The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer: Hello everyone and welcome again to the podcast and I'm so glad for you to get to know today. Darshana Avila, welcome Darshana Thank you. Glad you here so much. Yes, and this is gonna be a great conversation. One of the things that Darshana does is does a lot of somatic work around, sexuality and sex and erotic things.
And I'm looking forward to us delving into this and how she's helping people with different trauma parts and how it affects our, our sex lives and all of that sort of thing. So Darshana is a start with everyone. Tell folks a little bit more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed.
Darshana Avila: Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the long story short version of things. That's great.
Gordon Brewer: That's great. Like,
Darshana Avila: like many of us drawn to a healing path. It was my own wildly imperfect life experience that that led me here. And the, the crux of it for me was. Having, I, I came from a family with, with a significant mental health, mental health history, mental illness history, let's say.
Mm-hmm. And so therapy was really familiar to me. I, I was no stranger and always very open to it. Personal growth, spiritual seeking, all of those were a really significant part of my formative experiences. And in my journey when I started to explore my sexuality on the other side of the divorce, which.
Wasn't an intentional thing. I didn't like set a goal to do that. It was simply a product of what was happening. I was dating, I was relating, getting to know aspects of myself that hadn't been there inside of a monogamous relationship that lasted for most almost a decade. It, it opened me up to the reality that our culture has a major schism, and a lot of us know this intellectually, but I was feeling it in my body, this divide, that sexuality is compartmentalized set aside from just about everything else in our dominant culture.
And initially for me, I wanted spirituality. Sexuality. Mm-hmm. To feel more integrated because those were two deeply meaningful parts of my life. And that's where I was experiencing a lot of growth and expansion and joy. And as I delved into that, I was also noticing that there was a lot of harm being done and, and a lot of trauma that was already existing and then was being compounded on.
Inside of communities where both spirituality and sexuality were being explored. We've got many scenarios of, you know, like cult-like stuff, even if it's not a cult, where you've got a charismatic leader, you've got someone in a position of power telling his, his audience, this is, and it's, it's usually a he, but not always.
Mm-hmm. You know, telling his followers, telling his audience the right ways to be. And if you only do this thing. That set me off. Like that set my spidey sense and my alarms really going off of like, oh, there's, there's a real shadow to these seemingly beautiful gatherings and courses and communities and so on and so forth.
And when I decided. To pursue this as a professional path. It was very important to me from the jump that a really trauma-informed and culturally sensitive foundation be underneath any of the ways that I might support people to understand their eroticism intimacy, sexuality. And so I've kind of walked a dual path where.
I'm a certified somatic experiencing practitioner, so that, that's this really big piece of of my toolkit that focuses on trauma, though it's not the only one. And I am a sexological body worker, which is a very unique niche of somatic sex education and practitioner where I do hands-on and hands in work with my clients to be able to really meet them.
At, at that intersection of, of trauma, somatics erotic exploration, and a lot gets uncovered and liberated and it's Right. It's a really cool place to work.
Gordon Brewer: Yes, yes. So, yeah. So I think probably one thing that most people might be curious about is just how, sex sexological work is different than sex therapy.
Yeah. Because I think those are, you know, we, we might think of them as being the same, but from what you're describing is much different.
Darshana Avila: Very much so. And, and including that many sex therapists or some of my greatest referrals sources. Mm-hmm. Because there is a limit to what can happen, you know, and, and I am not a licensed therapist or, or clinical social worker, or I don't hold those credentials that.
Bless y'all if that's your work, because we need that. Mm-hmm. We need the talk therapy and the more cognitive approaches and even the somatic approaches to talk based therapy are different from what I do. So in the same way that, you know, if you go to a workshop that's teaching you how to move or breathe and regulate your own body, but the facilitator never puts their hands on you, that's gonna be very different than going to see.
Be a cranial sacral practitioner or a massage therapist or who, however, mm-hmm. Whatever it might be, where they're really getting hands on and being able to work with your soma, not just guide you how to be in your body. Mm-hmm. And so the difference between sex therapy or, or, or any narrative based talk therapy, even if it's got a somatic lens.
