Sex as Nourishment, Not Work: Reclaiming Desire and Connection with Cosmo of Himeros Project

In this powerful conversation, Melissa and Cosmo dive deep into the unexpected but natural transition from the world of being a chef to becoming a leading pleasure and intimacy guide. Cosmo explains that the crossover makes perfect sense: both roles involve curating people’s desire and finding unobstructed paths to feeling nourished.

Cosmo shares his own personal journey, including the profound “Aha moment” at an intimacy training where the simple question, “How would you like to be touched today?” fundamentally shifted his life and led him to realize he was meant to do this work.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Sex as Nourishment, Not Work: Learn how approaching intimacy as connection, nervous system regulation, and nourishment allows for daily play, rather than seeing it as a performance or another job.
• The “Wedge of the Pie”: Why focusing solely on a hard cock and intercourse is just “one little wedge” when intimacy includes closeness, touching, tickling, spanking, loving, and so much more.
• The Art of Touching Women: Cosmo announces his new system, highlighting that for women, care, presence, attention, and safety come first—competency is not the priority.
• The Himeros Project (Men’s Work): Discover the unique container that focuses on “what men are like,” not what they should be like, helping men build emotional bonds with each other to reduce the burden on their female partners.
• Expression vs. Containment: The critical importance of practicing both expressing your deepest desires and using containment (choosing when, with who, where, and how much to express) to prevent desires from being driven back into repression.
• Re-patterning Trauma: The transformative power of recreating traumatic dynamics in a safe space to reclaim lost elements and add a voice to say “stop”.

Connect with Cosmo & Resources:

• Himeros Project (Men’s Work & Virtual Course):
• Upcoming Men’s Retreats 2026: March (Joshua Tree, CA) and July (BC, Canada)
• Free Workshop: Subscribe to the mailing list for notifications about the free “Art of Touching Women” workshop (First one is December 3rd, 2025).
• Back to the Body (Sensual Retreats for Women)
• Anatomy of Desire: Cosmo’s six-part system for bringing desires to the world with integrity.

Transcript

Melissa D. (00:01)
Cosmo, welcome.

Cosmo (00:04)
Hi, what’s up?

Melissa D. (00:06)
Thanks so much for joining the conversation today. I’m just going to go right into the story of how you went from chefing to erotic exploration.

Cosmo (00:23)
Yeah, well you’re a part of it, it’s a good place to start. ⁓

Melissa D. (00:29)
I know you

and I knew each other back in 2006, something like that. You had a restaurant in Victoria. I had a restaurant in LA. And we were chefing with another chef at this raw spirit festival. Remember those days? yeah, so we went back there a couple of years, feeding like thousands of people all plant-based raw food, which was wild.

Cosmo (00:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Melissa D. (00:59)
And then there was a couple years, at least this is how I remember it, it was a couple years I get a message on Instagram from you of like, hey, Mango, I noticed, because Mango was my chef name back then, hey, Mango, I noticed that you’re transitioned away from food and you’re doing this other thing. And I remember you kind of asking me, hey, do you have any resources? And then I said to you something like, yeah, Caffeine Jessie, one of my…

early inspirations lives in Canada. then you’re like, yes, I’m going to have lunch with her next week. And so we were on this similar trajectory of transitioning from delicious live food to delicious sensuality and erotic expression. yeah, share with people like how you kind of got into that and what was the impetus.

Cosmo (01:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, wonderful. yeah, so kind of like people often ask, well, what’s the crossover? It seems like a big jump from, you know, being a chef to being a sex educator. And, you know, the way that you kind of described it is like the jump is actually, it makes a lot of sense. mean, being a chef, I got into working with food because I saw how food nourished people and how their desire created this loop.

that inspired me to create things a little tastier, to find things as healthy as they could be and as delicious as they could be. And ⁓ I would say that’s exactly the thing that I’m currently doing as a sex educator, ⁓ pleasure and intimacy guide and ⁓ curating.

Melissa D. (02:26)
Thank

Cosmo (02:41)
people’s desire, right? Like really helping them what I call like find this unobstructed path to feeling desire emerge from their system. And so, you know, that’s exactly what happened for me as I kind of started asking questions, you know, I had been running restaurants for almost 15 years working in the industry. I had been

Melissa D. (02:58)
Thank you. ⁓

Cosmo (03:05)
you know, working for 25 years in kitchens, starting out as a dishwasher and kind of like clawing my way up and deciding I didn’t want to work for other people. then, ⁓ you know, taking the huge obsessive leap to opening a restaurant and then, you know, opening six more over the next 15 years and loved that. But it was really an obsession ⁓ that I concluded ⁓ hopefully with grace, maybe not completely, but that was the aim.

Melissa D. (03:06)
Happy Thursday.

.

Cosmo (03:35)
And as I was coming to the end of that, also had been teaching cooking

classes for just about 10 years. And so teaching’s always been something that’s inspired me, bringing what I’m learning and sharing it with others. ⁓ But I was struggling. That’s the long and the short of it is I was struggling personally with my relationship to sex and intimacy, and I needed help. So I… ⁓

I had, you know, I think a lot of times for people that we work with, for men that come to our men’s retreats, there has to be a certain cumulative life experience that generates the inertia to say, fuck, okay, I can’t do this on my own. I can’t do this with the tools I was modeled. ⁓ I need some help from somewhere. And so, you know, you are part of that story and that I witnessed someone that I know cross over.

