235. Pleasure, Breathwork, & The Secret To Lasting Food Freedom ft. Melanie Bonk
235. Pleasure, Breathwork, & The Secret To Lasting Food Freedom ft. Melanie Bonk
So many women are taught that healing their health starts with better food choices, stricter routines, or more willpower.
But what if the real issue isn’t discipline at all?
In this powerful episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast, somatic sexuality and relationship coach Melanie Bonk shares how our vitality, confidence, and even food behaviors are deeply connected to pleasure, nervous system safety, and embodiment.
From a young age, many of us were trained to disconnect from our bodies. Pleasure was shamed. Sensation was ignored. Our intuition was quieted. Over time, this disconnection doesn’t just impact intimacy. It impacts energy, emotional regulation, self-trust, and how we relate to food.
Pleasure Is a Nervous System Experience
Melanie explains that we can’t fully experience pleasure, presence, or even self-touch if the body doesn’t feel safe.
By tuning into what’s called the “felt sense” (noticing what you’re feeling and where you’re feeling it), you create a bridge between your mind and body that increases regulation, awareness, and connection.
This same principle applies to:
• Emotional eating
• Stress responses
• Overworking and burnout
• Disconnection from joy
When the body feels safe, it opens. When it doesn’t, it protects.
Breathwork: The Fastest Way Back Into Your Body
One of the simplest yet most powerful tools Melanie shares is breath-led embodiment.
By sending your breath to areas of sensation, you literally move awareness, blood flow, and energy back into the body, pulling yourself out of mental spirals and into presence.
This isn’t just incredible for intimacy. It’s transformational for emotional regulation, cravings, and nervous system healing.
Why Pressure Kills Pleasure (And Consistency)
We also explore how taking goals, orgasms, results, and “fixing yourself” off the table creates more ease, curiosity, and connection.
Pressure creates resistance.
Play creates openness.
And this applies just as much to food freedom and healing as it does to sex and embodiment.
Radical Self-Love Changes Everything
Melanie beautifully shares how reclaiming unconditional self-love transformed how she treated her body, her health, and her life.
When love becomes an inside job, shame dissolves.
And when shame dissolves, pleasure, confidence, and nourishment naturally rise.
Ready to Reclaim Your Body, Safety & Freedom With Food?
If this episode lit something up in you and you’re ready to heal your relationship with food in a way that’s rooted in embodiment, pleasure, nervous system safety, and self-trust…
✨ Food Freedom Fantasy is officially open! ✨
This is where we turn consistency into foreplay, healing into self-expression, and food freedom into an embodied, joyful lifestyle.
If you want to do your food freedom journey dripping with fun, pleasure, and presence instead of restriction and willpower, come play with us.
We start at the beginning of March.
Links Mentioned
Embodied Activation
The Pleasure & Presence Reset
Try this simple embodiment practice anytime you feel disconnected, overwhelmed, or stuck in your head.
Step 1: Breathe Deeply
Take a slow inhale through your nose.
Exhale fully through your mouth with a soft sigh.
Step 2: Scan Your Body
Ask yourself gently:
What am I feeling right now?
Where am I feeling it?
Maybe it’s tension in your shoulders. Warmth in your chest. Pressure in your hips. Tingles in your hands.
There’s no wrong answer.
Step 3: Send Your Breath There
On your next inhale, imagine breathing light into that exact spot.
On your exhale, soften into it.
Step 4: Get Curious
What shifts when you bring attention there?
Does it soften, expand, relax, or feel more alive?
This practice builds nervous system safety, embodiment, emotional regulation, and pleasure all at once.
And the more you do it, the easier it becomes to stay present in your body, with food, emotions, intimacy, and life.
Transcript
Kayla: Hello Melanie, and welcome to the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast.
Melanie: Hi! Thank you for having me.
Kayla: Thank you for being here. So we’re going to start off with your Instagram handle and how you came up with it. I can guess, but tell us about it.
Melanie: Okay, so my Instagram handle is bonkbetter. My name is Melanie Bonk, and I am literally here to help you bonk better.
It is my married name, yes. Bonk is my last name. And I’m a somatic sexuality and relationship coach. If there were any other questions as to why I do what I do, I was even born on Valentine’s Day. My last name is Bonk, I was born on Valentine’s Day, and I just have this love, pleasure, and so much spice to share.
Kayla: This was absolutely what you were born to do.
Melanie: Yes.
Kayla: That is amazing. And I love having this conversation, because so many people think struggles with health, food, and energy are about eating better or finding the right workout program.
But if you’re hating your life and deprived of pleasure, the healthiest meal in the world might not help.
So can you share more about how you help women bring back pleasure, spice, and vitality?
Melanie: Yes. I am a firm believer that our vitality lives in our pleasure. That’s our energy, zest for life, and joy.
We’re taught from day one to be disconnected from our bodies and our pleasure. There has literally been a war on pleasure for thousands of years. So don’t feel bad if you don’t have a connection or understanding of your body or pleasure, because you’ve been trained not to.
I love to think of this work as empowerment, guiding women back into their bodies.
So many of my clients come to me with sexual trauma or were raised in very strict religious households where everything from the neck down was a no-go. We didn’t talk about it, touch it, or even acknowledge it unless we were having babies.
When you clear those layers and step into what I call our birthright of pleasure, power, and embodiment, that’s what I guide clients through.
It’s a very soft, gentle process. When we’re updating the nervous system and creating new pathways with pleasure, we have to go at the speed of the nervous system. I never push anyone with an agenda.
A lot of this is nervous system intelligence, which honestly isn’t talked about enough.
Kayla: Can you share more about the link between pleasure, getting into your body, and feeling safe in your nervous system?
