Sacred Sex: How do I Bring it Up with My Partner?

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Here’s one of the questions and my answer from last night’s Ask the Sex Teacher ANYTHING About Sacred Sex webinar.

Want to learn more about Sacred Sex?

SizzlingSacred Sex_ROLC__V2-2Join Sheri to ‘attend’ her four-session online course: Sizzling Sacred Sex: What It Is & How to Have It. Explore the mysteries and magic of sacred pleasure! Beyond the 4 class sessions, you get resources, home play assignments, suggested rituals and more!

Are you wondering about our Online Intimate Arts courses? Go here to find out what they’re all about! Discover the easy way to to learn to have more pleasure in the comfort of your own home!

Sacred Sex Starts with Sacred Intention

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Sacred Sex Starts with Sacred Intention

Bliss Dance by Tony Webster

Bliss Dance by Tony Webster

The Sacredness of Sex

All primal cultures recognized the sacredness of sex. After all, sex makes life, so how could it be anything other than sacred? In cultures that especially revered sexuality, Eros was considered a path to connect to the gods and goddesses, to the Divine. Sex was considered a prayer and an invitation to fertility for all life and all beings. Any babies that resulted from sex were an added blessing.

Many of these cultures used similar practices and techniques to draw on the power of Eros in service to the sacred. My approach to sacred sex is drawn from the many paths that cultures throughout time have followed to honor the spiritual in matters of the body and the bedroom.

‘Sacred’ means different things to different people. For our purposes, we can start with the idea that sacredness is what makes things feel special, cherished and unique. For me, it’s more than that, though. The ‘sacred’ is closely related to the notion of ‘spirit,’ which I see as something real and also to be celebrated.

When I refer to spirit, I’m not talking about religion or even spirituality. Perhaps because of my decades as a practicing midwife, I think of spirit as life’s incorporeal aspect, as the part of you that entered your body-mind when you took your first breath. It’s the magic spark that animates you beyond the mechanistic physical plane. But it’s not just in you—it’s in everything. When I write about connecting to spirit, I mean connecting to the sanctity of life, the holiness of all beings, and the sacred fire within you. It’s the Divine not as a separate, superior being, but as the mysterious force that’s manifest in everything. When your sex is integrated with your spirit, it can lead to not just transcendent mind-blowing sex, but a personal and ecstatic experience of the Divine.

Spirit is what the Native American Lakota people call Wakan Tanka, the ‘Great Mysterious Power’ or the ‘sacredness that resides in everything.’ It’s the ineffable energy that, among other things, connects the carnal erotic to the mystery beyond matter.

We have been endowed with tools that enable us to ride sex’s magic carpet into the sacred realm. Some of these are optional—sacred sound, for instance. One, however is not. This is sacred intention.

More Bliss in BedSacred Intention

Holding the intention to make something sacred is your most basic spiritual tool. You can use your other spiritual tools to make your intention more concrete (which often helps), but your most essential skill is the intention to have your sexual practice be sacred.

There’s something magical in this. If you hold the intention for something to be spiritual or sacred, that’s what it becomes. It’s a simple yet profound practice. You can use sacred intention whenever you have sex, be it solo or partnered, a quick snack or a prolonged feast. Define a sacred purpose for your pleasure, create a consecrated container, touch on your sacred intention during your erotic activities, appreciate and affirm the holiness of your erotic actions—any of these choices can be transformative. If you wish, you can dedicate your erotic energy and your orgasms to a spiritual purpose such as enlightenment, blessing or healing.

You can practice sacred intention whenever you wish. Depending on the circumstances, it may not take you to the experience of the sacred. On the other hand, it may. One thing is certain—you won’t experience sacred sex if you don’t hold a sacred intention.

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You Say You Want an Evolution: Wholistic Sexuality

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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!

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Four Lessons Prince Taught Us About Sacred Sex

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Prince(By Sheri Winston and Carl Frankel)

Because Prince was the rare artist-celebrity who was both deeply religious and openly sexual, his untimely passing has placed a sudden spotlight on the topic of sacred sex. His view of the relationship between sex and God provides invaluable insights to people who want to practice sacred sex, but aren’t sure how to do it.

Many religious faiths are vehemently sex-negative—anti-sex and anti-pleasure. You can only get to heaven, these traditions tell you, by transcending the body and its shameful desires. Because these attitudes have permeated our culture, many people see sex as sinful and the farthest thing from sacred.