And what I do is that I am literally hands on with my clients and sexological body work. Unlike any other modality that exists, we have a very pleasure centric ethos. So consent is the other big thing is establishing clear foundations of consent. It's all about one directional touch from me as the practitioner to my client.
If I'm working with couples, what I might be doing is guiding their interactions with one another, offering demonstrations about things, skill building, and then they get to interact with each other. But we are talking about. Genital stimulation. And before we get to stimulation, we're talking about sensate focus.
We're talking about really getting to establish that proprioception of tracking what's going on in your own body. How do we come out of threat responses? Particularly a lot of my clients, if there's trauma histories, have a lot of dissociation and a lot of numbness. They, they're not able to really say, this is what feels good to me.
Or this is what I like, or here's how I want it. I'll use, let me be a little more anecdotal about it. You know, the most common scenario of of somebody seeking me out is I've got a really loving partner and, and we have a pretty great relationship in so many ways. I know that they want to please me and I have no idea how to tell them what feels good in my body.
My body clamps up. The bracing is there, even when my brain says, Hey, we're safe. We want this. So a lot of this is about helping people to truly, we use this term, come home to their bodies or come home to your body. Mm-hmm. In a very like right colloquial way. But it's the reality of what happens in the kind of work that I facilitate, where there's a connection between that witness consciousness and the felt experience, and they can start to learn what it is to feel safe, what it is to allow pleasure, what it is, to use their voice to articulate preferences and desires and boundaries.
And these foundational pieces are essential for really thriving in intimacy. And they're absolutely essential for a truly consent based dynamic, which many people don't realize how much nuance goes into establishing consent. And if what you're doing is showing up for some version of maintenance sex with your partner, for instance, because you're like, well, mm-hmm better be better to like go along.
So we get along like, so, okay, my partner wants more sex than I do. I, I'll, I'll say twice a month. Fine. I'm gonna do this. That's not consent. Just because you're saying yes, if you're enduring and you are disconnected from your body and you're just showing up because you don't wanna have another fight about it.
We got a lot of ground that we get to cover. It's an opportunity Right, right. To, to really bring you into that equation in a way that can be truly enlivening and life giving. So that's a bit about it. Yeah.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm curious, what, what is generally the starting place for the work that you do with people?
I know you people can, I, you know, I've just. You know, learn over and over again just the important importance of somatic work and just really understanding the mind and body connection. And so when, when you, what does typical session look like? What does typical work look like and how do you go about that?
Yeah,
Darshana Avila: yeah. So erotic wholeness, which is my body of work, it, it consists of a four phase journey that I take clients through, and the start of it is very somatic experiencing focus, which is to say it really is about the fundamentals of embodiment. It's about nervous system tending. So that a well-regulated nervous system is not just like, I'm chill, I'm cool, like everything's great.
It's actually I can activate when I need or want to. I, I, I can get into that more sympathetic state and I can be in a healthy and resilient, parasympathetic, parasympathetic, I'm tripping over my words. Mm-hmm. State, you know, when, when I wanna feel more relaxed and receptive. And we know that if you are stuck in a threat response, you're, you're, you are either hyper you're, you're, you're up there in, in your fight energy or your flight energy or you're hypo and there's the freezing and the fawning that goes on.
Mm-hmm. So wherever somebody is. My initial work with them is like, how do we get into that resilient center where you can feel more ease and fluidity of moving between those states? Mm-hmm. Nervous system tending is the foundation of it all. And the other thing that we're doing in that initial stage has a lot to do with building rapport.
The work that I do is really intimate. I think that goes without saying, but you know mm-hmm. We're not. Mm-hmm. We're, we're not really used to. There's no context to compare what it is to have someone who is not a lover or a romantic partner or a certified medical professional touching your body, so mm-hmm.
I would never presume, I, I don't see clients for single sessions. You know, you, you're working with me for an arc, you know, of time, and so it's like mm-hmm. I would never presume to have somebody come into my office for a first session and be like, all right, close off, jump on the table. Like, let's go.
That's not how this works. So that first phase mm-hmm. We're creating our relationship and really a container of where trust can grow and they're learning how to be in their bodies. Mm-hmm. From there, when, when we've got the, the nervous system capacity established, we work on. Consent, as I've already mentioned, really understanding in a more nuanced way how to establish true consent for a physical exchange.
