Hana Sim is Orgasmic Meditation Trainer and Relationship Coach from South Korea. She says she used to be a floating head, having spent most of her life in universities, doing Masters and a PhD. I ask her how can we more authentic in our storytelling when most people are in their heads. Hana explains how Orgasmic Meditation helped her to be present.
Nicole Daedone is the one who made this practice; her first book is called “Slow Sex”. After it goes to our mindset, if we make it slow enough then we can see ourselves from the moment I see something new and then add up the interpretation.
We talk about how easy it is to label things, to judge them instead of observing them.
I think my judgement diffuses to other people, so at the end we think the same thing. The way we trained ourselves in Orgasmic Meditation is call what I see, and it changes our mentality.
She recognises she learned all the other things which can look good, but never really learned how to nourish herself as an adult human being.
I could not keep functioning in my old conditioning. I always had to perform and always had to show others that I’m worthy. It kept giving me a diminishing return. The more hard work I put in, it was giving me less and less satisfaction. At one point, it hit zero.
We discuss about being present in our bodies, and how if we do this we all feel each other. But we’re so busy thinking, she says, that we don’t recall all the things we feel. And about being in our masculinity or in our femininity:
The masculine way is to calculate the most efficient point to the end. The feminine way is “oh I’d like to feel this thing and maybe if I feel that then I can move to another point”. It’s always moving and always very flexible. When we follow our feelings it doesn’t make sense.
You can get in touch with Hana Sim in Facebook
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ALBERT: So, here I am in Paris with Hana Sim. Hi Hana
HANA: Hi
ALBERT: Hana is an orgasmic meditation trainer and relationship coach and I’m meeting her to talk about authentic storytelling, of course, so we’ve been talking already a bit about your background, about what you do. Just tell me again what is orgasmic meditation for those of us who don’t know.
HANA: OK, orgasmic meditation is a mindfulness practice so that means we train our attention on our body and how we feel and the way we do it is with another person so that’s more interesting and dynamic and there are lots of surprises. And if the normal zen or mindfulness practice concentrate their attention on their respiration and their breath, here we concentrate our attention on the point of contact between the fingertip and clitoris of woman so that’s really electric and very dynamic.
ALBERT: OK so that’s definitely very intimate, right and when you told me just a few minutes ago about this, this is like wow this is very intimate and what I find very interesting is that you’re originally from South Korea, right, but you live now in Paris and you mostly practice in Paris. So being you from this background with a society in Asia with this more constricted social norms, how was your journey from that environment to going headfirst into orgasmic meditation? What was your journey there? What happened?
HANA: There are many things that happened, there is my personal story and my different plans and my plan failed and there are many things, but first thing that I want to say because I changed many times my country, I’m from South Korea and I live in Paris and many times I go to English speaking countries very, very often and I think one thing which really helped me was the language barrier. Some people say we understand language mostly from the body language and the sensation so there are long periods of time I could not understand other languages, but somehow we understand each other like whether the feeling or the gesture and just the sensation. And actually the orgasmic meditation was something helpful I could use the skills in orgasmic meditation but we call limbic connection so even if I don’t understand all the words I somehow feel other people. That experience really helped me because even if I was not really fluent with languages I can feel people and that is something really exciting.
ALBERT: That’s really interesting. We’re talking about a universal language, right, I do believe that language and communication especially creates our reality. What you’re saying is maybe we don’t master all the languages or don’t master our language to the skill level we would like to but there are universal languages in touch I’m getting you’re saying is one of them, is a universal language.
HANA: What I really learned in orgasmic meditation is we actually feel each other. We feel each other but we don’t notice that. That’s something really interesting. Feminine, masculine or men women conversation, feminine is more about feeling and masculine, for me, is more like logical thinking. We all feel each other but just we’re so busy to think so we don’t recall all the things we feel. That’s why I’m doing this because we all feel and if we train ourselves enough then we can see where we really feel each other and just put more attention to myself and to other people. Something like that
ALBERT: There’s this barrier that masculinity or rationality puts in front of us and that’s sometimes an obstacle between real connection. If I couldn’t see you and if I just see you filtered through my mind, that’s not real connection. I know you work mostly with women, right?
