What Do Singing, Throats, Orgasm and the Vagus Nerve Have To Do With It?

It’s fairly gorgeous in Sonoma County this time of year and the days are getting warmer. This afternoon I rode in my car with my windows down and the radio blasting. The song was Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got To Do With It. It doesn’t matter as much what song it was as that it is a full-throated, lusty song, one that you have to open up your mouth to sing and open it big. And you have to open up your throat, too.

When we open up to sing that fully, especially songs that have a deep, lower resonance to them, we are triggering and using our vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is a big one. It’s long and it branches a lot of times as it snakes throughout our body. You can look it up on any resource site to understand it better.

But what those research sites don’t say is that not only does it innervate the throat and chest, it is directly connected to the cervix and uterus. What does this mean for women’s pleasure? Beverly Whipple and Barry Komisaruk have investigated the vagus nerve and deep vaginal orgasms in women who have spinal cord injuries. This spinal cord compromise causes them to lack feeling in their lower extremities, thus not allowing them the capability to feel orgasms by other nerve structures. The vagus nerve doesn’t travel through the spinal cord, however. Deep, penetrative sexual activities trigger orgasm via this nerve, even in these women, and they can feel the orgasms.

Here is what I am speculating: That opening up the mouth, chest cavity and orgasmic capacities via the vagus nerve may lead to powerful orgasms and possibly multiples and female ejaculation. When women emit deep, low sounds from their abdomens and with their mouths wide open this can sometimes lead to longer lasting, powerful orgasms and even female ejaculation. This all makes sense if you consider that the vagus nerve connects all of these functions, throat, chest, cervix and uterus, and that when they are utilized to the fullest extent of the nerve, and all of its endings, the nerve becomes so activated that it produces out of body pleasure that is more than the sum of its parts, so to speak.

I had a direct transmission of this ‘action’ years ago from Caroline Muir but I have puzzled over it until I learned about this nerve. During some filming with the Muirs that my husband and I did, I noticed some deep, moaning sounds she had made during her orgasms and ejaculation demonstration. Her mouth was wide open and the sounds were coming from down deep inside her abdomen. Making these kinds of sounds also causes a ‘pushing’ down or out, as in childbirth, of the pelvic floor and genitals, giving even better access to the depths of the yoni. You can even feel this when you are simply singing full-throated songs. The diaphragm pushes downward on the pelvis. I tried copying her sounds and had an immediate experience of multiple orgasms and female ejaculation that continued unabated for a long time. How and why would these conditions all work together to produce such extremes in orgasmic pleasure? Is the vagus nerve the ‘unusual’ suspect?

So, any thoughts or similar experiences would be interesting. I don’t care how speculative they are, I would love to know other’s thoughts on this subject.

Suzie Heumann

Why Does Surprising Your Partner Trigger So Much Excitement and Pleasure?

Novelty increases the amount of dopamine, a neurotransmitter, available to the blood stream and brain. Dopamine is associated with the parts of the brain that involve pleasure and rewards. When we meet a new person and fall in love serotonin levels are suppressed and Dopamine levels are increased. Love is new. It’s exciting. It’s intense and it propels the lovers to do things to win their new, potential lover/partner. It’s a feedback system.

This same feedback system can be employed to re-create intensity in a longer-term partnership. It can be used consciously to up the ante. But, caution is required too because the unconscious drive to keep upping the ante can cause problems. Dopamine is kind of addictive (think Cocaine). There is the possibility that trying to hold on to the intensity will drive one or both of the couple to seek adventures that are outside the boundaries of the other.

We’re an intensity driven society. This may be why we are seeing an increase in things like threesomes, cheating, swinging, polyamory, BDSM and other behaviors. The desire for creating new, hot, and deeper connections may also lead the other direction to the recent interest in Tantric sex and the arts of the Kama Sutra.

