Camilla Constance is an Empowering Libido Coach Who is Changing the Sexual Narrative
Camilla Constance, a former primary school teacher, has completely turned her life around in an unexpected way. After a deep depression, Camilla rediscovered sex and being in touch with her own body. This journey was a life changing experience for her, and now she has vowed to help other women and men rediscover this energy and life. As a libido coach, her mission is to change the sexual narrative and reconnect people to love and pleasure in their own bodies. When we begin to see sex in a wider context, we begin to understand just how important it is for a happy, healthy, and balanced life.
Tell us about what you do and what your why is.
I am a libido coach and I work mainly with women, but not exclusively. I do it because midway through my life, when I went through my depression, I dealt with it by going to the doctor, getting antidepressants, doing all of the traditional things. Then, some things miraculously happened for me and I rediscovered sex and it completely changed my life. Years later, I became familiar with the term vaginal depression which is when we are not sexually activated, we get very shut down, and we don’t have the surge of orgasmic energy going through us. Our bodies actually get fundamentally depressed and it is a physical depression. Overcoming that and helping others overcome that became my mission and my why. When I was really alive and I rediscovered my sexuality, I went to the doctor for something very routine. I sat in the office fizzing with life and energy. I looked around the room at women my age or younger, who all looked so grey and miserable and sick. I thought to myself “they need this touch, I wish I could go around and wave a magic wand and give it to them and bring them back to life.” To me, that is why I work for libido. Libido is desire. It is the life surging through us. It is fundamental to what I want to bring back to women, to the planet, to women’s families, to women’s partners and children. We need this aliveness in our bodies.
There are two roots for any human to experience sexual energy. Yes, there is sex with a partner, but there is also sex on our own. I don’t work with two people, I work with individuals, and I help them cultivate it within themselves, to kind of bring themselves back to life. They can then take this back to their partners if they’re in partnership. But, women do not need to be in a relationship to have a well fed sexuality. They can be filled with sexual aliveness through self pleasure work. There is a big step between the kind of unconscious habits that you don’t feel comfortable doing or don’t particularly enjoy, I guess unconscious masturbation, compared to the kind of conscious work you can do with your body and really learn to move energy around your body to nourish and sustain life. It’s a different way of viewing sexuality. And that is why I work.
How do your clients find you and how do you get past some of the preconceived notions or barriers that people can put up?
People have found me through my press features or on social media like Facebook. I have a Facebook group called “Camilla’s Kitchen Table” where women can join me to grow into an ease and comfort to begin to slowly melt the barriers. In that group, I am taking the first step to invite people to join me for a cup of tea and a chat just as they would in real life. If people then choose to work one on one with me, it’s very much about melting that resistance. Acknowledging it’s there and then working with every belief we have inherited: what did our parents, schools, and communities say about sex? Just having those conversations, doing some really gentle release works and meditation brings them to a different level of acceptance and love for their bodies and just experience pleasure in a different way. So many women are shut down to pleasure. They are scared to feel pleasure, so that is a big part of my work to bring those barriers down. It’s only been the last 20 years or so that neuroscience is actually doing the research to see how orgasm affects women’s health and cognitive abilities. This idea that sex’s soul purpose is for reproduction, and if you are having sex outside of reproductive purposes then somehow it is sinful or wrong, is a very good way of shutting humans down.
Do you work mainly with women, because women are so under researched when it comes to sex?
Yes, that is so problematic. Men’s sexuality is so well catered for. Even in the way that we’ve used sexuality as a culture, we very much view it on a male model. If you think about the pills that get men erect in order to have sex, it makes the energy very rapid, very urgent, very fast, and women’s energy most of the time isn’t really like that. Our energy is generally slower and gentler and needs more gradual build up. We are so used to trying to cram our gentleness and our fluidity and our sensuality into this rapid urgent box, and that is another reason why some women get shut down and bored and fed up and disheartened with sex because it’s just not pleasing them. So part of working with me is learning some really gentle and really profound self pleasure practices to get in touch with their own bodies. They learn to touch and interact with their bodies in a very different way. Breath is hugely important, moving energy with breath, visualization, movement, and sound are all key.
