Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (54 page)

Patricia Reis, a therapist who worked at my former office for a number of years, counseled one of my patients, Lydia, for several years concerning her chronic vaginitis. Reis learned that Lydia’s husband liked oral sex a great deal and rented numerous pornographic movies to try to stimulate her to perform oral sex. Lydia had been raped as a teenager. During the rape she had had to perform oral sex on her assailant. She recalled that the odor and the trauma of the event were so bad that the thought of oral sex had disgusted her ever since. Fortunately for her, after two years of therapy she was finally able to tell her husband firmly that oral sex was not something she could cooperate with willingly at that point. She had felt used by him sexually for years and needed to distance herself from this kind of sex for a while and reestablish comfort with her own sexual desires before she would be ready to consider the possibility of lovingly providing oral sex.

Whenever people use sex to diminish, control, or harm others, it does not contribute to the health of either participant. Many women have experienced the controlling attitudes and negative effects of certain religions on female sexuality. The tenets of the Roman Catholic and other Christian churches degrade sexuality—a normal human function—and subordinate it to reproduction. The consequences of such repression are seen in the problems women have in expressing their sexuality as well as in the sexual deviancy of some church repre sentatives, such as priests who have sexually abused children.

Many women are so invested in their sexual relationship at the expense of themselves that they repeatedly put themselves at risk for pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases rather than jeopardize the relationship. The pattern often starts early, in the teen years. A teenage girl wrote a letter to Ann Landers in which she complained that all her boyfriend wanted to do was have sex. He barely even talked to her anymore, and they no longer did much of any thing together except have sex. She was afraid to say anything to him, however, for fear of losing him!

I lectured at a local private high school several years ago on pro-choice issues. Afterward, several young men came up to me and told me that the girls they were having sex with didn’t ask them to use condoms—in fact, they had even told these boys, “It’s okay—you don’t have to use anything.” These girls (they were upper-middle-class and mostly white) perceived discussing contraception with their boyfriends as putting their social worth at stake. Some of today’s middle-school girls are providing oral sex as a way to win the attention of boys. Women have been socialized for centuries to put their physical bodies at risk in order to sustain interpersonal relationships that really don’t support them or their well-being. Though some studies show that condom use has increased, it is still true that many teenagers use no contraception. A report from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy in 2005 revealed that about 44 percent of boys and 55 percent of girls reported they used condoms inconsistently, and an ad ditional 8.6 percent of boys and 17.8 percent of girls didn’t use them at all.
¹⁴
Since 46 percent of all fifteen-to nineteen-year-olds in the United States have had sex at least once,
¹⁵
and a sexually active teen who does not use contraceptives has a 90 percent chance of getting pregnant within one year,
¹⁶
failure to use protection, against both pregnancy and disease, is a serious problem in this country.

RECLAIMING OUR EROTIC SELVES

Here’s the good news. Regardless of what has happened to us as children or what we’ve learned from our culture, our brains and bodies have the ability to change. This is known as plasticity. And when it comes to experiencing a fulfilling sex life at any age—this is great news. When we reclaim our own sexuality on our own terms, the whole world changes. When we learn how to turn ourselves on to life, instead of waiting for a Prince Charming to come along and do it for us, then we hold the reins of fulfillment in our own hands.

The most important thing to know is that a turned-on woman turns on the whole world. Think of the opening line to the old
Mary Tyler Moore
Show
theme song (“Who can turn the world on with her smile?”). It’s the truth. A turned-on woman is what turns on a man (or another woman). An angry, resentful woman does just the opposite. A business executive colleague of mine recently came up to me to thank me for helping his wife. It turns out that she had overheard me say that men like to please women and that a turned-on woman is what turns on a man. She went home and asked him if this was true. He said, “Absolutely!” From that moment on, their sex life reached a whole new level of satisfaction for both of them.

