Alternative Information On Women’s Breast Health

Here is the next blog in a series showcasing relevant topics from www.mercola.com. It’s on Dr. Christiane Northrup’s perspective on women’s breast health. It also details that over the past 30 years, an estimated 1.3 million American women have been overdiagnosed with breast cancer that posed no threat to their life. In 2008, an estimated 70,000 women were overdiagnosed with breast cancer in the US, which accounts for 31 percent of all breast cancers diagnosed that year.

That surprised me. Overdiagnosed? Check out the article. It’s a female sexuality-positive one as well.

Here is a very interesting article on www.mercola.com about how too much sitting due to desk jobs and sitting-related activities is bad for your health even if you have a good exercise plan in place. A NASA scientist did a study which proved that our bodies need stand-up time every 15 minutes. Just a stand and a dip in the knees and back up is all you need. Read on…

Again, I write on health and fitness info that’s hard to come by and makes an impact on our sex lives. I’ll bet that if everyone with a desk job or other long-time sitting endeavor stood for a few moments, even every 20 minutes which comes down to three times an hour, then people would reach the end of their day feeling better. That equates to more initiative to have sex if the opportunity is there that evening. Less television, more intimacy time and sexual enjoyment.

That’s right. You can’t spend your day sitting and then go home and sit some more. Everyday. It adds up firstly on your energy level, in my view, even before you get near other problems. The Mercola article also includes easy exercises for low back pain resolution and other maladies called, Foundational Exercising. The pic above has a table in it that looks like it can be adjusted for standing or sitting.

I’d like to get on a soap box for a moment to point out how when The Collective makes unseen negative impacts on us. The Collective is what I call that which is the widely understood state of the world/reality you live in as defined principally by those you share a community with, your culture, and your daily life patterns and necessities. Problems arise when things become “normal,” but they have unseen disadvantages to following them or worse, hazards.

Our world is a desk job world more so than it ever has been in human history. That is one particular state of the norm. Very often I coach people on how to make their own decisions that impact the success of their sex lives. One of the top three things that gets in the way of that goal is The Collective’s presumptions and social programming surrounding sex. This blog topic is an example of the same thing, except with a fitness and health issue. I can see people wondering why their co-workers stand to take a water break or bathroom etc at least three times an hour and think it odd. It breaks the almighty norm. It’s one thing when breaking a norm is a detriment and another when not breaking it is.

The fight to not allow other people’s viewpoints to have power over you when they are ill-informed ones is a crucial part of life from very early on. The best example in recent medical history is smoking. Smoking was part of that almighty norm for a long time. Smoking was allowed everywhere. People thought you were crazy if you spoke up about it. Or were being a crybaby or unsophisticated. Now, we know better about what smoking does to our health. Turns out the almighty norm wasn’t so almighty after all. I see electronic cigarette ads that sell the product on the point of its vapor won’t bother or endanger your friends and family.

So whether it’s sex, fitness, or any other accurate info that confuses or gives angst to The Collective, strive for and act upon that kernel of truth. It’s what benefits you most. Never forget that no one lives your life but you. Who knows? Maybe The Collective will catch on to the thing that’s so great for you. That’s what they call a trend. Then, suddenly you were the cool one who was doing it before it was popular. It’s so ironic that being trendy is by some people trumpeted and simultaneously attacked by others. What a world we would have if more people valued keeping their eyes peeled for valuable and beneficial trends and didn’t care about the blather from the peanut gallery.

I had a consultation call recently where my prospective client admired me for my complete freedom from embarrassment when discussing sex, and that was a big relief for her to find. I mentioned several things about how my past embarrassment of sex disappeared:

1.) Once people have quality, delicious food, they want more and value it. This was one of the first things that helped form the basis of comfort with my sex life. When it felt good or amazing to me and the women I shared it with, that did away with a lot of insecurity. The proof-positive of the sensations was justification for it holding a serious place in my life as well. That meant that my sex life became valued. Once that was established, embarrassment over something I value didn’t make sense anymore. If other people publicly derided sex, that was their bag and not mine. They could no longer influence me.

