Improving Health through Pleasure

Turns out - sex is good for you!  Who would have guessed?

You can read about the health benefits of sex on the very mainstream WebMD site in 10 Surprising Health Benefits of Sex.

Many of the benefits cited are directly traceable to the fact that intercourse is a physical activity, and so has benefits much like those of exercise.  Some are related to intimacy.  But they're all worthwhile.

In the Sweet Medicine SunDance Path, sexuality sits in the center of the human aspects wheel (emotional, physical, mental and spiritual are on the wheel), and as such is the catalyst energy.  A glance at the health benefits of sexual activity highlights how it can be a catalyst for the rest of your life.

Would feeling less stress, having a strong immune system, and being in better physical condition make everything in life easier?  How about sleeping better?  Or feeling less pain?  Hm.

If you're looking for good ways to improve your sex life - um, that is, immune system -check out The Sexual Practices of Quodoushka by Amara Charles.  It's an easy read, and you will learn things you never suspected about yourself, the human body in general, and our capacity for connection and pleasure - not to mention immune system support.

The Domain of the Earth

I love the midwest: the rolling farm fields, big green trees, rampant weeds, rivers, streams and lakes, pale blue sky (or gray, depending on the day), cows, corn.  Every time I go I admire them all, even take special extra drives into the country.  


But I don’t want to go back.  


And when I return to Arizona, I watch the appearance of the rocky hills, the dry washes, the great dry open spaces, and feel a kind of relaxation, a letting go, a pleasure in the naked beauty of the earth.  I don’t quite know if I love it more, or just differently; but it stimulates a different part of me.  


The desert is subtle in its beauty – you have to look more carefully to see the green, the differences between the summer and the winter, the slow growth of the desert plants.  The midwest seems almost ostentatious in contrast, with its heavy foliage, outsized plants (really – do they NEED to be that big?), lush grasses, abundance of water.  The sky is so wide, so blue here; and when there are storms, there are storms.  I feel more of the scope of the earth, even with the immediacy of the rocks under my feet, or the cholla just an inch from my knee.  The mountains rise up, the canyons cut down.  The earth presents itself.  I can see, can touch, the different layers of rock slicing through the slope I’m climbing.  


The plants live here, as do the animals (and humans), but it’s not their domain – it is the earth’s.  And I find myself over and over looking at this or that rock, or mountain, or horizon, or wash, or canyon, and feeling the wonder of it move me.   And move me it does.  I don’t always know toward what; but is definitely toward, rather than away from.  It draws me, makes me wonder what is farther along – just over that hill, or beyond that horizon.  The midwest never quite did that.

The Importance of Focus

"When you focus on your bad experiences, they keep coming back."

Cesar Millan, Dog Whisperer

If you're reading this, you have probably heard of the Law of Attraction, that "like attracts like", that the nature and tone of our thoughts dictates what we attract into our lives - basically, that the Universe provides what we ask for (in abundance).  It's the basis for The Secret.  Kinda esoteric, kinda woo-woo.  Potentially kinda hard to verify.

What I love about the quote above is this: it is an absolutely verifiable real-life truth, at least in human-dog relationships. What we focus on, what we anticipate, is very likely to come true.  And so through our thoughts, we create our reality.

Even if you think you know...

One of the best pieces of philosophy I've heard from a tv series (Los Hombres de Paco):

"But even if you think you know how things should be, the reality is that things are simply how they are."

Of Spirit and Substance - Stuff

I have a complicated relationship with my stuff.  I love it – pretty much every little, underused, misunderstood, dusty and ignored piece of it.  I don’t want to get rid of it – that would feel both counterproductive (what if I need it later, and have to go out looking for something like it, when I could have just kept it here and had it at hand?) and disloyal (it’s given all this time to me, and what, I just throw it out? Like yesterday’s garbage?).  Just like I have a personal relationship with my truck, for example, I have a personal relationship with all my stuff.  Not that every relationship is well-maintained; but it is still there, and cherished.

At the same time, I have more stuff than I need or really want, and definitely more than I have space for.  This leads to a feeling that my stuff is clingy – always closer to me than I really want it to be – and demanding – taking up space that I would prefer to be using in other ways, making it hard for me to vacuum or even walk around my room sometimes -  and that, of course, signals a dysfunctional relationship (as if it hadn’t been signaled already). 

