Play With Yourself (But Don’t Masturbate)

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Image for FB1In our culture, masturbation still gets a bad rap. While we may no longer believe it causes degeneracy and disease or causes people to go blind (although I do know a lot of folks who wear glasses!), we still don’t celebrate solo sex for the wonderful, self-loving, healthy and pleasurable practice it is.

We don’t even have a good name for it. I rarely use the word masturbation, preferring to call it solo sex, sexual self-love, playing with yourself, or self-pleasuring. I never cared for the m-word and now that I know the derivation of the word, I like it even less. The Latin roots of the word mean ‘to pollute with your hand.’ That’s certainly not what I’m doing with my hand when it’s busy down below! Nor am I committing ‘self-abuse.’ When you’re self-pleasuring, you’re doing lots of things—giving yourself sexual loving, learning how to expand your responses, practicing skills, exploring your fantasies, enhancing your mental and physical well-being, improving your vitality, having a good time, receiving pleasure and relaxing. That sounds like a recipe for health and happiness to me! so I encourage you to play with yourself, but never to “masturbate.”

Our dominant culture still encourages guilt, if not of the mortal sin variety, then of the mildly shameful or “You’re being self-indulgent and wasting time” kind. I find this ironic since we get many of the same benefits from sexual pleasure (whether solo or partnered) that we derive from exercise and meditation. We feel virtuous when we work out or meditate, while taking the same amount of time to have some juicy solo sex is considered frivolous and decadent or worse. When will our puritan culture get over it and accept that solo sex isn’t a dissolute fall into wanton lust, but an ascent into self-love that celebrates your desire, hones your abilities and ultimately honors yourself? While the sex you have with yourself certainly isn’t all there is to your relationship with yourself, it’s an essential component.

Are you practicing sexual self-love? If your answer is “I don’t do that,” I strongly encourage you to start now. If you’re thinking, “but that’s not real sex, it doesn’t count,” it’s time for a new story. Think of your solo sex as an affirmation of your juiciness and an essential practice on your path to becoming sexually masterful.

For those of you who do have ‘do-dates’ with yourself, I have a question for you: how’s it going? While you can’t really have bad sex with yourself, you can certainly have mediocre experiences. If you’re disconnected from yourself or just going through the motions, your solo sex will refl ect that. Do you only give yourself quickies? Just having frantic fast-food snacks? Are you a poor lover to yourself?

I hope not.

How would your dream lover treat you? In what ways would he or she delight you? When you practice solo sex, that’s how I invite you to treat yourself.

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This post is an excerpt from my recent book, Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play and Practice.

Learn to become masterful with your own erotic energy, delight your partners and have more bliss!

Ecstasy awaits you so why wait?

Vaginal Vs. Clitoral Orgasm

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Vaginal Vs. Clitoral Orgasm

It’s one hundred and ten years since Freud stirred up controversy with his theory that vaginal orgasms were the ‘mature’ way to come and that immature clitoral orgasms were for little girls and adolescents. It’s hard to believe that we’re still talking about it now—and that we’re still in a very muddled dispute. But we are.

Vaginal Vs Clitoral Orgasm: In the News! Again.

Since it’s about this century-old debate, I probably shouldn’t be too surprised to see the extensive press coverage that’s attended the publication of a scientific review of anatomy literature. The article in question is Anatomy of Sex: Revision of the New Anatomical Terms Used for the Clitoris and the Female Orgasm, by sexologists Vincenzo Puppo and Giulla Puppo, published in the forthcoming issue of Clinical Anatomy.

In today’s blog, I’ll focus on the vaginal vs. clitoral orgasm argument. The media frenzy is almost orgasmic (although not in a good way) as outlets variously applaud and decry the Puppos’ conclusion that “vaginal orgasm does not exist.” Unsurprisingly, women who don’t experience orgasm from intercourse seem to be on board with these scientists, while women who do experience orgasms from intercourse are shaking their heads and mocking the distance between science and real life (and real bedrooms).

Lizzie Crocker is in the no-vaginal orgasm camp. In her Daily Beast article, The Truth About Female Orgasm, she writes, “Thanks to the two Puppos and their clarifying study, women can finally stop … differentiating between types of orgasms that don’t exist. So … stop taunting us with claims of your intense, superior vaginal orgasms. It doesn’t exist and it never happened.”

I do understand where’s she’s coming from. From her words and tone, I conclude that she’s one of the women who don’t have orgasms from intercourse. I’m sorry if she feels ‘taunted’ by those who do. No one should suffer from orgasmic one-upmanship.

