All right, let's make sure we are in fact recording because I
would be really upset if we weren't.
OK hello, welcome to something positive for positive people.
I'm Courtney Brain. Something positive for positive
people is A5O1C3 nonprofit organization supporting people
navigating her for stigma. And this is so real because this
right here is my, I was, I was drinking something like a
beetroot juice powder thing and I was getting to the end of it
and I tilted the glass all the way and I guess I ain't have my
mouth wide open enough because it's just shot down here.
So you, you see this little stain I got on my shirt.
But hey, you know what, it's kind of what is very
representative of who I am and what something positive is,
right? Like it's not really, it's not
perfect, it's unscripted and in real time.
This is just how we do things. I got a little coffee right here
because after I finish this recording, I'm going to go and
do my workout, do my yoga. And yeah, it's it's, I'm off to
a late start. I'm working on not doing things
work wise over the weekend. So if you submit things over the
weekend starting Friday after one PMI have a really, really
hard boundary for myself that I'm struggling to win for us by
not doing something positive for positive people.
At least communication and work over the weekend.
For now, as I get more into it and more used to it, I can let
my weekends be Forrest and for play.
So I'm going to take a little sip of my coffee real quick and
we getting into this podcast episode now.
I'm feeling a lot more prepared to because I got a little
notepad here for what I wanted to talk about today.
And the title of this one is going to be you are entitled to
compensation. All right, if you received a
positive herpes diagnosis, you are entitled to compensation.
And if you remember back, I think episode 399, I got it
pulled up right here. Nope, It might have been 400.
Oh, oh, I I can only see what herpes taught me about that,
that that. So I think it was 399 hundred or
four O 1 where I talked about what herpes taught me about God.
And a lot of what that really has come down to is
understanding and learning the physical laws of the universe as
a whole. So understanding the physics of
how atoms engage with one another, how we interact, right?
And one of the things that's been mentioned here is that law
of compensation. And the law of compensation is
it's funny because anime does a really, really good job of
explaining physics to me. It speaks my language.
So in Full Metal Alchemist, I believe I mentioned this on
there, it was they they really talk about the law of equivalent
exchange and that in order to obtain something as a human
first, something of equal or greater value must be exchanged.
Now many of us when we get our herpes diagnosis, we begin
thinking about how something was taken away from us and we go
down this rabbit hole living as if something was stripped of us.
Like we were stripped of our ability to get into a
relationship. We were stripped of our
sexuality, our connectedness to our sexual selves, when the
reality is, OK, well, if something was taken from you,
right, you're entitled to something of equivalent or
greater value based on what you've given up.
And for myself, I'll use myself as an example.
And I, I don't like this because I'm such an extreme example.
My sex life has changed. It hasn't been taken from me.
What was taken from you were actually things that at the time
seemed like everything. But in hindsight, it what was
taken was actually good for me because the kinds of people that
I was having sex with are the ways that I would go about
having sex and the ways that I would go about connecting with
women and partners. These weren't the healthiest of
ways for me, and the more anime I watch, the more analogies I
get. So I I'm going to try and keep
this censored and grounded in reality and based on my
experience without going into the shows that articulate this
so well. And I'm trying to use my own
words and my own language, so bear with me.
If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you
probably speak Courtney to some extent, but if you haven't, you
probably don't think I'm a crazy person.
So my ability to have sneaky, like under the radar going about
it in a way that is like not direct.
That's the word. Me getting sex in an indirect,
roundabout way that's done right.
There's no more like not directly communicating my
desires and what it is that I want from someone, right?
Like you'll hang out with somebody, you'll be around them
a lot. You hope they get the hint.
You hope they make a first move. Ain't no more of that.
Because now since my diagnosis, I had to initiate conversations
about sexual health before we got into a place where we were
going to have our clothes off or what we're going to be making
out, or we're going to have our hands all over each other.
And if we're going to go out and be drinking or if there were
going to be any type of substances involved, you want to
have that conversation sooner. Whereas prior to my diagnosis, a
lot of those conversations weren't had.
The expense of it was do you want to wear a condom?
And so this led to a lot of sexual experiences with people
that were not in alignment with who I am and weren't in
alignment with the kind of relationship structures that I
wanted or the kinds of sex that I even wanted to have.
I didn't even know what kind of sex I wanted to have.
So the universe took that away from me, my ability to get the
kind of connection and sex and relationships that I wanted at
that time. Now this was a little bit over
13 years ago when I got my diagnosis right.
I started having sex at age 16. And so between the ages of 16
and 2324 years old, that's about 8 years of sexual activity of me
going about it in this particular way.
