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

The post 9 Natural Ways to Spice Up Your Sex Life: Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

Join us for a sexy eco chat on Wednesday February 13th to ask all your sex questions and a chance to win a box of Sensuous Green Goodies provided by Goodebox!

No wilting roses or scandalized blushing here, ladies; it’s time to live in the 21st century and own our sexuality.  With that said, we also want to do it in a healthy, conscious manner.  You’ve likely heard about how readily our skin absorbs less than good for us ingredients from personal care products – body lotion, shampoo, shower gel, facial treatments, lipstick, and the like, but have you ever considered that the skin on our most personal parts is even more sensitive and absorbent?  Have you read the ingredients list on that bottle of lubricant or body massage oil? How about that spermicide on the condom? Have you considered what that little battery powered bullet of joy is made of?  Or thought about the impact your sheets, lingerie and other trappings of sensuality have on the planet?

Author of Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets ‘Sexpert’ Stefanie Iris Weiss certainly has, and she’s not afraid to share.  We all have questions when it comes to our love lives, from dating and marriage to love, lust and sex. It’s nice to have an expert to ask! With that in mind, and to get you in the mood for Valentine’s Day, we’ve asked Stefanie to join us for an hour of her time on Wednesday, February 13th, from 6-7 PM PST / 9-10 PM EST, for a live chat where everything’s fair game. (Although, please keep your questions respectful.)

Topics could include asking her recommendations about sexual toys and products, relationship questions, sex questions, general opinions and more. Stefanie will answer them as quickly as possible and any that are still lingering unanswered once the chat is over will be addressed in turn at her earliest convenience.

Participants can also enter to win a prize package of Sensuous Green Goodies provided by Goodebox, including a signed copy of Stefanie’s book, and products from brands including Blossom Organics, Erbaviva, John Master’s Organics, Sir Richard’s Condoms, Vapour Organic Beauty, Swipes, Revolution Organics, Persephenie and Metropolis Soap Company.  Three runners up will also win a Goodebox with samples of many of these products.

To join, simple respond to the EcoSalon Facebook Event Invitation as “attending”, complete the Giveaway Entry Form and be sure to be online at www.facebook.com/Ecosalon on Wednesday, February 13th, at 6pm Pacific time / 9pm Eastern time.  Only active participants in the Live Chat will be eligible to win a prize. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Have questions you want to keep anonymous? Email us: contact@goodebox.com before we’re live and we’ll ask Stefanie for you!

Image: NeoGaboX

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Women like sex.

I’ve been thinking – buried under the crushing, exhausting weight of all the assorted indignities of the current war on women, maybe it’s time to flip the script and go back to the basics. My theory about why all of this inane madness is happening is this: elite white men are afraid that their god-given power is disappearing. After all, we have a black president, we’re on our third female Secretary of State, and apparently, women no longer “need” men.

I have a proposition: maybe what we do need is to get in touch with our most instinctual, sexual selves, the selves that could potentially make Rick Santorum’s head explode.

So what do women want? And why is it so necessary to ask that question right now?

The short answer is that women’s desire is a massive threat to men insecure about their own masculinity. Consider asking the question –  “What do I desire?” – and then pursuing the answer in the most pleasurable way possible. This may be more than just a fun, enlightening exercise– it may in fact be revolutionary.

Women who want to get inside their own desire must start by shredding some prevailing myths, beginning with the one about men wanting sex more than women. It’s been ingrained in us to accept that men are so man-like that they can’t help but stare at every pair of breasts within a one-block radius, watch porn in every free moment, and masturbate like monkeys. Then there’s the trope about how men cheat because they “can’t help it.”

Part exaggeration, part truth, but what’s true is that they have license to do this, and women culturally don’t.

There’s no shame in wanting sex, but women who express their desire at an early age are shamed as sluts. The only women who have the ability to not enter almighty slut-dome are those who are happily married, actively procreating, and (hopefully) have no desires whatsoever. Women are not allowed pleasure in this worldview, one that’s on the GOP platform in 2012.

Let’s tell Paul Ryan, Todd Akin, and their pals that we like sex and we don’t apologize for it. It’s not just for making babies. That if they want to take away our birth control, they’ll have to wrest it out of our cold, dead, hands. We’re not making more babies for them to recruit.

Feminist History 101

Women were literally property not that long ago. If you’re coveting or already have an engagement ring, note that it essentially evolved as a husband’s down payment on his soon-to-be-wife. Not only did we belong to our husbands like cattle or guns, we were not allowed to own any property, because we were not considered human beings. Since then we’ve gotten the vote, have been allowed to work outside the home, been set free by the pill, and presently find ourselves in a fraught conversation about what it means to “have it all.”

