Ah, modern dating! Where technology, desire, love and emotions whirl together leaving us dazed, confused, occasionally exhilarated, ghosted, catfished, soft launched, cobwebbed or all of the above and more. To say that dating and the quest for connection has changed in today’s modern world, is an understatement. I mean, c’mon, it’s got its own vernacular.

From the historical, societal and cultural roles that men and women play, to the ways we connect and interact with potential partners, dating has undergone a major shift due to changing gender roles, the rise of the feminine, and technology. And, even though we are more connected than ever, are we making any real connections?

Connection is digital.

Dating apps have revolutionized the dating game by providing a convenient platform for people to connect and meet potential partners. They have expanded the dating pool worldwide and made it easier to find compatible matches, breaking geographical and social barriers — but not without consequence and a few kicks to your limbic system; the part of your brain that regulates emotion.

In the age of Bumble, Tinder, Hinge et al, it’s as simple as swiping left or right; or is it? Swiping through profile after profile (after profile) can feel like a never-ending buffet line; where you’re hoping to find that rare delicacy and taking a little bit of everything as you move through. But where does it end?

Is it any surprise that dating apps have actually altered the dynamics of human connection?

They have introduced new norms and behavior by encouraging a more superficial approach to dating; where initial judgments are often based on appearance and limited information. The focus seems more on physical attractiveness rather than compatibility, shared interests and similar intentions, like someone looking for casual sex versus an LTR, friends with benefits, etc… Does anyone even read these profiles before swiping right?

In our pixelated universe, intimacy has also taken on a whole new meaning.

Before even meeting a match in person, we find ourselves baring our souls (and other things) to virtual strangers, exchanging electronic sentiments, instead of whispering them into the warm ear of someone we’ve met and KNOW we want to connect with.

So, what IS human connection anyway?

On a rudimentary level, connection is chemical; the intricate play of biology and physiology that pretty much acts like a drug inside of us. Hormones such as oxytocin, known as the “bonding hormone,” play a crucial role in forming feelings of trust, intimacy, and attachment. We get a dose of oxytocin when we give or get good hugs! Neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine activate and influence our mood and reward systems, curating experiences of pleasure, and social bonding.

Connection also consists of emotional and psychological bonds that form between people that results in mutual understanding, empathy, and shared experiences, creating closeness, intimacy and eventually, love.

In doing research on the phenomenon of connection, I came across a book called, The Evolved Masculine by Destin Gerek, a relationship coach, certified sexologist, and founder of his company by the same name. The book’s tagline is: Be the Man the World Needs and the One She Craves?. I was intrigued.

As a woman on a spiritual path that has only deepened throughout the years, I am only interested in connecting with a man who fully embraces his evolved masculine self, his highest potential. A strong, self realized, self actualized man who is in the right relationship to his power and has the ability (and desire) for deep and sacred exchange. Needless to say, I was curious AF about this book.

In general, women seek emotional connection as a means of deepening relationships, weaving intricate tapestries of support and empathy. Men have historically faced societal expectations to suppress feelings and emotions and we’re seeing just how this plays out on the world stage.

Destin Gerek, who is dedicated to redefining and evolving masculinity for the 21st century says, “Our broken world does not need less masculine power, we need more men in the right relationship to their masculine power.” Amen.

While generalizations can never capture the full complexity of individuals, there are some distinct patterns that emerge in how men and women approach and experience connection.

With gender norms evolving and the growing Women’s Empowerment Movement, we have witnessed the rise of the feminine and the #MeToo movement, advocating against sexual harassment and assault, and promoting gender equality. More men are now embracing their emotional depth and authenticity, connecting with their inner worlds, tapping into their full presence, and the highest version of themselves.

Shift happens.

But, let’s face it, we can only connect with others as deeply as we connect to ourselves. We must embark on a journey of self-discovery and self-awareness so we can truly understand our own desires, values, and boundaries. Delving into our own depths, we cultivate a sense of authenticity, self-love, self-acceptance, self-confidence and emotional intelligence, but it takes work. Time. Discipline and maybe, therapy.

Know thyself.

But, how can we begin to connect with ourselves deeply and authentically?

There are many ways. These include, but are not limited to:

• Meditation.
• Contemplation.
• Reflection.
• Silence.
• Yoga.
• Ecstatic dance.
• Prayer.
• Therapy.
• Breath work.
• Chanting.

These practices introduce so many physical and mental benefits, lowering stress, raising self awareness, and allowing for higher states of consciousness and connection to unfold.

Gerek has some ideas of his own.

Mindfulness.

He invites us to explore the realms of sensual embodiment, meaning ‘of the senses’, urging us to put down our Smartphones and step into the physical world of our five senses. The present moment. Now, where our deepest presence lies.

“Being present means not being in your mind chatter, not being in anxiety, fear, or fantasy. Presence means not worrying about the past or what has happened before, or being concerned about what might happen next.” Gerek writes.

“Being present is being IN your body and connected to your sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. When you are in your five senses, you are not in your mind. You are present in the moment, and women are incredibly attuned to this presence, even though many wouldn’t necessarily be able to articulate it.” Hmmmmmmmm…

Here’s where Gerek’s book really got me. He authored this text for men, to teach and inspire men to BE and become their best, most evolved selves yet as a woman reading it, these teachings revealed so much to me about the vast and lush psyche of a woman.

More intrigue.

Gerek knows and understands the entire spectrum of masculine energy. I actually felt a little voyeuristic peeking directly into this complex circuitry of man but it was Gerek’s understanding of FEMININE energy that spoke to something primordial in me.

Gerek states that, “women are primal huntresses for masculine presence.” I never knew how to verbalize this innate, archetypal dynamic, but he just did. He says that as a man, if you want to “open a woman into the fullness of her desire—wet, hot, hungry and coming back for more (and not just for sex but for you and your heart, as well)—you need to build your capacity for presence. Women want and crave a man who is willing to invest in himself on all levels so that his very presence and beingness invites her to unfold into her most alive and exalted expression. She wants her own actualization to blossom into the fullness of who she is capable of becoming.”

Now that’s connection.

See, in her highest expression, the evolved feminine embodies a depth of qualities that transcend societal expectations. Embracing her sensuality, she celebrates her body as a vessel of joy and creativity. She is a catalyst for change, using her voice and her unique perspective to create a more compassionate and equitable world. She embraces her nurturing nature for others, also honoring her own well-being. She is in touch with her emotions and embraces vulnerability as a source of strength.

The evolved feminine values connection and collaboration, fostering inclusive and supportive relationships. The evolved masculine embodies a range of qualities that extend beyond traditional stereotypes. He embraces his strength, and emotional resilience, cultivating presence, self-awareness and introspection. This allows him to understand and navigate his own emotions and those of others with empathy and compassion.

The evolved masculine balances assertiveness with receptivity, knowing when to take action and when to listen. He values integrity and authenticity, choosing honesty and transparency in his interactions, respecting boundaries and creating a safe space for others to express themselves, especially women.

These archetypal aspects of feminine and masculine energy, the very universal laws that move the stars and the planets, the Yin and Yang of it all that ensures all things in the universe remain in constant harmony and motion, elicit the perfect landscape for true intimacy and exchange.

Connection is a choice.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love technology and dating apps serve their purpose, but in a world where someone new is a just swipe away and grass is proverbially greener on the other side, the plethora of options contributes to the paradox of choice, making it harder for individuals to commit and invest in a single person.

With a seemingly infinite pool of potential partners at our fingertips, we can become trapped in an endless loop of “What if?” and “Could there be someone better out there?” diminishing our abilities to connect with anyone at all.

Gerek teaches that commitment and choice are not enemies. It’s about knowing yourself and finding that rare person who makes you want to hide or delete your dating profile and take a leap into something deeper, more profound.

Connection is a gift.

One that could last a moment, a night or a lifetime. You could be on the other side of the world at a conference and meet a beautiful soul that changes your life, serving as a mirror and a catalyst for transformation: A Twin Flame…But, that’s a whole other article.

Ultimately, connection is an inside job, because the best relationship you could ever have is the one with yourself. As we learn to navigate and evolve our own emotional intimacy, we can live our best lives, our highest expression and share it with others for the good of all. Our world needs this. And so it is…

Rossana Jeran

Rossana Jeran is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hello Computer, Inc., a social purpose company that is passionate about creating Mobile Apps that blur the lines of education and entertainment. They are the creators of the award-winning “StoryTime International” Mobile app, that translates and reads aloud in 137 languages, promoting literacy and imagination for Preschoolers, Kindergarteners and early readers worldwide. She studied Psychology and Communications at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and is a social Entrepreneur. Her diverse background includes social work, arts management, philanthropy, private equity, the dotcom Tech industry and Hollywood; by way of her work with music industry legend, Freddy DeMann, former Manager of Madonna, Michael Jackson, The Eagles, Billy Idol, Perry Farrell, Macy Gray and Shakira. Rossana is a published writer, a public speaker, an award winning Media Artist and bi-lingual, speaking Spanish fluently as a second language. Most recently she spoke at the Los Angeles County Women’s Leadership Conference (2022), the World Literacy Summit (2023) at Oxford University in the UK and most recently featured as a rising Entrepreneur in Vision Magazine, a subsidiary of Palm Springs Life Magazine. Her work as the Business Manager of Grand Arts (The Margaret Hall Silva Foundation) exposed her to the non-profit sector, managing the organization’s business, budget and philanthropic affairs while producing shows for some of the best National and International visual Artists every eight weeks. In 2010 she founded Fit Conscious Happy, a lifestyle coaching practice that guides people to reach their highest potential using fitness and Meditation for complete mind/body wellness. Rossana is certified by the Chopra Institute as a Primordial Sound Meditation Teacher and teaches Mindset and Mindfulness meditation online as well as in and around Southern California and beyond. A true and well-balanced dichotomy, Rossana balances her life between entrepreneurial work, and her passion for helping people. She believes literacy, imagination and technology are human rights. More info: www.rossanajeran.com

rossanajeran.com

The post Beyond the Screen: Dating and Connecting in the Digital Age appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

What if I told you that one of the paths to bigger, better, James-Webb-space-exploring orgasms was to…avoid orgasm?

I’m not pulling your wanker!  Really!

For thousands of years, tantra practitioners have known this to be true when it comes to how to have orgasms.  Older, more traditional schools of tantra taught that men should avoid ejaculation altogether, because it would cause a release of the sex energy.  Instead, they urged, people should keep that energy inside themselves, allowing it to recirculate, letting that energy be fuel for our minds and bodies.  It was believed that to ejaculate and release the energy would cause a draining of the spirit.  Thus, you cannot pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to orgasm-less jail.

What a bummer, right?

Modern practitioners of tantra have released a lot of these hangups about release, favoring a more moderate approach to orgasm.  Today, most tantric practice doesn’t swear off orgasm.  Rather, it involves a deepening of awareness of one’s physical sensations, focus on the breath, sound, and conscious movement (or stillness).

In my earlier article, Ten Surefire Ways to Ignite Your Sex Life, I mentioned both slowing down and also taking orgasm off the table.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but I promise: avoiding orgasm (at least for a while) can dramatically improve, increase, and intensify all your orgasms that follow. So how do we do this?  Swear off sex?  Strap on a chastity belt?  No!  (Unless that’s your kink, then Yes!)

First, let’s break down orgasm into its parts.

1. Arousal

This is the stage where you start to warm things up.  If you have femme energy, it’s likely that your arousal is a little slower and takes time to build.  If you have more masculine energy, your arousal may be fast.  Whatever the flavor of your energy, it’s best to start with your focus away from your genitals.

If you’re solo, you may want to start with self-massage, rubbing your chest or breasts, your neck, your scalp, then working your way back down to stroke your legs and buttocks.  I like doing this massage with CBD-infused unrefined coconut oil.  While you focus on touch and the sensations it causes, keep breathing deeply.

I highly recommend the breathwork practices in Barbara Carrellas’ Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century.

If you do this exercise with a partner, you may want to start with a tantric energy exchange, which I explain here.  Or you can start simply by lying together, your bodies a few inches apart, maintaining deep eye contact and sharing breath.  Loosen your gaze so you’re not looking hard at them, but open your eyes to allow them to see in.  Ask your partner to do the same, gently opening to let you see into their eyes too.

Gaze softly, allowing yourselves to be seen by each other, and when the time feels right, kiss each other, sharing breath more deeply. Now it will feel natural for your hands to be on each other, but try for this exercise to keep your hands away from their genitals.

2. Plateau

At this stage of arousal, if you have a femme body, you’ll likely be wet, your labia engorged.  (Unless your partner is Ben Shapiro, in which case, good luck, you’ll never get wet.)  If you have a masculine body, you’ll likely have an intense erection.  Here you start to sense a heavy, hot, possibly buzzing sensation in your groin.  Sexual energy radiates outward in your body. While for a lot of people (usually women) who have struggled with orgasm, this is the stage that usually brings relief. “YES!  I’m close to coming!” But in this practice, here’s where we’ll put the brakes on.

Take your hands off your body or, if partnered, off your partner’s body.  Take some deep breaths.  If you have a penis, you might try holding your penis between two fingers and your thumb, squeezing at the base.  Or you can try pressing on the tip of your cock with your thumb.

Keep breathing and let your heart rate slow a bit.  This should take you off the plateau, safely away from the climax.

For this practice of intensifying orgasms, you can start over from here, returning to the arousal stage, sensing what you feel in your body and where.  Tell your partner what you’re feeling and where you’re feeling it.

If you’re partnered, return to soft eye gazing, letting yourself be seen, and move on to kissing.  If you’re solo, let your hands move back to your body, but starting away from your genitals.

You can keep doing this practice, sometimes called “edging,” to get close to orgasm but then pausing and starting over, building the sexual energy and excitement.  Some people do this for hours, even days, letting it grow and grow.

3. Climax

How do you know when to climax?  This is entirely up to you.  You might give yourself a pre-ordained time limit, and say, “No orgasm until after ten p.m.,” if you’re starting at six. If you’re partnered, communicate clearly with your partner about if and when you want to climax.  When you’re ready, go for it.  With a very long build-up period, don’t be surprised if the orgasm feels distinctly different from past orgasms.  It may be more of a full-body experience rather than isolated in your genitals.

4. Descent (or Refractory Period)

This is the period just after your climax.  For some people, especially those with masculine bodies, during this stage you cannot be aroused again, and you require a bit of rest before arousal can happen again.  For some people, this is just a few minutes, but for others it might be days. It’s not uncommon for there to be intense emotions during this time.  For some, their emotions may be intensely loving, connective, and bonding.  For those with trauma, though, this can be a space filled with uncomfortable, even painful feelings, possibly of shame or fear.

Check in with your partner to see how they are feeling during this time.  And if you’re solo, check in with yourself.  How do you feel?  Where do you feel it?  What does your body need now?  What does your heart need? Give this practice a try and see what effect it has on your orgasms.  Does it make them longer and stronger?  Do you get to soar right into a nebula?