So I heavily invested my consciousness, my effort, my
attention, my awareness into getting sex and having sexual
partners. And now that's where my
attention and awareness was. I think a lot of what I did, as
most teenage boys was motivated by that.
Like, I started driving before I got a cell phone because I
wanted to be able to go see my girlfriend who lived a little
bit of ways away, and we would be able to have sex.
So like, sex is such a driving force that in order to get this,
I learned how to drive. I bought a car and I'm 16 years
old. How do you do that right?
How do you get the money? How do you get the money?
How do you convince somebody to teach you how to drive their car
as a 15 year old learning how to drive And then how do you have a
car before you have a cell phone, right.
So the the extent of which my sexual energy, my drive led me
to do all of this for the outcome of sex.
I think about the output of what I had to do in order to have my
first sexual experience and in order to keep having that.
So the equivalent of what I invested into learning to drive,
earning the money to save up for a car, getting the money for
gas, getting the money for insurance, making the repairs to
the car, getting to the place that I needed to go.
We had cell phones that had like Google Maps on there.
We had MapQuest. I had to go somewhere, type in
my address, her address, print that off, keep it not get lost,
had no kind of communication between leaving my house and
arriving to the destination. And if I needed to call, I would
have had to pull over and find a pay phone.
That's crazy to think about in hindsight, but that is how much
of myself that I put into the pursuit of sex, right?
So think about it like there's this Bank of your attention and
your awareness, right? I didn't care about, I was going
to graduate high school, that was easy.
I played football, that was easy.
I was going to college, so that was easy.
But getting sex, Oh my goodness. There was so much of my
attention, awareness, presence, consciousness that was invested
into the outcome of a sexual experience and the the, the
essence. Excuse me, I want you to think
about grains of sand, right? So at this point, I've put the
grains of sand of my awareness to create the form of what
became my girlfriend, right? And pouring into that
relationship, like or pouring into my sexual relationship,
like I'm putting my attention, awareness, life force energy
into that. And you heard me say what all
went into that? I had to get the money, get the
car. I had the there were so many
things that went into that, right?
And that was eight years of my life.
Like that was the extent of which I would be willing to go
in order to get sex. OK, so imagine, you know, if you
can every sexual partner that you've had and think about your
life force energy being the equivalent of grains of sand
that makes their form, right? That creates what that person
looks like in the experiences that you have, right?
You're you're pouring your sand into them.
All right, so that was happening for eight years, 7-8 years until
I got my herpes diagnosis. So I get my herpes diagnosis and
then it's almost like everything that I poured into them just
went away. Like there was going to be no
more of my ability to create the form of the sexual experiences
that was gone. The universe took those forms
away from me now, because the universe snatched the forms for
me and created, you know, this for me.
I created the idea that I would not have access to that again.
I would not be able to get the outcomes that I wanted.
But we forget about the output, the output being those
individual grains of sand that came from us into the form and
the shape that has been taken in our romantic partners or the
experiences that we think that we no longer have access to,
right? Because, yeah, I'm talking about
the outcome being sex. But what about the ability to
bring myself to engage with those people that I had sex with
and everything that led up to that, right?
So we are capable, right? I didn't lose anything when my
herpes diagnosis came. The form and how I perceived
what that would look like for myself, all of that went away.
But what happens to the sand, right?
Like this is a sandbox. Like our reality is essentially
A sandbox that we, what we give our attention to is what takes
form based on the sand that is available.
One of the laws of it, there's three laws of thermodynamics.
I'm, I'm learning this, I'm in, I'm in a group about quantum
physics, which is exciting. We're at the early stages, but
I've already been like pondering on the Internet about how things
work. And there's three laws of
thermodynamics. When it comes to energy.
The first law, I believe is the law of that it, whatever it is,
it says that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but it
can be like transferred. And so when I talk about the
sand and like the forms of our energy, if we can picture it as
grains of sand, like we are so much of that and have the
ability to bring it into existence or bring it into
reality of what we give our attention to law #2 is that the
universe naturally gears toward chaos and disorder.
So motion and movement and these that are not stillness is
naturally going to occur. So kind of if we want to be
still, we have to force ourselves to sit still, right?
But naturally that's just going to be what it is.
And then the third law is absolute 0, which essentially is
neutrality. And that's the thing that threw
something positive for positive people.
Yoga therapy that I try and teach people to do.
I talk about stigma minimization over prevention because that's
like the language that people understand.
But when I talk about absolute 0, the idea is to be neutral and
remain neutral so that you are operating from a grounded place.
To be able to not expend your own sand grains of energy, but
to recognize that you are in fact a part of the infiniteness
of the universe and allow for its energy to run through you.
Because when we're not at absolute 0 or parasympathetic, I
think it's the parasympathetic nervous system being at rest.
