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Something Positive for Positive People
SPFPP 356: Yoga Therapy for People With Herpes: Navigating Stigma and Emotional Wellness
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Courtney Brand
Foreign welcome back to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brand. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 non profit organization supporting people who are navigating herpes stigma. And the reason I can't stop smiling right now is because two Sundays ago we had our Something Positive for Positive People Safe Sex Expo. This was the first event of its kind for us and what it was was a day of workshops. We had Jordan Danelle, who's a board member, speak about sensuality and offer some alternatives of exploring your pleasure outside of just partnered genital intercourse. And then we had Dakota Rampin, who spoke to what we can learn from queer intimacy and queer sex. And then we had Dr. Dacker, who's also on the board of Something Positive for Positive People. She did the Stars Talk. Now, if you're unfamiliar with the Stars Talk, listen to podcast episode 299, because this is the framework that I use for teaching people how to disclose their herpes status to a partner. So she brought this in and gave people practice with sharing what their safety needs, what their pleasure needs are with a partner and then identifying those, because that's really challenging. And then finally we had Steph Zapata do a introductory kink class, just showing people how to communicate and demystifying some things that they think kink might be versus what it is versus what it isn't. And it was really hands on and instructional, y'all. We had the New York Department of Health up in that thing. We had organizations come in for some sti testing, giving out condoms, and it was a really nice event. And I want to shout out the hit me up space for, for allowing us to host this event, for being so flexible and accommodating and accessible as well. Because it was affordable, we were able to utilize the bathrooms. When we needed support, they were there. So shout out to them. I also want to thank the pornhub Sexual Wellness center for their sponsorship and the American Sexual Health association so that you know, I ain't going to debt trying to make this thing happen. But as I've spoken about before, my intention with this event is really to integrate people's ability to identify and communicate not only their safety needs like condom use and going to get tested, but also what they need for their pleasure and what they know and how to learn that and give people the practice of it. So what we did was in order to give people that practice, just bringing in facilitators who were able to hold the space and create a sense of safety good enough for people to be willing and able to explore that. So, I mean, we had people, I was able to just walk around and speak to people. Someone shared with me that, you know, they had something come up for them. It just reminded them of how things used to be for them before they got into a marriage and otherwise. We've had people share a lot of positive feedback. We have a survey where we just inquired on people's ideas of bad sex, good sex, safe sex, and we got that survey data in as well as the usefulness of the workshops and how helpful it was. And everyone said that they did feel a little bit more comfortable with talking about certain things. STIs was something that someone expressed that we, they wish that we would have gone more into. But I, I can live with that. I can live with that. So overall, fantastic event. And the reason that I'm smiling even more is because we just received funding to conduct this again. So I want to shout out to our funders, I don't know if I can say who they are, so let me, let me check in on that before I say anything else. But my contact was really enthusiastic about the project and wants to support it. So we're going to be going around teaching people how to identify and communicate about their pleasure and safety needs. Y'all. We're doing this again. Let's go. So be on the lookout for that event. I would like to take this on a roll. I did submit a million dollar application to a company to make it where maybe we'd be able to do this on a quarterly basis with healthcare professionals. In February, we're going to roll out our stigma free simulation experience with Affirm az. This is a sexual healthcare company. They also sponsored the Something Positive for Positive People Herpes Stigma conference this year. And we're going to go out there and we're going to test this out. Like this is going to be the pilot of what Something Positive for Positive People has evolved into. Being able to go and educate sex educators and public health professionals, people who do STI testing and teach them, you know, a stigma free way of delivering a diagnosis and offering support resources as well. And I'm so happy to hear from people who are hearing about something positive for positive people, from the, the people who are conducting their sci testing, the people who are diagnosing them, the people who are giving them the educational resources that they need. So if you one of those people, thank you, like, thank you for helping people bypass all the bullshit that a lot of us had to go through before getting to A resource that was actually helpful without having to stumble through spending thousands of dollars on false hopes for a cure or even paying hundreds of dollars on being able to just talk to somebod. Do take donations for people to have a conversation with me. But I think that that's a lot more accessible and available to the people who