Exciting new behaviors, practices, positions and other creative bedroom endeavors take very little thought and can add a lot to a long-term relationship. Some of the things you can try are making love in some place other than the bedroom, changing your bedroom to seem like another place, using blindfolds, restraints and pleasure-inducing items (think velvet, makeup brushes, silk, satin, rose petals, feathers) to treat your erotic skin with new sensations. Dress-up in something you usually wouldn’t, undress your partner to a slow, sexy favorite piece of music, learn a new sexual trick and try it out, wear a wig or high heals or both, have sex with your sexy underwear on, play with each other, under your napkins, during a dinner at a sexy restaurant or do a strip-tease for your lover. Get wild.

Or…sign-up for the Tantra.com Premium Member’s area and create a lifetime of pleasure, enlightenment, hot sex, subtle nuances and far deeper intimacy. It’ll fuel your craving for novelty and will increase your dopamine levels in the ‘good’ sense of addiction!

Blessings,
Suzie Heumann

The Best Sex Positions for Female Orgasms - Part 3

Sometimes it takes becoming more uninhibited to try Rear-Entry Positions. If either partner is self-conscious of their body then that is the first thing to let go of so that both can enjoy this fabulous category of positions. There isn’t a person alive who thinks they have a perfect body.

Gals, most men love looking at jiggling breasts and round buttocks. They aren’t going to be critical if they know you are enjoying every minute of the pleasure the two of you are creating so go for an edge and let go into the experience and the pleasure.

If you haven’t discovered how to find your G-spot yet then that’s a good place to start to amplify the sexual ecstasy from Rear-Entry Positions. There are some good articles on Tantra.com for this. It’s best to explore your G-spot with fingers and dildos before expecting to have orgasms via intercourse. It’s a fast path to G-spot orgasms, once you’ve had a taste of orgasmic sensations with a little sex play, so hang in there. These explorations may also lead to multiple orgasms in women, or men, and possibly female ejaculation.

Without a doubt this is one of the best position groups there is. Your ‘animal’ nature can really let loose! Rear-Entry Positions aren’t always the most appropriate, though. The moment must be right. This is because it’s often more appropriate to be facing each other. Eye contact, breath connection, heart chakra connection and deepened intimacy are all facilitated through facing your partner.

Rear-entry positions enhance G-spot stimulation. In addition, they leave the man’s hands free to touch and stimulate the secondary erogenous zones along the back and buttocks and the breasts and chest, much like the tiger that uses his paws and teeth. Variety is easy to come by in this position. You can adjust the angle of penetration, the ways you move about and the depth of penetration in the basic position. This allows the woman to tailor-make the experience for herself while having a lot of room to increase the pleasure for her partner. It also enables the woman or the man to stimulate her clitoris.

Try this position first up on your knees, instead of having the woman flat, on her stomach. It’s best for her to support herself with both her hands so that she can keep her spine moving and undulating. Make a study of how it feels as this is a base to explore from. Use the different ‘modalities’ of rhythms and depths of penetration. Try pumping and squeezing your PC muscles in this position.

Now, try sitting down on your thighs. What has changed? Take notice. What works for you in this variation when you apply the different ‘modalities’ of movement to the position? Lean forward and lie your head down. This is a good position to stimulate your partner’s inner thighs. You can also help him stay focused on non-ejaculatory pleasure by applying pressure to his perineum (the external area between the anus and the scrotum that covers his Prostate Gland or P-spot). This will help him from going over the top, so to speak.

Keep these exercises soft, fun and explorative. Take your time and enjoy every delicious moment. You are becoming an artist – enjoy it!
Suzie Heumann
Tantra.com

The Best Sex Positions for Female Orgasms Part 2

The famous anthropologist Desmond Morris wrote:

“A group of 27 couples were asked to vary their sexual positions experimentally, employing postures that would allow greater stimulation of the two vaginal 'hot spots', and it was found that three-quarters of the females involved were then able to achieve regular vaginal orgasms.”

