SPFPP 416: Herpes Community?
In this episode we talk about efficient energy use learning from some of the most energy efficient creatures. The spider, dung beetle, elephant, and lion are great examples of the four laws of thermodynamics in action. Then, I speak to that energy efficiency as it relates to community. These creatures maintain a balance because their environments aren’t as complex as humans’ are. So what we can do is embody each creature’s relationship to energy to understand our baseline archetype or way of using energy and apply it to community. Community is a preemptive energy regulator. With technology, we always have access to it, but for some reason, only feel called to it when we’re struggling. That’s not the most efficient utilization of community. This episode speaks to what is from the perspective of the herpes community. Listen here!
SPFPP 416 The Herpes Community? Transcript
00:00:02
Courtney Brame: Hello, welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame.Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit organization supporting people navigating herpes. And in addition to that, we offer yoga therapy for people who want ongoing support and uh working through the aspects of their internalized stigma, dating, discussing their status with partners, navigating rejection.
00:00:30
Courtney Brame: Um I can't think of anything else, but those are the main things that people come to me for in relation to yoga therapy. But I I think that they call it coaching. Whereas for me, I'm utilizing my understanding of and training from yoga uh in order to support people through that. So yeah, if you reach out and you're like, "Courtney, I just want you to tell me what to do." That ain't how this works.
00:00:55
Courtney Brame: All right. Um we offer one-on-one support calls. We offer support groups, um which are going to be changing come November. So I'll get through announcing all of that here soon. But I got a couple of things that I want to celebrate real quick. Um, I'm putting together a media kit for the 2027 Heric Spigma Conference, which I'm planning on being Friday, August 13th, 2027, and making it just one day long of an event that is primarily targeted towards clinicians, physicians, uh,
00:01:28
Courtney Brame: medical professionals who would deliver a herpes diagnosis, as well as mental health professionals and therapists who would offer support and information to their clients. that they see um and how to be a better therapist as it relates to navigating a patient's disclosure to you about their status. And then I'll provide the keynote um I'll facilitate a panel discussion um that highlights the experiences of people who are living with her abuse and navigating stigma and what we can do about um neutralizing it in the future.
00:02:07
Courtney Brame: So, I'm looking at this presentation that I made and I put together like a little kit because I'm looking for sponsors and donors. If you know someone who sponsors conferences or, you know, people who got a lot of money and just want to throw it at something, please send them my way. Um, that would make my life a lot easier.
00:02:25
Courtney Brame: I'm going to do a lot of like backlog emailing of people that I've worked with in the past and then also um do a lot of code emailing. But yeah, that's essentially what the rest of this year and a lot of 2027 is going to look like for the most part. Um, with a few exceptions of uh other things that I'll be doing through something positive as well.
00:02:49
Courtney Brame: But when I started the website in 2020 in 2019, we had 3,300 visitors. For perspective, in 2026, this year from January 1st to September 22nd, there have been 85,000. 85,000 as opposed to 3.3,000, which is wild to think about, but that's what consistency looks like. Now, I started the podcast in 2017 and there was no foundation for it.
00:03:24
Courtney Brame: um there wasn't one single place for the podcast so uh I don't have the numbers for that but I just thought that this growth was really phenomenal to be able to look at and say like to really be able to be like damn dude that many people and throughout the course of 2019 to date there have been 292,000 unique visitors 241,481 of um have been from the US, uh Canada, 17,335, and in the UK 12,21 visitors.
00:04:03
Courtney Brame: And then, you know, the least, um I did like a top 12 just cuz I was curious. But, um Brazil's on here, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Germany, Ghana, South Africa, India, China, Australia. Those are our other most visited uh states. So yeah, our United States countries um as far as states go, most people have visited by incognito, so there's no telling.
00:04:32
Courtney Brame: And that's 46,971 people, but New York takes the cake. 21,32 uh visits in the state of New York. And and in Cali, there have been 19,573. and then Texas with 14,970. And then the runner-ups are Florida, Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Oregon, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Ohio. So, um, yeah, that is we've been seeing a lot of growth over the years and I'm really proud to be able to continue to do this.
00:05:12
Courtney Brame: I'm I'm grateful. And now to be able to have moved to New York and be doing this full time. Now I'm making it work. All right. So, thank y'all. Thank y'all for being here. So, uh, welcome back. If you are coming back, I got notes pulled up here so I can make sure that I cover all of the topics that I want to cover and I do so in a concise way.
00:05:39
Courtney Brame: Um, so first off, what I want to talk about here is we talk about our energy. We talk about our emotional capacity. We talk about burnout. And I don't mean here specifically. I mean out in the real world. These are things that we talk about. We talk about burnout. We talk about depression.
00:05:57
Courtney Brame: And really what these two things are is imagine that you have a battery, right? A social battery is what people call it. But there's just like a battery in general that has a lot of energy. Maybe it's overcharged or it's depleted and drained and has no charge. All right. So that's what I'm going to speak to uh from the yoga philosophy.
00:06:18
Courtney Brame: Um this would be the goonas or an ayurveda I'm sorry. Uh these would be the goonas which are the three stages of everything. It's either in a rajasic state which means high motion chaos, a tamasic state which is stillness or motionless. Uh and then there's the balance state which is sadva. So sadva is essentially being balanced.
00:06:40
Courtney Brame: It's being at whatever your baseline is, whatever your equilibrium is. And the idea is to sustain that. There will be moments where you shift over into a more still state and you need to integrate more chaos motion activity and then there will be times where it's the opposite and you need to sit your ass down in order to get to that balanced state.
00:07:06
Courtney Brame: All right. So that's really what I'm going to be talking about here. The internal fire of that battery which is called agny. Um, and that agny is essentially what we use to digest. And I don't mean just digesting food for its nutrients, but the digestion of information as well. I know I've covered this on the podcast before, uh, but this is what this episode here specifically is about the power of and the use of community.
00:07:36
Courtney Brame: So when we look at this from a herpes stigma lens, stigma itself is something that depletes our energy very rapidly. Think about when you experience rejection, right? That may activate some chaotic energy within us and that chaos, that constant motion depletes our battery very very rapidly. So my goal for today is really to stop allowing that drain or to at least be able to bring some awareness to it and be able to recognize how to process that drain or that excess of energy that we can have
00:08:18
Courtney Brame: so that this is something that provides fuel to your agony and that your agony is able to transmute whatever the circumstances are into something that is useful. and makes you more efficient. All right, so housekeeping items. Uh I'm going to send out the October newsletter. Well, the October newsletter will be out with this podcast comes out because this will be in there.
00:08:45
Courtney Brame: Um but uh please catch the latest episode prior to this one with um Raina from Herpes Cure Advocacy. She is at this point in time one of the board of directors. Uh very active and involved and she shared her story. She shared her personal experience um having gotten herpes at 5 years old. Um you can imagine what happened.