need it. And it feels a little bit less sketchy. Isn't the word exploitive? Exploitive? Yeah. Like, I think that a lot of people do oftentimes exploit people who are living with herpes. And so I think that by offering it under the lens of employment, nonprofit, and that it's. You pay what you choose to pay. I think that I alleviate a lot of my own insecurity around that because I probably, you know, when I was first diagnosed, I would have given my life savings to the first person who would be able to tell me what to do. And so I. I don't believe in that. You know, people find me as they do. I'm finding more people are getting connected with me and reaching out shortly after their diagnosis. So this is really dope. And also, whenever y'all do donate, y'all are supporting this cause, these efforts, you know, I try and live out loud and as transparently as possible, especially with my efforts through the Something Positive for Positive People podcast and being able to just share with y'all, hey, here's what we doing. This is what's going on. So it really helps that the people who are giving, donating, that y'all believe in me, and that the people who continue to listen to the podcast or that I connect with, you know, eventually when people come into it, they support in whatever ways they feel aligned to do so. So another thing that I have going on, this is separate, but I did start self, which is an emotional wellness resource for men. And on November 30th, we're hosting the Black Men's Emotional Wellness Symposium. This will be four conversations deconstructing the ideas around the high value man. And we're going to talk about spirituality, fitness, integrity, and then vulnerability. I'm looking forward to bringing in, like, my. My anime and comic conversations into this space because I think that it's important that we see demonstrations of men, especially black men, outside the context that we see ourselves in, in the media. I consider myself to be a very unconventional Black man in the sense of a lot of the messaging that's targeting me or any advertising that's supposed to be for me, it's not speaking to me. I just don't vibe with some of that stuff. To be completely honest, I just live a different lifestyle than what advertising and media is telling people my lifestyle is or what it's telling me I'm supposed to be. So this symposium is for those black men, Any black man who resonates with the pursuing of consciousness and self help and. And just maybe doesn't feel like they really fit into the messaging that's out there portrayed to them. All right, now, getting into today's podcast episode, I do want to talk about yoga therapy. I did a podcast episode on my other show, Self, talking about yoga therapy being for black men, but, I mean, it's not, you know, exclusively for black men, but myself being a black man and having gone through the process of becoming a yoga instructor or certified to teach yoga. Like, I don't quite teach yoga classes. I'll make offerings that are synonymous with the yoga class. Like there's recordings of the Letting Go series. I did one for Self, and now I've done one for something positive for positive people, helping people work through the emotions, through movement and breathing, the emotions of their diagnosis and stigma. All right? And now I'm a yoga therapist in training. I think I have a little bit over two years left before I'm fully certified. But where I'm at now, I am able to work with people to a capacity. Right? Like, I'm very mindful and aware of what my limitations are. So I'm going to be very transparent about those. So if you go to spfpp.org yoga-therapy then you will find an intake form, you'll find a little bit more information. I'm going to kind of go over some of that here because I think that this can be super useful. 15% of people who've taken the latest survey for something positive for positive people shared that their emotional stress is a primary precursor for whether or not they're going to experience an outbreak. And I've seen personally and in a lot of science and research how yoga really is supportive to a lot of chronic pain, chronic illnesses. There's nothing specifically for herpes, though. And I'm very interested in conducting a study of people who might be experiencing outbreaks, who might be struggling with their mental health and emotional wellness as a result of stigma. And integrating what I'm learning about yoga therapy from this perspective is into their lives so that we can see if there's any significant changes in lifestyle, quality of life, outbreak frequency, outbreak duration. These are all the things that I think I can do through yoga therapy. So I, I went to Chad GPT and gave it. And I'm very transparent these days about having used chat GPT. This thing is saved and helped the mess out of me, y'all. So yeah, I'm a yoga therapist in training and I just want to kind of give you an idea of what that is and talk about a little bit of the similarities between yoga therapy and like talk therapy. Because there was a point, right, where we were offering therapy, we were paying a therapist to work with, talk to people who are struggling with herpes stigma. And then we had roughly 40 people that went through therapy and there were, there were issues with, with that. I don't have to go into what those issues were, but I wonder if there was just like an expectation set where people believed that based on what you hear on the podcast, right. That that's kind of be the layer or level of support that you get. And I offer that in phone calls, conversations that we, I have with people. But there's never anything sustainable. There's never any like next steps or practices