Prince was the absolute opposite of sex-negative. He believed that sex was one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity. For him, all sex was sacred. He believed that we can have sex that both feels amazing and connects us with the Divine. That’s a pretty radical belief in a world where sex has become deeply associated with sin.

Here are four takeaways from the Gospel of Prince about how to have sex that is both hot and holy.

1. Sacred sex isn’t ‘sex lite.’ It’s not sex with the raw, lewd, hot stuff stripped out. Prince made it clear that sex can be sacred and wildly profane at the same time. Since sexual desire was a gift from God, unbridled lust was one of many possible ways to praise Him. (An especially fun way!)

In Darling Nikki, he meets the song’s protagonist when she’s “in a hotel lobby, masturbating with a magazine.” They go upstairs and have a “funky time.” She’s quite the bedmate: Prince’s body “will never be the same.”

Sounds like quite the delightfully raunchy encounter, right? Only the song ends with a surprise—these words played backward:

“Hello, how are you? I’m fine, ‘cause I know
That the Lord is coming soon, coming, coming soon.”

Prince is suggesting that no matter how hot and dirty the sex gets, God is fine with it. Although Nikki turned him into a “dirty little Prince” whose one desire was to “grind grind grind,” that didn’t make him a sinner. He was “fine.” His journey into lust wouldn’t keep God from “coming soon.”

Great news! You can get down and dirty and still have it be sacred.

2. There’s a big gap between Prince’s view of sex as inherently sacred and the notion many people have of sacred sex as a sort of special sauce that elevates the usual sexual experience. Although many people associate sacred sex with ancient erotic traditions like Tantra, that’s not required. In Adore, Prince writes:

“When we be makin’ love
I only hear the sounds
Heavenly angels cryin’ up above
Tears of joy pourin’ down on us.”

There’s no mention here of special breathing techniques or any of the other sacred-sex moves you can study up on in the esoteric traditions. Prince and his partner were madly in love and making love. That was good enough to make it sacred. How do we know? Because the angels wept with joy for them.

Special techniques can help—a lot, actually—but sex doesn’t become spiritual just because you paint by the sacred-sex numbers. Sex is sanctified by what your soul brings to it.

3. Prince believed that the body is inherently sacred—both a gifyou-came-into-my-life-1174536_1920t from God and a path to God. In The Human Body, he writes:

“Can U get me excited?
Excited enough 2 thank the God above 4 the human body.”

Here, too, we see him making his familiar sex-and-God connection. If you turn me on enough, he’s saying, the spirit will come over me and I’ll cry “Hallelujah!”

We can follow Prince’s lead on this one, too. Sacred sex transmutes physical arousal into powerful feelings of gratitude to God for giving us hearts that can love as intensely as they do, and bodies that can experience such amazing pleasure.

4. For Prince, sex was right up there alongside salvation as part of God’s grand plan—so much so, in fact, that the Second Coming, as imagined by Prince, sounds suspiciously like a sex party.

From Sexuality:

“Stand up everybody, this is your life
Let me take u to another world, let me take u tonight
U don’t need no money, u don’t need no clothes
The Second Coming, anything goes
Sexuality is all u’ll ever need
Sexuality—let your body be free.”

That’s right, folks—Prince basically had his God presiding over an orgy. A holy orgy. Talk about radical sex-positivity!

Which brings us to our fourth takeaway: If you want to practice sacred sex, be like Prince and be sex-positive.

Prince left us many gifts, including his vast musical output and his amazing performances. Perhaps his greatest gift, though, was his unshakable belief that sex didn’t cause our downfall. Quite the opposite, actually—it’s what brings us back to the Garden.

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The Joy of Squirting: How I Learned to Be a Juicy Goddess

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The_Birth_of_Venus_by_Robert_Fowler-soft_edgesThe Joy of Squirting—How I Learned to Be a Juicy Goddess

Whether you call it squirting, gushing, or female ejaculation, it’s a delicious form of hot wet pleasure. Releasing this fluid, also called amrita, the nectar of life, is truly an ecstatic experience. Here’s how I learned to go from orgasmic to a gushing goddess—and you can, too.

Female What?

When I first heard about female ejaculation (FE), I was already working as a nurse-midwife and gynecology practitioner. I had never experienced it myself. At first, I thought it was made-up porn nonsense. But over the next few years, I had patients who reported what sounded like FE: profuse release of fluid with high-level arousal and/or orgasm. This is when I began to suspect that gushing was a real but rare experience.

She Gushed On Me!