Second wave feminists did some great work, but the anti-porn bit missed one important fact: women like sex. Going all Lysistrata on men isn’t going to solve much except making us all really sexually frustrated. At the same time, we have to push back. We are not Eve, or Pandora, or some other hypersexual goddess seducing men to eat our poisoned apples. Nor are we their Virgin Mary. We need to be allowed to simply be women, and not be shamed or idealized for wanting what we want, when we want it.

Even though we’ve made ridiculous amounts of progress (and fought like fierce warriors for every victory) we’re still so very far from where our feminist forebears had hoped we’d be. And I think it’s because we haven’t allowed ourselves to have enough, desire enough, experiment enough with sex. There’s still too much shame. Many women who have a lot of sex are doing so without pleasure. It’s still in service of the ideal of wanting to be wanted – rather than understanding what we truly want.

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.

Image: Je@n

The post For 2012, Pleasure is the Revolution We’ve Been Waiting For appeared first on EcoSalon.

A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Optimistic cities are filled with better neighbors, community members and friends. We’re packing our virtual bags to go on a tour of the best and maybe we’ll even find you. In the 10 Best American Cities for Optimists, Shelter Editor K. Emily Bond goes beyond asking if the glass is half full to find positively perfect destinations that might be nice to visit or live.

Columnist and Green Beauty Team founder Kristen Arnett recently met up with Eco Sex author Stefanie Iris Weiss for the filming of a French documentary on American sex. In High Definition: Eco Sexy Makeup with Author Stefanie Iris Weiss, read about how Arnett channeled Brigitte Bardot for Weiss and still learned a thing or two about lubricants. Yes, I wrote lubricants.

Turns out, making your own cheese is easier than you can imagine as our food columnist Anna Brones found out in a recent class at Portland’s Culinary Workshop. Brones writes: “My visions of an intimidating chef hovering over my shoulder as I shakily held my thermometer in boiling milk soon disappeared, and by the time Susana had put a glass of wine in my hand and a Fresh Cheese 101 print out in front of me, I realized that I felt surprisingly at home. Cooking with fresh ingredients with glass of wine in hand? If I’m perfectly honest, it’s sort of my ideal Friday night.” Read the whole story, Foodie Underground: Fresh Cheese 101 here.

Have you taken a walk in the woods lately? Skipped a stone at the beach? Sat and listened to the wind blowing through a grassy field? In 6 Ways to Embrace Mother Nature, Senior Editor Andrea Newell gives you six reasons why you should connect with nature. Newell writes: “In the past, the idea of women and nature bonding has often been relegated to new age mysticism and pagan forest rituals, but there are several psychological and healthful reasons why it’s good for women to embrace the outdoors.”

When was the last time you and your partner engaged in some healthy sex? In The Un-Cosmo Guide to Setting the Mood, writer Starre Vartan shares some easy tips that you can really get down sans the silly tips you might see from a certain dull glossy…

The post The Friday 5, Vol. 26 appeared first on EcoSalon.

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

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A new book offers advice on how to make your love life more eco-friendly.

Article by Darragh Worland and image by pinksherbet. First published March 2010 at Tonic.com.

What color comes to mind when you think about your lover? If it’s not green, then you’ve got a long way to go before you can call your relationship “eco-friendly.”

Well, praise the wood nymphs, because help is on the way in the form of eco-conscious author Stefanie Iris Weiss who has claimed the only spot on the love and relationship shelf of the bookstore that has yet to be staked out.

Her new book Eco-Sex is a guide to greening your love life. “I have always wanted to write a sex book. I am a very committed greenie, and I have been a vegetarian for 20 years. I saw a gap in the market and I couldn’t believe no one had written about this topic,” Weiss told MindFood.com.

The book includes information on where to buy eco-friendly bamboo underwear and dating sites where you can meet other eco-minded people. Weiss suggests the ideal first eco-date would be to go biking, and recommends natural latex mattresses (though not necessarily for that first date.) She recommends natural or organic cosmetics, biodegradable latex condoms, and jewels that even a self-respecting socially and eco-conscious woman would be proud to wear (no blood diamonds here!)

But is all this enviro-sex-talk a little too much too soon? I mean, it feels like just it was just yesterday when we re-discovered our love of nature and the environment. Are we ready for such a long-term commitment? Hell yes, says Weiss!

“I think green sex is having its moment right now. I think it is the next big thing in green,” she told MindFood.com. “People are realizing that their everyday, most intimate habits, are deeply connected to this horrible crisis we are in.”

And as for those flowers, ladies? Make sure they’re locally-grown before you put them in water. And if your date snorts at the question, throw him back in the ocean and reel in another one. After all, good girls recycle.

Editor’s note: Article by Darragh Worland and image by pinksherbet. Originally published by our friends at Tonic.com. Tonic is a digital media company and news source dedicated to promoting the good that happens each day around the world. Tonic tells the stories of people and organizations who are working to make a difference, by inspiring good in themselves and others. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Tonic on Twitter, too!

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