Xanet Pailet

Xanet Pailet is the best selling author of Living an Orgasmic Life. Xanet is a recovered NYC health care lawyer who lived in a sexless marriage for over two decades. After experiencing her own sexual healing and awakening in 2011, she transitioned her career into a full-time sex and intimacy educator and coach. Xanet believes that pleasure is our birthright and she is passionate about helping women and men find their way back into their bodies, their desires, and their pleasure. Xanet works with couples who are in sexless marriages and women who have experienced abuse and trauma. She helps them heal their wounds, release their shame, and reconnect with their sexuality. Xanet is a certified Somatica Sex and Intimacy Coach, Sexological Body Worker, Holistic Pelvic Care Practitioner, Tantra Educator and Somatic Experiencing Trauma practitioner. She is on the faculty of 1440 Multiversity, Ecstatic Living Institute and the Somatica Institute. Learn more: https://powerofpleasure.com

powerofpleasure.com

The post How to Have Time and Space-Bending Orgasms appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Here are some tried and true ways to remedy this and ignite your sex life.

Try these and watch as the embers of your sex life transform into hot, flickering flames.

1. Put it on the calendar.

As a sex coach, I often hear objections to this: “But doesn’t that make it too routine?  Won’t it feel like a boring work meeting if I have to write it on the calendar?  Shouldn’t sex be spontaneous for it to be fun?!”

No, no, and no.  Our lives are so filled with busy-ness.  When I call someone and ask them how they are, it seems the answer invariably starts with, “Fine, just SO BUSY…”  With hectic, over-scheduled lives, who has time for real connection?

Pro-tip:  If you don’t schedule time for sex in your life, chances are, there won’t be time for sex in your life.

I suggest talking to your partner to figure out what day works best for you to have dates, and then take turns planning weekly dates for each other.  Put these dates in your calendars, and note who’s responsible for the date.  To accommodate whatever activity you have planned (a lesson, shared meal, etc.) plus sex, the date needs to be fairly long.  Plan for four-hour dates at a minimum.

2. Create the mood to ignite your sex life.

Set and setting will make or break a great date and help you ignite your sex life.

If you want more sensuousness in your sex life, buy flowers and arrange them around the bedroom, sprinkle petals on the bed, light candles, put on some sexy music.

If you want edgier sex, darken the room and get out the sexy toys – maybe leave a whip on the nightstand?

Whatever your style, at minimum clean the room, put away the kids’ toys, pick up your dirty clothes.  While sexy baristas with a mattress on the floor and all their worldly possessions piled up around it may have sealed the deal when we were young and carefree, most people grow out of this at some point.  (But if you are into this, no judgment! A sexy barista is still a sexy barista, and the coffee in the morning is bound to be golden.)

3. Communicate.

Do this before your date, not during it, and definitely not while you’re in the midst of having sex.

Allow yourself to be vulnerable and tell your partner (in a gentle way) what is and isn’t working for you.

Encourage them to express this to you too.  Consider taking turns, telling your partner, “My favorite thing we do is…” “What’s your favorite?”  “The thing that excites me the least [or sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable] is…” “What about you?”

4. Slow down.  Slow wayyyyy down.

Lengthen foreplay so that foreplay is most of the play.  If you’ve been having twenty-minute sex sessions, schedule a session to last four hours, and aim for the first half being just pleasurable touch with no penetration.  This may sound extreme, especially if you’re used to quickies before work or just before sleep.  But a long, slow, leisurely love-making session can do so much to intensify your bond and build intimacy.

Consider the time an investment in your lover and your partnership.

5. No goal orientation.

Take orgasm off the table.  While this may be a foreign concept to some, those who have practiced some tantra know how powerful it is to make love without any end-goal, no expectation of orgasm.  Traditionally, “having sex” meant a session in which the man orgasmed.  But what if we forget this outdated view and just think of having sex as a pleasure session for both partners, where we maximize pleasurable touch and minimize the importance of any end goal?

6. Use coconut oil.

If you’re in a monogamous, committed relationship and don’t have to be concerned about STI infections, swap out whatever lube you were using for coconut oil.  (Conversely, if you are non-monogamous and rely on condoms for safety, skip this piece of advice and look for a natural and organic lube that works with condoms, because coconut oil or any oil-based lube will break down latex, rendering the condoms a pointless.)

The coconut oil should be plain, with no other ingredients.  I prefer the kind in the grocery aisle – unrefined, organic, virgin oil for my not-a-virgin sex goddess self.  I have very sensitive skin and find coconut oil to be the most soothing, least-irritating sex lube.  Bonus: it’s edible!  It does, however, have the drawback of staining fabric, so do be sure to launder everything well in warm water after your sex session.

7. Learn sexual massage to ignite your sex life.

Take a class with your partner so you can both lavish each other with expert sensual touch.  If you haven’t invested in a massage table, do so.  It’s an important purchase I recommend to all clients.

8. Explore fantasies.

Do you ever find yourself closing your eyes and imagining something else during sex?  If so, you’re probably not aligning your sex with your core fantasies.

Be brave with your partner and get vulnerable.

Tell them the things that really turn you on.  When you have solo sex, what images come to mind as you get close to coming?  Those are likely your core fantasies.  If you’re not getting to experience them (or at least getting close to them) in your regular sex sessions, you’re likely not maximizing your pleasure.

9. Make dates playful.

Have fun with your partner!  Be creative!

Instead of dinner and a movie, think rock climbing lesson followed by sushi and kinky play!  Getting to experience exciting new things with your partner will lead you to be more attracted to each other. 

As you take turns planning dates, pick new activities each time.

10. Make sex playful.

If you’re used to having just one kind of sex with your partner, switch things up to ignite your sex life.  Try new positions together.  Experiment with changed power dynamics.  Explore kink.  Set a timer and take turns directing your sex session, asking for the things that turn you on the most (while, of course, respecting your partner’s boundaries).

Go on Retreat with Xanet Pailet & Learn How to Ignite Your Sex Life

Go on retreat and ignite your sex life in October, 2022, with Xanet Pailet, at Palmaia, the House of Aia, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Spend Valentine’s Day, 2023 on retreat at Palmaia, the House of Aia, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, on retreat and learn how to ignite your sex life.

Order Xanet’s book: Living an Orgasmic Life!

Xanet Pailet

Xanet Pailet is the best selling author of Living an Orgasmic Life. Xanet is a recovered NYC health care lawyer who lived in a sexless marriage for over two decades. After experiencing her own sexual healing and awakening in 2011, she transitioned her career into a full-time sex and intimacy educator and coach. Xanet believes that pleasure is our birthright and she is passionate about helping women and men find their way back into their bodies, their desires, and their pleasure. Xanet works with couples who are in sexless marriages and women who have experienced abuse and trauma. She helps them heal their wounds, release their shame, and reconnect with their sexuality. Xanet is a certified Somatica Sex and Intimacy Coach, Sexological Body Worker, Holistic Pelvic Care Practitioner, Tantra Educator and Somatic Experiencing Trauma practitioner. She is on the faculty of 1440 Multiversity, Ecstatic Living Institute and the Somatica Institute. Learn more: https://powerofpleasure.com

powerofpleasure.com

The post Ten Surefire Ways to Ignite Your Sex Life appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Tips for Gift-Giving

Celebrating love is always a welcome practice in yoga, but can sometimes be forgotten in the hustle and bustle of life. For those of us whose love language includes gift-giving, it can be challenging finding the right present to show your affection to your significant other. So, to make it easier on you, we rounded up and categorized a no-fail guide for yoga-inspired Valentine’s gifts that any man in your life will love. (Dad jokes included.)

Bonus, many of these brands carry a women’s line as well, so you can do some of your own shopping while you find your Valentin’s gifts for the yoga men in your life. Or your gifts for any time of the year. It’s a win-win for everyone.

1. CUSTOM NALGENE WATER BOTTLE

The Nalgene Customizer allows you to create a one-of-a-kind, nothing-else-like-it bottle. Personalize the bottle any way you want – #Namaste, a photo of your yoga-loving man in mountain pose, you name it. And you’ll have fun making it! $20.

SHOP NOW

2. SOLIOS SOLAR POWERED WATCH

Powered by clean, renewable energy, and built with components that are easy on the planet, your man won’t be late to yoga with this sleek and eco-tech watch. Starts at $265.

SHOP NOW

3. WOLVEN’S ONYX JOGGER

This classic, signature black jogger is made to move with a yoga practice and sustainably made from post-consumer plastic, helping to keep plastic out of our planet’s delicate ecosystems. $88.

SHOP NOW

4. BODEWELL LIVING CANDLE

These candles offer positive affirmation for your man including “Radiant”, “Human” and “Noble.” They are all-natural soy wax, lead free cotton wicks and dynamic synthetic fragrances for the cleanest burn. $60.

SHOP NOW

5. WEIGHTED EYE PILLOW

The Miranda Bennett weighted eye pillow is heatable and perfect for savasana. Created entirely from the naturally dyed textile remnants left after the garments are cut, this special collection is hand-dyed in-house in Austin, TX with non-toxic, plant-based dyes. $38.

SHOP NOW

6. SMALLHOLD MUSHROOM GROW KIT

Give (and gift) new meaning to farm-to-table with Smallhold Specialty Mushrooms Grow Kits. He can grow and harvest Blue Oyster and Lion’s Mane mushrooms to cook when he makes you dinner. Starting at $34.

SHOP NOW

7. VIORI RICE SHAMPOO AND CONDITIONER BARS

These all-natural Longsheng rice shampoo and conditioner bars are inspired by the ancient rituals of the Red Yao Tribe, so your man with the man-bun can get his shampoo on. $13.

SHOP NOW

8. BOODY PULLOVER HOODIE

Made from a blend of sustainable bamboo viscose and organic cotton, the BOODY Men’s Weekend Pullover Hoodie features breathable, odor-resistant and moisture-wicking properties. Something to wear during the forest walk he’ll take after saving it! $89.95.

SHOP NOW

9. MUD/WTR

MUD\WTR is a coffee alternative that has 1/7th the caffeine of coffee, and uses a blend of masala chai, cacao and adaptogenic mushrooms.  MUD\WTR starter pack $40.

SHOP NOW

Ingrid Yang

Dr. Ingrid Yang, M.D., J.D., E-RYT500, C-IAYT, is a physician, certified yoga therapist, Reiki master and an advisory board member at wellness company obVus Solutions, where she contributes her expertise to the breathing exercises featured in the minder® posture corrector + breathing coach app. When not practicing medicine, Dr. Yang leads yoga trainings and retreats all over the world, with a special focus on kinesthetic physiology and healing through posture modification, breathwork, meditation and mind-body connection. Dr. Yang has authored two books: Hatha Yoga Asanas and her latest release, Adaptive Yoga, published in November 2020.

ingridyang.com

The post 9 Valentine’s Gift Ideas For Your Yoga Man appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Happy Together for 25 Years: 4 Tips for Relationship Success

It is possible for you to have a happy relationship that lasts for 25 years — or more. My husband and I started dated 25 years ago this year. 25 years together is a big number – a lot of couples don’t make it that long, at least not happily.

I have worked with thousands of women in my career and most of them are not happy in their relationships. Some couples will stay until the kids leave the house or until they feel financially secure enough to separate. A lot of my friends are divorced. Some are figuring out the new dating thing and some are already on their second marriage.

My husband and I are familiar with divorce. I am my husband’s second wife. Both of our parents are divorced. I have worked with many women as they were going through their divorces to help them recreate a life they love and this usually includes a new partner.

If you want to create the life you love with a partner who you love for the long-term, try these relationship success secrets.

4 Relationship Success Secrets

1. Have a REAL Connection with Each Other

It isn’t about the looks, the job, the money. These things can fade and change. The connection has to be strong. If it isn’t, then the grass is greener somewhere else when life gets hard – and life does get hard. It isn’t all roses and rainbows so you want to have someone with you that you really want to be with no matter what curve ball is thrown your way.

The connection has to be mutual. A lot of movies talk about “knowing” when you meet your person, your “soul mate” and “the one”. I keep hearing everyone say on reality dating shows like the Bachelor, “I feel sparks with you.” There can only be one true spark so on these shows multiple people are not going to have a true spark for one person.

Let’s clarify what this is energetically.

When I met my husband, I knew he was my person the moment I looked in his eyes. I knew. But knowing isn’t enough. My next reaction was fear, scared, I’m so young, I don’t know if I’m ready for this and I don’t know what to do with this. Feeling the sparks with someone is exciting and then scary. I honestly spent the first two months of knowing my husband running away from him and then feeling magnetically pulled back to him again.

The knowing connection makes you show up in a way you’ve never showed up with another partner.

You have to do the inner work on yourself to truly be present in that relationship.

I’ve watched women meet “their” person and sabotage it. Run away from “their” person. Go back to a man that treated them horribly because they felt safter and less exposed (and now they are separated from that man again.)

Not everyone wants a relationship with the unmistakable “knowing” connection. People have been making those relationships work for centuries. While my husband and I do have the sparks and I talk about it in my relationship book, you absolutely can make a relationship work without it. But to go the distance, you have to have a real connection with your person. It has to be someone you want to be with in good times and in bad…there’s a reason that’s in the wedding vows.

2. Don’t Ever Go to Bed MAD

Seriously, DO NOT do it.

Notice that when you have gone to bed mad that you wake up to a whole different beast the next morning?

You’re not only mad about the original event, but ALL the other “wrongs” that come to your mind since the beginning of your relationship.

What happens energetically is that in the darkness of the night – in the absence of light – your anger grows. Anger is a lower vibrational energy. Combining anger with darkness at night is the perfect storm to wake up to a beast that will really confuse your partner and make you feel worse about literally everything little thing from the beginning.

If it bothers you, deal with it before you go to bed and find a compromise. If I am upset about something, I tell my husband. We talk about it and we come to an agreement that is always a compromise because that’s what you do in relationships, you compromise. I won’t go to bed mad and he knows it. I also won’t let him go to bed mad.

If there is NO way for you to talk to the other person before you can go to bed, you have to make peace with it on your own and come up with your solution to the problem. Then present the problem and solution to them as soon as you can so you can find your compromise together. There is no reason or benefit to ever going to bed mad.

3. Be Crystal CLEAR in Your Communication

The majority of the population cannot read minds. They can’t even take hints.

If you want something to happen or to be a certain way, you need to tell your partner and give as many details and specifications as you possibly can.

“I like it when you do this, thank you.” “Can you please help me with this?” “It bothers me when you do that. Please don’t do it.”

Energetically, the clearer you are, the less drama, miscommunications and fights you’ll have. I remember getting mad at my husband for not doing things I wanted him to help with when we started dating. It was such a waste of energy because he didn’t even know I wanted help because I didn’t ask him. I just got mad and became a crazy woman in his eyes. Then I’d have to let go, calm down and apologize. Now we communicate. I can’t get mad if I didn’t communicate it to him, he is not a mind reader.

Here’s a classic example of what you’re doing with your energy in your relationships when you aren’t clear at all in your communication.

• You want a gift but instead you say, “I don’t want a gift.”
• Then you’re upset and angry because they’re supposed to “know” you better and get you a gift.
• In this example not only are you NOT going to get a gift, you are going to probably get in a big fight. If you want something from your partner, ask for it.
• Tell them.
• Send them the exact link to what you want.
• The more clear you are in your communication, the less misunderstanding and fights you’ll have.
• Happy couples have strong, clear and open communication with each other.

4. Put EFFORT into Your Relationship

When you start a relationship with someone, it’s new and exciting to learn about them and do new things together. Then you move into the next stage – you’re comfortable together and know everything about each other. You get into routines and get lazy when it comes to putting energy into your relationships.

