Why would you want to smell like everyone else? That's one of the questions we asked ourselves when we started to learn about the dangers of synthetic perfumes and fragrances. By "synthetic perfumes and fragrances," we mean most of the perfumes you see (and smell) when you walk into a department store. In 2015, department stores stocked 1,165 fragrance brands (nearly twice as many as they carried in 2002). But the thing is, 95% of the chemicals in most of these fragrances are derived from petrochemicals.

“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”

-Maya Angelou

 

Although it is most often in our relationship to our sexuality that we struggle to figure out what is “normal,” the weight of normal also impacts other ways we perceive and think, often obliterating our ability to see all the good that is happening in our lives. For me, the beginning of autumn has...

If the first doubt that most people have about their sexual lives is whether they are “normal,” then the new 2. 0 dating and sex app version of connecting has only accelerated this doubt. Arguably, the driver to the ever-expanding array of choices in meeting a mate online is desire. Desire for sex certainly, but also, and maybe more importantly, desire for all the parts of a relationship that make sex good. Rarely does the twenty-minute hookup satisfy us. Instead we are often left wondering what happened and who it was for. Likewise, although we are easily addicted to...

“We erase female pleasure…it puts girls not only at a disadvantage in terms of having a satisfying sexual experience but also just having an equal relationship.” Peggy Orenstein

“He liked it. That’s enough for me.” Our mothers said it about sex, as did our grandmothers. And yet disturbingly, our thoroughly modern daughters whose evolution and potential has dramatically risen, with higher earning...

"What we learn with pleasure we never forget. " Alfred MercierLearning to feel pleasure begins with cultivating our capacity to experience the world through our senses. Sensuality is really nothing more than connecting to your senses deeply. And it is in the smallest of pleasurable sensations that this practice comes alive. But often in our day-to-day, we lose touch with the physical sensations of life especially, and most interestingly, when we are in the midst of intense emotions.

“The only thing about masturbation to be ashamed of is doing it badly.” –Sigmund Freud

Shared pleasure depends on one’s capacity to pleasure themselves, which is why most sex therapists refer to the practice of masturbation as the foundation of sexual health. And just for the record, masturbation is the most common sexual practice on the planet. It is not just for lonely people either: surveys...

“Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.”  Voltaire

1. Bathe in your senses

Pleasure is entirely dependent on our physical capacity to experience the world through our senses. We open to pleasure when we become deliberate about learning more about our capacity to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. Doing this is easier than you might think: just by adopting the practice...

The night of my fiftieth birthday party in late October was unseasonably warm. I wanted to be sure and remember the night, so the festivities included magic and fire dancers. My four kids had been planning something special, and I hoped that it wouldn’t be a crazy rap verse about my quirks. Instead they started by silencing the room. Then, when it was quiet, each of them shared their most personal...

“The spirit down here in man and the spirit up there in the sun, in reality are only one spirit, and there is no other one.”  The Upanishads

 

The freedom to pray and worship and believe in whatever form of God is meaningful, to us, is a freedom that we often take for granted. Yet, in fact it is this freedom, above all others, that has drawn the vast diversity of people and religious beliefs that...