Didn’t have the Valentine’s Day you hoped for? Here’s 3 Rules for not making it worse.
Post Valentine’s Day can sometimes be a rocky relational transition. When we don’t feel seen or appreciated in the ways we hoped for, it is easy to slip into behaviors that silently undermine all the heartfelt efforts that we have worked at for so long. So here are a few practices that have helped me time and...
There are more breakups associated with Valentine’s Day than any other holiday – mostly because all of our perceived slights and disappointments that happen every day are on full display on that day.
“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.” - Wilhelm Reich
Some of my most vivid memories of my early sex life are not of the satisfying post coitus elated release, but of their opposite. It is hard to forget the many times when sex was more a path of frustration than pleasure; when I was still figuring...
The New Year is a good time to re-think our ideas about pleasure. In our culture, so focused on instant gratification, it is easy to lose sight of what creates a long-lasting and deeply healing experience of pleasure. While instant gratification does feed our brains a dopamine response to constantly want more, the...
There is a concept I learned while my kids were in Montessori educationcalled scaffolding—a technique that is reflected in the goals of learn it, do it and then teach it. In this way, the student comes back to the same material in a natural spiral, each time the student is able to add to...
“What is without periods of rest will not endure.” Ovid
Rest and recuperation is the only thing on my Christmas list this year. In the two weeks since my surgery I have worked a ridiculous number of days, insisting on getting things done instead of getting quiet. It has taken a toll. Starting today I am giving myself the gift of rest, which is not the opposite of effort, but rather its source.
R...
“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” Amit Ray
I am befriending my anxiety, as it goes with me everywhere these days. Happy to report that I have mostly given up the futile fight against it and I am finished with all of my subversive techniques to flee. Instead, I have been giving anxiety my full attention, which it turns out, is easier said than...
“The way you make love is the way God will be with you.” -Rumi
You will find this quote on the first page of my forthcoming book, Sex That Works – An Intimate Guide To Awakening Your Erotic Life. My book sums up the wonder of living deeply in your erotic self and how that act connects you to the divine in ways that nothing else in life compares. Sex That Worksexplores the steps of awakening your...
“You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…” Joni Mitchell
The shock has not lifted for me. Each day I continue to feel dazed and overwhelmed with grief by this world that is emerging. And yet, as I have written before, the more deeply I accompany my grief, the more resounding are my feelings of gratitude. When we allow ourselves to befriend loss and know it for the lifelong companion that it...
One concept we hold very dear at Good Clean Love is that of ‘Equal Pleasure’, so much so that we made it a tenant of our sexual health initiative, Make It Good. Why? Because we shouldn’t just settle knowing our partners have been pleased, we should also expect to be pleasured in return. It is the simple idea that the individuals participating in a sexual encounter are equally satisfied....
“A riot is the language of the unheard.” Martin Luther King Jr.
I am a fan of historical fiction and almost always in the midst of how other people lived through the challenges of a distant time. Witnessing history through fictional personal stories makes it real for me and has often left me marveling at how my own existence has never been swept up in any of the vast sea changes that political...
The older I get, the more I appreciate how long it truly takes to be able to understand, articulate and define what we know. Partly this is because what we know is continuously evolving as we grow. The deep wisdom of aging doesn’t come from what we know nearly as much as it does from witnessing all that we haven’t been able to see and that we may well never know. Successful aging, I think, is when...