Remember this – you put energy and time into things that are important to you.

Your partner will feel neglected when you stop putting energy into your relationship. Then they talk to their friends and it’ll be out of control in no time.

Don’t just assume they’ll always be there or take them for granted.

Especially if you don’t have a “knowing” connection, this is where the grass will get green when other people they work with or meet will give them attention they’re wanting and not getting. Schedule a date night, go for walks together, meet for lunch, hold hands and make time for intimacy.

Think of your relationship like a plant, you have to water it, fertilize it and give it sunlight so it keeps growing.

It’s a relationship game changer to be happy. Which of these tips would really help your relationship right now? One of my friends just told me that we are the only happily married couple she knows. These tips have helped my husband and I reach 25 years happily together this year. I’m a big believer in living a life I love. That means no drama, mutual respect and lots of love.

Use these Relationship Success Strategies

February is the month of love and I hope you’re able to put some of these tips into practice to create your happily ever after with your partner.

Lisa Gornall

Lisa Gornall is a Spiritual Medium, Author, Healer and Coach. She was born with her abilities to become one with your energy which allows her to intuitively clear and balance your energy. Lisa gets to the ROOT of your patterns, beliefs and fears that are no longer working. Since 2002, she has combined her intuitive abilities with healing and coaching. Lisa has coached thousands of individuals to heal their relationships, love their life again and get back to the lifestyle they originally envisioned for themselves – a freedom lifestyle. You can find Lisa at www.lisagornall.com

www.lisagornall.com

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It is Possible to Practice Manifesting Love

The term manifesting has become a term that many people look at as new-age or woo-woo, or maybe wonder, “is this possible?” Manifesting is, in essence, the belief that you can bring your intangible thoughts, dreams and desires into reality by simply attracting what you think about. To most people, this seems insane because, well, can the thoughts we have be that powerful? This is the root of the issue. People have so little concept of themselves and lack the acceptance of just how important and influential they are. We become lazy and unaware of what voices we allow within our minds which directly impacts our relationship with ourselves and the relationships we have with everyone around us.

As I shared in my recent workshop Overcome Heartbreak & Forever Attract Love, the attraction part of love is the most fun and easiest, because that’s when we get into our flow and become carefree instead of trying so hard. However, arriving at a state of attraction is a process that occurs once we learn to bring awareness to our unconscious habits and release the toxic thoughts we allow to wander in our minds.

The power of manifestation is when you are alone in the coffee shop and you think, “it would be so nice if a perfect stranger walked in for a beautiful conversation,” then, in walks the beautiful stranger. Every moment is creating your future, your interactions, your opportunities and your relationships.

I want to focus on manifestation with relationships and manifesting love as there is such power in this. However, the power comes when we can begin to understand that we can communicate, create requests, and state desires of who we want to be with, how we want our relationship to be and what we want to improve once in the relationship with our minds more than our words.

Most people think that communication through talking is the essential key in a relationship. But people miss that we communicate through our actions and the thoughts inside our head. Which these forms of communication are more powerful than anything we can state to another person.

Three Steps to Manifesting Love: Putting it into Practice

Step one in manifesting love is to become aware.

Become aware of what you are stating about dating, the gender you seek to date and your ideas around relationships. Most people come to me craving a fairytale relationship out of this world, and at the same time, have so much hate in their hearts. Stating things like, “but it will never happen for me.” Well of course it won’t happen for you because deep down, you want something and have a conflicting feeling of why it cannot happen for you. So, it never happens. This is like going to the store to buy something and stating, “I want these raspberries, but it will never happen for me.” or, “I want the Chanel bag, yet I’ll never make that much money.” or “I want to help a lot of people, but I don’t have the money for it.” Each of these are conflicting beliefs. The first step is to become more aware of what you’re stating your reality to be. Because you’ll be surprised at how scary it is to notice how much you speak about what you don’t want.

Step two is notice your complaints.

In this step, start noticing how often you are nit-picking other people, your reality, and yourself. I often hear people come to me and complain that their partner never does this, this gender doesn’t do that, or in the past, they asked their partner to do something, and they never listen, so everyone must be this way, etc. I follow this up by asking, have you stopped asking them to do something and instead become happy with what is already in the relationship? Do you show gratitude and appreciation for any of the good things occurring or is there always one more thing that needs to arise out of a nag, or that must happen, so happiness, peace and joy occur between the two of you?

This reoccurring pattern of feeling like the partner is never doing enough or not listening is because communication is happening through language instead of through the mind. So, you want to begin to think about what you would like to see happen, then start to act in a state as if that desire you have is already done. Do this consistently over a period, then quite quickly, the Universe and your relationships will match your energy because you become complete without needing someone else to do something for your mood to shift.

When you enter this state of controlling your emotions, you become self-empowered and everyone realigns to support you, guide you and fulfill you even more because you are the example of how you want to be treated.

Step three is to create the habit of speaking in the present.

I recommend making this short exercise a habit if you want to practice manifesting love. Try this exercise out even if you’re skeptical over a short period of time to begin seeing if manifesting will work for you to attract love. However, I’ve never had one person start this habit in their life consistently where the results haven’t arrived. This exercise can be done alone, but I always find it fun to include a few friends, whether texting or phone calls, etc. Instead of stating or talking about your reality how it is right now, begin to articulate how you want your reality. However, this MUST be in the present tense.

For example, my girlfriends and I will call each other and say things like, “It feels so amazing to go on the best date ever, he picks me up, fantastic sushi, picks the bill up, takes me home so nicely, and the kissing was terrific!” Even though there is no date planned, there is no man, there is no sushi restaurant. My girlfriends and I talk about it as if it’s already happening. Guess what? It almost always happens. Why? Because our mind, from a neurological standpoint, is starting to see that we can create an unknown reality, so the neurons begin to morph our reality and begin to see what we’re talking about.

This can happen with the attraction of love, money, relationships, jobs, et cetera. I always say give it a try; the worst thing that can happen is you can say I tried, and it didn’t quite work.

However, if you do it from your heart with consistency, your fairytale life will be birthed every day repeatedly to become better than you dreamed every waking moment of your life.

Colleen Gallagher

Colleen Gallagher is an intuitive business and personal development consultant. She has survived childhood cancer, is a global citizen, an advocate for everyone to have an opportunity to live their dreams and an academic who is currently pursuing her Ph.D is Psychology with a focus on Global Leadership and Change. She is an author of multiple books, including her latest release An Uncompromised Life, and the host of The Colleen Gallagher podcast. Her greatest success is seeing her clients fall in love with life by overcoming trauma and life challenges and create a lifestyle career that impacts the world. Colleen empowers leaders and businesses to come to a newfound clarity of their mission, so that they can better understand their gifts while taking calculated action to grow their businesses. Colleen offers these experiences through online courses, in-person retreats, her podcast, books and products. Currently, Colleen resides in Los Angeles, California.

colleengallagher.co

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How Can You Transition from Stressed to Blissed

You’ve been together more than ever before in your relationship. The access to all your usual activities has been altered which means you’ve been stuck at home together and you’re noticing all the problems. Has the house gotten smaller? Have they always gotten on your nerves and pushed your buttons? What new hobbies can they take up? Or better yet, what can you do to get away? There is a new stress on your relationship that being together all the time has brought to the forefront and it’s not working.

Here’s the thing about relationship problems, they don’t disappear if you don’t fix them. They actually grow and often spiral out of control, creating new problems. To take the stress off your relationship, start by addressing the problems together with your partner.

3 Practices to Try!

Reduce the Stress in Your Relationship by trying the following:

1. Getting Clear

Get objective by going for a walk, doing a meditation, writing, or practicing yoga. What is at the root of the problems in your relationship right now? When did the problems start? How often are they appearing? What can you do to create a change and what can your partner do?

2. Talking to Your Partner

This is the thing you don’t want to do, but this is how you take the stress off your relationship and move forward. The key to successful communication is to be clear, honest and focused on your goal of healing the relationship problems. Have specific examples of what is bothering you and specific outcomes on what they can do to alleviate the problem. There will be compromise on both sides and commit to taking action on the things you both agree to do and talking to each other immediately when future problems arise.

3. Having More Fun

Schedule in more date nights, self-care, spontaneity and practice more gratitude. The better place you are in energetically, the better you’ll show up in your relationship. Stop hiding from the stress and problems in your relationship and heal it. Your home should be your happy place. Let’s get it there again! Take this time and have fun to shift from stressed to blissed.

Lisa Gornall

Lisa Gornall is a Spiritual Medium, Author, Healer and Coach. She was born with her abilities to become one with your energy which allows her to intuitively clear and balance your energy. Lisa gets to the ROOT of your patterns, beliefs and fears that are no longer working. Since 2002, she has combined her intuitive abilities with healing and coaching. Lisa has coached thousands of individuals to heal their relationships, love their life again and get back to the lifestyle they originally envisioned for themselves – a freedom lifestyle. You can find Lisa at www.lisagornall.com

www.lisagornall.com

The post From Stressed to Blissed with Your Partner appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Intimacy and Authenticity

“Intimacy is at the core of most of our desires,” expresses Jennelle Gordon.

If we are wired for connection, why is it that so many of us have learned patterns that keep us from fully connecting to ourselves and others in the most authentic way possible?

What is Intimacy and Why We Need It

True intimacy means that we are honest, embodying and expressing all of who we are. When we get comfortable being intimate, we can connect with someone at the deeper levels emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. Through intimacy with ourselves, we can build romantic, platonic, familial, and professional relationships that thrive.

Most of us want to be seen, heard, and free to be ourselves at the most genuine levels. By giving ourselves the permission to let down the blocks we have built up, we open ourselves to authentic connection and inspire others to do the same.
Taking the time to understand ourselves, reveal who we are at our essence, and recreate from a place of wholeness helps us enrich every area of our lives, especially our relationships.

Intimacy through Connecting to Self and Life

We all need ‘connection’ to self and life to thrive in life. Many of us have experienced some form of shame, difficulty in relationships, trauma, dissociation, and a vast array of things that keep us from expressing our most authentic selves in life. We can have fulfilling intimate relationships by reconnecting with ourselves, learning to uncover the truth of who we are under those layers, and learning the practice of conscious connection.

Shiva, Shakti, and the Principles of Polarity

In yogic philosophy, the divine masculine energy is called ‘Shiva,’ and the divine feminine energy is called ‘Shakti.’ Shiva and Shakti are the forces that create everything in the universe. All humans have both Shiva and Shakti energies within them, and the way we embody them is unique to everyone. By understanding these energies, balancing them, and learning to work with these energetic forces, we begin to master intimacy and ultimately create our lives in union with the divine. One of the foundational aspects of attraction, creation, manifestation, and relationships is the principle of polarity.

Keith Mitchell and Jennelle Gordon: Guides for Cultivating Intimacy

Jennelle Gordon and Keith Mitchell have developed programs and retreats that help individuals create self-love, intimacy, healing, and authentic expression in their lives. Their journeys, life stories, and passions have led them to help others form deep, meaningful relationships that enrich their lives and propel them into a level of fulfillment beyond what was currently imagined.

Teacher and Healer Keith Mitchell

Keith Mitchell is someone who has consistently strived for excellence and achievement in all areas of his life. As a former NFL player, he became great at understanding how to push himself and accomplish goals. Yet, his life’s trajectory changed after experiencing an injury as a linebacker that left him in the hospital. This life-altering experience led him back to the root of yoga, his breath. He was able to heal himself with yoga, mindfulness practices, and conscious breathing. The power of these practices guided him to become a yoga teacher and the path of tantra. When he was in the NFL, he realized he disassociated from his body, had walled up to maintain hyper-masculine ideals, and even learned to disconnect from feeling. After his transformation and realization, he studied with leading Tantra teachers, including Psalm Isadora, Shasha Cobra, and others worldwide.

Teacher and Healer Jennelle Gordon

Jennelle Gordon is an inspirational holistic healer with expertise in helping others improve their intimacy in their lives. Her life’s path is a beautiful example of how holistic practices and reconnecting to oneself is the way to heal and regain a sense of freedom in life. She grew up as a product of the foster system, went into an extremist, religiously oppressive household, and experienced many forms of abuse until she could leave home. This trauma put her in a situation where a pimp forced her to become a product of human trafficking for a decade. Jennelle’s powerful healing story began when she decided to take charge of her life and create her own destiny. She was able to fake her death and then escape to a secluded area in Thailand, where she then immersed herself in a learning and healing journey of becoming an expert in the yogic path of tantra.

Jennelle had been practicing yoga before this to help with back injuries and help to give her relief from anxiety. Although, her love of yoga deepened with the tantra training that allowed her to reconnect with herself and begin a new life. Through her tantra training, she was able to transmute so much of the pain she had been through, including taking on beliefs of shame, dogma, and dissociation from herself. She then developed many practices that help her teach others to bring more pleasure, connection, freedom, and greater intimacy to their lives. Jennelle’s path, training, and experience make her an expert teacher in helping others recreate their relationship with themselves, others, and life.

Holistic Modalities and Transformational Guides

Both Keith and Jennelle exemplify the effectiveness of using holistic modalities and the tantric path to heal and empower others. Together, their in-depth understanding of healing, mindfully relating to others and intimacy helps create lasting transformation in their clients’, students’, and retreat guests’ lives regardless of their stories or backgrounds.

Keith and Jennelle offer complementary energy as co-creators and master teachers. Their students experience the depth, heights, wisdom, presence, liberation, healing, love, and everything these two have spent years cultivating to share with others. Like many people in the present-day world, Jennelle and Keith met online. The platform: LinkedIn. After connecting, they collaborated to host live events at exclusive resorts and exotic locations around the world. The Intimacy Mastery Retreat launched at the peak of covid in 2020 and sold out. They have since hosted multiple of these retreats and developed an advanced-level retreat called Intimacy Mastery 2.5.

Connecting with Intimacy Mastery 2.5

At Intimacy Mastery 2.5, Jennelle and Keith offer a life-altering, healing, and liberating experience, all in a luxurious exotic setting cultivated to give you the space for your fullest expression. Intimacy Mastery Retreat 2.5 guides guests through healing activities, embodiment practices, and connection exercises to help them have a more fulfilling connection to themselves and life.
The secret to creating a lasting attraction is in understanding polarity and how to embody your authentic essence.

Teaching intimacy became even more relevant when so many have been in situations where they became more isolated or potentially hesitant of connection. The tagline for their retreat is, “Elevating your greatest power to live the most exhilarating connected life possible!” Their retreat truly does deliver on this intention of helping guests to heal and express themselves.

Tantra is a holistic system of personal and spiritual development. Jennelle and Keith use tantric practices to help others create a union and balance of masculine and feminine energies to improve their connection and relationship to self and others.

Join Keith and Jennelle on Retreat for Intimacy Mastery 2.5

The Intimacy Mastery Retreat will guide you on a journey into the deepest, most unexplored parts of yourself. Wading through the darkest parts of yourself to find the light will allow you to relate to others on a level never thought possible. You will find yourself forging deep, meaning relationships that will enrich your life and catapult you into a level of fulfillment you could have never imagined.

Our practices are based on ancient yogic relationship principles, mindfulness, and embodiment practices.

These teachings will be led by master coaches Keith Mitchell and Jennelle Gordon who will take you through the most exhilarating experience of your life over the course of five days.