I draw a lot from a body of work called the Wheel of Consent by Dr. Betty Martin fan. Mm-hmm. I mean, if, if everyone received a, a basics in wheel of consent training as a young person, like our, our world would be a different place. We right. I, I'm giving my clients insight about that. We're also beginning to explore what it is to have a more nuanced vocabulary about touch.
That's another place where many of us fall short, is we don't know how to speak about the things that we want to do, that we want done to us. And, and so we use very vague words like, touch me. Well, I, I mean, I could slack you. That's a touch. Is that what you want? Right.
Gordon Brewer: You
Darshana Avila: know, like. And, and I, you know, it, it's, it's like, it's helpful because also another example, I could say Rub, and to you Gordon, a rub might be a massage where we're like really getting into the knots mm-hmm.
And the kinks. Mm-hmm. And, and to me, rub might be a, a gentle caress, no one's wrong, but we are using a word that is not understood by both people in the same way. Mm-hmm. That comes up a lot in intimacy. Yeah. So, consent, the vocabulary of touch. Practices to help clients feel more confident in using their voice, which mm-hmm for some people is positively terrifying.
And when we get over that terror, if it's there, it's also incredibly empowering and liberating. Mm-hmm. Permission to, to practice speaking desires and needs and boundaries out loud. Then we begin to build touch into the equation in, in progressive ways. So starting with more global full body contact.
And then when we progress toward genitals, it's in structured practices, a, a practice of de armoring and mapping, which is not arousal based, not stimulation based, but it's really to help. The person get to know their body. It's all about that, that felt sense experience. And then we can build into more arousal and stimulation based experiences so that they get to know what their pathways to pleasure are and what it's like to access arousal from a state of relaxation with clear consent.
Mm-hmm. With the knowledge that you don't have to perform for another person's pleasure, you don't actually have to worry about another person. You know, like this gets to be about you learning you and then you take everything you learn out into the wilds of your life, home to your partner. Right? And, and it's quite.
Transformative, but not only from a sex and intimacy standpoint, but the skills that are acquired here, the nervous system regulation, the confidence in your voice, a, a, a greater degree of articulation and advocacy for yourself, more of a connection to personal power and agency. There's nowhere in your life that that's not going to impact.
So,
Gordon Brewer: right, right. Yeah. This is, this is fascinating and particularly just around consent because I think one of the things that I think probably happens a lot is people will do things particularly in couples and, you know, and I'm a marriage and family therapist, so I, you know, as thinking about it through that lens, we will do things for our partners.
That maybe we just do it for their sake, but doesn't necessarily meet a need for myself. Right. You wanna say something about that?
Darshana Avila: Yeah. Thank you. That's actually a really great thing. Mm-hmm. So,
Gordon Brewer: mm-hmm.
Darshana Avila: That scenario is very common and it's not inherently bad. Right. But, but, but there's like an asterisk on that one.
There's a caveat. Mm-hmm. Sometimes, particularly if we are in a long-term relationship. We know compromise is gonna have to happen in just about every facet of the dynamic, right? Mm-hmm. So it's not an inherently negative thing to do something that pleases your partner so long as you yourself can find a genuine yes to pleasing them.
That's the subtle distinction. If you are doing it begrudgingly or if you're feeling coerced, if there is a threat of some kind of retaliation and, and I wanna be clear, like the threat of retaliation. The wor, you know, a very exaggerated sensationalized scenario might be like physical abuse or, or might be getting dumped and, and not having the means to provide for yourself if you're dependent upon a partner, you know, whatever that is.
Mm-hmm. But it also could be very like subtle, passive aggressive. Like, like, oh, now I'm gonna have to deal with like, all sorts of, of pouting and protest behavior. Mm-hmm. And, and whatnot. And. It's, it's, so if that's the reason why you are saying yes to your partner
Gordon Brewer: mm-hmm.
Darshana Avila: It's not knocking your instinct to protect yourself and preserve connection.
We're all wired for that. Right. But it's also an invitation to consider that there's something really out of balance then. Mm-hmm.