I first learned of this effect while teaching at Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts in New York City. I met a woman in her sixties who told me that her husband no longer needed to take Viagra to get erections. This was a direct result of her getting in touch with her own pleasure through participating in the School of Womanly Arts. A lightbulb went off for me. Increasing nitric oxide is the mechanism through which the erection-enhancing drugs work to increase blood flow to the penis. This woman had become “virtual Viagra” for her husband. Her turn-on had transferred to him and resulted in higher levels of nitric oxide and better erections. The implications of this are vast. The number one sexual dysfunction in women right now is lack of desire. This is the FSD referred to earlier. If a woman doesn’t know how to turn herself on, she won’t be able to turn her mate on, either. He may then turn to an erection-enhancing drug. Imagine how much healthier the world would be if women knew, in the words of Regena Thomashauer (Mama Gena), “how to put the key in their own ignition, and then drive down the road.” (I’ve written extensively about this in
The Secret Pleasures of
Menopause
[Hay House, 2008] and
The Secret Pleasures of Menopause
Playbook
[Hay House, 2009].)

Program for Consciously Reclaiming
the Erotic in Your Life

Sexual energy, or
eros,
is life force that permeates all of creation and is part of the joyfulness of life. It is exactly the opposite of
thanatos
—the force leading to death. For too long, our culture has dwelt on
thanatos,
without a balance from
eros
. It has taught us to fear, denigrate, and suppress our own eroticism, instead of using our erotic feelings as a sure sign that we are getting in the flow of a healthy and fulfilled life. Your body will tell you when you are heading in the direction of life-giving pleasure. You will actually feel it right in your genitals!

Before you get to the steps below, I want to stress that every man and woman I know has been, to one degree or another, adversely affected by our culture’s view of sex and the way it exploits and objectifies both men and women. Almost no women look the way our culture’s sex symbols look. Most of us don’t accept and love our bodies fully. Many women have been sexually abused in some way. Others have endured very hurtful comments from partners that have damaged their self-esteem. Men have also been harmed by our culture’s view of dominator sex. Many feel inadequate and worry about being accept able to women.

In the end, both men and women are looking for unconditional love and acceptance as well as sensual pleasure. Carl Jung called eros “relatedness” because eros is all about relationships as well. But most of us were never taught to be good lovers.

Here’s the good news. If you want to experience your birthright of glorious, healing sex, you can begin right now, with yourself. Whether you are single or in a relationship, gay or straight, when you change yourself and your relationship to your sexuality, then your outer experience of sexual relationships with others will change and improve as well. Guaranteed.

1.
Consciously decide to allow pleasure and life force to flow through you. Start affirming yourself as sexy. I don’t care how old you are or what you look like. Trust me. This is an inside job. Say the following out loud to yourself at least twice a day: “I am a sexy, irresistible woman.” Or my favorite: “I am Aphrodite. I make love with wild, unleashed abandon. I am an irresistible force of nature.” Make up your own affirmations. Remember, it all begins in your mind. Let the power of words and your mind consciously shape your sexual experience. Steve Bodansky, Ph.D., and Vera Bodansky, Ph.D., teach that a woman’s desire is an enormously powerful force for creating a more pleasurable life. I agree. When a woman feels sexy and consciously knows how to turn herself on by feeling sexy and exuding sexuality (just to please herself), she sends out a signal to the world that changes what and whom she attracts. She emulates the egg that sends the signal to the sperm.

An intriguing study recently done in Belgium illustrates this perfectly. Trained sexologists were able to discern with 80 percent accuracy if a woman has vaginal orgasms merely by observing the way she walks in public. Researchers found that vaginally orgasmic women have a more fluid, energetic, sensual walk with a longer stride and greater spinal rotation. This, they concluded, could reflect “the free, unblocked energetic flow from the legs through the pelvis to the spine.”
¹⁷

Here’s another suggestion. In her playful book
Life Magic: The 7 Keys to
Unlocking Your Magical Life
(Miramax, 2005), gifted clairvoyant Laura Bushnell recommends the following: Imagine that a person you consider very sexy (e.g., Sophia Loren, Salma Hayek—your choice) is pressed against your left side (the feminine receptive side). Breathe in her essence for about two minutes, imagining her sexy qualities permeating your body. Do this twice per day for about six weeks. You will notice a change. Consciously decide to do things that make you feel sexy. Wear sexy underwear under your business suit. Take more sensual baths. Read sexy romance novels. Fantasize more. (I know this is difficult when you have little kids and are working full-time. But, as with all good things, you have to consciously decide to have a good sex life.)

