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Live Interview: Our Innate Erotic Genius & Its Evolutionary Impact

On a rare occasion, one of the interviews I do for a summit is released publicly.

Lisa Schraeder from the Shakti Summit has agreed to let our interview be public.

In this interview I reveal my thoughts about our inborn Erotic Genius and how attuning ourselves to it can have a strong evolutionary impact on our lives.

Listen to Our Innate Erotic Genius and Its Evolutionary Impact Interview:

I’d love to know what you found most compelling and what resonated the most with you.

Please leave me your comments about it in the comments section below…

This interview is part of the Shakti Summit 2014 an online event that featured world-renowned experts sharing insights and deep wisdom to help you ignite a passionate life overflowing with joy, vitality, sensuality and love. For more information, please visit http://theshaktisummit.com

Erotic Genius:

What Is It And Do We all Have One?

…the gravitational attraction between one naked body and another is but a small reflection of the more ongoing and insistent eros between our body and the earth.”—David Abram

The word Erotic is titillating.

It can make us blush, our hearts beat a little faster, yearn for our lover, or run in the other direction as quickly as possible.

No matter what the case, it is always enlivening, in some form or another.

And that’s the point. Eros, and therefore, the erotic, is at the core of what invigorates life. Without it, it is said the world would be barren.

Yet we live in a world that pretends it isn’t intimately linked to the fabric of life in the most sensual, pleasureful ways imaginable.

Rather we tolerate a world that enslaves our wildness, leaving us with only bland conformity at best and sexploitation-consumerism at worst.

Then add the word Genius into the mix and things gets confusing.

What does our Genius have to do with our Erotic nature?

“In ancient Rome, our genius was [originally] known as the individual instance of a universal (non-specific) divine nature that is present in everyone [and everything]. It was considered to be the guiding spirit of a person. By the time of Augustus, the word began to acquire its secondary meaning of “inspiration, talent.” —Wikipedia

Our Erotic Genius is our guiding essence which is directly linked to enlivening us.

To the external world, it’s perceived and received as a form of our inspiration and talent.

Yet internally, it’s the part of us that irrevocably connects us intimately with life itself.

It’s sole purpose is to fuel us with enough ingenuity, talent and gusto so that we may birth our gifts into the world shamelessly.

And yes, we all possess this unassuming current that is literally giving us both the juice and the guidance to thrive day in and day out.

So why is that that few of us tap into this natural resource, only briefly glimpsing its grace in random ‘Ah-ha’ moments or moments of pleasure so intense all we can do is cry?

What Does It Have To Do With Sex?

Everything. And nothing.

This is where things get interesting.

We are sexual beings, there’s no getting around it, no matter how hard some of us may try.

It doesn’t matter what we look like, how successful we are or not, whether we are partnered or not, whether we love sex or hate it, our Erotic Genius™ cares not for such things.

It is concerned only with keeping us alive and purring, if we will let it.

So let me say this again: You are a sexual being, but you’ve forgotten that.

This means whether or not we ‘do’ something about our sexuality, we still innately are running this life-enhancing current.

Sometimes its turned down to a mere trickle, leaving us imagining that we are numb or dead to pleasure.

Sometimes its turned up so intensely it may feel like our very body cannot sustain the force of such profound pleasure.

And this happens whether or not we engage in the act of sex.

The truth is, when we do consciously engage in the act of sex and allow our own Erotic Genius™ the freedom to lead, we come back home to ourselves.

We reclaim the sacred from the profane.

We reclaim our birthright.

The 5 Levels Of Erotic Genius

Eroticism reveals to us another world, inside this world. The senses become servants of the imagination, and let us see the invisible and hear the inaudible. —Octavio Paz

So what does this mean for us in our day to day lives?

Just as our body, emotions, mind, and spirit have a natural maturity process, so does our sexuality.

There are 5 distinct levels to our the sexual evolution:

Level 1: Erotic Innocence

This is from pre-birth to puberty.

It’s how we discover our body & get oriented to the World. We literally make sense of the World through our sensuality.

This level is influenced by our parents/siblings/caregivers.