for you to go on and implement into your routine in order to really help you with the healing process, your diagnosis, whether that be physical symptoms or if that's just the mental health, emotional stigma related things. And I find that a lot of people, when they get into relationships, they, they kind of dismiss the need for the work, which is understandable. Right. But I want to just share how yoga therapy is different from traditional therapy and then I'll give you a little bit of my background on how yoga has helped me. So talking about how yoga therapy is different from traditional talk therapy there I ain't gonna go into the technicalities of it, but the talk therapy with a licensed mental health professional therapist really focuses on exploring the emotions, behaviors and thought patterns through conversation. So you really get into your own history, your identity, your traumas, and you kind of learn coping mechanisms. Biggest difference I see with yoga therapy is that we, we go deeper into the emotional awareness. There's a lot of somatics, there's a lot of embodiment, right. Understanding and identifying the feelings, what's happening within you. Right. And there's an incorporation of mindfulness, breath techniques and physical movement tailored to you and your individual emotional state. Right? So in yoga therapy we don't really look to diagnose and treat. There's so much more curiosity. Here is, okay, well explain this in your own words. Talk to me about this, right? And I find that when I'm doing my, even when I'm doing my support calls, right, or interviews, that's what it is like, people have always told me, courtney, you should be a therapist. You should be a therapist. And I've been so resistant to going back to school to become like, a traditional what we believe about medical therapists, because I didn't want to learn this jargon, learn these numbers and research and data that would disconnect me from the communities that I'm wanting to serve and then come back to those communities. Like, hey, I found this stuff. I found this. Let me. Let me give it to you. You've got this. This is what you're doing. So maintaining a presence in this community and being as accessible as I am has really given me a lot of insight underneath the surface level. Things I don't want to diagnose and prescribe the treatment from there. Right. If you're someone who is just grieving or you have grief, I want to help with that. If you are struggling with addiction or recovery, like, I want to help with that. If you're struggling with herpes stigma, I don't know that there's anything that's for that. Like, there's no diagnosis and treatment for it in the book of mental health conditions. Right. You may have suicidality, you may have depression, you may be sad, you may just be grieving your sex life. There may be some identity crisis. There may be loneliness. There are all of these things that are emotionally. And I recognize that, you know, medications are great, but what about other options? What if we can use what we have and try to exhaust those resources before going into something else? And I think that really what yoga therapy does is, yeah, it's about feeling, embodying, and then working through those emotions in a way that connects the mind and body. I find that there's a lot of dissociative behaviors within people, especially struggling with their herpes status. Right. Like, someone that I had a call with over the summer, she was telling me how she disclosed to this guy, and he got weird after, you know, disclosing to him. And she had also disclosed to me that she had been sexually assaulted. She hasn't dealt with that because she didn't have time. And I asked. I was like, why did you tell him that? Did you tell him that you were assaulted and he was the first person that you were sleeping with afterwards? And she was like, no. Or, yeah, yeah, she said, yeah, I told him that. I was like, well, don't you think that maybe that had something to do with it? And she had never thought about that before. Right. So imagine, you know, in my experience with therapy, really was just doing a lot of talking. And I don't know that there were a whole lot of, like, questions that revolved around not just what I was saying, but also what I'm not saying. Right. So I believe that me going down this road of yoga therapy, it's like the stars are aligning and things are really clicking for me and falling into place because I now have language for the kind of support that I've been able to offer and also have tools and skills in order to navigate to help people in a holistic way that isn't just, you know, me looking to diagnose and treat. And I'm not saying that all therapists do that by any means. I'm just saying that there are limitations of the mental health component that don't apply to the emotional wellness component. And most people, from what I'm learning, find yoga therapy when everything else doesn't work. So this can also be something that is very complimentary or it can be an alternative to your mental health resources. And those are expensive, right? Like yoga therapy is expensive, paying for school is expensive. So all of these things factor in. But being able to integrate this into my nonprofit work with something positive, for positive people, for people with herpes and who are navigating herpes stigma, I am able to make this more accessible and especially to people who may not even know that it exists. And I know when I got my diagnosis, I read online that stress management, movement, and then nutrition, these were the three things that were key factors for whether or not you would have any physical symptoms. So I got into yoga