Gordon Brewer: And
Darshana Avila: we have the possibility, we all have the possibility of learning how to find, you know, think of a Venn diagram. And if all of the things that I'm interested in erotically or over here on the right and everything you're interested in is over on the left, and we look at what overlaps in the middle, generally speaking, we can find some things when we are taught how to look at more critically and get beyond the very narrow, like the cultural script that all of us have been handed about sex.
Whoever you are listening to this, it does not matter your race, your, your gender, your sexual orientation, your background. The dominant cultural script is penis in vagina, and it's really about the penis. And so everything that we think of about sex has a power differential built into it. It has a very goal-oriented approach, and it's not especially creative when, right.
Sex and eroticism. I mean, there's a very good reason why I call my work erotic wholeness, even though the word erotic can be very provocative because it's often misunderstood. Eroticism is life force. It's creativity. So yeah, that flows into our sex. But it's in your activism, it's in your artistry, it's in the way you tend relationships of any sort.
'cause it's an intrinsically creative force. Sex is a, an opportunity for us to be wildly creative to play mm-hmm. To innovate, to explore the wonders of being in a sensing, feeling body that's wired for pleasure. So if all we're doing is following this super, super narrow script, we're leaving a lot on the table.
And if you're having sex in a way that it's like, okay, well I'm gonna do this thing because this is what my partner wants. You are, you're cutting both of yourselves off from the possibility of finding what else might exist that could really thrill you, that, that, that could be transformative, that could be liberating, that could deepen your intimacy, that could help you feel a greater sense of power.
So yeah, it, it's, it's just like overall, it's really about how can we go broader. In being curious and creative and experimenting to find where those meeting points can be, instead of just crossing our arms, shrugging our shoulders, like, fine, I'm gonna do this thing just for you. Like, right. There's more out there.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right, right. Yeah. So you, you know, one, one idea that I've always just kind of a premise is, and, and I'm interested to get your thoughts on this, is that, healthy sexual intimacy begins with emotional connection and emotional intimacy. That's just kind of my way of thinking about it, but I'm, I'm curious your thoughts on that or what you'd like to add to that.
Darshana Avila: Yeah, I would say that personally speaking, I agree. There are, it is. It is also a truth that different people have different preferences. So folks who are really into like casual sex, first of all, it doesn't mean there's no emotional intimacy there. Mm-hmm. But I think what we need to make a distinction between is like.
Prioritizing emotional intimacy only in the context of, oh, well you've gotta have this much time with a person. And that, you know, like that's a foundation. Like that's one place where we bring a lot of judgment to different people's way of relating sexually. I think objectively speaking, though, emotional intimacy, which we could also say is emotional safety.
The, the, the sense of really feeling welcome and permission to be who we are, to reveal ourselves. It's very vulnerable. You know, I'll, I'll bring in a personal anecdote, which was mm-hmm. From my, I think this was, I would've been in my very early thirties. It was before I chose this as my professional path, and I had a lover share a kink with me.
And at that time, I did not have the skills or the, the perspective that I do, and it was not mm-hmm. Something that I was interested in. And I was like, Ew, like, I mean, like really? Mm-hmm. Like, I just didn't, I didn't respond well. And to his credit. He was able to say like, I just, I just brought something vulnerable to you, and you basically just like threw it out the window, like not cool.
Mm-hmm.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Darshana Avila: So, emotional safety, emotional intimacy is, can I reveal myself to you, whether or not you wanna meet me in that? And it might. Mean that we get to do the thing that your partner wants, you know, like you might be able to enact the thing together. It also might mean the emotional intimacy of saying like, oh, I'm not gonna get this need met here, and I really care about this.
What do I do now? Mm-hmm. I feel like I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent. Mm-hmm. From your question. Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna bring this back in. Mm-hmm. Which is to say, I, I think another angle that I love to talk about is I despise the word foreplay. Because it, it's, it signals that there is a category of physical acts that are on a hierarchical scale, less than intercourse.
Mm-hmm. Back to that whole penis and vagina, like upheld as the, the highest level of what sex can be. I hate the word foreplay, but what I love the idea of is that idea, anything you're doing when you're not having sex. Is quote unquote foreplay. That's where emotional intimacy comes into the equation.