So, for Lizzie (presumably) and all the other women who feel orgasmically shamed, let me hasten to reassure them and impart a few important pieces of information that are missing from these heated discussions.

Let me start by making an important distinction. Most of the participants in this debate are equating ‘vaginal orgasm’ with an orgasm that results from penis-in-vagina intercourse without any added clitoral stimulation. These are not the same thing!

hand-461261_1920The Vaginal Vs. Clitoral Issue

To elaborate: Let’s start with the vaginal vs clitoral issue. The terms ‘clitoral orgasm’ and ‘vaginal orgasm’ are really only referring to where the woman feels the orgasm most intensely. Most people can experience orgasms that have different focal points. While most orgasms are genitally focused, it’s also possible to have ones that feel focused elsewhere, such as ‘heart-gasms’ or orgasms that are so expanded that they feel like the whole body is coming. Even within the genital region, orgasms can feel more centered in one part or another, accounting for orgasms that feel more clitoral, vaginal, uterine or anal (or in men, penile, prostate or anally-focused). The Puppos seem to think that “the few women who report ‘vaginal orgasms’” are deluded by the sexologists and the media. As if women don’t know their own bodies well enough to feel where their orgasm feels centered! If you are in tune with your own body, you’ll be able to distinguish which parts of you are pulsing and palpitating. There is a wide (and normal) range of embodied orgasmic experiences.

Why do we tend to feel orgasms in different areas of the genitals? In part, this has to do with which of the major sexual nerve pathways get more stimulated. More stimulation of the external structures tends to create orgasms that feel more clitoral. More internal stimulation tends to lead to a more internal (i.e., vaginal, uterine or anal) orgasmic experience. Stimulate all the nerve pathways and you get ‘blended’ orgasms that tend to feel especially intense.

andre_lambert_footjob-1917Now to address the separate but related issue about the various types of stimulation that can induce women to have orgasms. The Puppos basically say is impossible for women to achieve orgasms through penis-in-vagina intercourse without any additional direct clitoral stimulation. They say, “In all women, orgasm is always possible if … during vaginal/anal intercourse the clitoris is simply stimulated with a finger.” Rebecca Adams, writing “The G-Spot And ‘Vaginal Orgasm’ Are Myths, According To New Clinical Review” in The Huffington Post, seems to agree, quoting the Puppos: “Every woman has the capacity to orgasm if her clitoris is stimulated.”

There’s nothing wrong with clitorally-stimulated orgasms. If that’s the only kind of orgasms you have, you’re not broken nor are your orgasms ‘immature.’ Any way that you come from any type of stimulation is just fine and dandy! If you aren’t orgasmic in response to penetration, you’re not alone—over half of women don’t have orgasms with intercourse or without direct clitoral stimulation. It’s totally common and completely normal.

295535The most important thing I’d like everyone to know is that women can learn to become orgasmic from a wide variety of stimuli (including with intercourse). Got it? People can learn to become aroused and have all kinds of orgasms from many different types of actions and activities.

While direct genital stimulation is usually an important component of sexual arousal, people can get turned on and orgasmic from stimulation of other body parts or without any direct physical stimulation at all. Extra-genital arousal and orgasms are most likely to happen when sensitive erogenous zones are pleasured such as your nipple, the back of your neck or your mouth (kissing!)

The Puppos state, “Orgasms with a finger in the vagina are possible in all women, but the partner must also move the hand in a circle to stimulate all the female erectile organs.” This would certainly create a limited repertoire for attaining orgasms! In fact, we now have documentation via the MRI studies of hands-off female orgasm done by Komisaruk, Whipple, et al at their lab at Rutgers University that some women are capable of having orgasms by ‘thinking off’ with no clitoral, vaginal or genital stimulation whatsoever.

One thing the Puppos do have right is that women have a number of erectile structures. Unfortunately, they don’t acknowledge them all nor do they seem to understand how they work together. Understanding these erectile structures is one of the keys to increasing the incidence, intensity and frequency of female orgasm. It’s great for the vulva owners to know this, and their partners too.

The Female Erectile Network: A Revolutionary Map of Buried Pleasure

As I noted in So Is there Or Is There Not A G-Spot?, women have what I call the Female Erectile Network, or FEN*. It’s a set of separate but interconnected structures made of erectile tissue—the very same tissue that enables penises to go from small and soft to big and hard. Women have just as much erectile tissue as men, it’s just arranged differently. Some of these pleasure parts are well known while others are almost unheard of (even by scientists, medical practitioners and sexologists).