00:09:12
Courtney Brame: um or maybe you can't, but it's one of those stories. And I thought that this was a very powerful experience to bring onto the podcast. And I'm grateful that we were able to have this recording at the 2026 STI Prevention Conference in my hotel room. Um I was able to set up the camera so that you can see the conversation and not just hear it.
00:09:32
Courtney Brame: So please check that out if you haven't already. And um the shift that's about to happen for something positive for positive people. I've already been implementing this slowly but surely, but I'm shifting my schedule to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I'll be available practically all day. Um, with the exception of if I'm traveling, but I I made it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday because I'm not usually traveling on those days.
00:10:02
Courtney Brame: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, these are my weekends. These are my play days. So, Thursday is my Friday for most people. And then Monday is a complete reset, recharge day for me to be able to run errands, get groceries, meal prep, do laundry, clean, um, and just rest, like fully rest. And that's the schedule that I'm choosing for myself.
00:10:27
Courtney Brame: As we talk about this, you know, energy management, um, this is me practicing it. I'm practicing what I preach. If you got the last newsletter, you you saw that in more detail or uh more vague. And in this episode, like I'm giving you that toolkit um or templates for you to even be able to listen to this and be like, "Coy, that's b*******. Let me go see for myself." I want you to be able to do that.
00:10:51
Courtney Brame: I want you to challenge what it is that I'm sharing here. So, starting in November, Tuesday to Thursday, essentially all day, 7:00 am Eastern time to I want to say 700 pm Eastern time, but on Wednesdays, uh, the support calls are moving to that day. So, I'll be more active and involved probably until 9 9:30. Um, but that'll essentially I'll be available those days.
00:11:17
Courtney Brame: I'm not going to be available Friday to Monday. That's what we're going to be doing moving forward. So, one-on-one support calls are available. These are 30 minute calls and they are $75. The support groups are again moving from Mondays to Wednesdays. If you want to join one of the support groups, that's going to be $25 per session.
00:11:40
Courtney Brame: And all you have to do is just make the donation to the support group that you want to attend. Anywhere on the website, if you scroll to the bottom, you'll see a donation box. You select support group for men or the support group for women. You make your donation there. when I see it, uh, which will hopefully be prior to the next support group, um, I will send you a calendar invite because that's how I read it on my end.
00:12:07
Courtney Brame: It shows me you donated $25 to the men's support group. Okay? You're going to get an email, which is the calendar invite, which has the link to join, which when you accept the calendar invite, it sends you reminders. It sends you a reminder. um I believe it's 30 minutes before so that you have the invite at the top of your inbox.
00:12:29
Courtney Brame: Um the first and third Wednesday of each month are going to be the women's groups. These are still going to meet at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time. And then the second and fifth Monday of or second and fifth Wednesday of the month are going to be co-ed. Now there may not always be five Wednesdays in a month understandably, right?
00:12:51
Courtney Brame: But um those are the ones where I like to bring in a guest to just offer some unique perspective and I open it up to the men and the women. And now for the fourth Wednesday of each month, this will still be the men's group. We have not gotten a lot of men uh in attendance consistently for this to warrant having a group for men every other week.
00:13:13
Courtney Brame: So, we just meet on the fourth uh Wednesday and then uh the second Wednesday has now opened up to be a co-ed if people want to attend that one. And I want to shout out the men too from this last group. There were one, two, three, four of us. There were four of us and we got real vulnerable.
00:13:31
Courtney Brame: Uh we got to talk about kink a little bit. Uh, one of our attendees is a kink educator and he talked about pleasure mapping and introduced that to the group and we had someone share about like the dynamics in his discord and relationship shifting a little bit since now moving in together. And ultimately uh the the conclusion of that was hey well have y'all talked about it have you talked about hey you know I'm noticing a desire shift.
00:13:58
Courtney Brame: I would like to be intimate more uh sexually like there is this intimacy but the sex has gone down and that's made him you know have feelings that he just hasn't really been able to articulate. So being able to speak in a room full of other men who can understand is like a micro expression of community. And he got it.
00:14:20
Courtney Brame: He was like, "Yo, this is really helpful." Right? And I'm going to speak to why community is so important using that as part of an example. Uh the 2027 Something Positive for Positive People Herp Sigma Conference is live. The landing page is officially up and this will be a one-day event in New York and it will be virtual.
00:14:43
Courtney Brame: So, I'm planning I'm really pushing for August 13th. We just need to secure a venue. I've got conversations pending and the emails are out, text messages are sent um and meetings are on the calendar. So once we secure a venue, I'll be able to announce the date and also um well I mean I'm selling tickets now.
00:15:06
Courtney Brame: So you can go to spf.org/conferences and you'll see the options there. If you are a clinician or a therapist, we are offering continuing education credits. Um whoever it is that we end up partnering with, you will be able to have those credits. All right? And there's a virtual option for people to attend as well.
00:15:25
Courtney Brame: If you are someone who has herpes and you want to attend, you have an option to attend in person as well as virtually. Um, and after the conference, we'll have some like after events that are more on the social side for people with herpes. Anyone who's attending the conference is more than welcome to come, but I want to make sure that there's an element of this that uh is for the community while I'm talking all this community s***, right?
00:15:51
Courtney Brame: Uh the oh something positive for positive people expo January 16th which is a Saturday. We're starting at 3 p.m. sharp with the support group. If you're late, you will not get in. Okay? So make sure you get there early. Whatever preparations you need to make, I'm not holding the group up. We are on a very tight schedule.
00:16:10
Courtney Brame: I'm flying Lauren Key in for this event and she's going to perform her onewoman show uh which is a it's called Deal Breaker and it's a story about herpes heartbreak and the depth of her one night stand. I got to see it twice. I thought it was incredible and it's a really good example of um energy like she took the energy of her diagnosis and did something efficient with it and created something that is useful to the rest of the world.
00:16:41
Courtney Brame: Uh so that's another great example that I'll be incorporating in this episode. And so um yeah, that will start at 4:15. So, I want to make sure that we have an hour and some change for in-person support and then we can have that. We'll have the um the one woman show and then the place that we're going to be at, we're going to be at the Tiny Cupboard in Brooklyn, which is off of the J train and Chanty Street if you're local and it's right there and it's a
00:17:09
Courtney Brame: comedy club and like an outdoor game bar place where you can get drinks and snacks. There's food in the area if you want something different than what they have on the menu. Um, and there's just like an open space for us to be able to interact with one another. Of course, I don't know what the weather will be, but plan to dress warm.
00:17:27
Courtney Brame: Uh, and we'll be socializing until people want to go home. Uh, and then the survey. Please keep submitting your survey responses. If you have not taken the survey, please do. This helps me with presenting information to people who can actually make a difference. to the medical professionals to your CDC's your NIH, your NCSD, NCSH, all of these acronyms under the umbrella of sexual Oh.