Learn more about Intimacy Mastery 2.5

Christina Rendon

Christina Rendon is a meditation guide, healer, author, and creative consultant. She is passionate about holistic lifestyle and working with others that are making a positive impact in the world. She has hosted meditations around the world, has emceed at wellness events, and works with those on their path of awakening.

The post What is Intimacy and How we can Master this Practice appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Stress & sex: a yogic approach to awakening women’s libido

A woman’s most powerful sexual response is hidden beneath the surface and runs as deep as an ocean. Women have more erectile tissue than men, and the clitoris has nearly twice the amount of nerve endings as a penis. Women have reported orgasms of the clitoris, uterus, nipples, throat, g-spot, energy body, and more… So why is it that so many women today are struggling with low libido and anorgasmia? My name is Emily, and through my courses and coaching, I show women a yogic path to awakening their sexuality, healing sexual tension, increasing orgasm, and building a strong and consistent libido. In short, how to increase your sex drive with yoga.

The answer to the big question above is, well… multi-faceted. The roots run as deep as two millennia of sexually oppressed, objectified, and abused women. In today’s more inclusive and equitable world, our culture has some work to do to support women back into their empowered sensual expression. The application of various principles and practices of yoga help to activate a woman’s pleasure response, increase her sex drive, and support her in finding emotional and spiritual fulfillment from within her sexual life.

Holistic Sexual Healing through Yoga

Holistic sexual healing through yoga embraces five primary facets: stress reduction, self-connection & love, physical mastery, transcendence of history and limiting beliefs, and activation of the creative power.

The Power of Prana to Increase your Sex Drive

One of the most important links to the puzzle of a woman’s libido is in her subtle energy. Subtle energy, or prana, is the force that animates life. It’s invisible, but we can sense it with our higher senses if we pay attention closely. As yogis, we begin to perceive subtle energy through our practices. As we learn to work with it, it becomes less obscure. Then we begin to read it, move it, and control it – which all comes with time, patience, and most importantly – practice.

A woman’s sexuality can be addressed in a very similar way – as a practice of getting to know her on a subtle level. We can watch subtle changes in her skin tone, feel them in her aura, and she can use a soft concentration on the sex centers to move more prana into them and deepen the mind-body connection. It is at the level of the subtle that we begin to unveil answers to the questions about women’s sexuality that many of us don’t even know to ask.

Stress affects the body in both very subtle and very extreme ways and leads to a laundry list of dis-ease. If we pay close attention and study the changes in the body during and after the stress cycle, we can then support the body through its stress & recovery processes.

Reducing Stress and Feeling Safe

Healing a woman’s sexuality starts with supporting her body’s stress cycle through its entire process and back into a state of balance. When a woman begins to relax and feel safe in her own body, she establishes the foundation of accessing her deepest, and most powerful sexual response. It is at the level of embodied surrender that she begins to awaken expansive orgasmic potential and have deeply satisfying sex.

One of the first and immediate ways that the body responds to stress is by tensing and contracting the low belly – around the guts and the sex organs. The body instinctively draws the sensitive belly and sex organs up and inward to protect them from the perceived threat.

Think about it – do you really ever feel this reaction in your body? Chances are, the answer to that question is no. That could be because for days, weeks, months, maybe even years your body has had to react to stressors one after the other with such frequency that it never really recovered from the previous stressor before it had to respond to the next one. We’re talking about anything from jolting alarm sounds, to running late, to not getting enough ‘likes’ on a recent post, and the list goes on and on…

Normal modern life is stacked full of stressful stimuli. Most of us have adapted to chronic stress… but at a cost. Belly tension is subtly activated so often that the pattern of tension becomes stuck in our tissues and we become numb to it. (And I haven’t even mentioned how we hold our bellies in fear of being fat! That’s a different article.) When we become numb, our sensing mind has “checked out” from the low belly & pelvis. In this state, known as dissociation, we can no longer hear or sense intelligent messages being whispered by the body – until it starts “screaming” at us with issues like painful sex, IBS, the buildup of toxic belly fat, or a disconnection from the sexual response.

When we begin to bring consciousness to the micro-reactive movements of the body during its stress response, we can choose to take a little time to allow the body to recover. This is one step towards becoming unstuck from stress and tension stored inside the tissues.

Practice to Relax the Belly and Feel Safe

Contrast is the teacher! Begin observing the belly at various moments throughout the day. Observe it in the morning, touch it, take a moment to allow it to soften layer by layer. Try spending a full 15-20 minutes savasana practice with an intention to soften the belly, pelvic reservoir, and sex organs as deeply as possible. With this practice, we build a strong mind-body connection to a soft & relaxed belly – we now know what it feels like to be relaxed.

Then, look for contrast in the belly throughout the day. Observe when you feel stressed, tense, excited, anxious, nervous, fearful, or protective. Observe how these feelings affect the belly. Look deeper than the belly skin, feel deep into the layers of tissue around the organs for even the most subtle contraction.

Once the tension is observed, it’s time to take effective action. After the threat or stressor is over, spend a few moments consciously relaxing the belly and pelvic organs and tissues. To do this, simply bring a soft focus to the low belly and pelvis, and allow them to relax (think “relax” and feel it in the body). Spend at least two, up to thirty minutes relaxing deeper and deeper. Listen to the body and support its full resolution from the stress response.

Reclaim Joy

It’s no secret that chronic stress and trauma interfere with the ability to enjoy even the simplest of pleasures in life and in sex. It is never too late to reclaim joy and pleasure as a birthright.

Relaxing the soft tissues of the belly & pelvis flushes fresh oxygen and prana into the organs. By focusing on this area with a soft and loving intention, subtle energy will penetrate into the sexual centers releasing blockages and stirring the erotic potential. Sexual energy may naturally awaken as a result. If so, simply enjoy it!

Connect with Yourself to Increase your Sex Drive

When we feel disconnected from our sexuality, have low sexual sensation, or can’t get out of our heads during sex, these are often signs that we have ‘retreated’ from the pelvis and sex centers for one reason or another. Embodiment is the antidote to dissociation. Through yogic techniques, we can learn to master the stress response, feel safe in our own bodies, become wired for pleasure and joy, and sink into our most expansive orgasmic pleasure.

Revel In Your Pleasure

If you enjoyed this article and want to go deeper, try our free course Revel in Your Pleasure.

Emily Rae Davies

Emily is a Women’s Sexuality Coach and Founder of Yoga for Sexual Wellness. She specializes in supporting her students in removing the obstacles holding them back from their self-healing. As a thought leader for the modern woman, her mission is to support all women in liberating themselves from any constraints preventing them from living their best life, and aligning with their deepest passion and most complete expression of themselves. Learn more about this new paradigm in women’s sexuality at: www.yogaforsexualwellness.com. Follow us on Instagram @yogaforsexualwellness

www.yogaforsexualwellness.com

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Zoë Kors photo by Emily Sandifer

Photos of Zoë Kors by Emily Sandifer

Relationship is the bootcamp of self-realization

I saw her across the tent in the middle of the desert in Joshua Tree at Bhakti Fest, and the oppressive dry heat was farthest from my mind. She radiated warmth, aglow with her welcoming smile to every woman who came up to her expressing some form of gratitude. Donning a flowy white top and pants, with platinum short hair and blue eyes, Zoë Kors wore a silver ring in the shape of a clitoris.

I immediately thought of The Red Tent by Anita Diamont, a book I had read so long ago about the significance and purpose of women in Biblical times. During a woman’s moon cycle, and during and after childbirth, she would stay in the Red Tent with only other women, where they were their own authorities.

It was no coincidence I found Zoë; as a fellow explorer seeking out new paths of expression, I had covered some ground but never explored womanhood through the lens of sexuality in a group setting. A suburban mom and professional, I longed for a more spiritual context for my sexuality. I had subscribed to Zoë’s free emails “Daily Notes from Your Pussy” which delivers wisdom daily to your inbox in the voice of your vagina. So I was excited to attend her workshop. I became eager for the session to begin.

Changing Conversation. Cultivating Consciousness

Zoë Kors is a sex and intimacy coach. She is on a mission to revolutionize the way we think about, talk about, and experience sexuality. She delivers her work through online programs, private coaching, personal and couples intensives and retreats, and at Bhakti Fest workshops both co-ed and for women only.

A sought-after “sexpert,” she is widely published and is currently consulting and creating content for Coral, a new sexuality app. Zoë is also a featured sex expert on Residence11.com, a new website focusing on sex and lifestyle.

In the space of Sacred Sexuality, Zoë’s voice is unique. A native New Yorker, she maintains a no-nonsense edge, while throwing down deeply spiritual ideas about sexuality that lean into her extensive training and initiation in her tantra lineage. She’s part intellectual, part hippie. The result is a unique style of applied mysticism.

Sexuality Nourishes the Soul

In the workshop for women I attended, she described women’s sexuality as something that exists for ourselves—separate from partners—as a means of nourishing our souls. She spoke of the need for having a practiced method of connecting to our essential sensual nature through sensation and pleasure, and taught that it’s through the formlessness of arousal that the sacred feminine rises.

She says, “So much of my work is giving women permission to express themselves from a place of deep and wild truth. In order to do that we have to unravel the trauma of being raised a woman in a culture that devalues the very energy we were born to embody.”

Zoë goes on, “We are the great manifestors, we create life. And we do so by leveraging our capacity to channel creative life force energy. Shakti is expansive, chaotic, non-linear, unpredictable. This kind of energy scares the daylights out of the patriarchy. Our superpower is the very thing that we are told make us simultaneously “not enough” and “too much.”

Licking Honey from the Razor’s Edge

It’s the juxtaposition of our sacred and human selves that Zoë’s work addresses so beautifully.
Life in general, and sex specifically, can be experienced from two different perspectives at the same time. We can relate person-to-person, and also soul-to-soul.

Zoë’s own varied life experiences have brought her to where she is now. Her original Zen seeds were planted by Alan Watts as she lay in bed late at night listening to his dharma talks on the radio. Watts called himself a Zennist and offered Buddhism as an alternative to psychotherapy.

A few years later while studying Art History at University of Pennsylvania, she leaned heavily on those teachings when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. As Zoë’ says, “There is something inherently spiritual about having (and surviving) cancer at the age of 20. It was a very powerful lesson in non-attachment. The inevitability of death is a beautiful teacher.”

Her interest in Zen expanded to other spiritual disciplines. These days, Zoë is back to her Zen beginnings as a member of Prajna Heart Zen Center in the DTLA Arts District.

Yoga is something she began practicing  in a tiny studio above a used bookstore, long before it became the industry it is today. Many years later it was through her yoga practice that she discovered Kirtan (call-and-response devotional chanting) and finally Tantra through an immersion with the late Psalm Isadora, which permanently transformed her life.

“There is a lot I could say about Psalm,” Zoë reflects. “For me, she completely shredded the veil of illusion and exposed me to a world, a reality, a paradigm that was so profoundly real, it replaced my entire idea of what my life was all about. She was brilliant and mesmerizing and magical and infuriating—in all the best ways. It was through working with Psalm that I learned life is like licking honey from the razor’s edge, tasting the sweetness as it cuts you.”

Photo of Zoë Kors by Emily Sandifer

Radical Intimacy

It is not surprising that Zoë’s work with women has led her to coaching couples. In fact, couples currently make up 50% of her client roster. She will tell you that her passion for relational work is a direct reflection of the arrival of her soon-to-be husband, Andrew Thomas Roth, a Zen practitioner and coach in his own right who co-facilitates her couples programs and workshops.

Zoë’s couples work has inspired her own model which she calls “Radical Intimacy.” She has a couples program, workshop, and a forthcoming book under that name. Her methodology includes the balanced and skillful weaving of the three kinds of intimacy (physical, emotional, and what she calls energetic) with the three levels of intimacy (self, other, and the universe).

“One of the questions I am asked most often by women — as well as men – is, ‘How do we have a more deeply connected, intimate experience inside and outside the bedroom?’ ” Zoë says. “There is a simple truth about relationship. We can meet each other only to the extent that we can meet ourselves. If you want to feel more connected, you must be more connected to yourself. A necessary component of relational work is individual work. I often say that relationship is the bootcamp of self-realization. Fortunately, I’ve got some hacks to make it more pleasurable!”

At the end of the workshop, we became a tribe of women, seeing each other for our heartache and beauty. Tears and smiles were abundant as we hugged one another, sharing an intimate moment in time with our hearts open. How does one go back into the world with a heart wide open? By leaning into our collective womanhood, by allowing our innate, wild, feeling-nature, and by tending the flame within. Walking away, I realized this is the sisterhood that will break the patriarchy.

More Radical Intimacy

To learn more about Zoë Kors, visit zoekors.com. Follow her on Instagram @zoekors.

Zoë Kors at Bhakti Fest

Zoë Kors will be leading workshops at Bhakti Fest at 29 Palms in September. For more information, check out the schedule at: bhaktifest.com.

Shelley Karpaty

Shelley Karpaty is a yogi living in the Bay Area where she brings her spirit into writing, recruiting and career coaching. Medium: medium.com/@skarpaty and Instagram @shelleykarpaty

www.medium.com/@skarpaty 

The post Radical Intimacy, Sex, and Consciousness with Zoë Kors appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Harmony Begins in Our Consciousness

Human beings are familial beings; we treasure the company of loved ones. It is proven that harmonious family relationships promote mental, emotional, and physical well-being. In new relationships, care, compassion, and respect flow effortlessly. New relationships seem perfect and it’s easy to envision them remaining that way forever. However, after some time, the novelty wears off and things change, because we not only see the gifts of the relationship but the challenges as well. Initially we may deny inner and outer relationship issues, to ourselves and others. Or we may try to cover them up with pleasing words and actions. But gradually, left unresolved, it becomes difficult to sustain the same level of love and respect for the other person. So what are we to do when we want to consciously create harmonious relationships?

Our experience of conflict in relationships begins in our consciousness. So the healing and the creation of harmonious relationships also has to begin there. If we try to resolve it in words but hold bitter thoughts in our minds, the conflict grows. The strength of a relationship is determined by what we think about each other, not how we speak or behave. Our behavior can outwardly be fine, but our thoughts radiate to that person as vibrations. So, it is only a matter of time before we receive similar vibes back and it triggers conflict. Here are five simple steps to re-create harmony in strained relationships and consciously create harmonious relationships.

1. Take Responsibility to Cultivate Harmonious Relationships

The negative energy and emotions during and after a conflict can block us from realizing our contribution to it. Our ‘Response’ was our contribution. Even if the other person harmed, betrayed, belittled, disrespected, or ignored us…that was their part. Our response of anger, hurt, and resentment was our choice and creation. When we stop blaming the other person and look at our role in creating the conflict, healing begins.

2. Practice The Law of Reciprocity

The conflict began due to our perception about the other person. We created negative thoughts, felt negative feelings, developed a negative attitude, behaved negatively, and then transmitted negative energy. Hence, the energy radiated returned back to us, full circle. When our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors turn positive, the reciprocating positive energy heals us too.

3. Turn Expectations into Acceptance

Acceptance means understanding the other person’s nature and not getting disturbed by it. When I accept someone and stop expecting them to be or act some other way, it limits my internal noise and questions. When my mind is stable, I can respond proactively. I will then be able to choose the right response by remaining assertive, loving, and powerful.

