Tag Archives: Sexuality

Yoga, Aging, Intimacy & Sexuality

thekissTouching is a vital human need and an essential ingredient for healthy relationships. Studies have shown that without touching, many animals – including humans – will die in childhood. Being caressed also lowers blood pressure and releases natural opiates in the brain, as well as the chemical oxytocin, which is essential for human pair-bonding.

Sexuality and Intimacy

A lack of sexual intimacy can destroy a couple, and if you value your relationship,  focusing on creating deeper intimacy with your partner could be the best investment you ever make in your relationship. In successful relationships, couples learn to adapt and change together. They accept that change is an inevitable part of human life and support each other. Change due to illness and aging can provide opportunities for growth and intimacy.  It may mean adjusting to a new way of thinking, letting go of things that have been familiar and safe, and adopting a new approach.

Sexuality and aging

Middle-aged and older adults no longer accept such myths as “Sex is only for young people” and “Sex isn’t important to older adults.” A study conducted by AARP, “Sexuality at Midlife and Beyond,” illustrates this. These are some of the findings:

  • Five out of six of the respondents disagreed with the statement that “Sex is only for younger people.”
  • Six out of 10 people stated that sexual activity was a crucial part of a good relationship.
  • Only 10% of adults reported that they don’t particularly enjoy sex, and just 12% agreed that they would be quite happy never having sex again.  Source:  Sexuality in Midlife and Beyond

Greater experience, fewer inhibitions, and a deeper understanding of your needs and those of your partner can more than compensate for the consequences of aging. The physical changes of aging can provide an impetus for developing a new and satisfying style of lovemaking. When partners harmonize their breath and bodies, an effortless sense of intimacy is established.

Sexuality and Yoga

Yoga through its various asanas and breathing techniques help one relieve stress and relax and revitalize one’s body.  Selected yoga asanas increase flexibility and stamina and the regular practice of them can redefine your sex life at any age.  Unlike the western focus on single orgasms,  tantric  sex focuses on the benefits of prolonging the sex act for more intimacy, more and better orgasms,  and for health benefits.

Aside from the obvious physical benefits Arthur Jeon, author of Sex, Love and Dharma: Finding Love Without Losing Your Way maintains that a regular yoga practice adds to your sex life in a variety of ways.  Yoga can enhance your connection to the muladhara (root) chakra at the perineum and the base of the spine, and the svadisthana chakra of the hips, sacrum, and genitals, a connection that makes you more receptive and stimulates your libido.

Related post: Kegel Exercises are Sexy

Sleep better and improve your sex life with yoga -  a 2004 clinical study at Harvard Medical School showed that just eight weeks of a simple at-home yoga practice significantly improved sleep quality for the toughest audience — chronic insomniacs.  It’s a simple exercise to connect the dots — practice yoga, sleep better, have more sex and better orgasms. Recommended asanas – Upavista Konasana (Wide Straddle Forward Bend) and Baddha Konasana (Bound Angle Pose, also known as Cobbler’s Pose).

In a small preliminary study published in Journal of Sexual Medicine, Feb. 2010, women ages 22 to 55 who were enrolled in a 12-week yoga program experienced improvements in several aspects of sexual function, including desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain. For one hour a day, the women practiced 22 yoga postures (asanas) believed to have positive effects on abdominal and pelvic muscle tone, digestion, joint function, and mood. The specific asanas used in the study are listed in the chart below.

Yoga postures (asanas) breathing  exercises  & bandhas
Sanskrit name Also known as
kapalabhati -cleansing exercise cleansing breath
vajrasana diamond throne
yoga mudra symbol of yoga
marjariasana cat’s posture
pavanmuktasana hanging in the air
viparita karani mudra legs up the wall
matsyasana fish posture
halasana plow posture
ardha matsyendrasana half spinal twist
paschimottanasana back stretching posture
parvatasana mountain posture
bhujangasana snake posture
shalabhasana locust posture
naukasana boat posture
dhanurasana bow posture
bhushirasana preliminary headstand
hamsasana swan posture
chakrasana wheel posture
trikonasana triangle posture
uddiyana bandha -energetic lock abdominal lock
pranayama -breathing exercise breath control
shavaisana dead posture

In Sexy Yoga: 40 Poses for Mindblowing Sex and Greater Intimacy, Ellen Barrett, popular author and instructor for New York’s Crunch studios, offers the modern yoga student a specific program designed to transform and heighten sexual pleasure and lovemaking.

Barrett’s program includes a series of asanas (postures) that use yoga’s combination of movement, breathing, and focus to release sexual power. Sensual, erotic, and guaranteed to improve sexual performance, the poses are also designed to improve one’s ability to navigate both the physical and emotional demands of intimacy. Rooted in the rich tradition of yoga but far from an esoteric Indian practice, the program in this book is suitable for everyone from new students to experienced yoga practitioners.