right away along with those other two things. Like, I worked on my nutrition, I did work out more, and yoga gave me more than what I thought I was looking for. It really tapped into this spiritual component. A lot of what I learned through yoga actually aligns with my day to day life. And I've just not really fit into the things that I've been told, you know, I'm supposed to align with from even like early childhood. Right. Like religion and the way that those beliefs are and the traditional route for a career and even relationships, a lot of this hasn't aligned with me. And I felt out of place. I felt, you know, like my own identity had been invalidated. But to find yoga and to learn that, yeah, the way that I think is fine, the way that I choose to live is fine, as long as it's a way that I'm able to consciously choose. And that sometimes includes being willing and able to deconstruct previous thought patterns. Beliefs, looking at old behaviors, and then decide, okay, this serves me, let's do this. And it gave me a really different outlook on life. I mentioned that I've had three outbreaks. The first one, I got one when I got fired from a job in 27, 16, 2016, I believe 2015. And then I had one in 2021 after consuming a ton of sugar, which I'm glad happened because I was like, huh, maybe I shouldn't eat so much sugar. And then after going to the doctor, shortly after I learned that I was on my way into becoming pre diabetic. So the lifestyle change that I made after my herpes diagnosis and just listening to my body and having the know how, the, the bandwidth, the intelligence, the body awareness and emotional intelligence to explore. Okay, huh, my body's doing this thing. What would, what would the contributing factors be? Okay, this. All right, now let's cut that out and see what happens. And I just so happen to have been right about it on the first tried. So it's really been a long term lifestyle change. I haven't had anyone guiding me. I've been doing this on my own. Like it's been almost eight years now. I've been. The podcast has consistently been produced. I went on a little hiatus and realized that that was probably one of the worst decisions that I could have made. But I'm consistently, you know, emailing, messaging, dming, posting to social media, talking to people. You know, the herpes ain't going nowhere and I'm loving that. I'm seeing people come through, get what they need, go on about their business. And I do believe that putting myself on display and my own experience on display as a yoga therapist and training hopefully invites you to explore alternative therapy approaches. Because so many of us want a quick fix. We want this gone now. We want this dealt with so we can get back to life. But part of getting back to life is getting through and being in and being with what it is that you're going through. As I'm in yoga therapy, I do want to point out that, like, my focus is on the emotional wellness, the conversations, the, the curiosity, the interviews. Basically, I essentially am applying the sciences of yoga, Ayurveda, to a person's emotional wellness and integrating the movement, the breathing and the awareness and the ability to be with the emotions. And sometimes, like, all we need to do is talk and people feel better talking about things or they feel lighter or maybe they feel exhausted. Right? So offering tools that you have for yourself after we get off the phone is important. Not necessarily giving you homework, but giving you things that are still extensions of the work that we're doing together so that we can work toward a specific goal. So, yeah, right now, let y'all know. I am offering the yoga therapy because I'm a yoga therapist in training for donations. If you go to the intake form and you fill it out and we identify that we're fit, then we can work together. Oh, here we go. So some of the similarities between yoga therapy and traditional therapy, they both are supposed to be working toward the outcome of healing. So whether you're with a mental health therapist or a yoga therapist, the aim is emotional wellness. And they both offer support in processing your own thoughts and your emotions and then creating a path forward. The thing with yoga therapy is that it uses the body and the breath to create a whole integrated experience. And so my reasoning, as I just shared from my experience for yoga therapy for people with herpes is, first off, I can do it. I'm honestly, I don't trust working with people. I trust that if I book someone for a thing for the people that my community, for those of my community, I trust that they'll show up. But I've had a handful of experiences very recently where I need to just. I just need to do this things on my own. So I'm not going to become a talk therapist. There might feel like elements of that, but I'm very clear that I am a yoga therapist in training. All right, so while I might be good at this podcasting, I might be good at these one on one calls. I plan to be good at yoga therapy. I'm not a licensed mental health professional, which also means I'm not restricted by a lot of the guidelines that they have to be. I almost feel like some therapists, I can't be human. And much of what we need is just humanity. A lot of us don't feel safe going to our friends about things that we should be able to go to our friends about. And so a therapist may sometimes fill that role, but also not be able to give you the, the genuine reaction and the humanness that you not only deserve, but you need. And so me having my. The last eight years of my life out on the Internet on this podcast platform, like, you're able to see who I am. You see what you get, right? There's the