There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter, which is why I am instilling empowering values coupled with an open line of communication from the very beginning.

Just the thought of my 14-month-old daughter, Everly, incites an emotional reaction that’s more powerful than any feeling I’ve ever experienced. Heck, I’d bet money that writing this article will make me cry at some point during the process because I just love her so damn much. She’s cutting a particularly difficult tooth this week, and, aside from a fever, this is probably the most uncomfortable experience of her short life — something I know, after more than three decades of being alive, will someday seem insignificant.

I grew up in in the ’80s and ’90s and became an adult in the early 2000s, all decades I like to consider sweet spots when it comes to having just enough technology to improve quality of life, but before social media was so powerful that a single slip-up could become life tarnishing. Today, our goals for raising girls are similar, yet with the prevalence of privacy-invading apps, extreme Photoshop, and a media obsessed with celebrities and stardom, we have a relatively new set of battles to face.

And while each of us may handle these situations differently, there’s something you and I can both agree on: we want our daughters to be happy, well-adjusted people who are confident in themselves! Because of this common thread uniting all mothers of little girls, I thought it would be beneficial to highlight some of the more important things I plan to teach my daughter about life.

1. Assume Everything is Photoshopped

Today’s standards of beauty are unrealistic. The flawless, poreless skin you see on the cover of Vogue isn’t real. The insane cleavage on that Victoria’s Secret poster has likely gotten that way through the use of something the lingerie brand’s former resident photo retoucher, “Sarah,” likes to call the insertion of “chicken cutlets” into the bras and swimwear.

When preparing images for print, she told Refinery 29 that she was instructed to make the Victoria’s Secret model’s breasts larger and retouch areas where hair and stubble would normally be, reminding readers, “They come to these photo shoots and, like, they have their arms up in the classic beach pose, and they have, like, hairy armpits. They all have stubbly pubes — all the normal stuff [non-models have].” So there. You’re beautiful, girl, pubic hair, stretch marks, scars and all!

2. Your Sexual Orientation Doesn’t Matter

Your sexual orientation doesn’t matter to me and neither does the gender you choose to identify with. I’ve already considered that my daughter may be anything other than straight. She may not even wish to keep her body the way it is, but if you think I’d chastise her for being who she is, then you’d be mistaken.

Expect that your daughter may one day come to you about these issues, too, and when she does, prepare to support her. The American Psychological Association published a study showing that LGB teens who experienced parental rejection grew up to be “8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide, 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression, 3.4 times more likely to use illegal drugs, and 3.4 times more likely to have had unprotected sex than LGB peers who reported no or low levels of family rejection.”

3. Know Your Body and Explore Your Sexuality

One day, we’ll have version of “the talk” and I’m not dreading it. In fact, I’m looking forward to being open with you from an early age, teaching you to identify your genitals by their proper names, and hopefully helping you feel comfortable coming to me with anything. When that day happens, this is what I want you to know.

You have a vulva and a vagina and a clitoris and they are glorious. They will serve you well to masturbate, look at your vagina in the mirror, and enjoy who you are as a sexual being. Don’t be like me and not masturbate for the first time until you’re in your early twenties, explore and discover your body sooner, rather than later. Heck, do this before you even consider having a sexual partner — you may find that the urge to have sex is greatly diminished, or even subpar to what you can do for yourself.

Like Joyce McFadden, psychoanalyst, speaker and author of “Your Daughter’s Bedroom: Insights for Raising Confident Women,” said, “If we don’t teach girls to understand and respect the capacities of their bodies, and help them navigate the complexities sexuality can impose on their social lives, it takes a toll on their self worth and makes them lose faith in us.”

4. You Don’t Have to be Famous to be Important

Okay, okay, I’m totally biased, because you will always be important to me, but in the grand scheme of things, and contrary to what the media might have you believe, you don’t have to be rich or famous to be important. Whether you’re a kindergarten teacher, a nuclear physicist, or a stay-at-home-mom, the job you do contributes to society in a positive way and is meaningful as long as it makes you happy.  

I say this because society’s infatuation with celebrities has become so out of control that there is a bonafide psychological condition known as celebrity worship scale (sometimes known as syndrome), or CWS for short. While individuals with these disorders are among the more extreme cases of celebrity obsession we hear about, there is a similar, less intense attitude that spans many media outlets. I mean, our country did just elect a celebrity into office, for crying out loud.

And if you think our teenage girls are exempt, then think again. Psychology Today released details showing a “correlation between the pathological aspects of CWS and poor mental health.” Although it cautions that most of the studies have been conducted on adults, “studies relating to body image have also included adolescents, and have found that among teenage females (aged 14 to 16 years) there is a relationship between intense-personal celebrity worship and body image (i.e., those teenage girls who identify with celebrities have much poorer body image compared to other groups studied).”

5. Take Social Media with a Grain of Salt

It may seem like your life revolves around what your friends are doing on Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and all of the other cool apps your mom will be too old to understand, but there’s one thing I know about life, and it’s try not to believe everything you see or read on social media. The majority of people only post what they want you to see. Sort of like a really good magic trick, social media has invented a platform for us to create an illusion of the perfect life.

I also know this may be asking the impossible, but try not to worry about how many “likes” you get or followers you have. You’re worth so much more than a click or double tap. 

And please, for the love of God, don’t post that partially-clothed selfie. You will be grounded, young lady. For life.

Related on EcoSalon

I May Have Lost the Breastfeeding Battle, But I Won the War
4 Ways I Have a Better Body Image AFTER a Baby Came Out of Me
The One and Only: Is Having an Only Child Better for Parents and the Planet?

The post V is for Vagina: 5 Things I Want My Daughter to Know About Life appeared first on EcoSalon.

Erika Lust candidly discusses ethical, female-friendly porn, creative project XConfessions, and the impact mainstream porn is having on our children.

There’s a movement happening in the erotic film industry, and women are at the helm. Contrary to mainstream porn’s depiction of extreme violence, degradation, utilization of human trafficking, and a myriad of other transgressions, this variety of ethically-made, female-friendly porn is changing the way viewers experience on-screen sex. Erika Lust, founder of the Barcelona-based, award-winning indie film and production company Erika Lust Films, and creator of crowdsourced cinematic film site XConfessions, burst onto the adult scene in 2004 with indie short film “The Good Girl” and hasn’t looked back since.