In other words, it has been confirmed that becoming more uninhibited and less self-conscious is an important ingredient in freeing orgasms and in producing multiple orgasms in women. Sexual liberation can translate to sexual ecstasy when a sense of freedom and playfulness is brought to lovemaking. Experimenting with even the most subtle of movements, or shifts of a single position, can make a huge difference in getting the right kind of stimulation.

Let’s look at the position from the Kama Sutra called the Splitting of the Bamboo. In this position the woman lies down on her back and the man straddles her as in the Missionary Position. She then raises one of her legs and places it on her lover’s shoulder. Her other leg stretches out to the couples side or she can bring it up closer to her body by bending it at the knee. After a brief time the legs are switched and then switched again creating a back and forth motion that can sweep the head of the lingam across the G-spot in a windshield wiper like fashion.

In this position the woman may discover that one side works far better for her than the other. If the couple decides to stay in that position for a while she can begin to move her buttocks and legs in small, specific ways to increase the friction and pleasure. She can lift her buttocks, shift it to one side slightly, have her lover put a small pillow under her on one side or the other, slide her leg up further on his shoulder – I think you get the picture. There are a million subtle shifts that can occur that will make a significant difference in the results!

None of this is possible, though, unless the woman knows her hot-spots intimately, which is why she must self-pleasure and discover them. Oh, and it takes a lover who is willing to explore and have fun trying new things. Rear Entry Positions are next so stay tuned!

The Best Sex Positions for Female Orgasms

This blog will be a little mini-series of three blogs because this is a big conversation. Surveys and sexuality reports tell us that roughly only 20% of sexually active women have orgasms during intercourse. Assumptions will need to be made about that number because we don’t know if that includes manual stimulation of the clitoris during intercourse or not and several other issues that might skew the statistics. Let’s work with that number, however.

Orgasms are important to women no matter how convincing the idea of being in the pleasure without being goal oriented. Some of the time you can do this and some of the time you want an orgasm, pure and simple. Cultural constraints, modern media, lovers and friends can all influence how you might feel about your body, emotions and your ability to orgasm. You want what she’s having and you want it soon. If that’s the case with you then you’re going to have to know a whole lot more about your body and how it works in order to journey to the fertile fields of G-spot and vaginal orgasms. The positions come after you have the knowledge of your interior topography down and know your hot-spots from your not-spots. Self-pleasuring is the necessary evil! Set aside the time to spend with yourself soon. An hour three days a week should do it.

So here is a quickie lesson. You can find more out at Tantra.com, too. Most women’s clitorises don’t come near to getting the attention that is needed to stimulate that part of the anatomy during intercourse. If any position is going to do this then it is the C.A.T. (Coital Alignment Technique) position (this is a modified Missionary position where the man is on top and he has shifted his body up a bit towards his partner’s head so that his pubic bone rubs on her clitoris in an up and down (head to toe) motion. The other is the Woman on Top where the woman is leaning down, not sitting up, and she is doing the same motions as the man does in the C.A.T. position. That is, she is moving in a head to toe, up and down rubbing motion so that her clitoris is getting stimulated. Both of these positions do not, however, involve much G-spot or deeper A-spot (a spot above the cervix, deeper in the vagina, A is for Anterior Fornex) stimulation.

The first step, in discovering your vaginal, or yoni, hot spots, is to find your G-spot and begin to arouse, investigate and find orgasms through manual or digital (finger, G-spot wand or vibrator) stimulation. You can stimulate your clitoris first as it’s important to be very turned on when investigating your G-spot. Both are very connected with one on the inside and one on the outside, kind of back-to-back. They share nerves, blood flow and vibrational energy with each other! While I personally don’t feel that G-spots like much vibration yours may be different, but I wouldn’t start with a vibrator, I’d start with fingers (yours or a partner’s) or a Lucite wand. I have an earlier blog about the analogy of the upper palate in the mouth and the G-spot location so read it if you want to here. It may help.