Level 2: Erotic Activation

This is puberty.

It’s where we get familiar with the potency of our sexuality and where we are subject to strong hormonal impulses.

At this stage, we’re strongly influenced by friends, media, & our community.

Level 3: Erotic Exploration

This is where we ‘do’ sex.

We start to explore what is possible, what we like and don’t like.

Learning the ‘how-tos’ of sex & relating.

We are influenced by experts, books, & media, “mainstream” accessible sex education.

Level 4: Erotic Expansion

This is where we heal the schism between psyche with our sexuality.

We explore heart-centered, meditative sexuality along with our erotic edges.

We model ourselves with existing ‘matrices’.

In this we are influenced by established ‘alternative’ sex ed. books, teachers & schools.

Level 5: Erotic Wisdom

This is where we are ‘sexual BE-ings’, where our sexuality is no longer confined to genital activation, it becomes cellular.

We experience deep, sexual gnosis.

We become Omni-Orgasmic—activated in full body and by life itself.

Here we are self-generated, self-created, self-validated, and self-referenced.

Integrated Sexuality

Consider each of these levels as necessary as the next, if we miss one, we’ll inevitably return to it in order to cultivate an integrated sexuality.

The problem is when we attempt to abide to a pre-ordained ‘right timing’ for each level, making any reenactment seem ‘out of place’ when done ‘out of schedule’.

Yet these levels are not hierarchical, but dynamic and cyclical. In truth, we born Omni- orgasmic and our life journey is about returning to this inherent state while enjoying exploring the gifts of each level from new-found perspectives.

In a World where the erotic is pre-fabricated, pre-packaged, and pre-determined, where there’s disturbingly no time given to cultivating our relationship with this aspect of ourselves, we find little recognition of the true nature of Eros as a liaison between our biology and the Earth herself.

Now, more than any other time in history, our evolutionary journey is in our hands.

Each step we take, we have the choice to listen to and align with our innate Erotic Genius.

This is not an act of frivolousness, but a revolutionary act of courage wherein we each ignite ourselves and live true to our full potential, discovering the profound wisdom that lives within our erotic nature.

If you’d love to explore your own inborn Erotic Genius, I recommend starting with my book: Emergence of the Sensual Woman

I would love to hear from you, so please leave me your comments below. If you enjoyed this article, please like, share it, & be sure to join the Succulence Revolution (you’ll see the sign-up boxes).

The Phenomenon Of The Jade Egg – Part 1

A Tiny Tool of Transformation – Part 1

If I’ve had kids, don’t I need a bigger egg? No.

I’m a virgin, can I still use a Jade Egg? – Yes.

I have trouble with incontinence, will the Jade Egg help? – Yes.

I’m older, haven’t had sex in a long time, have vaginal dryness and no desire, will this Jade Egg thing work? – Yes.

I would like to have more orgasms and heard that having a toned vagina is important, can I get this using the Jade Egg? – Yes.

Everyday I get questions like these from women around the world who are seeking natural, empowering solutions to supporting their sexual health and deepening their pleasure.

It is natural to seek knowledge and to default to ‘google’ to finding our answers, but when it comes to our most intimate self, we would be served to use a good dose of discernment as there are many marketing ploys that are directed specifically at the very points of pain we yearn to heal for ourselves.

That said, let’s have a look more closely at this infamous Jade Egg, where did it all begin and why would we consider this as a viable option for our sensual and sexual wellbeing?

The Phenomenon of Jade Eggs

Although there are legends of Chinese empresses and concubines using the Jade Egg to remain sexually youthful, we can safely say that the Jade Egg practice is equally a modern day phenomenon.

When I was first exposed to Jade Eggs, there was a lot of mystical and poetic language that came along with it. Although it was initially lovely, it wasn’t until I had a dedicated practice that the true secrets of the Jade Egg revealed themselves.

Through taking what I learned in my own practice and sharing it with thousands of women of all ages and walks of life; I also learned what worked, what was obviously not designed for the everyday woman, and what was best left to legend.

It is this grassroots experience of working directly with women from around the globe that has revealed to me the truth of the Jade Egg practice and I have come to think of it as a tiny tool of transformation.