After studying political science and gender studies at University of Lund in Sweden, Lust read “Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible’” and had an epiphany, of sorts. Similar to others, Lust says “I was exposed to porn at a young age, like many people, and my first reaction was disappointment. When I was older, I decided to give it another try, but the same woman in heels was still giving a blowjob to a police officer to get rid of a fine.” Upon reading the book, however, her eyes were opened to a new way of thinking.

“It was the first book to look at pornography as a genre with a history, as a specific cinematic trend, and as a part of contemporary discourse on sexuality,” says Lust. “Beside being such a theoretical work…it made me realize porn was not only porn. I realized that mainstream porn is not something that really reflects any truths about sex — but it makes a statement, an idea; it expresses ideologies and values and also opinions about sex and gender.”

The more she learned about the discourse of pornography, the more she says that she wanted to try her hand at creating a film that represented her own ideas and values, while also being something that would appeal to women and men seeking sensual and ethical erotic content.

Today, she oversees XConfessions and Eroticfilms.com. The first is a crowdsourced site where Lust gathers anonymous confessions from her viewers and brings them to life in a high-quality cinematic film experience. Lust pointed out that the desires and kinks are vast and have exposed her to what she claims is “how amazingly creative and diverse female fantasies are,” noting that they’re “often far kinkier than men’s fantasies.” The latter is an adult site comprised of ethically-sourced porn by a variety of directors and features categories like Trans, BDSM/Fetish, Gay, Lesbian, Women Directors, and Sex Education. Depicting a variety of body types, races, and sexual orientations, the site coincides with her commitment to diversity.

When reflecting on mainstream porn, Lust says it “shows sex as a thing that men do to women, or that women do for men, which means misogynistic porn that objectifies women and places unrealistic expectations on both sexes. The representation of male pleasure is the ultimate goal, the scene typically unfolds through the male gaze, and the cumshot seems to be mandatory to end the scene. The female character is being used to satisfy others, but not themselves.”

In comparison, Lust says her films show women and men “as sexual collaborators, not as objects or machines,” and places a strong emphasis on representing female sexuality and desires, including taking into account the female perspective. “The most important message is that female pleasure matters. Not because male pleasure doesn’t matter, it does too,” but because, for decades, women’s pleasure has been ignored in mainstream porn, Lust says she wants to represent women “who assert sexual agency” and, in turn, offer women an empowering and positive experience after watching her films.

And that she does. Because of Lust’s openness to fans, keen artistic eye, and ability to diversify while still creating quality female-friendly porn, she says of the positive feedback she gets a lot of Facebook messages and e-mails thanking her for her work. “In fact…due to the release of ‘Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On,’ I have been overwhelmed by how many people have discovered me and sent me e-mails,” she says.

With a casting process that is “long and thorough” and an unconventional directing method that abides by her rule of not actually directing the sex at all, Lust ensures that the actors are excited and enthusiastic about participating and lets the performers “do what feels natural and pleasurable.”  

In addition to being a pioneer in the female-friendly porn industry, Lust is also a mother to two young girls with her partner and co-founder of Erika Lust films, Pablo Dobner, and the couple are conscious of the type of impact her work can have on them. “We’ve always asserted that educating our children and teens about pornography and sex is far more useful than attempting to try and stop them watching it. But it has come to our attention that children of far younger ages than we expected are being exposed to porn — children as young as 8 or 9.” That’s the age of her daughters, and Lust says add to that her unique voice in the dialogue around pornography and its influence on young people “Sparked something within me. So my husband and I have launched a non-profit project, ThePornConversation.org,” which is designed as a free tool for parents to help with instigating conversations about porn at home.

Labeling “porn as the new sex-ed,” Lust is equally as passionate about protecting children from misinterpreting the unrealistic expectations set forth by the mainstream porn industry.

“We are giving our children zero framework for contextualizing porn — for discussing it or balancing its potent images against everyday adult relationships,” she says. “But online porn is there. It can be improved, ethical adult cinema is on the rise, but mainstream online porn is going nowhere…the sooner we talk to them and educate them the better.”

Related on EcoSalon

5 Sex-Positive, Female-Friendly Porn Sites (NSFW)
5 Reasons BDSM is Good for Your Health: Break Out the Handcuffs, Girl
American Sex Education Needs to Catch Up to France: #NowWhat

The post Going Deeper with Female-Friendly Porn Director and Mother, Erika Lust appeared first on EcoSalon.

Kick the abusive and misogynistic mainstream porn to the curb, and choose sex-positive, female-friendly porn made especially with women in mind.

While there is still much debate over whether or not any porn is actually good for you, there seems to be a space carved out in erotic cinema that’s more conducive to not just the viewers, but also to the women in the films. Often deemed sex-positive, feminist-friendly, or female-friendly porn, when you compare these legitimate sites to mainstream porn, the difference is like night and day.

Female-friendly porn is different in that it varies the body type, represents more “conventional” women, makes female pleasure a priority, leans toward artistic and erotic direction, infuses more sensuality, focuses on quality production, and treats the performers with respect and dignity, including regard for their sexual health. The films may or may not be directed by women, but they defy the mainstream porn gaze, and focus on storylines that are usually more appealing to women. This doesn’t mean that your favorite kink can’t still be found, but you can feel reassured in that the performers are treated better, with many production companies utilizing real-life couples as the basis for their films.

Erika Lust, founder of the Barcelona-based, female-centric and sex-positive indie film and production company Erika Lust Films, was like many women when venturing out into the wide world of internet pornography. When asked what prompted her to begin writing and directing erotic films she replied, “I was exposed to porn at a young age like many people, and my first reaction was disappointment. When I was older, I decided to give it another try, but the same woman in heels was still giving a blowjob to a police officer to get rid of a fine.”

During her time studying political science and gender studies at the University of Lund in Sweden, Lust’s view of porn was drastically changed by Linda Williams’s book “Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible.’” She says of her self-described lightbulb moment after reading the text, “I realised that mainstream porn is not something that really reflects any truths about sex — but it makes a statement, an idea, it expresses ideologies and values, and also opinions about sex and gender,” pointing out a line from Williams’s book that reads, “Pornography as a genre wants to be about sex. On close inspection, however, it always proves to be more about gender.”

Thanks to female-friendly porn pioneers like Lust, the development of sensual, erotic films has begun to change the way we look at sex. They are more accessible and are becoming more widely recognized by the day, and in addition to the award-winning films produced by the companies we are about to explore, many of these producers focus on representing the realistic side of sex. It’s funny, intimate, passionate, and very different that what’s often represented in mainstream porn.  