Ok, let’s assume you’ll find it and have a good experience with noticing the pleasure, though maybe not an orgasm, in your early sexploration. You can up-the-ante by starting to strengthen your PC muscles by doing Kegel exercises. These will help tremendously; stronger orgasms, healthier pelvic floor, more orgasms, better (no much more) awareness of your body, great sex tricks by you for your lover and a bunch more reasons if you need them. The last and best thing about strong PC muscles is that when you move into more Tantric practices you will be able to move the sexual energy up, throughout your body more easily and effectively. That’s when it all gets really juicy!

So the stage is set for take-off. In a couple of days you’ll see installment two of this mini-series. You’ll discover a set of positions that you can try, modify, and try again to get the best out of them. I'll give you clues and tips for having the best intercourse sex ever.

Creating Intimacy

Doing ‘things’ together does not equal intimacy. Intimacy is the act of showing one’s self to another. It is about being vulnerable and about revealing personal information about one’s self. Intimacy doesn’t occur just between lovers, either. Friends, co-workers, family members and neighbors all require different levels of intimacy. Being intimate with another person heals you and it helps heal them, too. We all want to feel connected, valued and meaningful to others. Scientists understand that it is what keeps us young at heart, healthy and living longer lives.

We think about intimacy as something that is primarily with our significant ‘other’ most often. Having a deep, intimate connection during sex is just about the most fulfilling thing that can happen for lovers. It’s about trusting yourself and your partner. When you give yourself over to vulnerable, open, playful sexuality, sexuality that gently pushes your edges and keeps you taking gentle risks, you see how sweet and easy deepening intimacy can be.

Some things you can do to help create more intimacy with anyone:

• Softly eye gaze with another person for 5 minutes.
  
• Tell something vulnerable to another person. This can be an apology or an admission of something you feel guilty about or a personal learning situation that was difficult for you.
  
• Offer a helping hand to someone and then engage in conversation that is meaningful and stimulating and that revels something about you.
  
• Play a truth telling game of any sort. There are some that are perfect for friends, families and even lovers. Try Dr. Susan Campbell’s Getting Real Game. You can find it here: http://www.susancampbell.com/products/games/index.html
  
• With your lover, try setting up a time, say once a week, when you try something new out during lovemaking. It can be a new position, technique or place (like outside!). Talk about it later and each of you find at least one good thing and one not so good thing about it to revel.

Kama Sutra – The Tsetse Fly

It’s been discovered that if you can stop the genial rubbing of the female tsetse fly then you can slow down the reproduction rate. Duh. (This is important because the tsetse fly carries sleeping sickness in African nations.)

Science Daily reports that: “By snipping off parts of male genitalia and reducing genital sensation in both male and female tsetse flies, researchers induced a suite of changes in female reproduction, including reduced ovulation and reduced sperm storage.

This is wonderful news, though I don’t know how scientists will stop the genital rubbing. How are they going to go around snipping off parts of the male’s genitals?

"The tsetse fly Kama Sutra is long and elaborate," said Eberhard, who described the 30-minute ritual during which the male rubs the underside of the female's abdomen with his hind legs, sings to her by buzzing his wings, rubs her eyes with his front legs, and so on. This sounds great – 30 minute foreplay!

William Eberhard is a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and professor of biology at the University of Costa Rica. "We were surprised by the number of female processes that were influenced by modifying the stimuli received by the female from the male's genitalia," said Eberhard.

Science just doesn’t get women yet. There is a lot of catching up to do! But I object to the name ‘Kama Sutra’. It’s an inappropriate use of the name, don’t you think? Geesh. What’s the world coming to.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090514130636.htm

Fearlessness

“The only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of fearlessness.”
Swami Vivekananda

“Fear comes from the selfish idea of cutting one's self off from the universe.”
Swami Vivekananda

“Fear is man's greatest enemy, and it manifests itself in forms as diverse as shame, jealousy, anger, insolence, arrogance...What causes fear? Lack of confidence in oneself.” Swami Prajnanpad

How does a person court fearlessness? Tantricas are known for saying that Tantra is about saying ‘Yes’ to everything. That’s scary if you think about it. But it doesn’t have to be so extreme. What is a little fear that you might tackle? How about during lovemaking? Find something that you would like to transform, to break through a cycle that you know isn’t serving you, and look at what it might take to change it.