In the mid 90’s, I had an up-close personal experience of squirting with a female partner who was an ejaculator. She told me she had always ‘gushed’ with orgasm. The amount was profuse. I observed the fluid spurting out of her urethra. It did not smell like urine, wasn’t yellow, and it tasted briny and tangy but not at all like pee. It didn’t leave any stain on a white towel. When air-dried, the fragrance on the towel was quite pleasant.

As I’d been having orgasms for almost 30 years without such a response myself, I assumed it was something only a small number of women had the natural ability to do. I now ‘believed’ in FE, as an uncommon but natural ability.

Female Ejaculation Lessons?

My next shift in thinking came when I met a number of women who said that they had learned to squirt, commonly in their late 30’s and 40’s. This certainly got my interest! I started to believe that gushing might be a learnable skill.

I already knew that many sexual responses were based on skills that were learnable. I’d taught myself a variety of useful skills such as how to have assured orgasms, orgasms from intercourse, non-genital orgasms, and so on. Once I realized that female ejaculation was a skill that could be acquired, I figured that if these other women had learned to ejaculate, so could I. At that time, though, there were no books or classes on the topic, so I just kept asking questions when I had the opportunity while also expanding my orgasm skills and holding on to the vision that it was possible for me to experience squirting myself.

Squirting Is Possible and Learnable

Sure enough, now that I knew it was possible and learnable, and also had a foundation of orgasmic proficiency, it happened. After a delightful night of extensive stimulation and dozens of orgasms, I experienced my own dramatic gushing mega-orgasm. It was profuse, wildly expanded my already pretty wild orgasms, and had a component that felt deeply sacred and empowering. I was now a true believer. No question about it—squirting was a learnable skill!

Over the next few years, I became more proficient at having a wide spectrum of orgasms, including gushing ones. I was reinforced in my basic belief that if a person combined comfort and connection to their body, knowledge, skill and practice, they could learn to squirt.

Gushing Variety

The nature of my gushing varies quite a bit. I can produce vastly different amounts of fluid. With certain types of stimulation, especially if it’s prolonged, I may gush buckets. If I’m not in a deep state of arousal, inadequately stimulated or dehydrated, I produce very little. Not all my orgasms include obvious gushing at all.

I’m certain that I’m not producing pee. When I gush, the fluid I produce smells remarkably like amniotic fluid, briny and fresh like seawater. When I was still in my cycling years, it would be sweeter around ovulation. While it does emerge from the urethral opening, it’s not yellow and doesn’t smell like urine. I’ve checked the pH and it isn’t the same as urine.

Another consideration for me is that I can produce considerably more ejaculatory fluid than I can urine. When I pee, a finite amount of urine comes out. It takes some time before I can generate more. In a really prolonged orgasmic series of ejaculations, I can produce huge amounts of fluid. As long as I’m well hydrated, I can keep going. I measured the fluid once and found that I can expel about ½ cup with each series of gushes—and then keep going to have many additional series of gushes of similar amounts. I could never produce that much urine in such a short amount of time.

The Anatomy of Female Ejaculation

As I was developing my gushing abilities, I became intensely interested in the anatomy and physiology of the process. Since it was clear to me that it was not urine, diluted or otherwise, I wondered where the fluid came from. For a while, I found no plausible explanations for it. The scientific perspective seemed to be that it must be urine since there appeared to be no other place for a large amount of fluid to come from other than the bladder.

I did not (and do not) accept that theory. It was not congruent with my personal experience. I believed there must be another anatomically accurate and scientifically valid explanation.

Ejaculatory Eureka

My ‘aha’ insight into the possible mechanism of female ejaculation followed. You can hear about my ‘Eureka’ moment and find out where all that liquid comes from in my recorded online course The Learnable Art of Female Ejaculation. You can also get all of my subsequent learning about FE such as why we squirt and, of course, lots of tips and techniques for facilitating gushing goddess orgasms for yourself or your partners.

I have no doubt that many of the factors that contribute to the ability to squirt are learnable. These include getting to deep levels of arousal, orgasmic expansion skills, how to relax, release and expel, the mindset of permission, an accurate understanding of the relevant anatomy and specific manual stimulation skills. When women develop these skill sets, it increases the likelihood that they’ll have sexual experiences that are deeply satisfying and orgasmic, whether you discover the ability to get super juicy or not. If women also develop the ability to have glorious gushing orgasms, all the better!

Orgasmic Options

In my teaching about sexuality, I always emphasize that there are a wide range of pleasure pathways and many ways to access deep wells of ecstatic experience. Female ejaculation is not required to have extraordinary pleasure or to be sexy or for any reason other than that it’s a blissful way to expand the menu of orgasmic options.