Mm-hmm. How we are tending our relationships. How safe and open and caring. Is there flirtation? Are you actually feeding a little bit of healthy tension and banter? A little bit of mystery, a little bit of novelty, especially in a long-term relationship. All of that matters. So we hear a lot of these cultural tropes of like, oh, well you didn't wash the dishes, so I'm not gonna wanna have sex with you.
But what that's really about is. You were not being thoughtful. You, you didn't signal to me that you hear things that I need so I could be more available and relaxed to meet you in a, in a physically intimate moment. Therefore, my, my door closed, you know? Mm-hmm. So, so that where emotional intimacy and physical in.
Really do intersect. It's everything we are doing in our relationships is either a deposit in the bank account, so to speak, or a withdrawal. And so we want to be making more deposits in the form of all these little quick examples I've just given to, to really then be able to show up for moments of physical intimacy with the greatest degree of trust and safety and openness and desire online.
Gordon Brewer: Right. And,
Darshana Avila: and emotionally that that's not easy for everybody to do. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna add one more little piece to this. I know I'm a chatter, right? Sure. And that is for some people being physically intimate, it, it, it, it, there's, let me say it's an order of priority that that is not objectively right or wrong.
So for some people, the act of physical intimacy. Really then helps them open emotionally pillow talk. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, so the idea of like, you make love with your partner and then you're laying there and it's like, oh, now, now I wanna spill to you. Now, now I wanna talk. Mm-hmm. About all the things. So some people prefer a physical connection to really open them emotionally.
Other people really need the emotional component to be online and tended to before the physical intimacy can happen. Right, and what's important then if, especially if you find yourself in a relationship with someone who's got the, the opposite order than you. Nobody needs to be made wrong here. The, the moment we start blaming and shaming, we're, we're getting into really dangerous territory, but what we get to do then if we're motivated is say, how do we find a middle ground here?
Mm-hmm. How do we actually create the dynamics where each of us is able to get the thing that we want to a great enough degree that we can find one another and co-create in the ways that we want to. And I'm not gonna pretend that that's always the easiest thing to do, but it is a simple thing. We're, we're simply talking about respecting each other's differences and seeking a middle ground, seeking a compromise.
It's not more complex than that. So, you know, it, it is definitely something that you can do is, is what I would want someone to know.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I think one of the things that's maybe a lot of people struggle with, and I, I've even struggled with it myself, is just there's been a lot of, in.
Inherent shame around sexuality. Oh yeah. That's just been built into the culture and all of that. All of that sort of thing. And I, and I think when we can help people get to a place where they see that as just as much of an important component of themselves and who they are as a person at their own, their own ability to connect with themselves, connect with others, and connect.
As we, yeah, even as we started out talking about spiritually, I think it's a, it's a, it's, it's something that I think we need to maybe spend some time changing our minds about. And, and in all of that, and it's just
Darshana Avila: emphatic yes to that, you know? Yes. I mean, a and knowing that as a practitioner, as a clinician.
We're humans first, and that means, mm-hmm. That we're bringing all of our biases, all of our hangups, all of the shame and things that we carry. As much as we might try to show up with objectivity and neutrality for our clients, we're not, you know? Mm-hmm. We're human. And, and what you're speaking to is a very significant part of a modern western humans experience.
You know, here we are. Mm-hmm. In, in America, like sexual shame is a massive facet of our dominant cultural conditioning. And one of my little dms, my sayings is we are erotic by nature. We are. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There's not a, this is not a glitch in the system. This is not a flaw in the design. We don't like sex because we're not supposed to like sex.
We like sex because we're made to, we are intrinsically, sensual, sexual, creative, curious beings. All of that falls under the heading of eroticism in my world. Yes. And so the more we can. Give ourselves permission and give ourselves and one another, some grace to be who we are. And, and there's a fantastic little saying that, that, that gets tossed around in a lot of like sex positive communities and it's don't yuck another person's yum.
And it comes into play around sexual shame, like, Hey, mm-hmm. I might not be into what you're into. Back to that example I gave of, of my, my boyfriend, you know, two decades ago. Like mm-hmm. I might not be into the thing that you're into, but I don't have to make you feel bad about it. And then we get to apply that to ourselves.
Like I might be into things that have a certain taboo to them or that aren't everybody's cup of tea. You are not flawed, you're not broken. And I mean, we, this is a whole other sidebar conversation that we could get into about, mm-hmm. When someone has experienced trauma in the form of an assault or an abuse or, or, or like that, that can shape.