Men, women, sexuality and jealousy

couple_fighting2Evolutionary psychologists have developed a theory to explain the origins of differences between men and women.  The two sexes developed different strategies to ensure their survival and reproductive success, and that this explains why men and women differ psychologically and tend to occupy different social roles.

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Earthlings seek loving compatible partners

boymeetsgirl

According to an Oxford economist, marriage and cohabiting rates in developed countries can be linked to attitudes towards the roles of men and women, and views on who is responsible for doing the housework and looking after the children. Both men and women have shown they are more likely to want a live-in relationship with the opposite sex if they think their partner will do a share of the housework and childcare duties. –  Men Who Do The Housework Are More Likely To Get The Girl

We all hear gender based cliches  daily:

Men want sex; women want romance;

Men are from mars; women are from venus.

Gender based cliches generalizations and stereotyping

These gender based cliches, generalizations and stereotyping always fall apart under scrutiny. On one hand, there are men who are very romantic and there are also women who are too. On the other, there are also women and men who are not very romantic at all.

The men are from mars and women are from venus hype is tripe. It’s used to sell a vast array of both related and unrelated products, services and fuel online dating sites and relationship based blogs. We would be foolish not to observe that many growth industries rely upon the faulty foundation of advertising of gender based sensationalized cliches, stereotypes and generalizations in order to fuel their markets, obtain new customers, and maintain their existing customers’ brand loyalty.

Reality check

Men and women are both from earth and they both need and want the same things in long term relationships. Men and women have far more in common than they do differences. However, those selling products and services and their customers dwell on the differences, and what we fail to recognize is that when we buy into stereotyping we are buying into dehumanizing each other.

There are no characteristics that are innately female so men ought to stop making assumptions about individual women based on what they think is their knowledge of “how women think” or “what women want”. Likewise there are any characteristics that are innately male, and women ought to stop making assumptions about individual men based on cliche’s, stereotyping  and generalizations. They are not accurate so why do we pretend that they are?

I can guarantee that you will dump all cultural “baggage” when you enter into the back country and bushlands where your survival is of paramount concern and where co-operation is required. In the back country male – female relationships become more genuinely “human” and that all that sensationalized sexual claptrap disappears from your mind and speech. In the bush we are not defined by labels and cultural expectations and other societal BS, and when we are stripped of social conditioning what we discover that there is very little difference between our needs and desires.

What do earthlings want?

(1) Earthlings  are seeking a faithful partner whom they can trust. They  want a partner they can honestly share with and be open with ie. one who respects them. They are seeking a  partner they can trust with their hearts, plans and schemes, hopes and dreams.

(2)  Earthlings want to make a home a raise a family with a loving partner.  Male earthlings are seeking a partner who is feminine and loving because deep down the qualities that make a woman a great partner and mother are an attraction in and of themselves.  Female earthlings are seeking a partner who is masculine and loving because deep down the qualities that make a  man a great partner and father are an attraction in and of themselves.

(4)  Earthlings  are visual and they want a partner who takes pride in his or   appearance and her fitness level, without becoming obsessed with dieting and working out.

(5)  Earthlings view their partnerships   as support systems. They are looking for a partner who is strong and capable of providing them with encouragement and support. Earthlings  who are are quick to criticize  behavior, career and friends, and who try to change them are not on the appealing list.

(6) Likewise earthlings don’t go for high maintenance drama queens or kings. They don’t like angry partners who shout, nor are they attracted to bawl babies or to clinging vines. They want a partner who they can easily talk to and who is capable of discussing things without becoming overly emotional.

(7) Earthlings appreciate  a challenging partner, someone who keeps them on their toes intellectually. But they also want to have a partner they can  feel relaxed and happy with. They are looking for a partner who is clear thinking and has a good sense of humor; one who  is enjoyable to be with.

The Beauty Pageant Disease

sadbeautyby Guest Author CDF of Whirled Peas

Beauty contests have been getting more attention than usual lately. Usually, these rather pathetic events are ignored, left as an enthusiasm for hopelessly insecure young women, who having found no other quality with which to make their mark on the world, hit upon the “Evil Queen from Snow White” formula of finding self worth. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most neurotic-obsessive of them all?

Health and beauty

Don’t forget, these young women essentially torture themselves. They subject themselves to diets which border on starvation; they irradiate themselves either with natural sunlight or worse, tanning beds. In many cases, they have plastic surgeons who make sure their breasts are at optimal perkiness, their cheekbones are sharp enough to use as a hole punch, and their lips are sufficiently loaded with collagen that they appear to have a permanent pucker in place. It is rather a pity in those instances that the surgeons and cosmeticians don’t go up with the pageant winner to accept the award: doesn’t the pit crew deserve an accolade too?

