Read Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being Online
Authors: Dr. Christiane Northrup
Charise’s delightful experience of flirting and feeling turned on in the presence of vintage masculinity is a perfect example of a profound truth. As long as we’re in physical bodies, we are sexual creatures—whether or not we ever end up taking off our clothes with another person. In the absence of undue shame, we’re drawn to sexuality as naturally as bees to flowers. Flowers are simply the sex organs that plants use to attract the bees that pollinate them and keep them fertile, but they’re so much more than that: they’re part of the joy and beauty of life on planet Earth. Women’s sexuality doesn’t exist solely for procreation. We don’t stop being deliciously alluring just because pregnancy is no longer possible.
We’re wired for sensual pleasure from the start. Our physical bodies were formed through sex. Human life itself is, in fact, sexually transmitted. It’s even possible that the entire universe came into being through one big orgasmic bang. Who knows? What we know for sure is that for most of us, our bodies were conceived in a moment of mutual pleasure—at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. On a primal level, our cells remember the energy of creation: the pleasurable life force that keeps us alive and makes life worth living. This life force is transmitted through nitric oxide, beta-endorphins, and all the other neurochemicals of joy and pleasure. It’s important to realize that sexuality is about far more than just sexual acts. It is about life renewing itself! Sexual educator Layla Martin says the key to a woman’s happiness lies in a positive relationship with her vulva. Pure and simple. And I agree.
Earlier, you learned that your soul enters the body through what Tami Lynn Kent calls the “spirit door.” This is a portal into the “birthing field,” where energy becomes form. When you become aware of the profound connection between your sexuality, your spirituality, and your creativity, you will have discovered a powerful and renewable resource with which to source your life.
What Charise experienced at the picnic that day was two men who knew how to connect with their own masculine life force while also connected with their hearts—and that lit Charise’s
“pilot light,” if you will. I’ve had the same experience dancing Argentine tango with men who make exquisite partners regardless of how they appear at first glance. They may be balding or short or a little paunchy, but boy, do they know how to move with their own sensual, emotional energy, making it both safe and enjoyable for their partners to respond in kind. When both partners are dancing in full communication with each other’s hearts and hips, it’s like heaven. This is the kind of “time stands still” pleasure that stops the aging process. Our bodies, minds, and spirits are hardwired to seek this kind of sensual or even sexual experience, which can be available to every one of us.
Your brain and hips are not supposed to be experienced separately from each other. In fact, your pelvis has wisdom just as your brain does. Awakening to your sexual pleasure doesn’t mean being indiscriminate and mindless about your partners or sexual behaviors. The aim is not to be like the lost young women on the HBO series
Girls,
who have sex often but are disassociated from their own pleasure and wisdom. Nor should you aim to use sex to manipulate other people, because your Aphrodite power is not a commodity to be exchanged. Using sex that way wouldn’t be wise or ethical. It’s like the power of fire: you can cook with it or you can burn down your village, so use it responsibly. Jungian analyst and psychic Llorraine Neithardt, host of
Venus Unplugged
on Blog Talk Radio, points out that the aura of our sexual partners remains in our own energetic field for quite some time. When a woman is penetrated by a man, his energy stays with her for a year, while a woman’s energy stays with a man for a month. Hence, you want to be very discerning about whom you allow into your body—because that person is also entering you emotionally and spiritually.
To trust in the wisdom of your pelvis is to trust your own connection to Source, to the energy that creates worlds. Ageless goddesses own their sexuality and sensuality—shamelessly but also with great discernment. You draw in what you desire. Then you use it to bring forth something new and delightful. Nature doesn’t “use up” resources; she recycles them. You take in life force, enjoy it, and send it back out again in a different form. This is what women’s sexuality researcher Gina Ogden is referring to
when she says that a woman’s pleasure reverberates out into the world, healing all of us.
YOUR SEXUAL BIRTHRIGHT
A fulfilling sex life, however you define it, is possible at any age. Your perception of yourself is what has the biggest impact on your experience of sexuality, and this has little to do with your age. If you believe you’re sexy and sensual, you will be, no matter what your age or physical condition.
