Tag Archive for: Wholistic Sexuality

Wholistic Sexuality: Connection, Power & Passion

Wholistic Sexuality™

A Paradigm of Empowerment, Connection & Passion

 

Are You Craving Connection?

We all long for a sense of union and yearn for attachment. Everyone craves deep connection. Yet, so many people feel alone, and live shadowed by a sense of disconnection and isolation. Having sex is certainly one of the common practices that people use to feel, at least temporarily, united. Unfortunately, they often don’t have the kind of sex they dream of and wind up feeling even more disengaged then ever. I believe that part of the problem is the way that we think about sex, about connection and about our selves.

I offer you a new way to relate, a new model of sexuality—Wholistic Sexuality™. In essence, Wholistic Sexuality is about connection, beginning with your connection to your Self.

It’s All About You

That’s right. I’m saying that at heart (or perhaps lower) sex isn’t about what you do with other people behind a closed door. First and foremost, your sexuality is about your relationship with your Self.

And, let’s face it, you’re complicated. One way to understand your Self is to understand that you’re made up of interconnected, overlapping spheres, the domains of your mind, body, spirit and heart, which are linked and surrounded by an energy matrix. You are your past, both all that you remember and all that you’ve forgotten, as well as your present and the myriad futures you imagine. Your relationship with yourself is formed by genetics, upbringing, and experiences. It’s an amalgam of your beliefs, assumptions, and values. Your sexuality is composed of fantasy and reality, dancing with your deep desires, permeated by needs and challenges. Your sexuality is an inherent part of who you are, and all that makes you, uniquely you.

durer-nude-woman-with-the-zodiac-c-1502-1500It’s About Everything

Your sexuality is also about your connection to everyone and everything. It includes relationships with your intimate partners as well as your friends and family, influenced by media, history and culture. It’s part of all aspects of your life including your work and your play, your communities and spiritual traditions. Like a hologram, your sexuality is a microcosm that reflects and manifests everything from the personal to the planetary.

Lifelong Learning Journey

We’re on a lifelong journey of learning and discovery and that is especially true about our sexuality. Here’s a key fact to comprehend about sex: much of our sexuality is learned, including our erotic capacities and responses. Like learning to play an instrument and make beautiful music, we learn how to play our selves to make sexual magic.

Practice Makes Access!

Each of us comes fully equipped with all the everything we need to access ecstasy. You can think of your self as having tools, of mind, body, spirit, heart & energy. We all have the equipment but not everyone learns how to fully operate it and really make it sing. Just like learning to play the piano, our sexual skills need to be learned, and then practiced if we want to develop mastery. The more you practice, the easier it gets.

How You Learn

Learning is a process of skill-building. First you need to develop a foundation of basic skills. Once you become adept at the essentials, you can go on to cultivate more advanced abilities. The foundational skill set is your solo-skills, that is, the ability to competently play your own instrument. Once you have facility with your own sexual self skills, you can master partner skills and play delightful duets with others. Everyone can learn these skills and become sexually adept. Of course, there’s always more to learn on the journey to erotic mastery. Even virtuoso musicians always continually hone their craft.

Meaningful Models

In order to learn to be a sexual virtuoso you need to know what’s possible, then how to get there. Bad maps, which our culture provides in plenty, don’t get you where you want to go. It’s crucial to have accurate maps, usable guides and true templates for this journey. When you have functional and empowering models of what sex is and what it can be, then you can more easily follow those paths and reach your full sexual potential.

Language License286-7_kitagawa_utamaro

We need to free our words and discover, create or reclaim luscious, comfortable and hot language to talk about our sexuality, our bodies, and our desires. Only then we can really start to talk about sex, learn about it and consciously create our sexuality.

 

Genital Reality

Believe it or not, our current understanding of female and male genitalia is incomplete and inaccurate. How you play your instrument or anyone else’s if you don’t even know what’s really there and how it operates? We need to know the whole truth about our bodies. The lack of this fundamental information has myriad serious repercussions.