Pouring forth amrita feels awesome, empowering and profoundly liberating. It taps into deep emotions and feelings of connectedness with yourself, your partners and the universe. It produces a sense of deep release and post-orgasmic relaxation. When you’re gushing you feel like a goddess (or in the presence of one)—beautiful, gorgeous, and wild.

ROLC_FE_March 2016_V4-HeaderGo here for more information about the recorded online course The Learnable Art of Female Ejaculation. For all genders.

 

Why Learn to Squirt? The Pleasures of Female Ejaculation

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JP1847Why Learn to Squirt?

The Pleasures of Female Ejaculation!

Whenever I talk to a group of people about female ejaculation, someone invariably asks, “Why would I want to learn how to gush?”

It’s a fair question. For a lot of people, squirting conjures images of mess—a flood at best, pee at worst. It makes sense to wonder, ‘Why bother?’ Or even to have a ‘yuck’ response. Who needs more laundry to do?

So let me tell you—it’s worth it. Believe me, it’s worth it!

Simply put, female ejaculating wildly expands the experience of orgasm. Each spurt of hot fluid brings a delicious and intense feeling of release. It’s a form of ecstatic liberation. When it’s happening, I feel like a goddess—powerful, ecstatic and beautiful. It’s like you’re connected to the universal life force and it’s flowing through you.

It also has a deep emotional component for me. I feel like a fountain of love juice. “The fountain of the goddess,” they call it—for a reason. This is only my experience, of course, but other female ejaculators describe gushing similarly.

It’s also fabulous to be with a gushing goddess. In a recent class, my partner Carl was asked the benefits of being with a female ejaculator. His answer: “It tastes delicious, it’s emotionally empowering, and it feels yummily squishy. It gives me immediate feedback that I’m giving my partner amazing pleasure. There’s nothing better!”

In ancient India, this fluid was called amrita, the nectar of life. It was collected in sacred rituals and used as a blessing. I totally get that—amrita feels blessed to give and to receive!

Female ejaculation—it’s a complete win-win!

It goes without saying that you can have fabulous sex and wonderful orgasms without gushing. As an enhancement, though, there’s nothing quite like it. Female ejaculation feels amazing (sacredly amazing!). It taps into deep wells of emotion. It feels profound, like a delirious, wild, primal force that erupts and spills you into a state of blessed-out bliss.

If it leaves you with some extra laundry, that’s a small price to pay for a ‘fountain-load’ of ecstasy.

To learn how to facilitate your hot wet pleasure, ‘attend’ my recorded online course The Learnable Art of Female Ejaculation. 

ROLC_FE_March 2016_V4-Header

You get three class sessions, special yummy home play assignments, resources and more. For all genders!

 

G-Spot Reality Check

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Ingres – The Source

So: Is There or Is There Not A G-Spot?

A 2012 Huffington Post article emphatically states “G-Spot Does Not Exist, ‘Without A Doubt,’ Say Researchers”. The controversy continues to this day.

Are they right or wrong? In one way, they are right — there is no actual structure called the G-spot.

In another way, they are quite wrong, as there is a structure in that area that is responsive to stimulation (the right kind, at the right time, in the right way for that particular woman at that time). But it is not a round, dime-sized spot as defined by Dr. Grafenburg for whom it is named. Nor is it a part of the vagina.  What people are wondering about, talking about and searching for is the bottom part of the urethral sponge.

The what?

Women have a structure known as the urethral sponge (aka the female prostate) that’s comprised of erectile and glandular tissue. It’s a tube that surrounds the tube of the urethra – like a roll of paper towels surrounding the inner cardboard tube. It’s above the vagina and it’s analogous to the male prostate.
The urethral sponge can be stimulated through the roof of the vagina and by pleasuring the area surrounding the urethral opening. But it is not a magic orgasm button. Most women will not enjoy having it stimulated until after they’ve reached mid-to high level arousal.

It’s Part of A Juicy Whole

The urethral sponge is part of the Erectile Network, a complex of structures that also includes all three parts of the clitoris, the paired vestibular bulbs, and the perineal sponge. For an overview of this wonderful conglomerate of erectile structures, read Be Vulva Wise. 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.)

The urethral sponge also houses the glands that produce the fluid know as female ejaculate. (Another post addresses this controversy: Discover the Source of Female Ejaculation.

Women can become aroused and orgasmic by stimulating any of these structures (and in many other non-genital ways as well) but in general, the best arousal and orgasms happen when all of these structures are thoroughly stimulated.

