Elle Chase, CLC, CSE, ABS
Her intimacy, sex, and relationship work focuses on empowerment, relational skills, empathy, reducing shame, and addressing the intersection of body image and sexuality. As a life and executive coach, she draws on 25 years of experience as a film executive, producer, and five-time business owner across multiple industries. Her coaching approach integrates various modalities, including somatics, vagus nerve regulation, parts work/IFS, and mindfulness and meditation.
Over the past 15 years, her writing has been featured in Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Huffington Post, among others, and she authored the highly regarded Curvy Girl Sex: 101 Body-Positive Positions to Empower Your Sex Life (Fair Winds Press, 2017). Elle is also a sought-after expert, frequently quoted in international media, including The Today Show, Nightline, The New York Times, USA Today, and The New York Post. Additionally, her insights have been featured on top-rated podcasts and radio shows such as Sex with Emily, Dan Savage’s Lovecast, and Loveline.
Elle’s advocacy work includes founding and serving as the executive director of the Los Angeles Academy of Sex Education, an organization that provided community-wide sex education classes taught by leading experts. She also serves on the advisory board of EducateUS, an organization dedicated to advancing progressive sex education policy nationwide.
Her coaching practice is rooted in being trauma-aware, social and racial justice-informed, LGBTQIA+ affirming, kink-friendly, fat-positive, intersectionally feminist, and a disability advocate. She is also honored to work with clients in the CNM and SW communities as well as those exploring alternative relationship dynamics.
Elle Chase (she/her) is a certified life coach, intimacy and relationship coach, board-certified sexologist, and multi-certified sexuality educator. She has trained with some of the most respected programs in the U.S., including the San Francisco Sex Information (SFSI) Sex Educator Training Program and the Kinsey Institute’s Human Sexuality Intensive Program. Elle is a Certified Sexologist through the American Board of Sexology, and the American College of Sexologists International, as well as a Certified Life Coach through Lumia Life Coaching, an ICF-accredited program. Elle is a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, and primarily works individually with women, femmes + NB/GNC individuals, and with all genders in relationships of two or more.
“Why did you become a coach?”
When people ask me this question I always say “it’s a long story.” Here’s the abbreviated version.
Part of my sexual exploration was creating a sexy Tumblr page (back when Tumblr was relevant). I would curate gifs and images that really spoke to my sensual self, what I felt deep in my bones to be an empowered, authentic expression of passion, desire, and pleasure. It was just for me and my lover to enjoy … until all of a sudden others discovered what I was posting and the theme seemed to resonate with them too. To my surprise, I was getting emailed with questions about sex. It dawned on me that I had created a powerful tool that had the ability to stir sexual curiosity (maybe even a satori) in others. As I began to research fact-based answers, and dole out empathetic encouragement, I fell in love with (and saw a need for) pleasure-inclusive sex education …. and the rest is history.
In my past life (before sex education and coaching), I had a variety of experiences. I helped run a successful multimillion-dollar production company, I trained as a stage actor and was a stand-up comedian, I was a luxury travel coordinator for the Fortune 100 and celeb elites, I was a professional make-up artist making celebrities beautiful for the red carpet, I even made custom hats for Tracy Ullman - how random is that?
If it’s not already obvious, I am one of the many walking examples of how life doesn’t always end up the way you think it will. One minute I was married, planning a family, and running my own company, and the next minute I was a sexually adventurous divorceé, curating a porn site, writing erotica, and teaching classes about how to feel sexy in a body that you don’t like. The point is, what happens more often than not, is that many people discover there’s no one path where they’re always moving forward toward one particular goal that will make them a happy and fulfilled human. Since we were born, we’ve been inundated with the expectations our family and the world have for us. But, at some point, we need to make a vote for our own life … one that values our own goals for happiness.
There are people out there who want to make space for the zigzags and the swirls of life and want to get more comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing what they want to do “when they grow up.”
Those are my people because I am one of those people.
Without warning, while watching a passionate love scene on True Blood,
I suddenly broke down hysterically crying. I felt an untenable deep longing and grief pour out of me, and at that moment, I recognized an unexplored truth about myself that I had pushed down my entire life. I had never experienced passion. I had never identified myself as a sexual being at all and furthermore, never had pleasurable sex. I had to know what passion felt like and discover my sexual and sensual self. Japanese Buddhists have a word for what was happening to me, “satori,” which means “sudden enlightenment and a state of consciousness attained by intuitive illumination.” Compulsively driven, I was consumed with my new goal. Soon I was learning how to flirt on Twitter of all places, left my marriage, and started writing, researching, and exploring eventually culminating in a passionate love affair where I was finally discovering all I had been seeking.
