SEXUAL HEALING

 Sexual healing is an empowering process in which you reclaim your sexuality as both positive and pleasurable. It includes special healing strategies and techniques to actively change sexual attitudes and bonding behaviors which resulted from the excessive mental or physical stress, abuse, lack of knowledge or wrong knowledge about sex, physical or mental problems related to sex, insecurities, social problems, etc. The process of sexual healing includes gaining a deeper understanding of what happened and how it influenced your sexuality, increasing your body and self-awareness, developing a positive sense of your sexuality, and learning new skills for experiencing skin-to-skin touch, caress and sexual sharing in safe in affirming ways.

Sexual healing may take several months to years to accomplish and you should address at factors like depression, trust, self-blame, anger, etc for full fledged completion of the healing process. Sexual healing is necessary if you have one of these problems listed below.

      Sex not only celebrates pleasure and revitalizes the senses but also has many positive effects on body and mind. There are many medical studies and researches conducted all over the world to identify the positive effects of sex on human body and mind.

      In a single vigorous intercourse you would approximately burn 200 calories, which is roughly equivalent to a fast walk for 30 minutes or running on a tredmill for 15 minutes. The pulse rate increases from around 70 beats per minute to around 150 per minute and this means more blood is pumped to all parts of the body and revitalizes them. Muscular contractions during intercourse work the pelvis, thighs, buttocks, arms, neck and thorax. Men's Health magazine once even mentioned that ‘the bed’ is the single greatest piece of exercise equipment ever invented.

            Two hormones released during sex, dehydroepiandrostone and testosterone have been linked to fortifying bones and muscles, and reducing the risk of heart disease as well as protecting the heart muscle after an attack (by a 2001 follow-on to the Queens University study mentioned above).

            Queens University in Belfast studied the mortality of about 1,000 middle-aged men over the course of a decade. The study was designed to compare persons of comparable circumstances, age and health. Its findings, published in 1997 in the British Medical Journal, were that men who reported the highest frequency of orgasm had half the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke and lived longer. Women who have frequent sex may also increase their longevity through the increase in estrogen, which can help avoid heart disease, reduce incidence of breast cancer, suicide and depression. 

            During sex a chemical called Oxytocin increased to almost 4-5 times its normal circulating blood level. Oxytocin has multiple functions like acting on the uterus during childbirth, stimulating lactation, regulating body temperature, blood pressure, reducing stress hormones and thereby decreasing depression and anxiety (reason why people masturbate). Oxytocin also enhances wound-healing (people who have regular sex heal their wounds faster than those who have less sex). The emotional attachment and intimacy we often have towards our partner after sex is suspected to be due to oxytocin. Medical research has found the highest levels of oxytocin in people who are in love.

 In the 1970s Dr. Beverly Whipple of Rutgers University identified the female G spot, the vaginal spot for female arousal, and he also discovered one of the oxytocin's more potent effects: its ability to dull pain. Whipple showed that gentle pressure on the G spot raised pain thresholds by 40% and that during orgasm women could tolerate up to 110% more pain. Using fMRI to view the brains of women in orgasm, as they climaxed, either with visual stimuli or by self-stimulation, Whipple found that the body's pain-killing center in the midbrain is activated during peak arousal. Signals from this part of the brain instruct the body to release endorphins and corticosteroids, which can temporarily numb the raw nerve endings responsible for everything from menstrual cramps to arthritis and migraine for several minutes. Activating this region also reduces anxiety and has a calming effect.

In a 2002 study of 293 women, American psychologist Gordon Gallup reported that sexually active participants whose male partners did not use condoms were less subject to depression than those whose partners did. One theory of causality is that Prostaglandin, a hormone found only in semen, may be absorbed in the female genital tract, thus moderating the female hormones.

More recent research has focused on the hormones dehydroepiandrostone (DHEA) and testosterone, both important for libido. They have been linked to reducing the risk of heart disease as well as protecting the heart muscle after an attack.

Wilkes University in Pennsylvania says individuals who have sex once or twice a week show 30% higher levels of an antibody called immunoglobulin A, which is known to boost the immune system.

Another research trial involving more than 100 college students in 1999 found that the levels of immunoglobulin, in students who engaged in intercourse once or twice a week were 30% higher than in those who were abstinent.

Another chemical that surge during sex is dopamine, which, during orgasm, flushes the pleasure centers. Post orgasm, dopamine decreases rapidly, while another chemical, prolactin increases, to curb sexual appetite. Prolactin determines the man’s “recovery time,” and is involved in sexual satisfaction, and sleepiness post coitus. This prolactin also causes stem cells in the brain to develop new neurons in the brain's olfactory bulb, its smell center, thereby increasing the sense of smell.

The muscles used during keggle’s exercises are also exercised during sex and therefore there is a suggestion that sex may improve bladder control.

Further benefits to regular sex include keeps people look younger (studies have shown regular sex was the second most important parameter in youthful appearance, second only to exercise); release of a natural amphetamine (phenetylamine) that curbs appetite; reducing junk food cravings and addictive substances like cigarettes; sex improves fertility in women and regulating menstrual cycles and at last sex increases self esteem.

Many of these benefits of sex are confounded when it comes to promiscuity and sex with someone other than your partner as other factors such as stress, anxiety, sexual diseases and unwanted pregnancy come into play.