The Inner Upper Sponge

The urethral sponge is not a magic hot button that you can just push for an automatic orgasm. However, when a woman is already at high level arousal and the outer parts of her erectile network are pleasingly puffed, stimulation of the urethral sponge can be extraordinarily and intensely pleasurable! Since it’s made of highly innervated erectile tissue, it’s pleasurable presence becomes quite obvious as it swells. Once you experience it, you’ll never again doubt whether it’s really there!


Find out more  in my award-winning book,
Women’s Anatomy of Arousal – Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure.

Venus_at_Her_Toilet w-Phones & laptop_V4Online Courses

Here’s another way to learn more about the wondrous, elegant and integral female genitalia: Attend any of the relevant online classes:

 

 

 

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Lube Rules!

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In 2016 I offered a free online class about SEX TOYS: The Good, the Baaad and the Slutty.
(You can still get the recording here)Woman Riding Vibrator

As part of all my online education, I always give lots of extra information and resources. As a Wholistic Sexuality teacher and former health care provider, I get asked questions about lubricants all the time. I figured I may as well expand this a bit into a blog post and share it with you.

So, here’s a short primer on the rules of lube and why lube rules!

Lube Rules_Circe Invidiosa-WaterhouseWhy Lube?

Lubricants make everything wetter, slipperier, slick and slidey. Yum!

While vaginas do produce natural lubrication, even if you’re a vagina-owner who produces plenty of natural lubricant, more is better. Also, keep in mind that while vaginal lubrication is a sign of early arousal for some women, most vaginas won’t get super-slippery until the vagina-owner is in high level arousal. Beyond taking the time for a women’s entire erectile tissue network to get totally engorged, this is another good reason to wait until you’re really turned on before putting anything inside!

And, for those times in life when your vagina is dry, such as post-partum, post-menopause, or when you’re on birth control pills, using additional lubricant can make the difference between pain and pleasure.

Using lube is also essential for anal penetration play. The anus produces little natural lubricant and the tissues are fragile.

In addition, if you are using barriers for safer sex play or contraception, lube increases the pleasure quotient significantly. A few drops of lube inside the tip of the condom increases the penis-owners’ sensation (not inside the whole thing though – that would cause it to slip off!) Once the condom is on, slathering the outside will increase the pleasure for the recipient and reduce the chance of breakage—a win-win if I ever heard one! Similarly, some lube on the receiver’s side of a dental dam makes that ‘piece of plastic’ seem to disappear.

Lubricants and Moisturizers

It’s important to know the difference between lubricants and moisturizers. Lubricants make things slide and stay on the surface of your tissues. They’re good for sex, reducing friction and irritation and increasing sensation and pleasure. Moisturizers are absorbed into your tissues, improving tone, elasticity and resilience.

Lube Rules

  1. Oil doesn’t mix with latex. Oil causes latex to deteriorate rapidly leading to the dreaded breakage! (or tiny holes that are huge to sperm and microbes!)
  • There are basically two kinds of oil-based lubricant products: those based on petroleum (Vaseline, petroleum jelly, mineral oil) and those using plant-based oils (coconut oil, sunflower oil, etc.).
  • No oil-based products of either kind can be used with latex products.
    • This includes natural latex products (the vast majority of condoms) as well as polyisoprene (synthetic latex) products.
  1. Water-based lubricants can be used with any products.
  2. Silicone lubes can NOT be used with silicon sex toys. They will cause them to degrade.

Condom Sense

Most condoms are made of latex, which is stretchy, thin and comes in a wide variety of sizes and styles. They’re inexpensive and fine for most people. However, for people who are latex-sensitive (get irritated) or allergic (have serious reactions) or who wish to use plant-based oils like coconut oil, there are some non-latex options.

Types of Non-Latex Condoms that CAN be used with natural oils:

  • Polyurethane
    • Trojan™ Supra Condoms
    • Trojan BareSkin Condoms
  •  Nitrile
    • FC2 Female Condom
  • Lambskin condoms: I generally don’t recommend them as they DO NOT PROTECT AGAINST INFECTIONS!

Types of Non-Latex Condoms that CAN NOT be used with natural oils:

  • Polyisoprene (synthetic latex) These synthetic latex products can have the same issues that natural latex does, that is, oils will degrade them.)
    • LifeStyles® Skyn Condoms
    • Durex Real Feel Condoms

Natural Plant-Based Oils

If you aren’t using latex barriers, you can use any natural plant-based oil as a sexual lubricant. I recommend using organic products. You can find a wide selection at natural food store, sexuality shops and online.

