SIDEBAR: Spice Up Your Sexual Pleasure

Unleashed in 1962, Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl helped launch a revolution in women’s sexuality. The book declared that women have the right to seek sexual pleasure for ourselves. The “sexual revolution” continued into the Seventies, opening the field for women’s sexual expression even further.

Now’s the time to take the revolution to another turn: understanding that women’s sexual energy is sacred.

“Sacred”: what does that mean? What’s sacred is what’s necessary for our survival.

From the beginning, humanity’s survival has depended upon women’s sexuality. Every tribe’s survival has depended upon women’s capacity to give birth, to bear healthy children into the next generation.

Our ancestors understood women’s birth-giving power as kin to the Power of Being that creates, sustains, and transforms the world. Their images and icons of the Sacred Feminine celebrate women’s awesome ability to regenerate life. In woman’s body, the Great Goddess becomes manifest.

Lovemaking is a ritual that celebrates the Goddess, an erotic dance of give-and-take drawing masculine and feminine into union. Eros is the power of attraction that tempts polarities, embraces the universe, lures us toward life.

Your sexuality is one expression of your erotic life force, your core life energy. The source of this energy is your body’s center, what the Chinese call the “Gate of the Mysterious Female.” When you activate your body’s center with movement and breath, you ignite your inner source of vitality. You amplify your life energy as a whole.

This life we live is a grace. Our sexuality is a sacred trust. As we fully own our sexual energy as a generous gift, we can understand it as pro-creative power in the largest sense. Our sexuality is not only our capacity to bear children. It is, as well, our power to promote creation in any dimension we choose.

In these times, humanity’s survival depends less upon the capacity to bear children and more upon the conditions into which our children are born. Survival depends upon women birthing new ways of being and doing
that promote peace, justice, and sustainable economies on our planet.

How do we start?

With movement and breath, we cultivate the pro-creative power seeded in our “Energy Garden,” our body’s center.

We know ourselves as sacred beings and respect our sexuality as a sacred force of nature.

We realize that we’re sexy—at our juiciest—as we express the truth of who we are.

And, we direct our pro-creative power not only for sacred pleasure but also for personal and planetary healing.

Lisa Sarasohn is a yoga and bodywork therapist, and author of The Woman’s Belly Book: Finding Your Treasure Within. For information on current workshops, including “Losing the Weight of Shame,” and on related books and instructional video, visit loveyourbelly.com or email lisa@loveyourbelly.com

Spice Up Your Sexual Pleasure
Excerpted from The Woman’s Belly Book: Finding Your
Treasure Within.

This breathing pattern helps connect your body-centered source of vitality with your sexual energy center, the second chakra in the physiology of yoga.

“A majority of women prefer reading a good book to having sex.” As I recall it, that’s what one survey discovered. When I mention this finding to friends, they nod with a knowing look.

With all the responsibilities of work, home, and family, many women are exhausted by the time they finally get to bed. More women than you might imagine mourn the loss of their interest in sex.

What is sexual pleasure? It’s the play of sexual energy, one expression of your life energy as a whole. When you have more energy, you experience more pleasure.

Your belly is your powerhouse, your life-energy generator. Energizing your belly with movement and breath ignites a healthy delight in the pleasures of sex.
1. Sit or stand comfortably, or lie on your back with a pillow under your knees to ease your lower back. Give your belly room to breathe by loosening your belt, unzipping your zipper. Rest your palms lightly upon your lower abdomen.
2. Feel the gentle rhythm of your breath, allowing your belly to expand as the breath enters in, allowing your belly to sink back toward your spine as the breath travels out.
3. Locate your belly center, the point a few inches below your navel and in toward your spine. As you breathe, picture the breath entering your body through the crown of your head, flowing down into your belly center and brightening the globe that’s glowing there. Stay with this image for five to ten cycles of breath.
4. Continue breathing in through the crown of your head, directing the breath down to your belly center, now breathing out through the center front and back of your lower abdomen.
5. Stay with this image and pattern of breathing for ten to twenty cycles of breath. Experience the sensations occurring in your body.
6. Gradually return your attention to your whole body and to the present moment.

Sacred Sexuality Resources: Bonheim, Jalaja. Aphrodite’s Daughters. Simon & Schuster, 1997. Chia, Mantak and Maneewan Chia. Healing Love Through the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy. Healing Tao Books, 1991. Eisler, Riane. Sacred Pleasure. Harper San Francisco, 1995. Kamen, Paula. Her Way: Young women remake the sexual revolution. New York University Press, 2000. Moore, Thomas. The Soul of Sex. HarperCollins, 1998 Shalit, Wendy. A Return to Modesty: Discovering the lost virtue. Simon & Schuster, 1999. Williams, Donna Marie. Sensual Celibacy. Simon & Schuster, 1999.

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