Nina Powell

SUE WARDS

Nina Powell is often bombarded with questions after she tells people she "works with sexuality” for a living.

The Wanaka-based somatic sex coach works with couples and women (single or in relationships), mostly aged from their mid-20s to 60s. Thanks to Skype, she has clients from around the world, and said people are "pretty much the same” no matter where they come from.

"It always comes down to a desire to connect with another person. I think that’s the core of what people are saying.”

Common issues she deals with include loss of (or lack of) sexual desire, women who find their mind is too busy to be in the moment during sex, women with anxiety in their daily living, women who feel they don’t know their own bodies and find sex unfulfilling, and people who can’t communicate with their partner. Also: "People who really want their sex life to be something more: more interesting, more fulfilling, more playful, more exciting.”

Women can feel it is an unexplored part of self, Nina said, and changing that can change how they feel every day, making them more confident.

Her clients from a religious background have an added challenge, she said. "That is the biggest challenge that I’ve come across, and that is the one I’ve found the most problems transforming with people.” Shame around sexuality can cause "a big hangover” in people’s bodies, she said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Nina comes from a "hippy background”: she grew up in a Coromandel community.

"I’ve always had an ease and curiosity and exploratory nature with sex,” she said. The subject never shocked her or made her uncomfortable. "When I was 18 my closest friend said to me, ‘you should be a sex therapist’.”

Nina and her two younger sisters went to the local primary school, then Nina boarded at Epsom Girls in Auckland. She left New Zealand at the age of 16, flying to London to meet a boyfriend.

Always good with numbers, she soon found a job doing accounts. This led to her training to become an accountant, and eventually working at an investment bank.

She then studied business and psychology before completing a Masters degree in Human Factors - essentially ergonomics. What she thought would be an interesting design job working directly with people, turned out to be more of an office job.

Despite her hippy background, Nina said she "always had this idea of being a professional”, but after seven years working in safety critical industries, the voice in her head whispering ‘I don’t belong here’ became too loud to ignore.

She had also embarked on a "massive self-exploration journey” after leaving her partner of nine years. Googling ‘meditation and community’ led her to a conscious clubbing weekend in Dorset, and her first tantric workshop.

Nina felt right at home. "It was this really amazing opening, it was like melting something frozen.”

She became a workshop junkie, leading something of a double life alongside her be-suited day job. A female Taoist sexuality workshop was another key experience, where Nina learnt ancient practices which she says science is now catching up with.

After a couple of years of workshops, Nina studied a programme called ‘Sexological Bodywork’.

The more ‘embodied’ she became (through workshops and yoga) the more she realised she didn’t want her manager’s job. She started seeing clients in the UK, and sex coaching became her full-time work. She’s studied other modalities along the way (such as Holistic Pelvic Care ™, Tibetan Buddhist somatic meditation) to support her work.

Nina (she had a UK friend who called her ‘Sex Nina’) has a practical approach to these subjects. "They are practical skills about experiencing your body.”

"I feel really passionately that we all should have a life with sexual pleasure. And it’s possible for everyone, and I know that so many are not. I’m passionate about it because I’ve chosen it as my work. I feel it’s a very unspoken-about area.”

Most people have a sense of longing for something more, Nina believes. "There are these spectacular, exquisite states, that the body is capable of - it can happen standing on top of a mountain. Sex is one route to those states of bliss.”

Nina moved to Wanaka two years ago with her partner Sam ("He chose Wanaka, I chose New Zealand”), and she has felt very accepted here.

She usually works with clients for three months. "We set an intention for what we want to transform. That’s what I love about this job; it’s coaching, not therapy.”

Issues get stuck in our bodies, Nina said. "We can work with the thinking and that can be useful, but unless we work with the body we’re not really changing anything.” Women, in particular, she said, cannot override their bodies.

When people come to her there’s an element of "I want what she’s having”, Nina said. "I have such an ease with the body - I can inspire and call people into that space.”

While she works with sex, Nina says in a lot of ways "we could just take sex out of the picture”, as many of the tools she teaches are about being in the moment and having your body feel open, relaxed and joyful instead of anxious and fearful.

"It’s more about relationships and relationship with self. It’s like having this relationship with self that’s truly aligned with who you are. I feel like I’m a guide to people for transforming their life.”

But ‘Sex Nina’ is never far away: "I think that everyone should have a really great sex life on their own, and then they should come together to celebrate.”

PHOTO: Wanaka App