1. XConfessions

Created by European producer Erika Lust, XConfessions and EroticFilms.com have been her answer to the mainstream porn industry problem. When asked about what her company does differently when it comes to casting, she replied, “The most important thing to me are the performers. Our casting process is long and thorough. We always make sure our performers are sex-positive and one hundred percent happy and enthusiastic to be involved.”

When it comes to direction, Lust had this to say, “I have a rule that I don’t direct the sex at all. I let the performers do what feels natural and pleasurable. I don’t tell them put your leg here or your arm there! They talk before and decide what they want to do, this makes for the best results on screen and they have a better time!”

2. Crash Pad Series

Brought to you by Pink and White Productions, Shine Louise Houston “recognized an underserved demand for an alternative to mainstream pornography, and began to create well-crafted queer made porn.” The Crash Pad Series is based on the premise of a secret apartment where a key is passed on to the next person after having used it seven times. Lots of queer sex takes place in the apartment where the users’ wildest fantasies come true.

The stars in Houston’s films vary widely. Queer women, trans men, cis men, genderqueer, and gender-variant people are all included. The variation of body type, age, race, gender expression, and body modification are all taken into account, representing a wide range. On the topic of performer agency and consent, the website had this to say: “We collaborate with performers to shoot based on how they’d like to be presented. Performers come up with the episode plot (to ad-lib a script, or skip straight to the sex), and negotiate boundaries to decide on mutually consensual actions prior to filming, informing the crew of what they would like to do.”

3. Pure Cunnilingus

The largest and oldest site dedicated to male-female cunnilingus, this is the ultimate destination for muff diving. Often neglected in pornography, and overshadowed by female-male blow jobs, this site is the answer to representing more heterosexual cunnilingus in the adult world. The site stands by the claim of producing sex-positive, ethical porn.

4. Bright Desire

Described as “the embodiment of a sex-positive philosophy, aiming to offer a different kind of porn, one that is joyful and inclusive, with more intimacy, laughter, passion and connection,” Bright Desire takes pride in its female-friendly porn approach. The videos feature real-life couples and solo men and women, and claims that “the sex looks more like the sex people have at home – and that includes things like lube and vibrators.” The performers are active participants, and the films show real female orgasms.

5. For the Girls

One of the oldest and largest erotics-for-women sites, For the Girls provides adult entertainment from the hetero female gaze. Focusing on female fantasies and pleasure, this site contains lots of male nudity and appendages, “because we love cock!” In addition to the photos, there is also an archive of couples porn, featuring hard-core, romantic plot-based movies, real-life couples, and a women’s magazine featuring erotic stories that claim they transcend “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Not that that’s a difficult task, but I digress. What’s important is that For the Girls puts women first, and that’s a real turn-on.

Still looking for more? These female-friendly porn guides, found here and here, will lead you in the right direction.

Related on EcoSalon

Porn Is the New Black
5 Reasons BDSM is Good for Your Health: Break Out the Handcuffs, Girl
American Sex Education Needs to Catch Up to France: #NowWhat

The post 5 Sex-Positive, Female-Friendly Porn Sites (NSFW) appeared first on EcoSalon.

Looking for a reason to try BDSM? Or wondering why you can’t seem to get enough? We’ve got six different reasons explaining the benefits of kinky sex.

Sometimes we develop a fantasy that simply can’t be verbalized. A longing that we feel is so taboo we’re afraid to express our inner desires to our partner—and BDSM is one such arena where these reservations may fall.

Whether it’s the fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, or fear that we might actually love it, sharing these ideas can seem impossible. For some, this leads to a life of vanilla sex forever. For others, it becomes a liberating turning point to explore the type of sex life they’ve always wanted, even if that involves whips, rope, or submission. All of which, according to research, are actually quite good for your health and the health of your relationship.

The practice of BDSM represents conventionally taboo subsets involving bondage and discipline (B&D), dominance and submission (D&S), and sadism and masochism (S&M) that often (although not always) relate to sexual acts in and out of the bedroom. While it may be a fantasy more readily discussed behind closed doors, surveys show that aspects of it are actually desired by many.

A 2014 paper published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine asked more than 1,500 men and women to rate their interest in 55 sexual fantasies. Several BDSM-themed categories turned up, including fantasies about being dominated sexually (present in 65 percent of women and 53 percent of men), dominating someone sexually (47 percent of women and 60 percent of men), and being tied up for sexual pleasure (52 percent of women and 46 percent of men). Not only does this begin to verify the popularity of BDSM practices, but it also lets you know that you’re not alone in your kink.

When done correctly, and we’re not talking about “Fifty Shades of Grey“, partaking in BDSM is surprisingly good for you. Thanks to Medical Daily and their correspondence with various experts, we’ve got the lowdown on six of the benefits you can expect.

5 Reasons BDSM is Good for Your Health

1. Improves Communication and Increases Intimacy

Crediting the transparency that often accompanies a BDSM relationship, open, active, and clear communication are cornerstones for success. Between the use of “safe words” and the clear delineation between “play” (sometimes also known as a “scene”) and the day-to-day relationship, couples are required to identify when it’s time to get kinky, therefore discussing their sexuality far more often than some. Having sex increases intimacy, but throwing in a risk factor, like being tied up or blindfolded, increases it even more. What it comes down to is trust, which BDSM requires a lot of, and when the experiences go well, closeness is thought to be increased.

2. Encourages Fidelity

Because a healthy BDSM relationship requires trust that’s compounded over time, Dr. Jeffrey Sumber, a Chicago psychotherapist, believes that the individuals are less likely to stray, stating, “many who take it seriously are not interested in sabotaging the safety and trust that is imperative to its success.”

3. Better Mental Health

Citing a 2013 study from the Journal of Sexual Medicine, Medical Daily claims “people who practiced BDSM scored better on certain mental health indicators than those who had vanilla sex. The BDSM-friendly participants were less neurotic, more open, more aware of and sensitive to rejection, more secure in their relationships, and had a better overall well-being.” Furthermore, BDSM relationships have a lot of skin-to-skin contact, which one expert says promotes “physiological and physical healing.”

4. Reduces Psychological Stress

Believe it or not, being vulnerable during a BDSM session is actually said to leave participants feeling less stressed. Not only are the anxieties and insecurities we often feel during sex overcome by the ability to let go of judgement and control, but according to the aforementioned study, bottoms and tops (submissives and dominants) both had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol after participating in bondage.