Then what happens is we generate heat and friction to where we're
not at absolute zero. I only like 0° temperature.
I mean absolute 0. Like there's no presence of, of
external heat, right? So then the it's like the sand
can just flow through us and we just decide what it is that we
want to take form and we allow for it to take form.
So those three laws of thermodynamics govern the way
that I'm speaking to the sandcastle thing, right?
So forcefully, because my body, my nervous system, my mind, my
emotions, these things were never in alignment for those
eight years, right? Like how much effort I'm putting
into doing all these things, which it's great because I
gained so many skills. I learned how to drive, which
I've been able to drive and do other things, right?
I learned how to get from point A to point BI, learned
communication. I learned to set expectations.
I learned to be on time. All of these wonderful
byproducts of my pursuits of sex, and then I get my herpes
diagnosis and it's like I forget about all of those other things.
All of those other aspects of myself and the kind of person
that I had to grow into and become and all of the things
that I needed to achieve and that I did achieve, all because
I get a herpes diagnosis. Does that sound familiar to you
if you're somebody who received the herpes diagnosis and you
think to yourself, I'll never have sex again, right.
We're focused on that outcome of I'm not going to get that.
But we don't think about the output of what went into it.
Like just because we have herpes doesn't mean we are now no
longer going to be attractive. Be attracted to someone,
initiate a conversation, have some dancer laugh together, get
to know each other, maybe ask them out or be asked out.
Go on the date, have the one-on-one time, learn about
each other, get to know each other.
I'm running out of fingers here right?
All of these things that we actually have more control over,
which is our output leading to the ideal outcome, right?
We let herpes take away all of those things prior to getting to
a place of even needing to talk about having sex.
And that was my experience, right?
So I let myself believe that herpes took away all of those
other things leading up to the sexual experience before the
sexual experience had even been talked about it on the table,
which prior to my diagnosis, again, I went about sex in a
very like back door way. It wasn't something that was
direct. I was very indirect about it,
right? Partially because I wasn't
taught how to talk about it or like how to get it.
But it was also just like, that was the that was what worked for
me. So I continued to just do what
worked and allow what was happening to happen.
And now with this understanding of the way that reality works,
the laws of physics work, I recognize what's happened for me
as it relates to this law of compensation.
So there is an entitlement that we have a lot of us may not even
be aware of. So if herpes did in fact take
all of those things away from me, then I'm owed something
incredible. The value that I placed on my
sexuality was it's very significant.
I, I can't put it into metrics for everybody, but for myself,
like that was who I was, that was my identity very heavily
identified as a partner, a sexual partner, somebody who was
good at sex. Like I used to always say this
thing is like, I'm going to be in your top five.
That was that was the attitude that I brought into sex.
And after my diagnosis, like I lost that the universe took away
my confidence. It took away my outlet for
pleasure, took away my ability to connect.
It took away my future that I saw of being somebody who was
going to have five kids, get married, have a house in Saint
Louis about crazy, right, Thinking about having five kids
like I, I'm again, I'm, you might heard this before, but I'm
37 right now. When my dad was 37, he had me,
which I was an 1819 year old and my two brothers who were 12 and
13, He had a wife in the house and I, I saw the struggles.
I can't imagine the life that I live right now having three kids
or one kid or a house even, or a wife even.
Right. And you know, there was a point
where I did see this for myself and there were points in life
where, you know, you situationally, you're with the
person, with people, you get together and then like you
envision, you know, different outcomes for yourself.
But a lot of times we don't focus on the output and going
back to that absolute zero thing.
That's really what I've learned for myself in order to receive
what I'm owed from the universe. Like you are entitled.
Something was taken from you that you had so much value in
that you poured so much of those grains of sand of your energy
into, and it took the form of the outcomes that you wanted.
And when you receive your herpes diagnosis, it's almost like they
just collapsed. But when it collapses, because
of the first law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be
created or destroyed. It's just moved.
It's your core energy was put into those forms and now it's
collapsed. It's not gone.
It's just collapsed. And it's like, well, now what
are you going to pour? Your intention or your attention
and your awareness and your presence into because the
universe owes you new forms of that based on the laws of
thermodynamics, laws of physics. Please, like challenge me.
Look this up. If you think I'm lying or if I'm
bullshitting you tell me. Tell me I'm wrong.
Don't nobody tell me I'm wrong. People just believe me.
Somebody told me a long time ago she was like, what do you make a
great cult leader? And I didn't know if that was a
compliment or that was like a jab, but I was like, because I
thought about the the TV show the following with Kevin Bacon
and the dude who like legit had a cult and that I, I don't, I
don't want to be seen like that. Like if I'm inspirational or
influential, cool, but I don't want to be seen as like somebody
manipulative, taking advantage of people, right?
