A wonderful new book has just been released, 101 Vagina. The left-hand pages each have a black and white photo of a woman, front on, from belly to thigh, nude. On the right hand page is a piece written by the women about her genitals and how she feels about them.

So, depending on how much hair she has, you can see her vulva, looking like a little hamburger nestled between her thighs.
 
 I love those little hamburgers! And from what I’ve heard from men, they do too!
 
 It’s such a shame though that so many women don’t love their little hamburger. To the extent that there is a boom in women, particularly young women, having their genitals mutilated by plastic surgeons so that their hamburger looks like just the bun, without any filling.
 
 I’m using deliberately emotional language here, because I think it’s appalling that women have such a negative image of their bodies that they think spending large amounts of money to mutilate a part of the body that is rarely shown, is a desirable thing.
 
 Who said a woman’s inner labia should be shorter than her outer labia? Or that the edges of her outer labia should meet perfectly so that all you see is a crease? Why is it that women’s genitals are supposed to look those of like pre-pubescent girls - hairless and with only a crease on show? (Which begs the next question, if the genitals are supposed to be pre-pubescent, why then are the breasts supposed to look like lactating mothers - full and round, almost bursting?)
 
 There are a couple of wonderful documentaries, one Australian and one British, about how censorship of girlie magazines requires that only the “genital crease” be shown - the hamburger is not allowed to have any filling at all. No doubt this has led to women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies not looking air-brushed.
 
 Another wonderful book is The Heart of the Flower, which beautifully portrays wide-open genitals. While from the front they look like hamburgers, when open, they do look like flowers - with a very wide range of petals!
 
 The saddest think I think about women feeling their genitals need to be “simplified” is that they actually look more boring. It’s like picking the petals off a flower and leaving just the bud because in some screwy way, the petals are “offensive”.
 
 Open flowers, like mature vulvas, are luscious things, diverse in their appearance, with unique textures and patterns and scents. Take away all that and you’re left with plastic Barbie doll groins - uniform, soulless, and ultimately, not at all sexual.
 
 Bring back the appreciation of lusciousness in vaginas! Love your overflowing hamburger! Love your petaled flower, no matter the shape and form of your petals!
 
 Let’s love our luscious lady parts - our vaginas, vulvas, yonis, honey pots, cinnabar crevices, bajingo or whatever you call her.
 
 She is unique,
 She is yours and
 She is lovely! 

 I had a good chat recently with a woman who loves to make love with her husband, she said that she never refuses her husband, that she always comes from a place of "Yes!".
 
  Apparently her mother had drilled into her that it was the best way to stay happy and connected in a marriage, and it was good advice - regular, quality love-making definitely strengthens a relationship.
 
  I had to agree, I too like to say "Yes!" to sex (and when I say ’sex’ I mean love-making not just intercourse, not even genital interaction) - and I'd love it if you could too and definitely not in a “just do it” kind of way. I want you to say “Yes!", not “Oh well, if I must” or “Ok, if you’ll shut up about it” or “Well, OK. I suppose you did vacuum the house…”

I’m not asking you to say “yes” out of a sense of obligation or duty or as a trade-off. I’m saying say ‘Yes!’ to sex because it feels good to be intimate with your partner, because you know that even if you’re not really feeling it yet, if you focus on the beforeplay and then the foreplay, chances are you’ll be having a pretty good time. Then once the deed is done and you’re both in that lovely post-nuptial state with all sorts of yummy hormones flowing through your body that are making you feel loving, making you feel happy, keeping you feeling and looking young and vital - well, then you’ll be glad you said “Yes!” to sex. And you’ll find it easier and easier to keep saying “yes”.
 
  It doesn’t have to be a huge enthusiastic “YES!!!” for every encounter. It merely has to be a “yes” of openness and receptivity – more of a “Yes. Why not? Let’s start and see where it leads...” Then you need to be sufficiently in tune with yourself to know how you’d like to proceed. Maybe that’s simply following the initiating partner’s lead, or stating that you’d like a bath first or you need to finish some emails and “I’ll meet you in an hour” or whatever you need in that moment to get to ‘yes'.


 
  Notice that I’m not using genders here. In my practice I see at least as many couples where the man’s got the lower desire as couples where it’s the woman. We really need to ditch the myth that “all men are gagging for it and the woman are holding out”.
 
  Generally the higher-desire partner (HDP) isn’t a sex-crazed lunatic out to use and abuse you. More likely he or she simply loves you and wants to express that love sexually. It’s hard for the HDP to deal with constant rejection.
 