The Amazing Benefits Of Using A Jade Egg

The benefits of having a dedicated Jade Egg practice are numerous, ranging from the purely physical to the emotional & the spiritual (see part 2).

Why Jade? is a very common question which I have answered in one of my videos entitled: CLEARING THE CONFUSION ABOUT JADE. In essence, it’s one of our most hygienic options for having a completely natural ‘intimate tool’.

Here are 6 of the many amazing benefits we can reap from this practice:

1. Pelvic Health:

Let’s begin with what happens to our body, especially our vagina and pelvic floor when we engage in the proper use of the Jade Egg.

I say proper because there is a lot of hype about using the Jade Egg to create pelvic/vaginal tone. Yet too much practice or too much intensity focused on creating more tone can actually have the opposite of the desired affect of more ‘vaginal tightness’.

Our pelvis is part of our pleasure system and is infused with incredible pathways which can lead to exquisite orgasms and pleasure.

If we over-stress the muscles, we can actually create too much tension which can lead to atrophy and/or impede our delicate pleasure pathways and diminish or prevent us from experience our full spectrum of pleasure.

That said, one of the great physical benefits of effectively using the Jade Egg is having the tone of a healthy trampoline, which is fantastic and core to a life-time of bliss.

2. Vaginal Health:

Another benefit is that we are stimulating the localized production of estrogen. When our vagina sits unloved for prolonged periods of time, it does shut-down, thin-out, and dry-out.

By wearing the Jade Egg regularly, we give our vagina the opportunity to exercise and therefore, reestablish vitality and resilience.

And yes, this is true for women well into their 60s, 70s, & even 80s.

3. Accessing Our Pleasure Pathways:

Our pelvis & sexual organs are rich with neural pathways that can be entrained and accentuated for more and more pleasure.

The correct use of the Jade Egg enables you not only to innervate your pelvis and vagina—literally growing new nerves and therefore, expanding your pleasure potential— but it also helps you develop the somatic (physical) awareness of this subtle, yet powerful network of delight.

Our delicate, yet powerful pelvis & vagina does’t wake up through the intense over-stimulation of vibrators (in fact, this can have a numbing affect if over-used) nor from the thrusting motion of intercourse.

Waking up our ‘sleeping beauty’ requires consistent, regular infusions of conscious and un-rushed touch.

This is especially true if we have suffered from trauma to this area of our body.

4. Post-Trauma Recovery:

There is no amount of talk-therapy that can shift the tissues wherein our trauma is stored.

This is where consciously using a Jade Egg can be an effective tool both to repattern cellular memory and assist in regaining a healthy balance in our sensual tissues.

This is where the link between our sensual/sexual self and our psyche (emotions/mind) comes in and I will cover this in Part 2 of this article.

5. Birth Training & Post-Birth Recovery:

There are very few practices that teach us how to give birth. There are several Jade Egg exercises that I share which directly teach us about how to birth.

We can also use these practices post-birth to assist our pelvis, uterus, & vagina to return to a pre-birth state.

Plus, these same practices are the ones that can wake up our yoni’s (genitals) to experiencing vaginal, cervical, and uterine orgasms!

6. Sexual Mastery:

Becoming masterful with the use of the Jade Egg will translate into your sexual play with a partner.

In fact, once you have awakened your vagina in this way, you possess sexual skill that not only will delight your partner, but that will equally create more pleasure for you.

If you are curious to learn more about the misconceptions about using a Jade Egg or want to see how to prepare her for use, check out the videos I have made for you on this page – Introducing The Jade Egg

If learning to effectively use the Jade Egg is something you would like to learn, I recommend starting with my book: Emergence of the Sensual Woman.

If you enjoyed this article, please like, share it, join the Succulence Revolution, & leave me your thoughts below in the comment section.

If you’d like to go directly to Part 2 of this article — Click here

saida_signiture

Sexual Sovereignty?

Is It The Next Step In Our Sexual Evolution?

Deep inside yourself, you can feel it.

It can be the softest whisper or as powerful as newly unleashed lava.

However you sense it, your sexual evolution is happening right now. 