Starting with the familiar, the FEN includes the super-sensitive ‘jewel in the crown’ —the head of the clitoris. (That’s what most people are referring to when they say ‘clitoris.’) It’s a unique and remarkable structure and merits lots of attention. The clitoral head is the main and usually easiest orgasmic trigger for most women. It is not, however, the only path to female sexual pleasure. The female erectile network also includes the two other parts of the clitoris: the shaft (under the hood) and the 3-4 inch-long paired legs. In addition to the clitoral structures, the FEN includes the paired vestibular bulbs that bracket the vaginal opening, plus two additional structures—the urethral and perineal sponges. The urethral sponge is a cylinder of erectile tissue that surrounds the tube of the urethra. The perineal sponge rests under the vaginal floor, in the wall between the vaginal and anal canals. All of these structures are composed of engorgeable erectile tissue.

gerda-wegener-satyrOne key to making intercourse highly pleasurable and much more likely to be orgasmic for the woman is to make sure that the whole circuit of erectile tissue is fully engorged prior to penetration. Other keys include making sure that the woman is in deep, high-level arousal prior to penetration; using our additional inner ‘sexcraft tools’ (such as breathing, sound, movement, awareness and imagination, to name just a few†) to increase stimulation; having one or more orgasms prior to intercourse; and, during intercourse, using more pelvis-connected movements such as rocking or grinding rather than a penis thrusting in-and-out motion.

 

Orgasmic Learning: The Real Sex Ed

For women, orgasm skills are learnable. Some women haven’t yet learned how to have any kind of orgasm. There’s nothing wrong with you if that’s your situation—there are just skills you haven’t learned yet. Step one is discovering your easiest path to orgasm, which usually involves self-pleasuring and clitoral stimulation. Once women develop orgasmic proficiency, they can go on to learn orgasmic mastery, where you develop many paths through arousal, expand the ways you can get off and discover the wide realm of orgasmic possibilities.

Most women who have penis-in-vagina intercourse-only orgasms have learned how to get there. For those women who haven’t had penis-penetration-induced climaxes, you can develop the skills that will allow you that experience.

If you want to. You don’t have to. It’s an orgasmic option.

carlos-schwabe-spleen-and-idealThere is no right way to have orgasms. There is no better way. Nor is there a Freudian ‘mature’ way to come. But there are different orgasmic experiences. Clitorally or vaginally-stimulated ones, anally stimulated ones, orgasms in your dreams, hands-on ones, hands-off orgasms, whole-body ones. Orgasms from humping a pillow, from penetration of your vagina, your anus, your mouth or your mind. It’s all learnable! You can learn to expand your orgasmic range.

Celebrate All Orgasms

Please don’t let any reporters, scientists, partners (or anyone, for that matter!) tell you that your experiences aren’t real, that you’re not normal, or that the way you get off is wrong. If people with paraplegia can learn to have orgasms by having their mouth or fingers stimulated (and they can and have), then let’s stop limiting and shaming anyone’s experience and learn to celebrate orgasms in any way, shape or body part that helps us have them.

Having great sex is a learning journey. One part of that journey is learning to have orgasms. And, if you choose, learning how to use your many parts and multiple skills to have stupendous ones.

Want to Know More?

For more details about the different structures, take a look at this post: The Missing Female Pleasure Parts

For more information on what’s been misunderstood and neglected, here’s another post: Lost Sexy Bits. (It includes a quickie home play assignment.)

For a few orgasmic pointers, I invite you to download a free Orgasmic Abundance e-book.

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Genital Anatomy in the News! Again. Confusion Still Reigns About the G-Spot.

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Part One. So Is there Or Is There Not A G-Spot?

Due to the depth and complexity of information in both the original article and the media interpretation of it, I’ll be posting a series of blogs addressing various aspects of the female anatomy and orgasm debate and discussion.

Confusion Still Reigns

Is there a g-spot? A recent scientific article says no. Media outlets have hopped on that article and are promoting the idea that there’s nothing to play with inside a vagina. I say that while there is no structure that be accurately named the g-spot, there are indeed some delicious, erectile structures that can be accessed from inside the vagina to the great delight of the vagina owners.

Sad to say, we continue to have confusion and dissent among ‘experts’ as well as translation problems as press takes information from scientific journal articles and interprets (and often misstates it) for the general public.

After reading both the scientific article that started the furor and various media reports that paraphrase, misunderstand and twist the data, I’m ready to weigh in with my own sexpert opinions based on my education and clinical experience as a former certified nurse-midwife and gynecology practitioner, plus my current experience as a sexuality teacher and author.

