How to Live Fully Expressed in Life and Love

Featuring Laurie Handlers on The Amanda Kaufman Show

What does it really mean to live fully expressed—in your work, your relationships, and your sense of self? In this episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, Amanda sits down with Laurie Handlers, bestselling author and relationship coach, to explore what it takes to show up authentically in every area of life.

Laurie has spent decades teaching transformational workshops around the world. With expertise in sacred sexuality, fearless communication, and personal development, she brings an unapologetic and deeply informed perspective to the conversation about how expression, intimacy, and creativity intersect.

The Real Link Between Sex, Creativity, and Happiness

At the heart of Laurie’s work is a foundational belief: sex and happiness are deeply connected—but not in the way most people think. It’s not just about physical intimacy. It’s about energetic expression, creativity, and the freedom to fully be yourself.

Laurie explains that many people experience blocks in their "second chakra"—a concept from the Hindu system of energy centers in the body. This chakra governs pleasure, creativity, and emotional memory. When blocked, it doesn’t just affect your intimate life—it can create a sense of dissatisfaction and disconnection from your overall happiness.

“If you’re not expressing yourself creatively,” Laurie says, “you’re probably blocked in your channel for happiness.”

Amanda echoes this, tying it back to personal performance, leadership, and the broader theme of living a fulfilled life. The conversation touches on how these blocks often appear not just in romantic relationships but also in how we show up in our businesses, our communication, and even our inner dialogue.

Fearless Communication and Relationship Clarity

One of the most impactful moments in the episode is when Laurie discusses her work with singles and couples—particularly around the idea of radical honesty from the beginning.

“Singles often don’t want to make the same mistake again,” she explains. “But they don’t know how to express their boundaries or say who they really are in that first conversation. So we teach them to do just that.”

The message is clear: If the person isn’t a fit, move on. Don’t waste another five years trying to make it work.

This part of the conversation resonated with Amanda’s audience, many of whom are high-achieving professionals and coaches who value intentionality. The idea of getting clear, early, and direct about who you are and what you want is not just romantic advice—it’s life advice.

The Courage to Be Fully Expressed

Laurie’s career journey is as bold as her message. From being a corporate trainer in the '70s and '80s to discovering the practice of Tantra in a Yoga Journal article in 1986, her path has been anything but linear. She describes her evolution into an expert in sacred sexuality and personal transformation as a return to something she always knew—there was more to life, more to relationships, and more to personal power than society acknowledged.

She shares stories from her early workshops, where students were drawn to her not because she had all the answers, but because she embodied the very principles she taught. “People would say, ‘I want what she has,’” Laurie recalls. “It wasn’t about knowledge. It was about presence and alignment.”

Amanda highlights this as a powerful lesson for any coach or creator: it’s not just what you teach—it’s who you are while teaching it. Living in alignment with your values and your truth is what makes you magnetic and credible.

Extraordinary Love Is Intentional

Laurie and her husband, Michael Gibson, now lead programs together that focus on what they call “extraordinary love.” These programs serve both couples and singles and are designed to help people navigate the very real challenges of emotional intimacy, busy lives, and personal growth.

For couples, they help unblock stagnation in long-term relationships—whether it's from routine, parenting, or shifting dynamics over time. For singles, they offer guidance on how to avoid getting stuck in cycles of disappointment by starting from a place of honesty and boundaries.

Laurie also points out that extraordinary love isn't reserved for romantic relationships. It starts with how we relate to ourselves. When we express who we are without fear, when we allow space for creativity and pleasure, we become more grounded, present, and fulfilled.

Why This Conversation Matters

Amanda sums up the episode with a key takeaway: Your performance, fulfillment, and happiness are all deeply influenced by how authentically you live.

Laurie’s message isn’t just about intimacy or relationships—it’s about living in such a way that you’re not hiding from yourself or others. When you show up fully expressed, you create stronger connections, clearer communication, and a deeper sense of purpose.