2.) Knowledge is power, but so is being calm and together. The more I learned and discovered about sex’s details and nuances, the more I became excited about it as an art form unto itself. That excitement and confidence is a positive feeling and does a lot to eliminate the negative or the anxiety of the uncertain. Excitement to discover more also replaces stress over the unknown. As far as calm and collected goes, in social conversations, I was able to contribute usable info while also being immune to negative responses due to what I knew sex really could be.

3.) The interest in helping and exchanging info gave me a practical goal and motivation to approach sexual subject matter with an eye toward truth-seeking and caring about sex. Caring for everything it can do for us, caring for its importance and excitement in your life, and caring about its growth. I left behind the old ways of framing sexuality in my mind and took on brand new ones where the embarrassment triggers no longer exist. My list of priorities changed along with the loss of embarrassment. I decided I would have what was possible and incredible.

4.) Not wanting to “be the weird one” is a point of embarrassment during the act or in conversation for many of us. The former can be swept away by knowing what things you want in your sex life. If that doesn’t fit for others you come in contact with, then conclude the evening and move on if it’s a possible romantic partner. Otherwise, move politely to the next subject. However, don’t take rudeness and attack from others. Find someone who clicks with you or wants to learn how to. When you visualize and then put events into action to meet that person, it will have been all worthwhile. Refuse to allow sex-negative people to bully you emotionally.

Getting past the fear and habits of judging your own or your partner’s sex skills.

One of the first things people run into in their sex life is a partner’s lack of sexual skills, to one degree or another, when their sex skills are not up to par for their partners, and finally when your sex skills need betterment for your solo sexuality. The toughest of these are when those we have sex with “judge” us. It doesn’t have to be that way.

When you get specific about it, judging holds a negative connotation. A scolding and or berating implication. You’re being looked down upon when you are judged, is the feeling. However, when you give supportive feedback as part of a couple who shares a common goal of making their sex life better and better, it’s no longer judging. It becomes fruitful collaboration. I would have never become what I am today with regards to my sexual sophistication level if it wasn’t for an excitement for the details of what I could be doing even better for my partner or me.

Sometimes it’s easier said than done. If you’re someone who is easily triggered to anger when short-comings of any kind are addressed in any way, it becomes that much more important to stop, take a breath, remind yourself mentally that you and your partner are in a cooperative sexual relationship. You’re on a team. In a relationship that has patience and caring about one another’s feelings. Know also that positive change comes much harder, if at all, if you don’t have collaboration and communication.

Previous, repetitive life experiences and situations form triggers, but we can eliminate them with more repeat exposure to a nurturing environment plus the determination to let go of the trigger. It can also help to say to the trigger inside you, (which sounds cheesy, but it works) that things are different now and the old trauma is done and replaced with feels-good, healthy approaches. An even better method for change is time within the new environment and those affirmations. Be aware that triggers can stay with you for years if you don’t address them directly.

There’s more to how to work as a team in your sex life. Also in being too hard on yourself. Create something positive and specific in your mind and step-by-step make your way there. Sex life coaching can help both learning how to become a considerate team and then how to make your sexual dreams come true.

It was fun doing this interview. There was a lot of great material that didn’t make it in as well. The young woman said she thoroughly enjoyed our talk. I was happy to hear that not for typical reasons, but I could also hear by her tone that she really meant it. She got what I was talking about and loved what it spoke of.

I want to add a few things that were left out of some of the questions:

On if I believe in the “men want visual women want mental” images of sex. I would add to that it’s true that most women respond to well-written erotic depictions more powerfully than to most erotic video. Guys like the written too because I have found that as a gender, I’ve found very few men who have not or do not fantasize about sex where it’s not uncommon that women haven’t. I also find that live, in-front-of-you hot things trigger both genders more than video. Anyway, who cares, right? Well, that’s true to some degree but it’s important to move into our culture’s acceptance that women are sexual too, to honor that, and nurture it to its fullest within healthy contexts.