Melissa D. (04:17)
Thank

Cosmo (04:30)
into another realm and I was tracking you and I I was like fuck how did you do this like what is this first of all what are you doing and then you being like well actually one of the lead teachers is right in your backyard and you know that inspired me to reach out and inspired me to take this first step of my journey which again ⁓

we did together, right? The intimacy educator training on Salt Spring Island. And it was, it was at that training that,

You know the long and the short of it is. I got some kind of like a ha moment. Let’s say to not make it too. ⁓

Melissa D. (05:14)
Start.

you.

Cosmo (05:24)
you know, to woo, but truly it was like a ⁓ divine intervention where when I put my hands on somebody’s body and was guided to say, ⁓ how would you like to be touched today? And sort of felt the offering that that was to them. I just realized, holy shit, I got to, I’m supposed to be doing this work and I have to sell my restaurant and change my life. And what I know is that in that five day arc for myself,

When I was first asked that question, I busted open. It was just like a blubbering mess. I remember there was like a towel under my table where the face hole was in my massage table. And it was just like snot and tears. And I was just like, I don’t know. I don’t know how I want to be touched. Who’s ever even asked me that? Like, what are we even doing here? This is crazy. And it seems so simple, but it was so profound to me to center my body.

Melissa D. (06:03)
It’s hard to.

Cosmo (06:23)
and the sense a awareness in my system to become the priority of someone else’s attention.

It just flicked a switch. And that switch has, you know, went on to me taking the full somatic sex educator training and working with ⁓ supporting others in the Wheel of Consent workshops and ⁓ leading to my journey here that I’ve been on over the last ⁓ eight or 10 years with Back to the Body, Sensual Retreats for Women, and developing the Apollo Project and the Himaros Project for Men.

Melissa D. (06:59)
Beautiful. Yeah, there’s something really profound and quite magical doing those little somatic check-ins of, wow, someone is actually asking me ⁓ my preferences and how I want to be touched. How do I even want to be touched? I don’t know. ⁓ You know, that is a similar story that comes up with so many other body workers, because I remember Kafin, that was one of her earlier experiences too of

being asked that simple question and being able to drop in and actually feel it in the body. It’s, it’s deep. It’s rich. So from, from the sexological bodywork training, that was like a year that we were all in that you met Kasha, now your wife. And then you went right into a lead practitioner and back to the body. And, so like,

Cosmo (07:54)
Yeah

Melissa D. (07:55)
Explain

what that looks like as a practitioner.

Cosmo (08:10)
Yeah. So how, how explicit can I be? ⁓ Well, well, so yeah, so I did the training. ⁓ I met cash, you know, my current wife, ⁓ and colleague, you know, we work in tandem together. ⁓ Pamela Madsen who runs and is the CEO and founder of back to the body had

Melissa D. (08:16)
We want all of it.

Cosmo (08:39)
gone to the school and asked, ⁓ are there any male practitioners? They were looking for new body workers and ⁓ had asked if, you know, anyone is kind of bubbling to the top who they might refer over. And so I went and did ⁓ kind of a training, more like a tryout where I flew down to ⁓ to Boulder and ⁓ basically they had four women come and they,

you know, had me work with a group of three other men on all four of these women. And then they got feedback from them and said, what do you think? You know, are they back to the body material? And these were already back to the body clients that were volunteering their time and their bodies and their presence to kind of help assess ⁓ people’s competency. And I got lots of thumbs ups, which was great because

Melissa D. (09:30)
Mm-hmm.

Cosmo (09:37)
It was a very unique opportunity. is a unique opportunity to be invited into a company that is now ⁓ going into her 15th or 16th year, of which I’ve been part of eight of those. you know, it might be the only job in the world that was able to provide me, you know, a career as a sex educator, doing this work, logging.

thousands of hours with hundreds of bodies in a really ⁓ immersive type experience. immersion retreats, I’m a big advocate for. I’ve done private work at home and what I find is that when people kind of have to drive there and drive away that there is something that there’s a lot of catch up to do between sessions. So immersive work ⁓ tends in my experience to be ⁓

Melissa D. (10:10)
Hmm.

Cosmo (10:37)
give it enough time to kind of settle into the system and put life down for a minute. And so once, you know, I got kind of the thumbs up ⁓ from the crew, I was put into two back-to-back retreats on the big island of Hawaii in January. I did this tryout in December. I graduated in September. And by January, I was working. ⁓ At this point, I was still running my restaurant and teaching.

Melissa D. (11:06)
Well…

Cosmo (11:07)
And so I was kind of like juggling many a thing and trying to figure out like, is this where I’m going? And I spent the following year negotiating the sale of that current restaurant. And I was teaching for about another year, maybe a year and a half in the sort of overlap. But yeah, I got put into two immersive experiences back to back. was super intense.

There was a little bit, fake it till you make it. I felt confident, ⁓ but I look back now with the experience and the thousands of hours that I’ve logged now, and I’m like, wow, that was a big leap. That was a really big leap. ⁓ And so what do we do in session? I’ve spent a lot of time really refining down what I do. And I’ll kind of.

Melissa D. (11:48)
Yeah.

Cosmo (12:03)
I’ll give you that versus like maybe what I thought I was doing back then. ⁓

Melissa D. (12:06)
I’m so curious what the difference is. What you thought you were doing

and what you know you’re doing now.

Cosmo (12:12)
Yeah. OK, so back then it was like, to some degree, ⁓ let me show up with the tools. So back then there was kind of three really specific tools. How would you like to be touched? More or less pressure, faster or slower? Those are my like three guiding principles of what I was doing in session and trying to. ⁓ I think more back then I was trying to do a good job. I think that’s what.

Melissa D. (12:28)
Mm-hmm.