Even in 2025, Amanda notes, conversations around expression, intimacy, and emotional health can feel taboo or uncomfortable. But that’s exactly why they matter. These are the conversations that unlock deeper transformation—not just for individuals, but for communities.

Where to Learn More

Laurie encourages listeners to connect with her on Instagram at @laurie.handlers, where she shares ongoing tips, stories, and tools. She also offers a free resource called the 3 Rs Quiz, which helps you identify whether you're in a state of Resentment, Resistance, or Revenge in your relationship dynamic—and what to do about it.

Amanda wraps up with a reminder to listeners: If you found this conversation valuable, share it with a friend who’s ready to show up more fully in life and love. And don’t forget to subscribe to The Amanda Kaufman Show for more powerful interviews like this one.

Living fully expressed isn’t a destination—it’s a daily practice. Whether you're exploring your creativity, deepening your relationships, or learning to communicate your truth, this episode is your invitation to start living with more courage, more clarity, and more joy.

Chapters List

• 00:00 Introduction to Sexuality and Happiness

• 03:14 Laurie's Journey into Sexuality and Spirituality

• 06:03 The Connection Between Sex and Happiness

• 08:50 Working with Couples and Singles

• 11:37 Building a Coaching Business in Sexuality

• 15:27 Engagement and Resources for Listeners

Full Transcript

Laurie Handlers (00:00)

if that person's not the one Like eliminate them soon. Don't waste another five years on something that's not gonna go anywhere.

Amanda Kaufman (00:26)

Well, hey, hey, welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. And today we've got a very exciting episode with my friend, Handlers. So Lori is the author of two international best selling books about sex and happiness. So get ready, buckle up. This is going to be a lot of fun. ⁓ She has been talking about the expert.

Laurie Handlers (00:47)

Yay.

Amanda Kaufman (00:50)

She's been an expert in the field of sexuality, intimacy and relationships and has taught transformational workshops on topics ranging from releasing past emotional trauma and fearless communication and sacred sexuality since 1978. That is amazing. Laurie and her husband, Michael Gibson, offer relationship coaching, workshops and retreats on extraordinary love. Laurie, welcome to the show.

Laurie Handlers (01:19)

Thank you so much, Amanda. What a pleasure to be here. I love your enthusiasm. I can feel it over the sound waves.

Amanda Kaufman (01:23)

I'm sorry.

yes, absolutely, I love love. So I'm really excited and you're also the first intimacy, know, relationship expert that we've had on the show. So I'm excited to explore a new topic with you. So Lori, something I ask a lot of entrepreneurs is why this? So I am so curious, what drew you to this expertise?

Laurie Handlers (01:31)

Hahaha

Great.

Okay, well, I think I've been this way since I was a little girl. I was, you know, watched like a hawk by my mother and my grandmother because they thought I was gonna get in trouble because I was sexually precocious. And I followed the path of transformation and spirituality since the 70s. And then I, but I always knew there was more. Like I knew there was more to sex.

and I knew there was more to spirituality than people were talking about, but nobody was really touching the subject. In 1986, I read an article in the Yoga Journal, which was delivered to my apartment at that time by mail. And there was an article about tantra. And I read that article. I still have it in this file cabinet behind me. I still have that article from the 80s where it talked about

Amanda Kaufman (02:38)

you

Laurie Handlers (02:46)

sacred sexuality and talked about Tantra and I went this is it this is what I've been looking for and In the 90s, I finally found a class because there was no internet in the 80s. I found a class I went to class day one of class. I went this is it This is what I've been looking for my whole life There is more to sex than this You know in-and-out thing and there's more to talk about and there's more connection to spirit

Amanda Kaufman (03:08)

Thank you.

Laurie Handlers (03:14)

But, you know, I up until that time didn't know where to look. So I made the decision in 1996 that this was going to be my life. I was already a corporate trainer. I was already a teacher. I had already done workshops. In 1978, the workshop I did was called Body, Mind and Spirit for Women. So it was a lot of embodiment practices, which there wasn't even a word for then, but the sex part.