00:17:57
Courtney Brame: where herpes can be talked about and prioritized, but it isn't. So, help me help you by taking a survey. All right, let's get into the podcast episode now. All right. Oh, the light changed. You can see me now. What timing? Okay. All right. So, I want to introduce like this this energy management, right?
00:18:21
Courtney Brame: So, let's say we are we have a battery. I don't want to say we are a battery, but we have a battery. Um there are four laws of thermodynamics in physics that essentially if we align with these and understand these as just the way that all things interact with each other, we have a baseline for our life.
00:18:47
Courtney Brame: We have a we have a blueprint for what life is supposed to look like. And now having this, I recognize where things were working well for me and where they were not working well for me. and now having access to technology information, being able to ask questions and get actual responses in, you know, the form of whether it be immediate responses from AI or Google searches or articles or videos or even Tik Toks and YouTube uh Instagram reels and stories, then I'm I'm able to get to my destination for information a lot faster utilizing the resources that I have available to me.
00:19:33
Courtney Brame: So when we look at the laws of thermodynamics, I I asked this to be simplified. I was like, "All right, I want to simplify this." Oh, there you go. The sun coming back out and now you can't really see my face all that well. Um, but the first one is like um the law of the environment.
00:19:51
Courtney Brame: And so two things that are in connection will eventually share the same exact temperature. So who we are around in our environment will bring us to a shared temperature. So excuse me. If you're in a cold room, you get cold. If you are in a toxic relationship, you become toxic. So people can't say, "Oh, that person was toxic." Because if you're hanging around them,
00:20:18
Courtney Brame: you inherently become toxic. And in order to engage like you're not a healthy person with a toxic person, you are finding equilibrium. That toxic person is becoming a little bit more healthy maybe. But you as the healthy person are also becoming more toxic because a healthy person in a toxic relationship dynamic will walk away from that toxicity.
00:20:43
Courtney Brame: So therefore, you are not as healthy as you think. So to call someone else toxic, right, you're getting something out of it as well. You're sharing the toxicity, the energy there, right? like you're missing something or you have an excess of something, they are taking from you or you're taking from them and you're finding equilibrium on the spectrum of what your two temperatures are.
00:21:10
Courtney Brame: So, if you stay there and you're you're cold and you want that warmth, you are inherently draining your battery from your baseline by taking and receiving what doesn't really fit your baseline and your energy in the first place. because you're wanting to remain warm. So, what's important here is that we know and protect our environment as it is in terms of our own baseline.
00:21:40
Courtney Brame: So, your environment, your home, your room, if that doesn't feel safe, you are always going to externally seek safety anywhere that just isn't home. And you may find yourself in toxic relationships or toxic environments or unhealthy unaligned. I want to use the phrase unaligned more than anything else. You'll find yourself in places where the environment is unaligned and not reflective to your identity and now you have to become more like that space and that inherently makes you less like yourself.
00:22:12
Courtney Brame: Okay. The next one is the law of transformation. So energy cannot be created or destroyed. I'm sure we've all heard that somewhere. And what happens is that it changes its shape. So a herpes diagnosis, right? This isn't something that just goes away, right? We choose what it turns into.
00:22:37
Courtney Brame: Going back to Lauren, Lauren took her diagnosis and she made a story out of it. So her I mentioned agy earlier like the digestion she digested this information. A lot of us will let something sit undigested and we'll avoid it and what happens is it turns into amma and amma is sludge. It's a physical sludge from food that we're not able to digest that turns into toxicity and creates you know issues within our body.
00:23:07
Courtney Brame: But then there's this mental emotional sludge that maybe we don't see, but it's something that's there that dictates our behavior and like goes to like. So, we've got that sludge that's just just there, unprocessed emotions, mental trauma, and we're going to constantly have that poked at by life events that are drawn to that part of us because we haven't released it.
00:23:32
Courtney Brame: We haven't moved it. Energy wants to move. it can't sit and stagnate. Right? So when we don't look at our diagnosis, what it can become is heavy weight that makes us not able to move or we try and distract ourselves by constantly being in motion. Maybe we're constantly going out and we're drinking or partying or We're we're frantically dating and looking for somebody to save us from having to look at that amma that sludge that has now developed.
00:24:06
Courtney Brame: Right? So Lauren didn't let her s*** build into sludge and amma. What she did was she made it a story. She took it through her agy, her internal digestive fire, and the emotions of that were turned into a story, a comical story that is also educational, that is also her own expression of what she's digested.
00:24:34
Courtney Brame: And so this was something of purpose within the boundaries of the stage. when you see the one woman show, however you end up coming across it, um you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. Like it's on that stage. Her herpes diagnosis doesn't carry with her and impact her everyday life like that. You know, it's something that happened and now it's got boundaries to where she expresses that in the form of her onewoman show.
00:25:06
Courtney Brame: So this is one of the uh really really important things that we need to know because that also applies to any and all trauma. So if we're unwilling to look at it, it gets heavy. It builds into sludge and it slows us down and it draws in more of what's like that and then we need more help getting moving.
00:25:30
Courtney Brame: Or you know what happens is if we avoid it, we're burning ourselves out energetically and avoidance of just looking at the thing and giving it a way a place to move so that it doesn't get stuck. The next one is the law of maintenance. All right. So the idea is that without any kind of effort everything gears toward entropy or chaos and it just decays.
00:25:58
Courtney Brame: So everything in the universe naturally decays. We age. We get older. Our bones wither wither away. You look outside and things weather and eventually form into dust, right? So without any kind of daily effort, our daily effort isn't to create things and make them like more susceptible to entropy necessarily. We are essentially creating things that how can I how can I put this?
00:26:35
Courtney Brame: We're we're combating that decay essentially. So we're building structures that while naturally things want to decay. So like let's say we're building a sand castle, right? We're building that sand castle by stacking things that we know over time is going to weather away. Whether it be because of the weather or uh water washing up, but external internal circumstances that are just as a result of the globe spinning is going to make that structure collapse, right?
00:27:08
Courtney Brame: And so we know that everything is just going to gear towards that. And peace being one of those things as well, it's a daily practice. We are consistently putting in effort to combat entropy. We accept it that it is just a part of it's like u paying interest on the loan right or like we're paying a bill you know that we got to eat we know that we got to sleep we know that we have
00:27:33
Courtney Brame: to pay taxes right so the acceptance of that okay it's all right how can I let my effort minimize the impact on the mess so personally I've been changing how I eat and what's crazy is I just looked at the scale I'm 205 5 lbs. I used to struggle with getting out of the 230 to 240 lb range um two years, a year and a half ago, whatever you know that window was.