Like I think that that's that's not cool.
But anyway, the point of absolute 0, I think that when
people say to work on yourself, that's what it means.
And I'll talk about this, the 8 limbs of yoga, which are OK.
I'm trying to remember these off the top of my head.
Essentially what this is, is it's a framework for how to get
your state of being, body, mind, emotion, spirit into that
absolute 0 state so that you can in fact like not waste your
energy, but to allow yourself to remain in neutral state.
For the body to naturally do what it does.
For the universe to naturally do what it does.
And for your ability to create and have the experiences and
autonomy and choice to almost be able to flow through you as you
access or essentially how the universe accesses itself through
you or God or whatever higher power of force that you believe
in that we are all connected to. OK, so the creation of like the
essences, the essence of your grains of sand that are your
awareness that you put into the form of the outcomes that you
want. Collapsing after the herpes
diagnosis. If we align ourselves according
to the 8 limbs of yoga, which are the yamas and the yamas
which are how you engage with the world and how you engage
internally. Panayama, which is control of
the breath, Asana, which is alignment of the body.
Like to be able to be comfortable to meditate.
I know there's Bianna Dharma. I don't want to mess him up.
And the meditation part, the sense sensory withdrawal, being
able to pull your awareness away.
So just like how herpes came in and it took away our idea of the
outcomes that we want, right? Being able to take consciously
the awareness that we give to things and be able to retreat
into that sandbox, so to speak. So our awareness is not on our
job, on our kids, on our partners, our friends, our
family, our hobbies, our interest.
It's just being pulled away from those things.
It's like we are consciously bringing our awareness, those
grains of sand into the sandbox and then deep focus to where
we're almost constructing. Like I think about a sandcastle,
the deep focus, I forget the word for it, but to be able to
focus on that one thing at a time that you're doing, right?
Like this is 1 of the 8 limbs. Because now what we're able to
do with that focus is we're building whatever it is that we
want, the outcome that we are working toward, we are
consciously putting the energy into creating that thing, right?
And this, again, this is like how we're aligning ourselves.
And then after that, man, what is what comes after the focus, I
want to say is somebody, but I got to look it up real quick.
Hold on, hold on. 8 lambs of yoga.
Almost had it. Almost had it.
OK, so wait, it was the yama, which is how you behave with the
world, how you behave in yourself, the physical postures,
breath control, taking away the senses, which is pratyahara.
And then dharna is concentration, Deanna is
meditation. So I had it a little bit out of
order. And then samadhi is the final
stage where we have that again, we're aligned right.
So once we're in that neutral state of absolute 0, this is
this is how we achieve that state.
It's not an outcome, it's a state that we have to what will
fluctuate back and forth from and we have to align ourselves
with. All right.
So all of that said, as we practice those things, and
again, this is what I'm, I'm working on this in yoga therapy.
This is why I've been inconsistent with the podcast
episode. I've been learning for the past
year about this like application of yoga therapy to the nervous
system, to our emotions, especially to support people
navigating stigma, because having herpes and navigating
stigma myself, yoga was the by far the most useful thing to me.
And if somebody would have came at me and been like, well, have
you tried yoga for that, I'd have been ready to slap the shit
out of them. And mind you, I'm talking about
232324 year old. All right.
I mean, now, now I'm, I'm more curious about it, but at the
time that would have been my response.
I would have been like, you fucking kidding me?
What do you mean? So I, I, I don't wish this on to
people. We have a conversation and if
people want to get to this place, let's talk about it.
And I tried my best to put my own experiences out here in
order to be able to get people to see its application in
someone's real experience. I haven't been having, I haven't
had any podcast guests in a minute and I was struggling for
a while to give them. But I think that maybe this is
just my little nudge of I've been working to stay in
alignment, and so much of it is in the Yamas.
And the Yamas, one of the things that comes up is discipline and
energy management. These are the two things that
I've been focused on. I have been withdrawing my
senses from a lot of external things, polyamory being one of
them. I'm not a polyamorous person, am
I not a monogamist? Yeah, I am.
And that's like where I'm at and where I'm, I would say more so
aligns with me where I am right now, but who knows what can
happen over time, how that changes based on, you know, what
aligns and what's supposed to work or happen or be for me and
work through me. And another one of those is like
in reading them, right, non violence, truthfulness, non
stealing, energy management and then non attachment, right?
So these are the ways that we engage with the world, right?
