ColumnHere are 9 sex tips for giving you and your partner an organic sex-lift.

Sex is natural, sex is good, but not everybody is doing nearly enough of what they should. We’re busy, we’re stressed out, and we’re tired, but that’s precisely why we should be having more sex. Being intimate cuts heart attack risk, burns calories, increases endorphins and boosts immunity. But in a technology-addled world where we’re often more intimate with our iPhones than our active or would-be lovers, sometimes you need a few tips. It’s time to slow down and put some eco into your sex. Here’s a guide to getting it on au naturel.

1. Fall in Love With Your Own Body

Eco-Sex starts with your own body. Practice being Cleopatra from the moment you wake in the morning until your lover arrives to pick you up (or just comes home from work). If you haven’t already begun excising toxic chemicals from your beauty routine, let better sex be your clarion call. Cleansing and moisturizing with EWG-approved products or DIY organic essential oil blends will make you look and feel beautiful. Falling in love with your own body is step number one for a healthy sex life: give your temple the respect it deserves.

2. Entertain Aphrodisiacs

Nibble on vegan and organic aphrodisiacs. Skip the heavy, artery-clogging, erection-killing steak and champagne dinner. Try a vegan and/or raw meal laced with aphrodisiacs like asparagus, ginger, avocado, and artichoke (to turn on women) and cinnamon, mango, squash, pumpkin and cayenne (to turn on the guys). Ginger and basil do double-duty, seducing both sexes.

3. Light it Up

Let there be candlelight. Particularly if you’re in a long-term relationship where it seems as if you and your partner are having a threesome with the television. It’s nice to ditch the grid, at least for an evening. Turn off all the electric lights and create a sensual, subtle, skin-flattering glow. Conventional candles are often made from toxic paraffin, so go for ethically sourced, eco-friendly, fair-trade varieties when possible. Cheekily-named (“Morning Wood” and “One Night Stand”) candles from A Scent of Scandal are vegan with cotton wicks. Essoya Candles use non-GMO soy and stimulating essential oil blends. Or try doing a craft night with your lover: make candles together before you make love.

4. Slip Into Something Natural

Wear sustainable skivvies. When sex gets too routine, the old cliché about lingerie really does work – especially when your panties are made from the good stuff. Forget the mass-produced Victoria’s Secret or even the Agent Provocateur – slip on underwear made from natural textiles like organic cotton and bamboo, and let the fireworks begin. Enamore, Araks, and Urban Fox make gorgeous, simple and sexy bras, panties, and teddies that both you and your lover will fancy.

5. Stay Ethical Right Down to…

Make your safe sex sustainable sex. The amazing folks behind Sir Richard’s Condom Company have created the first ethical condom. Vegan (certified by PETA), and sourced from sustainable latex, Sir Richard’s donates a condom to a developing country for every one you buy. Consider them the Tom’s Shoes of the sex industry. Luckily your pleasure is just as important to them as ethics are: the ultra-thin variety are seriously thin condoms that feel barely there. They’re also stylishly packaged and available at Whole Foods.

6. Oil Up Your Libido

Rub on some DIY massage oil. Coconut oil, the magical elixir that can be used in your hair, as a makeup remover, as a vegetable sauté, or in your smoothie is also a wonderful massage oil. Include a few drops of lavender and ylang-ylang essential oil (for stress-reduction) or neroli oil to stimulate libido.

7. Make Things Slippery

Make your lube organic. The conventional lube you find in the corner drugstore likely includes endocrine-disrupting parabens. Even some of the “natural” brands still have glycerin, which isn’t necessarily a toxic ingredient in other products, but not something you want near your nether regions. Glycerin strips the vagina of moisture, making it raw and more susceptible to yeast infections and even STI’s. Experiment with organic brands like Sliquid Organics or the UK-based Yes. Note: only use water-based lube with latex condoms – oil will degrade latex, rendering it useless. Keep your coconut oil away from your condoms.

8. Create An Adult Toy Box

Try sustainable sex toys. Yes, they require power. But that doesn’t mean they’re less than natural. The pleasure-pioneers at JimmyJane have created a line of sustainable, medical-grade, rechargeable silicone sex toys that last practically forever, unlike the throwaway, pthlalate-laced, plastic dildos of yore. These toys are gorgeous pieces of high-end design that belong on top of your night table instead of hidden in the drawer.

9. Take It Out of the Bedroom

Do it in the woods. You can, and you should change sexual venues. Find a safe, secluded spot in the wilderness and surrender to the wind and the leaves and the trees.

Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Ten Speed Press/Crown Publishing, 2010) and eight other books. Stefanie keeps her carbon footprint small in New York City, where she writes about sustainability, sexuality, reproductive rights, dating and relationships, politics, fashion, beauty, and more for many publications. Learn more about her at ecosex.net, follow her eco-sex exploits on Twitter or join her on Facebook.

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Image: kayla kandzora

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ColumnNothing’s steamier than an eco sex writer channeling Brigitte Bardot’s makeup.

In the steamy, hot month of August I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Stefanie Iris Weiss, the author of Eco-Sex for the filming of a French documentary on American sex. Friends only through our interwoven virtual connections on Facebook, I’d never communicated with her until days before she stepped foot into my apartment to have her face made up in an early 70’s Bardot inspired look she so desperately desired. Stefanie, by the way, is pretty much a sex bomb in the womanliest sense with her full hips, incredible cleavage, and cascading blond hair.

An hour later, sprawled out on a red and white checkered blanket on the grass in Central Park, Stefanie looked perfectly poised and ready for a romantic encounter with a semi-traditional picnic basket containing a bottle of organic wine and of course, some snacks deemed to be aphrodisiacs. Suddenly Stefanie started whipping out condoms, lubricants and vibrators discussing their particular “eco-friendliness,” and me, with an unconscious nodding of my head started taking notes.

Maybe it was when she began extolling the wonders of using coconut oil as a lubricant that I felt a little more in my own groove since I work with the oil in many different ways and it’s not as foreign to me as perhaps vibrator talk. One thing we are on common ground with though is that makeup adds to a woman’s overall sexy factor.

When I asked Stefanie why she thinks makeup enhances a woman’s sexiness, she answered:

“Makeup gives us the ability to enhance our natural beauty and play up our assets, which is the way I like to wear it during the day. It brings confidence, boldness, and reminds you of the kind of power you have. It allows you to walk into any given room like you own it. At the same time, when you have a shoot, an event, or just a hot date, you can wear makeup the way you’d play dress-up as a little girl. It can be a game, a ritual, a way of starting foreplay before you’ve even got anyone else in the room with you. I always say that sex begins with our relationship to our own bodies, the moment we wake up in the morning and look in the mirror. And when you begin to dress your face, the real fun starts.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. So, I will leave it at that.

Products used for the eco-sexy Bardot inspired look:

Jane Iredale Circle Delete Concealer #2

ZuZu Luxe Mineral Bronzer

ZuZu Luxe Brow Pencil in Flax

Couleur Caramel Lip Gloss in #802

Couleur Caramel Eye Shadow in Coppered Brown #52 and Light Taupe Brown #5

Youngblood Eye Liner in Black

Image of Stefanie: Jonathan Alpeyrie
Makeup: Kristen Arnett

The post High Definition: Eco Sexy Makeup with Author Stefanie Iris Weiss appeared first on EcoSalon.