00:28:04
Courtney Brame: And I've now been at 205 just because like I'm cooking more of my food. I'm working out differently. I'm working out the least amount that I ever have and I'm eating the best quality of food that I ever have and I'm cooking more than I ever have. And I'm recognizing my body is very rapidly changing for the better.
00:28:27
Courtney Brame: Of course, how I feel in it, how it looks, how it's presenting. Like I got all my hair, I got, you know, full beard. Like I got veins in my legs popping out now. A little more vascular. You know what I'm saying? and I'm a little more agile and I'm not fighting aging.
00:28:44
Courtney Brame: Aging is a natural result of entropy, one of the laws of physics, right? Everything decays. Everything we we age. And I'm choosing to put my energy and effort into aging gracefully. At 37, I'll be 38 years old in November. And something that's important to me is like I'm looking at older black men who don't look their age by any means, right?
00:29:12
Courtney Brame: Like I've seen 70, 80 year old black men doing yoga and I'm like that's where I want to be. I want to make sure that, you know, I'm not I'm I'm putting my daily efforts into sustaining a sharp mind, a smart a sharp body, and that I'm able to sustain my health. So, I'm on top of that right now.
00:29:33
Courtney Brame: And it's a daily thing. You need these routines. You need these boundaries for yourself because the more of that effort that does go into your immediate center, your surroundings, it shapes everything around you as well. It does influence your environment like we talked about before to where you are more of a you're more of an impact on your environment than your environment impacting you because naturally the environment is going to be susceptible to entropy
00:30:06
Courtney Brame: but and as are you but you want to maintain your daily disciplines to where you can minimize the impact of that entropy. Okay. So when boundaries, when routines and disciplines drop, that's when we become that's when that aging process begins to come in and kick our ass. And the same thing with stigma, right? If we the perfect example, um I met someone at uh I was kicking it at a lake with friends and met someone made eye contact and I was like, "Oh yeah, we looking at each other like to the point where her friend was like,
00:30:46
Courtney Brame: "Hey, checking you out." Like I heard her say this. We walked past each other and I was like, "I'll probably never see her again." Turns out saw her again and uh started a conversation with I was like, "Hey, you know, you had that, you know, moment of eye contact or whatever like I feel like I should introduce myself. I'm Courtney and just led to a conversation and uh to the point we ended up making
00:31:08
Courtney Brame: out like hold on like the f*** I don't do this." Like I was like I said, "b****, she was like what? You you like making out on the first day?" I was like, "No, I don't do this." And then we kept making out. But um that we had some conversations that I was like h I probably shouldn't do this and in the conversations like there were things that came up that I have experience with where I've operated from a very inefficient
00:31:37
Courtney Brame: place. So here we're talking about efficiency of energy, right? So we walked and we talked and she shared some things about past relationships and liking toxicity and drama and that's where I should have walked away but I was like let me see where this go. I looked at I was like you know she cute right?
00:31:58
Courtney Brame: So fast forward I learn all these things about her and I know that this is not a fit for me. And so eventually you know we see each other uh social media. She saw mine. She was like, "Hey, I know she got a lot of herpes stuff on there. What's that about?" And I told her and she was like,
00:32:13
Courtney Brame: "What? Like, you got herpes? Uh, and I was like, "Well, yeah, I do. Like, what questions do you have?" She's like, "Well, thanks for telling me." That was the end of the conversation. Right. So, looking at this, we are seeing that my discipline, my boundaries of knowing like this ain't for me.
00:32:36
Courtney Brame: I knew this wasn't for me because it sounded like things I've heard in the past where I knew these things weren't for me. And we can even kick it off with starting with I don't make out with people I just met. When that happened, it should have been done because that's my that's my boundary, right? and straight.
00:32:57
Courtney Brame: Sure enough, here we go. So now at that point, it's like um the chaos crept in because now the chaos has led to what can be perceived as a rejection from the other person rather than an upholding of my own boundaries, knowing, hey, this ain't going to be a fit. Right? So, this is an example of that in real time where I know that I had this boundary of I don't make out with people on first date and then along the way I've seen red flags out the ass,
00:33:30
Courtney Brame: but I was ready to do what Courtney wanted to do and not uphold the disciplines and boundaries of highest energy efficient Courtney. All right, so there we go. That's that's that's one example of that and I've had a few more cuz I've been dating again. Well, we can talk about that. I'll shoot the s*** at the end of the podcast for those who just come here for, you know, this important stuff.
00:33:56
Courtney Brame: Uh, and then lastly, the law of zero flow. We call it the law of flow. Zero resistance. So when we stop fighting against ourselves like I just did, energy flows without creating any heat or friction through us. Okay? So imagine that there's just like a constant very subtle wind that's flowing through us and it flows in different directions, right?
00:34:23
Courtney Brame: But the idea is to sustain that flow and not create any tension that restricts it or changes the direction of where it wants to go naturally. All right. When we stop fighting the truth, Satia and the nyamas and nyamas, when we stop fighting the truth, and we stop begging for someone to accept us, someone to save us from ourselves, save us from being single.
00:35:03
Courtney Brame: We drop our own internal resistance. Massive life events, massive life events are much more manageable without us burning out, without us having to get erratic in our responses, without us falling into a state of depression. And what this looks like is knowing what our reality is, knowing what our truth is. I spoke about that energy flow constantly, right?
00:35:35
Courtney Brame: There's a constant input, there's a constant output, and we radiate what we're transmuting. Again, going back to the agy, if we're taking in things that don't digest well with us, we're going to produce toxicity. Everything doesn't come out immediately. What takes longer? to come out is sitting inside of us. So if it's good quality, good quality of information, good quality of food that's sitting inside of us, that's what we radiate.
00:36:08
Courtney Brame: That's what people gravitate towards. That's who we are. That's our authenticity. That's our identity. And then the words that we speak, the actions that we take are fueled by that vibrance, by that frequency. And when we taking s***, when we doom scrolling and looking up toxic s*** and we are eating, you know, the things that we're maybe not preparing ourselves or things that don't have any life to them.
00:36:39
Courtney Brame: That's how Ayurveda describes it, right? So, if we're eating things that are grown from the soil or animals that, you know, are wild caught and not like farm, not farm raised, what's the word? like uh farm. Yeah, I guess farmer is salmon, but we want more things that are connected to nature to take in and digest because that's what our inner fire, our agy burns most efficiently because it maintains the natural flow of our own energy.
00:37:13
Courtney Brame: And since doing this, like I apparently I had 30 pounds of s***. And that's just the physical s*** in my mass, my body that had to come out cuz like my stomach's gone down. And I know that a lot of it, you know, may have been water weight, fat. Um, but I've become healthier. I think I've spoken about this previously, but I was at the line for becoming pre-diabetic until I got a herpes outbreak after having a lot of sugar in a short period of time.