On the presumption that I’m a master in bed from first contact. One thing I would add to what I said is you become a master with a given person over time by learning their subtleties and developing new things together. This is the most important aspect to the answer I give to another age-old question: Can sex get better over time? Yes. Absolutely. In every one of my long-term sexual relationships this has been the case as long as the two of you actively strive for growth. You could say it’s a combination of knowing those woods like the back of your hand. Every leaf and berry and also finding more woods that weren’t there the day before.

I would add to the question on fantasies of infidelity that my sex life coaching doesn’t just air out issues and things are fixed. It’s a bit of that and also showing couples how to create the sex they want and then what they don’t yet know is possible. That is one need I show them how to get. If you haven’t already, Click here For the Nerve.com article.

I was in one of my Talk Sessions with a client recently when she told me about how she always felt a need for a healthy and high-quality sex life, but those ideals were met with the world, and later her ex, attacking her for it. While deciding if she wanted to work with me, she wondered if her dreams were well-founded or if the culture was right in condemning female sexual expression.

She decided that she would have a more advanced understanding of how to give the best of sex to her new man as well as herself. She ran up against the diametrically-opposed cultural expectations most of us encounter at some point. The two sets of expectations around us are:

1.) Both women and men are hit with negativity toward sexual enjoyment. From secular as well as non-secular sources.

2.) Once in a relationship, she (or he) gets a completely different message that now it’s suddenly time to be good at sex, enjoy sex, and want to have lots of it with your partner/man.

Obviously, women suffer the most from the first cultural expectation. They may need to defend against accusations like “slut,” which can imply a woman who will have sex with anyone she wants. However, men are given permission to do just that.

Fundamentalist Non-secular groups make their position on known, but the use of the word slut and others like it has a “practical” side, one could say. It strikes fear into the hearts of developing teenage girls, promising social attack and shame if they begin their sex lives too early. It’s every parent’s fear and many will understandably do whatever it takes to protect their daughters from teenage pregnancy. Another “practical” use is steering women toward stable and socially respectable partnerings. Before DNA testing, people had a harder time distinguishing paternity in children, which determined inheritances. There are definitely better and more heartfelt ways to keep teen girls making responsible decisions than throwing around the S word.

In a nutshell, a woman gets the message to be wary or stay away from solo or partnered sex. Once in a relationship, sometimes a more conservative version of the negativity appears at this point where your choice of sex acts is reduced down to one or two forms at most. But the ultimate kicker here is now you have to adopt sex into your life suddenly after it’s been a subject of negativity and mystery for so long. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Draconian solutions to real-world issues aside, my advice to people is to under-use the S word and related terms. It may help in one regard, but it sticks with women long-term. When it’s time to start her sex life, the remnants of the pain that overuse (or poignant single use) will cause her to pull away from forms of sexual expression that she wants. She may feel pressured to be good in bed when there has been little in the way of guidance and often have another reason to resent men for how they don’t have to put up with the same treatment.

People wonder why their sex lives are rocky and anxiety-ridden. This is one of the reasons for many people out there. It’s true that another portion of women navigate the S-word over-usage and settle into what they want in their sex lives. They can envision it and most often privately do so, then set their decision-making underway to make those dreams realities. They know what they want in a stable, hot, orgasmic, healthy sex life. That’s one of the things that all of my clients, women or men, have in common: knowing what they want and staying focused on developing the pieces for oasis-like amazing sex.

A footnote to this: I watched the movie Silver Linings Playbook and there’s a part about thirty minutes in where Bradley Cooper’s character calls Jennifer Lawrence’s a slut for coming on to him. During her retort she said words to the effect of, “Sometimes I like it dirty and rough and messy, but I’ve accepted that about myself. Can you say the same?” Jennifer’s character focused on the slut comment as an attack on her belief in a favorite form of sexual enjoyment. Then without using the word, called Bradly’s a hypocrite because we all know damn well what men would love to do with women, or characters, who look like Jennifer Lawrence. We also know what men wish women would do and feel back. We have to put an end to throwing around “slut”. It’s not helping either gender when the time comes for them both to have the sex they dream of.

Your partner is missing a crucial detail pertaining to something your body and/or your mind really enjoys or needs for satisfying sex/orgasm. The two of you are into communicating, so you tell them. They receive the info and in this case, zero in and make fireworks happen. However, the next time, the same mistakes are made. This can be very frustrating and eventually anger-triggering. What to do?