5. Reduces Anxiety

In addition to all of the other benefits, Medical Daily also pointed out that the “sexual enjoyment of giving or receiving pain can actually reduce anxiety even for the most anxious of souls in the bedroom.” And according to a separate study presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Austin, Texas, it was revealed that S&M changes the brain’s blood flow, sometimes contributing to an “altered state of consciousness” akin to a runner’s high or yoga. The tranquility felt by the participant (most likely a sub) is believed to be caused by the lack of blood flow to the the brain, therefore reducing anxiety.

The conclusion? When you explore your sexuality safely, legally, and openly, there are loads of benefits to feeling liberated and in touch with your inner desires—even if that means you like a good flogging every now and then.

Share your thoughts about BDSM on the EcoSalon Facebook page!

Related on EcoSalon

Polyamory & Cuckolding: Your Burning Questions Answered
Beyond ‘Fifty Shades’: What’s the Real Deal with BDSM? Sexual Healing
The 9 Most Empowering Sex Positions for Women: Female Sexuality Remixed

The post 5 Reasons BDSM is Good for Your Health: Break Out the Handcuffs, Girl appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column If you learned everything you know about “cougar women” from “The Graduate” or even “Sex and the City,” you’re still woefully ignorant about a very common dating scenario. There’s nothing predatory about older women dating younger men.

The Mrs. Robinson myth is alive and well, despite major cultural shifts in the last decade. Why are people still so freaked out about older women having sex with younger men?

We may gently “tsk tsk” when we see an older guy with a younger woman – but it’s certainly not viewed as a scandal, as we’ve seen it all a million times. We have a frame of reference for older man/younger woman pairings – evolutionary psychology even tells us that there’s a biological basis for it. (Note that I’ve roundly debunked Evo Psych in various Sexual Healing columns.) We know this guy — he’s just having a midlife crisis and he’s not a danger to anyone but himself (and maybe his mistress). But when women dabble in age-gap dating, they are ferocious animals stalking meat in the dark of night — they’re terrifying.

This is all, of course, just another form of the Madonna/Whore complex, with cougars as a stand-in for the whore. Except this whore is so sexually insatiable that she can’t help but hump everything in sight, and people like laughing at her as much as they feel sorry for her. (Too bad that she’s probably having the last laugh, because she’s having great sex.)

Over the past five or ten years, “cougar” dating sites have proliferated – most likely because of demand. But out there in TV land, the arbiter of our cultural standards, “Sex in the City” character Samantha Jones set up the 21st century cougar trope. Sam wasn’t exactly mocked for her taste in younger men, but she was presented as voracious and relentlessly sexual – something women just aren’t supposed to be in polite company. More recently, a television show called “Cougar Town” was a vehicle for former “Friends” star Courtney Cox.

But has our gut-level response to seeing older women and younger men together in real life shifted? I went straight to the source – women dating younger men, and the men who love (and sleep with) them.

Here are some comments from a few women over forty about sex in midlife generally, with a generous side helping of dating younger men:

“The sex is OFF THE CHAIN.”

“He likes his women like his cars, older, classier, more beautiful and dependable, strong, sturdy, true.” (From a 52-year-old woman dating a 34-year-old man.)

“They like us because we know our sh*t. We’re also probably not (as) desperate to get married as many 25-32 year olds are (as all their friends troop to the altar and start having babies) — we may have already BEEN married.”

“Forget Botox — orgasms are the ultimate youth elixir.”

Women over forty are mostly written out of the sexual narrative, similar to the way that women over forty in Hollywood are written out of every single screenplay. When older women want to have sex — and specifically, when they want to have it with younger men that can keep up with them — they are are compared to wild animals and framed as something less than human.

The fact that these women want to have sex, period, is what brings the judgment. How dare they still have libidos when they may no longer be perfect, perky, 24-year-old specimens of culturally-sanctioned beauty standards? We need to reexamine why the very idea of a woman who expresses her desires is so threatening. A woman over forty who wants sex isn’t a wildlife program on PBS — her dating life is not a reality show.

Television and movies may not have caught up to the actual women, the ones we call “cougars” — who are rediscovering their relationships with their own bodies, figuring out how to feel desirable again after having children, or perhaps finding their way back from divorce. Their lives are not over — in many ways they’re just beginning.

So we’ve established what’s in it for the so-called “cougar women”, but what about the younger men in the equation? More and more young guys are firmly in the “I don’t want kids” camp, and hooking up with an older woman who’s already had kids or who is proudly childfree is one way to sidestep the breeding discussion.

As for why young guys are increasingly attracted to older women, my theory is that confidence is hella sexy, and when you get to be a woman “of a certain age” you have far fewer f*cks to give about what other people think about you. You carry yourself that way, instead of looking around to see who’s checking you out. You’ve worked hard at becoming the subject of your own life, rather than someone else’s object. When you’re in your twenties and thirties you’re ostensibly in your most physically desirable stage of life — but you’re often not feeling what people are seeing.

I also credit decades of feminism for the confidence older women grant themselves — sisterhood isn’t just powerful, it’s damn good for our sex lives. The cougar narrative assumes that women are financially well-off in their forties, and that’s somehow part of their allure — but I don’t buy it. I found few examples of Sugar Mamas, but I can show you a troop of sexy artists, writers, and other not-particularly wealthy, but extremely sexually open freelancers in their forties. The men they’re dating and/or sleeping with certainly aren’t in it for the money.

Women in their late thirties and beyond have (hopefully) had plenty of sex, multiple partners, and know what they want — and often that includes dating younger men. Younger women are often just figuring it out, and sometimes perform in bed rather than truly take pleasure in the experience. (See almost any episode of “Girls” from season one for evidence of the “Sex kinda sucks but I’m going to do it anyway because I really want this guy to like me” theme.)

Another theory that’s bandied about (and I’ve done some of this bandying) is that there is a perfect libido match between women in their late thirties/early forties and men in their mid-to-late twenties. Anecdotally lots of men and women I chatted with seem to agree — the assumption is that our sexual peaks line up perfectly. (Note: there’s no scientific proof of this, and some researchers entirely debunk the very idea of sexual peaks.)