Cosmo (12:42)
And not to say that I’m not trying to do a good job right now, but I think it’s become very clear that ⁓ it’s less about performing as a practitioner and more about inquiry into meeting the person and allowing them to express out and meet that. ⁓ So there was an element that’s just naturally ingrained in our systems, especially in those socialized as males, men.

Melissa D. (13:00)
Mm-hmm.

Cosmo (13:11)
this sort of performance element like I want to do a good job and You know that met might have meant that helping someone reach orgasm ⁓ Meant it was a good session, you know, whereas that’s different for me now where I don’t I don’t have that target that what I noticed is that I Started to notice that bodies were feeling that I had targets and some agenda that even though it might have been subtle

that were still embedded in my system. And I feel like the big difference is now I really don’t approach bodies with any agenda. And that’s a lot easier on my system. And it translates into a safer ⁓ environment for ⁓ women and the men that I work with. But it is slightly different, and I’ll get to that after, to feel the safety of the container, which allows their desire to emerge organically.

Whereas if agenda is in the room, it doesn’t happen in the same way. so, yeah. I mean, there’s something I’ve been playing with that I find a little different, like, and just like, we’ll go there and then I’ll go back to the other ⁓ piece around what I’m doing in sessions. But basically like, what I’ve noticed is that female bodies, women,

Melissa D. (14:13)
Yeah, for either side, really.

Cosmo (14:34)
often need safety before desire can emerge. And what I’m noticing with men is that they need to be able to express their desire in order to feel safe. And that is like just a little, it’s subtle, but it’s an interesting thing I’m tracking. Is that true across the board? I don’t know, but I am noticing that. So back to like what we’re doing sort of right now, what I

Melissa D. (14:45)
Mm-hmm, yep.

Cosmo (15:05)
refine it down to is that, and I briefly touched on it, is I’m helping folks ⁓ find some unobstructed path to express themselves. And if anything is an obstruction, we need it, notice it, give it attention, care for it, and see if it wants to move or slide into the system in a different way. And as I’ve

people in their expression versus repression of their emotional body of their desires ⁓ then it becomes time to help them practice kind of containment right because that what I notice is that if if we’re supporting people expressing right because repression can have a very harmful

negative calcifying rigid effect on the body that promotes aging and lack of wellness across the board, right? Repressing emotions has a somatic impact on your life.

And so we want to help express. But what I notice is that expression without containment can also have a very negative impact on your life and your system. Right? And so this practice of containment, choosing when, with who, where, and how much you express of your true heart’s desires, of your heart’s song, of your body’s wisdom, it actually adds value to the expression.

Over expressing devalues it because you might be bumping your expression off of people or in places where it’s not welcome. It’s not receptive. they’re not interested. And so what happens then is that actually expression without containment promotes repression because it drives you back in. Yeah.

Melissa D. (17:02)
Hmm. Do you want to give? Yeah, do you want to give

some clear like zoom into a little bit on how that may show up?

Cosmo (17:14)
Yeah, absolutely. I’ll give a personal one because then, yeah.

Melissa D. (17:17)
Great, yeah, I’m thinking of some

stories too for myself and…

Cosmo (17:26)
So let’s just say like, you know, between Cash and I, if we’re say negotiating some kind of polydynamic, some ⁓ recreational ⁓ novelty play with somebody outside of our core relationship. And I’m like making breakfast for the kids and making lunches and Cash comes up and says,

Hey, I’m thinking about going on a date tonight with somebody. And it’s the first time I’ve heard about it. I might just go, whoop, and kind of clam up and not be in a space where I’m prepared to have that conversation, which might be different than if she were to say, hey, let’s go for a walk. And we talked about some, some poly dynamics or some asks ⁓ where I’m like, okay, I’m ready for a conversation. But

Melissa D. (18:13)
Yeah.

Cosmo (18:20)
If I do this and her system who loves me and cares for me notices I do that, then the likelihood of her wanting to share will decrease. So her expression will get kind of pushed back in like, Ooh, she’ll feel my ouch. And naturally being a caring person who loves me, she’ll be like, Ooh, maybe I won’t share that.

And it’s in.

in that misplaced expression that things tend to get swept into the shadows, right? Less conversations get had. ⁓ And so by having like attentiveness and some containment about where and when and how we express, which as you know, I’ve kind of got this six part system called the anatomy of desire that kind of ⁓ deconstructs this process of how to

Melissa D. (18:57)
Yeah.

Cosmo (19:20)
bring your desires to the world in a way that gives them, like, values them and values yourself, you know, that you matter enough to appropriate time for these things that are important. And so that’s one little example, right? There could be tons. ⁓ Yeah.

Melissa D. (19:35)
Right.

I love the anatomy.

I actually have it here on my desk right here. Maybe we can put it maybe we can put in the show notes because I love that it kind of gives someone a system if they have a desire rather it’s to you know, play with someone outside the relationship or have a certain thing happen with a partner, whatever it is. ⁓ There is a way to go about it so that you can just have a track for less harm and hopefully a successful.

Cosmo (19:46)
nice.

Melissa D. (20:09)
grounded conversation with those that might impact. ⁓ Yeah, so we’ll put that on the show notes because I often get clients that come in, you know, that are like, I just want this thing and I’m like, great. Have you paused and actually felt what it feels like in your body? And they’re like, well, no, I just have this thing. And I’m like, okay, well, I’ll bring out the anatomy of desire that you created. I’ll be like, let’s let’s roll through this and kind of role play what it would be like to bring forward to your partner.

Cosmo (20:15)
Yeah, exactly.

