SPFPP 406: Right Use of Energy - Brahmacharya in Action
Are you bleeding energy into things that don't serve your highest self? This week, Courtney is back with a massive life update and a profound shift in the podcast's direction. Transitioning to a once-a-month format, Courtney dives deep into the yogic principle of Brahmacharya—the right use of energy.
Listen in as Courtney candidly explores how removing social media distractions and enforcing strict personal boundaries led to massive breakthroughs. From transmuting unspent sexual energy into writing the first draft of the SPFPP book, to transforming his physical health through Ayurveda, to processing relationship trauma on the Zouk dance floor, this episode is a masterclass in vertical growth over horizontal distraction. Courtney also breaks down the fascinating differences between the men's and women's support groups, drops his upcoming travel itinerary, and explains why true authenticity is the ultimate friction-remover.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Subscribe to the SPFPP Newsletter: spfpp.org/herpes-newsletter
Read the SPFPP Blog: spfpp.org/herpes-blog
Request a Donation-Based Support Call: spfpp.org/herpes-support-call
Episode 406 Transcript
The Pivot: One Episode a Month and the Concept of Brahmacharya
00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Hello. Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supporting people navigating herpes stigma. This is about to be a very long podcast episode. I'm thinking more than an hour for sure.
I know that you may notice that there have been a lot fewer podcast episodes than weekly. So, I want to revisit and set the new expectations for there to be one podcast episode per month. For now at least, in the event that that changes, cool. But for where things are right now, I think that's the expectation that I can consistently set. Which is funny, because when I started the podcast in 2017, my plan was to make it one episode a month, and unexpectedly I was having three, four, five recordings over the course of a week. But that's not where we are anymore. The social media landscape has changed.
00:01:21 Courtney Brame: The thing that people have gotten from being a podcast guest, I think they're just getting from the 30-minute support calls or getting from the support groups and sharing their stories that way. So, I have a lot fewer guests now. And I mentioned in previous episodes that I feel like I'm getting repetitive or just talking about me exclusively. So rather than talking about me and my experiences four or five times a month, why don't I just condense it into one?
Speaking of the word condense, that's kind of what the topic of today's podcast episode is. The theme is Brahmacharya. If the ten commandments of yoga are the Yamas and Niyamas, the Yamas are how you engage with the world, and then the Niyamas are how you engage internally.
00:02:36 Courtney Brame: It typically translates as celibacy, but really what it is is the right use of energy. The way that I envision it is we're constantly storing and releasing energy. We can either release it consciously or store it consciously, or what's happening is that it's just happening. There's a cycling of energy within us. The environments that we're in that change our mood, that's drawing in energy. Whenever we feel drained, an environment can make us feel like we're losing energy. The things that we do can feel like we're leaking energy unconsciously and we're just like, "I don't know why I'm tired."
00:03:39 Courtney Brame: Well, one thing can be doomscrolling. That's a perfect example. You get a meme that's sent to you or a reel from a friend. You open that reel, you end up in the next one, and then the next one, the next thing you know, it's been 30 minutes, right? So losing energy in that sense is what Brahmacharya can bring up. I truly believe this concept helps with herpes, and I'm currently putting together a presentation on it. As you might know, I'm in yoga therapy training, and I've been learning a lot and living a lot of this. So, I'm going to do my best to just share my own experience and apply it to y'all to the best of my ability.
Protecting Energy and Eliminating Distractions
00:04:54 Courtney Brame: If you've followed me on social media, you probably see that there have been significantly fewer posts because I recognized how much my energy was leaking there. Just for perspective, I took social media off of my phone. So now it's just on my laptop. If ever you catch me on there and I'm responding to messages or posting anything, I get in, I get out. My friends have been sending me reels and memes, and I've not even opened them. That's just what I got to do to conserve the leaks of my energy. I'm applying Brahmacharya not just to my personal life but also to my work life.
00:06:00 Courtney Brame: The first thing that I'm doing personally for me is protecting my energy. I'm protecting what I'm doing structurally with my finances. I'm protecting my attention and, most importantly, my time. What this looks like is bringing a much stricter focus to Something Positive for Positive People. I was forcing these podcast episodes for the sake of consistency. It used to be more important to me that a thing be done than it be done right or done well. I'm not a perfectionist by any means. I value consistency more so than I value perfection.