And the application is, I'll do separate episodes in more detail
if this is something that naturally comes up, but without
overwhelming people, I want to make sure that I conclude the
you're entitled to compensation. If you received the herpes
diagnosis and you're still alive, you're entitled to
compensation by the universe. I'm not going to say financial
compensation. I know people who I've gone
through the legal process of suing, trying to sue, and you
know, it's worth hope for some people, actually, and for others
it's just not. It's not worth it.
And it goes back to the amount of energy and awareness and
attention and presence that we give to the form of the thing,
rather than being able to fall back a little bit and just be
like, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to
detach from those things. I'm going to remove my
awareness, my energy, my presence, my attention from
these things. Let it fall into the sandbox.
And the sandbox is essentially like the quantum field of
infinite energy and intelligence, right?
And what we, when we're like viewing ourselves is broken.
We can't let that energy run through as it gets stuck, it
gets caught, right? And the way that we can view a
herpes diagnosis is as sort of a redirection of where that energy
needs to go. It's really just saying, hey,
your energy and attention is here in this place, which is
scattering into all these other directions, like, let's plug
this leak here. And then it goes and chills.
It sends the message. And then it just chills.
And it's like, all right, as long as you get the message, I'm
a chill here, but I'm always going to be here as a reminder.
And that's kind of been what it is for me.
It was a huge redirect for me, and I didn't realize this when I
was practicing yoga, but I just felt better and I didn't have a
lot of outbreaks. I have my first one.
I have one after having a ton of sugar in a short period of time,
and I have one after getting fired from the job.
I had no business at that job. And now because I worked on
alignment, even if it was unconscious, like practicing
yoga and getting all of these things, I remember one day I
just took a class. I was mad.
I had a terrible day at work and I went, I went to the class,
everything. And it was like, I don't need to
be in this class. But I went and I just felt
better. And looking at the 8 limbs of
yoga, like that's what made me feel better.
That's why I felt better. I was out of alignment.
And then I got into alignment and it, it's very like short
term temporary. You get glimpses of peace and
what it looks like to have things just fall into place for
you when you're in that state. But if you're still doing the
thing that got you, that get you out of that state.
Like for me, it was the job, the field and the jobs that I had.
I'm not a person that can go into a place every day, Monday
through Friday from 8:00 to 5:00.
I'm not. And it took for my herpes
diagnosis. And like I said, I got fired
from a job and that triggered an outbreak as I was looking to get
back into the same career field. I went to college for
advertising and public relations.
I minored in creative writing and communication studies.
Double major, double minor, I'm kind of using those things, but
I ain't using that shit podcast, which is technically media, but
my it it's been the yoga, the yoga, learning to teach yoga,
learning to it. It's not even been learning to
teach, but learning to learning. Learning yoga for myself has
made me the kind of person who can now offer the kind of
support that I offered. And stumbling into this like
this is what the universe owed me.
And I, I can say this from a place of mom used to always call
me arrogant and I've been fighting that for years of like,
no, no, I'm not arrogant. And in that, like I've been
overly humble, which is something I know that I've
talked about on past episodes. Like when you podcast for
fucking 8-9 years, you repeat some things.
So if you've been here this whole time, like you're going to
hear some stuff again. But if you're new here, hi, I'm
Courtney, don't listen to old podcast.
And I, I, I think that that arrogance is actually important
here because I am in fact living proof of that.
I'm living proof of the law of compensation in action.
I told y'all what was taken away from me and I told you my
perception of what was taken from me.
And a very important analogy here is giving, right, If you
have a dollar, that dollar might be your last dollar.
The value of that dollar to you can be significantly different
than the value of that dollar to someone else.
So your $1.00 can be $1000 to somebody else.
Oh, here's $1000 and I ain't worried about it.
Whereas it's like, man, isn't my last dollar.
This is all I have here. The value is significantly
different. So the value that I placed on my
sexuality or my ability to get sex was significantly different
than my value of being able to work and, and make money, right?
I place way more value on getting sex versus getting a
job. There's always going to be jobs
out there you can do. Another example of this is I was
giving up something for my Socalpa, which is like my
lifelong intention basically. And when I was thinking about
the thing to give up, it was like, oh, certain foods,
drinking, I'm already not doing that.
Watching porn. I can't tell you the last time I
watched porn, these were the things I was thinking about
giving up. And I thought sex and I didn't
really have a reaction because it would have just been like,
I'm not giving up sex forever. I know that.
But giving it up for a certain amount of time or setting
conditions around it, right? None of that moved me.
But the minute I thought to myself, Instagram, my heart
drop, it didn't now. But the first time I thought
giving up Instagram, my heart drop.
And I was like, oh shit, that's the thing.
That's the thing that I need to give up for my son Cobra.
And the way that I decided to do it was I just removed Instagram
and all social media from my phone.