good, the bad, the ugly. You know, I try and make sure to balance it out and share it all. So y'all don't hit me with no. Well, five years ago, y'all, Courtney said this thing. No, it's all out there. If I said it, then it's out there. And the context, you know, hopefully isn't left out of there. But that's what this has become like. This is literally the evolution of, you know, me as someone who's been doing yoga since I got diagnosed with herpes. And it's like all coming together now, full circle. But for anyone who's living with herpes, this can be a really useful tool. And the biggest challenge that we face is that emotional weight of stigma. Again, 15% of people reported that emotional stress is a precursor for outbreaks. And we know that stress directly impacts those physical, physical symptoms. Yoga therapy is a space where you can acknowledge that stigma, work through the emotional responses that it brings up, and then create a sense of safety in your body. We know that unresolved emotions like shame, guilt or anger can manifest physically. And with yoga therapy, we're taking this holistic approach to managing those triggers and the symptoms, connecting the mental and emotional components with the body's response. So that's why y'all need to do that. All right, so as we talk about navigating Sigma with yoga therapy, like, I'm, I'm putting this together. I'm in the classes, I'm learning how yoga therapy is applied to grief, applied to emotions, applied to addiction, applied to behavior change, applied to even misalignments and physical elements of the body. And I'm going to be learning about the cancer, like how it can be useful for people who have cancer and other forms of another chronic pain. And then I'm learning about pain care. And I'm, I'm loving this pain care. Like, I'm putting a lot of time and energy into it, but it's the best way that I can explain it without like, you know, talking too much is it's like kind of like trauma informed. Like trauma informed to me is offering very avoidant language. It's like, don't say this, don't do this, don't do this, don't say this. And the pain care, aware, while it is trauma informed, really aligns with the stigma free aspects because you have to be more engaging and you have to be curious. It's all unique to the individual. It's not like, oh, I learned this about this population of people. This is how I'm going to serve this population of people. And I think there's so much of the well meaning resources that we have out there. Forget that we're still all human, regardless if you of your sexual orientation Your sex, your gender, your career, your tax bracket, your political affiliations, whatever your religion is, your communities, where you stand on certain topics or issues. I think we forget that we're all human. And so I believe that what this is offering me is going to make me not just a better herpes stigma education advocate, but a better individual that can run this organization. Y'all, this again, it's been eight years, y'all. It's just been me. I got my board members, and I have, like, people who I go to for things. Shout out to Jenny for the website, and in the book that we're working on right now, I want to shout out Dakota for presenting with me and workshops and everyone who's given me opportunities to come and present or speak on their platforms to their students, their curriculum reviews, for really, like, supporting me in this. Like, it. It's tough, and I don't know when the next time I'm gonna get paid B. But I. I do it. And yoga therapy really called to me because, man, I don't know that I really, like, have a specific reason, but what's coming to me right now is that I felt like I wasn't doing good enough. Like, I wasn't doing good enough for y'all. And I recognize that yoga therapy is a very potentially lucrative field because look at who does yoga. Look how much money's in the industry. Industry. And then look at, you know, who goes to yoga therapy. And it's very similar to those people. But I really do believe that I can bring this in a much more accessible way to a community of people, an audience that can benefit from it that otherwise also may not have known about it. So, yeah, it's. I. It's funny because I always would be like, I make fun of the people who. They come to you with a problem, and then you're like, oh, well, have you tried yoga or have you meditated? And it's funny because there's so much truth to that, right? Like, if we were to try yoga or if we were to meditate, we actually might get something really good out of it. And this really isn't just that thing. Like, it's very involved. It's engaging. You're involved in your healing. Like, I'm not going to just tell you ego do these things, right? Like, you're telling me what you have to work with, and we're taking that and we're building on it, right? So that. That's my goal with, you know, becoming a yoga therapist and bringing that into this space specifically to Work with people who are living with herpes. So the thing is, when they say, oh, I'm supposed to say this, it gave me a little quotation mark. Yeah. Herpes stigma can be isolating. And one of the things we'll do in yoga therapy is practice techniques to help you with those feelings. Right. The isolation, loneliness and being able to acknowledge them and being able to have awareness to what you're feeling, how it's impacting you. I think it contributes to the forward response. So I always talk about the fight, flight, freeze. Fine. I don't always talk about these, but we, we are aware of what these are. But I do believe that there is another type of response that we can have whenever we're activated or when we're triggered and