00:37:42
Courtney Brame: And then I learned, oh, okay, sugar's a trigger. And then I have a family history of a lot of things and that's just natural. Like I would naturally gear towards those things because of the law of entropy, right? So my effort, my energy has now gone into maintaining a body and a mind that is strong against entropy that is strong against the natural chaos that the world gears towards and I used to really heavily fight that in the wrong way like it was an external fight like oh I'm not going to be like y'all I'm going just do things different
00:38:32
Courtney Brame: than no I've accepted that these are some of this is genetics but I've also accepted that you know what I take Again, what I put out is my responsibility. And so, I'm not resistant to what I'm naturally drawn to. I love watching anime. I learn a lot from anime. And my brain, the way that my mind works is I like patterns.
00:38:59
Courtney Brame: Patterns help me articulate things a lot smoother. As you'll see when we get a little bit further into the podcast here because I'll share some like powerful metaphors and analogies for you. But um yeah, it it's we essentially build ourselves into people that accept truth and reality for what it is. It's like our own, you know, internalized truth to allow for energy to continue to flow without creating any additional resistance.
00:39:37
Courtney Brame: when that internal resistance drops, like if we have herpes and we're struggling with stigma and we're just resistant to looking at it or we're just enshed in it, then we don't burn ourselves out and become susceptible to that sludge that develops. Now, we talked a little bit about energy and energy management, right? The idea is to become efficient.
00:40:06
Courtney Brame: The more efficient we are with our energy, the more we're rewarded evolutionarily. Okay? So, when it comes to energy management, the flow of it like it just has to it has to go. It has to go somewhere. When energy becomes stuck, like Albert Einstein said, E= MC², energy stacked and compounded on top of each other becomes mass.
00:40:34
Courtney Brame: Right? So, a lot of things that you may read online will say like if you have any sort of a mass or cyst, there's stuck energy. Now, speaking from my experience, I'm not saying that this is universal for everybody, but Courtney has a two cyst on each of his testicles. All right? So, I have accumulated mass on each testicle.
00:41:00
Courtney Brame: The flow of my energy in that regard has probably been compounded and just stuck because I'm not allowing it and I have not allowed for it to flow naturally. What can be said here is that I know I want to have a lot more sex than I'm having, but I have like an internal belief of the more sex I have, the less aligned I am in my life.
00:41:28
Courtney Brame: the more sex I have, the less grounded I am. And I don't think that I've ever had that language until this past weekend where um a buddy of mine, man, I I I talked about this at the men's group, too. Um but I'll I'll have to speak on that in more detail, but to round that out, uh he asked me a question.
00:41:50
Courtney Brame: He asked me, "What do you want?" And I got anxiety around what I wanted because I didn't even want to tell this super safe person what I it and that was difficult for me and looking at you know now how energy works and how energy becomes mass like when it's just stacked up on top of each other and now having a cyst on each of my testicles and what my testicles represent for me when I
00:42:13
Courtney Brame: look at the truth and the reality of it it's there has not been a consistent flow there's a desire for more flow in that part of my body and I'm declining it like I'm I'm essentially rejecting myself by not allowing for myself to ask for what I want, ask for more consistent sex. But there's also a fear because the last time I had I was having the most sex that I was ever having, this was falling apart.
00:42:43
Courtney Brame: This thing that I care about and I was falling apart. So the again like if you're with toxic person people or people who want from you or take from you or who are not like you necessarily you become more like them. I'm someone who values my discipline. I value what I've created and put out into the world.
00:43:07
Courtney Brame: I value my being. I value my who I am. And when the story that I've told myself is the more sex that I have, the less me that I have to be in order to get there. So, I've cut that s*** off. And that fear, you know, maybe is what developed into the cysts on my testicles, right?
00:43:34
Courtney Brame: Um so that that's an example of that and and probably something to dig more into but compounding energy not moving freely we get masses we get uh mass accumulated in that part of the body which is representative of whatever it is that is our truth about it. So, I asked um I asked uh my AI about the animals that are the most efficient with their energy.
00:44:04
Courtney Brame: And the first thing that came up was the spider. And the idea is that it is the master of its environment. So, it doesn't run around and chase flies, right? Like, it's very restricted. It doesn't have wings. How does a spider capture something that is so mobile that it should very unlikely be able to eat or catch or touch even.
00:44:30
Courtney Brame: It builds a strong structure. It builds boundaries and it sits at the center and it allows for the universe to come to it. I looked up exactly like what this process was um from start to finish. When a spider's making a web, it just um allows one thread to descend and it allows the environment to dictate what structure it attaches itself too.
00:44:58
Courtney Brame: So if the wind blows in one direction or another, um, it lets it attach, it hooks it, and then it crawls down the web to test the integrity of its integrity. So a balance of tension and integrity of it. So it goes to the center of that thread and it begins to build outward. So the shape of the web is really what fascinated me too because it looks like how when we see atoms the circles with the dots on them.
00:45:29
Courtney Brame: That's exactly what the spiderweb looks like. So I wondered if there was something there. And sure enough there is. But we got going all of that. Um but once it's done with the creation of the web, it just sits at the center. And again the environment told it, hey, build here, start here.
00:45:48
Courtney Brame: and then it just spiraled itself out, right? So the environment is essentially sending things in that direction. So it sets up the web and then what happens from there is as it spirals you know and makes more web outward it locates the center and it just sits it rests at the center and in that center it's able to pick up on the vibrations of what connects to it and knows okay this is food because when a fly gets trapped it's like vibrating frantically trying to get out the more it struggles the more caught up it gets right and the Same thing for uh different types of insects.
00:46:29
Courtney Brame: It may be able to know how big it is or small it is. And the spider just is chilling there. It's just chilling. And then I learned a little bit more interesting things about it. So I wondered like how do spiders make so much of that webbing? And there's a whole internal process that speaks to knowing who you are, knowing what you can and cannot digest and what turns what to what.
00:46:53
Courtney Brame: So the reason that this is so efficient is um it digests the bug's skeleton or exoskeleton, its organs and everything in it, its wings by wrapping it up and coating it and creating essentially an external fire. So it kind of cooks it using its own digestive enzymes and its webbing and everything to turn it into like a paste. And that paste after it consumes it becomes the new material for the webbing that it continues to again spiral out in order to bring in was for it.
00:47:32
Courtney Brame: And the way that it mates too, which is interesting, its web is out there and a mate would come and like test the integrity of the thread too and be like, "Oh, what you got going on here?" But it does it in the rhythm to identify, "Hey, I'm not food. I'm not food. And it'll pluck at it.
00:47:51
Courtney Brame: And then the spider knows, okay, what's going on over here? And then from there She, the female spider, will um then just like make herself known because she likes the integrity, the structural integrity of the spider, the male spider's web. And then that's what they do from there is like they co-create ecosystems of okay, boom, we've got this web here and now like we're stacking our own webs like within each other.