Melissa D. (20:39)
so that it doesn’t burn your house down, you can have a conversation because sometimes desires live in fantasy, which is great. And just expressing it can be really healthy and beautiful. And then there’s other desires that may not be in alignment with, you know, some values share values in the partnership. I mean, I’m sure we could just talk all about the anatomy desire just on its own, but it’s fascinating when we start when we start unpacking it a little bit and giving people a system, they’re like, ⁓

Cosmo (21:03)
Absolutely.

Melissa D. (21:08)
Right, okay, I didn’t think about this. And so I feel like you learned a lot in the development of this, of like, how do we do this in a way with integrity and with a lot of like more embodiment and clarity around our desire. So.

Cosmo (21:26)
Yeah, and there’s a cost, right? There’s like…

Melissa D. (21:27)
Always.

Cosmo (21:30)
And again, we won’t spend too much time on anatomy, but the important piece is acknowledging that by allowing our desires to take up space in our bodies without necessarily needing them to be actualized in our lives, ⁓ we just expend so much less energy trying to like block and hide our desires. So what if we just could allow all our

dirty, weird, immoral, unethical, shadowy, whatever they are to just exist and have our have our filter well placed of what we value. I call it like the hierarchy of values at the gateway to our behavior. Right. So we allow our system to just be in this free flow. And then it’s it’s only when we want to translate it to behavior that we need to like

Melissa D. (22:16)
Mm-hmm.

Cosmo (22:28)
really check ourselves and of course I absolutely believe that we need to check ourselves and can’t just let our desires run our lives because well I don’t even need to explain that like anyone that has done that. I have I have done that I’m sure you have allowed desires to just like take take the lead right and they burn shit down you know I call those like fire desires right which can be potent and powerful and help define your belonging in the world if they’re

Melissa D. (22:44)
Never, never Cosmo. Yep. Yep.

Cosmo (22:59)
⁓ approached with the intentionality and consciousness that they deserve because desires are potent, right? And they can burn shit down and they can also sometimes burn shit down that leaves way for new growth. So it’s, you know, it’s not to say that we want to be afraid of our desires. And I think that’s a big part of the work that, ⁓ you know, that I am committed to with people is

not being afraid of who they are and having some practice, some way to practice the experience. And what we do in session is yeah, practice expression, practice bouncing it off of somebody, practice what it feels like to be with another body that feels grounded and is receptive to following your lead, to listening and see how you are there.

Right? See how, and then they can take that and practice it on their own or with partners or with their husbands or wives or other people, you know, important people in their lives. So the first step is can I get it out? Right? Can I activate my throat? Can I activate my heart? Can I activate my genitals in a way that is unobstructed and practice that with somebody whose job it is to hold space for people to practice? Right? And I mean, you know this, you do this.

Melissa D. (24:25)
Right? Yeah.

And also, ⁓ you know, I’m I’m often just kind of a neutral person in someone’s life. They’re not trying to have a sexual relationship with me. They’re not trying to build a life with me, but I can hold the feminine. You know, I can hold that pole and help them kind of feel and express and navigate and kind of talk through ⁓ some of these things, which is so important. Yeah.

Cosmo (24:53)
Yeah,

yeah, that’s and that’s an important piece, right? Is that we’re we may be surrogate in the sense that we’re we’re there as you know, we’re there to practice intimacy. We’re there to practice the erotic. I mean, we get very intimate with the clients. You know, we don’t we keep our clothes on. You know, I’m not speaking for everyone in our field because some somatic sex educators can make their own rules. But in our containers, we keep our clothes on. You know, generally speaking, we’re

We’re not doing sort of fluid exchange and penetration. We’re not… ⁓

Yeah, we’re not forming relationships and taking them away from their partners. We’re not trying to, yeah, elicit this kind of long-term coupling dynamic with people, but we allow them to practice intimacy. And we do it in a very hands-on, tangible way that brings it out of concepts and into the body.

Which is like you can talk about sex all day long you can talk about relationship all day long you can talk about intimacy all day long and people have great fucking ideas about it. And when you put them when you put them in a room. That’s when the rubber hits the road that’s when you see okay but do you understand does your body know this. And most of the time.

Melissa D. (26:05)
Yep.

Yeah.

Cosmo (26:22)
people aren’t practiced at it no matter how much they have it up here and they really require you know it’s not to say that the psychological element of sex education isn’t as valid but it needs to be physiologically ⁓ woven together right there two parts and ⁓ and that’s what we do is we offer that opportunity to leave those bits together

Melissa D. (26:45)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, someone

can come into the studio and say, you know, I can’t experience pleasure. Great. We can talk about it. But like, let’s get into the body and notice in real time when it shows up, what’s in the way and come up with ideas. And this is what I love about our work is it’s not so clinical. Sure, there’s some tools that a lot of us will use, but we can go into ⁓ this very creative, quite playful space.

Cosmo (27:02)
Yeah.

Melissa D. (27:15)
I’m thinking of some of playful wrestling matches that I’ve gotten into because there was something that needed to be worked out in that way. Speaking about re-patterning experiences, I’m curious, are some ways, creative ways that you’ve worked with women in that dynamic that had them be able to express it in a way or had an aha moment that maybe wouldn’t have been available had they just stayed in their mind or?

Cosmo (27:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that’s a big part of the work that I’m doing for sure is repatterning. I won’t say one of, because this has happened before and I don’t want to specifically talk about one particular session or something or one person’s experience. But I have stood in.

in really uncomfortable roles for people in order for them to harvest things that were lost because traumatic events experienced simultaneously. So I’ll describe what that means. you know, life can, you know, once we scratch under the surface in life, most things lead us to a paradox, right? And so in traumatic events, especially, especially sexually abusive traumatic events, ⁓

Melissa D. (28:25)
Mm-hmm.