The Anatomy of Sex

Let’s begin with the science—Anatomy of Sex: Revision of the New Anatomical Terms Used for the Clitoris and the Female Orgasm, by sexologists Vincenzo Puppo and Giulla Puppo, published in the forthcoming issue of Clinical Anatomy.  (And, by the way, media folk, this is a literature review, not a study.)

One aspect of their basic argument is that sexologists, scientists and health care providers should use anatomically correct terminology. I agree insofar as terms such as G-spot and internal/inner clitoris are inaccurate and best not used. I disagree with the scientists, however, about what terms we should be using instead, what’s actually there, and how it operates.

The Female Erectile Network

As I point out in my book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure, women have what I call the Female Erectile Network: a set of interconnected but separate erectile structures made up of the three parts of the clitoris, the paired vestibular bulbs, the urethral sponge and the perineal sponge. They are connected both functionally and structurally. While the Puppos’ article discusses the three parts of the clitoris and the vestibular bulbs, they neglect to consider the more internal erectile structures: the urethral and perineal sponges. These are important components of the female erectile network. While the Puppos are proposing “female penis” for the descriptor of this collection of erectile structures, I strongly believe Female Erectile Network is more useful and descriptive and far less confusing then naming a female body part after a male one.

While it’s beyond the scope of this article to go into detail about each of the female erectile structures, I do want to point out a few salient bits of information about the network. Pound for pound and inch for inch, women have just as much erectile tissue as men do. Each of the network’s structures is composed of erotically responsive erectile tissue, and with proper stimulation, each can become engorged. While women can become aroused and orgasmic with only some of the network activated, for maximum pleasure, get the whole network engorged. When all of the separate structures are engorged, the erectile network becomes like a snug and stretchy cuff of delightfully responsive equipment. Getting one component stimulated and engorged is good. Getting the whole network puffed up and pleasured is way better!

Let me go into a bit more detail about the urethral sponge (so named in the ground-breaking 1981 book, New View of A Women’s Body). It’s also known as the female prostate, since embryologically it’s formed from the same tissue that becomes the prostate gland in males. It’s composed of spongy erectile tissue that forms a cylindrical tube that surrounds the tube of the urethra. It’s rather like a roll of paper towels, with the urethra being like the cardboard tube, while the erectile tissue is like the paper towels. When unaroused, it’s as if you’re near the end of the roll. With proper and pleasurable stimulation, the sponge swells and becomes more like a brand new jumbo roll. The Puppos refer to the urethral sponge as the “corpus spongiosum of the female urethra,” but neglect to connect that to the ongoing controversy about whether or not there’s a g-spot.

Here’s a little-known fact lots of people miss—the underside of the tubular sponge is what in common (and incorrect) parlance is known as the g-spot. I prefer not to use that term. It is not a spot—it’s the bottom of the tube of the urethral sponge. So while I can truthfully say that the ‘g-spot’ as an anatomical structure doesn’t exist, the erectile tissue known as the urethral sponge most assuredly does. Got it? There is no g-spot, but there is a urethral sponge—an engorgeable (and potentially pleasurable) erectile tissue tube that lies just above the roof of the vagina. The Puppos are correct that the g-spot is not a part of the vagina. The urethral sponge is not a part of the vagina itself, as it lies right above the ‘roof’ (anterior wall) of the vagina. However, it can be stimulated is through the vaginal roof, so from the lay point of view it is ‘inside’ the vagina since it can be accessed that way.

And the media? Here’s an example of its hyperbolic and inaccurate response (these from Lizzie Crocker in “The Truth About Female Orgasms: Look to the Clitoris, Not the Vagina” in The Daily Beast): “A new study claims the G-spot is nothing more than a ‘scientific fraud,’” and “Thanks to the two Puppos and their clarifying study, women can finally stop digging around for their G-spots.”

WRONG! Women have erectile tissue that can be stimulated intra-vaginally, it’s just not a g-spot. It’s the bottom of the urethral sponge and I do recommend that women (and their lovers) discover it.

Who Wins The Battle of the Sexperts?

Can’t figure out which ‘sexpert’ is right? How about if you all check it out for yourselves? You can become your own expert and solve the question for yourself!

Let me invite you to do a bit of homework. (This is a shortened version of the suggested guided tour of The Succulent Sponge exploration from my book. If you own the aforementioned equipment, you can do this exploration solo. (It’s written from the female perspective.) If you don’t have female equipment of your own, you’ll need a lab partner for this experiment.

Guided Tour of the Succulent Sponge

Begin in an unaroused state. Put one or two of your fingers inside your vagina, turn the pads of your fingers up, curl them and reach up, exploring the roof.

