Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/732294
healthy living SEX TALK Slow Down and Smell the Roses GIVING UP FAST FOOD SEX By Wendy Strgar "We think fast food is equivalent to pornography, nutritionally speaking." ~Steve Elber A s a culture, our diet often suffers from the overwhelm- ing demands of schedule and time constraints; we pick up food on the run and call it a meal. Even when we take the time to prepare a meal at home, we often eat it in front of a screen, eating quickly and mindlessly. Taking the time to taste our food is a luxury many of us don't know we are missing. We leap to the main course, overeating but never really fi lling up. In many ways our sexual drive sadly gets the same treatment. We take the sen- suous part of our humanity for granted, forgetting the power that scent has in wak- ing up our memory, sexual- ity and emotions. It is well documented that people who become anosmic, suffer not only a signifi cant drop in their ability to taste, but to emote. Thus, sexual drive also often plummets. Learning to pay attention to scent and associated tastes is a way of building a sensory vocabulary. The more layered an experience is with all of our senses, the more memorable and rich it is. Learning to slow down so that we can savor our sensory capacity makes life rich. Nowhere is that more true than in our intimate lives. Thinking about our sex life like a gourmet meal both takes the pressure off of any precon- ceived ideas of the main event and opens a gateway to the wonders of what it means to be a sexual being. Often when I teach about expanding our capacity for phys- ical love, I use the analogy of a gourmet meal. When we sit down to dine, we don't jump right to the main course. Think of the last fabulous meal you enjoyed; hors d'oeuvres, second course… Tastes, conversation, lingering touches… Awake with all your senses. Why hurry to the main course? Adding scents and fl avors to your lovemaking extends the pleasure, and introduces a whole new synergy. Enveloped with sensu- ality, the pressure is off and the pleasure is on. Scented love oils that heighten your own pheromones and awareness of the scent chemistry between you and your partner, trigger the limbic brain through the olfactory bulb. The arous- al mechanism is stirred and so is the feel of your part- ner's body as the oils give the curves and valleys in the body glide. I always tell people that personal lubricant should be reserved for the moment you can't wait, then it can really do its job. The best lubricant in the world is a penetration aid, and contrary to the mil- lions of dollars of KY adver- tising that "a little lube is all you need," a satisfying inti- mate encounter takes more than a squirt of lube. Picking up a bottle of lu- bricant at this point makes infi nitely more sense. This is the moment when a pene- tration device can do its job, adding the old familiar slip to the deepest communion we can manifest. Hurrying to the main course is anti-cli- mactic at best and painful at worst. Take time to explore what it means to feel sensu- ous. It is a close cousin to our most satisfying experience with delicious food. Wendy Strgar—Writer, teacher and loveologist is the found- er and CEO of Good Clean Love, makers of Almost Naked 95%-organic lubricant. october/november 2016 15