Great Sex, Naturally by Laurie Steelsmith Read Free Book Online Page A

before you begin the exercises, to tighten your core by contracting the muscles of your lower abdomen and pelvis while pulling up on your pelvic-floor muscles, as if doing a Kegel. (We’ll explore Kegel exercises in detail later in this book.) Pilates can be a powerful way of strengthening your core, increasing awareness of your pelvic muscles, and enhancing muscles that contract your vagina during sex.
    — Yoga. With yoga, you can change your body, including your core, from the inside out. Iyengar yoga, in particular, allows you to increase the flexibility in your hips, buttocks, abdomen, and pelvis. It also enables you to strengthen and tone the muscles of your pelvic region. And while you’re expanding your flexibility, it can help you increase your awareness of your posture and lower abdomen.

Your Great Sex Detox
    What does throwing out your Teflon pans have to do with having great sex? As you’ll discover in the pages ahead, there may be many items in your immediate environment that are compromising your health and affecting your sexual energy. Knowing which to eliminate is part of cleansing your body and enhancing your libido-building lifestyle—which is why we call the cleanse outlined in this section the Great Sex Detox.
    If your body is in a toxic state, you don’t feel especially sexy or attractive. You probably feel tired, achy, and as if you have a hangover most of the time. Imagine what your life would be like if you didn’t take the garbage out of your living space for months, or years; that’s analogous to what happens to your tissues if you don’t detoxify your body. It’s no wonder if you feel literally “down in the dumps.”
    By eliminating toxins accumulated in your body, the Great Sex Detox can recharge your energy, boost your libido, promote clearer thinking, support your brain health, elevate your moods by increasing the synthesis of “happy” neurotransmitters, improve your digestive health, help your liver work better, balance and strengthen your chi, help you lose weight if you need to, and more. It can make you feel more alive, and sexier, than you may have felt in years. After following this unique cleanse, many of my patients report having more energy and improved sleep, and say they feel “born again.” It’s about cleansing your body of impurities on a cellular level, as well as creating long-lasting behavioral changes and giving you a sense of empowerment.
    The Great Sex Detox can also improve your hormone metabolism by boosting your intake of cruciferous vegetables, which contain compounds that help break down estrogen in your body. As you’ll discover in a subsequent chapter, you have better hormonal health, and better overall health—as well as potentially better sex—when your body does a good job of breaking down estrogen into its “friendly,” rather than “unfriendly,” forms. (There are many types of estrogen; you want to convert estrogens into weaker, friendlier forms—not unfriendly ones.) The friendly forms of estrogen help moisten your skin, hydrate your vagina, create pleasant moods, and support the functioning of your memory; the unfriendly ones may contribute to ovarian cysts, fibroids, cystic breasts, breast cancer, and a host of other problems.
    The Great Sex Detox is easy to implement, and you can continue with all of your normal, everyday activities—your job, exercise, taking care of the kids, walking the dog, and so on—while you’re doing it. It’s a relatively gentle cleanse, unlike some aggressive detox plans that can be physically draining and interrupt your lifestyle. You should feel good while you’re doing the Great Sex Detox, and since you’ll be releasing toxins that may have been stored in your body for many years, you can expect to feel increasingly better as your cleanse progresses.
    While you’re doing the Great Sex Detox, you can continue taking prescription medications—for example, if you’re on high-blood-pressure