Remember as you go on your guided tour that this is erectile tissue that you’re feeling, so during stage one of your exploration, that is, in a completely unaroused state, it won’t feel like anything in particular. Since the urethral sponge surrounds the urethra, when you push against the non-puffed tissue, you’ll really be rubbing almost directly on your urethra( pee tube). It will probably make you feel like you need to pee. For most women, this is not an erotic sensation.

Play with yourself (or get help from a partner) and get moderately aroused.

Now, feel it again. Notice the differences in size and sensation. It probably won’t feel irritating anymore, but it may not feel great, either.

Return to sexual pleasuring and get to high level arousal.

Feel inside again. When your urethral sponge is really big and puffed, you’ll be able to feel the whole two to three inch length of it. You’ll also notice its ridged or ribbed texture. If you separate your fingers a bit, you can run them along the gutters or sides of the tube. If you can reach in far enough, you’ll feel where it ends. When you play with it for awhile, you may notice that it starts to feel like a wet sponge, as if it’s full of tiny fluid-filled grapes.

If you’re using a mirror, you can see some interesting sights. If you hold your vagina open and look inside with a light, you’ll see the roof bulging boldly down into your vaginal canal. You can also note the raised circular ring that’s the end of the tube surrounding the opening of your urethra.

Pleasuring Female Parts

Here’s a little tip about pleasuring female parts: most women prefer to have their erectile tissue played with after it’s at least partially engorged. If you or your playmate are pressing the urethral sponge too early in arousal it will usually not only not feel good, it will often feel irritating. Save sponge stimulation for high level arousal and if playing with it doesn’t feel good—back out and turn up the turn on before returning to inner sponge play.

For a more detailed version of your home play assignment, detailed anatomy descriptions and unique illustrations, please see my book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure.

In part two of Female Orgasm and Genital Anatomy in the News, I’ll look at the vaginal vs. clitoral orgasm controversy and explain why all the fuss is misguided.

For a few orgasmic pointers, I invite you to download a free Orgasmic Abundance e-book.

For lots more details, illustrations and guides to discovering all of the female pleasure equipment, I invite you to read my award-winning book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure.

For in-depth information, my recently released book, Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play & Practice expands on many of the ideas in this article, such as how to use your ‘sexcraft toolkit’ to expand your pleasure.

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Some Notes on Erotic Mastery

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Becoming An Erotic Virtuoso

Angie Chung, Hand Shapes: Hill & Valley

Angie Chung, Hand Shapes: Hill & Valley

Don’t expect to become a virtuoso overnight. Mastery takes time, energy, attention and practice. Lots of it. This is true for playing the piano and it’s true for sex, too. It’s been estimated that becoming expert at anything takes at least 10,000 hours. Luckily, since we’re talking about sex here, you’ve probably already put in quite a few hours!

In addition, you have some very deep, hardwired sexual circuits that make developing your erotic proficiency much easier than mastering Mozart. This is one area of your life where you can make pretty quick progress on your learning journey once you have a guide, maps and the desire to excel.

Also bear in mind that while technique is an indispensable means to an end, erotic mastery isn’t solely about technique. Great sex isn’t about performance or ‘doing it right’—it’s a magical improvisational dance. Technique provides a foundation of embodied learning that you then use to play freely and imaginatively—it’s the underlying skill set that allows you to be fully in the moment and open to the flow. So learn your moves, practice your techniques, train your mind and body to excel—then forget all that and let passion and energy be your guide.

“The more technique you have the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is the less there is.” — Pablo Picasso

Succulent_Sexcraft_Sheri_WinstonI hope you enjoyed this little taste of my new book, Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play & Practice. It’s the place to go to develop exquisite erotic skills like becoming extraordinarily orgasmic, mastering erotic trance states and so much more!

 

OLC_Succulent_SexCraft_Website header_ProductAre you ready to have me 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!

Is Porn Turning Boys Into Monsters?

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Headline from The Guardian: “Any boy who tells you that he hasn’t seen porn is lying. Porn changes what you expect from girls”

While I certainly agree with many points in the article, such as we need to be teaching about relationship and communication skills and consent in sex education for children and teens, there are a few points that seem to arise frequently about the influence of porn.

This article in the UK Guardian states:

“A 2013 report for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, called Basically … Porn is Everywhere, examined recent research on the impact of pornography on children and young people. According to the report, pornography “influences their attitudes towards relationships and sex; it is linked to risky behaviour such as having sex at a younger age; and there is a correlation between holding violent attitudes and accessing more violent media”.

As far as I know, the data I’ve seen does not support that conclusion.

Has anyone seen this report or this data?

Do you believe this is true?

Are they conflating correlation, influence and “links” to causation? (It’s a favorite media tactic for sensationalizing and twisting data.)