  Of course, if your partner is emotionally or physically abusive, you need to give a firm “No!” followed by serious soul-searching as to why you got yourself into such a relationship; and then seek out a respectful, loving partner to whom you can say ‘Yes!’. Fortunately in most cases though, it’s more a matter of mismatch than of outright abuse.
 
  If you’re the lower-desire partner (LDP) you can use your partner’s desire for you to get you in the mood. Say “Yes” to their advances and allow yourself to be desired, be wanted, to be adored and worshiped! Be self-indulgent about it - “Yes, here I am, take me, the way I like it!” And in the process, naturally allow yourself to return the feeling when you feel it ...
 
  Saying “Yes!” to sex is really saying “Yes!” to yourself as someone deserving of love, pleasure and adoration.
 
  Saying “Yes!” to sex is saying “Yes!” to love.
 
  Saying “Yes!” to sex is saying “Yes!” to life.
 
  If you’re struggling with these ideas and concepts then start slowly.
 
  Start with the "ye-es..." of tentative possibility and allow it to grow into the enthusiastic "Yes!"
 
  Give yourself time to grow. 

A clitoral orgasm is a very fine thing.  It can leave you drained though.
 
 If you approach clitoral orgasm like a male ejaculatory orgasm, then it becomes about a build-up of localised sensation leading to an explosive orgasm where you feel an outward burst of energy. Momentarily pleasurable, but often flat afterwards, and you’re generally not able to continue lovemaking afterwards (whether alone or with a partner). You feel kind of, well, done.
 
 A far better way to approach clitoral orgasm is the slow build, allowing arousal to rise and fall, losing yourself in the pleasure of the sensation moment by moment. Then when the orgasm arrives, you open to it and fall into it. There is no tension, there is no grasping for the orgasm, and there is no sense of forcing it. It’s a welling up and releasing. And that releasing feels more than just genital, as though your whole body is washed with warmth and pleasure.

Then you can leave your hand (or your partner’s) over your clitoris, just touching it lightly without movement, palm over your pubis, as you relax into the feeling and allow the waves of pleasure to wash over you. This can help maintain the sensation for some time. Then, if you wish, you can do it again - even several more times.
 
 Clitoral orgasm in this way is not draining; it’s energising. By the end of the lovemaking session, whether solo or partnered, you have a sense of being “filled-up” or recharged.
 
 You might also find that each orgasm in succession has a different feel to it. I often find that the first feels more like tension release, it’s allowing my body to get into a deeper state of relaxation, so that subsequent orgasms are fuller and richer and more blissful.
 
 For this approach to clitoral orgasm, I recommend using fingers rather than a vibrator. Fingers have more finesse, more delicacy and complexity. You can play with stroke and pressure and rhythm far more easily with fingers than with a fixed implement. While I’m not against vibrators, they can be too intense for this style of pleasure and orgasm. Often women tell me they find it easier to orgasm with a vibrator. I don’t doubt it. But does the fact that it’s easier to put a frozen dinner in a microwave rather than cook from scratch, make it better? No, it’s just easier.
 
 So, I believe that if you want quality clitoral orgasms - ones with subtlety and variation and, to use a musical term, timbre, then it’s good to develop finger finesse, both your own and those of your lover.
 
 Then let the long-lasting pleasure begin! 

I had a male client complain to me recently that after five years he still couldn’t get his girlfriend to want or enjoy sex. He said he’d tried everything - even anal sex and fisting, and she still wasn’t interested…
 
 Oh boy, I think this guy was confusing sex with a porn shoot.
 
 The poor girlfriend wasn’t frigid, she just wasn’t ready! Fortunately, she was trusting her body and saying no, rather than going ahead and traumatizing herself.

I see so many women who have forced themselves to have sex when they weren’t ready (and by the way, if your sexual activity includes anal sex and fisting, she needs to be very very ready). They’ve been subjecting themselves to constant low level sexual trauma, and over time they’ve come to hate sex.
 
 In some cases, women have subjected themselves to high level trauma. Some of the things women get up to without truly wanting to are extraordinary - if they were getting paid for doing stuff they don’t want to it might make some sense, but they do it for free!
 
As I’ve explained elsewhere, a woman’s body opens in stages. You can’t go barrelling down to the genitals. In fact, you can’t go barrelling into a kiss if she’s not ready.
 
 If you go too far too fast her body isn’t ready. So, if she’s saying ‘no’, it means ‘no’.
 