HANA: Also lots of men
ALBERT: Would you say work most with women than men or the same?
HANA: It’s about the same.
ALBERT: Regarding this living from the heart, from the feeling instead of the mind that we men do so much so, what do we men have to learn from women?
HANA: Men learn from women? That’s really interesting. It’s really a humbling point. Before we just talked about the authenticity and being honest. From men which can be challenging for women or from masculine to feminine, sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes when we follow our feelings it doesn’t make sense. Just for example, we try to find some nice place in this area. You propose one place and I was talking about this treat and we just followed our sensations and found some nice cozy place.
ALBERT: We found this creperie, which was wonderful. This crepe was amazing and having some tea now.
HANA: So it’s more like this kind of journey. If you want to make it clear from the beginning, we just fix the end point and just try to calculate the most efficient point till the end. Feminine way is more like oh I’d like to feel this thing and maybe if I feel that then I can move to another point. So now I felt it so now I feel different. It’s always moving and always very flexible. From the beginning part it doesn’t really make sense. For example, my life I came to France for the PhD and to be married and to be happily ever after. I never really thought I would teach something like orgasmic meditation. It’s like WTF. It didn’t make sense. At the end I’m like wow this is the right place for me now.
ALBERT: So about this flowing nature of femininity, this intuitive nature of femininity, I don’t know where I’m going but it kind of makes sense. You feel that living in this feminine quality helps with being true? Helps with being authentic?
HANA: Yes, I believe so
ALBERT: How do people in your courses, people in your trainings, how do you help them open up and be authentic? Because of course it’s something that takes courage to go into orgasmic meditation training
HANA: It’s really something special
ALBERT: It’s not always couples, right? It’s maybe people that maybe never met before. I’m going to have this very intimate session. How do you help them open up?
HANA: One thing we do often is someone told me in our brain when we see something new, sometimes we often misinterpret that as a fear. What we do often is stay in the sensation and describe the sensation and put more distance like just a little bit and little bit more distance from the body sensation of like “whoa that’s something so new I don’t know what that is”. We make little bit bigger and bigger in space from the moment when we see something new and when we put our interpretation.
ALBERT: So detach ourselves from the meaning that our mind wants to put to that thing we’re living.
HANA: Nicole Daedone is the one who made this practice and her first book called “Slow Sex”. At the beginning she talked about slow sex and slow movement and being really in our body. But after it goes to our mindset, if we make it slow enough then we can see ourselves from the moment I see something new and then add up the interpretation and like “oh it’s ugly, oh it’s beautiful, or it’s not, I don’t like or maybe I like it. It’s just all the meanings of it. It’s really slowing it down.
ALBERT: That’s really interesting. What I’m picking up is that, of course, to be authentic to be true to have this real connection, we have to drop our minds to work on being less identified with our minds and be more present. You mentioning your body a lot so we have to go back into our bodies. Us as a human species we just learn how to grow apart from our bodies. Our brothers, the animals they are fully in their bodies. Maybe that’s why they kept their intuition at 100%.
HANA: I think, for example, animals cannot be depressed. Something like that.
ALBERT: Well, I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure…
HANA: I saw some depressed dogs maybe. When I think about my experience when I was really depressed. There are many layers of that. I was isolated, I had lots of self criticism. I was thinking OMG I’m not good enough. I’m just stupid. I’m going to die. Just there were with many thoughts. At that period I was like a floating head. I’ve spent most of my live in universities, engineering school, after I did my Master’s, and after I did a PhD, so step by step heady person carrier. I was really like a brain floating in the air. I didn’t know how to feel my body or how to feed my body. Not even sex, I was not here.
ALBERT: What happened, what happened that made you click?