Cosmo (28:46)
It’s everything in that event that is bad.

least this is what’s been communicated. So I’ve had experiences where women have shared to me, I had this ⁓ traumatic experience with a man and ⁓

Eight out of ten things in the experience were really beautiful. It were really beautiful time and part of the grief is around and then he did this. And it ruined everything and so I’ve you know I’ve done sessions lots of times where we recreate. The dynamic. To reclaim elements. As building blocks of something they love.

Melissa D. (29:16)
Hmm.

Cosmo (29:35)
and cherish and want for themselves and want to be able to experience with other people and then go to the thing that went wrong and add their voice into it. Be able to say stop be able to so. You know. Something that like. Even the traumatic experience itself done in a different way. Could be something they like but now can’t you know.

Melissa D. (29:44)
Mm-hmm.

Cosmo (30:03)
prior to repatterning or reclaiming it can’t even go close to it and can’t no longer want to wear certain clothing or don’t want to go out to even dating can sort of stimulate something or ⁓ certain type of rough body play is a no when that might be something that they want but they want to be able to say no that’s too much like this like give direction have input and then

And then there’s this flowering that can happen, this thriving. So there’s a lot of beauty and power in reclaiming instances, experiences, moments where something went wrong, somebody wasn’t listening, somebody didn’t have the level of care that would have provided the safety and the beauty for someone else to really meet them.

⁓ and racks a whole bunch of shit for people you know and then that ripples down into so many things and we see it in the world and we won’t go quite down that that path right now but the the impact

is generational. The impact goes down into our children. The impact goes down into how everybody relates. And so having care at those critical moments, and that’s part of the work, and we can get to that later as well. The part of the work that I really feel so called and a responsibility and am inspired to bring to men is what I’ve learned from working with women that I also didn’t know.

logging thousands of hours of how to approach women in a way. That. Allow space for both of us to flower and open up and have really fun playful intense sexy slutty experiences that allow this animal inside of us to come out that is wanted but only. One safety is established and that’s good for everyone to have that understanding and so.

You know, it’s a lot of logged hours listening and learning. And there’s some real gold that I’ve harvested from having the honor and the space to spend that much time with that many women, different bodies from different cultures, from different ages, to learn a lot more ⁓ that are filling in a ton of blind spots that I had for most of my life up to 40. ⁓

Melissa D. (32:41)
Wow.

Cosmo (32:43)
Yeah, it’s a big gift and I feel a lot of honor and responsibility as well.

Melissa D. (32:49)
Hmm,

beautiful. let’s go into the Himros project, was previously called the Apollo project, and your work with men. And these are a similar retreat as Back to the Body, but with men, ⁓ a small group, eight to 10 men, maybe 12, that are doing deep men’s work with you and Ori Dehaan.

And then in addition to all of that, they get a sexological bodywork session with a female practitioner. Yeah, share a little bit about ⁓ that container, what that looks like.

Cosmo (33:34)
Yeah, thank you. I love it.

Melissa D. (33:34)
Because there’s so much men’s work happening right now. ⁓

A lot of camps and warrior training and this and that. And there’s something really special and unique about the blending of what you and Ori are offering.

Cosmo (33:50)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, for sure. So I’ll hit it from kind of two angles. And I’ll hit it from the men’s work angle first, and then talk about the hands-on work and why there’s just so much available in that that isn’t available in other work. And I don’t even know that there’s another container like what we’re doing in this way. ⁓

because it is, it’s edgy, right? And it takes people who have logged a lot of hours to be able to hold space in that way. And it’s risky for ⁓ everyone to show up with that much attention to detail, that much acute awareness, and really go into the actual work with people’s bodies ⁓ where they’re in real time somatic learning, right? So from a men’s work perspective,

Melissa D. (34:45)
Mm-hmm.

Cosmo (34:49)
Again, tons of work, tons of great work out there. ⁓ I look forward to it. ⁓

You know an agenda this year to to go and participate cuz I do a lot of space holding and so I’m looking for. For something out there right now that calls to me as a man to go and participate in so that’s something I’ve got on my radar. And the one thing that I will be looking for in doing that and something that we at the Apollo project and him rose project really kind of draw a line in the sand is.

If I feel like men’s groups are telling men what men should be like, and the group is about training that into men, it’s just distasteful for me. And maybe there are men that that’s like, oh, that’s exactly what I need. But I like to draw a line in the sand and not to say one is better, just like you got to pick a lane, right? So my inquiry is not what men should be like.

but what men are like.

And so we’re going into the retreat to understand men, to help them understand themselves, not in the socialized aspect that’s laid on top of them, of what you should be as a man and what is the burden that they’re all carrying and what they’re all trying to be, but who they actually are under that. And so we provide a pretty intimate space for emotional sharing. We have lots of

games and exercises and workshops that give space for men to uncover ⁓ grief, frustration, anger, eros, desire, playfulness, curiosity about who they are, rather than trying to kind of overlay themselves into this socialized image of what they’ve been modeled men should be like. I just think there’s enough of that. ⁓ Yeah, so that that

Melissa D. (36:54)
Right?

Cosmo (37:00)
That’s the kind of men’s group angle is that we come together and we also use each other as a resource so that we.