4. The Art of Letting Go is Essential

Only one of us needs to dissolve our contribution to the conflict for healing to begin. Letting go means that I am not in resistance but open to solutions and I do not hold on to something any longer than necessary. Once we have resolved the conflict, in order to move forward, we need to let go of it in our consciousness. Thus the saying, “Forgive and forget.”

5. Keeping Faith for Harmonious Relationships

Have faith that it will not repeat. Any insecurity and fear about their future behavior can create an emotional barrier. If our efforts do not resolve the conflict, let us keep the faith and continue to radiate love and healing to them. Keeping faith in the other person and myself—no matter what—can only help the situation. Paying more attention to what we think and feel about them, and not what they think about us, helps us to move forward faster.

Create Shifts for Harmonious Relationships

When we shift from expectation to acceptance we can forge stronger relationships. Moving beyond the labels of our roles and responsibilities can help us become embodiments of the primary virtues of love, peace, power, wisdom, and joy. When we experience these emotions from within, we do not expect them from our relationships. Instead we connect with people (and nature) with the intention to give, give, and give happiness…thus receiving it in return. Our inner awakening can positively influence our relationships.

Attend the Awakening West Coast Tour

Join the Brahma Kumaris of Southern California for the Awakening West Coast Tour with BK Sister Shivani. These few hours of valuable time may inspire us to be the unifying force for change through deepening our awareness of how to create more harmony in relationships. For details on other Awakening events visit us at awakening.brahmakumaris.us. For FREE tickets, visit: bklosangeles.org.

BK Sister Shivani will be at the Bren Events Center at UCI, 100 Mesa Rd, Irvine, on Friday, June 8, from 6:30-9pm. For free tickets visit: awakening.brahmakumaris.us.
BK Sister Shivani will be at the Dolby Theatre, 6801 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, on Saturday, June 9. There will be a morning program in Hindi 11am-2pm and an evening program in English 6pm-9pm. For free tickets, visit: bklosangeles.org/-register-sister-shivani-event.

BK Sister Shivani

BK Sister Shivani has been a Raja Yoga Meditation practitioner with the Brahma Kumaris for over 20 years. Her ability to analyze deep-rooted emotions like ego, stress, anger and fear, empowers people to take personal responsibility for their thoughts and in their practical lives, especially in connection with relationships. Sister Shivani has been sharing spiritual concepts worldwide on the TV program ‘Awakening With Brahma Kumaris,’ for over 10 years and has more than 35 million viewers. She was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador by the World Psychiatric Association. By profession, Sister Shivani is an engineer.

www.awakening.brahmakumaris.us

The post 5 Easy Steps to Harmonious Relationships appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Moms Date Too

Dating is different when you have a child, and so are you—your priorities, schedule, needs, and your body. Your fantasy of forever has been busted open. You are on your own again, with a little one at your side. Speaking from experience, here are some single mom dating tips–along with questions to ask yourself and a few affirmations to repeat to know you are ready.

When it comes to dating, recognize that you have baggage. That’s not a bad thing! It simply is. If you gave birth to your child, your body has changed. You may have stretch marks, a bikini-line scar marking your child’s entrance, or you’re carrying weight differently. Those early hours that you used to spend at the gym, have been replaced by morning nursing, early school drop off, or attempting to squeeze in some much needed me-time (or sleep).

And while, yes, you’re a mom, you’re actually MORE than that! You’re a woman! You feel the pangs for companionship, the desire to be desired, and the craving to be touched by someone who isn’t your child. But more than that, you don’t want to feel alone anymore and you want a partner in all of this—someone to share this life with, the ups and downs, and the daily new experiences.

Parenting is one of the most deliciously fulfilling experiences of your life. But it isn’t the only thing happening in your life. If you’re ready to make your love life a priority again, it’s time and you deserve to be loved and cherished without excuses.

You deserve to feel like a woman again. It’s time to put some effort into your love life so that you can find love again.

Some single parents re-enter the dating pool may be afraid, ashamed, feel they are not good enough; others may be angry, jaded, insecure; and yet others are possibly even excited!

Regardless of the array of confused emotions, many single parents share some of the following same questions:

How do I know when I’m ready to date again?
What type of person should I look for?
How do I redefine myself and what I’m looking for in the future?
When and How do I have the “I’m a parent” conversation?
How do I reconcile my guilt for leaving my child, who I love, to meet some “random” person who I don’t know, for a first date?
How do I make myself the priority and rediscover myself without being a delinquent parent?
What do I do? What do I say? How do I not sabotage it by doing/saying the wrong thing online, in text, email, phone, or in person?

Before you dive headfirst into the dating pool, you need to be honest with yourself.

Are you ready? You are once you  can confidently say these seven statements:

1. I accept and own my single mom status!

This may not be your fairytale. You might not have wanted to be a single mom. But you are, and you have come to terms with it, accept it, and be ok with it. You’re not proud, and you’re also not jaded. You are able to be confidently vulnerable about the reality. This is your fairytale truth.

2. I am comfortable being alone.

You don’t feel like you “should” be out doing things, aren’t ashamed of going to bed at 8pm because you are seriously exhausted, and you don’t feel the need to be attached to your phone so cyber friends can keep you company.

However, you don’t want to get too comfortable being alone and lose the urge to date again. You won’t let yourself get into the mindset of, “I have my child, career, and social network, so why go through the motions just to fall for someone who needs my energy, time, and in the end may break my heart?”

3. You can not complete me, because I’m already whole.

This is something that I call “sticky.” You are a complete, interesting, magnetic, intriguing, alluring, memorable person and you leave others wanting MORE! You are Perfectly Imperfect, and Real…because that’s what makes you Love-able.

4. “I know that being a mom makes me MORE desirable, not less.”

You have a child and that’s a great thing, not a pain point! You are now instilled with traits that are essential for mommy’ing, and are also surprisingly desirable characteristics as a partner. You are strong, know what you want and need, aren’t playing games, are a nurturer and caregiver, know how to have fun, are organized, you know how to give to others, and you know how to truly love.

5. “YES! I am a mom, and I am a WOMAN first.”

Yes you are a mom. And you’re also a woman. Don’t forget that. What do you need to do to feel like it? Start taking care of and putting effort into yourself again. Take a bubble bath (with candles in the corners), go to the gym and feel sexy as you sweat, buy yourself a new lacy bra, just do something that makes you feel like a hot woman (in addition to a hot mama). Nurture yourself! Buy yourself a present! BE the priority. Show yourself love.

6. “I have Integrity! My Feelings, match my Words, match my Actions.”

Having integrity is more difficult than you may realize. In fact, most of us think we do, without realizing that there is a disconnect between feelings and words, or even before feelings—because we don’t take the time to check in with ourselves to be clear on what we are truly feeling and what we need.

Not sure if you do or not? Next time you have a decision to make or an opportunity to contribute your opinion, stop for a second and think about what you want to say. Strip off your feelings of insecurity, shame, anger, “shoulds,” past pain, or the need to prove yourself, and allow yourself to come from a place of confident vulnerability. Be honest with yourself first—that’s your “feeling.” Now make sure to voice, and them act on those feelings—confidently with vulnerability, and without apology.

7. “I will BE It, so that I can BECOME It!”

As much as the idea of “Dream it and you will Become it” is beautiful, there is a lot more to it than wishing and hoping your dreams to reality. There are steps and actions that must be taken in order to actualize them. So, from now on, you will no longer sit back and wait for your dreams to come true. If you are really ready to make them come true, start being them, acting them, living them! Be sure that your attitude, actions, and associations align with all that you want to Become, and soon you will, in fact, BE it.

Laurel House

Laurel House is a Santa Monica-born, bred, and based dating and relationship coach, helping to empower her clients to be their best selves so that they can find the love the deserve. She has a no-games, rule-screwing approach, teaching her clients exactly what to say and do, how to present themselves online and in-person, and the specific strategy to find love- hard, deep, and fast, just like she and so many of her clients have. Laurel believes that dating is about clarity through communication, and with clarity comes confidence. Laurel is called a “Man Whisperer,” Dating Jedi Master, Relationship Fairy, and Cyrano. More than anything else, Laurel demystifies dating so that you can confidently date with integrity and purpose.

www.LaurelHouse.com

The post Single Mom Dating Tips appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Photo of Laurel House by Jenny Taylor Boudoir Photography

I’m a new mom. Which means I have a new body, new curves, and a new C-section scar. I’m also a single mom and a dating coach, so I am aware of the life/confidence-shifting realities when it comes to being a new mom vis-a-vis dating and romance. Entering the dating world with a new baby, new body, new identity, and new priorities, I was in need of becoming more comfortable with, and feeling sexy in, my new skin. As part of this process I decided to do a sexy boudoir photo shoot with one of the most reputable boudoir photographers in the country: Jenny Taylor Boudoir Photography.

Over the last two-and-a-half years, I am living in what has come to feel like a constantly evolving body — its size, sensations, and purpose — that has grown, stretched, lost sensation in some areas and gained sensation in others, filled out, became heavy, got tired, and ached. Then, after 11 hours of scary and painful laboring, including too many hands belonging to too many people I didn’t know exploring my insides, I had an emergency C-section that saved my baby but left me with a nasty scar. A few weeks later, someone told me that it was “so disgusting I can’t look at it,” leaving an emotional scar too.

After a year and a half of breastfeeding, my body is starting to feel like my own again. Thanks to running after my curious son, picking him up and carrying him for comfort, plus time to get back into my exercise routine, I feel fortunate that my body has returned to its pre-baby size. I have even grown to appreciate my C-section scar as my son’s entrance into the world. But, with the memory so much pain, both physical and emotional, I was still struggling to see the beauty of my body.

In order to do that, I needed to experience myself in a non-mommy way. I needed to feel and see my curves as sensual again. I needed to pull out my lingerie, hoping it would fit, and develop the confidence to slip it back on and face the mirror.

I’ll admit it… for research I scroll through galleries of photos of gorgeous women on sites like AskMen.com, flip through the pages of scantily clad women in Maxim, and peruse the seductively posed celebrities in GQ and Esquire. When I do this, my eyes roll over their curves and my mind reaces; how can you not get just a little turned on by peeking at such a sexy scene? It’s more than looking at their bodies; I’m imagining myself in those positions, wearing those clothes, and feeling that beautiful. I want to look that sexy. But more than that, I want to feel that sexy. Of course, then that critical voice in my head spits out venomous comments like, “Your thighs are too fat,” “Your face is too round,” “Your butt is too wide,” “You could never look like them.“

I’m not alone. As a dating coach who makes frequent TV appearances, I hear from thousands of women who reveal their own body insecurities. In fact, some of the women who seem most “perfect,” the women you gawk at and wish you could look like, are often the ones who put the most pressure on themselves to embody perfection, and fixate on the most seemingly minute and practically unnoticeable flaws. We tear ourselves apart, cut ourselves down, and destroy our self-confidence and self-worth in the process. This behavior has got to stop.

As a coach, I lead by example and put my many mistakes on display. It became time to prove to myself that I could be as sexy as the girls in those magazines. Okay, maybe not quite that sexy. But, at least I wanted to feel desirable. I decided to strip down.

The moment I walked into the studio, I felt like a supermodel. They seated me on a makeup chair in a room with inspiring boudoir photos of other everyday women hanging on the walls, each of whom oozed confidence and beauty. My nerves began to untangle.

My makeover began: my skin tone was evened out, tired under-eyes enlivened, false eyelashes affixed, and my hair bolstered with curls and hairspray. Feeling sexier by the second, I walked through the photography studio with multiple sets, including bedrooms and living rooms. Jenny came in, and we discussed my purpose for taking the photos: I explained I wanted to look and, more than that, feel sexy again.

Photo of Laurel House by Jenny Taylor Boudoir Photography

I was clearly in the right place and from the beginning of the process I felt safe—and I felt like I fit in with the rest of the everyday women who are photographed in this studio. Jenny Taylor’s clients range from women in a variety of professions who want to try out the lingerie variety of feminine, brides-to-be who are giving photos to their fiancé to amp up the pre-aisle walk excitement, women who want to celebrate weight loss, to single ladies ready for a confidence injection before going back out into the dating scene.

We decided on four outfits: sweet, sexy, hot, and naughty. I loved feeling my body move as the photographer offered tips to enhance my curves. I felt liberated, energized, and gorgeous. And it was so much fun!

A week later, when I saw the photos during the big reveal, I was shocked that I could look so good. I allowed myself to see my body through someone else’s eyes—my photographer’s. Within that fresh view I saw, and felt, beautiful; this is an attitude that I can wear as an accessory in any outfit or state of dress or undress.

A boudoir photo shoot can be a confidence-boosting, self-loving gift for yourself. If you’re in a relationship, it can a gift you can give your partner. Look good/feel good. Feel good/look good.

In the end, my boudoir shoot allowed me to not just see beauty (though in the photos I definitely did), but to simultaneously feel vulnerable and confident—which made me truly feel sexy. Within that space, on those sheets, in that outfit, with my hair and makeup done—my true radiance was revealed—and it had more to do with how I felt on the inside than anything else.

Safety Tips Before You Book A Boudoir Shoot:

Don’t just let any random person take sexy pics of you.
You don’t want your sexy pics to get into the wrong hands.
You must trust the person/company who is shooting the pics.
You must feel and actually BE safe. You are opening yourself up to be very vulnerable. Some people could try to take advantage of that, and of you.
If you are having an individual (as opposed to an established company) take the pics, you can have them take the photos in YOUR camera only, so that you have complete control of the images after the shoot. If you choose to hire a company, do your research first. Don’t be embarrassed or feel like you are inconveniencing them by calling and asking more questions.

Laurel House

Laurel House is a Santa Monica-born, bred, and based dating and relationship coach, helping to empower her clients to be their best selves so that they can find the love the deserve. She has a no-games, rule-screwing approach, teaching her clients exactly what to say and do, how to present themselves online and in-person, and the specific strategy to find love- hard, deep, and fast, just like she and so many of her clients have. Laurel believes that dating is about clarity through communication, and with clarity comes confidence. Laurel is called a “Man Whisperer,” Dating Jedi Master, Relationship Fairy, and Cyrano. More than anything else, Laurel demystifies dating so that you can confidently date with integrity and purpose.

www.LaurelHouse.com

The post A Camera Captures Confidence–The Sexy Secrets of a Boudoir Photo Shoot appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

She now sees that she was too trusting and open with the shamans, and within the first three months of her visit to the Peruvian jungle, Soukalova had “some highly questionable and sexually inappropriate incidents” with one of them. She realized that “the shamans were not enlightened beings but normal men—some abusing their powers as healers.” This, of course, played perfectly into the very wounds Souklava was trying to heal.

Zuzanna Buchwald in the sweltering jungle heat by a secluded tambo (solo hut) at Nihue Rao. Photo by Tracey Eller.

Souklava was fortunate. She was able to leave the unethical shaman and find ethical female shamans who brought a warmer, more nurturing energy to ayahuasca ceremonies. She found profound healing and is now sharing her healing story with people from around the world at Temple of the Way of Light, a women-centered ayahuasca healing center in the Peruvian Amazon. She’s also speaking out about her experience with the predatory shaman in hopes of helping women distinguish between highly trained, experienced, ethical and loving shamans and poorly trained or imitation shamans, as well as how to recognize any shaman who wants power, money, control, fame, or sex. As ayahuasca becomes a global phenomenon, fame and fortune can corrupt even highly trained, experienced shamans.

