Tag Archive for: “enhancing sex”

The Elusive Female Orgasm: 3 Tips to Awesome Orgasm (Part 1)

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Three Tips to Experience and Expand Female Orgasm

Orgasm is a learnable skill that every woman can acquire—and then expand upon.

Gervex - Woman Tossed by a Wave

Gervex – Woman Tossed by a Wave

Orgasm School?

Not having rip-roaring orgasms when you’d like to? Or at all? Don’t despair! Orgasm is a learnable skill —and every woman can become proficient at getting there. And if you already have your basic orgasm abilities down pat, you can use the same tools to expand your climax-ability.

Orgasm Challenges

Although sex is both natural and learned, for women, learning our path to orgasm is not always easy or natural. Just consider these statistics. Ten percent of women have never had one (yet!), while over half of women don’t have orgasms from intercourse, despite what you see in the wacky, unreal worlds of porn and romantic movies. Many if not most women are what I call “orgasm challenged”—sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, and it’s a mystery why that is (or isn’t). So what’s a girl to do if she longs for delicious climaxes to her solo or partnered erotic experiences?

Relax–You Are NORMAL!

For starters, relax. There’s nothing wrong with you—these are simply skills you haven’t learned yet. That’s right: sexual abilities are learned, just like playing the piano, speaking French or any other complex set of skills. You can learn how to improve your orgasmic capacity if you want to. It will probably take some time, and you’ll definitely have to practice, but sooner or later you can be exclaiming, “Oui, oui, oui!” or “Whee, whee, whee!” Ultimately, the choice is yours.

Female Orgasm Basics 101

Unfortunately, in this world of ours it’s a lot easier to find someone to teach you French than it is to find a good orgasm class. Don’t despair! I’ll get you started right now on the basic class: Female Orgasm 101.

orgasmschoolbanner

1.      Slow Down and Take Your Time!

Since the average time spent in foreplay for couple sex is less than 10 minutes, we have one root cause of orgasmic issues right here. For most women full, deep and complete arousal can take up to 45 minutes. That’s right, 45 minutes! That amount of time is quite shocking to most people. When I present this info in a class there’s usually a moment of shocked silence. Then all the women give a big sigh of relief and suddenly light up with the understanding of why things may not work so well or how they’ve been engaging in erotic activities that they aren’t ready for—like intercourse. Our cultural models of arousal and orgasm are male-oriented, based on common patterns of men’s sexual responses. The male arousal pattern is of quick hot genitally-focused energy, leading to rapid erection. By contrast, for most women, most of the time, our erotic energy starts cool and diffuse and takes time to heat up and coalesce in our genitals. What’s the rush? Do you have something better to do than taking your time to get totally and utterly turned on?

Now, it is true that we women can learn how to enhance our arousal process and speed that curve up. In fact, everything I suggest below about learning to develop your own erotic mastery can help women get going faster. And everyone, both, men and women, can benefit from slowing down and taking enough time for both partners to get deeply and fully aroused.

2.      Breathe

Breath is basic. You don’t have to remember any complicated esoteric formulas or worry if you’re doing it wrong. You certainly won’t forget to do it at all. Breath happens—and, if you want your orgasms to happen and then to expand, all you need to do is enhance whatever your breath is already doing by itself. Just do a little more. Breathe a little faster, draw it in a little deeper, let it out a bit longer, or open your chest and belly more. Enhance your breathing and you’ll augment your arousal. Don’t hold your breath or let anxiety tighten it up. Breathe into your pleasure, breathe into your body, keep it moving and you can breathe yourself right into a nice juicy orgasm. Keep breathing into it and your climax will be bigger and better.

3.      Focus On Yourself

Yes, in this case it really is all about you. In order to get turned on, you need to connect to your own experience and feel your own pleasure. You can’t become a master musician only by playing duets. In order to become adept at playing your own instrument, you need to spend time doing solo practice. Yes: I did just tell you to go play with yourself. Solo sex is where you can pay attention to yourself without the distraction of another person’s needs, desires, expectations and demands. When focusing on your self-pleasure, you can discover what works for you and explore new pathways. Repeating behavior and action is how you learn. Like driving a car or playing a musical instrument, you need to practice to get good at any learned skills, including (and perhaps especially) sex. Then, just like playing the piano, when you get the learning practiced, automatic and embodied, you can let go of thinking and just let the music flow out of you.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play with partners when appropriate and available. Go ahead — have fun with your playmates! However, if you want the most pleasure possible and the easiest access to your orgasms, you must also cultivate your own abilities, by yourself.

Now, go ahead and have some sweet sensuous succulent solo sex!

This is an excerpt from Sheri’s book, Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play and Practice.

Want more? Check out our free e-book Orgasmic Abundance!

Read Part Two for More Tips.

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

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

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

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

 

Welcome to Sex 101

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Sex 101: Learn Super Sex

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

Learning Sex

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

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

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

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

There’s Always More to Learn

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

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

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

Luscious Lifelong Learning

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

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

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

Sex Version 2.0

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

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

Sexual Skills Need to be Learned

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

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

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

The Foundations of Erotic Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to Erotic U.

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Welcome to Erotic U.

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

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

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

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

 

Want to attend out virtual erotic education online?

OLC_Succulent_SexCraft_Website header_Product

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

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

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

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

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!

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!

Read more

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.)


Do you like the idea of getting empowering, entertaining, erotic education for adults ONLINE? If so, we invite you to check out our Intimate Arts Online live and recorded online classes and courses. Discover a convenient, private and enlightening way to have more pleasure and expand your erotic universe. You’ll be glad you did!

Download your free Orgasmic Abundance ebook and get other free erotic education stuff here!

Want more? Check out our award-winning books.

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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!

Sheri recent book, Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play & Practice is for singles and partners of all genders and orientations–for anyone and everyone who wants more pleasure!

Do you dream of having spectacular sex? Can you imagine becoming an erotic virtuoso? Now it’s possible with the help of Sheri Winston’s groundbreaking new book!

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.

 

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

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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

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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.

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Connection: The Prime Directive of Sex

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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.