From the Book: The Everything Great Sex Book
Written by Suzie Heumann and Susan M. Cambell

You and Your Body

Women have questions, frustrations, and judgments about their bodies. Today, even supermodels may complain about how imperfect their bodies are. If they can't accept their bodies, how can the rest of us accept ours?

Maybe you don't feel sexy and attractive anymore these days. You've gained a few pounds, can barely fit into your clothes, and don't seem to have the time to put yourself together. You want to feel attractive to your husband and feel sexy walking down the street again. How can you reverse this downward spiral?

The Teachings of Tantra Can Help

The precepts of Tantra teach that the body is the temple. To take good care of it and keep it healthy and alive is vital. Our earthly body acts as a conduit for the lessons that life has to offer. Giving our bodies many experiences of pleasure, health, and love facilitates our spirit to reach higher consciousness. Carving out the time to deeply care for your self will refresh your self-love.

You may not feel as though you are in the body you once had. As a woman your “temple” will go through many transitions. Women can expect a multitude of changes in a lifetime like puberty, pregnancy, nursing, going back to normal size, then pregnancy again, and middle age weight gain, and on and on. Hormones rage and shapes change and all of this occurs in a society that holds 20 year olds with model bodies at the forefront.

You could go out and buy a new dress or you could focus on what is inside. That is your jewel. When you attain a balance of mood, inner happiness, and security you will glow on the outside. Consider taking up a practice of yoga. Not only is it great exercise and a good skin rejuvenator but it teaches us to bring our outer lives inward. Your life will feel more in balance and you will look more alive. Then your inner self will reflect the real you on the outer plane.

Cultivate Your Sexual Juice

If you can carve out a little time for yourself close your bedroom door and dance. Try belly dancing. It’s becoming very popular, is great exercise but it’s best attribute is that it will get you into the body you do have and will give you some new-found sexual juice. Grind your hips, smile, and think sexy. Don’t be critical. There’s no use in that. It serves no purpose but to alienate us from our selves.

Create a ritual that you invite your husband to. Set out candles, pillows, and maybe a small altar. Set an intention for yourself. This is not going to be a sexual ritual, though it may turn that way. This is intended to be a vulnerable truth telling ritual. Speak from your heart about the fears you have expressed in your question. It is likely that he will express some similar ones about himself and the two of you may well have the best talk you have had in years.

Invite him to learn some new sensual and sexual things with you. Touch techniques including the use of a blindfold to remove our strongest sense - that of sight - help to add aliveness to our sexual encounters. Intimacy techniques like eye gazing and deep breathing together create opportunities for seeing beyond the superficial body.

Try some new sexual positions from the Kama Sutra. Don’t worry about how you look. Let yourself go into the pleasure. That is what your husband will notice. Remember – you can be the Sacred Slut and the Goddess – you have the capacity for both. It will turn him on but better yet it will turn you on.

For more information see Suzie's book:

Everything Great Sex Book