Nihue Rao’s traditional ayahuasca is small-batch artisan-crafted on site. Photo by Tracey Eller.

Altered States + Consent

Ayahuasca is a powerful hallucinogenic blend of at least two plants native to the great Amazon, the ayahuasca or caapi vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and the leaf of chakruna (Psychotria viridis). Additional Amazonian medicinal plants are sometimes added but these two plants must be present for the medicine to work: the caapi vine, which contains a group of MAO-inhibiting (monoamine oxidase) compounds called beta carbonline alkaloids, and at least one DMT-containing companion plant such as chakruna. Drinking ayahuasca puts people into a vulnerable altered state where, in a safe set and setting, they can make powerful personal discoveries. As with other powerful “sacred plant” medicine traditions, the Vine of the Soul has emerged from its native Amazonia and is now practiced around the world.

Sex with a shaman while under this influence, or even within a certain time range of having partaken of that brew and ceremony, can never be consensual. Sitaramaya, a Los Angeles-based plantswoman and Shipibo-trained shamanic practitioner, agrees. “When you’re working with a shaman, there’s no consent because you’re under the influence of a psychoactive potion and the enchantment of the shaman,” she says.

There’s no shortage of authentic male Amazonian shamans with strong codes of ethics. Sadly, however, there are also far too many who are masters at seduction and coercion. The abuses they carry out range from fondling or groping people during ceremonies, to inappropriate romantic relationships, to rape. Women, men, and transgender people can all be dramatically affected by the experience.

Writer and speaker Lily Kay Ross, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, has spoken out about her experience at the hands of a prominent ayahuasca shaman in Ecuador because she wants people to know what could happen if they unwittingly put themselves into the hands of a sexual predator. Ross says she was drugged with a brew heavily dosed with toè (Brugmansia), a plant rich in psychoactive tropane alkaloids, and then sexually assaulted for several weeks. “Consent hinges on the ability to give consent,” she says. “There are a number of things that can impede that, though perhaps none so obviously as mind-altering substances.”

Toè is a dangerously powerful psychedelic that can dramatically increase suggestibility. “The tropane alkaloids in toé are very potent, fast-acting, extremely poisonous, and powerfully hypnotic,” says ethnobotanist and medicine hunter Chris Kilham, author of The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook (and my husband). “They work directly on the central nervous system. Too much toe’ can kill you. As a date-rape drug, it would be like being in a nightmarish funhouse.”

Toè is a Master Plant that has been used in South American Andean and Amazonian shamanic practice for centuries and is part of the tradition. The term “Master Plant” refers to “teaching plants” with powerful healing properties. “Like many medicines, this plant shows great value,” Kilham says, “But it must be handled with extraordinary care.” A small amount of toè may be fine under the guidance of an ethical master shaman such as Don Alberto Torres Davila of Blue Morpho, who understands that a little toe goes a (very) long way. Considered to be one of the most powerful healers in the Ucayali River region, Alberto mindfully oversees the creation of each artisan batch of ayahuasca—with exquisite results. I cherish the healing visions that I experienced in his care.

Ayahuasca is an intense experience. Everything that happens while you are “in the medicine” takes on greater significance. Ross says being in a state of openness and receptivity to suggestion, stimulus, and sensation when she was sexually assaulted deepened the wound.

Cosmic Sister Plant Spirit Grant recipient Julia Moore at Nihue Rao’s Medicine House. Photo by Tracey Eller.

Setting Sex Aside

Since 1971, Kilham has taught yoga to thousands of people across the world, and he recognizes that people are vulnerable to spiritual advisors of all types. “Spirituality is our core essence,” he says. “The multi-layered aspects of vulnerability make that a circumstance in which you should not have any overlay of sexual engagement. In this situation, it’s fundamentally unwise and potentially injurious to engage sexually. To avoid any possibility of that, you just eliminate sex from the equation entirely. In doing so, you make the spiritual engagement safer.”

A key part of the experience at ayahuasca retreats is participating in la dieta, which calls for abstaining from ingesting alcohol, caffeine, and certain foods such as salt and sugar and from engaging in any sexual activity for a certain period before, during and after ceremony (including the full time at the retreat). In the medicine space, people often seek help with relationship and sexual issues, and engaging in sex can damage or distract from the healing process.

Avoiding sex during la dieta is purifying and prevents your energy from getting tangled up with someone else’s while you’re sorting through your own body, mind, spirit and heart during ceremony, says Dr. Joe Tafur, a medical doctor, shaman, and co-founder of Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual. He warns that having sex while taking ayahuasca affects the visions, interferes with the medicine, and could have lasting repercussions. “You might end up having to work through some other kind of healing process. So then, you just wasted a healing opportunity and created the need for another one.”

Some people experience ayahuasca as an aphrodisiac—and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as they don’t act on it while at the retreat center. “Increased libido and more chi flow in your body is considered a sign of health,” Tafur says. “But like in many other spiritual traditions, the idea here is that you can let that energy flow through you and build and raise up your chakras—and then at the appropriate time it will be there for you.”

Abstaining from sex in this case is simply part of the ground rules and must be respected, Kilham says. “We have so many opportunities in life to engage in sexual activity. If the impulse is genuine I-have-met-my-soul-mate material, then it can wait.”

Ayahuasca maloka in the moonlight. Photo by Tracey Eller.

Shaman as Predator

Ayahuasca delivers transformative effects, and many people have found the experience profoundly healing. As is the case with many spiritual or transformational experiences, it’s all too easy to confuse the profound healing la medicina delivers with the shaman who helped deliver it. As a result, people may open up and trust someone who might not have their best interests at heart, leading to devastating feelings of betrayal and confusion, and even post-traumatic stress disorder.

Soukalova speaks of witnessing beautiful young women who gave away their power to men they wouldn’t have had the time of day for outside the retreat center. The sinister shamans convinced the vulnerable, susceptible young women that they were special, “the chosen one,” she says.

But predators don’t always look or feel like creepy guys in the movies. On the contrary—they’re often charming and charismatic. “Seduction in this context is part of a larger predatory repertoire, one of many tools along with manipulation, promises of spiritual, emotional, even physical healing, and the administration of substances known to elicit strong feelings of sexual desire,” says Ross. “It’s a weighty tool belt these shamans are carrying.”

When an unethical shaman recognizes behaviors that identify an individual as vulnerable, she or he becomes prey. “They use their energy—like vampires—then drop them when they are no longer useful,” says Los Angeles-based integrative psychiatrist Dr. Hyla Cass. “This was a real problem in the early years of gurus and yoga—it was all pandemonium with no boundaries, and women were being screwed left and right, literally. These guys would come over from India and get all this attention and had no idea what to do with it except to exploit it, and they left a lot of damage in their wake. There is no difference now with abusive shamans.”

This is still going on in the yoga community, with several notable rape and sexual harassments lawsuit stories currently in the news. In the United States we have laws in place to protect and defend victims of sexual harassment when it comes to doctors, teachers, bosses and so forth, but there are no comparable laws to discourage perpetrators in a mostly underground shamanic scene. What we’re looking at here is a rapidly-expanding community of truth-seekers being called to explore a profound mind-body-spirit wellness experience, converging with a motley menagerie of fools, woo-woo wannabes, or predators who have no business leading ceremonies seeking vulnerable prey.

Candlelight in the maloka (ayahuasca ceremonial space). Photo by Tracey Eller.

Boundaries Are Crucial

Attraction to charismatic leaders in positions of power is part of being human—it is not “wrong.” It’s far too easy, however, for vulnerable women with histories of sexual abuse to confuse this “strong energy connection” with love, says Cass. If a shaman attempts to seduce you, it doesn’t make you special. It makes you a target. Shamans who demand sex, additional money, agency or connections, Sitamaraya adds, “are not doing their job.”

A history of sexual abuse “often leads to blurred boundaries,” which makes people more vulnerable to predators, says Tafur. Sexual advances from a shaman can be especially confusing, which is why strict rules are in place about sex between licensed therapists and patients, teachers and students, bosses and employees, et cetera. It is why there are codes of ethics in the yoga community about sex in professional settings. “It comes with the territory,” Cass says. “It may look like consenting adults but on an unconscious level in those kinds of relationships, there is another script going on that’s exploitative. It is not love; it is not a relationship of equals.”

Seduction takes two. Kilham says people have an obligation to find another shaman if they suspect they’re being preyed upon. “Your own sense of your self-preservation should kick-in and lead you elsewhere,” he says. Ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, author of Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, agrees. “There’s a certain responsibility on both sides,” he says. “Trying to seduce the shaman is also inappropriate and unhealthy.”

DreamGlade’s Shaman Estella smokes mapacho, a potent Amazonian tobacco, considered to be a sacred plant and master teacher, and used in protective “soplars”. Photo by Tracey Eller

Women-Led Ceremonies

Souklava believes the women-led ceremonies at Temple of the Way of Light provide an extra layer of safety and comfort for women—particularly those who have sexual issues to heal. Annie Oak, co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress, concurs. “Participants of all genders tell us that they welcome working with a woman ceremonial leader,” she says. Carlos Tanner, founder of Ayahuasca Foundation, has found that as well. “Some people’s issues are deeply rooted in gender, and for those people, it seems like being in a place they feel safe is really important and really helpful,” he says.

Stacy Stephen Povey, founder of the Peruvian Amazon ayahuasca retreat center Dreamglade, has heard many reports of male shamans abusing female guests and spoken personally with several women about their traumatic experiences, leading him to hire Shipibo Maestra Estella Pangosa Sinacay, a female shaman. “I really like having a feminine energy in the ceremonies here, and I even designed the maloka (ceremonial hut) with that in mind. With Estella at the helm, our ceremonies have a warm maternal vibe.”

Cosmic Sister Plant Spirit Grant recipient Julia Moore, a recent sustainable food systems graduate and organic flower farmer, enjoying a refreshing ritual shamanic “flower bath” at Nihue Rao before ceremony. Photo by Tracey Eller

THE REWARDS ARE WORTH THE RISK

Ayahuasca can be an extraordinary, life-changing experience. If ayahuasca is right for you, you should have safe access to the adventure. My intention is to empower through information, advice and warnings so women can enter the ayahuasca space with a better understanding of sexual ethics and what is expected of them, the shaman, and other individuals in the surrounding community.

Understand cultural divides. Amazonian and Western cultures have different attitudes toward boundaries, sex and women. Soukalova describes Amazonian culture as “very macho, often chauvinist” and warns travelers to “take responsibility for the signals you send out. Be extremely cautious about offering friendly affection towards male healers (hugging or kissing).”

Do your homework. Research. Ask questions. Investigate. It’s a mistake to show up in Iquitos (or anywhere) and start looking for a shaman or the least expensive retreat available. Reputable ayahuasca healing centers carefully select highly trained, experienced, ethical healers and work hard to ensure a protected space. They book out months in advance. “Network to find out which are the good places and which are the bad ones,” McKenna advises. “You need to know what you’re getting into.”

Pay attention to the shaman. Walk away from shamans who claim to have special powers, thrive on authority and praise, or boast about their ancestry, lineage or power. “Authentic shamans tend to be very humble, quiet, and unassuming,” Soukalova says.

Pay attention to the brew. Always ask what ingredients are used to make the ayahuasca brew. Use extreme caution when drinking ayahuasca that has been made using toè (Brugmansia), a powerful psychedelic that can dramatically increase suggestibility. “Toé is not necessary for you to have a full and powerful ayahuasca experience,” Kilham says.

Focus on your intention. The medicine works better when you set an intention. Ayahuasca can be an intense, wild ride that can bring healing, inspiration, clarity, and revelation. Intentions help keep you safe, can help guide your journey, and serve as a centering mantra within the chaos. “It’s always about the intention,” Sitamaraya says.

Prepare yourself. Try not to take old, unhealthy patterns with you into ceremony. “Do your inner work about your sexual and intimacy issues, or they will pop up in in the Amazon, and acting them out there is not advised,” Cass says. If you feel that you are vulnerable to sexually based self-destructive behaviors, ask someone you trust for help.

Respect the agreement. The basic dieta includes abstaining from any form of sexual activity. That’s the agreement. Respect yourself and others by sticking to it. “First is to respect the diet and the healing process,” says Tafur. “Wait till your diet is closed.” When in doubt, wait until you are deep in the medicine and ask the ayahuasca, “What is this really about?” You will likely receive a jewel of wisdom.

Stick together. Find a buddy while you’re traveling and at the retreat center and keep an eye out for each other. Discuss in advance what one person should do if the other appears to be in danger of being targeted or is showing signs of self-destructive behavior. “Let each other know what types of issues should be red flags and promise each other to speak honestly and frankly about what you’re seeing if you think that something is off,” Sitaramaya advises.

Protect your space. While at the retreat, protect yourself and your personal space. Trust your intuition. If something doesn’t feel safe—walk away. If anyone encourages unhealthy choices (such as sex with the shaman), you are in a dangerous place. “Your best recourse is to remove yourself from the situation as soon as possible,” says Ross.

Allow time to integrate. Post-ayahuasca integration is a vital phase of the process. Turn down sexual or romantic advances from any person during your time at the retreat and preferably for at least a week afterward, if not longer. Allowing ample time to integrate your ayahuasca experience and the brew to be fully out of your system is the smart thing to do. “Take special care of your physical and mental state,” advises Oak.

Zoe Helene

ZOE HELENE is a cultural activist who is unyielding in her fight for the rights of women, wilderness, wildlife, and sacred plants. She is the founder of Cosmic Sister, an eco-feminist educational advocacy group championing women’s healing, self-liberation, and empowerment through legal work with nature’s most profound medicines, including cannabis, ayahuasca, peyote, and psilocybin. (@CosmicSister)

zoehelene.com

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It can seem to be a surprising statistic at first. From now until the two weeks before Christmas, breakups are steadily climbing to the number one spot of the most popular time of year to end the relationship. That number instantly drops on Christmas Day, which is the least popular day of the year for a breakup. It spikes again in March: Spring cleaning!

Why all of the holiday heartbreak?

The holiday season is all about love and family, office parties, overindulging, overspending, stress, and cold weather. All of which can lead to cold feet. Let me break it down for you: there is a connection between the holiday intensity and its cause for heartbreak.

Love and Family

During the holidays you want to be around people you truly love; you don’t want to be involved with someone who you are not so sure about, who you know doesn’t have everlasting potential, or with whom your love has fizzled. You also don’t want to introduce your not-so-serious other half to family members. The more you focus on being with your loved ones, the clearer it becomes that your lover isn’t one of them.

Office Parties

Sure, a friend’s party would be much more fun. Even a quiet night at home with a glass of wine and some TV would be a welcome break from hectic holiday festivities. But, your significant other’s office party is tonight and, whether you like it or not, you’re going to go…and like it (or at least act like it). This is important, and it’s an expression of your dedication to the relationship. But, you may feel uncomfortable or resentful.

Overindulging

You’re eating too much, drinking too much, and your nerves are on high alert. As much fun as the excess can be, it can also lead to blowout fights that quickly escalate to the biter end.