Amanda Kaufman (03:35)

Mm-hmm.

Laurie Handlers (03:40)

that came in in the 90s. it was always in the background lurking, but I didn't know how to speak about it. So, yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (03:46)

Right.

Yes, yes.

And, you know, especially, especially a topic like this, it's, you know, not as, not as commonly talked about even now in 2025. You know, we still have a hard time saying the word sex. And I was like, goodness, I'm going to have to talk to my assistant about, you know, how we cut up the reels to, to do this, to still get all the reach and everything, because there's still a lot of, um,

Laurie Handlers (04:15)

Yes.

Amanda Kaufman (04:17)

suppression of the conversation around it. makes people, you know, it's a bit taboo, isn't it? So yeah, I love having you here though.

Laurie Handlers (04:23)

So you have to write,

you have to make the E into a three.

Amanda Kaufman (04:29)

That's it, right?

Laurie Handlers (04:29)

S3X

that's one of the code ways to deal with it. You just spell it differently. I want to tell you that I the books the titles of the book Sex and Happiness and then there's a subtitle for each one. Years ago I had a podcast for 15 years and first started as Tantra Cafe but I got like tired of just interviewing Tantra people and my manager of the station at the time

Amanda Kaufman (04:33)

We will.

Laurie Handlers (04:55)

said to me, you should rename your program Sex and Happiness. They're the two most searched for words on Google. And so my ratings and my podcast and everything went way up the minute I changed the title from Tantra Cafe to Sex and Happiness, the Sex and Happiness podcast.

Amanda Kaufman (05:05)

That makes sense.

Well, there's a great marketing lesson

in that for all of us about the clarity and really speaking to what people want. Yeah, I love it. So you're doing podcast touring. Is there another book on the horizon?

Laurie Handlers (05:18)

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, actually one for couples. My husband and I are halfway through the Sex and Happiness book for extraordinary love for couples. So that's there. And then I have a book I wrote a long time ago, but I never published it. It's called The Owner's Manual. So you know when you get a car, you get this thick book that says, you know, this is how you operate the brakes. This is the weather windshield fluid getting replaced. This is what you every so often you need a checkup.

Amanda Kaufman (05:40)

That's so exciting.

Laurie Handlers (06:00)

Well, no one gets that for their body. So I wrote a book called The Owner's Manual, which likens the body to the operating system of a car. And I think I'll probably, I don't know what I'll do with that yet. I may just self-publish that and put that out because people don't really have any idea how to operate. They're just flying blind.

Amanda Kaufman (06:03)

True.

Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. So, I mean, if you had a chance to just tell, well, you have a chance right now to tell everyone, like, one thing that they should know about sex and happiness. If they never pick up another book about it, you get this one chance to just tell them something they should know. What would you love for them to know?

Laurie Handlers (06:26)

Yeah.

Mm.

Sex and happiness are totally connected and it's not necessarily having sex. So it's not necessarily like, I'm gonna see my partner and I'm gonna have sex today. It's more that if you're blocked in what's called the second chakra of your body and the Hindu system, if you're blocked in the sex area, which is the centers of pleasure and pain and the memories of pleasure and pain and your creativity.

So if you're blocked there, then it's really hard to be happy. It's hard because if a person's not using their creativity to the fullest, or at least expressing themselves, and they're blocked there, then they're probably blocked in their channel for having happiness. And that's an individual. It doesn't matter whether you have a relationship or a friend with benefit or whatever. just, it...

Amanda Kaufman (07:18)

Hmm.

Laurie Handlers (07:37)

It's like the sex chakra and the throat chakra are connected. The sex has creativity creation, like creating babies, but creating computers and cell phones. All the creation comes from that pleasure pain center, and then expressing it comes from the throat. And if I withhold or I'm too afraid to express myself, my creativity

then I'm blocked and that has everything to do with happiness.

Amanda Kaufman (08:04)

Hmm.

That makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. ⁓

Laurie Handlers (08:10)

Yeah, so if they never read anything,

that's it. That's it.

