Sexual Health.

In my experience, sex is every bit as good as they say it is. Here's my take on understanding it and making it better. If this writing comes from a pleasure-focused and heterocentric perspective, it's not because I think sex is a risk-free activity or that alternate orientations are any less important; I've simply written from my own experience. The focus is on safe, loving, and hot hetero sex because that's what I know and love.

The Human Body.

The human body is a beautiful thing, and good sex enjoys every inch of it. While the combination of penis and vagina is amazing to say the least, the whole body should be caressed, kissed, massaged, warmed and made to tingle... and really excellent sex goes beyond the body, bringing healing and joy to the mind and the emotions as well. Whether it's slow and sensual or passionate and dynamic, good sex is all about engaging the mind and exploring the body. When giving pleasure feels as good as receiving it, it all becomes twice as much fun. When you approach sex with a positive attitude, a sense of humour, and an uninhibited love for feeling good, it will be the natural, healthy, and amazingly fun thing that it should be.

Fitness for Lovers.

The following section all about training the body for sex. It's important to note that physical fitness, or even good physical technique, are no substitutes for a sensual intuition, good communication, or a love of pleasure that's as uninhibited as possible. On the other hand, exercises like these will make your body more well-suited for sex. Many men and women who follow an otherwise well-balanced exercise program fail to improve their sexual and reproductive function, perhaps because of overconfidence in or discomfort with their intimate anatomy. This is foolish not only because well-balanced full-body fitness is the ideal, but because making love, and making children, are two of the most powerful experiences this life has to offer.

General Health.

At a very simple level, better health makes for better sex. A healthy diet, regular exercise and abstinence from bad habits will greatly improve one's energy level, and thus increase sex drive, male potency, feminine responsiveness, and mutual enjoyment. Flexibility is a particularly sexy quality in a woman, and women seem to be innately drawn to yin style activites, such as yoga and pilates, that develop it. Men on the other hand are drawn to yang style activites like weight training and martial arts, and these develop strength that many women love to see and feel. The ideal training program for people of either sex includes both yin and yang elements, and functional strength, flexibility and cardiovascular health are all practical for everyone. Good muscle tone and healthy weight are potent aphrodisiacs, although for many sensitive beings, anorexic and/or musclebound caricatures of women and men are not especially attractive. It is probably enough to say that better health makes for greater physical attractiveness, better sexual function, and a host of other good things.

The Pelvic Floor.

A healthy pelvic floor is widely regarded as one of the key elements of a top-notch sex life. The pelvic floor or pubococcygeus (PC) muscles are those that tense and relax so enjoyably during orgasm. They are located rather intimately, close the genitals, and can be identified by halting a flow of urine mid-stream. For a man, strengthening the PC muscles will prolong and intensify orgasm, increase potency, and condition the penis to accept more blood, thereby enlarging it. Learning to relax them during sex will delay male orgasm indefinitely. For a woman, pelvic floor exercises will increase genital sensitivity, orgasm frequency, and orgasm intensity, and may eventually enable her to perform pompoir, a reportedly incredible squeezing and massaging of the penis within the vagina. Exercising the PC muscles can have therapeutic effects for people of either sex. Instructions for these exercises (usually known as Kegels, after a doctor who prescribed them to ease childbirth) can be found here, here, or here.

The "love muscle" exercises of either sex can be done at any time, and are a productive way to spend time in traffic. The basic motion is simply to contract, possibly hold, and finally relax them. As expertise develops, longer, harder and more contractions become possible, and resistance can be added with the elastic band of one's boxers (men), a friendly cylindrical object (women) or one's hand and fingers (both). Women become able to contract at different depths within the vagina, and men become able to distinguish between the front and rear muscles of the pelvic floor, which can be used for different purposes. It is helpful to synchronize one's breath with the exercise, inhaling upon contraction, gently holding the breath with a sustained contraction, and relaxing with exhalation. Full relaxation between contractions is especially important for men, as it sets the pattern for relaxation during sex and builds awareness and control in the pelvic floor area.

Male kegels are ideally done while erect, unclothed, and lying down comfortably. A good test of sexual energy is to try and acheive an erection without anything touching the penis. Repeated hard kegels can lead to a great solo orgasm and can be used for that purpose, but the exercises work best when orgasm is avoided, and care should be taken not to consistently associate the exercises with ejaculation. A good kegel contraction, with sufficient energy behind it, will cause the head of the penis to enlarge significantly as the blood runs in. To exaggerate this effect, gently squeeze the base of the penis as you relax a contraction, slowly pull your hand up the shaft as if it were a tube of toothpaste, and release your hand as you contract again.

Hsi Lai's book The Sexual Teachings of the Jade Dragon includes instructions for nine lingam exercises that are absolutely excellent. Out of respect for Lai's work and his copyright I won't recount them here, but the book is certainly worth reading.

Other Exercises.