00:07:02 Courtney Brame: I'm condensing things to just three things that I do: all things Something Positive for Positive People, completing my yoga therapy training, and my part-time job as a male urological teaching associate, teaching medical students to give genital exams. I almost gave myself something that would have taken me away from just doing those three things.
In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali—which is like a bible of yoga—it teaches the eight limbs of yoga, which I will be teaching on June 18th virtually at noon Eastern time. I'm going to go through applying that to navigating herpes stigma. But all in all, the eight limbs of yoga are essentially the pathway to removing internal frictions so that you are able to align your output with your outcomes as closely as possible.
The Shiny Object Syndrome
00:08:31 Courtney Brame: I'm recognizing the kind of outcomes that I desire, and so I have to align myself, shift what my outputs are, and be mindful of the inputs as well, so that I'm not causing myself to misalign. One of those things came in as a "shiny object." The Yoga Sutras talk about how when you're on an aligned path—whether you're aligned with the universe or surrendered to God—it's almost like you're walking with the King through the castle to get to the grand hall where a festival is happening. But along the way, you are met with shiny objects. There's a jester over here, entertainment over there, grabbing your attention.
00:09:45 Courtney Brame: What's important is that you stay on the path and not let any of those shiny things deviate you. At the end of the path, you'll have encountered all of those things, and you get to enjoy them from your seat with the Divine. When I heard that, it made me think, because I had applied for a substitute yoga teacher job at a prestigious gym. This gym had a hot tub, a sauna—I was hyped. They pay a lot better than I thought a gym would pay. But when I heard back, I got a feeling in my chest. I'm learning to listen to that. I'm learning to listen to my own nervous system. I'm learning to listen to my body when it tells me, "Hey, this ain't right."
00:10:51 Courtney Brame: I've made decisions in the past where I ignored that feeling because I wasn't connected to it. Through Ayurveda, through the eight limbs of yoga, and making a consistent regular practice for myself, you don't notice it day one, but after two months, you do. I don't want to expand horizontally; I want to extend my depth vertically. And so I'm extending my depth vertically by leaning most heavily into Something Positive for Positive People.
Content Pivot: Quality Over Quantity
00:12:07 Courtney Brame: I mentioned the podcast and content pivot. Expect one podcast a month. I was forcing it, and that was leaking energy. I recognized that I was dreading the recordings. Whereas with this one, I was hyped to finally record. It's almost like the energetic buildup was taking place. I was able to sort out everything I wanted to cover and put it into the podcast and the newsletter. If you're not on the newsletter, please be on it.
00:13:11 Courtney Brame: You will miss the opportunities to be in-person. If we do support groups that are in-person or if I'm traveling, I can't connect with you if you don't get the notifications. I usually don't go to the same place twice within a year, and this is a good opportunity for you to meet other people who are living with herpes in your area. I am deepening the quality of the content. I'm doing this at a vertical depth for vertical expansion, not horizontally.
00:14:10 Courtney Brame: I want to deliver a greater quality of things. I'm going to be posting more on the blog, doing more videos on how to go about disclosing or talking about sexual health and relationships. Social media has shown my posts to 39 people after almost 24 hours. Putting time and energy into making a new post just to get 30 views is not worth it. The way you have to position content in order for it to get visibility doesn't align with me.
00:16:18 Courtney Brame: So many people want in-person support. They want the community, but they're unwilling to receive one to one and a half emails a month. If you don't want your main email to have herpes-related information on it, make a burner account. But if you're not ready to receive the information, you just ain't ready. I don't want you to waste your energy trying to be something you're not ready to become yet. Roughly 10,000 people visit the SPFPP website per month. That's where the investment of energy and time really needs to go.
Support Group Dynamics and Setting Boundaries
00:18:41 Courtney Brame: For the support groups, the women's group is phenomenal. We consistently have 17 to 20 women that come the first and third Monday of each month. If you want to join, you have to have a donation-based herpes support call first. I say "donation-based" because people fill out the forms and they don't donate. I do not reply to emails that have no donations associated with them. I get a lot of spam and trolls.
00:19:48 Courtney Brame: What I've noticed over the years is the people who don't donate don't show up to the support calls. I've rearranged my schedule to prioritize these, and with it just being me, this is one of the ways I'm protecting my energy. It's like a membrane around me energetically that slows things down to a stop. Everything that we do is donation-based. I don't care how much you donate. Somebody donated a dollar—I don't care! You've given an energy investment to show me you're serious.