When my father died and I emptied out his house – which, by the way, was FULL of stuff, some of which I’m sure hadn’t been used, touched, or even though of for decades – I felt like I was freeing up some secret stockpile of energy, sending things out into the world where they could be used and loved instead of hidden away, imprisoned.  And look!  I’m doing the same thing, even with some of the same stuff!  (Yes, I kept some of his stuff.)

Just yesterday (she says proudly), I took a bunch of stuff to be recycled or reused – quite a volume of stuff, stuff that I could say with confidence I would not be using in the future.  But I still have a lot of stuff. 

It’s hard to imagine – but what if, as an experiment, I did something like got rid of some things I thought it possible I might use in the future.  Would the regrets be devastatingly overwhelming if I did indeed find myself wanting to use them later?  Might I forget that I had ever had such a thing, and feel no regrets?  Might the gain of having the extra space more than make up for whatever regrets I end up feeling?  Might it be just too destabilizing for me?  After all, my stuff holds my aspirations, my possibilities, my interests, my preparations, my quirks, my past, my personality – in some sense it defines me, and darned well keeps me defined.  What if I no longer had my stuff to tell me who I am, who I was, and who I might be?

What exactly is the relationship of substance - in this case, my stuff - to spirit, my spirit?  What does it say about who I am, how I make my appearance in the world?  Does it really hold potential?  Or is it more like quicksand, sucking down the possibilities of change?  Or is it entirely neutral - with perhaps my own attitudes about it all being either the repository of potential or quicksand?

Just How Good Is It All?

I've been waiting - I admit, impatiently - for the waning of the phrase "It's all good" for some time now -years.  But it doesn't seem to be happening.  In fact, it seems to be increasingly popular among my spiritual growth buddies!  Argh!

Here's why the phrase bugs me.

It feels like either a pushing-down of or a glossing over something which is actually significant, and which deserves attention.  It's different than saying, "I don't want to talk about this right now," which is straightforward and honest. It's different than saying, "I know things will turn out ok eventually, but man, is it hard right now."  It feels both somewhat dishonest and somewhat condescending.  It reminds me of friends saying they were doing great, everything was fine and looking up one weekend, then the next weekend saying that things had been really bad last time, but now they were better.

It's another politically-correct way of speaking about things, to say, it's all under control, no need to worry about me, nope, I got my spirituality going and I'm handling things!  Distancing.

Tell me if I'm wrong about this.

Presence: A "Lesson" from My Cat

(I put "lesson" in quotes because I so doubt that cats think in terms of teaching.  They just are, and do, and learn. That's what I suspect.)

After visiting a friend who has a cat, I was thinking back on the good times with my own cat, who died a while back.  One of her absolute favorite things to do was the bathtub game.  She'd hop into the bathtub when I was in the bathroom, then sit expectantly, waiting.  It was hard to resist her.  So, most times I'd grab an old toothbrush, squat down beside the tub, and either tap the toothbrush on the edge of the tub or poke it over just enough that she could see it.

This cat was a street cat, a survivor, who grew up catching her own food.  She never quite grasped the concept of not using her claws, and when she did use her claws, she used them as though she were catching food that her life depended on.  She was highly skilled at this, and she did not hold back in any way.  So, it was very important - VERY important - to make sure that her claws did not come near my hand.

The instant she heard the tapping, or saw the toothbrush appear over the edge of the tub, her pupils would snap open, and her body would sink down just a bit - preparing for the death-spring.  (She apparently didn't care that toothbrushes never die - she was willing to try over and over.)  At this point, I had to be ready to move very quickly indeed, or to bleed profusely.

Those times, playing with my cat in the bathtub, were incredibly fun, and funny.  Part of it was just the pure pleasure of seeing her in action, because she was an amazingly fast, efficient hunter, and cat-beautiful.  Part of the funny was the ridiculousness of making my vulnerable hand her prey.  But part of it was the demand to me to be absolutely, fully present.  If I was not, the consequences were immediate and painful - a great feedback mechanism, eh?  And that's the "lesson" I'm referring to: one of the things I learned with this cat was how it feels to be completely present in a given moment, and also how it feels to be completely present with another being.

I really have a lot to thank her for.