Even if you don’t believe in it or you feel trapped, lost, or simply bored out of your mind, within you is a force that will not be stopped.

It wakes you at night, it titillates you in random moments, and it catches you when you least expect it.

This is the fragrance of your sexual sovereignty.

These very words, when uttered aloud, can evoke curiosity, relief, and at times, confusion.

What is sexual sovereignty and could it possibly be part of our sexual evolution?

Whether or not we want to admit it, we are evolving sexually.

It may not look that way when we see how extensively we have converted sexuality into a commodity and how far away we have come from truly understanding this powerful human force.

Furthermore, the prevalence of world-wide sexual trauma and abuse hardly inspires us to grasp our own transformation.

Yet beneath all the turmoil and multi-trillion dollar pirating of our sexuality, there is a quiet evolution blossoming.

The root of the word evolution contains within it the idea of unfolding or development.

Therefore, sexual evolution is the natural unfolding or development of sexuality.

If we take this to heart and apply it to an individual, we can see that that each one of us has the potential for a deep unfolding or unveiling of our erotic nature.

It is equally important to note that today’s version of evolutionary sexuality has less to do with cryptic rituals, initiations, or highly specialized sexual postures and techniques and has more to do with accessing something deep within each of us.

This is where sexual sovereignty comes in.

It is the forgotten element of our nature that is often over-shadowed by our fixation on our pain, disappointment, regret, or what is commonly known as our sexual ‘wound-ology’—the focus on our sexual pain and trauma to the point of identifying ourselves with it.

Sexual sovereignty is the natural unfolding of our own erotic wisdom, including the concept of being a fully emotionally and sexually expressed adult.

What it’s not:

Sexual sovereignty isn’t an pre-determined idea or a posture we can assume.

Nor is it something we can bargain for, get from someone, lose to someone, or even purchase.

What it is:

Sexual sovereignty is what occurs when we begin to excavate the riches of our being, the gifts that have yet to be birthed, what has yet to be touched or even acknowledged, without the interference or influence of the external world while being in harmony with our deep erotic wisdom.

By fully claiming our sexuality and commanding an embodied authority of this aspect of our life, our sexuality frees itself from being ruled or formed by external opinions or behaviors, and instead, becomes self-validated, self-reflective and self-actualizing.

Key questions to reveal your sexual sovereignty:

1. Are you identified with your sexual trauma or abuse? If yes, are you willing to begin to explore that who you are is greater than the sum of that experience?

2. Have you spent time concentrating on what your ‘un-born’ or ‘un-expressed’ gifts may be? If not, why not?

3. Are you willing to explore, understand, and transform your past sexual imprints and begin to explore the possibility of self-defining your sensuality and sexuality?

It’s important to note that sexual sovereignty is a natural state of being which is inclusive of both our emotional/psychological self and our erotic intelligence.

It is our inherent sensuality that possess sexual clarity, integrity, and full expression along with emotional depth and responsibility.

As we face some of our biggest evolutionary choices—choices that will determine whether our species continues to thrive and prosper—affirming our own sexual sovereignty becomes an essential part to our contribution to planetary change.

If the concept of sexual sovereignty is something you would like to make into reality, I recommend starting with my book: Emergence of the Sensual Woman.

If you enjoyed this article, please likeshare it, join the Succulence Revolution (sign up on that page), & leave your thoughts below in the comment section.

Exhausting Periods?

Challenging 5 Common Myths About Your Cycle.

Have you ever contemplated why you feel so tired during your period?

Perhaps you don’t feel tired, but the women around you always remark about how tired they feel around their menstrual cycle?

Maybe you read about how women can learn to actually stop their menses through specific practices and you wondered about whether or not that was a good idea?

It could be that you also wondered if somehow your period was a time for detoxing?

Or, you heard that if you don’t bleed on the new moon, there is something out of whack with your Femininity?

Myths about our menstrual cycle are so prevalent these days that it is hard to decipher fact from fiction.

In fact, their very existence can create a variety of neuroses that can evolve into female health challenges.