My own experience is that the older I get, the more young men seem to be interested in me. I don’t think I’m giving out “cougar” vibes, whatever those are, but online and in real life, I get hit on more and more by men in their twenties (even as young as TWENTY, which sometimes freaks me out, and I write about sex for a living.) But I must admit — I kind of dig it.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email  stefanie at ecosalon dot com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

Related on EcoSalon

Women Dating Younger Men: Why It’s Hot

Do You Demand Pleasure Parity? Sexual Healing

The Art of Receiving: Do You Deserve Sexual Pleasure? Sexual Healing

Image: Mark Dumont

The post Redefining Cougar Women: Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnSexual shame dominates our lives — even when we’re not consciously thinking about sex. Shame is so overwhelming that it can feel impossible to extricate oneself from the ubiquitous, all-consuming spiral of it.

Sexual shame is not just what happens in the act of sex, or post-coitally. It’s not the just the “walk of shame” or guilt about casual sex that you wish you could un-have. It’s something you carry around with you when you commute to work, when you’re hanging out with your friends, when you’re relaxing with your family – it’s always there, lurking in the background, until you consciously decide to kill it off.

There are almost too many sources of shame to list in one article, but I’ll try. There is the most obvious kind of shame – the kind that happens after a sexual assault. This brand of shame is ostensibly permitted, at least in clinical settings. Not all women come forward after rape, however – so it’s only the few who are allowed to work through the trauma. One-in-four women will be raped in their lifetime – a staggering statistic that elicits a tsunami of shame.

Yet sexual shame is also straight-up body shame. It’s waking up in the morning, looking at yourself in the bathroom mirror, and thinking, “Ugh”. It’s feeling too old or too ugly to experience love. It’s repressing your anger because you’re afraid of offending a partner or potential partner. It’s the sense that you must always be a good girl, even if you’re a grown-ass woman.

Sexual shame is not asking for sex when you’re horny, because you feel too fat or not pretty enough. It’s not asking your partner to go down on you because you worry that there’s something wrong with your vulva – maybe it’s not “normal.” It’s being in your head when your partner does go down on you – worrying whether you’re good enough to deserve that pleasure, wondering why you’re not feeling enough pleasure, worrying if you’re moaning loud enough to make your partner feel like you’re having a good time – instead of just having a good time. Worrying, on the other hand, that you’re moaning too loud.

On the flip side, there is not speaking up about what you don’t want, also born of shame. We want to be pleasing, even as we’re afraid to ask to be pleased. We’ll show up for sex when we’re not in the mood, because we’re afraid of alienating our partner. There is also the shame you might feel after (or while) looking at porn. There is post-orgasmic shame.

There is slut-shaming, still everywhere, even as we fight against it. We’re still damned if we do and damned if we don’t as the Madonna-Whore complex rules most of our social interactions and messaging from pop culture. No matter how progressive we are, even if we’re atheists, there is still the sexual shaming born of religion – as active, or perhaps more active, than ever. The ever-present war on women seems to dominate every election cycle. As I said — too many kinds of shame to list in this space.

Our culture is saturated by sex – it’s in our imagery and our innuendo. It dominates our advertising and films, our viral videos and Netflix queues, our nightly news — our everything. Despite the constant stream of sex, almost none of it (save a few daring projects like “Orange is the New Black” & “Masters of Sex”) honestly depict real (and diverse) women’s sex lives. Women are still overwhelmingly portrayed as objects for consumption by male viewers. There are precious few representations of our desires on the big and small screen – the spaces where we tend to work out our unconscious drives.

What is the cost of all of this unremitting shame? Self-shaming robs you of pleasure – which is really just a way of robbing you of your life force. I believe that shame can actually make you sick, but the good news is that reclaiming pleasure can renew you — body, mind and soul.

So after a lifetime of pervasive sexual shame, how do we purge it? You may want to change the rules of patriarchy, and may be actively working toward that — but it’s not enough. In order to disentangle yourself from the twisted mess that is the shame industrial complex, you must ask yourself what you really want. Peel it back, layer by layer. Let your fantasy life be the lab in which you discover what might turn you on if you weren’t shaped by misogynistic images.

Sexuality is deeply complex, and I’m not telling you to reject any part of yours. There are moments that shaped you from childhood and young adulthood, and some of those, even if they come from what you might objectively consider harmful or negative — they might still be yours. This is yet another level of shame which must be purged. There is nothing wrong with any fetish, or anything that turns you on — as long as consent and communication rule.

Ending sexual shame has everything to do with claiming your authentic desire. Even if you know how to give yourself an orgasm, you probably don’t have enough of them. If you’re a typical heterosexual woman, you come to partnered sex without the expectation of having one, because most of us experience clitoral orgasms, not vaginal ones. And because so many straight men don’t put a lot of thought into our anatomy, and properly pleasing us — many of us give up. If you want to claim your desire, you have to be brave enough to speak up.

Here are some daily practices that can help you expurgate shame, and wholeheartedly embrace pleasure:

• Daily orgasms via solo sex
• Orgasmic meditation with a partner or at a workshop
• Daily sensuality practices
• Tantra

If you begin claiming what’s yours in other areas of your life, standing up, being strong, not wilting in situations where you’d ordinarily give up — you’ll empower yourself to stand strong for your sex life. I was incredibly inspired by Rebecca Traister’s admonition to women this week — that we, in the words of our hero Tina Fey, say “I don’t f**king care if you like it” the next time we’re coddled or infantilized by men.

Figure out what is YOURS, not your partner’s. This doesn’t mean you will stop pleasing your partner. If the person you’re married to or sleeping with is threatened by your self-discoveries, rather than turned on by them — I’d suggest that you might reconsider that relationship. Come to the bedroom with new revelations about your needs, new demands, new fantasies, new ways to role-play, new positions – and communicate about them. That’s where it starts — but only you know where it goes from there.

Join Stefanie on a journey to the authentic heart of your sexual self with Project 40: Sadism, Masochism, Sexuality & Shadow, an online 40-day tour through the heart of your psyche via intensive journaling, ritual, and guided daily emails. 

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

Related on EcoSalon

How To Start Your Own Personal Sexual Revolution

Sex and Intimacy: What’s Love Got To Do With it?

Get Your Renewal On And Have Better Sex This Spring

image: youngdoo

The post Extinguish Sexual Shame by Claiming Your Authentic Desire: Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnOur culture (simultaneously puritanical and hyper-sexualized) has long had its knickers in a twist about causal sex – especially the kind had by women. Last week a new study moved slightly beyond the “good girls don’t” trope, proving that casual sex can be healthy — if you’re not already hung up about it.