00:48:23
Courtney Brame: They're interwoven in the environments, right? So, I thought that that was really cool. I really went way deeper into that than I needed to, but it was so fascinating to me because of the parallel, right? Like, you don't bring someone in. Let me speak for myself because this is what I've done in the past trying bringing people in like as I'm building a thing rather than when the thing is built, like when I have my life built for them to come in and be like,
00:48:51
Courtney Brame: "Hey, you know, I like what you got going on over here." like what's up? And yeah, that that we ain't got to go into all of that. So, the next one is um the scarab or the dung beetle, which is a master of transformation. It literally takes s*** and the most discarded waste in an environment and it rolls it up to birth new life.
00:49:21
Courtney Brame: Lauren, perfect example. Don't nobody want herpes. Lauren Key took her herpes diagnosis and turned it into a story, put it on the stage, and now people are able to laugh, people are able to connect, people are able to socialize, maybe meet their next baby mama, baby daddy, husband, wife, partner, friend. You turning s*** into something else.
00:49:47
Courtney Brame: for me, you know, I took my diagnosis and all of the stories that were thrown to me and I' I've taken this stigma and turned it into a f****** business. And not only is it a business, but it's actually something that's helping people. It's supporting people through what's often times like the worst time of their life and allowing for them to have their friendships, their connections, their relationships, go on to have children, right?
00:50:22
Courtney Brame: And the idea is that this births new life like to take this heaviness of the emotions that come from stigma. Don't nobody want this s***. We roll it up and birth new life. And what dumb beat beetles do is they like take this big ball of s*** and they lay their eggs in it so that their offspring is able to take from that and you know be born and then go out from there and repeat the
00:50:52
Courtney Brame: process. the next wing. Uh the elephant is the master of maintenance. So when we look at this law like it's you know a elephant when you see an elephant it ain't no denying that that's an elephant. It's massive. It takes up space and also it refuses to be rushed or susceptible to the entropy of the environment.
00:51:16
Courtney Brame: It's not going to move faster. I don't think I've ever seen elephant run now that I'm thinking about it. It moves slowly. It breathes deeply. And it sets its own pace. You ain't got to rush at the pace of other people. And you ain't got to slow yourself down for other people.
00:51:41
Courtney Brame: Right. Again, you be you at your center when you are most grounded and you let those who want to be there, you know, show that they have the rhythm to be there. But we have to use our boundaries. We not we may not be spinning spider threads, but we have words, we have actions, we have the way that we carry ourselves, where what our environments are, how we dress, our no, right?
00:52:05
Courtney Brame: Like this is the rhythm I'm dancing to. Cool. When that rhythm changes, no or cool, right? But it's very important that if we are massive that we not act like smaller animals or act bigger than we actually are. Be you. Be you. Move at your own pace. I'm in New York City.
00:52:35
Courtney Brame: I see people running all the time. There have been rare situations where I've had to run to catch a train to something because like a show was starting and I needed to that was it. like I wanted to be to a thing like on time, but typically I'm very early to things and I'm always walking pretty damn slow if I'm being honest.
00:52:55
Courtney Brame: I don't let things speed me up. And if I'm slowing down, it's because that's what the moment calls for. Or if I'm speeding up, you know, then again, very oneoff situations where I do. Lastly, the lion is the master of flow. And I I love this one because I think that this is very symbolic of myself.
00:53:19
Courtney Brame: A lion will rest for 20 hours a day to remove all friction, but when it's time to act, it gives 100% of its explosive and perfect energy. I go work out, my workouts are 30 minutes now, 35 at the most because I like change weights out. And then I'll run for five minutes. So, I'm at the gym.
00:53:42
Courtney Brame: I'm in and out in 45 minutes now. Efficiency. And when I get done with that workout, that's probably it. That's probably the only work that I'm doing. So, one out of the 24 hours in a day, I'm exerting myself, you know, for the practice. Maybe there will come a time of day where I got to be more efficient.
00:54:04
Courtney Brame: I even think about when I played football. What I loved about football is that plays were maybe seven seconds. So, I'm like slow moving, lazy, but during that seven seconds of action, I'm I'm on it. I'm on it. Right? And I used to sometimes spend 90 minutes, two hours at the gym, and I don't I don't have to.
00:54:23
Courtney Brame: I don't need to. A walk is like a 20-minut walk to the gym. a 20-minute walk back. And while I'm there, I'm lifting for 30 to 35 minutes and then I'm running for the other 10. And it's like sprint, sprint, rest, sprint, rest. It's efficient. And now condensing my workday is the quality of my life has seemingly gotten already so much better just with limiting my windows to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
00:54:51
Courtney Brame: I can be explosive for three days a week when it comes to the mental capacity of running something positive for positive people, showing up and being present, making these podcast episodes, managing the finances, doing all the behind the scenes work, hosting the support groups, the calls, the yoga therapy sessions, I'm able to sustain this. and outside of that.
00:55:16
Courtney Brame: So 3 days I'm working, four days 3 days I'm resting, four and the fourth day I'm or I'm sorry 3 days work, four days rest and play. And that that's how I'm choosing to live my life now. I'm removing that friction. I'm removing that heat so that my intentional output has more impact. Now, I gave all of this in regards to energy and different animals and nature that utilize it in the ways that they do because I wanted to give a framework for people to be able to understand, okay, like this is what it means to have energy,
00:56:03
Courtney Brame: manage energy. When I have a lot or have a little, the idea is to get back to balance and efficiently use the energy. A lion is a lion. An elephant is an elephant. A beetle, a dung beetle is a dung beetle. And a spider is a spider. What does this mean for a human?
00:56:20
Courtney Brame: We can take from each of these and apply it to our lifestyles. When it's time to rest, we got to know it's time to rest because there's too much motion. When it's time to be in motion because there's been so much rest, like we got to know that, hey, it's time to get moving. What I find in my work at something positive for positive people is that people come to me in one of two states.
00:56:48
Courtney Brame: high energy rajas when it comes to the goonas or low energy Thomas when its comes to the goonas and the idea is to in this space people are able to get a glimpse of their balanced state and their baseline just because this is a balanced environment and I believe that that's what community is and community does. Community is present consistently for us to stay connected to so that we have this to fall back on.
00:57:26
Courtney Brame: not necessarily when we need it, but the constant engagement is what helps expand our own batteries capacity. And in this case with herpes and herpes stigma, being able to know that you have a community that you can lean into prior to a date. Hey y'all, I got this date coming up. Like, I can use some words of encouragement because I know I'm going to disclose today.
00:57:51
Courtney Brame: Help. All right, you got this. You can do this, right? you got this charges your battery when you were feeling a little low or that same person can be in a lot of a high energy state and it's just like oh my god I'm I'm anxious I'm nervous I don't know what to do like I don't know how I'm going to do this hey take a breath you got this all right like just and just know that you're awesome and when you go on that date this person is going to see how awesome you are and regardless of what happens at the end of it.