HANA: I had to find something. I really had to find something which can change that state because I could really feel like I was getting dry. And also my life with my ex-husband was not really happy at that period. Now I think this is quite logical because I was not happy so we could not be happy. What we were doing is we were looking for something which could help us. Something to bring up the electricity or vitality and more energy.
ALBERT: Between the two of you?
HANA: Yes, so at the period, we were really open minded people. We had our basis of the engineering school so I keep people like engineering people and very scientific, and engineering approach to human mind is if that makes sense, why not try. So we tried some kind of threesome or adding more people, or adding more toys or Tantra or going to some festivals with many surprising, interesting people.
ALBERT: And that helped you go from your mind back to your body and your feelings.
HANA: Actually attempted at some point but it didn’t really change. It gave some excitement and it was refreshing because there was a new situation. But the thing was that I didn’t know how to live inside me. That’s something really, really difficult to learn.
ALBERT: There’s always infinite list of addictions that people sometimes go when they feel they’re lost in their minds and they’re not present. We’re talking about the present. Living in the now and the here. Fully. Otherwise, if we’re in our minds, our minds are always either in the past or in the future. What could go wrong, why didn’t these go right. There’s so many, this infinite list of addictions that people take like drugs, like addiction to food, addiction to alcohol, addiction to sex, addiction to risky sports, there’s all these addictions that we think will help us get out of our minds and go back to living life fully. But you didn’t go to those ends, you didn’t go to these extremes.
HANA: I think I could go.
ALBERT: You could have, but you didn’t. How come you didn’t? What did you find, what made it click for you to say, “oh that’s what I was missing”.
HANA: Actually it was really the orgasmic meditation. At that period of my life, I was too full of pride. I just didn’t want to admit it at that point, but now I don’t hesitate. There was one time… so after the orgasmic meditation, we share something called frame. Frame is a body sensation of one moment and it can be really diverse. It can be like, “oh I have an itchy sensation on my head so I really want to touch my head.” Or something like “I feel like my back is tense.” It’s really simple. When I started OM (orgasmic meditation in short), maybe daily basis, there was many new body sensations that I’d never really imagined that I would feel. It was not sexual. It’s more diverse than sexual. There was one day it was raining and we were OMing in the room and I could feel the raindrops were hitting my body. It was a little bit trippy but I felt like body was floating and with the sounds of rain and feeling the rhythm and the movement, it was like wow, I never really imagined that I could feel that in my body. Each time it was different. Each time it evolved differently and also my partner could feel it. That was a really magical moment that “wow, I can really connect at this level of body sensation with someone and I could feel this so much new just in my body”. I didn’t need to go somewhere else, but I first saw a life in me.
ALBERT: Going back to authenticity. Because that’s my quest, my mission is to find the tools, the specific ways how to make storytelling authentic. So, you shared your story. You were vulnerable there. You shared you’ve been depressed, you shared that you felt stupid, you shared you wanted to die. What process do you have to make in order to tell this story in an authentic way just like you told me but without being energetically attached to it.
HANA: Wow, that’s a really good question. I think for me the biggest part is shame. Like working on our shame.
ALBERT: That’s a big word, isn’t it
HANA: I remember about 5 years ago when I started my practice, orgasmic meditation, I didn’t really talk to people. I went to events and I just ate some cookies, then see the events and I went home. At that point, I didn’t have permission because I’m South Korean so if I speak in English or French, it’s never really perfect. I felt so shameful about that.
ALBERT: You know what, I can relate that. I’m from Barcelona from Catalonia, so English is my 3rd language. My first language is Catalan, then Spanish and then English I had only started speaking when I was 29 when I moved to London, so I can totally relate to that. So shame is a big thing. Do you think that includes the fear of being judged?
HANA: I think it’s really my judgement diffuses to other people, so at the end we think the same thing. For example, if I think that I don’t speak English well, then I get tight and I look for words and other people can feel it and they find that, oh this person feels really, really nervous at English.