 Chances are it means: ‘I’m not ready for that yet'.
 
 If this is you, this means you need to tune into your body and check where you’re at and what you’re ready to do. Then let your partner know.
 
 (This applies to guys too if their partner is going too fast for them, and half the couples I see the man has the lower desire, so it’s very common. The only real difference is that a man generally can’t force himself to have sex if he’s not up to it - literally!)
 
 There are no rules with sex, and you don’t have to proceed at a certain pace or in a certain order. You’ve got to treat sex like a picnic rather than a three-course meal. All you have to do is what’s right for you at that particular moment.
 
 Now for some women, there are additional barriers:

• She might have been raised in a very sexually conservative family. I’ve found that girls who are brought up with a ‘no sex before marriage’ approach to sex, often have trouble moving from a ‘sex is bad’ to a ‘sex is good’ attitude, even when they are married or in a committed relationship.
• She might have experienced sexual abuse or trauma. Whether this occurred as a child or later in life, it can cause a woman to withdraw from sexual interaction or limit that interaction.

If there are these mental or emotional barriers in place, then all the more reason to proceed with care as it will take even more attentiveness for her to become ready. If as the woman or her partner you don’t feel up to that challenge, then seeing someone like me can help shift beliefs around sex and allow a woman to blossom into the fullness of her sexuality.
 
 It can't be forced. If you want a bud to bloom, you can’t coerce it, or you’ll end up with a broken flower.
 
Guys, to learn about how to be the kind of lover that knows how to bring out the best in your partner so there is no reluctance, I recommend you do my online program for men - Black Belt in the Bedroom.
 
And women, to know who you are and what you want and be able to express that, I recommend you do my online course for women - Luscious Woman.

Once you’ve developed these skills and self-awareness, reluctance and ‘frigidity’ will be a thing of the past!

What is Tantra?
 
 Essentially, it’s mindful sex. Or to be a little broader: mindful loving. Loving with presence and focus, fully engaged physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
 
 Mindful sex means that:

• your monkey chatter mind is stilled, so your brain can focus creatively and connectedly;
• your body has heightened awareness, fully using each of its five senses, so there is great feeling throughout the whole body;
• you’re focused on the whole body, and even beyond the body, not just the genitals;
• there is a palpable energetic flow within you and between you, you feel connected;
• your sexual play flows in peaks and valleys, from intensity to subtlety and everywhere in between;
• you communicate verbally and physically with ease and understanding;
• you feel both deep and light: deep in feeling and light in freedom;
• orgasms may or may not happen, it’s the pleasure of the process not specific outcomes that matter;
• the encounter leaves you feeling recharged and reinvigorated;
• you find that the whole of life improves, you are healthier, more vital and feel a positive joyful outlook on life.

With mindfulness a quick snuggle under the covers can be as profound as hours of play on a weekend away. It’s about what’s happening in the moment. A mindful moment can be an eternity.
 
 Mindfulness is a challenge to modern urban types whose lives rush by at a million miles an hour. So, if you can learn to incorporate it into your loving and love-making, not only will the experience of sex be so much better, you’ll become more mindful in the rest of life.

This might sound obvious, of course you should love your partner. But do you really? And if you so, how do you express that love? Are you treating your partner like your lover? Or are you treating them as your spouse/co-parent/boss/subordinate/flat-mate/carer/dependant/provider/nurturer…?

There are only two true feelings in life: love and fear. All the negative emotions are essentially some expression of fear. Anger comes from fear: so if you are narky or nagging or irritated or down right furious with your partner, you are expressing fear. Oppression comes from fear; so if you are controlling your partner, or allowing yourself to be controlled by them, you are expressing fear. And boredom comes from fear; so if you are allowing yourself to become stuck in a rut and not seek enjoyment in life, then you are expressing fear.

That fear comes from within. You are projecting your fear onto your partner in the form of anger, oppression/being oppressed and/or boredom. It comes from you.

To turn that around and allow yourself to truly love your partner, requires you to transform your fear into love. You have to own your fear and your expression of that fear, and then let it go. Allow the love in to yourself and allow it to flow out of yourself.

True love, not love based on fear, which many people mistake for love, is both strong and gentle. It’s forgiving and accepting and all-encompassing. As the fear goes the love fills up the space and the world becomes a different place.

