Keeping Long-Term Relationships Hot! Luscious Kissing (Part 1)

How to Fall In Love … Over and Over Again

Dicksee Romeo & JulietLook around at couples in any busy restaurant and you can probably tell which ones are madly and newly in love. It’s easy to recognize the telltale signs—they gaze into each others’ eyes, can’t keep their hands off each other, seem fascinated by everything their partner has to say and find opportunities to kiss.

Like other animals, our biological mating template is in full force when we connect to a special and especially delicious partner. These behaviors are the result of a biological cascade—we’re awash in a falling-in-love chemical soup. It’s a delicious, intoxicating, delirious cocktail … and it doesn’t last. For the vast majority of people, the in-loveness compounds run out within the first four years of a relationship. We can continue to experience all sorts of other forms of a love connection like caring commitment, deep attachment and special friendship. But the sparks of ardent desire usually evaporate and our burning passion cools.

What can we do to sustain or rekindle the fires of desire?

One technique is to act like you did when you first fell madly in love. Think of the in-love period as your relationship training wheels. Now, after so many years, the biological support system is gone and you’re on your own to feed the fire and keep the connection sizzling.

Act Like You’re Madly In Love

Here’s one suggestion for using the falling-in-love template to keep those hot and heady feelings alive or to revive them if they’re slumbering.

Hot Kiss

Photo See-ming Lee. CC Lic.

Kiss Like You Mean It

Remember how when you first were in love you wanted to smooch, lap up, sniff and nuzzle your lover? Can you recall the pleasures of sweet soft lips pressing together? Remember the sensations of that delicious yielding mouth slowly opening, followed by hungry exploring and some serious deep wet kissing.

Have you forgotten? Has your kiss fountain dried up and become a scarce desert of dry little pecks? When is the last time you had a hot make-out session with your long-term sweetie?

If it’s been awhile, then it’s time to put wet kissing back on your menu.

Kissing creates a sexual circuit between lovers, an intoxicating reciprocal scent and taste response loop. Arousal heightens your senses, increasing your pleasure in the flavor and aroma of your partner’s body. As you get more turned on, your arousal causes your mouth to become tastier while heightening your senses—you taste better to your lover and they to you. The more you do it, the more turned on you get, and the more delicious the kissing becomes. You’re creating a positive kissing feedback loop.

Not only is your sense of taste intermixed with your ability to smell (and get turned on by scent), but your mouth, lips and tongue are some of the most richly innervated areas of your body. That’s why licking, kissing, sucking and nibbling are such significant erotic activities. You get the delicious combination of taste, aroma and tactile delight all rolled into one delicious ball.

Gulácsy_Lajos-Ecstasy_ca_1908Biochemical Bliss

In addition, kissing mingles hormones and biochemicals in a way that not only shares but literally increases the body’s love and lust substances. You can literally taste and smell your playmate’s arousal. Arousal tastes divine!

One of the simplest ways to get some juice flowing is to take up the art of ardent kissing. Have a minimum of three ‘wet kiss dates’ a day. They can be sweet and soft gentle explorations or hungry feasts of ravenous desire. Your kiss trysts doesn’t have to be long—even a minute of serious succulent smooching will start to shift the energy from ‘ho-hum housemates’ to luscious lovers.

Put a ban on the parched pecks! Shift from dry lip skims to liquid lip love when you wake up, leave for work, come home or go to bed. Or take ‘kiss breaks’ and do a few minutes of lusty lip locking a few times a day.

There are so many ways to kiss. You can use your lips, mouth and tongue (and occasionally even your teeth) to give and receive, to be soft or fierce. Your oral equipment provides a huge variety of perfect ways to play with your lover.

Serious smooching is an easy yet powerful relationship fire-starter. It’s an intimate and inspiring way to lubricate your relationship and re-ignite your partner passion. Make time for making out!


Want more ways to keep long-term relationship hot? You can have it. Here’s Part Two: How Touching and Part Three: Shine the Love-Light


Succulent_Sexcraft_Sheri_Winston

Want even more? You can have that, too!

With Sheri’s recent book, Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide for Erotic Play & Practice, you’ll get specialized knowledge laid out in a clear and entertaining manner, along with lots of suggestions for sexy fun, illuminating ‘playshops’ and super-useful practices.

Whatever level your sex life is at, no matter how happy (or unhappy) you are with it, Succulent SexCraft will help you take it higher!


Developing Erotic Mastery: Conscious Learning

Conscious Learning

A Tasty Little Excerpt From “Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play & Practice

In many ways, learning to expand your sexual pleasure is like learning to play a musical instrument. It’s about acquiring a set of complex skills, albeit more intimate ones. There’s one important difference, though. If you don’t know how to play the piano, you don’t feel weird, ashamed or somehow broken. Nor do you believe that everyone except you already knows how to play really well. We all understand that playing an instrument requires conscious learning and practice over time. No one is born knowing how to tickle the ivories, yet somehow we’re supposed to know how to have great sex without the benefit of lessons or teachers.

In one way, learning sex is unlike learning to play the piano. With sex, you aren’t only the musician, you’re also the instrument. In this sense, it’s more like learning to dance. Whether it’s the piano or the instrument of yourself that you’re studying, learning is required to become a skilled artist—and anyone who wants to learn, can.

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

Becoming An Erotic Virtuoso

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.

Read more

Circumcision Doesn’t Cause Women’s UTIs. What Does?

Is Circumcision A Factor in Women’s Urinary Tract Infections?
Is Sex?