Melanie: They’re so interconnected.
We can’t even experience our own touch if we don’t feel safe in our bodies.
Safety is about knowing:
“I am safe to feel vulnerable. I am safe to feel sensation.”
A simple way to start building this is something I call a body scan.
Take a deep breath in… exhale it out… and notice:
“I’m feeling tension in my right shoulder.”
Then allow that shoulder to soften.
“I’m feeling pressure in the front of my pelvis.”
“I’m feeling the fuzziness of my slippers on my feet.”
This is called the felt sense. You’re noticing sensation and location.
Labeling both connects the left and right brain, which creates safety in the body.
Over time, it becomes natural.
And one quick way to dip into pleasure, whether alone or with a partner, is simply asking:
What am I feeling? Where am I feeling it?
Maybe you suddenly notice your partner’s hand on your thigh.
It’s warm.
What else do you feel?
Curiosity brings you back into your body.
Kayla: I love that. Women want to be present but end up in their heads thinking about the to-do list.
How do you help them stay in their bodies during pleasure?
Melanie: First, ask yourself what you actually want in that moment.
Do you want pleasure right now?
Or do you really want to get your to-do list done?
Sometimes it’s a “get shit done” day, and that’s okay.
Giving yourself permission to honor your desire matters.
But if you do want to be present and you’re stuck in your head, trust me, I’ve been there.
Receiving pleasure can trigger thoughts like:
“Did I shower?”
“Am I clean?”
“Is there toilet paper?”
“When did I last poop?”
Those stories rob us of pleasure. They’re conditioning telling us we’re not good enough or perfect enough.
You always have a choice:
Spin in thoughts, or come back into your body.
That’s where What am I feeling? Where am I feeling it? helps.
The second tool is breath.
Breathwork is my favorite pleasure tool we’re all born with.
If you feel a hand on your thigh, send your breath there.
Inhale deeply, imagining light traveling down to that spot.
Exhale and melt into the sensation.
Your brain can’t stay in stories while using breath.
Breath brings you back into pleasure instantly.
Kayla: That explains why meditation is so powerful. And I can only imagine how magical that is in the bedroom.
Melanie: Even five minutes of breathwork before intimacy makes a huge difference. Just breathing together allows you to drop into your body faster and more deeply.
Kayla: What does breathwork with a partner look like?
Melanie: It’s beautiful foreplay.
Especially if libidos are mismatched, which is very common.
Women’s anatomy usually needs more time for blood flow and arousal.
You can lie facing each other or sit holding each other, heart to heart, breathing deeply together for five minutes.
I love adding music that turns me on so the environment supports the experience.
Within a minute or two, breath naturally syncs, nervous systems soften, and energy builds.
It can lead to incredible pleasure.
Kayla: I imagine this is amazing for different erotic blueprints too.
Melanie: Absolutely. I love the blueprints. And honestly, we’re all of them. We can play with every expression of pleasure.
Kayla: What other somatic tools do you love for women who struggle with body image or insecurity?
Melanie: I don’t know any woman who feels naturally confident in the bedroom. Let’s normalize that.
We’ve been fed unrealistic images, and porn definitely doesn’t help.
One of my biggest breakthroughs was realizing I’m the only one who can love myself unconditionally.
At first I thought, “My husband loves me unconditionally.”
But actually, love always has healthy conditions like respect, loyalty, and boundaries.
Same with my kids.
So unconditional love truly becomes an inside job.
And that’s hard for women.
I had to learn to love my cellulite.
Nobody tells you to love cellulite, but it’s part of being a woman. And I love being a woman. I love being multi-orgasmic and experiencing deep pleasure.
So cellulite? Sign me up.
Loving my breasts after four babies was another chapter of self-love.
When we reclaim radical self-love, vulnerability becomes easier. And vulnerability is required for deep pleasure.
That’s when those big orgasmic waves come.
Kayla: What about women who struggle to orgasm without stimulation and want more pleasure?
Melanie: My first step is actually taking orgasm completely off the table.
No orgasms. Just sensation. Just pleasure for pleasure’s sake.
Touch without pressure.
Curiosity. Play.
It removes expectations and opens the body naturally.
Kayla: That makes so much sense.
What are the biggest roadblocks you see?
Melanie: Conditioning, religious shame, lack of pleasure education.
We’re taught fear-based sex education, not pleasure education.
But pleasure is your birthright. Every body is capable of full-body pleasure.
We also use holistic tools like breathwork, mindfulness, and even sound.
Authentic sounds vibrate the vagus nerve and calm the body.
It’s about reclaiming pleasure with permission to play.
Kayla: And when women reclaim pleasure, it changes everything.
Melanie: Absolutely. Confidence in the bedroom becomes confidence in the boardroom.
When I reclaimed self-love, I treated my body differently. I stopped drinking, ate better, honored my vessel.
I realized the power was inside me.
Kayla: If you could give one more embodiment challenge, what would it be?
Melanie: Begin attuning to your pussy’s desire, or whatever word feels good to you.
Bring awareness to your womb and yoni, which includes the whole anatomy and energetic portal.
Let creativity, intuition, and desire blossom from your pelvic bowl.
Kayla: I’m guessing you’ve read Pussy: A Reclamation.
Melanie: Once or twice.
Kayla: Everyone should read it.
Melanie: And you can name her anything that feels good to you. It’s an act of reclamation.
Kayla: Where can listeners connect with you?
Melanie: Instagram is @bonkbetter.
My website is melaniebonk.com where you can find one-on-one coaching and my tantra-inspired Date Night Membership for couples.
Kayla: Amazing. Thank you so much for being here.
Melanie: Thank you! And remember, I’m here to help you bonk better.
Kayla: Best catchphrase ever.