00:21:40 Courtney Brame: The women are willing to navigate stigma and all of the emotions. There's a lot of depth to the support group. We're covering the roots of stigma, intimacy, boundaries, vulnerability, relationships, and self-image. What I've noticed with the men's group is they're very focused on problem-solving. Between one and three men will show up.
00:23:43 Courtney Brame: The things that happen in the men's group are, "I got a rejection, help!" or "I have an upcoming disclosure, how do I tell this person?" They take the advice right away and then that's it. They don't come back. That reciprocity, that ongoing support is something that in the men's group just doesn't happen.
00:24:37 Courtney Brame: I even put a frequently asked questions on the herpes support call page to explain the process even further. I can't waste energy on people who don't even read the instructions. It feels icky for me to say that, but I recognize that ickiness is just the discomfort of having boundaries. I'm seeing where all of these leaks are, and I'm plugging the leaks that came from not having a routine.
Upcoming Events and Travel Schedule
00:26:42 Courtney Brame: These are the upcoming dates for meetups and travel. May 15th is virtual—Sex Positive Portland. I'm hosting an event on navigating the herpes stigma in alternative lifestyles. July 23rd through 26th, I intend to be in Houston, Texas for a Zouk conference. I'm available to host a meetup if there is interest.
00:28:43 Courtney Brame: July 26th, I go to St. Louis, Missouri for a couple of days. August 29th is the New York City Herpes Stigma Expo in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We're going to do demonstrations on how to talk about herpes with partners, how to talk about sex, and how to talk about relationships. We'll use Dr. Evelin Dacker's STARS Talk, which covers what we need for safety, turn-ons, and boundaries.
00:30:43 Courtney Brame: The next day, August 30th, I'll be presenting at the STI Prevention Conference in Atlanta. I'll be there until September 2nd or 3rd. I'm looking to host a meetup there as well. And I live in Brooklyn, New York, so that'll be ongoing. I have spaces where I can host game nights and support groups, but I need the interest.
Transmuting Sexual Energy: Brahmacharya in Action
00:31:43 Courtney Brame: So, this portion is about transmuting sexual energy. Typically, a person newly diagnosed with herpes might decide, "I can't have sex." They allow herpes to decide that for them. Not being a sexual person means that energy is just there. Energy can't be created nor destroyed, but it's also not designed to sit still, be stagnant, and create s*** within the body. We got to move that s***!
When we look at Brahmacharya again, it's not celibacy, it's right use of energy. Even if you do want to have sex, it's having sex in a way that aligns with who you are.
00:33:00 Courtney Brame: Around Valentine's Day, I realized that since my last relationship, I was doing a polyamory thing, and I recognized that I'm not polyamorous. There was a constant leaking of my energy. I had people tell me I was polyamorous, and I was like, "Okay." But it never felt right. Between mid-March and now, I haven't been as sexually active as I would like to be. I'm a different person when I know it's on the table versus when I don't.
00:35:15 Courtney Brame: Rather than allowing that sexual energy to leak and going to find somebody to hook up with, I decided to do something with it. Sexual energy is creative energy; it's life force vitality. I have successfully written the first draft of the Something Positive for Positive People book. I wrote the first draft of an actual book with that concentration of my sexual energy.
00:36:26 Courtney Brame: Now, I might be horny as hell, but rather than having a sexual experience and getting a release, I wrote a book. What else can I create? I'm a nerd, and I bought the materials to make Escanor's axe for the June 6th Brooklyn ComicCon. That's another place I'm putting my energy into just creating things.
00:38:51 Courtney Brame: The right use of energy for me doesn't look like, "I'm horny, I need to get this off." It looks like, "What do I really want?" Sometimes I'm horny because I'm lonely, or I want companionship, or I just want intimacy. It can all come from the same place of feeling disconnected. You have to give that sexual energy an outlet. Energy is supposed to move and flow.
The Health Journey: Ayurveda and Transformation
00:43:39 Courtney Brame: Speaking of my health journey, I started these lifestyle changes when Ramadan had begun. I've had high blood pressure since I was 20. Most recently, I went to the doctor and they told me, "You are pre-diabetic." I didn't want to take medication. So I went to Ayurveda and started applying the things I was learning in yoga therapy training. I was hovering around 235 pounds.