Erotic Owners Operating Manual

After you get the picture of the basic equipment, then you need to know how it works, and how you can make it work better. For example, once you understand the process of arousal, and learn to fully utilize your innate tools, you can dramatically enhance your sexual experiences. Once you understand the erectile equipment or how our nervous systems are hard-wired for pleasure we have much more ability to utilize our glorious bodies.

radha-krsna0Celebrate Sex

We need to reclaim sex from the shame-mongers. Sex is the inherently sacred power that creates life. When you recognize your potential, you are unleashed to explore the vast and potentially transcendent realms of orgasm and ecstasy. Your sexuality is a powerful, transformative gift that’s your personal manifestation of the universal life force. Sexual pleasure is your human birthright. Claim it! Free your sexuality and you’ll tap into your very own vital wellspring of joy. After all, it’s yours!


Welcome to Sex 101

Sex 101: Learn Super Sex

Do you want to have fabulous, mind-blowing sex?
Here’s the key to having sex that exceeds your wildest fantasies.

Learning Sex

Want lessons in orgasmic abundance? Classes in accessing ecstasy? Perhaps a curriculum of the 3 C’s, climax, communication and connection? Could you benefit from innovative erotic education?

I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Sex Classes (Ya Sure?)

Think not? After all, if all that sex stuff is natural and I’m fine the way I am, why would I wantSex Classes-Website Home Page Box Template-1 in square - round corners-light grayV2 to go to sex school? Even if you’re orgasmic and basically satisfied with your sex life, you can benefit from learning how to do it better.

I’m not talking about the basic sex education that you may or may not have gotten in school about how babies are made and how to keep microbial invaders away from your squishy bits. I’m talking about grown-up classes in how to become orgasmically proficient and share blissful waves of sexual energy with a partner.

There’s Always More to Learn

Certainly, if you have challenges with your orgasmic ability or your sexual connections, you may know that things could be better. Especially if you feel broken, inadequate or like you got gypped when they passed out the sexual goods, you may already believe you could benefit from studying the erotic arts.

Wherever you are in your sexual learning journey, you’re OK. So, please don’t be insulted or feel bad. I’m not saying that you aren’t already a sexy devil and dynamite in bed. However, everyone can benefit from learning how to become sexually adept and ultimately become your own expert. Even if you have good sex, even if you have lovely orgasms, your sexual experiences can be bigger, better and beyond belief. Do you doubt that?

The simple truth is that you learn sex, so to become truly proficient, you need to study, practice and learn. This isn’t a life requirement or relationship prerequisite. But, if you want to become a virtuoso of your own sexuality, enhance your erotic experiences and expand your abilities, then you need to learn how. And, the homework is really fun!

Luscious Lifelong Learning

Humans are learning instruments. You started learning the moment you were born, if not before. As a child, you absorbed information like a brainy sponge, sopping up morsels of culture. You developed skills and roles by playing endless games of imagination. To learn to walk, you creeped then crawled, than toddled. At first you were awkward and made mistakes, but when you fell down, you just got up and kept going, stumbling forward, tipping and tottering about. One day you walked, and soon you ran and danced and skipped, all with adept grace. Learning to walk came naturally.

More Bliss in Bed - Website Home Page Box Template-1 in square - round corners-light grayV2Later we learned harder things that didn’t come so easy, like reading and writing. While communication seems to utilize a natural, in-born human capacity for language, the more advanced technology of written language needs more formal discipline to learn.

Sex is like that. While our utterly natural impulses are based on a deep evolutionary template, we have the unique potential to develop our sexuality far beyond what Mother Nature offers other animals. Indeed, humans have become the most erotic of creatures, with an enormous component of our sexuality that is learned behavior. We learn sex, not just when we begin actually having it, but from the moment we’re born.

Sex Version 2.0

Like our computers, we come from the factory with hardware, wiring that cannot be modified. Yet, being human, with our big fancy new brains, a huge part of our sexuality is also software; the programming made up of our culture, upbringing and experience.