Also, is “slag” British for slut?

This Is Your Brain on Sex

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The following is an excerpt from Succulent Sexcraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play and Practice:
brainonsexYour neocortex is the executive headquarters of your brain, perched in the penthouse at the front of your skull. This is not where sex takes place. Sexuality is primarily a function of the older, more primitive parts of our brain. Sexual energy is animal energy and our animal selves live in the limbic system and old brain. Sex taps into ancient evolutionary machinery that resides, so to speak, in the cranial basement. You need to go down the brain elevator if you want to really get down sexually.

Your busy babbling executive forebrain can be more of a hindrance than a help. We’ve probably all had times when our chattering neocortex blocked our sexual energy. People get stuck in their heads—or, rather, neocortex—all the time thinking about things like what you should (or shouldn’t) be doing, if you’re doing it right, if the ceiling needs painting… the list goes on and on.

The simple fact is that to go into erotic trance at all, and especially to go deep, your forebrain needs to turn off so your animal body can wake up and turn on. Your command center needs to stop thinking, deciding, planning, worrying and judging—it needs to go off-line. Until that happens, the primal templates that reside in the old parts of your brain can’t be accessed.

Turning off the jabbering conversations in your executive office is easier said than done. We can do it, though, with the help of our sexcraft toolkit. Focusing on sound and breath, for instance, takes our attention away from all that administrative prattle and brings us to greater body awareness — it makes us, in this sense, more ‘animal.’ Similarly, visualizing heart energy stills the mind and activates the limbic system, which, as we’ve seen, is the mammalian part of the brain that deals with love and attachment.

Great sex brings out the animal in you. not literally, but not merely figuratively either. You go down into the more animal parts of your brain, on vacation from your control-aholic, hyper-active head office.

The deeper we get into our arousal trance, the more difficult it becomes to communicate coherently. talking is a fore-brain activity and when we’re turned on, we’re down in the basement and that upper story is far away. This explains why we tend to communicate in shorthand when we’re having sex (“now!” “please!” “Yes!”) or stay with our animal selves and simply purr and howl.

The three aspects of the brain—the old ‘reptile brain,’ the ‘mammal mid-brain’ and the ultra-modern ‘human new brain’ — can act in coordination or competition. Sex is a great example of how this plays out. It’s a journey where you shift from mundane reality to the altered state of intense arousal. At the beginning of the experience, your prattling neocortex predominates. As you go deeper into arousal, it slowly shuts down, allowing you to descend to where the primeval apparatus of sex resides. In between are the connections, emotions and experiences that form the web of who you are, what turns you on, your dreams and fantasies, your hopes and expectations, your anxieties and fears, your thoughts, sensations, meaning and stories. These can facilitate or inhibit your shift into deep erotic trance. For instance, your command center can assist you on your journey by reminding you to use your tools, advising you to take some deep breaths, make pleasure sounds and rock your hips. You can use your sexual imagination to replace negative thoughts with hot scenarios. Brain management is, believe it or not, a bedroom skill. You don’t want your forebrain working against you. Learn to harness it in service to your arousal—use your conscious brain to get animal and wild.

You can consciously use your brain to change your mind and you can use your mind to change your brain.

The Six P’s of Touch

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photo CC by SA Nelumba

You can become a touch savant by playing with the six p’s — presence, purpose, patience, precision, pattern and progression. When you do so, you get to the ultimate p -— Pleasure!

Presence

It is in the imperceptible space between that which touches and that which is touched that one body can be felt, no matter how closely, to be different from another.

When you are fully present and in the moment with your touch, it will be exquisite. paying relaxed, soft-focused attention is a great way to let your kinesthetic intelligence emerge. If you’re touching your partner’s thigh, be present to the thigh. Don’t think about where you’re hoping to get to after that. delight in the delicious now.

Use your own sexcraft skills to stay present. if you find yourself in a thinking or distracted place, slow down or better yet, get still. Get centered back into your own experience using breath, awareness, intention (or whatever your favorite centering tools are.) Then shift your awareness back to your partner.

Purpose

Touch transmits intention. If someone is rubbing your back as a prelude to getting into your pants, you’ll know it. If someone is intending to give you pleasure, their touch will transmit that, too.

I encourage you to create conscious intentions when you connect erotically with yourself and others. Focus on connection, pleasure and co-creating a great improvisational journey, not on getting or achieving.

