A few months ago, I rang my friend and book coaching client Celinne Da Costa to catch up. Half an hour into our conversation, she mentioned in an offhand comment that she was interested in exploring her dominant side in her sexuality.
I mentioned that I am a switch (meaning I go both ways in the Dom/Sub dynamic) and I since I know both sides, I enjoy and am good at supporting women in discovering their dominant side. It’s fun for both of us. I also like the politics of it: women learning to dominate men subverts the patriarchy.
Celinne was supremely interested in this. We are completely platonic friends, and I supported her professionally in her process of writing her amazing memoir. So I assured that teaching/learning dominance can be done without anything involving sex, or even running erotic energy. Dominance is about progressively taking control in an encounter (with consent) and that can be completely platonic if that is what’s called for, which was the case here.
She asked me how this worked. I explained that many of my female friends in the Bay Area are interested in learning to dominate men erotically, and I have shown them (in fact, I don’t seem to know any women who are not interested in learning dominance. Maybe that’s the kind of women I hang out with! :)
In three cases, women I have trained in their initial phase of learning have gone on to become badass and very successful professional dominatrixes. Two of them have combined BDSM with pre-existing healing modalities they already worked with. One of them supports herself lucratively entirely from this work now, and another recently earned $15,000 in a weekend private immersion.
(Note: I taught the skill of erotic dominance, not the professional/business/marketing side of professional dominance, which is a whole other game and which these women got other mentorship/support from pro-Dommes to learn.)
Celinne is always up for adventure (that’s what her whole memoir is about) so I suggested I give her a training session over video call, we record it, and if she’s comfortable with it, she could release it to her audience on her podcast. (We’ve actually never met in person, though I wrote copy for her and helped her on her book writing for years).
Celinne was a HELL YES to this. So we did it. For 2.5 hours straight. Raw, unfiltered, in a single take.
In it, we dive into inquiry about what Domme persona she wanted to explore. True to her nature, Celinne dashed my expectations by coming up with a whole new distinction within BDSM archetypes I had never considered before, even though I’d been in this world for 10 years and she was completely new.
I was blown away that Celinne was willing to try learning a new skill–especially one so vulnerable–for her audience, diving right in. That’s my friend Celinne for you!
Part 2 is where it gets completely crazy, and Celinne’s inner dominatrix came out and she dommed the shit out of me in real time like a pro right out of the gate.
But that’s a bit extreme to release without any warm-up. So here’s Part 1, the warm-up to get you ready. In this episode, you’ll get a feel for how someone goes from having zero experience in BDSM-style dominance, to being ready to unleash herself on a (willing) submissive, in just the space of an hour.
Bravo Celinne, I’m in awe of you, Mistress!
PS – thank you Selena Soo for connecting me to Celinne many moons ago- you sparked a wonderful friendship!