ALBERT: That’s the law of attraction, isn’t it. You’re broadcasting a thought, in this case, “I’m not good at English, I’m not good at English”. And of course the Universe sends you proof of that thought. How did you get over that?
HANA: It took me a very, very long time. It took me a very awfully long time.
ALBERT: That’s the part through authenticity, right? We’re here in our minds, our minds are telling us a story, a story that we are buying, a story that my English is not good, I’m stupid, my story that I’m not worthy, and we’re buying into all this stories in our minds that it’s creating.
HANA: I’m not lovable, I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough.
ALBERT: All that is in the past and I don’t want it anymore. Bye bye. How did you personally work around that? I mean it takes a lot of courage to be authentic. One way to authenticity can be vulnerability. So you’re vulnerable, share your story, you’re willing to be open, to be fragile if you want, but of course if you open up from a place of shame, the results are not going to be good, right. So what was your process? What was your journey like to heal that? To move from that place of shame into a place of confidence?
HANA: The one thing in orgasmic meditation is there’s quite a strong Buddhist philosophy so we like being neutral. In one of the steps of orgasmic meditation is see the woman’s genital and describe it in a value neutral way. You know we are in France and we like to speak and we like to describe so what we do usually is like “wow, I feel the flower or I feel the origin of the word”. It’s so easy to put the judgement and our thoughts on what’s happening, but the way we trained ourselves in orgasmic meditation is call what I see like if there’s a cup and there’s water and I see someone crying and I see your tears. So keeping that neutrality about emotions, it is really helpful. Whether it’s a good thing like joy. My basic tendencies like keeping joyful and smiling. I am a smiling Asian woman, I’m always polite and I’m very nice kind of conditioning. I had to give myself the permission that getting angry and getting upset is OK. I see many other people do that maybe I can do that too. OK, shame? So everybody is a shame.
ALBERT: So getting out of this dichotomy of this category of either good or bad, I’m judging it… The nature of humans usually are we want to look good, we want to be right, we want to be in control. So yes, we somehow have to find a way out of this wanting to look good because wanting to look makes us judge ourselves all the time and judge other people. Everything like this glass, this is half empty, no this is half full. It’s just water, but is this water contaminated because it’s tap water from Paris, so it’s not pure. We’re just putting so much judgement in everything. This is an object made of glass, it’s transparent. I don’t know if it’s glass even, that might be a judgement.
HANA: And humans can do that too.
ALBERT: I have an idea of what it might feel in my mouth when I put it on my lips, but I don’t really know until do it, right, so let me experience it fully. OK it’s water, it’s colder than I thought it would be, the temperature is quite warm here. It’s nice. It’s hydrating. My throat was dry and now it’s wet which is nice because it allows me to speak more. We could be here for like 3 hours. But Hana, how do you take your clients, the people you coach, the people you train, through this journey of non judgement to vulnerability to authenticity?
HANA: One example I can give is one of the guys I coached he had a difficult relationship with his wife and so that’s what I wanted to say that we can do this kind of observation with this human being. Women can get really angry and vicious and very criticising when we are not really happy and everybody can do. So this guy has a lot of difficulty in front of his wife because she often gets angry and criticising and his feelings get hurt so it’s not easy to live on a daily basis. What we tried to do was see his wife and not try to defence because when we defend ourselves, it could trigger another defence mechanism and we can easily go to fight. What we tried to do is look at his wife and recognise her feelings like, “wow you’re so upset and you’re so angry and I’m sorry for that”.
ALBERT: Do they express that in words or is it just recognising?
HANA: Yes. It’s calling what we see, it changes our mentality. That’s my theory, anyway. Even if I get really heated and I want to react to this person in front of me like sometimes people can get really crazy, like I do, so what we can do is before we become reactive, just pause 1 second and see what’s happening. What this person is feeling, “wow she’s really upset and it must be very difficult for you”. So that moment is a really short moment and it’s not easy thing to do, but it can change lots of things.