Luckily, this means your sexual software can be consciously re-patterned. If your old programming is buggy, it can be replaced. First you may need to overwrite limiting beliefs, inhibitions and defeating attitudes by un-learning these dysfunctional patterns. This frees you to learn new skills, importing innovative programming that expands your erotic capacities and allows you to access the full range of your sexual potential.

Sexual Skills Need to be Learned

You’ve already learned a lot about how to be sexual and how to “do it”, probably by the time-honored, hands-on method. There’s nothing wrong with the classic technique of fumbling about in the dark until things happen to happen. However, if you want to be a true sexual virtuoso, you’ll probably need to learn more than whatever it is you’ve discovered so far.

The idea that our sexuality is learned is the basis for the curriculum of classes that I teach. Sexual and relationship skills can be, and indeed, need to be learned if you want to excel.

Think of it like learning to play a musical instrument, speak a foreign language or develop an athletic skill. You may be naturally musical or athletic, but almost everyone will benefit from lessons. To become adept takes energy and attention, and true proficiency takes time and practice, practice, practice. Anyone and everyone can become skilled at making music, speaking French, or in the erotic arts, if they choose.

The Foundations of Erotic Education

All complex abilities start with acquiring basic skills, sex included. Your sexuality begins with your relationship with yourself and your basic skills begin here. You can’t expect to play fabulous duets if you don’t know how to play your own instrument. So, the foundational skills in sex are the techniques that focus on your abilities to play with your own sexuality. I call them “Solo-Skills”. By developing mastery over your own erotic instrument, your Self, you expand your ability to get turned on, achieve orgasmic proficiency, and gain easy access to ecstasy.

All of your sexual skills build on each other and become easier with practice as repetition causes patterns to become embedded pathways in our bodies and brains. Never forget that the largest, most vital sex organ is indeed, the brain. If you want to have the most wondrous sex possible, the place to start is by opening your mind to new ideas, possibilities and skills.

st-teresa-faceEach of you has the ability to learn and expand your response repertoire to increase your capacity for pleasure and ecstasy. Start out by realizing that you are responsible for your own pleasure, not your lover. Next, embark on a conscious learning journey to develop the techniques and skills that will make you the master of your own instrument.

And, don’t forget to practice! You may not get to Carnegie Hall, but you’ll be capable of sexual performances that will surely inspire standing ovations.


OLC_Succulent_SexCraft_Website header_Product
Are you ready to learn how to play your own instrument with skill and passion? Ready for amplified arousal, easy orgasms, expanded orgasms and access to your own ecstasy?

You can do it in the comfort and privacy of your own home with Intimate Arts Online Education!

Join us for a 4-week deep dive into Succulent SexCraft: Supercharge Your OWN Pleasure for a lifetime of MORE!


Welcome to Erotic U.

Welcome to Erotic U.

Frank Dicksee - The Mirror3-w-cell phoneMany people believe that sex is just something you do, no instruction required. What they don’t understand is that we’ve been learning about sex our whole lives. From how your genitals were handled during diaper changes to your first back-seat fumbles, from adolescent jokes to TV sitcoms, from textbooks to the plethora of porn—you’ve been learning about sex your whole life. You’ve absorbed innumerable lessons about your body, pleasure, relationships, power dynamics, what is and isn’t okay to talk about, suitable language, gender roles, what’s sexually appropriate, what’s hot and not, and much more. Your teachers have been your families of origin, schools (and playgrounds), places of worship, your peers and our ubiquitous entertainment and advertising culture. This is your real sex ed and it’s immensely powerful. You don’t choose to take this class; it just happens. Much of our sexuality education has been unconscious and, for the most part, unquestioned.

A lot of people believe that when it comes to your capacity for sexual pleasure, you have to play the cards you were dealt, good, bad or indifferent—there’s not much room for improvement. People typically believe that learning sexual skills is only about improving your ability to please your partners (like learning to give great oral sex). However, many of your own sexual abilities, including your sexual responses, turn-ons, pleasure pathways and desires, are learned—and therefore amenable to conscious learning. You can learn how to get turned on more easily and in more ways, how to deepen your arousal, and how to become orgasmic (or more orgasmic, or crazy-orgasmic). More broadly, you can learn to become an expert at optimizing your own pleasure.