My favorite natural lubricant is good old coconut oil, which acts as both a lubricant and a moisturizer! You just use it straight out of the jar. It smells and tastes delicious. It’s solid when cool and a liquid when warm and it melts deliciously at body temperature. Coconut oil is also good for vaginas as it’s mildly anti-fungal and anti-bacterial (but only against the ‘bad’ bacteria and not the ‘good’ ones that live in a healthy vaginal ecosystem).

Other nice body-friendly and yummy oils include almond oil, jojoba oil, sesame oil and apricot kernel oil.

Make Your Own: Yoni Balm

Yoni is Sanskrit for the ‘entrance to the universe’ or ‘sacred garden of life’. Here’s a recipe for some home-made Yoni Balm using coconut oil as a base.

  • ¼ cup coconut oil (You can also use a mix of coconut, almond, or other plant oils.)
  • 2 tablespoons grated and packed cocoa butter
  • 1-2 vitamin E oil capsules
  • Optional: ½ teaspoon glycerin
  • If you like add non-alcoholic flavoring extracts: vanilla, orange, etc. (No sugar or sweeteners of any kind, though.)

Melt the coconut oil and cocoa butter gently over low heat. While cooling add vitamin E oil (empty 1-2 capsules). Add flavoring and glycerin, if desired. Pour into shallow jars or small containers.

Don’t want to make your own? No worries! One of my favorite herbal companies, Avena Botanicals makes this lovely luscious velvety Yoni Creme.

Water Soluble Lubricants

Water-soluble lubricants are good for latex products and fine with silicone toys. They don’t stain and are easy to wash off. Water-soluble lubes can get sticky and tacky though, so a handy trick to keep them slippery is to use a squirt bottle filled with water and just occasionally use a spritz to rehydrate your lubed body parts.

Unfortunately, most commercial lubricants have a nasty taste and are full of non-body-friendly chemicals. Luckily, there are many natural and organic products on the market now.

My favorite natural water soluble lubes are aloe vera-based. Like coconut oil, aloe acts as both a lubricant and a moisturizer! Among my recommended brands are Good Clean Love (goodcleanlove.com) and Aloe Cadabra (aloecadabra.com). Sliquid (sliquid.com) as a variety of natural lubes, including some with aloe, some without.

Make Your Own: Natural Water-Soluble Lubricant: Flax Seed Goo

May be used internally and externally. It’s soothing, protective, and hypo-allergenic. Plus, when it’s fresh, it has hardly any taste or smell. It’s also water-soluble, thus latex-compatible.

  • One cup flax seeds (whole seeds-not ground)
  • 6 cups water (think juicy sex!)
  • Bring to a boil. Turn down heat. Simmer 6 minutes. Turn off heat. Let sit for 6 minutes. Strain the goo from the seeds. You have now made some sexy slime.Put in large jar in the fridge and put a smaller amount in a small jar or squeeze bottle to have handy for sex. It will keep for up to 2 months in the refrigerator, 2-3 days room temperature. It may be preserved with grapefruit seed extract, calcium ascorbate or a similar vitamin C compound, vitamin E, potassium sorbate, essential oil of lavender, rosemary, sandalwood oil, or tea tree oil.

Silicon Lubes

Silicone lubes are really slippery and long-lasting. They don’t wash off easily, so they’re great for use in the water. Three that I like are Wet (stayswetlonger.com), Pjur (pjurusa.com) & ID (idlube.com).

Samples & Sensitivity

Many companies offer sampler packs so you can try their various products. Also, most sex-education oriented brick-and-mortar stores have lube testers available so you can feel and taste the various products. As with any product, you may be sensitive to some ingredients even if they’re fine for other people. Start off by skin testing on a non-sensitive body part like your inner wrist. Assuming you have no negative reactions after a few hours, then try a small amount on your more delicate bits!

Slather and enjoy!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Condom Depot for all thing condom including non-latex condoms. Beyond their selection of a wide variety of latex and non-latex condoms, they also have a supremely useful Condom Size Chart so you can get the right size to improve comfort and reduce slippage and breakage.

Condom Size: Another good condom size chart.

Female Condom FAQ

What’s The Best Lubricant? 10 Natural Lubes To Bring Home—Jess Kapadia, Huffington Post

What’s the Best Natural Sexual Lubricant? You Might Be Surprised—Jill Richardson, AlterNet. (Though I don’t agree with the author about plant-based oils)

The 5 Best All Natural Lubes—Lexi’s Green Guide

This blog is from the More Info & Resources that goes along with a FREE ONLINE CLASS: SEX TOYS: The Good, the Baaaad and the Slutty. (You can get the recording here.)