ALBERT: That’s the shortcut to observing, to connecting, to authentic connections. That’s what you’re saying. Because in that moment we allow ourselves to be triggered, then our ego comes into place and takes control over our existence.
I’m going to be the devil’s advocate right now, you know in that moment, you might think the person who was observing might think, hey now I have to take care of the other person’s emotions and needs, but what about my needs? Right? I’ve been there, of course, everyone who’s been in a relationship has been there. What is the mantra that I have to repeat myself when that happens. Just observe the feelings, just observe the feelings, is it that?
HANA: The thing I learned is that the more we train our attention, it can be really clear where I put my attention. If we can feel that in a given moment, like this person needs my attention or is he calling my attention and now I want to change our conversation. It’s something we changed our conversation just through this 30 minutes, fluidly. You know when to change the subject, you know when one subject is fully explored and we can change. Actually we know when this person in front of me needs my attention and when I need some attention.
ALBERT: What I’m thinking about now is transcending all these layers that are mind has put in us that say, “oh but if I don’t take care of myself, I’m going to get hurt or tonight I’m going to feel regret”. Let me share with you about something I’ve been learning over the past few years, sorry, the past few weeks actually. I’ve been working with a lot of people and what I’ve been experiencing is that when I let go of expectations, when I let go of my needs which are not really my needs but my ego’s needs, and when I let go of that and relate with people from a place of service, of just wanting to help, to contribute, not help, contribute, to serve, like everything works out.
It’s taken me so long, I’m 35 years old now. And so it just takes so long because the programming we’re receiving, I mean you’re from the other side of the world of me and I’m from the other side of the world from you, right, but what we think we have in common is we have all this programming in our society. Maybe they take different shapes, different forms, right, your environment, my environment but they have this programming that are just putting layers on top of us and all of that is like a heavy weight that’s making us small putting this glass ceiling on top of us. And then at one point we have to realise, well, look I’m this little sparkle here that hasn’t died yet, no matter how many layers you put on top of me, I’m this shiny thing that can just break out and show myself. How was it for you being from South Korea, from an Asian culture, which is very disciplined, very square if I might, very strict… When did you realise that you could be this? Was it before you moved to France? After you moved to France? During your last marriage?
HANA: In South Korea, we have a really strong family environment. We are really used to taking care of each other. Usually the mother in the family takes care and now it’s changing. It’s always changing, but we take care of each other and make sure the other people are well fed and give to other people.
ALBERT: Your identity is your community’s identity, right?
HANA: Kind of. As a woman, it’s hard to feed ourselves like I eat good food first and I get my steaks needed and I nourish myself and that kind of thing I didn’t learn before. I learned like mathematics and science and sociology. I learned all the other things which can look good. But I didn’t really know how to really nourish myself as an adult human being. That was one thing really changed a lot because I could not keep functioning in my old condition. I could not keep working in the way that I knew before also because I changed country and I had to adapt, also it was not sustainable. It was really hard and hard pressure on myself. I always had to perform and always had to show others that I’m worthy. It kept giving me diminishing return like more effort, more hard work I put in, it was giving me less and less satisfaction. At one point, it hit zero. I really had to think how I can be a really happy human being. I looked around and there were some cases like, oh that might be possible. Those people look happy so I need to learn how to nourish myself and accept my body and start to think what I really like to do and when my body feels good.
ALBERT: You had to become a bit selfish.
HANA: The one example we use is in the airplane when people say put your oxygen mask first please and then help others.
ALBERT: If you cannot help yourself, you cannot help others.
HANA: It’s really draining. It can be really draining. I’ve seen some cases where daughters saying many times to mothers, “Oh I’m not going to live like you, mother”. That’s really vicious and can feel hurtful. It’s quite often. The case when the women is not happy and the people around them they feel that. It’s not really about the how much good meals we make, how much we try and work hard to feed other people, but when one person is not happy and drained, all the other people around her can feel that. So please eat good things end up getting nourished themselves first.