As you get older two things can happen; you can either open up more or shut down more. If you begin asking questions about the source of a notion, idea or limitation often you can make a breakthrough that helps you take the next steps towards creating a new way of being or maybe even a practice. ‘Living well’ is an art form and can be perfected by taking small risks.

Maybe it’s about just saying ‘Yes’ sometimes too. Magic can happen when you stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone. You learn new things about yourself and that kind of experience can make you a bigger person. It creates more self-esteem and allows you to trust yourself more. Fearlessness grows on its self and expands you in ways that nothing else can.

The next time you find yourself about to say ‘No’ stop and ask yourself if this time you can say ‘Yes’ and feel good about it. If you can take the calculated risk then do, say ‘Yes’ and watch what happens. If you do it in baby steps things should go well!

Keeping Intentions Grows Your Brain

I'm reading about and thinking about setting intentions and keeping intentions. It turns out that people who have more self-control have an area in their brains that is more highly developed than those who do not keep their promises to themselves. And because our brains are so 'plastic' it is possible for each of us to increase this area of our own brains by practicing more self-control. Ok, 3 choc-covered almonds, not five!

Why would we want to do this? Self-control sounds like a dirty word sometimes but if you finesse it to harness its power then you have a tool in your basket that can help you discern and stick to the kinds of things that will make you happier about your life and yourself.

A few researchers have discovered that we can actually increase the size of areas of our brain when we exercise them. This is a hot topic these days. Exercise simply means using them more and so the more you might use the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (this is the area that is bigger in people who have more self-control) the better you will be at, well, using it to help yourself with the things you want.

What do you want? Do you want to study Tantra, have a successful dieting plan, add an exercise regimen to your life, grow your business or maybe go back to school? By planning and then executing your plan in a way that helps you to stick with it to make the most of your life you’ll be feeling good about yourself and helping your brain to grow too. By the way, if your answer included studying Tantra then you might want to investigate our learning area Tantra.com’s Premium Membership. It is designed to help you help yourself to knowledge and mastery. And it might even increase your brain size!

We Create Our Own Reality - What Are You Creating?

“The phrase ‘to meditate’ does not only mean ‘to examine, observe, reflect, question, wish’; it also has, in the Sanskrit, a more profound meaning, which is ‘to become’." Krishnamurti

To Become that which you practice is the ultimate goal. This idea then requires us to look at ‘what do we want to become?’ because what we do practice does in fact become us. I am thinking of the times I get frustrated with my husband. He, and I, then become ‘frustration’ unless I hold him in other ways that will counter that ‘practice’ of thinking of him in that way. When I think or ‘meditate’ on “He is so chaotic and stressed.” my guy becomes fixed as those things – chaos and stress. I must confess that it is rarer for me to think of him as ‘brilliant, productive and a hunk’ but he is those things too.

This is scary because quantum physicists pretty much believe that we are what we perceive - literally. We actually do create our world – all of us help perpetuate and create the cultures we live in, the family we grow, our personal life issues and even what Mother Earth looks like. It’s a bit difficult to fathom but this is rapidly becoming common thought today. We are creating everything we see before us.

If this is the case then what are we doing? And when will we wake up to it? Brain scientist and neurobiologists who study long-time meditators say that the neo-cortex of these people is thicker than the average person. The neo-cortex is our higher brain, the part that is the ‘executive’; the one who calls the conscious shots. People who meditate have become able to call on their higher selves better than those who do not meditate. They can calm themselves and stay rational if they need to.

Pretty amazing brains we have. They can grow and change and become what we want to make of them and therefore make of ourselves. Meditation doesn’t have to be hard. Dr. Richard Davidson, from the University of Wisconsin, believes that just one half hour of sitting in contemplation of love and compassion, every day, can add that bulk to each of our brains and make us wiser, calmer, more loving and less judgmental. Now that’s Becoming to me!