00:44:41 Courtney Brame: In mid-February, I was like, "I don't want to do this anymore." I applied Brahmacharya—the right use of energy—to address these things. It was an energy leak whenever I just ate whatever I wanted. Now, I eat spinach, quinoa, and salmon for lunch or dinner. For breakfast, I eat eggs, egg whites, spinach, and sourdough bread. The big thing for me is the spices: turmeric, ginger powder, cumin, black pepper, onion, and garlic powder. These spices heat up your digestive fire.
00:47:01 Courtney Brame: For my Ayurveda composition, I'm very Kapha, and I hold on to things. I shouldn't be eating heavy things or drinking cold fluids. Now, I am consistently hovering around 215 pounds. I'm putting the work in. I'm still working out and lifting heavy at the gym. I'm practicing yoga. I've incorporated running, and I've also been dancing. I find myself significantly more horny because of the way I'm eating—the right cholesterol and fat combinations will raise your testosterone.
Somatic Healing Through Dance
00:51:17 Courtney Brame: I feel like a real dancer now because I bought some Fuego dance shoes. Dancing has been so good for me. I fully understand somatic movement now. In yoga, you'll sometimes just start crying and not know why. Trauma can be stored in the body as stagnant energy that hasn't had an opportunity to move. That's the emotional release that dancing has been giving me.
00:52:25 Courtney Brame: One of the big releases was letting go of caring about how silly I look. I'm facing my own internal judgment of moving my shoulders or doing a body roll. My body has been a weapon on a sports team; I've used it for football, to push through pain, and to exercise. Now, with dancing, I know I look a little stiff, but I'm getting better.
00:54:21 Courtney Brame: In the anime Solo Leveling, the main character is the worst hunter, but he keeps showing up. He's given the ability to level himself up, and all he had to do was honor his discipline. That is where I feel I'm at now. I might be the worst dancer in the room, but I'm sticking to it.
00:55:13 Courtney Brame: I remember my ex making fun of me in the car for dancing to the lyrics of a song. I thought that was a bad thing. Come to find out in dance class, the instructor says, "Dance to the musicality, dance to the lyrics, play, be silly!" I had that memory unlocked that I otherwise wouldn't have had access to if I wasn't moving my body.
00:56:13 Courtney Brame: I recognize after all this time that I need to let go of how harsh I was on myself for the relationship not working out. I didn't realize it was so hard for me to date because of this block I had. In dancing, I've learned that there is nothing wrong with me.
Removing Internal Friction and Honoring Authenticity
00:57:24 Courtney Brame: One of the challenges I face in dating is being decisive. I am so decisive when it comes to SPFPP, but I'm not decisive on the dance floor, and in dating, I'm shooting my shot and messing up because I'm not being decisive. The mental blocks and insecurities instilled in me from past relationships have messed me up.
01:00:42 Courtney Brame: I had to remember I did this before. I was walking down the street, struck up a conversation with someone, and it was so easy. I forget that these no-stakes interactions are where things are supposed to start. I don't need to go into every interaction knowing what I want.
01:02:37 Courtney Brame: If we're energetic systems, like electrical circuits, if there's any heat or friction, something's going to short circuit. Removing that friction is as simple as being yourself. We make it complicated. The in-between of what you think and how you behave—that's heat. That's friction. Letting your behaviors and your beliefs align removes that resistance.
01:05:32 Courtney Brame: Dancing is sparking a lot of dreams. I take the things from my dreams and bring them into reality through journaling and meditation. If you're exhausting yourself faster than you're able to replenish yourself, that's where you burn out. That exhaustion happened to me because there was a misalignment between my beliefs and my behavior.
01:09:04 Courtney Brame: With Something Positive for Positive People, this feels so aligned that recording these podcasts, hosting support groups, and teaching yoga gives me infinite energy. I am motivated by connection. Life isn't about what happens to you; it's about what happens through you. When you're serving a community and you feel like there is a mission that aligns with who you are, you get supercharged because the energy of the universe is operating through you.
01:34:28 Courtney Brame: Guard your energy. Be the observer. Take care of your health, cook for yourself, make time for play. Trust the internal gravity you've created by affirming your identity and values. Everything and everyone orients around your authenticity. Get on the email list at spfpp.org/herpes-newsletter so you can be up to date on in-person events. Till next time, stay present and protect your energy.