2.
Focus on sex and the erotic more. If you want your sex life to improve, you have to spend time thinking about sex and the things that turn you on. Though it is true that our culture is obsessed with sex and uses it to sell everything, few people actually make it a priority in their lives. We become voyeurs, not di rect participants. It’s time for that to change. Developing the capacity for sexual pleasure is a skill that can be learned like any other skill. The more you practice, the better you become. It’s a delightful feedback loop.

3.
Get fit and healthy. A sexy person is a healthy person. Many women find that the healthier they become, the more libido they have. Take a good multivitamin and do aerobic exercise three times a week for twenty minutes. You can’t be at your sexual best without good blood flow to the pelvis, and exercise and the right nutrients help with this. Do your Kegels regularly, too. (For more information on this topic, read
Healthy Sex Drive, Healthy You:
What Your Libido Reveals About Your Life
[Health Reflections Press, 2010] by Diana E. Hoppe, M.D., an ob-gyn colleague of mine.)

Ancient Taoist practices, still taught today, view sexual energy as life energy. When it is consciously directed during meditation, this energy can help rebuild organs within the body. Sexual energy is one of our most powerful energies for creating health. By using sexual energy consciously, whether we are in a relationship or not, we can tap into a true source of youth and vitality. One of my favorite ways of doing this involves using a jade egg. Saida Désilets, Ph.D., author of
Emergence of the Sensual Woman
(Jade Goddess Publishing, 2006), gives explicit instructions both in the book and on her CD for using a jade egg vaginally to develop dexterity, strength, flexibility, and tone. The vagina, like the sole of the foot, the ear, and the palm of the hand, has reflexology points that correspond to the major organs. The use of the jade egg stimulates these areas in a healthful way.
¹⁸
(See
www.thedesiletsmethod.com
.)

Although it takes time to learn these techniques, every woman’s health can benefit from developing her pelvic floor and vaginal muscles. Women who have healthy, strong pelvic muscles are less prone to vaginal problems and urinary stress incontinence, and they tend to have more fulfilling sexual functioning with better pelvic blood flow, better vaginal lubrication, and stronger orgasms. (For women who have experienced sexual or other pelvic trauma, I highly recommend seeing a physical therapist who specializes in pelvic floor rehabilitation. A good alternative would be a physical therapist who is skilled at the Wurn technique; see page 134.)

A note about medications: It is well known that certain antidepressant medications decrease libido. Ironically, new research is also showing that oral contraceptives, the ef fectiveness of which has long made women feel freer to have sex with out worrying about pregnancy, might actually contribute to long-term sexual dysfunction because the pill lowers testosterone levels—even after women discontinue taking it. (See the section on oral contraceptives in chapter 11, “Our Fertility,” for more information.) If you are on either of these medications, you can still experience very satisfying sex by using my suggestions to help develop more robust pleasure pathways in the brain.

4.
Connect with nature. They don’t call it the “birds and the bees” for nothing. Sexuality is abundantly reflected in nature. One of my friends recalled that when she went out the door of the church one Sunday morning in spring, the warm, earthy smell of a newly plowed field nearby awakened her senses. She remembered the combination of the smell and the sunshine as very erotic.
¹⁹
This makes sense—the brain pathways for the sense of smell are very close to those associated with arousal and sexuality. Another woman, a lesbian, said that she always thinks of the Grand Canyon when she’s making love. A third described swimming with dolphins as the most erotic experience of her life.
²⁰
Sunbathing is also associated with sexual arousal for many men and women. In ancient Greece, men used to run on the beach naked to expose their testicles to the sun. Modern studies have shown that this increases their testosterone levels. It is likely that in women sunlight increases the level of androgen, the testosterone-like hormone asso ciated with sexual desire.