Sex and pleasure are critical components to a long, healthy, happy life.
Kuel Life is pleased to welcome Ania Grimone to the roster of Thought Leaders. Grimone is a clinician of Chinese medicine, as well as Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, Health, and Sex Coach. She blends the most cutting-edge behavioral science with principles of Chinese medicine, Daoism, Tantra, and somatic experiencing, to heal and harness the power of female sexuality.
She is a founder of Venus Core Leadership, teaching women a new way of being sensual, embodied, regulated, and filled with pleasure.
Let’s Welcome Ania Grimone to Kuel Life:
KUELLIFE: What type of business do you own/run?
Ania: I am a founder and CEO of Venus Core Leadership, a virtual coaching company, where I help women heal their sexuality, love their bodies, feel empowered around aging, and be great leaders.
“I help women heal their sexuality, love their bodies, feel empowered around aging, and be great leaders.”
I do that by combining science with ancient tantric, and other somatic techniques, to unlock the body’s pleasure potential, heal trauma, release old conditioning and rewire the nervous system for safety, confidence and pleasure.
By healing sexuality, we restore the whole woman, and a fully liberated woman is essential to a better, conscious society.
Driven By Instinct:
KUELLIFE: What prompted you or drove you to become an entrepreneur? When?
Ania: My life blowing up really. Lifelong emotional numbness, chronic sense of loneliness, troubled marriage, and declining mental health, made me at some point recognize deep layers of unintegrated trauma. I spent the larger part of two decades working on it, but it wasn’t until I lost my pregnancy in 2010 that I found a way to heal.
The grief, rage, and betrayal of my body was so intense, that I felt I was going to lose my mind. Driven by instinct, I asked my family to leave the house, I turned on music and danced like a mad woman. I was a mad woman. I screamed, and cried, and raged, and danced, and at the end of two hrs I was done. Grief was gone. This drove me to study deeper the somatic (aka body-based) approaches to trauma resolution.
Quality Of Connection:
At the same time, I noticed that in my clinical practice, whenever I initiated questions about sexual health, or functioning, I was met with embarrassment, and very often despair, or tears.
I realized that women do not have safe spaces to talk about this topic, and it becomes increasingly difficult as we get older. I saw the impact of negative conditioning, shame, guilt, and limited beliefs holding women hostage, not just in the bedroom, but in every area of their lives. From how they felt about their bodies, abilities, their voices, levels of confidence, productivity, safety, and ability to connect.
“In short, how we make love is how we do everything else.”
EVERYTHING was affected by the quality of connection to their sexuality. In short, how we make love is how we do everything else. My own sexual healing held the key to feeling better than I have ever felt in my 50s. So in 2019, Venus Core Leadership was born.
Ania’s Choice To Work In Pleasure:
KUELLIFE: What’s your biggest struggle?
Ania: Undoing decades of habitually driving myself to check things off the list no matter what. I am getting better by the day, but choosing to work in pleasure, in regulation, in my body, and not disconnecting from it, still takes conscious effort. At the same time, I have a lot of data that when I do, I become more effective, and have more fun in the process. But it is a struggle at times, hahaha.
KUELLIFE: What is your biggest fear as an entrepreneur? How do you work through it?
Ania: That my business will become a job without benefits, and will suck me in, body and soul. That I will lose all that I have learned, because through some unconscious back door, the old conditioning will win, and I will burn out. Yep. It is a thing.
Pleasure Break:
How do I work through it? By asking myself: What is the next ONE thing that I have to do right now? Then I go do it. And then, I take a pleasure break before moving on to the next thing.
“The process keeps me regulated, present, and moving forward without overdoing.”
It can be two minutes of stretching, cup of tea, essential oil, looking at kitty videos, sending sexy message to my partner, caressing my neck, dancing to one song. Whatever makes me feel good. It does two things. First, it brings me into the body, and out of my mind. Secondly, it slows me down to assess what is the next ONE thing. Is it important? Does it move a needle? Do I have capacity to do it right now without compromising my wellbeing?
The process keeps me regulated, present, and moving forward without overdoing.
Ania Grimone Always Looks For The Intersection Of:
KUELLIFE: How do you measure your success?
Ania: By the level of pleasure with which I get to deliver my message and impact into the world, while getting paid, and maintaining my important relationships, and my health.
- I bring massive value to others
- I am doing what I WANT to do
- I do it in a way that DELIGHTS ME, gives me pleasure, and lets me stay regulated.
- I am making money.
- I am connected to people that are important to me
If I stand at the intersection of those, I am successful!
Know The Four – Focus On The Fifth:
KUELLIFE: Finally, what advice would you give other women about taking an entrepreneurial path?
Ania: Some elements are common knowledge. It’s the first four. Skip to the last one, the most important, if you know the four.
“We disconnect form ourselves, become burned out and bitter. Hence the most important piece”
- What can you do that would bring value to others? Business is ultimately about bringing something of value to other people that they will be willing to pay for.
- What do you WANT to do? Just because you can, and are good at something, and it sounds good, it doesn’t mean it is a good idea to do it. If you don’t love it, you will quickly run out of steam. It’s not worth the time, or expense unless you are 100% both feet in because it is your deep desire.
- What will bring you money? Obvious, but worth mentioning, because I see many women starting a business in spaces were there is either huge competition and they don’t have the skills to break through the noise, or there is no demand, as in “people need this”. It may be true, but if they don’t WANT it, they won’t buy it.
- What will you not mind doing over and over again for the next three years? Yes, at some point you may get sick of doing the same things, saying the same things, etc. Be ready to do it anyway.
Make It Feel Good:
But there is the last piece that is overlooked in the culture that promotes a very masculine model of entrepreneurship; make it feel good. We are sensual, body-based creatures. It’s not the nature of the feminine to be stuck in our heads, in constant pursuit of strategies, and to do lists. We disconnect form ourselves, become burned out and bitter. Hence the most important piece
- What would give you the most pleasure (it can be the what, but it can also be the how, when, where etc)? There will be days you will have to show up, even if you don’t want to. In fact, you will have to show up, period. Find a way to do business that is easiest on your nervous system. Example: I am an introvert, so working in a communal space would drain me very quickly.
What’s My Next Move?
I love teaching groups online, so organizing live retreats would be a bear. This way I skip on commute, saving time and energy. I can sip tea in fuzzy slippers, while I am delivering massive value. I teach in a way that allows me to show up authentically, without a suit, makeup, or PG language. You get my point. Find your formula. Make the business fit YOU, not the other way around.
Also one of the most useful questions I ask myself when I get stuck is: If I could assume, it is working, what’s my next move? It’s a great question to cut through the inevitable self-doubt, that comes up in the downtime between taking action and seeing the result of it.
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