Great Sex, Naturally (11 page)

Other Tools for Enhancing Your Dietary Cleanse

While you’re eliminating toxins from your tissues with your dietary cleanse, there are a few additional steps that can help rid your body of unwanted contaminants. The following measures serve as catalysts by speeding up your body’s ability to shed toxins, and at the same time they increase the energy-and libido-building benefits of your dietary cleanse. After completing your 21-day cleanse, you can continue using these techniques indefinitely to optimize your potential to detoxify.

—
Great sweats, naturally.
Perspiration can be a key factor in the success of your dietary cleanse, because it’s one of your body’s most efficient ways of purging toxins. You can work up a healthy sweat with any kind of aerobic exercise, but one of the best ways to send your toxins packing is with a dry sauna. When you use a low-heat sauna for 60 to 90 minutes, your body begins to mobilize toxins out of your fat cells, into your blood, and out through your sweat.

Make a point to sweat out your toxins at least twice a week during your dietary cleanse. If your local health club or spa has a dry sauna that allows you to adjust the heat, you can find the temperature that suits you best. (The ideal for many people is about 105 degrees Fahrenheit, but it can vary from one person to the next.) Another great option is Bikram yoga, an advanced form of yoga done in a room heated to about 105 degrees. Keep your tissues hydrated by drinking plenty of fluids before and after a sauna or Bikram yoga class.

—
Dry-skin brushing.
You can further facilitate detoxification by skin brushing, because your skin accumulates toxins your body is trying to eliminate through your pores. You need to keep your skin—your body’s largest sex organ—as clean and healthy as possible. Because of its extensive surface area, you may be harboring a substantial residue of toxins and dead cells on your outer surface. Perhaps you’ve done everything right with your dietary cleanse, released toxins out of your pores, and have all but gotten rid of them—yet they still cling to the outside of your body. All you have to do is brush them off and they’re gone forever.

Skin brushing not only clears toxins and dead skin from the surface of your body, it also stimulates your blood and lymph vessels—both of which remove toxins and other debris from your cells. Do skin brushing at least once every day during your dietary cleanse; you may be surprised by how revitalized you feel after such a simple technique. With a soft scrub brush, use gentle, firm strokes to cover as much of your body as possible, always brushing toward your chest. (To most effectively enhance detoxification, it’s best to encourage the circulation of your lymphatic fluids in the direction of your heart.) Brush from your hands toward your shoulders, and from your feet toward your pelvis; upward from your abdomen and lower back toward your heart; and downward from your neck toward your heart. As an alternative to dry-skin brushing, you can use a loofah sponge or exfoliating glove in the shower.

Conclusion: Putting the Great Sex Lifestyle into Action

In this chapter, you’ve explored three highly significant aspects of your health and sexuality: your diet, exercise habits, and ability to detoxify. You’ve seen the vast difference that each can make in your overall health and your capacity for sexual pleasure.

We began this chapter by reflecting on the notion that great sex is your birthright, but with an important caveat: you ultimately have to
choose
it. As you move ahead, you can use the tools you’ve just discovered to make choices that will maximize the effects of everything else you gain from this book—whether it’s new exercises, acupressure points, specific aphrodisiacs, or any other way of enhancing your sexuality or health. So let’s continue moving forward; the journey has only just begun, and there’s much more to discover. …

CHAPTER 3

YOUR
SEXUAL
CORE

Creating Optimal Pelvic
and Vaginal Health

“Electric flesh-arrows … traversing the body.
A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music
falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm.”

—A
NAÏS
N
IN
,
D
IARY OF
A
NAÏS
N
IN

As we pointed out in
Chapter 1
, your body is perfectly designed for great sex. You have all the right ingredients—nerves, hormones, glands, and other physiological components—to reach the highest states of sexual ecstasy. In this chapter, we’ll explore the critical role of your pelvic region, look at what you need to know to intensify sexual pleasure in your genitals and other pelvic organs, and provide you with exercises and various tools for strengthening your pelvis and further enhancing your sexuality. If you experience common challenges that women encounter in this vital area of their bodies—such as vaginal dryness, vaginal or urinary infections, menstrual cramps, or chronic pelvic pain—you’ll also discover many effective natural solutions.

Your pelvis allows you to move through the world with balance, stability, and strength. One of the most dynamic areas of your body, it also allows you to make love, achieve orgasm, menstruate, release eggs for potential new life, and develop a fetus. In addition, it supports your bladder and other vital organs, and enables the elimination of wastes so the rest of your body can operate efficiently. Your pelvis not only is your center of gravity, but also the core of your sexuality, the seat of your genitals, and the site of thousands of nerve endings with no other purpose than to give you sensual pleasure.

In Chinese medicine, your pelvis is also seen as central—an energetic hothouse of chi. All the chi in your body flows through your powerful pelvis; you can nourish this area and resolve many pelvic and sexual issues by increasing the circulation of your chi. As you’ll discover, this may be especially important if you have what’s referred to as “stuck chi” in your pelvic region.