Different things can be creating this issue or a combination of them. The notables are:

1.) Busy Week: People have a lot of things on their plate. A great way to keep track is keep notes in your phone for what you definitely want to remember to do next time. Two things. That’s all. If you know some sex will be happening soon, check your notes for a quick reminder. Repetition is power and so are reminders.

2.) Overwhelming Desire version 1: This happens a lot with men. Their minds are pulled into the hotness they see and are doing with their partner, which is fine, but narrows focus too much. It makes them forget to field the desired skill. One great thing to do is pre-plan to check your list, then find the one thing of the two that’s the most important or hot for your partner. Then, visualize/fantasize doing that to her/him and the hot responses they’ll give you. Which to many of us is erotic and also feels good to know you’re doing a good job. Finally, go do that to them.

3.) Overwhelming Desire version 2: Happens a lot with women, but men also. You want intercourse. Bad. Right now. You skip over the thing(s) you have to remember and go straight there. Your man serving it up orgasms and it’s over (it isn’t in the way I coach sex, but that’s a very common pattern). Give him or her a reminder in a hot spoken way. That will redirect usually. Or, go with the flow, then do the desired thing afterward. Sex does not begin and end at male orgasm.

4.) Not Prioritizing Their Partner’s Desires: It can be a new thing for people to be more conscious of sexual details and sequences when they have just let Nature take its course. This is one of the worst side effects of when people follow the old directive of, “Sex should just come naturally.” Too naturally and it’s all about his orgasm (in the most common case) and hers is left in the dust. However, it was natural! This is a great example of when just plain old natural isn’t good enough. The moment you decide to make your sex life better, you adopt a design mode into how you think about sex. You plan in advance. It’s a new way of doing sex. You’ll come back to naturally, but for now let it go and create something new that incorporates both his and her orgasm.

5.) Not Prioritizing Their Partner’s Desires version 2: It’s a harsh one. The person who is missing the boat just doesn’t care that much about pulling their weight in bed. There can be different reasons for this, but they all boil down to stopping and having a discussion. Some people have yet to develop the ability to become aroused by their partner’s arousal. Some are hyper-focused on their own enjoyment. Or both! Some have ego issues with needing to get new things right the first time and be perfect at them. If they see they can’t do that, they’ll avoid the issue altogether. This is way more common in western culture than I’d like it to be. We are pressured to do so very often at work and school. Let all that go in the bedroom. Work as a team. Certain parts of your sex life will be works in progress and that’s 100% normal. That’s the beauty of it, actually. The process and requirements of some forms of great sex can be intricate enough that they have to evolve over time into their best. This is where sex as an art form emerges as well as the excitement that it’s not just tab A into slot B. There is much more, which is engaging for us adults.

6.) Don’t Honor Their Bodies, So Why Honor Yours: This can take different forms. It can sometimes follow how in shape someone is plus the presence of unhealthy habits the person is, although not always.

7.) Additional Ego Issues and Stonewalling: a.k.a passive (or active) aggressive actions that mean, “Don’t tell me what to do.” The only way to deal with this is see if the two of you are on the same page. You can lead a horse to water, sort of thing. If you aren’t and it isn’t changing anytime soon, I suggest getting apart and finding compatible people. If getting apart isn’t an option, a more serious talk will have to go down. These schisms are what create unhappy marriages and infidelity. My coaching has brought people digging their heels in the sand, or inserting heads therein, along and shown them how much better life and sex is when they let go of their resistance be it from ego or otherwise.

My last piece of advice is a broad one, but potent. We’ve heard it before: eye on the prize. Give it your all and blow them out of the water. Squash laziness (which can be item number 8) and let no b.s. stand in your way. You’d put your life on the line for a soul mate and such, so take some of that determination and stir it into your resolve for a new and powerful sex life.

The article has some snarky parts, but that’s to be expected these days. It also made some errors in its information that they present. The most glaring being how I supposedly ended my personal relationship with my mentor Betty to be with my current partner. Not true. I went for quite a while as a single guy afterwards. Still, it’s a great piece and I’m happy about it.