Are sexual preferences in very real ways that can be really disturbing when they're not understood. When, when, when, when a person, when a client doesn't really get what the psyche does to try to make sense of really awful situations. Sexualizing, eroticizing. Negative experience is actually a very intelligent way that our psyche is trying to help us process and stay intact, even though we've gone through something awful.
Yeah, and so a lot of, you know, one of the most common things that I hear from clients has to do with. For instance, if there was abuse in the family, if there was a rape or an assault fantasies of either the same things happening to them or fantasies about their perpetrator, that that's one way that the mind can eroticize such a thing.
Mm-hmm. Another way that we go is. We put ourselves into the role of the transgressor and the perpetrator in our fantasy world because it's a way to balance things out, so to speak. Right now we're sitting here having a conversation about this clinician to clinician. Your average person who walks into one of our offices is just thinking, why am I fantasizing about abusing somebody?
Like, this is horrible. I can't talk to anybody about this. Mm-hmm. Now, and this is a particular category, you might be into cross-dressing, you might be into using vibrators, you might be into anything that in your schema just seems a little far beyond what's acceptable. Mm-hmm. And, and the, the thing I would want.
Us to know as individuals, as humans and us to be able to share with, with those that we support is. As long as no one's getting hurt in a non-consensual way. Right. It's okay to like what you like. Mm-hmm. And there are, there are safe and sane pathways to exploring, do I want to actually enact this in, in my lived experience?
Mm-hmm. Is this something that simply gets to live in my fantasy world and I can use it as leverage for my own pleasure? Is this pointing me toward. A piece of my healing psychologically somatically that that still needs some attention and care. Like whatever one of those it may be like. Great. It's, it's not an intrinsically shameful or negative thing.
It's, it's simply, it's information and it's opportunity.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. Darshana, this is fascinating stuff and I've got, we've gotta be mindful of our time. Yes. I know. We could, we could spend all day just talking about these things and I, I very much appreciate your openness and willingness to. To put this, this whole topic out there for people and that the, the work that you're doing and helping, helping people kind of end some of the stigma in some of the.
You know, the, the baggage a lot of us carry around sexuality and, and what it means to be an erotic person, a whole person, that kind of thing. So, yeah. Yeah. This is great. I appreciate
Darshana Avila: that, Gordon, and thanks for Yeah. For being open to having the conversation.
Gordon Brewer: Oh, right. So tell folks how they can get in touch with you and find out more about your work and.
Darshana Avila: Yeah. My website. Yeah. That sort of thing. My website
Gordon Brewer: is,
Darshana Avila: yeah, my website's gonna be the, the mother load, and it's my name, Darshana avila.com. You can learn a lot about how I work with clients there, and as I made a brief mention of most of my clients are referred by their therapists. Mm-hmm. So, sure. You know, it's a wonderful thing to know that there are people who might be able to support your people beyond where your scope of practice goes.
And I'm on. Instagram and YouTube and LinkedIn and, and so there's lots of ways to simply just learn more about, hear me talking and educating about these topics because that is exactly what we need. To your point, more conversation, more education. So reach out if you have questions for me, I love hearing from folks who've heard me on a podcast and they're like, Hey, I wanted to talk more about such and such, right?
Let's, let's keep healing and growing and thriving.
Gordon Brewer: Sure, sure. And we'll have links in the show, show notes, in the show summary for people to get to it easily. And also if Darshana been on numerous podcasts and so also a Netflix show. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I'm on, I'm
Darshana Avila: one of the experts on Netflix's Sex, love, and Goop, which is also something that I hear people say.
Tell me all the time. My therapist told me to go watch this show. And it's not just, oh
Gordon Brewer: wow.
Darshana Avila: It's not just my work. It's multiple practitioners introducing people to different ways to work with sexuality and get, you get to see these in real time with real people, so.
Gordon Brewer: Awesome. Awesome. Well, we'll we will be sure to check it out.
So thank you Marsh. Thanks again for being on the podcast and I, I hope people have found this just really informative and. And light and enlightening as well.
Darshana Avila: Yeah, I hope so too. Thanks, Gordon.