Amanda Kaufman (08:16)

Yeah, that's it. Like if you want to unblock your creativity, you want to be fully and authentically expressed. And that makes a lot of sense. You know, and I know you're backing up what you're saying with thousands of years of spiritual practice. But there's also a lot of good science around this stuff, too, you know. So dear listener, if you're at all skeptical about what she's saying, I invite you to do some of your own research as well.

Laurie Handlers (08:18)

Yeah. Yes.

You

Amanda Kaufman (08:41)

because the more holistically healthy you can be, the more happy you're gonna be overall. And this is a really, really big piece of your performance. So good. Yeah.

Laurie Handlers (08:50)

It's true, it's true, yes. And you don't

need a partner to be expressed and to unblock. You can unblock those things yourself as an individual.

Amanda Kaufman (09:00)

That's true. Yeah, that's true. That's so good. So I am so curious to like when you're so you work with your husband, right? Like you guys have a coaching program.

Laurie Handlers (09:13)

Yes, I work separately and then we work together. So I've been at it longer than him. I'm a few, I'm 20 years older than him. So I've been at it longer than he has. He was a network engineer. and he was, but he was kind of a sex geek. Like he did a lot. said to him, the first time he ever touched me, I said to him, where did you learn how to touch a woman? And he said to me, I Googled it.

Amanda Kaufman (09:39)

That's awesome.

Laurie Handlers (09:41)

So, yes, we do programs together. We do specific programs on extraordinary love for couples and for singles. For the couples, we find that couples get stuck in a few different ruts. Like familiarity really does breed contempt, that whole Shakespeare thing. So we unblock couples from either arguing all the time, even though they love each other, they can't stop arguing. So we unblock that.

We unblock couples who have grown too familiar. They've neutralized their polar attraction for each other. So we work with that. And we also work with couples who adjust.

too busy or things changed when they had a kid or the kids grew and now they don't know what to do. They love each other, they don't want to leave, but they're more like best friends than they are like lovers. So that's one piece. We also work with singles who don't want to make the same mistake when they're meeting somebody new who could be a potential partner. They don't want to blow it in the first conversation. They don't know when to express boundaries.

Amanda Kaufman (10:33)

Hmm. ⁓

Laurie Handlers (10:48)

or when to state like this is authentically who I am for fear, know, this person will like them or whatever. And so we teach them to say it, to speak their truth and to say their boundaries and to say their preferences when they meet somebody new. So if that person's not the one next, you know what I mean? Like eliminate them soon. Don't waste another five years on something that's not gonna go anywhere. So that's what he and I do together.

Amanda Kaufman (11:15)

Totally.

Laurie Handlers (11:16)

We do that piece together. And then I work with people in containers that focus on spirituality, sexuality, and shamanism.

Amanda Kaufman (11:27)

Very, very, very cool. I'm so curious about the business side of what you do, because obviously, well, maybe not obviously, I'm assuming that people have some kind of a sex life. There's all kinds of people that do, and you've chosen to pursue the topic and the subject matter.

Laurie Handlers (11:28)

Thank you.

Okay.

Amanda Kaufman (11:47)

in a particular direction, can you talk to me a little bit about making something like this work as a business, as a coaching business? What have you discovered really matters to pursuing something you're clearly very passionate about, very knowledgeable about? In my experience working with coaches, knowledge isn't rarely the problem, but I think what's really remarkable about what you've

done beyond the core expertise is that you have monetized this really well. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? What would you say to somebody who is a geek or a nerd in their particular realm and they're maybe a little worried about making it work?

Laurie Handlers (12:26)

Well, I mean, for me, just, when I started, a lot of people already knew me in the workshop space and also in the world of transformation. So I used to work at Landmark Education, which is like transformation, but it's this only. It's not like this down. So when I moved over into like the whole being, I just told people what I was doing and they saw the difference in me.

They saw me before and then they saw me after and they all said, I'll what she's having. So that's how it began. Like I just started doing classes up and down the East coast of the US and my classes were full. People were just like, I want that. I want what she has. She just, she's different. She's full, fully expressed. And I would just say that it has to do with being credible.