Most women have been brainwashed into thinking that after the age of 50 or so, they’re no longer sexually attractive or desirable. Others have been faking orgasms and putting up with less-than-fulfilling sex for years—all because they simply don’t know there is no ceiling on sexual satisfaction and delight. Nor do they know that experiencing sexual pleasure is a skill that can be learned and enhanced at any age. Sheri Winston, author of
Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure
(Mango Garden Press, 2009), explains that anyone can learn to play a few notes on the piano, but to become a virtuoso takes years of practice. It’s the same with sexuality. There’s always room for more skill and more pleasure.
Women have been hoodwinked into believing that the desire for sex naturally wanes after menopause. The truth is that there are times when the sex drive is expressed by going deep into the body’s root system to reinvent yourself rather than just “putting out” for others. It’s not waning, it’s finding a new direction for a time. Women have big sexual appetites if given half a chance to know and express their desires with individuals who love and respect them. Not realizing this, many women are “hexed” by mainstream medical research that pathologizes women’s sexuality. When research suggests that almost half of women have FSD (female sexual dysfunction), you know that it isn’t women who have the problem. It’s the culture that is adversely affecting them. A 2008 study showed that while 42 percent of women had FSD by this definition, only 12 percent of those women were upset about it.
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Mainstream sex research narrowly defines normal sex as intercourse twice a week—an incredibly limited definition. Women’s sexuality is a whole-body experience that is not limited to our vaginas and clitorises. By the way, the word
vagina
is Latin for “sheath,” as in the sheath for a sword, so this major part of our female anatomy is referred to by its relationship to a man’s penis. Regena Thomashauer, leader of Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts in New York City, where women learn to reconnect with their sexuality and graduate as “sister goddesses,” refers to a woman’s vulva and vagina as a “pussy.” Now, I’m not totally comfortable with that word in casual conversation, but I have to say it has some better origins than “vagina” does. “Pussy” is said to come from Old Norse and Old English words for “pocket” and “bag” (for holding money or possessions—in other words, for holding your power!). And the P-word may also come from an old Germanic word used to call a cat—and what’s more seductive and powerful than a cat who answers to no one and luxuriates in her own skin? “When a woman owns her pussy, she owns her life,” says Mama Gena.
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Mama Gena teaches that every time a woman discovers her pleasure—on all levels, including sexual—she sets another woman free somewhere else. It’s kind of like in the movie
It’s a Wonderful Life
when the angel Clarence tells George that every time he hears a bell ring, another angel has earned his wings through saving a life or doing another good deed. This makes perfect sense to me. Quantum physics has proven beyond a doubt that all of us are interconnected energetically. So when one woman awakens to her birthright of pleasure, she makes it that much easier for the next one to do the same. Awakening to our pleasure and sexual power is an act of power in a culture that is sexually repressed or shaming. As a woman awakens sexually, she connects her intellect and her spirituality with her erotic anatomy, becoming a fully integrated force for good on the planet. So ring your bell and invite other women to ring theirs!
We can reinvent ourselves from the inside out at any age or stage, and there’s something especially potent about the rebirth that occurs for so many around menopause. One aspect of rebirth is the reclamation of our sexuality, as we take it back from a dominator culture that says it has no value after it’s no longer
needed for baby making. Our sexuality is far more than a vehicle for bringing sperm together with an egg.
Research has shown that the number-one predictor of good sex after menopause is a new partner, but there’s no need to take that literally. Research has failed to show a consistent link between a woman’s hormone levels and her sexual satisfaction. It also hasn’t shown a link between her age and her sexual satisfaction. So why is a new partner so potent? Because with a new partner, you become awash in DMT, the hormone produced by the pineal gland that makes you feel blissful. It’s also the hormone produced in so-called “enlightened states.” The good news is it’s entirely possible to generate DMT on your own! When you cultivate a new relationship with your sexuality and sensuality, you’re actually connecting with what Sheila Kelley, the founder of S Factor pole dancing workout classes, calls “your inner erotic creature.” You connect with the archetype of Aphrodite as she comes through you. Her expression is unique to you.