Five Unchallenged & Common Myths:

1. Women lose energy during their menses.

This is an interesting myth because it is a learned idea. Unless you are the rare woman that actually is exhausted during her period, this myth simply isn’t true.

Yet because we ‘believe it to be true’, we behave accordingly, blaming our period for our exhaustion versus our own lifestyle choices.

On the level of our body and psyche, the menstrual phase of our cycle is a natural ‘reset and rest’ time. It is a time for us to enjoy going inward, to attune ourselves to what is working and not working in our lives, and to part-take in nourishing activities.

As for blood loss, unless we are excessively bleeding, the amount of blood loss is not enough to equate fatigue. We lose, on average, 35ml of blood with our menses, yet donating blood, on average, we give more than 10x the amount of blood (450ml)!

Furthermore, in the West, we often attribute slowing down and being still with being tired or sleepy.

But these are unrelated states.

What is important here is to note that we have a strong ‘meme’ (a mental virus propagated as truth) interplaying with poor life-style habits.

Reset: Our menses is a time to go inward, to contemplate, to slow down, to reset and realign ourselves to what is most important in our lives.

When we slow down, if we are tired, we let ourselves enjoy relaxing and rejuvenating ourselves with plenty of rest.

2. Our kidneys are adversely affected by the menses.

What is actually meant here is a statement on our adrenal health, not so much our kidney health. This confusion comes from attempting to translate an Eastern concept (kidney health) into a Western paradigm (adrenal health).

Furthermore, this meme is backwards—It is the exhaustion or depletion of our adrenals that adversely affects our menstrual cycle, not the reverse.

However, it is common that in the natural ‘rest and reset’ time of the actual menses, we experience greater awareness of our adrenals and their imbalances.

What fatigues our adrenals? Stress, of all kinds.

When the adrenals are in stress cycle, they no longer can support producing our healthy hormones in a balanced way.

This can lead to issues such as estrogen dominance which is linked to the experience of PMS, fibroids, endometriosis and irregular menstrual cycles, just to name a few.

Reset:

By having a good look at our life-style, we can begin to make some positive changes towards enjoying more down time and practicing being quiet more regularly.

Many women report a positive change in their cycles simply by regaining their adrenal health.

3. The Taoist premise that encourages early menopause (cessation of the menses).

This premise is widely propagated through different texts that state that a woman loses her JING when she menstruates, therefore leading to the assumption that in order to stay young and healthy, we must prevent the loss of our JING as much as possible.

Again, here we have the difficulty of translating an ancient concept with modern medicine. In a very simplistic way, the concept of JING can be loosely related to adrenal health.

As we already noted, life-style is the main culprit to eroding adrenal health and I have found this to be true in regards to women’s health issues.

What is more draining than our actual menses is our lack of introspection and emotional responsibility.

PMS, in my experience, can be diminished or eliminated by having the willingness to examine ourselves more deeply and to take ownership of our choices and of our shaping our lives into one that is supportive of our natural, rhythmic, womanly cycle.

Reset:

Menstruation is natural.

Our environment, our life-style and our psychological well-being all play a big part in how we experience our cycle.

When we begin to live more in harmony with our own cycles, we return to our optimum state of vibrant womanly health.

4. Our menses is a natural detox program.

Here is another interesting meme that implies that we are somehow ‘dirty’ and must be ‘cleansed’ once per month.

Yet, menstruation is one of the four natural expressions of fertility cycle.

For this one, I want to jump immediately into the reset.

Reset:

As mentioned in #3, we could do well by owning ourselves emotionally.

Often we do use our uterus as a sort of psychic garbage can.

However, I have noticed that women who honestly begin to use the PMS/menstrual time of their cycle as a time to blossom in their emotional maturity, their menstrual pain diminished or ceases all together.

Of course, there are ways to exercise, eat, and supplement our lives that equally support the transformation of living in harmony with our feminine rhythm.

5. If we don’t bleed on the new moon, we are out of sync with our Femininity.

This meme is very harmful because not all women menstruate on the dark moon and this does not, by default, prove that they are out of sync with their Femininity.

In fact, women who follow the recommended protocol to bleed on the new moon may be doing everything right and still not bleed at the ‘right time of the month’.