SW-books-widgets-188x222
This is a slightly modified excerpt from Sheri’s award-winning Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure.

Want more info on Wholistic Sexuality? Check out my recently released Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play & Practice.

 

Want to attend out virtual erotic education online?

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Are you ready to have Sheri personally help you learn to play your own instrument with skill and passion?

You can do it in the comfort and privacy of your own home with Intimate Arts Online Education!

Join us for a 4-week deep dive into Succulent SexCraft: Supercharge Your OWN Pleasure for a lifetime of MORE!

Amplified arousal, easy orgasms, expanded orgasms and access to your own ecstasy awaits you!


You Say You Want an Evolution: Wholistic Sexuality

Erte 1You Say You Want an Evolution

What Is 21st century sex?

What could it be?

What is Sex?

I’ve been a Wholistic Sexuality Teacher, midwife, nurse and gynecology practitioner and an enthusiastic sexually active woman for many decades and I still don’t have a simple answer to that question. I can tell you what it’s not. Sex isn’t just some brief lusty activity involving your reproductive organs, hidden behind a closed bedroom door. It’s so much more then that.

A Fantastic Fulfilling, Frustrating Force

Sexuality is a force that is colossally complicated and mesmerizingly compelling. It’s an unavoidable part of being human, yet shrouded in mystery. Sexuality is an interplay of desire and denial, fantasy and reality. It’s a complex physical and biological template tangled with an equally elaborate cultural overlay. Sex is powerful and promising, chaotic and conflicted, ecstatic and blissful, frustrating and disappointing. For some it is demonic, for others, divine. Sex is emotional, energetic, and often overwhelming. Its power is personally pervasive and culturally ubiquitous, with messages both hidden and overt. Potentially, our sexuality can be deeply connecting; of us to ourselves, to others and to the great mystery of life. Unfortunately, that potential is never achieved for many people.

Should You Be Ashamed of Yourself?

Currently, sex in our world is based on negative models grounded in ancient history, perpetuated by modern media and the convoluted chaos of contemporary culture. For many, sex is a source of unhappiness, frustration and a deep unsatisfied longing. We live in a unique time and place where sex is overtly in-your-face and covertly in your pants, all the while harboring undercurrents of shame, guilt, fear, denial, lust and self-loathing for our bodies, our desires and our pleasures.

Succulent Sacred Sublime Sex

SUKUH Temple, Karang Pandan, Central Java, Indonesia2I believe that we need a new model of sexuality that incorporates a bigger picture of what sex is, of who we are and what we can be as sexual beings. I see a desperate need for a model where sex is honored, celebrated and sacred. So I made one up.

A Sexual Evolution—Wholistic Sexuality

We had a sexual revolution, with its bumpy gains, imperfect progress and some serious backlash. Now it’s time for a sexual evolution that I call Wholistic Sexuality. In essence, my Wholistic Sexuality model is about connection.

This philosophy brings sex back into connection with all aspects of our selves and our lives in a way that honors the power of sexuality. Sexual expression, pleasure, intimacy, fun and joy are necessary to be integrated and whole. In order to be a fully vital human being, we need our sexuality to be intact, functioning and healthy.

Love Yourself As You Love Your Neighbor (or Lover)

This does not imply that in order to be healthy we must be in sexual relationships with others, but rather, we must create and maintain a good sexual connection with ourselves. In other words, Wholistic Sexuality is, first and foremost, about your relationship with your Self. This includes your relationship with your body, your history and experiences, the beliefs that you were exposed to as you grew up, your current and past relationships, your community, the media, your culture, and all other aspects of your world. All of these components and more create your internal sexual relationship. Indeed, your sexuality is a hologram of your inseparable mind, body, heart and spirit. Your sexuality is ultimately, about everything.