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Keeping Relationships Hot! Shine the Love-Light (Part 3)

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Keeping Long-Term Relationships Hot!

Guerin, Pierre-Narcisse - Venus et AdonisShine the Love-Light (Part 3)

Opening the Windows

In part one, we covered kissing and in part two, touching like you did when you first fell in love can sustain the heat and turn-on your turn-up even in long-term relationships. Here, I offer one more area to explore: shining your love-light onto and into each other.

Seeing Into the Other

Eye-gazing is a powerful way to connect. Cliché though it is, the eyes really are like portals that allow us to see into the heart (and possibly the soul) of another. They show our true feelings, vulnerabilities and desires.

It’s not always easy to eye-gaze, though. Looking deeply into another’s eyes can be dauntingly intimate. You need courage to show up fully and stay present, to see and be seen.

When we’re first enamored of another, we tend to gaze deeply into their eyes, beholding the wonder of our beloved. Wanting to eye-gaze comes naturally, but it tends to be limited to those times when our love hormones are in overdrive. As the years go by, most couples spend less and less time looking into each other with wondrous love. Or, if we do look, it’s not with the open-hearted delight and passion that earlier overflowed through our eyes and face and heart. The result is less intimacy and connection.

New lovers don’t need to set aside special time to use their eyes to pour their love into their mates, but if we’ve been together for a while, we’ve probably fallen out of this habit. Help yourselves fall back in love, by remembering to look at your partner, with love, throughout your regular interactions. Make giving a loving look a regular and frequent occurrence.

In addition to making love-looks an ongoing habit, you can also set aside time for eye-gazing practices as another way to increase the flow of heart-energy between you.

Eye-Gazing Galore

Here are a few suggestions for some simple eye-gazing practices.

  • Get into a comfortable aligned position where you can easily look into each other’s eyes. Lay side-by-side or sit facing each other in chairs or have one partner straddle the other’s lap.
  • Decide which eye will be the focus of your gazes. One particularly useful trick is to look into each other’s non-dominant eye, which is theoretically more connected to emotional state. Look into each other’s eyes. Allow your gaze to be soft and relaxed. Let your gaze softly focus, resting on one eye. Try to avoid switching from one eye to the other or glancing at their mouth.
  • Simply look into each other’s eyes, breathe and be. Relax into the experience.
  • To make sure your gaze is filled with love, it can be helpful to silently say loving things like “I love you” as you look. Try doing that and notice how your heart expands as you repeat loving words and how more love-light shines out.
  • The more love you feel, the more you give, the more loved your partner feels, the more they give, creating a positive love loop between you.

Oh, Babypicasso-maternite-1905

Another practice is to see your partner as if they were a shining newborn baby. Imagine seeing your sweetie with the love, delight and open-hearted joy that greets a new and beloved child.

You Are Divine

One more option is to consciously imagine that you’re seeing the Divine in them.
To expand this practice, try to coordinate your breathing, so that you’re both in the same rhythm. As you sync up your breathing pattern, it often becomes easier to stay in a tranced out, heart-centered love space.

Let There Be Love

Incorporating the actions of new lovers into the habits of long-term ones is crucial to keeping our love luscious. The actions are simple: looks of love, sweet deep kisses and tender touches. Remembering to do these simple actions isn’t so simple. The new love biochemicals aren’t there to drive our impulses toward intimacy. To create sustained ardor, we must call on our conscious choice and our intention. When we add these sorts of fuel to our fires, they can burn on, and falling in love can be transformed into a sustainable life of living in love.

Want more long-term love lessons? You got it! Here’s Part One: Kiss Like You Mean It and Part Two: How Touching

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Keeping Long-Term Relationships Hot! (Part 2)

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Touch Like You’re Madly In Love

julien haler-Body PicHow Touching

In part one, I discussed how the period of time when we’re madly in-love tends to come to an end for most couples. However, we can use the unconscious behaviors and actions that came naturally at the beginning of our relationship to keep the blaze burning over the years.

One key is to consciously choose to engage in the same type of intimate early-in-love behaviors. In my last post, I suggested that you fire it up with some liquid lip love, with luscious wet kisses.

Next on the list: the fine art of touch.

Tender Touching

Touch was your first sense, beginning while you still floated in your mama’s womb feeling held, surrounded and safe. You were already touching your own body before you even emerged.