00:58:26
Courtney Brame: We here for you. And think about how that calms a person down from being so chaotic. This is preemptive community utilization, right? So, we're doing this ahead of time. We're there. We're connected already. We're exchanging means. We're meeting up. We're going to places doing things, right?
00:58:49
Courtney Brame: Social activities. What happens is that people use con uh community late. It's after a rejection and now this person is chaotic. Oh my god, I can't believe this person rejected me. I don't know what I'm going to do. I want to I want to jump off a bridge. Oh, I'm so embarrassed.
00:59:10
Courtney Brame: D and that exponentially takes from the space. And let's say you don't have access to community. Where else are you taking from in your life? Is it going to be the people around you, your friends, your family? Is it even the dates that you're going on? Are you going to pour more into the dating apps?
00:59:29
Courtney Brame: Are you going to go and drink more so that you can just go out and forget about what happened? We can offload that excess energy onto somebody non-consensually who may not be in a place to where they can receive all of that. And that's what community is. community is a place to be able to offload that excess energy to where thousands of people all over the world, maybe like a dozen or dozens in a community are able to receive that offloading of excess energy from you.
01:00:04
Courtney Brame: Or if you experience rejection, you're like, "Oh, you know, I'm just so bummed. I'm down. I don't know if I want to do this anymore." Right? When you're down and you need to be poured into, you step into that community space, you're like, "Hey, come on. Cheer up. Let's go get a drink. Let's go get something to eat.
01:00:23
Courtney Brame: Let let me let me just sit with you." And you're charging your battery from the community space and not any individual person. This is the power of community. I used to conflict my identity with being something positive for positive people or like if something happens to Courtney, the s***'s dead. I still kind of think that, but more accurately, I recognize that I am not something positive for positive people.
01:00:56
Courtney Brame: And that's why I'm able to take these condensed hours of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to be something positive for positive people focused. And then the other day is for it to be quarterly focused. I am that spider. I am also that dung beetle. I am also that lion. I am also the elephant.
01:01:16
Courtney Brame: There is no single identification for Courtney. I've spun a web and this web isn't something that's going to like trap you. You show up within it, you know. And this web specifically is that which is something positive for positive people, helping people navigate herpes. If you happen to stumble across it and you decide that you want to be in this web, you're not trapped by any means.
01:01:44
Courtney Brame: You free to come and go. How you vibrate in this space is what I pay attention to. Yes, you use words, but the words that you use can be high energy and then you need more grounding or they can be low energy and you need more excitation. And I think that that's the thing worth replicating and being able to give people an understanding of, hey, this is what this community is.
01:02:12
Courtney Brame: Therpy's community is a wild f****** thing to say, but there are communities for sewing women's communities, LGBT communities, HIV communities, senior citizens communities, right? Like there's all these clubs and communities. And I find that when we have these things, there's also a lot more accountability. Like how easy it is to just go somebody who you have no connection with.
01:02:39
Courtney Brame: You don't know them really. uh they say they're part of a community, but that's so vague. Like here I really genuinely believe that having access to a community of people especially so many different walks of life who just have this common interest this common connection action, right? Like I I know people. I know lawyers.
01:03:01
Courtney Brame: I know opera singers. I know dancers, DJs, uh authors, videographers, therapists, nurses, right? Rappers. My community consists of so many phenomenal people and I wish this for you but it's it's constantly like rather than people coming and being part of this community like people don't even accept receiving a monthly newsletter because of the fear of having this because of the fear of being connected to people dope ass people that and maybe they just don't know because I I I don't talk about it.
01:03:52
Courtney Brame: I don't talk about my interactions that I have with the awesome f****** people that we meet. And now, you know, having sustained a support group for a year, like I'm able to put up like legit boundaries to where I feel comfortable with organizing said community. And it's been trial and error. Like I'm I'm not perfect.
01:04:13
Courtney Brame: And I've not done this in the best way throughout the entire time, but I'm in a place now where I'm recognizing, okay, boom, these are the things that need to happen. And one of those things is recognizing that I am a community leader. And I accept that identity. I accept that role. And I accept the responsibilities that come with it.
01:04:39
Courtney Brame: I accept the the discernment that I have to have with it and that this is what I want. This is what I want to be. This is what I want for people. So sitting at the center of this herpes community, not just in New York City but in the world. I am that spider and I am responsible for.
01:04:58
Courtney Brame: Okay. Boom. This vibration is really, really high. It's anxious. Let me ground you. Let me let me let me come over this. Where you at? All right. Here I come. I got you. If it's something that's more rhythmic, maybe it's a community partner of some sort, like, "Oh, you want to work together? All right,
01:05:16
Courtney Brame: let's talk. Let's talk business. You got a venue for me for the 2027 something positive for positive people conference? Hell yeah." And this community web, right? It extends. It's a personal part of me. There are people that come in vibrating with the frequency of potential partner. There are people that vibrate with the potential of coming in as or with the potential with the frequency of coming in as somebody who might even be able to take my place in a lot of this or be able to replicate these things that I'm doing.
01:05:50
Courtney Brame: And my discernment has to be to really be able to identify these things and be more clear, more firm around what my own boundaries are as I navigate this space and the core understanding. I don't believe in safe spaces. I'm going tell y'all that. You going to hear me say this until indefinitely. This is an intentional space.
01:06:13
Courtney Brame: And the intention here is for that recalibration, an ongoing, it's like an infinite loop of recalibration. and to be as connected as I am. There's 27 of us, 26 people of us in this New York City group chat. And I always got something to do now. I said, "Hey, we got karaoke tonight. This time,
01:06:37
Courtney Brame: this place." You know, I don't feel alone. And I think that a part of where my struggles were in 2025 specifically was that I did feel alone. the community I thought I was part of the sex education space that I wasn't part of that community but I thought I was you know I was I'm a lion and an elephant and a dung beetle and a spider but I was acting like a something else a fish none of those things that I just mentioned swim and so you know when I realized all right I ain't no
01:07:20
Courtney Brame: I had to start to find my own community and I looked I looked a lot I've been adjacent to a lot of communities but the one that resonates with me the most is like this community of people who have so many different identities who accept like we're able to all sit in the room together despite race, income, class, political views, whatever the f***.
01:07:44
Courtney Brame: And through this common interest, this commonality, this common ground, be able to find community and alleviate the energetic disruptions, the nervous system disregulations that occur within people. Too much energy, too little energy. Remaining connected to this for me has alleviated my loneliness. It's alleviated my shame even, right? Because I can be myself here.