I have the messaging app just to have for Facebook and WhatsApp,
but everything else is gone off my phone.
So I'm posting significantly less on Instagram.
It makes me way more intentional because I have to come to my
computer now to do it. And I I like that.
I like that adjustment that I made.
So I didn't realize how much of my awareness and attention that
I was giving to social media until I took it away.
And like my phone usage has significant, can't be dropped
even. But I say that to say like the
value of Instagram and social media and I I'll be fully
transparent. Y'all like the outside of, you
know, the something positive, the herpes stuff like Instagram
was a dating app for me. So I guess it was in fact
connected to my ability to get into relationships or have sex.
Like it was in fact a dating app for me in the time that I was on
it as well. Like I meet people who were
like, Hey, I like what you know what your work is.
I like what you do, I like what you're about.
I like you, right? And that's gotten me into some
very healthy and loving relationships and it got me into
what I thought would be my last relationship.
So like I'm not against that. Like, of course, you know,
there's the ethics and the boundaries that you need to have
around that, especially like between the here, I'm supporting
people in these vulnerable populations and, and identities
versus personal use. So I decided to just give up the
personal use of it and just make it about herpes and herpes
stigma. So in me, I'm not letting the
universe take that from me. I'm giving that.
And because I had that intense emotional reaction when I
thought about removing social media from my phone, I know that
that carries significant weight to me, whereas it might not for
somebody else. It would be like if I were
giving up $1000 because that's the value that I place on this
versus if I were to just be like, what if I like, give up,
give up. What else?
Like something I already care about like dating apps Like, oh,
I just won't get on dating apps. That's like a dollar worth of
attention and awareness versus it being $1000 of social media,
Instagram. So now the universe, because I
voluntarily offered up $1000 quality of my awareness,
attention, the grains of sand, right?
I removed it from the form of my dating experiences.
Now the universe owes me something of equal or greater
value, so maybe it'll be something aligned where it's
somebody who does watch anime and enjoys the kind of things
that I like to do. That is more of a fit that is
more compatible than what I've received in the past, right?
So I'm voluntarily offering that up.
Whereas my sexuality was taken from me or I perceived it to
have been taken from me, along with all of those other things
that the grains of sand of my awareness gave form to.
Now it's all back into the sandbox in the sandcastle.
So the involuntary entitlement, like what?
I'm old has been given and now it's just a matter of sustaining
it and sustaining it really just looks like practicing the 8 lens
of yoga and living that shit right?
Like the Yamas and the Yamas I it's 10 adults.
So the yamas are five and then the Yamas are five.
And these are like your own internal observances and your
external ways of engaging with the world.
And I'm, you know, in hindsight, like I'm so grateful for like my
most recent relationship, it ended over a year ago at this
point. And without using this language,
I think that This is why the relationship ended because I
didn't have this, I didn't have this grounded state.
I didn't have this code that I live by.
And I was living in the way that was very like externally driven,
unintentional, no boundaries. So I I can say that now like I'm
I'm very grateful for. What I learned after that
relationship ended because it did teach me this because when
done this was some of the shit she was saying.
She was like, what's your intention?
What are your boundaries right. And I that question didn't make
sense to me in that way. But after a year of shit, and
I'll probably speak about this a little bit more, but after a
year of just like being able to process that internal heat, that
internal friction and recognize like, oh, now that I'm in a much
more grounded state and aligned based on the 8 limbs of yoga,
I've been able to have that clarity that she wanted from me
that I shit didn't have for myself.
So, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm very grateful for that because it's
those obstacles that become opportunities for us to get to
this place. Like it was an adjustment, just
like my herpes diagnosis was like that breakup was like a
readjustment for me. And so that's, that's, that's a
very critical piece of how we got here and how we got to this
place. So voluntarily now my sun culpa
is to nurture my nature. And part of that was recognizing
that I am a being, that at baseline, I am nurtured, right?
I see myself beyond my physical form, my body, what it does, and
more so about those invisible parts of myself.
Nurturing those, being able to be creative, curious, someone
who values choice, challenge myself.
I value completion, someone who's consistent.
I enjoy connection. I think that's seven, that's
seven series. I forgot what the 81 is.
The 81 is community leader. I think no, it might be
something else. But anyways, that that's, that's
very important to me and being able to live that in a way where
I'm, I'm learning out loud and in me learning out loud.
I believe that this is one of the more honest and accurate
ways of being able to educate or to teach.
So as a yoga instructor and yoga therapist and training, once I
get the yoga therapist stuff done, I got that's going to be
the title that we went with this.
