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healthy living T his season give the back-to-school idea a revitalizing and healing twist by focusing on rethinking your sex life. Try just one of these suggestions and see if it doesn't inspire ways to make your sexual health a transformative force in your life. Love your Body Our sex life lives within our physical body, so how you feel about and treat your body is a direct refl ection of the respect you hold for your sex life. For many of us, this must start with a decision to stop comparing our body to photoshopped images of models. Don't sacrifi ce your access to pleasure in the false belief that sex- ual satisfaction will fi nd you when you are more fi t or more beau- tiful… Actually, studies have shown the reverse relationship to be true: Opening yourself up to more sexual pleasure will make you recognize the beauty in your body as it is and inspire you to treat it better. For me, the dictum that "bodies are designed for motion" is a good place to start. Get moving more often and fi nd ways that offer you the experience of both building strength and discover- ing fl exibility, both of which are critical for more pleasurable and long-lasting intimacy. Dedicate yourself to fi nding ways to live more deeply in your body which is easy when you don't take your fi ve senses for granted. Explore the range of scent, taste, and touch that surrounds us. This will ground and nourish the richness of living in your body. Resolve to treat your body with a little more attention and loving kindness and it will reward you by revealing its capacity for pleasure — sexual and otherwise. Be Playful In childhood, no one had to teach you how to play. Even the most serious street games were won with just natural curiosity and ea- gerness to play. Having fun was second nature and treating your quest for more satisfying sex with this same spirit can help free your imagination (i.e., read fantasy) to silence the external voices, whether they be the experts who are supposed to know or the in- sidious cultural messages of shame and fear surrounding sexuality. The key to rekindling this kind of playful spirit is to recall how our youthful spontaneity came riding on the tails of the abandon and freedom that came from not worrying about how we were being seen. Playfulness by defi nition excludes issues of right and wrong and playing fair mattered. Sexually speaking, being able to play fair and with abandon is the perfect equation where we can blos- som into our hidden erotic selves. Playfulness in bed is where we can have fun pushing the edges of our comfort zone and know that no matter how it comes out, we will laugh and build trust in our ability to be in the game. Talk about Sex For most people, talking about sex is a taboo topic of discussion. This overbearing silence not only keeps us from creating the sex lives we want but worse still, keeps us from maturing into our erotic selves. Partly we don't talk about sex because we are frightened by what we don't know and partly we are afraid of what we do know. Consequently, it is more common than not to retreat and to limit our sexual vocabulary to the lowest levels of discomfort. Tragically, what is lost, is the opportunity to both learn who we are as a sexual being, and who we could be as a sexual couple. Talk about your desires, tell your partner what you really want to do, share a recurring fantasy, even if you would never want to do it in real life. As you begin to broaden your sexual vocabulary, make sure you can distinguish between sexual education and entertainment. There is a wide gap between some fun ideas you can gather from sexual entertainment videos or magazines and the knowledge and expertise of a qualifi ed sex educator, coun- selor, or therapist. Taking the leap to create a sexual conversation will open up your capacity for pleasure and enhance the trust in your connection. —Wendy Strgar, writer, teacher, and love- ologist, is the founder and CEO of Good Clean Love, makers of Almost Naked 95%-organic lubricant. By Wendy Strgar Three Easy Ways to More Enjoyment STEP UP YOUR SEX LIFE 1 LOVE 2 PLAY 3 TALK August/September 2018 13 SEX TALK