Great Sex, Naturally (42 page)

CHAPTER 8

PRESERVING
YOUR PASSION

Enhancing Your Libido
for the Rest of Your Life

“You can have anything you want if you want it …
with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin
and joins the energy that created the world.”

—S
HEILAH
G
RAHAM
,
T
HE
R
EST OF THE
S
TORY

Great sex, as we said at the beginning of this book, is your natural birthright; you were born of orgasm, and your body is perfectly designed to manifest sexual pleasure. This book has given you the essential tools you need to create vibrant sexual health at any time in your life, but great sex isn’t your birthright on just a temporary basis. You can utilize all that you’ve discovered in these pages to empower your sexuality every day, for the rest of your life.

There are ways of thinking about the changes recommended in this book that will support your ability to incorporate them into your life and make them lasting and permanent. Let’s look at some thoughts you can use to “frame” the contents of the previous chapters and help create change in your sexual health that never goes away.

Your Libido, Naturally: Common Sense and Uncommon Sensuality

As your personal guide to enhancing your sex life, this book contains a lot of detailed information. But your underlying impulse to use it—perhaps what made you choose this book in the first place—is a matter of your own intuition. You may have instinctively found its natural take on sexual health more attractive than what conventional pharmaceutical methods have to offer. On a gut level, you probably resonated with its core approach to enhancing sex, which could be summed up as
natural measures
,
maximum pleasures
.

Far too many women let themselves be convinced that they need to use synthetic hormones or other unnatural means to regain their libido, when this simply isn’t so. As you’ve seen throughout this book, innumerable factors and forces determine your sexual health, and you can strongly influence them with your daily choices. We’ve explored hundreds of safe, natural ways you can cultivate and enhance your sexual energy, from the wisdoms of contemporary natural medicine to secrets passed down to you from ancient traditions.

Your attraction to the natural approach in this book is, perhaps, also a matter of common sense and sound judgment. You may feel a basic impulse to avoid anything that runs counter to your intuitive awareness of what’s natural—from drugs with toxic side effects and foods grown with pesticides, to sexual lubricants containing parabens and personal-care items laced with carcinogens.

The fact that you’re reading this book shows you’re on the right track, and you’re making wise choices. As you move forward on your path to greater sexual health, continue to trust your common sense and follow the guiding instinct that brought you to this book. The rewards will be all-encompassing for your health and sexuality. By consistently applying the tips and techniques gathered in these chapters, you can transform your life and libido from the bottom up, at any age. Keep making the right choices during each new phase of your journey, and they’ll become stitched into the fabric of your being, with never-ending benefits. This is the essence of self-help; you help yourself, and you help yourself
to a better life
.

A Call to Action: Your Rx for Great Sex

This book provides you with an enormously varied collection of steps you can take to enhance your sexuality. But you’ll get the most from it, as we pointed out in the Introduction, if you use it as a whole—as opposed to referring only to certain pleasure-nourishing nuggets of information, or homing in on specific sexual-health solutions. The effectiveness of any single choice you make to enhance your sexuality is shaped—and may ultimately be decided—by its relation to the larger backdrop of your overall well-being. One of the great secrets to enhancing your libido is that context is everything; with all things sexual, all things are contextual.

This is why some of the benefits this book offers will be most profound if you take a holistic approach, balancing and transforming many aspects of your health and sexuality in unison. The effects of individual aphrodisiacs you’ve discovered in
Chapter 5
, for example, may even exceed their reputations and your expectations—as long as you take full advantage of many of the other health-boosting and libido-liberating tools you’ve gleaned from other chapters. If you apply the secrets you’ve found in these pages from this perspective, the power of their cumulative effects may amaze you, and continue to reverberate in your life far into the future.

Of course, you won’t be able to begin applying everything you’ve gained from this book at once, and you may want to integrate some of its recommendations into your life gradually, at a pace that suits you. One of the best ways to start using it to enhance your sexuality is by choosing key elements from each chapter and making a plan—with your partner, if appropriate—to blend them into your lifestyle.

With this in mind, let’s recap the main points we’ve addressed in
Chapters 1 through 7
, review the measures you can take to bring fundamental changes to fruition in your life, and reflect on how you can stay motivated to that end. This is your “call to action,” if you will—an exhortation to create a strategy that will allow you to begin benefiting immediately from some of the most important options you’ve garnered from these chapters.

1.
Maximize your mind power.
In Part I of this book, we explored a wide range of essential tools and techniques you can use to create a stable sexual-health foundation. First and foremost, we looked at the part your mind and spirit plays in enhancing your sexuality in
Chapter 1
. Opening with this topic made sense; no sooner were you
opening
this book than you were
opening
your mind to the notion that your mind is capable of
opening
any door for your sexual well-being. That’s a lot of “openings” for one sentence—and for your sexual health.

Your mental and spiritual well-being are vital to your sexual health; not only do they promote your capacity for great sex in a host of ways in and of themselves, but each option laid out in
Chapters 1 through 7
—each tool and technique you may use to enhance your health and sexuality—depends crucially on the power of your mind to choose it. Your mind’s potential to make healthy choices, again and again, may be the single most influential factor in your ability to achieve great sex, and will determine the benefits you reap from every secret you’ve discovered in this book.