we're in that fight or flight response and it's forward, it's where we recognize the intensity of the sensation in the body because chemicals are being released. And now we choose, what am I going to do? This is the decision. It might have been pre made. It might be one that is impulsively during the episode where, you know, normally I fight, this time I'm going to choose to do something different. And that to me is a forward response. So I hope to do some papers and research on getting this to be like an integrated thing. Right. Like I don't know that it's out there. Let me check, make sure the forward response. Forward response is an option in email clients that allows you. No, you heard it here first, y'all. I googled the forward response and it's, it's all email related. Wow. Okay, so this, this might be a big. Okay, all right. I just made something. But yeah, this is how we get control. We get control through choice. Right. So when we're able to, you know, have practice of making choices and that's typically what we find in yoga classes. Right. There's invitations. Right. Some language may not be, you know, the best considering how much training an instructor has or what their capacity is. But in yoga therapy, it's very much giving you the practice of choice, which helps you with having control and the feeling of being in control or having control over the things that you, you can't control, especially in your body, in your mind and with your emotions. So there's a lot of psychological inaccessibility around therapy. You know, for me as a black man, like therapy was made accessible because I think my therapist understood like what my financial situation was and he knew that I would pay him more later. So we had our agreement for that and it was accessible to me, but I, I would not be able to afford. Like some people charge 150, 250 per session. And I mean, for some people, like that's, that's a month salary, like that's a month of their work, you know, that they get to take home after bills, groceries, and that's if, you know, they're able to pay their bills and groceries. So I ain't offering this for free, don't get me wrong. Like, I. People find ways to get money to pay for the things that they value. So this won't be free. For now, it's donation based. But as time goes on and I start to see what the value of this thing is, maybe I can get it funded as a program to be able to offer yoga therapy to X number of people at a time so as not to overextend myself. Maybe we get enough money to bring in more yoga therapy therapist to support people with herpes, y'all. There's so much that we can do. And all of this starting with herpes, like, that's crazy. We talking about safe sex expos, we talking about training healthcare professionals, we talking about the advocacy, the surveys, the, the yoga classes, the yoga therapy, man. Something positive for positive people is evolving. And I'm so happy to be able to be part of this and I'm really proud of the community that's been developed so far. You know, regardless of how often you check in with the resources, regardless of how, like maybe you need it sometimes, maybe you don't, but there's people out there, y'all, who support this work and support this space and who see you who are living the same experience you are. Whether that be offering me time, finances, the resources that they have, finances, donations or access to opportunities, they're out here and keeping this thing going, man. And I think one of the fears that I have is that if I, if I die, this dies because I'm getting older. Like my back, top of my hair is like thinning out is harder for me and keeping weight on is really easy for me. I recognize like that I'm aging and I accept that. And my hope is to make something positive for positive people so fucking big and make it so fucking attractive and so diverse that it does overshadow and supersede everything else that, you know, isn't like it. I want this to be a place where we have alternative resources to support folks navigating herpes, stigma, the chronic pain of a diagnosis, the mental health effects to suicide, to depression. Right? Like there's alternatives to what we're told is out there. And it frustrates me that I didn't know about this sooner. And that's due to the psychological inaccessibility. Me being a black man and yoga being in primarily white neighborhoods and it being like, you know, white women in their mid-20s and through 50s or whatever, going to these classes wearing their Lululemon or whatever, right? They got their yoga mats and their. The. The straps, the blocks and the cute outfits or whatever we want to call it. And there's nobody in there like me. There's no instructors like me. And this could be, you know, me being a product of my environment. But I done bounced around and moved to different places. I took a class with my first black man as a yoga teacher when I moved to Portland, Oregon, of all places. Right? I got. Hit him up. We were supposed to do a podcast together, man. Wow. I forgot his name. Oh, damn it. I need to find them on Instagram. Okay, that. Anyways. But, yeah, the psychological inaccessibility is just where there might be marketing, promotion, the environment, the. The location, that you may look at that and go, ah, that ain't for me. And a lot of what I've learned that's made me who I am came from me stumbling into these places that I would previously have thought weren't for me. And that's because of my fucking herpes diagnosis. It made me have to think different. It made me have to do things different. It made me have to look for ways to get what it is that I wanted, which was genuine human connection, right? And sometimes