No matter what your relationship status, you can use your sexual power to source your life and activities. If you’re currently single and not in a sexual relationship, you can express your sexual drive in a virtually unlimited number of healthy, positive, and uplifting ways. You start by acknowledging that your body was created by sexual energy and is still fueled by that same energy. You are an expression of Source—pure and simple. And Source is flirtatious, sexy, and full of pleasure!
As an ageless goddess, you can enjoy your sexuality well into your 60s, 70s, and beyond. Although it may fly in the face of everything you’ve been told, research shows that older women have far better sex lives than many younger women. Gina Ogden, Ph.D., author of the ISIS (Integrating Sexuality and Spirituality) study and a researcher of women’s sexuality, says that women in their 60s and 70s are having the best sex of their lives.
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A fulfilling sex life begins first with your thoughts and beliefs. As you start to feel sexier, you soon become more attractive on the outside. Both men and women know that women who are turned on and in touch with their own desire for pleasure are sexy.
There is no more powerful aphrodisiac than a woman who feels irresistible and relishes it!
Like many baby boomer women, when I was younger, I didn’t know how to express my power without turning off men or feeling asexual or unattractive. Many women were taught that to be desirable, we had to be weak and submissive so that a man would feel strong and, well, manly. Or we were told that the feminine arts—donning lingerie, makeup, and beautiful clothing, for example—were not worthy of our time or attention. And we also learned to focus on our partner’s pleasure at the expense of our own. Talk about a double bind! Be a strong woman who acts like a man—where’s the fun in that?
In many ways, women of all generations are still in that struggle to own their power in a way that’s aligned with the inner erotic self. Women wrestle with how to be sensual, strong, feminine, and confident in their bodies and self-expression. We judge ourselves relentlessly about our weight, our breast size, our thighs, our hair—the list goes on and on. Our self-judgments and shame turn off the life force within us. To turn it back on—and have great sex at the same time—you just have to know, and practice, four things:
RECLAIMING APHRODITE
Many ancient cultures had goddesses of love, sex, and pleasure—there was Freya in Scandinavia, Oshun in West Africa, and Rati in India, just to name a few. It’s interesting to note that
the Greek goddess Aphrodite, whose Roman name was Venus, was not just the goddess of beauty, sexuality, and seduction but also of prosperity and victory. She was also all about relating deeply and profoundly to life. The archetype of the sacred sexual goddess lived in our collective psyches for eons until the rise of agriculture, when the collaborative societies that worshipped the goddess were replaced by societies that worshipped the male god. Afterward, for thousands of years, cultures around the world tried to deny, suppress, control, and demonize the power of women’s sexuality, severing the connection between women’s bodies and the creative, divine life force. These dominator societies were focused more on individual triumph than on collaboration, and the power of people at the top of the hierarchy headed up by a king or emperor. While this may
seem
like ancient history, we can see the same ideas playing out today, even in the U.S., where some states actually have laws to force vaginal ultrasounds on women who choose abortion. There are legislators who believe women can’t be trusted to know their own hearts and bodies well enough to make the choice without this invasive procedure. You think you’re living in the modern world and then someone proposes a law that makes you wonder what century you’re in!
After millennia of influence from dominator culture, it’s no wonder we’re so disconnected from our bodies and the creative life force associated with the earth. But deep down, we know we’re meant to be sexual, sensual, life-giving, ageless goddesses. And deep down we know that sex and Spirit go hand in hand. In a survey of 4,000 women, Gina Ogden found that 47 percent reported that during orgasm they had experienced God, while 67 percent said that they needed sexuality to be infused with spirituality to be satisfying.
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Likewise, neurotheologian Andrew Newberg, M.D., who studies the relationship between the brain and spiritual belief, has suggested in his book
Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief
(Ballantine Books, 2001) that sexuality influenced our ability to experience religious ecstasy.
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That’s not something you are apt to learn about while sitting in a church pew!