Overspending

Like Valentine’s Day, there is the expectation of a gift exchange. And when you’re on the fence about whether this relationship is going to last through the end of the season, you may opt to end it instead. A lot of it is the un-experienced glee of gift giving! Giving is, yes, oftentimes as great as receiving. Picking out that perfect present that you just know your partner will love leaves you almost giddy! But when the last thing that you want to do is think of something clever, special, or even decent for your partner, you know there is a problem. But it’s not just about the giving. If we know that we are likely going to end it soon, we don’t want them to spend money on us! Yes, many of us are truly that selfless.

Stress

Your partner is supposed to be your shoulder to cry on, your chest to decompress on, your ear to listen, and the sage advice to ease your stressed mind. But if your partner is actually the last person who you want to go to for reprieve and comfort, the holiday season will make that repulsion even more obvious.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

And if you have no interest in snuggling with your partner at night or stealing some romantic couple time by the fire or in a hot tub, you just might feel more iced over when you’re close to their body heat than when on your own.

So, should you end it or endure the holidays and wait for a “better time?” After all, flights are booked, the family already knows they are coming, and you are honestly looking forward to that ski trip that you planned. If you know that it’s over and that it’s just a matter of time until the inevitable conversation, then end it. Believe me, you don’t want to force togetherness, deal with the incessant triggers that will confront you, pretend to be happy and in love, wish you could be anywhere else with anyone else, and grate on each other’s nerves to the point of a near breakdown and maybe even a nasty in-the-moment breakup.

Breakups are never easy. Best advice: tell each other what you appreciate about each other, acknowledge the good in them–the reason you fell for them in the first place, thank them for what they have taught you, and authentically and lovingly express why you’re saying goodbye.

Tis the season! Now get ready for a New Year, and for the best you!

Laurel House is a dating coach and flirting expert, four-time published author and go-to lifestyle expert on E! News. Her YouTube videos that have received over 12 million views. Her fifth book, Screwing the (Dating) Rules: The No-Game Guide to Love will released in January, 2015, with Running Press. ScrewingTheRules.com

Laurel House

Laurel House is a Santa Monica-born, bred, and based dating and relationship coach, helping to empower her clients to be their best selves so that they can find the love the deserve. She has a no-games, rule-screwing approach, teaching her clients exactly what to say and do, how to present themselves online and in-person, and the specific strategy to find love- hard, deep, and fast, just like she and so many of her clients have. Laurel believes that dating is about clarity through communication, and with clarity comes confidence. Laurel is called a “Man Whisperer,” Dating Jedi Master, Relationship Fairy, and Cyrano. More than anything else, Laurel demystifies dating so that you can confidently date with integrity and purpose.

www.LaurelHouse.com

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Brian Chance

The post Colors Of Love appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt writes that he considered the Buddha to be the greatest psychologist of the last three thousand years, until Haidt’s research revealed something interesting: passionate engagement with what matters to us in life is key to finding resilience, meaning and fulfillment – not a life lived in dispassionate nonattachment. Haidt, an associate professor at the University of Virginia and a leading light in the positive psychology movement, says we know now that the strongest indicators for human happiness are meaningful intimate relationships with others, along with a sense of purpose in our work and feeling like part of a community. But he doesn’t discard the dharma completely. On the contrary, The Happiness Hypothesis asserts that meditation is one of the only methods validated by research for overcoming depression and positively retraining the brain.

This got me thinking about my own journey. As a diligent meditator and yogi in my twenties, I aspired to what I thought of as a Buddha-like freedom from attachments. The ideal for me was to become a still point of centered awareness: unmoved by life, not needing anyone or anything, free from worldly ambitions – and living, I now see, at a safe distance from my emotions. For me finding balance through my thirties meant seeing that my practice was in some ways perpetuating a kind of disconnection from feeling and living fully. There was also a way it was preventing me from loving deeply. It has taken time and effort to integrate an embrace of my body and heart into what was a very mental and somewhat escapist approach to spirituality, and to realize that it is in the rest of my life that the fruits of my time on the yoga mat and meditation cushion are truly revealed.

My journey into balance includes using both yoga practice and the Buddha’s vipassana meditation as a way to dive deeply into my body and mind. I have had to relearn how to work with the natural emotions, desires and needs that are part of this human experience. What was missing in my earlier practice was compassion and self-acceptance. I came to understand that this had deep psychological roots not only in myself, but also in the common spiritual desire to transcend our vulnerable and mortal humanity. This lack of intimacy with myself was reflected in my personal relationships. Practicing in this new way began to profoundly impact my ability to love and be loved.

In discussing the importance of love relationships, Haidt draws on the research of Harry Harlow and John Bowlby that became the foundation for something called attachment theory.

In Harlow and Bowlby’s defining experiment, baby monkeys were given the choice between a wire mommy doll with a milk-giving tube and one covered in soft cloth without a feeding tube. They would routinely choose the soft mommy, demonstrating their need for soothing physical contact over and above even the need for food. Haidt writes about how our early sense of love, safety and bonding with our care-givers shapes not only how we show up in our adult romantic relationships but also how we eventually relate to our own children. All of this has to do with how we form healthy attachments, and how at both the psychological and biological levels we need to love and be loved to be healthy. The research confirms that physical affection and compassionate relating literally balance our nervous and immune systems, build resilience in response to stress, allow our brains to grow in healthy ways and give us confidence and trust in others and the world around us.

Perhaps how we use the word “attachment” in a spiritual sense may need to be more carefully nuanced. Of course it is good to practice releasing our unhealthy attachments: the ways in which we become fixated and clingy in unconscious ways. But underneath some of the grasping which the Buddha warned about so eloquently may well be a deeper need for healthy attachment; the loving closeness and connections with others that are the bedrock of what it means to be human.

One of the things I love about practice-based spirituality is that it is a living tradition: an evolving, transforming inquiry into inner and outer reality. This subtle but powerful shift in how we think of attachment can be incorporated into how we interpret spiritual practice in a modern context. We can now validate that meditative practices retrain the brain in a myriad of powerful ways. These vary from gaining access to states of consciousness in which we feel a deep timeless union with the cosmos, to deepening our capacity for compassion and moral reasoning, to helping us resolve and heal painful memories and emotions, to literally “charging up” areas of the brain that express our capacity for positive emotion. These spiritual gifts can allow us to engage in our work lives in ways that generate creative flow, and a meaningful sense of purpose. The right balance of healthy attachment and being able to let go of compulsive clinging may also affect our interpersonal ability to bond and relate intimately with others. This can only increase our capacity for joyful, connected living.

Julian Walker

Julian Walker is a yoga and meditation teacher, bodyworker and ecstatic dance facilitator in LA. He is co-founder of the Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind yoga teacher training: ahemyogateachertraining.com.

www.ahemyogateachertraining.com

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Lately I have been painfully aware that every relationship in my life calls for careful tending, and I am always blowing it. Not a huge amount, usually, but enough to be painful. It seems like I am either giving too much or too little to each person. At the end of the day, I have these little sensations in my body, tiny aches, that say, “You spent too much time and energy on that connection and not enough on the other one.” Equally demanding is the challenge of listening to each person, seeing things through their eyes and not losing my own perspective.

The number of people I relate to in a day has doubled in the last year, so I am having to learn a new level of the game. Meditation, pranayama (breath techniques) and asana (posture) help a lot – they tune my attention to make better choices about where to put my love and attention. Each person, each project, is saying, “Show me some love.” When I get it just right, the feeling is exquisite.

I am surprised at how much Yoga it takes to keep me well-tuned. Two forty-five-minute sessions: one in the morning, and one in the evening, are needed. I was kind of hoping that by now, after forty years of practice, my groove would be permanent. That I would be, you know, enlightened. But no, I need all the tools of Yoga, and I need to work them daily.

This is Sutra 83 of The Radiance Sutras, a dharana on relationship:

Everyone knows, there is me
And then there are all these others.
This is common to all.

Lovers know, there is me,
And the source of this me
Is ever mysterious.

Each contact with another
Is a spark of the Divine.
Lovers move through this world
Awake to intimacy,
Each touch a revelation
Never to be repeated.

gr?hyagr?hakasa?vitti? s?m?ny? sarvadehin?m |
yogin?? tu vi?e?o ‘sti sambandhe
s?vadh?nat? ||

Looking in the Monier-Williams Sanskrit dictionary, we see some touchy-feely words, and some abstract ones: grahya – that which is grasped, seized, objects; grahaka – the grasper, the seizer, subject; samvittih – awareness, consciousness; samanya – common, in common; sarva dehinam – in everyone; yoginam – yogis, those who practice Yoga; visheshah – differentiation, distinction; asti – there is; sambandhe – with regards to relationships, connections, bonds; savadhanata – attentive, alert, mindful, heedful, careful.

If we wanted to make this verse sound really dry, we could say: “Object-subject consciousness is common to everyone. What is different about a yogi is attentiveness to this relationship.” That is the way my translation read for years, until I realized that this is a boring way to elucidate a very interesting topic.

The Sanskrit text uses dynamic physical terms – grahya and grahaka – that imply, “When we come into relationship, I am seizing you, grasping you, and you are grasping me.” The sutra seems to be saying: any relationship is a kind of embrace, whether we are physically touching or holding them in our heart. Yogis need to be aware at all times of the texture, the feeling tone of this touch. So be skillful, be alert to the magic of what you are creating.

Practicing Yoga, especially pranayama and meditation, heightens our awareness of the space between things. Currents of energy flow between the chakra (energy centers) in the body, and, startlingly, between our body and other bodies. Yoga amplifies the power of our attention, so that when we listen to someone, and look at them, there is more going on than we may otherwise be used to experiencing. A transmission of prana (life-force) is going back and forth. On the level of energy, it is as if we are touching them or holding them. In Tantra, the attitude is that this contact of “me” and “the others” is sacred and powerful for everyone involved.

We all have many relationships – friends, family, co-workers, teammates, lovers, dogs, cats, horses, the ocean. Each requires its own precise way of holding and has its own rules for what an embrace is. Each friend needs a different kind of greeting. Men need to be hugged differently than women. The hug you give a tearful child is very different from the hug you give your spouse. A hug held for a heartbeat too long can feel smothering. Turning away from an embrace too quickly can feel cold or dismissive. Great alertness is called for. Each bond, each connection, each relationship in our life requires the best we can bring, and each moment of contact is surprising. When I have noise in my head during meditation, I can always trace it back to some conversation that wants to be resolved or advanced to the next step. Once I get this, the mental chatter turns into a background hum, and then some version of OM, the song of life.

The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra describes 112 Yogas of wonder and delight for touching the divine in the midst of daily life. The teaching is a conversation between lovers, Shakti and Shiva, the Goddess Who is the Creative Power of the Universe, and the God who is the Consciousness That Permeates Everywhere.

Dr. Lorin Roche has been practicing and teaching these methods since 1968. He has a PhD from the University of California at Irvine, where his research focused on the language meditators generate to describe their inner experiences. The Radiance Sutras, a new version of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, is available from Lorin’s website, lorinroche.com. Feel free to email your comments and questions to lorin@lorinroche.com

By Dr. Lorin Roche

Brian Chance

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Photo: Charles Peterson, charlespeterson.net

Quan is seemingly unaffected by the relentless barrage of sexual assaults regularly performed on the senses of Los Angeles’
population by corporate advertisers. American Apparel soft-core billboards are not resonating on the same frequency with the young Buddhist monk; short in stature, long in devotion, he lives in the same city as I do – but a universe away. He says it’s effortless. It’s the simplest thing to transcend the sexual impulse. His breath channels the energy right up his spine through the crystal palace and out into the ethers.

I am not Quan…yet. For me Los Angeles is filled with the possibility of sexual intrigue at every juncture; each aisle at Whole Foods a potential love connection. Yet I am called to seek a higher vibration, a transcendental sexual experience. I want sex to be sacred.

My neophytic vision of sacred sex is mercurial; Sex as a heart-opening consciousness expanding erotic spiritual healing. A union with the divine, to be devoutly expressed with meticulously vetted partners. It’s an ambitious goal for a product of the pre-AIDS, 1980s New York free-for-all where I developed my sexual ideal which consisted of serving one well-practiced mantra: more.

When someone told me it says in the Vedas that we are agreeing to marry in another life everyone we have sex with in this one, I was shocked into celibacy…for a month at least. Sex is the most compelling force in human life. Living in a place like LA, it’s not always easy to micromanage a high ideal.

“Where we are in this Kali Yuga…we’re so low down the food chain of being able to perform austerities…if we can just have sex in marriage, it’s considered saintly in this day and age,” Vedic scholar Nrsimhananda tells me, but I’m not looking to get married anytime soon.

Good thing a new sexual revolution is upon us. A spiritual one. The talk show illuminated age-of- enlightenment; the 80s let the cat out of the bag about the blow-back from reckless abandon of the ban-the-bra 70s. And though I don’t think anyone is looking to reenact
the 1969 Summer of Love, or that the Bible Belt is going to strap on a tantric awakening anytime soon, there is a new sobering openness in the air. The current climate of hope and change is manifesting as a neo-sexual renaissance. These days even televangelists are stimulating the airwaves, inciting divinely-infused sex.

“If you’re first of all, rightly related to God vertically, then you’re going to be horizontally connected in the bedroom in a deeper way because of that vertical connection.” Rev. Ed Young recently told me. He issued a call for a week of “congregational copulation” to the married couples at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas (an evangelical church with 20,000 members). The TV preacher’s words are apparently resonating with the converted; he has appeared on national talk shows and was featured in the New York Times. There’s been a shift, but not in the sense that the flock is straying too far from the Good Book.

“Marriage is the only relationship that the Bible says is analogous or symbolic of God’s relationship to his people. His relationship is sacrificial. It is loving. So in marriage I should have that commitment and love,” Young says.

Others have developed that idea more thoroughly; “We get to make our own sandcastles in God’s material playground, and sex is the ultimate re-enactment of the process of Creation,” Nrsimhananda offers an Eastern perspective on that theme through a Western lens. “We can pretend we are the controller in this world, but sex is a dim reflection of the spiritual reality of unconditional love. Anyone who loves their children can tell you the difference. If I want to realize that I am not this body, then I can’t indulge in the relentless pursuit of unlimited sense gratification and attain detachment. The laws of nature don’t work that way,” he says and I understand where he’s going.

We want to be God and we’re using sex to do it. It’s an infantile pursuit in light of reality of the transcendental. Still, knowing that I can’t indulge in the mindless pursuit of sex and get any otherworld traction gets lost in the fray as the imperious urge presents.

The intention of Tantra is to integrate your sexual energy in the service of enlightenment.

The Reverend gives practical advice for sacred sex, “I would invite couples to pray together,” and although I get his point, I’m still in the dark about how to shed the light on the sex I will surely be having. The sinful single gay variety. And although I’m grateful for the Reverend’s advice, I’m clearly going to need to find a higher authority to advise me.

Deborah Taj Anapol, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and leading-edge healer, writer and teacher who founded the Sacred Space Institute, a national organization dedicated to reintegrating sexuality into spirituality and health care and expanding the boundaries of the family. She’s an expert in sexual healing and sacred sex.

“Sacred sex is a lot more about undoing the learning or conditioning that says you need to repress your sexual energy and that says sex is shameful. To release the religious or parental conditioning that tells us that sex is sinful, evil or unimportant. Sexual energy is our life-force. It is sacred.”

She has lots of ways to help people do that: breathing techniques, bodywork, psychodrama and stuff like that. She’s been ruminating on sacred sex for decades and has a different perspective that gives me pause.