Your body has other erogenous zones, beyond your pelvis and genitalia, that contribute to your sexuality and overall health. But your pelvis is so pivotal, on so many levels, that it merits special focus. Let’s begin by exploring the anatomical nature of your pelvic organs and genitals, and the key roles they play in your sexual health and pleasure.

The Intimate Anatomy of Your Pelvis

The framework of your pelvis is composed mainly of the two large hip bones that spread out to support your lower body. Within this structure, an elaborate network of muscles and ligaments works to embrace your internal organs, help hold your body upright, and enhance your sexual functions.

Your pelvic muscles consist of an outer, middle, and inner layer. The outer layer, which lies just beneath your skin, can be imperative for orgasms because it contains parts of your clitoris. (As you’ll discover, your clitoris is more voluminous than you may think.) The muscles that form the middle layer are important for your sexuality not only because they surround your vagina, but also because they give additional support to portions of your clitoris—your clitoral bulbs. Your urethra passes through these middle-layer muscles as well, so keeping them strong can help prevent urinary incontinence.

The inner layer of your pelvic muscles, known as your
pelvic diaphragm
, includes your pubococcygeal (PC) muscle, which contracts rhythmically when you have orgasms and can contribute to their intensity. (The PC muscle is actually more than one muscle, but is traditionally referred to in the singular, as we do here.) This muscle is also essential for supporting your genital organs and bladder. It runs from the front to the back of your pelvis (from your pubic bone to your anus), and from one side of your pelvis to the other, creating a large bowl-shaped “hammock” that holds up your pelvic organs. If your PC muscle is well toned, it’s tight and supportive; if not, it’s loose and saggy, which can result in incontinence. It can also lead to organ prolapse—a condition in which the structures that normally hold up an organ are no longer sufficiently supportive, and it “falls down.”

Along with your three layers of pelvic muscles, you have multipurpose pelvic ligaments that support your sexuality by connecting your clitoris to your uterus, allowing you to feel deep uterine pleasure during sex and orgasm. In addition, your pelvic ligaments not only structurally support your uterus, but also move it, along with your cervix, up and out of the way during intercourse.

Your Phenomenal Feminine Organs

Your sexual organs, the centerpiece of your pelvis, are a wonder of nature, unique in their elegance, complexity, and capacity to bring you to shivering heights of sensual pleasure and profound feelings of spiritual connection and love. With their ability to expand and contract, respond and recoil, welcome and release, they’re delightfully dualistic; partly external and partly internal, both seen and unseen, closely known yet secretive and mysterious. In Chinese medical terms, they’re both yang (outward, in the light, “hot,” and intense), and yin (inward, dark, cool, and protected). Let’s take a closer look at each of your precious sex organs:

—
Your vulva.
The beautiful outer portion of your feminine organs, your soft, velvety vulva suggests the shape of an orchid in bloom. The term
vulva
encompasses your labia majora (the large outer lips along the entrance to your vagina), labia minora (your thinner, inner vaginal lips), vaginal opening, external clitoris, and urethral opening. Your vulva contains thousands of nerve endings, includes glands that allow for vaginal lubrication, and provides a protective covering for your inner structures and organs. Your vulva also includes your mons veneris (Latin for “mountain of Venus”), the soft mound over your pubic bone.

—
Your clitoris.
Perhaps the single clearest anatomical proof that you’re meant to enjoy your sexuality, your clitoris has but one purpose: to give you pleasure. (It may be no coincidence that the words
clitoris
and
climax
share a common Indo-European root.) Resting partly on the outside of your body yet nestled inside your protective external labia and hidden beneath its hood, your clitoris contains highly specialized, delicate tissue and between 6,000 and 8,000 touch-sensitive nerve endings—a staggeringly dense concentration compared to other similarly sized parts of your body.

Dictionaries typically define the clitoris as a “small” erectile organ, but you may be surprised and delighted to learn that your clitoris is much larger and more extensive than what you can see externally. Many women believe that the clitoris consists only of the “nub” (the clitoral glans) that protrudes below the pubic bone, along with its cape (the protective clitoral hood, or
prepuce
). In fact, the visible portions of your clitoris are only the beginning.

Your clitoral anatomy also includes the shaft of your clitoris, which is directly under the glans, and the two wing-shaped “legs,” or
crura
(
crus
is the singular), of your clitoris. Your crura, which are made of erectile tissue, support your clitoral shaft and curve downward and to the sides for approximately four inches along your pubic arch. In addition, you have two clitoral “bulbs,” also known as
vestibular bulbs
, extending downward from your clitoral shaft for three to five inches along both sides of your inner labia and your urethral and vaginal openings. Also made of erectile tissue, your clitoral bulbs become swollen and engorged with blood when you’re aroused. (
Erectile tissue
generally refers to spongy tissue that expands and becomes firmer when filled with blood. The term is so often associated with a man’s anatomy that some women are surprised to learn they have erectile tissue, too.)