Patience

When I’m asked for one single bit of advice about how to have better sex, my answer is this -— take your time. Quickies can be fun snacks, but extraordinary sex usually occurs when you slow down to enjoy the feast.
While I certainly recommend taking time to have leisurely encounters, I mean something else as well. Don’t be in a hurry to get from point A to point B. Dogs (or should i say, core-yang people), this means not diving directly into your pussycat’s nether regions. If you want to do some muff munching, consider starting at her toes, taking time with every digit, then traveling oh-so-slowly up her leg until she’s desperate to have you dive into her glorious genitalia. Slow is good -— it creates anticipation and builds arousal. The more patient you are, the hungrier your kitty will be and the more you’ll be rewarded when you feed her (or feed on her).

Precision

By precision, I mean touch that’s discerning, accurate and exquisitely focused. it’s one of the keys to touching masterfully instead of just “okay-fully.”

It requires you to toggle your attention and awareness fluidly back and forth between yourself and your partner. as we get more turned on, it’s easy to lose our focus and get wild and sloppy with our movements. as things up-regulate and your brain heads down toward the basement, do your best to pay extra attention to the importance of precision!

It also requires presence —- you can’t be precise without being present.

Pattern

If you touch someone in the same way over and over again, it can get monotonous or irritating. if you deviate non-stop, it can feel incoherent and chaotic and keep the recipient from going into trance. There’s a middle ground between chaotic and boring. Masterful touch is like music -— it creates patterns with its combination of rhythm, repetition, harmony and syncopation. Repeating a move creates space for appreciation and feeds anticipation. It creates a pleasing expectation -— a sort of touch security, as it were —- and escalates entrancement.

Syncopation offers an accent note. It delivers the element of surprise, and it does so without taking the recipient out of the zone. Use motion and stillness, just as music works with sound and silence. Remember: stillness is a ‘move’ just like motion is a move. Play with a beat, melody and cadence. Use repetition, surprise, rhythm, syncopation, tempos and motifs to create your very own symphony of touch.

You can also play with touch as if it were visual art. Pretend you’re finger-painting, sculpting, outlining or shading. Here, too, use designs, motifs, recurring themes, and gradually changing patterns. Doodle with their body! There’s a larger takeaway here: touch is an art form—and mastery equals artistry.

Progression

Pattern and progression are closely related. in fact, progression is how you get from pattern a to pattern B, or from location a to location B, without having it feel rushed, jumpy or chaotic. Let your touch have internal consistency, a sort of touch logic. Don’t jump around randomly from one place on the body to another. Play with progressing coherently from place to place, or from one layer to another. Shift fluently between languages. Transition gradually between tempos or from broad strokes to detailed ones.

Generally, use smooth, gradual transitions (except when you want to delight with the surprise of an accent note). For instance, going from deeply therapeutic shoulder massage directly to genital stimulation might be disconcerting. However, if you move from deep kneading of the big back muscles down to the buttocks, shift to a lighter sensual rhythmic stroke down the thigh, followed with a teasing, feathery flit up the inner thigh, a quick brush past the crotch, to almost touching the genitals, and finally to landing there with a deliberate firm hand — well, that can be utterly delicious.

During all of this, of course, you’ll want to practice another of the ‘p’s —- patience. There’s an art to finding the balance between taking your time and being too slow. Here, look for the receiver to give cues. as long as they’re loving it, linger there. When they’re not responding positively, it may be time to move on to something else.

Receivers, there’s a message in this for you: Be actively responsive. Not only will this amplify your pleasure, you’ll be letting your giver know how you love to be touched. And that’s a positive pleasure circuit!

This is the Prime Directive of Sex

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The following is an excerpt from Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play and Practice.

THE PRIME DIRECTIVE: SEX IS ABOUT CONNECTION

1. Your sexuality is first and foremost about your connection to your self. Your whole self.
2. Your sexuality is also 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.
3. Sex is both natural and learned. While an important part of our sexuality is based on our inborn animal templates, an astounding amount of human sexuality is learned.
4. 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).

Connections your sexuality is connected to everyone and everything. Here are aspects of the web of life that surrounds and supports you, and that co-created you:

YOU

• Hardware: nature, evolution, genetics
• Software: learning, environment, culture
• mind, body, heart and spirit
• energy and matter

EVERYTHING ELSE

Families

• your family of origin (the place where nature and nurture overlap and sometimes collide)
• your families of choice (the people you choose to create family with)
• your families of creation (your kids, if you have them)

Partners

• including any people with whom you are or have been intimate, sexual, and/or romantic
• current partners
• past partners
• fantasy partners
• potential partners

Communities

• friends, acquaintances, and all other communities and connections
• where you live
• political institutions, spiritual, religious and other institutions
• other institutions
• the media
• your work
• all living beings
• the world
• the ALL… The mysteries (leaving room for all of the energies and influences that we don’t know or understand)

What is Sex?