I would have sought that out through sex. And when sex was, the illusion of. The illusion was that it was taken away from me. And it took for me to go through and figure out, well, what was it that I was getting out of sex that I want, right? I made that decision, and I started to find that thing I didn't need for it to be sex that I got in order to get the feeling that I was in pursuit of. All I needed was just connection. So what are you needing? Right? Like, this herpes journey brought me to a place of recognizing that connection is important to me. And it looks a different way for me based on the nature of the relationship that I have, the friendship, the family, the. The close friends, the acquaintances, the colleagues, the peers, whatever you want to call it. So, yeah, we making it affordable and accessible through my work, through something positive. If this is something that you're on board with, if you got money like that and you just Want to make a fat ass don today so that I can support people and so that I can, like, I do things very strategically, right? So, for example, the herpes stigma conference 2024 brought in about $12,400. This was after spending how much? I probably spent about $4,500 between speaker fees, the platform, the. The. What was the other thing? The promotions for it, the consulting that I did in order to make sure that I was, you know, doing things well. Shout out to Steph for helping me with organizing the conference. I hit them up for their consulting services for hosting the conference. And of that money, I put that into the Safe Sex Expo and the money that I put into the Safe Sex Expo and the time and the energy I was able to put into it, I was able to get a couple of sponsors, I was able to make the event affordable, and I was able to secure a space. And a lot of what I do is just reinvest me, right? So your donations, like, I ain't paid myself in three months. Don't tell my board members that. I don't think they listen to the podcast, but it's been three months that I've not paid myself. And it's because I more so truly believe in the work that I'm able to do through something positive for positive people. Like, eventually I will be able to pay myself very well. But for now, like, the donations y'all giving help, I got $3 and 80 cents a month from Patreon, and y'all don't know how helpful that is. Like, full transparency. I don't give a. The people who listen to this and tell me, hey, that's not good to talk about your business this way. Whatever, whatever. But I fucking accidentally overdrafted by 60 cents because I forgot that something wasn't on the business credit card and it was on the bank account. And so I have to pay out a lot of things. Like, I make sure that everybody who works with me gets paid first. Like, I sometimes pay people early, so I ain't got to think about it. I mean, I know that they'll show up and it's just off my plate, but I fucking overdraft it. And luckily I'm paranoid as fuck. So I check my app, like, two, three, four times a day just to make sure everything is okay. So I hurried up and just made the transfer in. But, like, you know, and I don't say that to, you know, make anybody feel bad for not donating or whatever, but I share it just because, like, I'm Also running a business, man. And if I'm be transparent and put my life out there, you know, within the, with the respect of the people around me, I'm gonna put it out there. And I, I ain't the kind of. That overdrafts like I'm very on top of my. But that just happened because there's like. Of that like the, the, the payouts being so much greater than the return sometimes, right? Because I am investing. I am, I am invested in making something positive for positive people a thing, right? The going and hosting sexual wellness and pleasure communication. Not even retreats, but workshops. Why can't I do that once a month in a different city? Why can't I have a day of workshops for bringing in and, and you know, bringing value to the world of sex education that has given me so much and enhanced my own personal life, my, my career even. And I'm in my. I guess I am feeling passionate about something positive now. Like I feel good about this. I feel good about being able to after I'm done with school, offer yoga therapy and even now like practice and get into the routine of integrating what I'm learning into the peer support cause, the herpes stigma support cause. Right. But I'm not like for once worried about money, right? Like it comes, when it comes. I'm able to say I haven't paid myself in three months because I'm able to pay my bills and yeah, we just got this grant for the safe sex Expos and I'll be able to do a little bit more of that coming soon. So be on the lookout if you have not subscribed to the newsletter. I sent out one newsletter a month. You might get more emails from me. If you sign up for an event that gives you updates on the event, that's it. I'm very much leaning off of social media. I finally got my website together and people are able to find it. So much more is happening off social media than I'm able to keep up with because so much of being on social media is telling people what you're doing more so than doing what you're doing. And I took off for October. I hopped on to post the emotional. The Black Men's Emotional Wellness Symposium for self. But I, I had to get right back off because I got, I got goals. I got goals. I'm. I'm very much leaning toward not buying a house at this point, but I would like to live in one. So I'm happy to just rent and be flexible and free to just go and Move wherever it is that I want to do. I mean, my girlfriend. To be able to go where we want to go. And, yeah, I