A Sexy Healthy Whole

It seems everyone these days is striving to be healthy. Exercise, meditation and healthy eating are now mainstream ideas, supported by countless cultural messages. But sex hasn’t yet emerged from the shadow of repression and shame to become part of what is considered a healthy lifestyle. Only when you connect your sexuality to the rest of your life, will you become integrated and truly healthy.

Conscious Connection

I believe that a sexual evolution is beginning and will continue to occur. It’s a part of the evolution of personal and global consciousness that is occurring planetwide. And since I believe that evolution begins at home, I encourage you to explore and enhance your connection to your own delicious sexuality. After all, without sex, life itself would be impossible. And a whole lot less fun!

Read more

Connection: The Prime Directive of Sex

The following is a collection of excerpts from Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play and Practice.

The Prime Directive: Sex Is About Connection

Title Graphic_Connection_Titian_The Three Ages of Man-detailAt root, sex isn’t about what you do erotically with another person. It’s not about getting off or getting it on, scoring or hooking up. It’s about connecting, first with yourself, possibly with others and ultimately with life.

Your sexuality is first and foremost about your connection to yourself, your whole self.

More than anything, your sexuality is about your relationship with yourself. By ‘self’ I mean all of you: your body, mind, heart and spirit; your past, present and future; your genetics and your environment—everything that makes you uniquely and completely you.

Your sexuality is about who you are, not about who you do (or don’t) have sex with. Your sexual activities don’t define your sexual identity—they emanate from and are expressions of it. Your sexuality is an inherent, inseparable and essential aspect of the complex person that is you.

You can break up with other people. They can die or go away. You can’t leave or be left by yourself, though. Wherever you go, there you are. You are your primary partner, the only one who has been and always will be with you.

What this means is that if you want to have better sex, start with yourself. If you want to have better relationships with other people, start with yourself. If you want more love, connection and pleasure in your life, the place to start is, you guessed it, with yourself.

There’s a straightforward reason for this: Your foundational relationship to yourself is the basis of all your other relationships (not just the sexual ones). All your other connections are shaped by your relationship with yourself.

Your Sexuality Is About Your Connection to Others

Naturally that includes the people you have sex with—partner sex is fundamentally about connection. And it’s also about your connection to everyone and everything, including all life on this planet.

Because your sexuality is an integral aspect of who you are, Eros shows up in all your interactions and relationships, including the many that aren’t sexual. All your other relationships are influenced by your core connection with yourself, just as you have been shaped by all that surrounds you. You’re at the center of a great web of connection. This includes your relationships with partners, families, communities, culture and ultimately the whole wide world. Whatever you do, however you’re connected, your sexuality is part of it.

Sex is Both Natural and Learned

The story that ‘sex comes naturally’ is only partly true. While much of our sexuality is derived from our natural animal templates, an astounding amount of human sexuality is learned. You learn sex, including not just what goes where, but more significantly, your erotic capacities, responses and pathways to pleasure. You are an intricately interwoven combination of hardware and software.

Your hardware is your genetics, the factory-installed equipment that is the unique result of millions of years of evolution. It’s your inborn instincts and aptitudes. You can’t change your hardware, but you can learn to understand and work with it. And learn how to make it work for you.

Unlike your hardware, your software is the programmable, learned part of who you are. You’ve been absorbing things like a sponge your whole life, starting with your prenatal environment and continuing through your birth journey up to this very day. You’ve been shaped by your experience and environment.

Much of our sexuality comes from the software side of the divide. You learned to view sex as sinful, sacred or something in between. You learned your concept of foreplay, your beliefs about who is and isn’t appropriate to have sex with, and much more. Some of this education has been conscious. Much has been unconscious.

Your ability to learn is innate, while what and how much you learn depends on your social and cultural circumstances. For instance, you were born with the inherent ability to learn language, but your proficiency with your native tongue or how many languages you speak depends on your environment. Another example: Every baby loves music and responds to rhythm—but whether or not you play an instrument depends on what you learned to do with your intrinsic musical aptitude. Essentially, you learn sex the same way you learn to play a musical instrument, dance or become fluent with a foreign language.