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Have you ever stopped to wonder, “Just what exactly is sex anyway?” Here’s our definition — see if it doesn’t expand yours.
(Excerpted from our new book Succulent SexCraft.)

What Is Sex?

Sex is any erotic activity: it’s something you do. Sexuality encompasses the whole of who we are. It incorporates our thoughts, emotions, stories, beliefs, values, relationships, boundaries, choices, behaviors, knowledge and experiences.

Sex makes life. It made you—the one and only complex entity you are.

Sex is the vital life force, the energy that infuses all living creatures. It connects all life (including you).

Sex is the pervasive power of creation, the force that fuels sexual reproduction. It drives evolution’s mix of competition and cooperation. It generates diversity, beauty and complexity.

Sex permeates everything. our political systems, spiritual traditions, institutions, mythologies and cultures are shaped by it in myriad ways, both positive and negative. Eros fuels fertility, creativity, connection and love.

What Is Sex For You?

For starters, ponder these questions, remembering that there are no right answers. If you choose, record your responses in your journal.

• How do you define sex?
• What did you think sex was when you were a child?
• What would you like your sex life to be like?
• What do you like about your current sex life? What do you dislike about it?
• What are some positive feelings you have about your sexuality?
• What are some negative feelings?
• What do you believe would make your sex life more fulfilling?
• What would you like to learn?

We encourage our readers to answer these questions
beforSucculent SexCraft Book Imagee and then again after reading the book, to clearly show the progress they’ve made. Of course, you can’t do that if you don’t have the book, but that is an easy problem to fix!

5 Stars! “Engage your curiosity and transform your erotic play” By Kate Chopin

Women’s Health Magazine Gets It Wrong about Women & UTIs

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4693614248_97a6977e6d_bIt’s not fair to women to put out an article about women’s health that mixes correct and incorrect information. Let me set the record straight about what they got right and what they got disastrously wrong and what they just don’t understand.

True: UTI’s are common in women and often related to sexual intercourse.

To start with, it’s important to understand that there’s a difference between irritation from too much friction and an infection caused by bad bacteria.

If irritation is the issue then applying frequent and generous lubricant will help reduce friction. Especially if you’re using condoms, and going at it a lot, than lubricants are your friend.

Even more important: make sure the woman is totally and thoroughly aroused prior to penetration. Most people are confused about what constitutes full female arousal and readiness for penetration. For most women that can take 30 – 45 minutes of getting turned on. Without having all of your erogenous tissue fully engorged, you are prone to irritation and significantly less pleasure. Ladies, don’t allow “premature penetration!”

Back to the mistakes in the article. Here’s another place they’re completely wrong: “When you have sex, bacteria from the vagina can get rubbed into the urethra, where it travels up to the bladder.” Nope, it’s not vaginal bacteria that are the problem. It’s almost always bacteria from the anus that cause urinary infections.

Since it’s anal invaders that are the source of urinary infections, the best prevention is excellent sexual hygiene, meaning that nothing that touches in or around the butt should go in or around the vulva and vagina. (At least not until it’s been thoroughly washed with soap and water.)

While the frequency of the sex is an factor in UTI’s it’s not the amount of sex per se that’s the problem. It’s friction, inflammation and un-friendly bacteria. More sexual activity provides more chances for butt bacteria will get tracked into the vaginal and urethral areas. In addition, irritated and inflamed tissue is more susceptible to infection. That’s a bad combination.

They got this right: “taking cranberry extract on a regular basis can help. Cranberry actually keeps the bacteria from sticking to the wall of the bladder.” That is true! Using cranberry extract capsules is a great strategy for prevention and can also nip an impending infection in the bud (if you catch it super early.)

This is totally wrong: “Your doctor may also prescribe an antibiotic that you can take each time you have sex, which will deliver a high level of antibodies to the urine (though not to your blood stream, so you won’t get a yeast infection).” So very wrong. When you take antibiotics, you deliver antibiotics to your whole body via your blood stream. While antibiotics will kill the bad bacteria in your urinary system, they can also kill the good bacteria in your vagina and lead to yeast infections.

The take-away: Make sure that the women’s body is really ready for penetration by taking as much time as she needs to be completely ready. And ready doesn’t just mean wet—that’s an sign of early arousal. For a woman to be totally turned on means that she’s deeply into her state of arousal and that her whole erectile network (her circuit of connected erectile tissue structures) is engorged.

Use extra lube.

Practice careful sexual hygiene.

Have as much sex as you want.

photo CC-BY Graham