This is where things align. I'm not, I'm teaching herpes
stigma minimization like that's the the work, but the purpose is
getting people to a neutral state, that absolute 0 state,
being able to neutralize our own internalized herpes stigma so we
can go out into the world and do that.
And when we do, that's where we begin to see the world through
this the other side. But you got to know.
You got to know and trust and believe that you are entitled.
I'm so surprised this ain't dried up yet.
Must be the beat in it. Like the beat.
Yep. The beetroot juice.
Man, this ain't going nowhere. And I have to watch this.
Yeah, Get. We're entitled.
Act like it. What do you want now?
And this is one of the questions I ask people on our support
calls and the support groups. Well, what do you want now?
You are entitled. You're entitled to compensation
because of what was taken from you and the laws that govern the
reality that we live in. You owed something.
Now what do you want to be owed? What was the value of your
sexuality previously? Right.
And since that's been quote taken from you, you get you got
options. You get to choose infinitely
something of equal or greater value, and you tell God, you
tell the universe, you tell the divine, you tell source.
Whatever language you use, you tell.
AI want this now, but know that it has to be of equal or greater
value. All right, I got something
positive for positive people. This thing validates all of
those intangible aspects of myself.
I get connection out of this. I get to be curious.
I get to be creative. I get to choose to show up and
do this shit everyday and it's challenging.
I'm very much value challenge. I have a sense of community.
I'm seen as a community leader. I'm demonstrating consistency.
I complete things on a regular basis.
These taxes, y'all bookkeeping for a non profit.
This shit is hard, but it it, it very much is fulfilling and I
would much rather have this trade off of not being able to
just have roundabout indirect relationships and casual sex.
If that's, if that's what I had to give up to get to this place,
I'm fine with it. But we got to get to a place
where we can see, see it for what it is, see what was
actually taken from us and receive it as a gift.
Because now, like, there's a fucking box with a bow on it of
something that you want, that you feel like, oh, because it's
not in the form of what it looked like before.
It's not mine, it's not for me, I don't deserve it or whatever.
Whatever the fuck we think. I'm just try not to curse.
That's going to be in the transcript now.
Dang. But the thing that we get in
return, if that's, if we, we got to choose though, we got to
commit to it. We got to be honest.
We got to be real with ourselves.
If this is what I this is what I'm choosing because we weren't
choosing before. We didn't choose consciously to
trade this, to have this taken from us, right?
It's a trade. So now you know what?
However we viewed ourselves, the identity that we cared about
ourselves pre diagnosis. Now we're entitled to something
that is going to make us that's that's more aligned, let's call
it that, that's more aligned, but we're entitled to that, act
like it. And for so long over the years,
like I've never seen it that way.
I've never like I, Courtney couldn't do this.
Courtney out of alignment couldn't do this.
There have been so many times I've been ready to give this
shit up and somehow, someway there was something that would
happen to just realign my ass back into that zero, the
absolute 0 neutral state. This ain't me.
This is what people mean when they say like God speaks through
them or talks through them or operates through them.
It's those podcast episodes where I'm like, I don't know if
anybody going to really fuck with this.
And then bam, because it's coming from this neutral and
grounded state that is the quantum realm energy of Infinity
working through me. And it's going to connect with
the people that are aligned to it.
And so this isn't real time like me living in this way in real
time, like showing you that, hey, you can do this shit too.
I ain't special. I got herpes just like you and
in aligning my way of being, this is what came out of it.
And there's a constant readjustment, realignment.
I I need these reminders. I have my morning routine, I get
my my hot water drink, I do my workout, do my yoga.
I try to make the first and last 20 minutes of the day my time,
my journal and I not as much as I should do my breath control.
I constantly try and take away my senses away from distractions
while still remaining present. Try and do one thing at a time
and that's really all we can do. We try until we get to a place
where trying becomes effortless. And you're entitled to that.
So if if this is something that interests you and you want
supporting that, like that's what this community is about.
That's what this space is about. And actually, yeah.
June. Oh, I want to say June 17/18/19
or 16/17/18. Damn, where is it at?
Hold on. I got it pulled up here.
OK. June 18th, around lunchtime I am
going to do a presentation on this very thing, the 8 lens of
yoga applied to herpes stigma. If that interests you, then go
to the website, you'll be able to register for it.
Excuse me and I'll be talking about that in a lot more
specific details. But yeah, for those of you that,
you know, this resonates with, tell me like let me know that
this resonates because I at this point, it's like yoga therapy
for herpes is like the thing that we're working towards.
And I'm working towards being able to support people through
the stigma and getting to that ground state of absolute 0 so
that you can receive your compensation, right?
Like prep yourself, get yourself ready for what what's coming to
you, but you got to choose that shit.
