SURFACING FOR AIR
HOW MANY OF US grip our sphincter, tense our abdomens, brace ourselves against the world as we walk around all day?
Compelled to keep our bellies from spilling over our waistbands, tucking our tails under to maintain some sense of protection during this awkward stage between birth and death. Seriously, how many of us?
Show of hands please?
My hand's up. I just caught myself doing it while I was typing. Perhaps you don't even realize your body is tensing up, armoring against what's going on in your world, and, more likely, your inner life. Repeatedly contracting these muscles restricts your breathing, blood flow, and your digestion. Limits the amount of oxygen, hormones, and neurochemicals that your entire body needs to function and flourish. Please wrap your fingers around your own throat and press in; until you're uncomfortable and have trouble breathing, it's like that.
Are you familiar with your sphincter? Contract it right now, as you read this. Breathe in as you slowly pull your sphincter muscle in and up into your body - like you're in an elevator and trying hard not to fart. Contract a bit higher... further still. Inhale more deeply as you pull up just a little more. Now release.
It's likely you'll feel a tingling cascade of energy. Perhaps your eyes even brightened a little.
"Jerking ourselves off in the privacy of our own bodies!" Dr. Gil Hedley exclaimed as he directed all 54 of us in the Integral Anatomy Dissection Lab to slowly open our anuses, contract and relax them in unison, by gently raising each contraction higher and higher as you just did. We're pleasuring ourselves from deep inside, while we move our molecules. This conscious contraction and release stimulates and massages our muscles, fascia, fat, nerves, erectile tissue, veins, and arteries in our pleasure rich pelvic region. In turn, stimulates our whole body; and it feels really good.
HAVE YOU TOUCHED YOUR MESENTERY TODAY?
Beyond our own ass, we have over 50 different sphincter muscles throughout our body, some voluntary, like the one you contracted a moment ago, others on autopilot. There's the sphincter of Oddi, controlling digestive juices from the liver, pancreas, and gall bladder, into the duodenum.
Your mesentery is made of two sheets of whisper thin, resilient tissue called peritoneum, sort of like a hammock, and connects parts of your small intestine to the back wall of the abdominal cavity. Touch your belly, and you touch your mesentery. Between each sheet of this supple fabric are blood vessels, lymph vessels, and nerves so your small intestine can move freely. Controlling blood flow are microscopic precapillary sphincters, cuffs of smooth muscle around each capillary acting as valves to regulate your blood flowing in and out of your stomach, intestines, uterus, aorta, even the artery to your right testicle.
There's a pupillary sphincter, which encircles the pupil of the iris - in your eye. You may have laid eyes on the sphincters in whales and dolphins that power their blowholes as they surface for air, releasing carbon dioxide, clearing and filling their lungs before diving down again. A sensational experience of awe and wonder - deeply resonating.
When you surface for air roughly 21,000 times a day, revel in the magnificence of your own breath.
Inhale fully, and fill your lungs with wonder. Exhale audibly with a resonating... awe.
(Excerpt from my new book, Sensual Intelligence: An Introduction to Your Body's Language, available everywhere books and audio books are sold 
Yup...Size Matters
“The intimate connection between a woman’s psychic humor and her clitoral power means that the clitoris must be wired up to the brain – the big brain – before it can sing.” The brain must learn to ride its little rod the way it must learn to balance its body on a bicycle. And once learned, the skill will not be forgotten.”
Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography.
Yup, size matters. Be Mindful, Not Mechanical.
Our largest, most powerful sex organ is our brain. Although you think everything happens between your legs, the sensation of orgasm actually originates between your ears, in the form of chemical messengers and the receptors they bind to. It's like a scene from Star Wars with little ships zipping around and docking in their corresponding bay with this mysterious system guiding the whole magical dance. True, the information comes from the farthest reaches of our body; the real action takes place in a fairly primitive part of our brain, the limbic system. Known as our mammalian brain, this is the seat of our emotions, desires, drives and impulses. It's where you fall in and out of love…or lust.
"Learn to tune your engine. Realize that just like a carburetor, the mix can get 'off' and then pressing on the gas might cause a sputter or a tailspin,” says Stephanie Moses, author of Getting to Neutral. Be mindful, not mechanical. Pull back the curtain on your emotions and thought patterns and their effect on your sexuality and health. How you focus your attention and manage your emotions directly shapes your experience.
Don't be a leadfoot. Ease up on the pedal of your stress response system. If your mind is not allowed to conduct your body in healthy ways, eventually it just gives up on the direct communication and manifests a different route, usually through your body and not in pleasant ways. They need to work together, or they both suffer. “If your body is forced to settle for what’s going on inside your mind—let’s say, negative talk—then your body will live that out,” affirms Stephanie. If you allow the painful, negative occurrences of your day, of your past, or what you predict and deduce of future events to constantly swarm in your mind, your flooding your brain and body with stress hormones. Your system is in overdrive and burning itself out – and you’re letting it happen. YOU are the lousy driver.
Good question. When you’re immersed in swarms of negative inner dialogue about yourself and how you think & feel about sex – you’re grinding your sensory responses down to nubs.
On top of that, you’re pulling the ripcord for habitual stressful emotional patterns, biochemical responses that cause you to hold – to contract your body – so, you feel less and less. After numbing everything all day, you suddenly expect your body to leap into action sexually. Think again. Imagine someone yelling at a child all day and soon enough, that child starts to ignore the tirade, and eventually ignore everything. They check out. When you harness the power of your thoughts and dismantle your stress engine you clear the path for your natural healing and ultimate pleasure network.
“Since the internal representations we make lead directly to our feelings, our behaviors, and which people or situations we attract or become attracted to, becoming aware of how we do that gives us choice”, offers Bill Harris, maverick Personal Development Specialist and creator of The Holosync SolutionTM. He adds, “It allows us to stop creating our experience of life automatically, based on the past and, instead, to create our life by choice, in the moment.”
We think of ‘the rush’ we experience as being from external means – love, lust, booze, nicotine, prescription drugs, adventure, success, stuff, or sweets - however it's really our response to our own biochemicals driving us to acquire them.
Get the Dope on Dopamine
The most important factor in falling in - and out - of love and lust is dopamine. There are many chemicals streaming inside us to create our experience. Dopamine is the neurochemical that activates your reward circuitry, a small portion of the limbic system, which is a set of brain structures that drive many of your behaviors that further your survival or create pleasure. Whether it’s sex, eating, taking risks, achieving goals, or drinking water; they all increase dopamine, which is the juice that you get at the end of the deal. It’s the "craving" neurochemical, think of dopamine as the "I’ve got to have it" ingredient, whatever "it" is.
Look inside this glorious system of yours, acquire a taste for the recipes of your mind and when you learn to ‘tend the fire’ you can cook up whatever your heart desires.
Our most healing, lasting biochemical friend is Oxytocin, stimulated by touch, a warm embrace; it’s our nurturing and bonding reward and catalyst. Bonding is a mammalian program. Genuine communication, dissolving fear, building real connections and gratifying interactions promote and stimulate a delicious cocktail of oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin – that radiant glow we feel when we’re happy and loved up.
"A positive attitude and laughter increase the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. These neurotransmitters cause us to feel good, get things done, resist sugar and other carbohydrate temptations and sharpen our minds," affirms neurologist Vincent Fortanasce.