want to be able to work towards having a family. And I'm saying this as a. Who just overdrafted in his account. Right. But, yeah, like, I got a big picture for this, y'all, and there's a lot of, you know, different advocacy methods. There's a lot of people talking about herpes and all of that. But, like, who. Who, you know, overdrafting the account for, y'all? Let's be real. Who is willing to, you know, not. People say this about, you got to put yourself first. Like, I think situationally. Yeah, but it's. I've said this probably a couple of years ago, but it feels like putting myself first when the people around me are cared for. And, you know, I don't know that I need to set the expectation of when I need something, I expect you to be there. But I know that I'm cared for in a way where I don't need anything. Like, I don't need for people to. Maybe I do need something. I should stop saying that. I'm working on that in my relationship. Right? I. I have needs. I just struggle to identify them. And there's still a little bit of my daddy issue that comes up where I expected if I ask for a thing, I'll be disappointed. But me and my dad talked about this. He was like, son, you never asked for anything. So another yoga therapy, perspective enhancement. I'm working on learning how to ask for things, so I'm asking for people, hey, if you're curious or interested in yoga therapy, I ask that you do fill out the form, that you make a donation and that we. We work together. Like, let's. Let's see what it's about. Let's see what we can do. And I got to do a couple of case studies, so I may be on the lookout for a handful of people for that. But I do think that this is going to be a thing, so you please hop on board. Now, if you listen to this and you feel compelled or you're curious, look up yoga therapist and what they do, and, you know, maybe me and you can have a conversation about it. So closing this out. Yeah. If you're dealing with stigma, struggling with your emotional wellness in general, yoga therapy might be something worth exploring, especially if it's going to be accessible for me. Because some of these yoga therapists, they talk about 250. Let me see what Chad GPT said. They talking about 250 a session. How much does a yoga therapist charge per session? All right, we're gonna wait on that. And in the meantime, while we wait for that, y'all, please, like, rate, review, share, subscribe to this podcast, please. Like, more people are finding out about it, but I. I can't really say that it's enough yet. For perspective, 6,000 people have been coming to something positive for positive people a month. I'm probably averaging more so two to four support calls a week. But I ain't getting no in, like, y'all ain't giving me no, like, reviews like testimonials. And I get it. Stigma. People scared of other people finding out or making a connection. But this is really great work for me, an individual. And the more that people talk about it, the more that I can expand and it not just be me. And maybe there can be a staff, maybe there can be a physical location, maybe there can be more events, more socializations, because the CDC ain't helping me. Who's those other people? The. The. The not to see? It ain't just the cdc. The CDC ain't helping me. Damn. Who else was I about to say it wasn't? Nah. What now? Ain't nobody coming to save Courtney. Let me just say that, like, we. We tried bringing herpes people together too, in the past, and that would have been phenomenal, but that didn't work out, so it's on me. So I need the testimonials. I need y'all to tell people. I need y'all to rave about it so that I can do this on my own and with y'all support. This is a, what they say, community based organization. So if you're watching this, you're listening to it, like, get involved, y'all. Okay, back to the cost of a yoga therapy session in the US they can typically charge between 75 and150.50, with prices varying based on where they at and their experience. But in major specialized practices, race can go up to 200 or more. So I'm gonna do the slide and scale thing. Like, I'm. I'm taking donations, and if y'all got funding for programs out there, y'all let me know. And yeah, let's make this happen. Let's make this happen. I'm feeling the most optimistic, probably because I've been off social media for about nine days, and it's really been good for my mental health. Like, I. I ain't miss no messages. I do check in and see if, you know, there's anything pressing or urgent. But I encourage people to just hit me up through the website, email me. I'm easy to contact and talk to. I wish I could tell you check the reviews, but ain't nobody leaving reviews. But if you somebody who listening, we've talked in the past, and you feel up for a podcast episode, like, let's do one. Have a podcast. And you like to talk about your experience working with me so I can put that out into the world. And, you know, this can be more of. More of an organization and community thing than it is a Courtney thing, because I do get concerned about what if something happens to me and then this just, like, dies? Like, there's not even a person in place that can pick it up from here. My board members have access to everything that I have access to, but to the structure. Ain't no structure. But for them to, like, know how to carry on with this or what to do next. Ah, I don't know that they got that in. And so, yeah, that. That's all I got, man. I ain't gonna keep talking and doing all of that. But, yeah, it's at. If you're curious about this spfpp.org yoga therapy, and that's on the website@spfpp.org all right, till next time, y'all. Thank you. Oh, perfect. Time. Ambulance coming.