We all come equipped with a starter kit of basic capacities such as an inherent sense of rhythm, a body that loves to move, and a brain primed with the ability to learn words and grammar. Our natural aptitudes provide the foundation for learning essential skills. We then build up our skill sets by layering on increasingly complex competencies. While much of our learning is unconscious, it’s through conscious learning that we achieve proficiency and ultimately mastery.

You Need Accurate Maps

To fulfill your sexual potential, it helps to have structure, support and guidance–and, more specifically, accurate and effective maps and models. Anything short of that is like trying to find a special spot in the woods without a map (or with one that’s just plain wrong).

It’s not easy to learn complex skills on your own—it helps to have a guide. A teacher can share their knowledge base of accumulated information, wisdom and techniques, offer logical sequences for learning, organize information, provide structure and clarify confusion. A mentor can encourage you on your journey, and also share useful, accurate maps that show you the easy routes and warn you against pitfalls.

Good guides are especially necessary when the maps you’ve been using are inaccurate or outdated. Bad maps get you lost! Unfortunately, this is what we get from our mainstream culture, which seems to specialize in offering flawed maps about relationships and sexuality.

To make matters worse, many people don’t realize they’ve been working with faulty maps and instead believe there’s something wrong with them. Bad maps about sex, bodies, desire and relationships often leave people feeling broken or like failures.

For all their value, though, it’s essential to remember that the map is not the territory. It’s a representation of reality, not the actual thing. That’s why you can have many maps of the same thing, with each one emphasizing a different perspective. A street map, a population map and a topographical one can be simultaneously true yet all look different and be useful in different ways. That doesn’t make one right and the other wrong—they just offer multiple lenses so you can get a bigger and more multifaceted picture.

The important thing to ask about a map or model is if it’s useful and true. Does it confirm or invalidate your experience? Does it get you lost or help you get where you want to go? If you want to find a special swimming hole you’ve heard about, you’re much likelier to get there if you’ve got an accurate trail map that has a big ‘X’ marking the sweet spot.

Of course, you’ll only know if it’s correct if you actually take that walk in the woods and find out for yourself if that idyllic place exists.

Maps are a supremely useful tool for getting where you want to go. Without them, you’re just fumbling in the dark.


 

An Overview of the Integral Model of Wholistic Sexuality™

I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about sex, particularly from my integral holistic perspective. I’m always trying to make my paradigm more clear, understandable and elegant. Here’s my latest version of what Wholistic Sexuality is. If you want to read the longer version, it’s is in the library.

Arthur Rackham Illustration from The RingWholistic Sexuality is about connection. First and foremost, your sexuality is about your connection with your Self — that’s your primary relationship.

Your Self includes all of you: body, mind, heart and spirit, past, present and future, genetics and environment — everything that makes you uniquely and completely you.

Your sexuality is about who you are, not who you do (or don’t) have sex with.Whatever you do or don’t do — you are a sexual being. Your sexuality is an inherent, inseparable and vital aspect of you.

Wholistic Sexuality is about seeing the connection of all life. Your sexuality connects you to everyone and everything. Your fundamental relationship to your self forms the foundation of all your other relationships. Like a hologram, your sexuality is a microcosm that reflects and manifests everything from the personal to the planetary.

Sex is one of the most powerful forces on the planet — it makes life! When you understand and respect that power you can channel it appropriately and responsibly, allowing you to connect with your ecstatic energy and its transformative potential.

Wholistic Sexuality sees sex as something you learn, including your erotic capacities, abilities and responses. Like learning to play an instrument to make beautiful music, you can learn how to play your ‘instrument’ to become an erotic virtuoso.

Bliss is your birthright. You were born with the natural capacity for extraordinary pleasure, abundant joy, and deep connection. Wholistic Sexuality is the map, the lessons and the guide to discovering, expanding and claiming your full sexual power.

Wholistic Sexuality offers a vision of sex where it is normal, natural and inherently good, where we honor the miracle of life and revere the energy of Eros. When we respect the power of sex and learn to navigate its awesome energy everyone can connect with the sacred gift of ecstasy.