The world really does need love, yet the media and the politicians and even the most well-meaning of people project fear out into the world, which only increases the negative. So it’s up to us to do the work on ourselves and in our closest relationships. That includes family and friends and colleagues, but most importantly it means that most primary of connections, your partner in life. This is the person with whom you have the extraordinary gift of being able to be completely open with, to the extent of sharing sexual intimacy. Nothing is as raw and vulnerable and truly open as real sexual intimacy (which is why so few people can experience it without a lot of application). Nothing else requires such a removal of fear and replacement with love. Your bedroom is the practice ground for love. Allow it there and transform the world. 

Love thy neighbour – start with thy partner.

“Batten down the hatches! Prepare for penetration!!”

It’s not exactly how a woman wants to feel when in the throes of sexual pleasure.

For maximum pleasure we need to be accepting and welcoming, not tensing and preparing for combat. Yet the language we use around sex, encourages the latter not the former.

Penetration is such an aggressive term, implying force. So ‘penetrative sex’ sounds as though something has to be broken down to get through. If the focus is going to be on the penis, then we could term it ‘insertion sex’, which is less aggressive than ‘penetration’, or even better ‘entering sex’, which has no aggressive sound to it at all.

But why are we focusing on the masculine genitals anyway? The female genitals are equally important to sex!

What’s important from the female side? Certainly not ‘resistance’, which tends to be the response to ‘penetration’.

How about ‘invitation’? When the vagina is ready, she invites the penis in. On receiving the invitation, the penis accepts with appreciation and chivalrously makes his way in.

There is such a world of difference between a penis penetrating a vagina and a vagina inviting in a penis, even if the physical act appears the same. Emotionally and energetically, they are poles apart.

Please don’t assume that just because I’m using the word invitation that the vagina only wants it gently. Oh no, she may well want to be ravished, to be taken with lust and vigour! It’s not what you do, but how you do it.

Invite and enter - then let the party get started! (No gate crashers please!)

The human body is a sexual pleasure machine, and the female body even more so than the male.

That may seem surprising if your concept of someone’s “level of sexuality” is determined by their “level of libido”. We’re rather too libido-oriented in this society.

The general belief is that sex is a response to feeling horny. Along with that belief comes the implicit assumption that the hornier you feel, the better sex will be. Since so many women have bought into this model, they believe they should be horny before they start making love. So if they’re not gagging for it they tend to give up and don’t do what it takes to get in the mood - generally thinking that there’s something wrong with them (if they’ve got low self-esteem) or claiming they’re “normal”, declaring that “women don’t like sex” and their partner is “sex-crazed” (if they’re more assertive).

I see this all the time. It’s a shame as it so not true. Once you understand that you cultivate desire, that the lust doesn’t just ‘descend’ from on high, that female desire tends to be contextual - more about how she’s feeling and what’s going on for her than a genital-driven “horniness” - then you’ve got something to work with, something wonderful!

Once a women allows herself to get into the mood - wow, the places she can go! Because when it comes to the response side of sex (as opposed to the desire side) - well, women are far more superior then men!

Women can have orgasms that are more intense, more frequent and last longer than men’s. On top of the standard clitoral orgasm, which is similar in physiology and feel to the male ejaculatory orgasm, women can have orgasms through vaginal stimulation, G-spot (actually the urethral sponge) stimulation, AFE-spot stimulation, cervical stimulation, anal stimulation, nipple stimulation, in fact, from virtually any part of their body, and even without physical touch (either by being in the presence of a man who’s very present in his masculinity, or by bringing yourself to orgasm through breath and visualisation). Women can have multiple orgasms, wet orgasms (more commonly known by the dreadful male-centric term: female ejaculation), full body orgasms, and can stay in ecstatic states of arousal for very long periods of time.

Unfortunately, most men or women don’t even realise what women’s sexual potential is. After a few decades of wondering why women are so sexually dysfunctional because they don’t function sexually like men, Western scientific research is only now starting to acknowledge that women’s sexuality is different. But it’s still way off realising just how wonderfully different women’s sexuality is.

Fortunately some people (like me!) are exploring beyond the boring limits of conventional models of sex in the West, taking on board the wisdom of older sexual traditions, such as the Tantric and Taoist, and doing a lot of personal research: I know all this is possible because I experience it.

When women realise it’s possible, they can start to experience it. When women have sexual responses like this, when they go to heaven, they take their man there with them. There is nothing a man likes more than to give his women this level of sexual pleasure. It satisfies him to his very core. It makes him feel like a Real Man. He may not be able to experience the level of feeling that she can, but he can feel fantastic for getting her there.* 

Female sexual response is extraordinary. It can take a while to get there**, but like all good things, the more time and attention you pay to something, generally the better the outcome.