ALBERT: That’s the way of taking care of yourself. You can put the label on it as selfishness. You know there’s the kind of selfishness that serves you, and the selfishness that not only doesn’t serve you but also harms. And the kind of selfishness that consists of putting your oxygen mask first so that you can put it to others, I think that’s the kind of selfishness that serves.
HANA: Maybe the word selfishness comes from some kind of deprived notion like whether there is a limited amount of good and whether it goes to you or me so I can be selfish or altruistic. If we change our point of view, there’s a way we can create more by sharing and getting nourished well. I get good things so you can get good things. It’s really a change of mindset.
ALBERT: As a relationship coach, what is the price, what is the cost of not living authentically?
HANA: For example, sex, before my discovery of my own body and sexual self, I didn’t know how to use this vessel. I didn’t know where to scratch or where to touch, so I didn’t have enough information about myself. In this context, sex can be difficult because my partner he wants to fulfil our sex life and have a really thriving and happy life forever. That’s what we all want when we’re in love, right. But I felt like something wasn’t working in my body and then I started to think there was something is wrong. My partner starts to think “Oh maybe I’m not really performing, maybe I’m like impotent and I’m not really skilful”. Then each person starts to live a difficult life. Women feel broken and men feel incompetent. It’s really a subtle point just knowing myself and then be really kind to myself. For me that was the cost, thinking something is broken, problems, and it doesn’t work and just getting a little bit sad and unfulfilled.
ALBERT: So what is your advice to the people that live like that?
HANA: It’s really a difficult question. It’s difficult to acknowledge.
ALBERT: I’m going to help you. Go to an orgasmic meditation session.
HANA: Yes, that helps and it also takes a lot of courage. I know the people who calls me first and I know that this is a really courageous choice. Just to call someone talking about orgasm, it’s a really vulnerable and courageous choice
ALBERT: It seems like courage is the breaking point. It seems like courage, I mean talking from my experience, but it seems like courage is that point, that vibration, that frequency, that you have to force yourself to get there before you can reach other states. Before you can advance, before you can upgrade your life, you have to get courage. Before courage, nothing comes.
HANA: For me it also helped that people are not the same, but we are not that different. This is also why I was really excited about the storytelling thing because when people start to share their stories, we see so many similarities. Like I’m South Korean in the middle of Paris, but actually there are really many similarities between people. We are never alone. All the problems we see in our lives and all the difficulties, there are so many people having similar things. Knowing that I am not alone and that there is something common and I can talk to, it really helped.
ALBERT: I think that coming from the idea that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, right, we are spirits who happen to have a body. It’s not like we are a body that happen to have a spirit. If we come from this perspective that spirit is first, then of course, we are so, so similar, we are one with all other beings in the planet, in the universe. I see myself reflected in you and part of your life reflected in me so that’s why when we share a story in a true way, we can see that truth.
HANA: I really agree
ALBERT: Even though it’s not one truth, it’s not one single truth, but it’s 7 billion truths, or more than that if you include all the beings and the insects and the rocs. There are so many truths, but they all share so it seems a root, which is like the universal truth. I think that’s where we’re getting to, and when we shave all those layers of fear, of social conditioning, of the story that we tell ourselves that put us down day after day, when we transcend this as we get to that truth then we are not afraid of being intimate, of connecting with people, looking each other into the eyes, who we see reflected in each other
HANA: And feel more free.
ALBERT: And we feel more free. That’s a path to freedom.
HANA: I don’t need to pretend to be something different anymore.
ALBERT: Hana Sim, thank you very much, orgasmic meditation trainer and relationship coach. Thank you very much for this amazing conversation.
HANA: Thank you so much. It was really fun.
ALBERT: Thank you for accepting my invitation, in the middle of Paris, from a stranger, and see I wish you lots of luck and lots of courage in your mission of freeing up people.
HANA: Wow, thank you so much. That means a lot to me.