After touching on the close ties between your sexual health and your general health, and the decisive role of your psychological well-being for both,
Chapter 1
delved into your mind power in more detail. Being conscious of how your brain may affect your feelings and sexuality can help you nurture a relationship—which is why we looked at key connections between your physical brain, the sway of sex-related brain chemicals surging through your body, and the intense emotions you can experience in a sexual partnership. Remember that you can harness your mind’s power to build and maintain a great relationship with the means we outlined—by using time, communication, sexual trust, and support for your right brain.

In
Chapter 1
you also explored your brain’s
plasticity
—the physiological basis for your ability to replace negative habits of thought with new ones that promote health, love, and pleasure. As you continue moving ahead on your journey, keep making good use of this gift; with the combined effects of the methods we mapped out—allowing time for change to happen, using affirmations, meditating, and keeping a journal—you can help reshape your sexual destiny. In this chapter you looked at additional ways you can support a healthy sexual relationship by being aware of the important links between your self-esteem, behavior patterns, and sexual health. Remain mindful that you need healthy self-esteem to repeatedly make the wholesome choices that great sex hinges on—and that it’s imperative to recognize the signs, and take appropriate steps, if you need to boost your self-esteem.

When you apply any of the tips, tools, or techniques in other chapters to your sex life, remember that they work best when used in harmony with everything you’ve discovered in
Chapter 1
. You stand to gain the most for your sexuality, in short, by always keeping the power of your mind in mind.

2.
Fortify your foundation.
Since every facet of your daily routines can affect your natural predisposition for sexual gratification, in
Chapter 2
we explored the Great Sex Lifestyle—a way of life that solidifies your sexual-health foundation and allows you to fully bring out your pleasure potential. Without many of the features of this lifestyle, your capacity for great sex may, to one degree or another, lie dormant within you, suppressed by poor health, incessant struggles with unsexy symptoms, and compromising conditions. But by following this lifestyle on a consistent basis, you can inestimably increase the likelihood of realizing the full scope of your birthright to pleasure. Review this chapter often, and continue to assimilate its recommendations into your daily habits; the rewards can be life altering.

In
Chapter 2
we profiled three key components of your Great Sex Lifestyle. First, we looked at a dietary plan that can help you manifest your potential for radiant sexual health. Continue to adhere to the Great Sex Diet—including all of its suggestions on organic food, carbohydrates, protein, healthy fats, nutritional supplements, and more—and your innate capacity for great sex will have the opportunity it deserves to shine. And remember to keep enjoying the “Dynamic Dozen” dietary choices recommended for spicing up your pro-libido diet.

Next, in
Chapter 2
we looked at the sex-enhancing effects of exercise. As you put the Great Sex Lifestyle into practice, keep in mind that your body was made to move, that exercise is therapy, and that finding forms of meaningful movement can help you maintain your momentum. Balance your yin and yang exercises, and choose types of exercise, like dance, that put you in touch with your pelvis. Refer to
Chapter 2’s
discussion of exercise whenever you need a healthy reminder of the many close connections between movement and your sexual well-being, and use it to keep you keyed up about the potential of exercise to uplift your sexual energy.

Last but definitely not least,
Chapter 2
outlined another essential method you can employ to help attain the heights of sexual fulfillment you’re meant to experience: with the Great Sex Detox, you can purge impurities from your home environment and streamline your body’s ability to rid itself of hidden toxins that hamper your health and limit your libido. As you discovered, this can not only recharge your sexuality but also invigorate your overall well-being; by
literally
bringing out the worst in you, it can figuratively bring out the best in you. Take advantage of the step-by-step 21-day dietary cleanse that accompanies the Great Sex Detox (along with the recommended supplements and other tools) and, if you like, continue to include “magic” smoothies in your diet indefinitely.

Once you complete the dietary cleanse, as long as you maintain good eating and exercise habits, its benefits will be ongoing, and in all likelihood you’ll continue to feel renewed, revitalized, healthy, and sexier than ever.

3.
Care for your core.
With your sexual-health foundation securely in place, there’s a lot you can do to enhance your libido by nourishing your sexual center—the “great sex vortex” of your pelvis and sex organs. In addition to being your sexual centerpiece, containing thousands of nerve endings perfectly designed to provide you with sensual pleasure and enable you to reach orgasm, this phenomenal area of your body is pivotal in numerous other ways. It allows you to menstruate, release eggs, and procreate; serves as your center of gravity; supports your bladder and other vital organs; and facilitates the elimination of wastes. It’s also critical to your health in Chinese medicine, as the energetic nucleus of all the chi that flows through your body.

You can use
Chapter 3
as a tool to help give your sexual core the attention it needs to thrive. By becoming familiar with the elegant nature of your pelvic and sexual anatomy—including your vulva, clitoris, perineum, vagina, urethral sponge, cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries—and understanding what you need to know to keep them in vital health, you’ll be more able to bring out your inherent disposition for sexual well-being. And you’re further empowered by being aware of what happens in your body during arousal and orgasm, and all the ways in which sex can benefit your health.