01:08:15
Courtney Brame: And other people can be themselves here as well or they're learning that they can. But you can't just come here when you have a rejection. You can't just come here when somebody break up with you because now you're you're exhausting the community and you're just burning through. You're burning through it. So lean in preemptively utilize it.
01:08:37
Courtney Brame: Show up to a support group. come to an event, you know, I engage. Hey, how can I get more involved? Just engage with the newsletter. Share the resources. Let like like let yourself be a part of this community. Offloading excess and receiving when you are not in excess, when you ain't got it.
01:09:09
Courtney Brame: So all of that says like you you ain't got to come here when you hit rock bottom, right? Laws of thermodynamics state that if a person A is in an environment that is B and another person interacts with environment B that person is C then A and C are the same come interact with this environment you know you might be cold right interacting with this environment creates warmth there's somebody else out there that's cold if they interact this environment there too becoming warmth and now we're the same through that
01:09:50
Courtney Brame: temperature the regulation right the balance the reccalibration and that's what community is community is a consistent calibration so spiders even you know they you spin your web you got your home food coming in frequently right let's say a storm it. That spider is going to go find that web, eat it, turn it into a new web. Got to find a new home, start the process over, right?
01:10:27
Courtney Brame: You can't you can't do this by yourself. You don't have to do this by yourself. Having community, being able to plug into it, do that s*** when you are strong. Do that s*** when you don't need it. If you got that extra heat that you can put into this space so that it's there, it's like a perma charge.
01:10:46
Courtney Brame: Somebody else will be able to come in and tap into that same heat that you've offloaded. I ain't asking people to give me money, give make donations. I'm not asking for that. I'm asking for your presence because that's what other people need. This is just a cycle of that. And there are people whose presence looks like donating time or donating money or graphic designing things or a conversation that changes the world, a podcast interview.
01:11:20
Courtney Brame: I mentioned my friend like who just listened to me and helped me with just coming up with the terminology that oh I'm I've got this internal barrier of resistance to having a relationship dating because if I'm dating or in a relationship or I'm having more consistent sex then that takes away from the community that I've been building. It takes away from this thing that is so important to me.
01:11:49
Courtney Brame: And now with cysts, it's like, "Okay, Courtney Eagle, now you you got to find balance. I need to find balance now for myself. Otherwise, that energy gonna keep compounding and who knows what'll happen. I hope my balls don't explode. That'd be crazy. But that's my responsibility. Now, I know I'm aware of it and I can do something about it, right?
01:12:15
Courtney Brame: The the flow of energy has to happen and it's on me to get these needs met, right? And so preemptively leaning into my community, it's like, "All right, guys. I'm I'm I'm dating again." I mentioned a few maybe months ago where someone in the support group called me out on something about uh about dating and like just not being able to just say, "Hey, I'm Courtney." And I did that.
01:12:39
Courtney Brame: That's what community does preemptively. It prepares me for doing very difficult things. And I hope this for you to be prepared to do difficult things. So, I ain't going to say it's like a fail safe, but what they say, build a wall before build the well before you're thirsty so that you always got excess of water beforehand, right?
01:13:04
Courtney Brame: You don't want to go out there desperate. If a m*********** tell you, hey, I don't want to date you cuz you got hurt. But you should be able to go, okay, and text one of us, hey, you know, I'm out. My date ended a little early. What you doing? Let's let's go get food.
01:13:20
Courtney Brame: Let's go grab a drink, right? That should be the flow of this s***. And as somebody who's just been doing this s*** on my own for damn near a decade now, I I haven't had that, you know, from the herpes community, but I know that I've had friends that if I've had those kinds of situations, the friends were always there.
01:13:40
Courtney Brame: I don't hit people up as I need them. I mean, might be the other way around, but I think that I have friendships where people just we think about each other. We hit each other up. Hey, how you been? And this community, any community that you're part of, being able to have that space where it's not just you and another person, it's not exhausting.
01:14:04
Courtney Brame: It's reciprocal. It's a cycling of that energy, the excess going where it's needed. If you are low energy and you're plugged into a community, you're in this environment, right? laws of the universe equilibrium. If A and C are completely different, but they interact with B, the consistent interaction is going to make them all the same, all like B, right?
01:14:33
Courtney Brame: So, that's that's what I'm that's what I'm finding to be true. And I'm living my life in this way and I'm I'm f****** seeing it in real time, y'all. So, yeah. I we build these connections before we become desperate. And then that's when we have this energy protection from being able to let somebody take from us in a one-on-one interaction.
01:14:56
Courtney Brame: Will you get rejected? I told you like, "All right, have a great day. I'm ready to go home." You leave. But that knowledge, that understanding, the knowing that this exists, the knowing that you have community, like those are your immediate thoughts. It's not, "Oh my god, this person rejected me. I'm never going to find love again." No.
01:15:16
Courtney Brame: the energy of the community and the understanding and know knowing that you got that that flows into that space that was just created by the rejection instead of the empty thoughts of I'm going to be alone forever. No one's going to ever want to date me. I'm never going to have sex again. I'm never going to have intimacy.
01:15:36
Courtney Brame: And it's in the form of community. So stigma, it's isolating. And when isolated, it is so easy to drain your battery. Again, law of entropy. Everything naturally gears toward disorder and chaos. You alone are a soul loone structure that is easy to strip energy from. Right? If I take one wooden plank and I set it in the sand, the wind can blow it over.
01:16:06
Courtney Brame: But when that m************ wood plank is on a deck that is connected to a house that has roots in a basement, that's a whole house of different materials that make up one structure that will endure for at least a century. I know it's some hundred year old houses before it's blown over. That's us. And that wooden plank is secured in being part of something larger than what it would be as a plank, but a deck.
01:16:35
Courtney Brame: I remember Planet of the Apes uh Caesar I guess he took one twig he said alone fragile broke that broke that twig he took a bundle of sticks he tried to break it he was like I can't but together strong alone weak together strong that's community and it's not just like a physical muscle strength it's emotionally it's energetic and it's an efficient use of energy that's what all this s*** is efficient energy use.
01:17:07
Courtney Brame: You can do it on your own in isolation, but you don't have to. So, all that said, man, like build your web, know what you're digesting, know what you're inputting, and allow for your output, whatever that is, to be representative of the consistent flow of energy. And the the more consistent you do that, the more efficient you become, the greater your capacity for being able to transmute and fuse a greater quality of material and then put out a greater quality of material and continue to
01:17:43
Courtney Brame: cycle that. That cycling of energy makes up your vibe, your aura, your energy, whatever your language is. And you'll begin to see how your environment environment changes, the people around you change. And you got to exercise your your note, your boundaries, your words, your actions. Let those be consistent because those are like the threads that people will want to stick around or people will get be like, "Nope, I want nothing to do with that." And you got to respect that. You got to respect the environment that you've built for yourself and understand that it's an environment of authenticity and truth. Till next time, stay present.