And I challenge you to do so. I challenge you to decide for
yourself a OK, this is the value that I place on what was taken
from me. And now that I don't have it
anymore, that space needs to be filled, will be filled with
something of my choosing rather than that space being filled for
you. The same way that herpes, how we
perceive our herpes diagnosis having taken things from us in
the past. All right, so that's all I got
for y'all for this podcast episode.
I think I, I stayed on topic for the most part.
If y'all wondering about that the, the, the STI situation.
It ain't been a week yet. So once my doctor gets back to
me, I'll be able to know and I'll tell you how things went
from there. But I'm in communication with
everybody and I let them know and yeah, we'll, we'll see what
ends up happening. I'm at a friend's house and dog
is just barking. Y'all probably can't hear that
because I got my microphone. But yeah, that really does
conclude this episode of something positive for positive
people. Please like rate, review, share,
subscribe to the podcast. Couple announcements.
I know it's the end of the podcast, but if you don't
subscribe to the newsletter, like please do.
I send 1.5 newsletters average per month and they really have
everything that you need to know.
Like I would talk about what happened last month, what's
happening, there you go reducing noise because the dog barking,
there it is. It talks about what we've done,
it's talked about what we're doing and it's talking about
what's coming up next. So you'll be able to see the
events and people have requested in person stuff, but it's like
I'll get 100 requests to do a thing in a city over the course
of five years and like 6 of the people are still on the
newsletter or subscribe to where I would be able to do the thing
in that place if we were all still in contact.
So don't have any other way to stand in contact with y'all.
So please subscribe to the newsletter.
And as travels are coming up and as interest develops for things,
I'll be able to go to the people who are in this particular city
and say, hey, we're going to do a thing.
Let's organize it. Let's make it happen to where we
can have some aspect of community in person with one
another. I'm big on that.
And I very much enjoy being able to connect with people in person
and have that like feeling of community.
We did it in Brooklyn for the Herpes Stigma Expo a couple of
weeks ago and we had about 30 people show up.
It was awesome. We had a support group, we did
some meditation, we had a dating and disclosure practice
workshop, and then we also show the No Shame in This Game
documentary. And we had Lauren Keene come do
her one woman show on the death of her The One Night Stand
because of her herpes diagnosis, which was really funny.
So I want to be able to do more of that, but I need people, you
know, to show up and I need to know where people are.
And yeah, time wise, another thing that I've been working on
is boundaries around time. Things that have times are going
to be those times. So if you schedule a 30 minutes
of work, all people been getting 2 hours, 90 minutes a hour, I
can't keep doing that. And part of that is my alignment
for my own aliens of yoga, like the the time thing and energy
management. We got to be intentional with
the time that we have together, and 30 minutes is plenty of time
for people to come and get what it is that they need before
being directed to a thing that might be more specific, whether
that be the support group or yoga therapy.
All right. And I'm not responding to
emails. I respond to everybody, but I've
been getting like 80 ish 7080 support call request per month.
Not everybody shows up. So I would say maybe between 65
and 75% of those are real and I do those.
But I get a lot of people that this has been happening lately
with somebody I'll e-mail and they're like, I didn't fill this
out, lose my e-mail. I have a stalker that put my
e-mail in here and I'm like, listen, I, I asked for all of
that. I'm just replying to the e-mail
that I got. But these are typically people
who don't make a donation. So I'm not responding to emails
where people don't make a donation.
All right, That that's really what you know, this comes down
to is like this discerns who's serious and going back to the
whole exchange thing, right? I think that one of the reasons
that something positive for positive people has been stuck
is that there were no mutual investments, right?
Like I let myself be exposed to a lot of taking and now that
ain't the case. So no donation, no e-mail.
All right? I don't.
And I tell you, I don't care how much you donate, but to take the
intentional steps of making a donation ensures that you are
more likely to show up. There are people who made a
donation and then not come to the 'cause I mean, I show up, I,
I give the information and that's really all I can do.
All right, But I'm just sharing this and saying this because I
have some honor boundaries. So I want to hear from y'all
know, five months after you filled out a support call form
and you're like, why you ain't e-mail me back?
No, you fill out the support call form, make a donation and
you will hear from me. Unless your information is wrong
and I have no way of getting in contact with you, which if that
does happen, e-mail me. But I already updated the
website to reflect that, right? So for my medical professionals,
mental health professionals, June 16th and 17th, we have
something for y'all during the lunch hour that you need to
register for. And then August 29th is when
we're looking to have the next something positive for positive
people, Herpes Stigma Expo. And this one will be in
Manhattan in lower Manhattan Chinatown area.
But look out for more details on that.
Subscribe to the newsletter if you are not.
And until next time, stay present.
Y'all Stay present.