The following is a simple yogic exercise that will increase pelvic mobility and help energy flow more freely through the area. Come into table pose, on your hands and knees with your wrists directly under your shoulders and your knees directly under your hips. Exhale as you round your back into cat pose: that is, simultaneously tighten your lower abs to pull your navel towards your spine, tilt your tailbone down and push your pubus forward, and round your back to bring your shoulders toward your hips. Next, inhale and arch your back into dog pose, raising your head and buttocks in the air, tilting your tailbone up towards your spine, and pushing your belly gently towards the floor. Exhale back into cat pose and begin again, performing this basic cat & dog tilt several times. The next step is to lower your hips towards your heels during the dog pose, and to push them forwards during the cat pose. Finally, begin to make big circles both ways with your hips, passing through the same positions where you changed direction on the last step. Remember to tilt your tailbone and breathe as before. The flow of energy during this exercise can be subtly but powerfully arousing; enjoy that and perhaps see where it leads you.

For men (and women) who enjoy giving cunnilingus, strength and endurance of the tongue is helpful. The simplest and most effective tongue exercise is to fill your mouth with water and swish it forward repeatedly with your tongue. You can also press your tongue hard against various parts of your mouth, meanwhile moving it around or relaxing and contracting it. Advice on actual cunnilingus is given here.

While disciplined improvement of one's body will tend to improve sex, it is not nearly as important as one's mental attitude. Paying loving attention to both bodies, being undistracted by other concerns, sharing pleasure rather than taking it, and loving how fun it all is, will make sex more rewarding and enjoyable than any of the physical preparations mentioned above.

Respect & Empathy.

It's sometimes believed that people who save sex for a committed relationship are morally good, and that people who enjoy casual sex are not. In my opinion, sex is only immoral if one partner seeks their own pleasure at the expense of the other. As long as one's partner is respected and mutual pleasure is the goal of the encounter, there is no reason why casual sex needs to be demeaning, unrewarding, or in any way unhealthy. That being said, intimate relationships offer emotional, spiritual, and sexual benefits that casual encounters do not. In either case, it is very important to treat one's lover with respect and with empathy (neither of which is incompatible with BDSM) to ensure that sex is a positive experience for both of the participants.

Fantasy vs. Reality.

Thanks to the mainstrem media, we are bombarded with images of women who are underweight, good-looking, and barely distinguishable from each other. This imagery can desensitize men to real beauty, and make real women feel inadequate. Sexual responsiveness is also idealized via pornography, creating another set of unrealistic expectations. This whole complex breaks down when people of either gender realize that real beauty is about health and happiness, rather than make-up and marketing. Men begin to see appreciate all the different ways, physical or not, that a woman can be beautiful. Women begin to accept and love themselves for who they are, and they learn that greater beauty, which is not everything in life, is a matter of smiling more and being healthier rather than skinnier. When we choose reality over fantasy, people of both genders learn to love real human bodies, and better sex is the result.

This is not to say that fantasy has no place in one's sex life. Thinking about an upcoming rendezvous can build sexual energy to intense levels, and a woman having sexy thoughts can be well along the path to orgasm before her partner arrives. Fantasizing about different acts will encourage inventiveness, and if one lover is communicative and the other is accommodating, new levels of satisfaction and some very hot discoveries can be made. Fantasizing about other people is only useful to increase sexual energy, and tends to be either a symptom or a cause of waning sexual attraction. A healthier alternative is to magnify the attractive qualities of one's lover in one's mind, making her beautiful breasts even softer and smoother, or his sensual kissing even more erotic. This builds sexual energy along with love and appreciation, and tends to strengthen the bonds of a committed relationship.

Finally, our society promotes many wrongheaded ideas about sex, many of which are overcome when one loses their virginity, but some of which linger on. To begin with, sex is not a clean and sterile affair, nor should it be. Sex deals intensely with the human body, which sweats and menstruates and uses the washroom, and while good hygiene is essential, it must be accompanied with a lighthearted and tolerant attitude towards bodily fluids and odours. Also, not every sexual encounter is going to be completely amazing. Even the most well-trained bodies don't always work the way we want them to, and the occassional instance of clumsiness, quick ejaculation or unresponsiveness should not be taken too seriously. In general, if you can't laugh at sex or you're afraid to make a mess, you're going to cause yourself or your lover some trouble.

Intimacy.

As mentioned earlier, the best sex has a mental and emotional dimension that makes it much more rewarding and pleasurable than strictly physical love-making. There is a lot to be said for feeling completely comfortable with each other, for being able to read each other so well that an almost telepathic communication takes place during sex, and every little desire can be fulfilled. Having said that, not everyone is looking for intimacy at every point in their lives, and that's completely valid. Intimate relationships always carry a danger of stagnation, and one must try to see one's lover with beginner's eyes, with wonder and awareness of a changing and beautiful person. This combination of familiarity and freshness can lead to sex that is comfortable and uninhibited, and yet passionate and intense... another example of yin and yang coming together to create something beautiful.

Good communication is essential for a successful relationship, and that is as true for a couple's sex life as it is anywhere else. Talk about your sex life: what you like doing or having done, what you'd to see like more of, what you might have issues with. For more advice on communication, see the section on love and relationships. If you're talking about how amazing something feels and how much you love something, you might as well be doing it while you talk. =)

The next section is all about foreplay, from kissing and touching to oral and manual sex.