Reset:

If your cycle is healthy and you feel attuned with yourself, then whenever you bleed is perfect.

We must let go of forcing ourselves to live according to external constructs and instead start to live according to what is true for our own unique self.

When it comes to our own deep Feminine wisdom, nothing replaces attuning ourselves with ourselves and being willing to challenge and question everything that we believe to  be true about what it means to be a woman in modern times.

This is a true and courageous act of claiming and living according to our embodied wisdom.

If you would love to understand your own inner wisdom, check out my book.

If you enjoyed this article, please like it, share it, and leave your comments below so we can continue to unveil our own truths about what it means to be a healthy woman.

Relaxed Arousal?

Uncovering The Deeper Meaning Of Pleasure.

Is sexual pleasure something haphazard or is it something you intentionally cultivate?

When you do have sex, is orgasm the essential ingredient to ‘good sex’?

Perhaps sex no longer fascinates you and has become a get-it-over-and-done-with chore?

Even if sex is still important, maybe you sense something is amiss and wonder where all of your techni-color orgasms went?

Or, is sex something done quickly, in order to relieve the tension that has been building up inside of you?

Whatever the case, our sexuality is unavoidably influenced by the wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am attitude that is so prevalent in modern media.

We are inundated day in and day out with messages that imply that not only should we be turned on all of the time, but as soon as we are turned on, we must do something about it as quickly as possible.

Then, adding to the mix, when we do enjoy sex, we tend to focus on the end result and miss the pleasure and connection that comes with sexual play.

The ‘tension-release’ method of building ourselves up to the ultimate peak moment in order to be momentarily set-free has become the norm.

Yet this way of having sex, although fun and possibly fulfilling, can leave us wondering if there is more to sex than what we currently know.

This is where “relaxed” arousal comes in.

Relaxed arousal represents the dynamic paradox of feeling the intensity of arousal while being fully relaxed in both mind and body.

On a psychological level, the more clear and relaxed we are, the more access we have to our innate erotic intelligence.

Accepting pleasure as our birthright, enjoying sex and orgasm as a natural, healthy part of being human, and understanding that we are biologically designed with a full neural network of unlimited pleasure potential, we begin to give ourselves permission to fully open up to our body’s amazing capacity to generate limitless pleasure.

On the physical level, relaxation is key to inducing a pleasure-hormone response cycle and enabling us to access the more subtle sensations of the erotogenic zones of our body.

Relaxing our psyche directly affects the relaxation of our body, in fact, most issues with libido and pleasure are of a psychological nature.

3 Quick tips to Relaxed Arousal:

1. Take time to explore your beliefs and definitions about sex and pleasure and see if some of them could be updated.

2. When engaging in any sensual or sexual activity, be willing to forget about the end result and indulge in all of your senses while deepening your awareness of your body.

3. Practice relaxing both your mind and body outside of an erotic context. The more you practice, the more you will have the power to drop into a relaxed, yet aroused state when you do engage your erotic self.

By allowing our front brain to release its agendas, to-do lists, and out-dated perceptions, we allow our hypothalamus to bathe us in a rush of pleasure-based hormones.

This process includes letting go of having to ‘make pleasure happen’, of  wishing for pleasure to ‘feel or look a certain way’ as well as letting go of the mechanical version of sexuality.

This relaxed, open, non-goal-oriented spirit shifts us from a purely localized genital experience and enables us to enjoy the deeper purpose of pleasure, whether it is found through profound sensuality, an orgasm or many orgasms.

Relaxed arousal is something we can have alone or with a partner and is essential to supporting us to reclaiming our natural vitality, inspiration, and capacity to contribute something worthy in the the world.

Through living in reverence with our own pleasure, we literally switch ourselves on and live a life rich with beauty, deep peace, and satiation.

If embodying relaxed arousal is something you would love more of, I would recommend starting with my book: Emergence of the Sensual Woman. If you enjoyed this article, please like it, share it, and subscribe (sign up on page) to access more tips to living a sensually alive life.

Remember to leave your comment below so we can continue to deepen this discussion.