Politics and beauty

We have Miss California to thank for drawing our attention to this swamp of shallowness and trauma. If she had merely said that she was in favour of gay marriage, or if the blogger Perez Hilton had merely dismissed her as an airhead, we would likely have allowed the latest Miss USA contest to pass unnoticed. But thanks to the brouhahaha between these two we have been reminded of this contest’s presence, and the deep seam of psychological issues not just with the contestants, but lurking within the public that allows this competition to continue.

Only in America would the notion of a nearly-naked fundamentalist Christian beauty queen tossing her processed hair and parading brand new pageant-bought plastic breasts across a Las Vegas stage in front of millions of television viewers with all the modesty of a blue ribbon heifer at a county livestock fair (the same fundamentalist Christian beauty queen who would later tell a television reporter that she heard God whispering in her ear as she answered a celebrity-worshipping Internet gossip columnist’s question about gay marriage) be treated as anything other than an occasion for high comedy and mirth.  — Michael Rowe

Fantasy made flesh

We live in an era where some must have every fantasy made flesh. Some want to live in a mansion; up until recently, it was possible even for individuals to buy one, even if they hadn’t sufficient means to pay back the mortgage. Some want to make a lot of money; again, until recently, it was possible to sign up with online stock brokers and try one’s hand at making paper profits. Some want to kill and hurt people; the more sane take up their time with graphic three-dimensional video games, the deeply troubled go on the rampage in schools. There is an urge, hidden but always screaming that demands we become wealthy, powerful, attractive, full of sexual magnetism, and never, ever be satisfied.

In this schema, the beauty contestants are victims of a need for fantasy to be made flesh. They desire attractiveness above all. But what supports that image of attractiveness is the willingness of the public to have them perform as their masturbatory props.

Masturbatory props

In order to explain this phenomena further, it’s worth remembering that all sexual activity has a fantasy element involved. The act is never the act in and of itself; if that were the case, it would become quite absurd in some respects, from the motions involved to the awkwardness of the creaking bedsprings. But it is not just that: there are fantastic qualities associated with it, connected to the imagination: e.g., I look into her eyes and see her soul. Or, this is such a naughty thing we’re doing. Or, this reminds me of this other time which was really good, in which case fantasy is piled on fantasy. We need this component, it is healthy: it is an abstract element which allows a space for thought in a world which if experienced solely through the nerve endings, would never allow thinking in the first place. However, at the same time this element can be warped, if our desires are exclusively trained on trying to turn fantasy into reality.

Sexuality and sensuality

We are constantly bombarded with stimuli which tells us to do precisely that. Men’s magazines, airbrushed, soft focus, or even digitally enhanced, try to portray an image of woman in a certain way: breasts have a certain set of parameters to which they must adhere, face, eyes, hair, all have to fall within a series of measurements. The ideal woman is young, sexually promiscuous, and yet vulnerable to advances of even the most homely man. But perhaps the fantasy space is disturbed by the impossibility of these qualities existing in a single combination, so it looks for substitutions: the young and vulnerable aspects make their appearance in the beauty pageants. The sexual element in this instance is more understated, but inherent. The women in this scenario are not women in and of themselves, they exist solely to fulfill an imaginative outlet, and reinforce the negative psychological feedback loop which suggests that fantasy is there to be realised.

Conscious living

Fantasy can be harmless, and as previously stated, necessary. However, there is a point where it becomes too much to remain unaddressed: that point is where it inflicts harm on the well-being of others. Considering the lives that are blighted by the necessities of this perverse phenomenon, that juncture has already been reached. To address this, the first step is to accept that this outlet is not “normal”. For those who say otherwise, it is considered “normal” in some societies that clitorectomies are performed, yet we in the West refuse to accept this. Normal is thus a relative value: therefore it is subject to revision, and when provable harm is entailed, morality demands it must be changed. Beauty contests should be exposed for the tragic mess that they are, not celebrated in any way; let it be ridiculed, damned, castigated, derided. Perhaps hope also lies in phenomena like Susan Boyle, which is challenging the underlying societal opinion about physical beauty being linked to talent or virtue: they are not. We need more of this in order to challenge and break our own assumptions. We also need more humility, whereby we realise that we are not all going to be pop stars, millionaires or Hollywood actors. We have value as individuals; trying to project that value against the ever variable grid of fame is neither worthy or worthwhile. Posterity should be taught to let it go.

Related post:
Sexualizing young girls