We learn to build bonds, emotional bonds with men to support each other and take some of the emotional labor that often, I know for myself, that men resource women for.

back into their men’s relationships. instead of their male relationships being solely, go and do things together, play sports, go to the pub, do different things, but they’re actually coming together to resource each other for some of their emotional needs, which allows more spaciousness in the system to approach their partners on it. It’s not to say that we should never talk to our partners about our emotional things. That would be ridiculous, but

freeing up some space, giving some process with other men who share the same lens of the world to kind of add some balance. So when we approach our partners, we can be a bit lighter. It can be sexier. It can be more fun. can feel like less of a burden on our partners to kind of carry all our labor of emotional tending. So I feel like the container trains

Melissa D. (38:23)
Yeah.

Cosmo (38:28)
⁓ into the system naturally that, ⁓ actually other men are yearning to talk about their feelings too. It’s just not part of a lot of our ⁓ socialization. And once they show that like,

Melissa D. (38:40)
Right?

Cosmo (38:46)
Or they’re shown that then they go back home and a lot of men you know message me after and they go my god I feel so much more comfortable with man I feel much so much safer bringing up these conversations because there was just a lot of hesitation doubt fear of judgment fear of shame. ⁓ You know we’re constantly sort of force fed this idea of performance and so there’s a lot of grandstanding there’s a lot of. Like.

measuring and comparing against each other and trying to one up rather than being like, oof, I had a hard day, oof, I fucked up, oof, I failed at this, oof. And then what it does is as soon as you drop down, you’d be so amazed how many men are just like, my God, bro, me too, like, And it permisses, right? It adds permission to other men to share in a different.

new way and once they taste the flavor of that, it’s like something you didn’t even know you were looking for like, ⁓ thank God. You know, so that’s yeah, that’s the men’s work bit. And then they, you know, then they get this one on one time to go down and work with a female practitioner and they take all the concepts and the somatic learning that they do in group and kind of harvest that.

Melissa D. (39:47)
Hmm.

Cosmo (40:14)
and decide, what’s my particular journey that I am looking to work on for my body sexually? Right? We really, they’re, they’re erotically inclined sessions where the men are invited to practice expressing their desires, to, to practice talking about their ⁓ fears of intimacy, practice talking about their performance issues, practice, you know, ⁓

acknowledging that their cocks don’t always get hard when they want to practice understanding sensate awareness and sensate focus in their body to find different pathways to pleasure that aren’t completely objectifying. Now that’s not to say there’s anything wrong with the male penetrative erotic directionality because male arousal is penetrative, it is outwardly focused, it is objectifying.

But we’re practicing this like objectifying with positive regard and then also practicing receiving and bringing the awareness to like, I like when my nipples are touched and my earlobe and someone whispers something slutty in my ear while tickling my asshole or something like that. You know, like you kind of, start to map the system and it gives them a map to go back and explain it to the people they’re playing with. So it doesn’t

Melissa D. (41:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Cosmo (41:39)
Sex instead of is now like, I gotta show up hard, I gotta show up and do a good job, and if I don’t, I just feel shame and I kinda wanna like hide and then I wanna go to porn, which again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with porn, but as soon as it starts carrying the load of your erotic charge, you’re not able to bring that to your partner because you’re afraid, you’re ashamed, you’re feeling lesser than and you’re hiding.

And when we can be like, ⁓ actually, there’s like a hundred things I like with my body that don’t even have to do with me having a hard cock. And all of a sudden this huge range of possibility opens up. And that doesn’t mean that having a hard cock and fucking isn’t fun, right? That’s great. But it’s like one wedge of the pie and like filling your heart and

Melissa D. (42:32)
Right?

Cosmo (42:37)
closeness and touching and tickling and scratching and biting and pushing and choking and slapping and spanking and tying and whipping and holding and loving and all these pieces like There’s like I got goosebumps. I’m just like fucking is just this little wedge and we put so much pressure on it We have a multi-million dollar industry that just says this is how men should show up and I’m you know I’m I’m rooting for men

Melissa D. (42:54)
Yeah.

Cosmo (43:06)
You know, I’m really rooting to help not teach them what they should be like, but be like, let’s get to know ourselves so we can show up in relationship in a way that’s just way funner. It’s way more fun than just trying to perform. Because what I know is here’s the thing, and this has been reflected to me a ton from men, is even when I teach them, OK, here’s how you

can more regularly get a hard cock. Here’s how you can ⁓ not have as rapid ejaculation. Here’s how you can do some semen retention and just like really hold it in. Here’s how you can show up as a dominant and masculine man. These are all things that I’ve like practiced in myself. You know, I used to struggle a lot with, right? These are common things. I’ve struggled with lots of them. And yes, I’ve learned those things. But when you show up to sex and you just like have your backpack of all the things you’ve learned,

It basically becomes feeling like work. Because you’re going in to do a good job, not to feel good. It’s a totally different approach. Right? If I’m going in to do a good job, I probably have the interest in having sex once or twice a week. You know, maybe that’s even high for some people, right? When you add four kids and my work and tending the garden and

Melissa D. (44:14)
Hmm.

Totally different.

Cosmo (44:33)
cooking dinner and cleaning, da da da da da, right? It’s like, I gotta do another job, right, that I’m good at. But when I approach it like, this is like connection and nervous system regulation and nourishing to my system and I wanna feel good, I can go in and fucking play and touch every day because it’s like food, right? It’s not dessert, it’s not a fancy experience, it’s not like,

putting on all the armor and showing off. It’s like nourishing. It’s ⁓ relaxing, not more work. Do we really, do we need more work? There’s enough work, you know?

Melissa D. (45:10)
Hmm.