One study even suggests that seminal fluid contains zinc, calcium and other minerals that have shown to retard tooth decay.

Some urologists believe that in abstinence all the minerals like calcium, zinc, etc are concentrated to almost 600 times that of blood and likely all the toxins in the blood also are concentrated in the stagnated seminal fluid, which may result in the increased incidence of prostatic carcinoma.

Most of the benefits of sex are present only if you engage in sex once or twice a week. If you engage in sex more than this upper limit of twice a week, the beneficial effects of sex were shown to decrease.

Contrary to popular belief about sexuality, you need to learn that healthy loving expression includes the expression of your more shadowy desires as well as tenderness. The delicate opening up of your repressed sexual histories, variations, deviations, and fantasies is enriching as well as healing. It is your religious ideas and the energy built on that base poses unrealistic and unnecessary restrictions on your sensual life or sensual energy expressions. Resolving this powerful inner conflict is necessary for true body, mind and spirit connectedness. Here are six guidelines that can be used to foster feelings of greater aliveness, sensual pleasure and contentment.

 Body Awareness:           

Some of you have depleted energy levels and a diminished sense of aliveness in their pelvic area and a fullness of energy in the heart region. Others feel their heart energy constricted while having intense pelvic charge. This is particularly evident in early intimacy and bonding. Because of the fragmented energy distribution in the body, sexual motivation usually has more to do with feelings like neediness, release, and proving one’s self-worth, than with pure pleasure and the normal desire for interconnectedness. To achieve this conscious, deep breathing exercises focused on the groin can help energy and awaken sexual aliveness. Begin by breathing down to the perineum, that lowermost part of the crotch between the vagina or the scrotum and the rectum. This exercise can be done while brushing your teeth, riding in a car, or for a few minutes before or after sleeping. Deeper breathing of this sort can help lead to spiritual-genital integration.

Pelvic breathing can be combined with the "rotation exercise." Stand up straight, put your feet shoulder-length apart, relax your knees, and rotate your hips in a circular motion, stretching out in all directions as far as is comfortable. Keep rotating, first in one direction, then the other. Lower and raise yourself while rotating. Just go with the flow for a few moments. Subtly at first you will begin feeling a renewed aliveness in this region that is sensual, sexual, and centering-all at the same time. These exercises can be done alone or with a partner.

Sexual History                                                                                                                                                            

           With trusted partner or people, begin a process of uncovering and sharing sexual secrets from your past. It is important to do this with those who are sensitive, understanding and compassionate listeners who could listen with respect. Along with these secrets there is a need to bring awareness to religious and other spiritually infused influences on your early sexual development. This exercise will help put your current sexual expression in an understandable and historic context. Sharing this history with a safe person in a shame-free setting can provide a grounding and framework for your present experience while simultaneously creating a platform for new possibilities.

Dialogue in relationship:           

Encourage yourself to cultivate meaningful dialogue around sexual issues in dating situations and with significant partners. The deepest interpersonal healing takes place in relationship. Finding and cultivating a safe partner(s) is, of course, crucial. To heal the spiritual-sexual split you should always relate your aspects of split to another human with whom you dialog and discover the possibilities of unison exercises.

 Fusion Exercises:

           Combining meditative, spiritual, or contemplative experiences of others with your own sexuality can lead to a new and deeper connection with both pleasure and release, in which experiences often grow from being concentrated on the genitals to becoming a powerful, full-body, kinesthetic event. This can be done only by realizing that sex is a natural act and not condemned by God or nature. The pleasure of sex is also therefore a natural event and there can be no restriction in enjoying it within the safe limit. It is like enjoying a good breeze and feel the pleasance. Like there can be no reservations in enjoying the breeze, there can also be no reservations in enjoying sex or the touch of others and deriving pleasure from it. You should always have realize that religion and its master has created our genitals as usable organs and not as vestiges, only for us to use it in the right sense. You should use your intuition and creativity to create additional such merging practices to merge sexual and spiritual energies.

Rediscover Adolescent Awkwardness:


          Willingness to enter a period of discovery is called adolescent awkwardness. Adolescence is a period when you and everybody become resourceful, adventurous, and with slight disregard for the existing rules enter into the world of sex. You should internalize the sexual-spiritual schism and must allow relationship to grow beyond the conventional religion-sex split based connection. You must surrender preconceived concepts regarding sexuality and intimacy and join another person in authentic adolescent discovery. It is important to give yourself permission to feel adolescent and awkward with yourself and another. It is rich, fertile ground in which to plant seeds of new awareness and possibilities.

Appreciate Resistance:


          The above mentioned exercises may initially bring practical resistance while trying to apply. This is good so that the resistance of the subconscious mind comes out and therefore the possibility of bringing out a change will effect. By connecting with the resistance, and moving through it, you will have the opportunity to distinguish and unravel the diverse feelings and incidents that have formed themselves into restrictive shame.

         It is important to realize that when two people share love’s energy combined with erotic energies, a transcendent experience occurs, one that is often profoundly healing and enriching. Reaching this goal is the result of a conscious give and take, a negotiation of the open-hearted experience of interconnectedness. We need to learn to communicate our needs, desires and fantasies in order to help dissolve shame, insecurities, and aid in the acceptance of contradictions and complexities of the sex related issues.