Even if you’re not a casual sex regular, you’ve probably been there at least once. Perhaps it was the classic campus walk of shame — ambling back to your dorm room with smeared mascara as your suite-mates headed to their first class of the day. Or the adult version — hailing a taxi in stilettos in the middle of the early morning rush.

The study in question suggests that having casual sex is good for you – but only if you’re already down with casual sex. On the other hand, if you’ve got judgments about the concept, it’s unlikely that a one-night stand will make you feel good. Those who scored high on the sociosexual scale (measuring openness to causal sex) reported feeling good after casual liaisons. (Guilt about drunkeness and failure to use condoms figured heavily in to whether or not people felt post-coital shame.)

With all the recent pearl-clutching about hookup culture, Americans are clearly still in the throes of the Madonna-Whore complex — but we can break out if we try. This study begins to show us the increasingly absurd assumptions of evolutionary psychology. Like the groundbreaking “Sex at Dawn” and Daniel Bergner’s “What Women Want“, there is a growing body of literature about sexuality that attempts to destroy the misogynist stereotypes that tend to hijack any discussion about women and pleasure.

We need more of this line of inquiry, but we also need to create our own sexual breakthroughs – don’t just leave it to the scientists. Examine your own judgments about casual sex. Were you exposed to negative messages about sexuality when you were young? Were you slut-shamed? No matter how liberated, progressive, non-religious and intellectually enlightened we are, we’re not immune to the toxic sludge of shame. That’s something that must be worked through, day-by-day, encounter-by-encounter, and basically every time we get dressed.

Let’s turn the “Walk of Shame” into the “Walk of Awesome.” There is no reason the boys should be the only ones having fun here. A few things to remember: Communication is just as important in one-night affairs as it is in long-term relationships – don’t be shy about asking for what you want. Enthusiastic consent rules. In fact, if you’re never going to see Mr. Tonight again – you might feel even bolder. As long as you’re safe – (condoms please!) and not overly inebriated, you can and should have at least a few casual hookups, especially if you plan to settle down with one partner for the long term. It goes without saying that safety isn’t just about STI’s — a recent “Daily Show” segment covers the long list of dangers and double-standards we women face.

Here are some reasons you may want to give it a go. Orgasm is great for you. Sure, orgasm doesn’t always happen on the first go with a new partner – but you can encourage it by being vocal or introducing your favorite toy. If you’re working on improving your body image – novel sexual encounters can help you to get more comfortable.

This isn’t to say that everyone is cool with casual sex; we’re not all cut out for it. But I would argue that slut-shaming messages, rather than women’s natural inclinations, are the driver of their experiences. The Vrangalova study suggests, at least to me, that we come to sex with innumerable, highly complex attitudes shaped by genetics, parenting, advertising, socializing and so on. It’s not black and white, nor is it just nature or just nurture – and casual sex is not all good or all bad.

So if you’re single (or newly single), but you chose to leave casual sex behind when you packed up your dorm room – you may want to take your judgments out for at least one more spin.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie@ecosalon.com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

Related on EcoSalon

How To Start Your Own Personal Sexual Revolution

The Real Reason Female Sexuality Has Been Repressed For Millennia

Sex and Intimacy: What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Image: Maxime Guilbot

The post In Praise of Casual Sex: Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnTerry Richardson’s long history of sexual predation is repugnantly, exhaustingly common. But it provides the occasion for us to explore the murky, complex issue of consent – and its deep implications for your sex life.

Men like Richardson often get a pass (until some get their collective comeuppance) because we don’t like to talk about the use and abuse of power. This power is everywhere all the time, lurking in your interactions with friends, family, co-workers – and lovers. Because it can feel so toxic and impolite to bring it up, and because we’re so afraid of being left and/or rejected – we tend to keep our concerns to ourselves until they blow up in our face.

Our deeply unhealthy relationship with power allows the usual suspects — white, heterosexual, cisgendered men — to wield it with impunity. The question posed by the title of last week’s New York Mag article: “Is Terry Richardson an Artist or a Predator?” offers a patently false dichotomy. It is not a measure of whether he’s an artist OR a predator, but rather a question of whether he can be both. Can famous male artists be predators? Of course they can. Any guy can be what he is (entrepreneur, waiter, freelance writer, accountant) and still be a predator.

Anecdotally, I’ve seen Richardson out around New York City a number of times, and he’s always got a very unsettling look in his eyes as he scans the room, presumably, for victims. His energy is not unlike that of (the recently fired) Dov Charney or Vincent Gallo. If you dig behind the headlines, you’ll often find that manboys like this manipulate people because they felt powerless as children. The article seems to want to excuse Richardson because of his difficult childhood – which is absurd, but again – achingly common in response to stories like this. Boys will be boys, goes the stock phrase.

Richardson certainly doesn’t think he’s a predator – he believes he’s an artist and a thumbs-up fun guy who knows how to dish up the subversive side of life. He justifies his behavior for the art – saying it pushes people’s boundaries. His modus operandi: shoving his penis in model’s faces without warning and coaxing them into faux and real blowjobs during and after photo shoots – that’s “just for the art.” Simply because he can get away with it, Richardson doesn’t have to think about his power, born of his white-guy artist privilege – he just works it. It’s all about casual entitlement.

This story is not just about whether meaningful consent was given in Richardson’s notorious photo shoots, and whether he’s guilty. (Of course he is.) It’s about whether we understand the meaning of consent at all. Because sexual agency for girls who will become women is so very fraught, we are completely confused about how to say no, and what it might mean for us when we do. Teen girls who say no are shamed as prudes, barred from being popular. Those who say yes are slut-shamed. (Note that these are usually weak yeses and noes – not the kind we’re aiming for.) The internalization of the Madonna-Whore complex sadly starts around puberty, and unless we do something about it – each of us individually, in our own lives – the cycle will never end.

Why are so many women afraid to say no to men like Richardson? I’m not just talking about models whose careers might be at stake. Why are we so often scared to say no to the men we meet, go on dates with, take home, or don’t take home? Why are we sometimes afraid to say no to our live-in partners? I would argue, in part, that this is because we’ve never been taught how to properly say yes.

Here’s why we often say nothing when our instinct says NO. Because when you rebuff them, men like Richardson will claim it’s because you’ve got sexual hang-ups. If you refuse to succumb, you’ll be called a tight-ass. He’ll suggest, or tell his friends, that you don’t know, or even want to know, your own sexual self. He’ll claim his interest in your body is a gift, a form of liberation and leadership – he just wants to show you the way. But you don’t need to be taught “the way” – your sexual self-knowledge is built on you finding your own way.