Another thing about women is that all of us need our love languages nourished. That is an integral part of sexual foreplay and the more that men (and women) do the love dance throughout the day - meaning the winks, the strokes, the cuddles, the kissing, etc - that is the foreplay that we need. It is not just a couple of minutes before penetration in the bedroom, it’s an all day long thing. So many of my clients come to me who have never seen their parents touch or interact in that way and it is so good to be able to model that kind of behavior.
I wanted to ask you about your experience with women refuges. How is this connected to the work that you do?
I think the connection is fear. It comes back to the saying “men fear women will laugh at them, and women fear men will kill them.” Men have this big fear that they need to perform correctly, that they need to be hard, and they need to be impressive in order to avoid being laughed at. Women’s fear is that our sexuality is dangerous or wrong or sinful. They burned women for being overtly sexual not so long ago, and this is deeply embedded in our bodies. I have been working with women who carry this fear and we do so much work to release it and experience sex in a more pleasurable, gentle, and loving way. I have become very aware of the fear that women carry. I have worked with a few women who have suffered incredible violence at the hands of men and I can’t think of anything more important for me to support than places that make women safe. Sexual violence is real. If it gets to the point where you need to escape to keep you and your children safe, there needs to be places to go to. I just think if you have any level of success as a woman and you have the means to give back, then this is what you should support.
You see clients from all over the world. Do you see differences in mindsets depending on where they are in the world?
Yes and no. I have to be really careful to check that it is actually a genuine difference or if it is just my prejudice or my preconceived notions. I think about this more and more. I am a white western woman, and I view the world through the perspective of a white western woman. Sometimes, we can assume that we are all looking through the same lense, but everyone really sees everything very differently. I want to give an example: When I used to work with couples, I had a session booked by a man, and I was assisting him to give his wife a really sensual experience. They showed up and it turned out they were both Muslims. I immediately went to the white western woman's reaction of “this is an abusive situation, I shouldn’t partake in this, I shouldn’t help him.” I just kind of had a knee jerk reaction and I had a one on one talk with her and she said “no, no this is a gift from my husband.” We then went through this really beautiful tantric process together and I have never seen a more sensual and sexually alive woman. My prejudice of thinking that she was here against her will was completely misjudged. I think it is really easy from ignorance to make assumptions about people from other cultures and other countries, when fundamentally we are all just humans.
What are some of the other things that you have discovered doing this work about yourself, about the work, about your clients?
Setting up a business and putting yourself out there in a business way is the most vulnerable, exposing, and challenging experience that I have ever done. Learning how to do something and then getting a job doing it is one thing. Learning how to do something and then promoting yourself and putting yourself out there as a sole trader is a whole different ball game. So when I am talking to women about their fear, I am really on board with them. I feel this fear everyday because of the business side, and that was unexpected.
Another really big thing I have learned, and that I am learning more and more, is how whilst there are differences between men and women, ultimately we are all human beings. I don’t buy this idea that women want love and men want sex. I think women really want sex and need sex and men really want and need love. There is lots of conditioning that makes it difficult for men to be open to love, but fundamentally we all want that connection.
Camilla wants anyone who feels disconnected or shut down or is worrying about sex to know that you do not need to be in that place anymore. Camilla, along with many other women out there, can guide you to a much happier place. You are not broken. Nobody is broken. You have been trying to fit yourself into a box that you don’t fit into and it’s time to create a different box. You can get help to do that. Her website is www.camillaconstance.com and you can request to join Camilla’s Kitchen Table Facebook Group here. Her Instagram is @camillaconstance.coaching and you can also find her on Facebook and LinkedIn by searching her name.