Claus Rebler-Scream-UTII started writing this as a response to a Facebook post about a women who doesn’t want to have sex with her uncircumcised partner as she believed his intact penis was causing her to get recurrent urinary tract infections. I don’t know if she wants him to get circumcised but that won’t solve her problem. She has my sympathies—urinary tract infections are painful and their association with sex is distressing. Unfortunately, few people seem to actually understand why they occur or how to prevent them.

To start with since the instigation of this post focused on the status of the male member, let me say clearly—whether a male partner is circumcised or intact is not a factor in UTIs.

Sex Is NOT The Cause of Urinary Tract Infections

UTI’s are almost exclusivity caused by anal bacteria that enter and proliferate in the urinary tract. How do the little buggers get from the butt to the urethra? We transport them there by ourselves or with the help of our sexual partners. So, while sex doesn’t cause UTIs, it does tend to transfer the bacteria where they don’t belong.

Prevention

The most important thing to prevent urinary tract infections is super-great sexual hygiene to prevent any bacteria from getting in at all.

Sexual hygiene starts with the basics of good hand, genital and butt washing prior to sexual activities.

However, it’s not our before-sex behavior that’s the main problem. It’s what we’re doing while we have our erotic romps that’s really at fault. The most significant UTI prevention strategy is to keep the butt bacteria where they belong! Take care during sex! Nothing that enters in or touches near the anus should then touch in or near the vulva, vagina and urethral opening.

24969142975_bebcb585bb_zSex—It’s Messy!

Let’s face it—sex is often a wet, messy business and all of the pleasure parts are quite close together. How do we keep the butt bugs where they belong? Here are a few strategies for avoiding contamination (and the possible urinary infections that can result). Try using different hands for front and back. Gloves are a great help as they can be removed after anal play. Similarly, use condoms for anal sex then remove before vaginal contact. Dental dams work great for analingus (and prevent the giver from getting other potential infections.) What to do if you’ve used a body part for anal play and now want to employ it on the vulva? Go take a break and have a good wash.

Is the Standard Advice Useful?

In addition to doing our best to keep the bacteria segregated, we can also decrease their opportunity to flourish. The standard advice of peeing before and after sex, maintaining good hydration and using generous lube can help reduce the risk of infection, should bacteria be inadvertently transferred from back to front.

However, these measures will often be inadequate to prevent an infection, especially if the bacterial load is substantial and the environment welcomes the invaders. Inflamed tissue leads to more adherence, increasing the risk of infection if bacteria have to have been accidentally introduced. An inflamed urethra is more susceptible to infection, but only if there’s a cause of infection, that is, the presence of anal microbes. If there’s no bacteria than you only have inflammation, which is still irritating and can be painful but is likely to resolve without treatment.

It certainly makes sense to stay away from irritants to prevent inflammation and irritation with the concomitant increased susceptibility to infection. Irritants can include friction, spermicides, feminine hygiene products and for some women, certain types of lubricants. Also, if the woman is not adequately aroused and adequately lubricated, penetration can cause irritation, which make her more likely to be unable to fend off bacteria. The health of the women can also be an underlying or co-existent factor.

aloeFor sexual lubricants I strongly advise natural lubricant products, like aloe-based Aloe Cadabra or Good Clean Love (water-soluble and latex-compatible) or coconut oil (NOT latex-compatible). If you’re using condoms, extra lubrication is strongly advised. Also, lubricants are very helpful for intercourse with circumcised men since the lack of the foreskin itself increases friction. The week before menstruation, the post-partum and post-menopause phases of a woman’s life are times that the genitals drier and more fragile. Personally, I think extra lube is pleasure-enhancing at any time, even for women with abundant natural juice.

In addition, unsweetened cranberry juice (liquid or concentrate capsules), Vitamin C and a variety of herbs such as Uva Ursi can naturally kill bacteria. Their use can help in prevention efforts.

Female Ejaculation Prevents UTIs

Finally, I have found that women who ejaculate rarely get UTIs. While peeing after sex may help reduce the number of bacteria, and lessen the chances of getting an infection, the actual flow of fluid through the urethra is only mildly helpful because bacteria adhere to cells. That’s why when you have a UTI and are urinating frequently, all that peeing doesn’t cure the infection. You can’t pee out all those sticky little bacteria. Yet, anecdotally, for myself, in my clinical practice and my teaching, I’ve discovered that abundant ejaculation seems to significantly or even completely prevent urinary infections. (Plus excellent sexual hygiene, of course.) I have a theory that female ejaculate is anti-microbial—I think it’s Mother’s Nature’s UTI prevention strategy.

No More UTIs!

Urinary tract infections are awful, painful and can have dramatic impacts on our sex lives. Some basic knowledge and simple measures can easily be put to use to prevent them once we understand where they come from and how to thwart them. Great sexual hygiene and learning to work with the body’s natural defenses can stop this common problem in its tracks and keep badly behaving bacteria from colonizing our urinary tracts as well.


Want to learn how to female ejaculate (or help your partner learn to do so)? Take the online course!

ROLC_FE_March 2016_V4-HeaderThe Learnable Art of Female Ejaculation

Three Online Classes, Supporting Texts and Videos, ‘Home Play’ Assignments, and More


 

Connection: The Prime Directive of Sex

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

The Prime Directive: Sex Is About Connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Sexuality Is About Your Connection to Others

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

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

Sex is Both Natural and Learned

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

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

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

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

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

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

You Need Accurate Maps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


 

Play With Yourself (But Don’t Masturbate)

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.


Succulent_Sexcraft_Sheri_Winston

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

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.


Save

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

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.


Save

Save

Save

Some Notes on Erotic Mastery

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?

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

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.