Throw away the limiting beliefs, expand your possibilities to so much more - open yourself up to your glorious potential!

*Actually, men can cultivate themselves to attain these heights too.
** Unless she knows how to keep herself ’simmering’ -  High Libido Women Keep Themselves Simmering

To discover more enrol in my online women's course!

Or if you live in Australia, come along to my gorgeous women's weekend workshops!

Yesterday I had a wonderful meeting with a wise person. It was one of those meetings where two hours pass in a flash of enthralled conversation. I was sharing my views on sex and life, and he listened in rapt attention, so pleased to have found someone who ‘gets it’. As a spiritual seeker himself, he said that he had looked for someone who understood what sex was really about, to no avail.

There are your sexpots, promoting a raunchy and generally superficial approach to sex; there are your spiritual hippie types who might get it but seemed removed from modern reality; and there are your clinicians with their ‘jolly good, sex is a healthy activity’ approach, which is all a bit dry and unsexy. These are all useful approaches in themselves, but not any of them are holistic.

So, to find someone who combined the scientific and the spiritual and had a definite sexual edge, well, bring it on!

As he put it so well: Sex is the Base. It’s where life comes from; it’s where everything comes from. All these seekers of meaning and purpose and growth and development won’t get where they’re going unless they address sex. All aspects of sex: the dark and the light, the yin and the yang, the sensual and the sordid, the serious and the play.

Sex is a microcosm of our lives. To put it to one side and get on with ‘the rest of life’ is simply not possible. Not if you want to be complete.

Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, energetically – sex is there in all of it. It’s in the poetry and the beauty, the destruction and the chaos. It’s all life. It all stems from sex.

Sexual energy permeates our lives; it’s what makes us feel alive and vital.

I think that’s one of the reasons why seeing a sex therapist can be so effective in enabling change in people’s lives. Until that’s unblocked, there can’t be real change in people’s lives. The energy needs to flow through your body and out into your life. It has to be unblocked at the base to flow freely, for you to be free.

Would you like your vagina to be exquisitely sensitive, alive to nuance and sensation and responsive to ecstatic subtleties? Then you need to wake her up!

Unfortunately our focus in this society on the harder side of sex, the “peaks” rather than the “valleys” of sex, means that many women have “hardened" their vaginas. The focus on the “bigger, harder, faster”, rather than the “slower, softer, subtler”, means that many women have lost the ability to sense subtlety and softness through the walls of their vaginas. If your vagina can’t feel, then you either need increasingly more intense stimulation, or you forget about the vagina and focus on the clitoris as your primary sexual organ, or you give up on intercourse altogether because it just doesn’t feel like much. When your vagina is awake though, it becomes so sensitive in the most delightful of ways! It becomes highly receptive and attuned to subtle energies and exquisite variations of sensation.

This is very different to the intense thrusting most of us view as good sex (although as I always stress, I’ve got nothing against a good shag, just that it’s only one aspect of good sex!).

To wake your vagina up, you need to spend time being purely receptive. The easiest way to do this is to have some lovely non-genital foreplay (especially kissing) with your partner so you’re feeling connected and yummy together. Then you lie back and relax and allow him to touch your body and your genitals, gently, tenderly and softly. Then when you really want to invite him inside you, only then you allow his penis in.

Have a sense of “enveloping” his penis, feeling that you are embracing it with your vagina. Although you are receptive, you are not passive; energetically your vagina is awake and attuned.

With his penis fully inside you, really feel it. Let him hold it still for a while, even for some minutes, then move very slowly and gently. If he’s having trouble being so slow himself, practice with you on top first, barely moving, then moving in slow little circles around and around. Relax and breathe to your belly. Feel what it’s like with and without eye contact. Try some gentle contractions with your vagina, giving his penis a gentle massage with the walls of your vagina. Notice how different parts of your vagina feel.

Then slowly build up to stronger thrusts, all the while being aware of how your vagina is feeling and responding.

For those of us more used to a “unisex" approach to sex, where you’re both “giving” to each other, rather than allowing one or the other to purely “receive”, then this approach might seem one-sided. Once you get used to it and have woken up your vagina, then you’ll understand why you need to approach it this way. The amazing sensations, and the orgasmic spaces you can go to with an awakened vagina engaging in “valley-style” sex, are just wonderful!

And guys, the sensation for your penis inside an awakened vagina is equally awesome.

To find out more about awakening your vagina, enrol in my online women's course!

Or if you live in Australia, come along to my gorgeous women's weekend workshops!