Dr. Anapol says: “A lot of people who think they’re practicing Tantra these days are feeding their sex addictions. If you’re going to let the sexual energy have you rather than be in pursuit of physical pleasure you need to bring a lot of awareness to sexual exchange. It’s a double-edged sword. Most people, even if they don’t hold the attention to get there, often do have a mystical experience thorough sex. Once they do, if they’re in addictive mode, they can get addicted to the mystical experience as well as sexual. Then you’re in pursuit of this experience and then you’ve lost the original motive to escape this wheel of life, this karmic expedition that gets you nowhere, unless you believe in reincarnation. It gets you back into another life to try it again. The intention of Tantra is to integrate your sexual energy in the service of enlightenment.”

I do believe in reincarnation and I most certainly don’t want to be back here again in the same way. Integration sounds great. That’s what I’m after, but shouldn’t I be praying or chanting or meditating at least? I mean it feels like all this pleasure-seeking that will lead me straight back to nowhere.

Nrsimhananda gets specific in a 60s flashback; “In 1966, Prabhupada was in New York with maybe ten followers total. He came out with a list one day of the four regulated principles: No meat eating, intoxication, gambling, illicit sex, chant sixteen rounds a day (lowered from sixty-four). The followers said, we can do everything except sex. Of all four items, illicit sex is the most difficult. He said, “Here’s what you do, do the best you can. The main thing is don’t eat the cow. Don’t take drugs. Don’t speculate the meaning of Absolute Truth. Learn it from sadhu (saintly people), people who see the truth. If you can get the first three handled, the fourth will come into line. If you can take care of these other things…Krishna will gradually give you the detachment.”

A gradual detachment sounds doable. I don’t eat the cow, take drugs or speculate on the meaning of God, so I feel a little better about seeking a sacred sexual experience outside of a committed relationship. After all, what am I? A saint? The Reverend gave me a tip along these lines in the form of an automotive analogy to help me on my journey.

We get to make our own sandcastles in God’s material playground, and sex is the ultimate reenactment of the process of Creation.

“Sex is like a Ferrari. If someone gave me a brand-new Ferrari I wouldn’t take it off-roading. It would trash the car. I would only drive it where it’s supposed to be driven…Sex is a God-given gift. What’s happened to sex, like this Ferrari, is we’ve taken it off-road. Many people have taken this God-given gift and used it in a God-forbidden way. It’s going to be great for a while but I don’t think its going to have ultimate spiritual result until we do it the way God intended it. One woman, one man in a marriage,” he said.

I’m not sure where to ride that but I might be looking for a more fuel-efficient metaphor. Deborah Taj Anapol told me to breathe deeply while having sex; that seems useful. Someone else told me that Prabhupada left some unofficial off-the-record advice about sex hovering around on the planet; He said, if you’re gay, find one boy and stay with him. Now there’s some advice I can use.
My goal is to ground myself in a way that will allow me to embrace an elevated sexual ideal while diving deeper into detachment.

“The aspiring yogi is always seeking to be detached from senses,” Nrsimhananda says, “Like the turtle withdraws itself into his shell, a yogi goes to a cave – even thousands of years ago – to withdraw from presumably a simple world. There the yogi could meditate without distraction. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna says by the contact of the senses with the object of pleasure attachment develops, and from attachment comes frustration. From frustration comes anger, from anger one falls deep into the material pool.”

In a place like Los Angeles, it’s easy to set myself adrift in the endless sea of beautiful bodies and drown. But I don’t want to find myself rolling around in the mud at the deep end of material pool without a rope. I’ve already been very muddy. It looks like the only road to emancipation is open-hearted restraint.

Metsa Niwue aka François Demange (pictured) is an Amazonian medicine practitioner in Peru working in the traditions of the Shipibo and Quechua Lamista. He emphasizes the importance of sexual restriction in working with the medicine. “The main concept of the restriction of sex in vegetalismo; traditional Amazonian medicine is around the idea that master plants have spirits and the teaching and knowledge around the medicine comes from the spirits. Building a specific relationship with the plant and the spirit, you need to be totally cleared of all type of interaction with another person, so not to interfere with this communication, the sexual energy needs to be guarded. It can’t be shared. The old shamans have told me that the spirit world don’t like the smell of the sex…so it creates shock into the spirit world. If a human being on [diet] restriction is having sexual intercourse the spirits will go away. Most of the energy that comes from the teaching sits in the sexual energy of the practitioner. If he is having ejaculation, he is going to give away part of the strength he is receiving.

The sexual restrictions are very important. Especially in the beginning when you start to train under vegetalismo you are building that relationship with the plant spirit. Then, after ten, fifteen, twenty-five years you know how to deal with those energies…you can sometimes practice tantra or having certain kinds of sexual intercourse because you know how to organize those energies.”

Control, as espoused by the shaman, is part of the practice in many traditions. “All yogis will be preaching a methodology of controlling the senses,” Nrsimhananda says. “In Raja Yoga there is a technique for this. In Jnâna Yoga, there is a thorough analysis of the nature of the material energy…in Hatha Yoga, physical mythology…Siddha Yoga and Kundalini are all heavy disciplines that require controlling the senses and restricting the sex life. And then oddly enough, [there is] Bhakti, the Yoga of love. Bhakti, of course, is not about ascending or even going anywhere. It is all about unconditional love for God and all His/Her parts and parcels. Liberation is not the goal; it is a byproduct of love,” according to Nrsimhananda. “Whether I am in heaven or hell, I only want to be in your loving, devotional service lifetime after lifetime’ – that is the heartsong of a bhakta, a devoted soul. The other ascending processes: by this or that austerity I will lift myself up through the chakras to enlightenment, they are like granules of sand compared to the pearl of devotional service. Bhakti is a descending process; by my acts and devotion, God may, if He/She so chooses give me the kripa, the mercy of spiritual enlightenment… He’ll grant and bestow. It’s a receiving…it’s a very different from the others.”

Which of course makes me want God as my only lover…but I’m not Quan…yet.

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Sacred Sex appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

This is the third installment in an ongoing column focused on meditation practices in different traditions.

I am often asked about what Zen can teach us about the intimate personal relationships that play such an important role in all our lives.
When our walls are down, we are more in touch with our feelings and our emotions. And when we as individuals are based more in trust than in fear; everything is heightened. We are able to be open and vulnerable, having dropped our defenses or barriers, and true intimacy becomes possible. Our sexual life and our ability to communicate and relate is improved. We are in touch with our true self, it’s more tantric; it’s being there with the other person in a sensitive way. But it’s also being true to ourselves and who we are. It’s a more conscious, awakened state of being, where we are able to use our emotions in a positive way that gives a richness and fullness to our life. Instead of fearing or suppressing our emotions, we actually use them as the petrol for our life.

In the Eightfold Path in Buddhism, the first component is ‘right understanding’ or ‘right view’ and the second is ‘right perception’ or ‘right attitude.’ It’s absolutely true that when you have the right view and right perception in a relationship, it’s beyond being just about sexual satisfaction. Then you are really in a relationship as partners, and it is all about growth, spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, and psychological. It’s all about both parties doing well, and being attuned to one another. In this situation, your sensual and sexual relationship often improves because of the enhanced intimacy.

Think of yourself as the sitting figure outlined by a triangle in the illustration. The left corner (knee) represents the self that desires and loves conditionally. The right corner (knee) represents egolessness, what I call Big Mind, pure being. The apex includes and transcends both of them. At the apex, our true self, we can recognize the patterns and habits of our thoughts and emotions without having to be run by them, and we can see more clearly what we really need and what is sufficient. We can also be in touch with the mind of pure being and unconditional satisfaction that does not require anything to be whole and complete.

This doesn’t mean we disown the more sensual, sexual, physical side of ourselves. We want to embrace all aspects of ourselves, and transcend them, which means to include and go beyond them. Every aspect of ourself has its own wisdom and vitality. We don’t want to lose this energy, and we’re not going to get rid of it anyway. We know this through science. What we can do is recognize and be aware of negative tendencies. Many people believe the ego is negative or bad, and try to repress it, or even to get rid of it. We need the ego to function. By recognizing the ego, being aware of our self-centeredness, we have the choice not to act in a selfish and self-centered way.

The same is true of any emotion. When we are aware of our anger, for example, we have the choice to express it in an appropriate or inappropriate way. By not suppressing it, it doesn’t fester and explode at an inappropriate time, or at the slightest provocation.The same is true for fear. By recognizing the positive aspect of fear, which is to warn us of danger, then we can use fear in a positive way. We want to embrace it for what it is, and go beyond it.

Going beyond means we do not exclude or suppress any aspect of the self or its energy. It means that we allow every aspect to perform its function. We can choose to move from a negative to a positive expression of each aspect or state of mind. This means that we don’t hold a preference for or against any part of ourselves, but include all and allow them to function in their most appropriate and meaningful ways.

Finding balance and intimacy is all about coming from the apex, rather than from a self-centered place in the relationship, which is from the egocentric corner of the triangle. When you include Big Mind, the egoless side of the triangle, then you reach an understanding of both the personal and the impersonal. From the apex you include our human desires and emotions, and unconditional compassion, as an integrated sexual human being. From here you see a relationship in terms of how you are supporting one another in growth, maturation, and feelings of love. It’s a much deeper, much more profound place than where we normally come from.

Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi is the creator of the Big Mind process, which he has been developing and refining for the past ten years. He will be at the Big Mind Big Heart Weekend Workshop with Bill Harris at the North Embassy Suites Hotel in Los Angeles, March 7 – 8: bigmind.org.

Brian Chance

The post Zen And The Art Of Relationships appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

A few simple asana (posture)done while lying on the floor exercise the muscle groups in the pelvic and groin area.

Apanasana
Keep in Mind: Keep your shoulders on the floor. Keep your hands on the kneecaps. Coordinate breath and movement. Cautions: Don’t pull too hard, this is a warm-up. Other Benefits: Will increase range of motion in hips. Lie on your Yoga mat. Bend your knees and lift your feet. Place one hand on each kneecap. As you exhale, gently, but firmly pull your thighs toward your chest. Keep your hands on your kneecaps, inhale, and push your knees away. Coordinate the movement with yourbreathing. Remember the short pauses that happen at the end of the exhale and the end of the inhale. That means start your exhale and then start pulling in. Finish the movement,finish the breath and feel the short (half second) pause. Then start your inhale, straighten your arms and come to a full stop. Repeat four or five times. A small pillow or a folded towel behind your head will make this position more comfortable. Focus your attention to your hips and think of breathing into them. Attention plus breath equals awareness. Awareness of what is happening in your body is half the battle. Awareness will ease your path to a supple, strong body		Inhale     Exhale

Supta Padangusthasana Variation
Keep in Mind: If your legs do not straighten, it is okay to keep your knees slightly bent. Move with your breath. Cautions: Be aware of your lower back and the sacroiliac joint. If this is a strain in your lower back, keep your knees well bent. You will still receive much benefit. Other benefits: Stretches groin muscles and opens the hips. Increases blood and energy flow to pelvic floor. Lie on your back, knees bent and feet lifted off the floor. Put one hand behind each thigh to support your legs. Inhale, straighten both legs. Push your heels up toward the ceiling. Stay in this position as you exhale. On inhale, open your legs taking your heels as far apart as they will comfortably go. Exhale, close your legs. Inhale, open your legs. Repeat two or three times then close your legs and return to the start position with your knees bent. If this is easy for you, stay in the open leg position for a couple of breaths, if not, don’t. Repeat the whole sequence one more time. Repeat apasnasana.
Exhale	Inhale	Exhale

Supta Baddha Konasana
Exhale	Inhale	Keep in Mind: Move with your breath. Cautions: If this creates discomfort in your lower back, discontinue. Other benefits: Increases hip mobility. Increases blood and energy flow to pelvic floor. Stretches groin muscles. Next, lie on your back, knees bent, feet on the floor for supta baddha konasana (supta-supine, baddha-bind, kona-angle.) Inhale and open your knees. Exhale close your knees. Repeat five to six times.

Upavistha Konasana Adaptation
Keep in Mind: Begin each of your exhales by pulling in below your navel. Cautions: Do not pull yourself farther forward with your arms. Other benefits: Stretches hamstrings and lower back. Increases hip mobility. Sit up on your Yoga mat for upavistha konasana adaptation (upavista-to sit, kona-angle.) Open your legs as far as they will comfortably go. Bend your knees. L Lift your arms along side your ears and above your head as you inhale. Exhale bend forward between your legs. Stay for one breath. Inhale lift your arms and your chest to come up with a flat back. You may want to make an adjustment in your leg position. Keep them as wide as is comfortable. Try bending your knees a little more. Try it again. Inhale, lift your arms, exhale bend forward between your legs. Stay for a few breaths then come up as you inhale. Try it one last time.	Inhale	Exhale

Krama-Segmented Breathing

The most beneficial element of this sequence is controlling the breath in conjunction with contracting and relaxing the abdominal muscles. The breathing exercise, krama-segmented breathing, will greatly increase muscle tone, the health of your vital organs, digestive system function, help reduce incontinence after pregnancy and increase or re-establish sexual vigor.

Sit. Breathe. Relax low in your body. Imagine yourself to be urinating. Now stop the flow in mid-stream. Feel all of the muscle groups you used to stop your imaginary peeing. As you strengthen those muscles, you are bringing renewed life and energy to all of the sexual organs also. Exercising those muscles begins with proper breathing. Starting the exhale by contracting your muscles beginning at the floor of the torso and moving up to the solar plexus is the first step. Followed on inhale by releasing the muscle groups in descending order.

As you inhale retain the mild contraction below the navel while relaxing only from the solar plexus to the navel, pause then continue the inhale and relax from the navel to the pubic bone, then from the pubic bone to the floor of the torso. At first, this muscle coordination seems impossible, but both strength and control will improve with practice. All the while, you are building stronger muscles the same way lifting a dumbbell strengthens your biceps.

The next step is to exhale in stages while contracting the muscles also in stages.

Start your exhale and gently contract the muscles from the bottom of the torso to the pubic bone. Pause.

Continue your exhale and contract the muscles between the pubic bone and the navel. Pause.

Finish your exhale while contracting the muscles from the navel to the solar plexus.

Now inhale in segments.

First inhale and release the muscles from the solar plexus to the navel while retaining the gentle contractions below. Pause.

Continue your inhale while releasing the muscle contraction from the navel to the pubic bone. Pause.

Finish your inhalation and release the muscles from the pubic bone to the floor of the pelvis.

Do five complete breath cycles. Then sit and breathe normally for a minute before you get up and move onto your next activity.

Krama breathing can also be used by itself. If you try it for just a minute or two in the morning you will notice that it builds warmth and energy in the body. Or, try one round of krama breathing while waiting for a red traffic light to turn green. If you make this breathing technique part of your daily practice, very shortly you will notice increased muscle tone in your abdomen. Other results will also become apparent.

Fred Miller (E-RYT 500), the author of The Back Pain Cure, Yoga for Aches & Pains, and How To Calm Down is a certified Viniyoga teacher and a Yoga therapist who has taught Yoga for twenty-six years. For more information on Core Muscle Control for Long Life, Continence and Sexual Vigor, visit: howtocalmdown.com or email: fred@howtocalmdown.com.

By Fred Miller

Brian Chance

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