I was very surprised when I was told that the couple was okay with “going public” with who they are. I did not ask them to either. I didn’t know about it until just after they had been interviewed. I was appreciative though. That does help to make my work more real and accessible.

Hope you all had a great holiday and Happy New Year! -Eric

No one talks about it. It makes an ego sting when what one does well in bed fails. Blame is placed on the other person when much better responses exist. Here are some tips for dealing with this before deciding to break it off too soon.

1. Communicate. Talk with your partner to get more information on how good something feels that you’re doing. Maybe that something you think works… really isn’t significant at that time or to their body in general. Get info on the things they know is hot for them that perhaps did nothing for your last partner. If you’re in a marriage, this is especially important because you are sharing the same life with your partner now and there’s no easy way out of that.

2. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that a prized sexual skill you have used as a never-fails trick will always work. Even if it’s amazing for the vast majority of partners, be ready to accept just as smoothly that it won’t for the minority and switch seamlessly to something else in your skill set. Believe me, smooth transitions from things that aren’t working to different things that may work much better is impressive to your partner. It shows sophistication and caring about the whole process. Including them even if you’ve just met.

3. If you have the opportunity, read up on a particular kind of sexual indulgence that isn’t working out for you and your partner that you’ve been successful with previously. Practice together. There are things the pleasure receiver’s body needs time with during multiple sessions, so to speak, before it will work.

4. There is a bigger picture issue than if your partner can’t do or orgasm from one of your favorite sexual activities. What if she/he can have bigger orgasms from something completely different that you have never done with anyone else before? What if she/he can do things to you that are unique? What if they have a body or beauty type that really does it for you? What if they’re emotionally sound and aware? What if you’re in love with them? Consider these before you act too rashly.

5. If there is something you can’t live without in your sex life and you cannot work it out on your own, consider some sex life coaching. If it is an issue beyond professional coaching’s reach, then it’s good to be honest with yourself and take that seriously. You don’t want to ignore those feelings of doing without in a big way. That leads to messier breakups and divorces down the road. Choosing to end a connection with someone is okay. Just make sure you have thought it through and acted upon it beforehand.

This is entertaining writing, but many readers out there will take the descriptions as 100% accurate and then wonder why they can’t have vaginal orgasms as easily as Anastasia Steele can with Christian Grey. As a sex life coach, it’s my job to point out the strengths and shortcomings of such popular literature so that people who read it don’t go off on wild goose chases and get crestfallen when those chases turn up dead ends. For years, I’ve divided erotica into two forms: the kind where a woman’s orgasm comes out of nowhere and we have to make assumptions on what made it happen and the kind where the author makes its trigger clear. I favor the second type. The descriptions are always hotter and more detailed as well.

The most common way Anastasia has orgasms is during intercourse with Christian. There is no description of what Christian’s large penis (of course) is doing inside Ana’s vagina other than moving to and fro. He’s not bumping the cervix with the head of his penis and he’s not utilizing a specific angle to stimulate an orgasm-inducing spot inside her vaginal walls. Just in and out. Ana’s rise up to orgasm is described several times and it is always the same.

Paraphrased, a feeling welling up from inside getting stronger and stronger until her vagina orgasms from friction alone. No direct nor indirect stimulation of the clitoris. Now, if it is possible to trigger the autonomic part of the female nervous system and brain to have an authentic orgasm under these sexual conditions consistently, then it is a very rare capability. One that, in my professional opinion, a given woman’s body and neurology can do or cannot. Sex scientists have made claims that the first third of the vagina is responsible for these orgasms. What I find at fault in releasing this data is they do not state that so many women’s vaginas do not possess this capability when so stimulated.

However, there are other orgasms that can learned and triggered via stimulation of specific points inside the vagina. I do not call these orgasms “vaginal orgasms” for the same reason I do not call a clitoral orgasm a “vulvar orgasm”. Specificity is always paid to the clitoris for clitoral orgasms. We must do so as well with the orgasmic zones accessible within the vagina. If we don’t, then it becomes much too vague and difficult to find one’s way to these awesome pleasures. We humans give intense attention to detail when it comes to so many other important things in life: business, science, medicine. We must do the same with our sex lives.