Touch is so fundamental that without it, babies will wither and die. As grown-ups, we won’t die from touch deprivation, but we won’t be as happy and healthy as we would be if our minimum daily touch needs were met. Yet most of us are starved for this essential tactile nourishment.

For people without intimate partners, it can be challenging to get all the touching you want and need. Even people with partners may be touch deprived if we’ve allowed the frequency and the spectrum of touch to diminish.

Rodin - Eternal Spring resizeArticulate Touch

Touch is a basic form of communication—we all speak this universal tongue. It’s also one of our first languages of love, beginning with mother and infant.

At a subtle level, touch transmits intention, emotion, energy, relaxation or tension, and the rhythms of the body. If someone is touching you in a loving way with the intention of giving you pleasure, it feels very different than if they’re touching you solely for their own enjoyment. Comfort, anxiety, caring, attention and distractedness are all transmitted through physical contact.

While touch is a language everyone shares, many people are tremendously confused about the purpose and value of touch, how to share it appropriately, and how to do it masterfully. Touch is complicated, delicate territory. It’s easy to miscommunicate about it. And it’s not always easy to touch with great skill and finesse.

Whether or not a particular type of touch is pleasurable is completely subjective. For instance, the sensation of being tickled may be something you find dreadful or delightful. Personal preferences notwithstanding, when we fully activate our kinesthetic intelligence, we’re most likely to touch our partner in a way they enjoy.

Remember, though, that no one is born knowing how someone else wants to be touched. Which is why we can’t rely on touch alone. To give exquisite touch, even if we’re totally attuned, it helps to add other modes of communication like sound (“Umm!” “Aah!”), words (“More pressure, please”) and body language.

Play A Touching and Feeling Game!

Play this game in total darkness or use blindfolds. This will remove all the visual stimuli and help you focus solely on the sensations of touch.

Touch each other with full attention and awareness. Use your breath to get centered and stay present. Use sounds of pleasure to amplify the sensations and give feedback..

Alternate your attention: Shift your awareness to the part being touched, then toggle back to the part doing the touching. Imagine that you’re stroking velvet as you slide your fingertips along your partner’s skin. Focus on how lovely it feels on your palm, then toggle your attention back to your partner’s skin. Run your fingers through their hair, alternating your awareness of its texture against your fingers with attention to your partner’s pleasure in having their hair stroked. Try to balance your focus so that you’re really feeling as you touch.

After you’re done, have a chat about what happened, what worked or didn’t and what you learned.

Ask me no more....for at a touch I yield, 1886_Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrenc
The Four Languages of Touch

There are four languages of positive touch—nurturing, healing, sensual and sexual. To keep a relationship vital and satisfying, I believe we need to share all four types of touch.

Here’s a brief introduction to the spectrum of touch.

Nurturing touch transmits caring and acceptance. It’s the kind of tender touch a loving parent gives their beloved child. It helps us feel loved, valued and worthy of being loved.

The second language of touch is therapeutic touch—any form of contact that heals, eases stress, promotes well-being, repairs bodily damage, restores health or palliates pain.Eros-Psyche Bouguereau

The third language of touch is sensual touch—any form of contact designed to heighten the senses, amplify body awareness and magnify perception. Sensual touch is not explicitly erotic. While it might be a warm-up on the path to arousal and is often an excellent prelude to sexual touch, it’s not designed to be a turn-on in and of itself. Think of it as turning on the senses, not the genitals.

Last but definitely not least, there is sexual touch—any contact that arouses and stimulates. Sexual touch entices your erotic energy to come out and play. It teases, titillates, ignites and (hopefully) satisfies erotic desires.

Remember, new lovers caress, hold, rock, stroke and creatively explore all kinds of different ways to discover and delight with contact. An important strategy to sustain your relationship’s passion is to consciously incorporate all four touch vocabularies into your connections.

Want to know how to fall in love over and over again? Did you miss the first part of this series of posts? No worries — here’s Part One: Kiss Like You Mean It and Part Three: Shine the Love-Light.

Succulent_Sexcraft_Sheri_WinstonDiscover more Touching Succulence!

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Visionary yet practical, Succulent SexCraft offers a detailed road map to supercharging your erotic life and becoming sexually whole and empowered. With its wealth of ideas, practices and games, you’ll be able to access extraordinary pleasure, overcome challenges and learn to play masterfully with your inner ‘sexcraft’ toolkit. It’s your personal guide to developing a healthy, celebratory and ecstatic relationship with your sexuality.