Like the first thing is like I'm authentically who I am. And so people know that when they're, when I'm not just telling them something and being a different way in my life. No, I'm being like this throughout. number one is being authentically representing the brand. And then the other part is marketing. mean, letting people know that this is available, that this is out there and that I'm, I've been at it a long time.

and they're gonna be safe when they explore. They don't have to be in a couple. They just have to want to be more full in their life. I mean, I've had every segment of the population. I've had people whose partners have died and then they were like, now what am I gonna do? That's including my father, who when my mother died, my father was like, he said to me, I gotta talk to you.

What am I gonna do? I'm gonna start dating. And I said to him, buy condoms. And he said to me, no, you know, like he couldn't fathom it. And I said, yeah, there's a lot of things floating around that weren't floating around when you were young, you know. So he became my student, but I sort of had like widow, widowers. I've had people who split and didn't know what they were gonna do next. I've had people who are together. Maybe one comes where the other one comes to class.

Amanda Kaufman (14:13)

You're the expert.

Mm-hmm.

Laurie Handlers (14:40)

And then they realize like, there's a lot here. There's a lot that I didn't know about. And there's a lot to myself as a whole being that I never even dared to talk about with my partner or with anybody. So I think it's marketing to people who, who really want to live a full life. I don't see how somebody can live a full life if they're not sexually expressed. You know, I've even had, in the old days, I had a few nuns.

Amanda Kaufman (15:04)

Exactly.

Laurie Handlers (15:07)

and priests who left the church and got together. And I said, why didn't you come to me? They said, you just, you're it. We like you and we trust you and we wanna be with you if we're gonna have a whole new life after the church. So I've had that too. Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (15:27)

love that. You

know, there's a lot of really beautiful lessons in that, in like how you described it, you know, that aligned authenticity of this is who I am, but allowing, like you've said so many times on this very short show, like it's expression. We've got to express, we have to allow people to see us and then they can make an empowered decision. And you know, that's a really powerful...

And it's like more than marketing, really. It's your beingness and embodiment of your role. so good. Lori, what is the best way for people to catch up with you, get to know you better?

Laurie Handlers (15:59)

Totally. Yeah. ⁓

Well, I think on Instagram, actually, like Instagram these days is the is the place you could find me at lori.handlers. It's l-a-u-r-i-e dot h-a-n-d-l-e-r-s. That's my Instagram handle. And I'd say that that's where I express the most, both in stories and and and reels and things that I'm posting.

And if they came there, if they want to, come there, they could they could send me a comment, which I have like a free giveaway, which is called the three Rs quiz. So it's they could just ask for the three Rs quiz. And that tells you if you're in relationship, if you're in. Resentment. Resistance or.

Revenge and you know, you know what act course of action to take as a result of taking that quiz But I have so much more. I mean, I had yeah, I have 15 years of podcasts and I have all kinds of things plus my books ⁓ Which yeah

Amanda Kaufman (17:06)

That's so good.

for sure and we'll make sure to include

the links to all of that dear listener in the show notes below. Laurie, thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Laurie Handlers (17:23)

It is my pleasure. It's so great to be asked the best questions, you know what I mean? Like the most direct questions, like this is it. This is your life. So do you want to be happy, as happy as you can be, or do you want to be like wondering? I would rather be as happy as I can be.

Amanda Kaufman (17:41)

with you right there, absolutely. And dear listener, I'm sure you have three friends who would love this episode. So make sure you grab the link to the episode. You text it to them. You send it to them on Messenger. And if you've got 30 seconds, please, please, please just take a few minutes to give us an honest review. know, Lori showed up so well here. We really appreciate her and all of our other guests. If you take 30 seconds to rate the podcast, it helps people to choose us.

Laurie Handlers (17:43)

Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (18:10)

when they're listening. So until our next episode, I'm so excited to see you next time. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss it. Until then, do what matters.