Warning: these men aren’t just tattooed hipsters with requisite muttonchops. They come in various stylistic guises. Watch out in yoga class – Richardsons are commonly wannabe gurus – they hang out at Burning Man, too.

Part of the reason we’re conditioned this way is that sexual assault is so common that it’s become a kind of morbid rite of passage for girls and women – I know few who haven’t been violated in some form. We still think of rapists as the men who might grab us in a dark alley, for whom we must have our mace and rape whistle ready. But the far more common kind of rape – date rape – regularly goes unreported and unremarked upon, simply because it’s so ubiquitous. This is yet another reason we’re so often paralyzed between our yeses and our noes; there is a continuum of assault and mass confusion about consent.

The dictionary defines “consent” as: to permit, approve, or agree; comply or yield.

Even as we’re not quite sure of how to define our boundaries, we couch our concept of consent mostly in terms of no. Being surrounded by enabled predators will do that to you. But what if young girls, right around the time of their first period, were offered an entirely new rite of a passage — one that put pleasure at the center? What if we taught them that it’s not just boys who want and need sex? What if we were honest about their body’s capacity for world-rocking, shame-free orgasms? What if we showed them a map for being the subject, not the object, of desire?

Before we can get to the healthy, full-throated “yes” that will improve our relationships, our sex lives, and our self-esteem — we have to understand why and when we first learned to say no. Because our first no was likely weak and based on fear, not desire, we have a lot of unlearning to do. So even if you’re twenty years beyond your first period — you can still own this rite of passage. Part of the map for adult women is exploration of the concept of enthusiastic consent – popularized in the book “Yes Means Yes.”

Our culture heartily endorses the Richardsons of the world. Because, in fact, they mostly run the world. They at least run the world of advertising, which is a kind of mental matrix for all of us, as we’re exposed to it 24/7. When it comes to warped images of female form and function, it’s hard to distinguish if it’s real or if it’s Memorex. So it takes work — an intentional rewiring of your brain.

Predators like Terry Richardson are everywhere. But you don’t have to define your sex life by their distorted standards – you can create your own. In doing so, we can eventually create a level, healthy, safe and pleasurable playing field.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

Related on EcoSalon

Increase Sexual Pleasure: The Sensuality of Your A-Spot

Toxic Masculinity and Your Sex Life: How Do They Relate?

Improve Your Communication Skills & Save Your Sex Life

Image: Disrupting Dinner Parties

The post Terry Richardson, Consent and You: Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWe’re in the midst of major teachable moment, thanks to the sheer awfulness of the recent Isla Vista event and #YesAllWomen, the viral hashtag that followed in its wake. Toxic masculinity is finally getting the analysis it deserves – but what does it mean for your love and sex life?

Let me start by saying that although this column is in part about finding compassion for the experience of men and boys, it’s not in any way excusing harassment and violence (both online and off).

Work must be done, legislatively and otherwise, to completely alter the landscape of male privilege — we must end all affronts to women’s bodies. Yet I want us to take this conversation to the next level – which is to say a deeper level. Let’s unpack what toxic masculinity means for your love and sex life.

Several men I know have recently teased me about how often I refer to patriarchy in this column – “What’s the question? I don’t know, but according to Stefanie, the answer is definitely patriarchy.” I don’t bristle at the criticism because I realize that I’ve mostly spoken about the way patriarchy, that all-pervasive personal/political bedrock philosophy of most of recorded history – affects women. But our boyfriends, our husbands, our fathers, brothers, cousins, sons and co-workers – patriarchy hurts them too. Not to mention the dudes and bros – the most entitled and unconscious first-world men.

An easy way to get inside of the raw angst of so many women in the wake of not just Isla Vista, but a growing global rape culture, rampant misogyny, the PUA and men’s rights movements, and unprecedented online harassment of any woman who dares label herself a feminist, is via this disturbing Margaret Atwood quote:

Men fear being laughed at by women. Women fear being killed by men.

Pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? Sixty-four percent of women who are murdered are killed by a current or past intimate partner. When men are murdered, it’s usually by strangers. Why are women so afraid of being killed by men, particularly men that they are/have been intimate with? A chilling quote from Elliot Rodger’s manifesto hints at it:

Girls gave their affection, and sex, and love, to other men but never to me.

The operative word here is “gave.” Although this is the rant of a mentally ill sociopath, it’s also the underpinning of many of our assumptions about heterosexual relationships and about male “ownership” of female bodies. Even the healthiest of us are socialized to believe that women’s bodies are not truly their own. In this way, Rodger’s belief system is part of a continuum — he just took it to its most deadly extreme.

In this model of sexuality – let’s call it the “Don’t give the milk away for free” model – women possess a commodity that men need. Sex between consenting adults, whether it’s a casual hookup or sex within the confines of a traditional marriage, is best when it’s not transactional. Unless the transaction is agreed upon at the outset – most often with a sex worker. (Not that that there’s anything wrong with that!)

The deeply ingrained idea that men always want sex more than women want sex is part of the problem. We are objects, not subjects. We are cast in a role, not directing. It instantly objectifies us before anyone has been exposed to a perfume ad of a photoshopped woman’s torso. This myth of women holding their sex for ransom is older than Eve. Scientific data continues to reveal the true breadth of women’s desire, the fact that women get sexually bored faster than men do, and that our libidos and need for novelty are far more intense than we’ve ever acknowledged. Our capacity for pleasure is still a secret to most of us.

Women are not merchandise in the marketplace of sex – we are sexual beings with agency. We have desires. We teach our girls that only boys have needs, and that as girls, it is their duty to fulfill them. We don’t give girls the chance to chart the map of their own desire. And what of the boys?

We pathologize sex and yet teach boys that they’re supposed to be sexual aggressors. We tell them that they will want girls more than girls want them. We tell them that this wanting will rule them, that if they don’t feel it all the time, there is something wrong with them. We tell them that their desire is not just ever-present, but that’s it’s a dangerous threat. (This is the ethos behind the veil in Middle Eastern countries – women are such tempting, delicious treats that men cannot control themselves – so they must literally be hidden from view.)