No, there’s enough things that we need to

do. Yeah. I love watching your stories ⁓ that you post with your wife, Kasha. There’s, ⁓ you know, the two of you doing body painting together and doing the ropes. And do you want to share just some of the things that the two of you kind of, it seems like you schedule it in ⁓ and there’s this whole buffet of experiences available.

to you and your connection, your relationship, than just showing up with a hard cock and fucking. Yeah.

Cosmo (45:49)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I’m just going to grab my charger one second. So.

I love that ⁓ you mentioned that because we really do prioritize the time, whether we feel like it’s time for sex or not.

Melissa D. (46:08)
Just quality time that’s on the schedule? that? Yeah.

Cosmo (46:12)
Yeah,

yeah. we, you know, we make dinner, we clean up, we put the kids to bed, kind of check the boxes of the household. And, and then we, you know, usually at nine o’clock, we go into our bedroom almost every day, you know, at least five nights a week. And we do something. We play and, you know, it might be like, okay, you got a game.

You want to role play that you’re ⁓ the neighbor across the way and you’re about to be engaged, but you’re like into this older man or you’re younger man. you know, like we do age play in both directions. It doesn’t matter. ⁓ One of us might be like, no, I just want it to be you. I want to have a really intimate, just like heartfelt connection. Great. Let’s do that. It might be like, I want to feel really ⁓ contained. So we might play with some rope.

Melissa D. (46:50)
you

That’s fun.

Cosmo (47:12)
⁓ Last night we wrestled, know, and she’ll say, you know, give me, like let me win, but give me like 20%, right? So I’ll kind of like, just give a bit. ⁓ Her favorite thing is to have to be drawn on or painted on. And so I like the texture of paint. So I’ll often opt for that because I can kind of go into this meditative space and like make her my canvas. And I like the feedback loop.

Melissa D. (47:20)
Hahaha

Cosmo (47:41)
where a canvas doesn’t move, but she kind of like, like breathes and kind of like, like sort of, like makes sounds, which it makes painting even more fun. And yeah. And so we, we, or sometimes we have like, you know, like, I like to think there’s like food, like daily stuff is like food. And then when we book like the studio or we book three days at Airbnb or something, that’s like,

Melissa D. (47:51)
Mm-hmm.

Cosmo (48:11)
dessert where we’ll have these like extended three or four hour play times where we take breaks and we go back in and it’s like You we might do a scene we might play with power a little bit more which takes like You know this whole arc of an experience I might get to express like deranged elements of myself that she allows you know, so there’s like there’s both softness and Real intensity that comes out

Melissa D. (48:31)
Yeah.

Cosmo (48:41)
when we craft time for those experiences.

Melissa D. (48:44)
And who gets to

decide, ⁓ say it’s a weekday and you show up, the kids and the dinner is done, you show up, does you just kind of organically each mention something? I get this question a lot. are men that I work with are thinking, okay, I’m exhausted at the end of my day, I want you to think of something else. Or they feel stuck on, okay, I’m not supposed to show up.

Cosmo (49:07)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa D. (49:10)
but I’m still left to decide what we’re doing and what the direction of the intimacy and they get really caught in that space.

Cosmo (49:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so one, there should be something that just works. You find that thing that works. Like, Cash and I have a loop, an erotic loop, that’s like, we’ve just laughed in times. We’re both sex educators. We talk about promoting long, luxurious pleasure. But we have incredible sex in 12 minutes. Like, we both cum. We’re both in pleasure. We’re tweaking all the things. We can just like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. It’s like click, click, click, click, click, click, click. And we’re just like, ⁓ and then we late.

Melissa D. (49:41)
Well done.

unlocking each other.

Cosmo (49:52)
You know, yeah, we like, you know, savor for 15 minutes and in half an hour we can have like a deeply nourishing erotic experience, right? And that’s great. And we are. And so I call that food. Right. And then the dessert is like these longer experiences. Generally, when we go and we say like, what do you want to do tonight? It’s kind of like who has some inspiration? Throw it in the pile.

I would say, yeah, I don’t generally have a huge issue coming up with things, but I feel like Cash might be more specific about what she’s open to in that time. So I might say, well, you know, okay, I’m open to a role play. What’s a yes for you? Cause I could go either way. I don’t really care. Like something taboo, something we shouldn’t be doing, you know, use the erotic equation, right? Which is, ⁓

Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement. So I’m a pretty easy animal. You throw me an obstacle, she’s attractive and I’ll get excited. know, like something I’m not supposed to do, right? It’s an easy equation. But I think thinking about it before you’re in bed in the moment and having a little list, like spending some time, some intentionality around like what are five things you tend to like? So if somebody says,

Melissa D. (50:58)
huh, yeah.

Cosmo (51:20)
will you choose you go great. I want I want you to play Dolly and let me use your body for and then she might say okay but I want you to do some havening some light sweet touch on me for 10 minutes before I can surrender my body to you so like have a system where you’ve done a little bit of like inventory on your desires and that’s part of what the work that we do with people on retreat is is generating.

Melissa D. (51:21)
Have a list.

Cosmo (51:49)
an understanding of their system so when they go back to their partners or they go back into relationship of some sort they can ⁓ have a personal inventory of their system that then they don’t feel because what happens when they feel the pressure is they kind of you lock up a bit right there’s this like ⁓ I don’t want to do anything this feels like work ⁓ and people lock up but if it’s like ⁓

You don’t know what we should do. How about you crawl between my legs and put your mouth on my soft cock until it swells down your throat. You know, like that’s, that’s fun. Like I don’t, I don’t, you know, like that’s on my list and, ⁓ and it might just, you know, Cassius go to his back tickles. Right. If I don’t know what it’s like, okay, I’ll just, just lay on me and tickle your back. And sometimes that’s all we do. It’s just like holding and

Melissa D. (52:31)
Right? I love that.

