About Laura Jurgens, PhD — Somatic Sex & Intimacy Specialist

Where neuroscience, somatic practice, and attachment theory meet the lived reality of your body.

My Mission

I’m here to help you have a future full of more pleasure and connection than you can currently imagine.

There’s a version of intimacy most people have never experienced — not because they’re incapable, but because nobody ever taught them how to get there. A culture built on performance, shame, and deeply gendered expectations has left most of us disconnected from our own bodies, our own desire, and our capacity for genuine connection.

My mission is to change that. For individuals and couples — and collectively. I believe pleasure is a birthright meant to nourish us, and too few of us know how to really connect to it. I believe that authentic desire belongs to everyone regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, body type, or relationship structure. And that the path back to genuine intimacy is through the body, not around it.

This is the work of Pleasure Uprising. And it’s the work I was made to do.

About Me

I’m Laura Jurgens, PhD — a Master Certified Somatic Sex and Intimacy Specialist, practical coach, researcher and educator. I work with individuals and couples who are done performing, done overthinking, and ready to actually feel something real.

My approach sits at the intersection of cutting-edge nervous system science, attachment theory, somatic body-based practice, and an explicitly feminist, intersectional lens.

I am not operating from intuition and weekend certifications. I read the research. I understand the neuroscience. And I build every piece of my practice on what actually works — in the body, not just the mind.

I work with women, men, and gender-nonconforming people across the full spectrum of sexuality and relationship structure. My practice is explicitly inclusive — queer-affirming, multicultural, and grounded in the understanding that pleasure looks different for everyone and belongs to everyone.

The Pleasure Path Method™

Most people arrive having tried the obvious things. Therapy. Books. Honest conversations that went nowhere. Maybe hormones. None of it reached the real issue — because the real issue doesn’t live in your thoughts alone. It lives in your body.

Talking and learning from books won’t change the disconnect. Your body needs new, reparative experiences.

The Pleasure Path Method™ is my signature somatic (body-based) framework, developed from years of research and practice. It moves clients through four evidence-based steps:

1. Understand Shift out of blame, shame, and self-criticism and into genuine curiosity — about yourself, your patterns, and what’s actually been shaping your experience. This is where relief lives. Most clients feel it within the first few sessions.

2. Discover Go on the joyfully pleasurable journey of finding out what actually lights you up — how your unique erotic self works, what your body responds to, what helps you feel safe, free, and truly open to desire. This step is often the one clients have never been guided through (or given themselves permission to take).

3. Express Learn to communicate your desires, needs, and limits with clarity and confidence — with a partner and with yourself. Not scripted techniques. What you truly long to say. How you truly long to be heard. Learn how to do it and practice it with lighthearted ease.

4. Connect Become a boss at repairing relationship ruptures in ways that bring you closer, hold your own limits without guilt, and build the kind of connection that genuinely nourishes — partnered or not. This is where sustainable intimacy lives. It opens you up to feeling fully seen and heard in a way that melts the bracing and anxiety of the past.

My Approach

I use somatic (body-based), neuroscience-informed, and cognitive (mindset) tools — always grounded in current research on desire, arousal, and attachment. Everything we do is paced to the individual client, never forced, and typically really fun. People (like all animals) learn best through play. I work with the nervous system directly, which is why my approach produces results that talk-based approaches often can’t reach. Insight is a starting point, not a destination.

My practice is:

Research-backed — I hold a PhD in biological sciences from UC Davis and I stay current with the research on desire, arousal, nervous system regulation, and attachment. What I teach is grounded in evidence, not trend.

Somatically trained — I am certified through the Somatica® Institute (accredited by the American Board of Sexologists International and approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists) and trained in NeuroAffective Touch® — a method that releases attachment and developmental trauma held as deep bracing in the body.

Cognitive and behavioral — I’m also certified through The Life Coach School in cognitive-based mindset coaching, which means I can work with both the body and the mind simultaneously. I teach realistic, structured ways to shift your mindset and feel more empowered, not B.S. affirmations that you’ll never believe.

Explicitly inclusive — queer-affirming, gender-inclusive, multicultural, and intersectional feminist in approach. All bodies, all relationship structures, all orientations are welcome here.

All sessions are clothes-on and do not involve genital touch. In-person sessions may involve mutually consensual touch in service of your goals — for example, learning to communicate about touch or practicing different ways to initiate.

My Story

It’s been a winding path. Yours might have been too.

I’m a self-liberated former academic research professor, community organizer, and farm worker, among other things. I worked three jobs putting myself through college. I’ve been a homeless independent kid and a survivor of child abuse and sexual assault. I know what it is to have your sense of self — your body, your desire, your right to take up space — shaped by experiences that were so heavy that you shut down, avoid, distract, isolate, overwork, and pretend you’re “fine.”

And I know what it is to find your way back.

For a long time I had a hard time knowing what I wanted, let alone asking for it. I was disconnected from my emotions and my body. I was terrified of conflict and of being “too much.” But I learned to reconnect with myself step by step — and then to connect authentically with others. I came home to the power of my own body, my pleasure, my boundaries, and my genuine capacity for joy in intimacy and great connections.

That process — not just surviving but actually thriving, actually feeling good, actually wanting what you want without apology — is what I teach. It works. And it’s available to you.

For Practitioners

I work with therapists, pelvic floor physical therapists, physicians, and other practitioners as a specialist referral resource. If your clients are dealing with desire concerns, intimacy challenges, sexual shame, or attachment-based barriers to connection, I offer a level of specialized somatic and attachment-informed expertise that falls outside most therapeutic training.

I’m happy to connect, answer referral questions, or co-consult on complex cases. You can reach me directly at laura [at] laurajurgens [dot] com