Having your emotions shut down when you’re a young male child, being taught that crying is “gay” or that compassion makes you a “fag” – that kind of early patterning can cause some serious damage. It’s bad enough when a person’s actual sexual orientation is in the crosshairs of bullying, but even for young boys who will be straight men – being taught not to feel can do long-term damage. Stop for a moment and think about what may have happened to the men in your life when they first understood that sensitivity was for suckers.

Think about your boyfriend, your exes, your father, your brother, your male co-workers – all the cis-gendered, heterosexual men in your life. How many times have you seen one of them cry? With Father’s Day coming up next week, it’s a really opportune moment for us to examine the deeper implications of masculinity not just in our culture, but in one-to-one interactions with the men we know.

If you are a woman who dates and sleeps with men – examining your own assumptions about masculinity can help you transform your relationships. Start by looking at any gross generalizations that you have about the men in your life, and then work backwards – why do you feel that way?

I’ll get us started – mine has often been: “Men are 12.” I throw this one around casually, based on how excited one of my exes still gets about GI Joe at the age of 42, and how my father still likes to play video games. I often say this without necessarily examining the deeper implications of boyhood/manhood, and what it means to “be a man”.

What does it mean to be wounded but to have to cover up that wound so that no one ever sees it? The shame women feel about their bodies, about being not beautiful enough, is perhaps equivalent to the shame men feel about being perceived as weak.

What does it mean to always have to be dominant, aggressive, always the initiator? Not just in bars, where an old-fashion dating dance still seems to rule the roost – the men approach, the women decide. We sometimes choose to break through these boundaries and are called rebels for it – but what if we could move closer to overall equanimity here?

We want our men to understand why we are feminists, and why they should want to be feminists too. But the learning curve is steep, the reverse socialization fraught with psychological landmines. Boys are made to feel that being sexually predatory is not just required, but that they aren’t “real men” if can’t “get” girls.

What if we began to shift this language in our pop culture? We still talk about how our rom-coms are best when the guy “gets the girl” in the end. If girls are taught that they are not objects on the sales rack of sexuality, and boys are taught they are not consumers in this toxic marketplace, we’ll start to wring some toxicity from our relationships, our sex lives, and the culture at large. And it all begins with you.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

Related on EcoSalon:

The Art of Receiving: Do You Deserve Pleasure?

The Madonna-Whore Complex in Depth: Virgins, Whores, and You

How To Start Your Own Personal Sexual Revolution

The post Toxic Masculinity and Your Sex Life: How Do They Relate? Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnThe ability to experience sensuality is fundamental to sexual pleasure. (You can have sensuality without sex, but sex without sensuality tends to suck.) Your relationship to your own senses has probably taken a serious beating in recent years, but you can increase your sensuality – in less than five minutes a day.

We’re often more intimate with our iPhones than our lovers, more gripped by pics of flowers on Instagram than by actual flowers. We stop to document before we stop to touch, smell, taste, hear and see what’s in front of us. We’ve got this thing called life backwards, big time.

It’s important to acknowledge that it’s been a long decline – we didn’t just wake up and start ignoring our senses when Facebook and Twitter officially launched in 2006. Before we were obsessively posting statuses, we were already Starbucks-fueled type-A’s, running around like headless chickens, too consumed with consumption to notice the hidden beauty and wonder of even our most mundane moments.

We stare at blue screens all day. We’re so addicted to our gadgets that we barely have time to look people in the eye. When is the last time you stopped to really take in a sunset with your senses — and not with your Instagram?

It’s no coincidence that yoga and meditation have been our obsessions du jour during the last decade – we need them more than ever because we are so desperately ungrounded and stressed out. But even those body-positive rituals don’t hit every note we need them to — and getting to class can be impossible sometimes.

Even if you’re too busy to get to Bikram today, even if you feel like you’re too frazzled to fit in a ten-minute meditation session or make yourself a smoothie, I have a quick and easy ritual that will help you kill about a dozen birds with one stone. This ritual, from my private vault, can:

• Help you feel grounded and calm, focusing your mind
• Restore your relationship with your body
• Get a healthy piece of fruit in you instead of a protein bar (duh)
• Enhance sexual pleasure —  building a better connection to your lover, and the potential for stronger, slower orgasms
• Reduce your heart rate

The Apple Ritual:

(Note: You can use other fruits if you like – whatever is local, organic and in-season. I choose apples because the “apple a day” adage turns out to have some serious scientific merit. And they hit all the sensual notes, because they have a discernible crunch. Bananas may be phallic, but you can’t hear them.)

Start by shutting out other sensory stimuli – turn off the TV, shut down your email, and silence your phone. The ritual begins the moment you begin walking toward the apple – as you head to the fruit bowl in the living room, the kitchen, or wherever you keep your produce, you’re already prepping your body/mind for the experience. Think of this as if you were walking toward your lover – even in the moments before he/she is right next to you, or touching you, your body begins to respond.

Reach for the fruit, paying attention to the sensation in your fingertips as it makes contact with the skin. Is it cold? Room temp? Slippery? Go to the sink and run the apple under the water – but you’re not just cleaning it. Pay attention to the sound of the water hitting the apple, and the way it feels on your hands, always retaining your connection to the weight, shape, and slip of the apple.

You can dry the apple, but I like to keep it wet. Close your eyes, raise it to your nostrils, pressing it against your face, and take a deep inhale. Notice the different notes of scent. Then pull it a few inches away, and examine its flesh, colors, indentations, the way the light shines on it. Now you’re ready for your first bite.

Anticipate. Breathe. Don’t rush. Raise it to your mouth but before you do anything else, press it against your lips, and don’t be afraid to lick it a bit. (Or a lot.) Then open your mouth and take your first bite – ever so slowly. What’s happening? Are you hearing the crunch between your teeth? Does your tongue taste sweetness, tartness, a bit of both? What do you smell? Let the juices run down your face.

Notice if you go down to the core or feel satiated beforehand. Notice the slight tackiness on your fingers, the after-taste on your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Run your tongue over your lips and below your mouth – do you taste of sweetness?

Do not be surprised or ashamed if you get turned on. Or you might feel really silly – both are normal responses. If you need to immediately go and mount your lover or use your vibrator — congratulations — you have definitely experienced deep sensuality. Now come back and do it again tomorrow.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

Related on EcoSalon

Get Your Renewal On and Have Better Sex This Spring

How To Eat Your Way to a Better Orgasm (Seriously)

Orgasmic Meditation and Pleasure as Practice (Part I)

Image: NeoGaboX

The post Increase Sexual Pleasure — the Sensuality of Your A-Spot: Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.