Yeah, and intimacy can look so many different ways. I think that’s the biggest teaching ⁓ that I leave with clients is like, it doesn’t have to look like the slice that you were talking about. It can be back to goals or a light role play or fetishizing each other in a fun way or, you know, a BJ, like whatever. Writing those lists and understanding what really works for you and then where the overlap is and knowing that there can be a nice, playful negotiation.

Cosmo (52:51)
You know? Yeah.

Melissa D. (53:19)
Yeah.

Cosmo (53:20)
Yeah, exactly. like, you know, okay, so just I’ll finish on this because this is good. what we started with with the Apollo project in the Himuro’s project is let’s understand what men are like for themselves. Right. So they can do this. They can bring this understanding of who they are to the world and maybe they shift their experience of the world with a better understanding of themselves, both with other men and in their relationship to their body and sexuality.

with very somatic practice experience over a week where the world dissolves, right? They just get an opportunity to learn this. We also have monthly calls now that are offering alumni ongoing support to get reconnected with other men that have shared this lens, shared this experience. So that’s really beautiful. Over the years, working in both the women’s container and men’s container, I’m constantly asked,

by both the women, can you teach our men to approach our bodies the way that you’re approaching our bodies? Not me specifically, but with care, like as practitioners, and to understand how to approach the female body a little differently. And I get asked by men, can you teach me how to approach the female body the way you’re describing it? And so I’ve kind of just like been chewing on that.

⁓ for a while and basically have come to the conclusion that I’m now developing a bit of a system called the art of touching women, how men touch and why it matters. And the nutshell is, is competency isn’t first.

Women don’t necessarily, competency can be important, but care, presence, attention, safety come first. And often men when they’re saying, how do you touch women? They’re asking me, how do you finger or how do you tie or how do you whip? But competency is way down here. And so I’m developing a system, a three month.

Melissa D. (55:18)
Mm-hmm.

Cosmo (55:35)
program that approaches all the things, including some competency, but all the elements that come way before competency that can completely radically change the way you’re approaching a woman’s body and get you completely different results of how that experience will feel for you.

Melissa D. (55:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm, beautiful.

Cosmo (55:55)
I see a little smirk there, Mango. ⁓

Melissa D. (55:57)
I’m so glad you’re offering this

because yeah, men often want to know, how do I make her climax? How do I do the fingering technique? How do I make this happen? It’s like, I love that you’re taking it back to things that are often way more important for women. ⁓ Not to put everyone in a category, but there’s years of experience, thousands of bodies that you’ve worked with, feedback you’re getting, yeah.

Cosmo (56:23)
Yeah. And I’ve practiced going in to try and do that thing. And what is felt, what I noticed is that an agenda is felt and a body goes into protection mode.

And if you can create a space with no agenda, then desire naturally organically emerges. And then you can meet it with all the competency that, yes, you can learn. There is relevancy to competency for sure. ⁓ So here’s the nugget. I’m offering basically a free

one hour workshop that gives the fundamentals of some of this. then a three months of the part of the immersion work too is that it’s not accessible for everyone, right? These are expensive retreats. have professionals fly in. We’re doing full hands-on work with a full team. They’re not cheap retreats. They’re very valuable, ⁓ but that’s not accessible. So I also have been just like trying to figure out how to make this work more accessible to more people, more men.

And so offering this free workshop that anyone can come to and get some bits then a very accessible three month virtual course that again will get into this deep dive of how to go about this with some demos cash is gonna play with me we’re gonna show some competency but a lot of the other stuff as well and then The newest version is that looking at July for 26 of actually doing the art of touching women as its own immersion retreat

Melissa D. (57:51)
Mm-hmm.

Amazing.

Cosmo (58:03)
And so that’s kind of the nuggets that are coming up ⁓ in 2026.

Melissa D. (58:10)
I love it. Cosmo,

thank you so much for joining me today.

How can people find you? And we’ll also post all these links in the show notes of how people can find you for the upcoming workshop in early December, that free one. And if they want to do a deep dive, they can do that. ⁓ Yeah, how else can people track you down?

Cosmo (58:16)
My absolute pleasure.

The easiest way is ⁓ Himeros Project, which you’ll put the link in, I’m sure. Himerosproject.com. It’s him, H-I-M, A-R-O-S, E-R-O-S, And backtothebody.org. So if you’re female-bodied, if you’re a woman and you’re looking to do immersive work, I work in that container doing as a practitioner. And if you’re a man, ⁓ male-bodied, and actually,

We’re considering including trans men too, if they’re interested. ⁓ The Hamerose Project. ⁓ we have two retreats for that for men in 2026. We have March in Joshua Tree, California, from March 3rd to 9th. And in BC up here in Canada, July 15th to the 21st. The virtual course is April through beginning of July.

And as you mentioned, I’ll probably be doing one of these a month. So if you go on and add yourself to the mailing list on Him or Else Project, you’ll get kind of a notification about when the free workshops are happening. And the first one is December 3rd, 25. So that’s a little snapshot. And thanks for having me, Mango. It’s been sweet, super sweet.

Melissa D. (59:54)
Yeah. ⁓ thank you so much, Cosmo.

And I look forward to seeing you soon. All right. Take care.

Cosmo (1:00:02)
Yeah, likewise.

Bye for now.