My next point focuses on the pressure our culture places on us to have and make women have vaginal orgasms. It’s the part of the culture that places sexual expectations on women and men vs the part that demonizes sexual enjoyment altogether. We hear it through the grapevine and locker rooms about this. These sources also fail to give us usable instructions on how to make a vaginal orgasm, as I’ve described above, happen. That doesn’t matter though, you have to be able to do it anyway.

Male ego is one thing that fuels this because at basic levels men fantasize that their erections can do it all for her. They hear their friends say the same thing. In the absence of solid information to go by plus the urgings of ego, men come to these conclusions. One of the pillars of performance anxiety is born as well. There are others, but that’s a big one. It’s the number one reason why women fake orgasm from intercourse with a man.

Both women and men bold-face lie about being able to do this publicly so that they look good . I’ve seen it happen often; even a few times when I know better about the teller’s sex life. I don’t blame the tellers. The problem firstly is with the faulty messages and pressure we get from that grapevine.  The move beyond that ignorance into designing your own sex life on your terms and with accuracy is a big part of what I do.

I also saw in the first book of the series (the one most of us read) where Christian provided skillful clitoral stimulation to clitoral orgasm… twice. All the other times he did it he stopped before Anastasia climaxes and switches to intercourse and a storybook vaginal orgasm. I would ask the author, if Christian is a master lover, why doesn’t he make Anastasia’s clitoris orgasm and then her vagina follow suit for two orgasms? He wanted to pleasure torture her? Okay, fine. You can do that, but not as many times as he did it and it wasn’t said that he intended to do so.

The very first time the two characters have sex, he does simultaneous clitoral stimulation and vaguely referred-to g spot stimulation with one hand. (It takes practice, believe me.) Again, he stops before clitoral and/or g spot orgasm and makes her come with vaginal intercourse with the large penis. (Another assumption made by the culture; and by some women while their sisterslook at them with bewilderment.) Why doesn’t he give her a clitoral then a g spot orgasm? Then a friction-induced vaginal orgasm? 3 is better than one. It’s writing that focuses the reader once again on the primacy of vaginal orgasm induced by a penis.

The author writes this way because it taps into what the female collective consciousness fantasizes about, regardless of whether or not it’s attainable for the vast majority of women while simultaneously leaving out many other orgasm and pleasure possibilities unique to a woman’s body. (I’d add incredibly rich and supernaturally handsome men/princes who can fly helicopters and seek to end world hunger to that fantasy list as well.)  The damage that is done by erotica writing like this is similar to what some kinds of porn can do to certain viewers: set up unreasonable or impossible expectations which frustrates those who expect it to be true because they don’t have or have sought out a better quality source of sex information.

We must surpass this basic level of sexual sophistication. Congratulations to the women who claim with all honesty that this form of vaginally-induced orgasm is possible for them. That’s a great superpower you have there. But it doesn’t help those whose bodies can’t do it. All the women who cannot and never have had such an experience, no matter how big his penis is/was, will discover how their individual bodies produce “vaginal orgasms” through sex life coaching and related professional outlets. Then, as our collective sexual knowledge grows, erotica writers will have to keep up with a new set of expectations. If we don’t, then there are so many more, (and different kinds of) big O’s that are attainable that women will miss out on. And we don’t live forever.

Before I conclude, I do want to mention what Fifty Shades has done for my business. Women and men are coming to me because it lit a spark in them to get better at sex and do mostly the non-bdsm, gourmet vanilla (as I call it) sex things depicted; like simultaneous clitoral and g spot stimulation and hot intercourse. It also shows Christian Grey as a man who takes the initiative with sex, is very into Anastasia and sex, and many women want that from their beloveds. Men want to be that for their partners and also want her to want sex with him like Anastasia does with Christian. Partly out of male ego, but also out of love for women and creating great things for the women in their lives. These are the best things about the Fifty Shades trend and I’m very happy to help my clients create that in their lives.