Are you wondering where you sex drive went?
Does your libido feel lower that you want it to be?
If so, then this episode is for you!
This week we dive deep:
– How to Be Curious about Your Sex Drive
– Pelvic Floor Breath Embodied Practice
– 7 Holistic Practices to Increase Your Sex Drive
Watch below or listen in and feel empowered in how to rev up your sex drive!
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Deep love and honoring and until next week…. stay sexy!
Transcript For Episode 3
7 Ways to Ignite Your Sex Drive
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sex drive, sex, increase, decreases, libido, feel, life, stress, practice, love, shown, partnered, fabulous, episode, masculinity, desire, exhaling, impacting, talk, sleep
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Welcome to the Love Deep Lab Podcast helping you integrate sex, sexiness, sacredness, and science in your life and your bedroom. And now, your host, Dr. Stormy!
Hi, and welcome to the Love Deep Lab Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Stormy!
This show is for you, if you’re wanting to add more passion and fire into your life, both in and out of the bedroom. In today’s episode we’re going to cover 7 ways to increase your sex drive and to tap into your libido and ignite that spark in your life! So whether you are partnered or single, whether you’re feeling in touch with your sex drive, or really disconnected from it, the show today is for you. So thank you for listening. And thank you for joining us today. Let’s get right into it….
So first of all…. I want to talk a little bit about what is sex drive? What is libido? And what does it mean? And how do we increase it? I want to just normalize for you that the studies say 43% of women and 31% of men report some dissatisfaction, some sexual dysfunction at some point in their life. So if you’re listening, and you’re connecting to this, and I can really feel you as well at times in my life……You’re totally normal. Thanks for hearing that and it’s a great place to start.
So let’s talk about libido. So libido is my sexual drive, my desire for sexual activity, my desire to have sex. And it’s such a spectrum, and there’s no such thing as normal. There’s external and internal factors that impact our sex drive and our libido over time. And I think it’s really helpful to look at what are the internal factors decreasing or impacting negatively your sex drive? And what are the external factors that might be negatively impacting your sex drive? So it’s helpful if you start to think of it like that, and welcoming in curiosity rather than judgment, which you will see as a common thread in our love deep episodes. Can I be curious about where my sex drive is? I mean, you’re listening to this podcast, so you’re obviously open to increasing it. And I honor you amd celebrate you for even having the idea to notice what your sex drive is, and how can you increase it?
Another thing that’s helpful to look at when you’re thinking about your sex drive is to check if it is relational? Or is it lifestyle factors that are impacting your sex drive. So perhaps your relationship is feeling strained if you’re in a relationship, or you’re feeling like you’re struggling with communication or expressing your needs, wants and desires in the bedroom? And we have so much more on how to express needs, wants and desires in future episodes because that’s a super deep passion of mine. But just getting curious is, is there a relational thing at play? Is there something you can improve and work on in your relationship that would help increase sex drive?
Is it lifestyle? Things like aging. Studies show after 60 years old that sex drive tends to decrease. But I will tell you, that doesn’t have to happen. We have episodes later about how to keep your sex drive alive no matter what age you are. But the things like age, things like illness, things like obesity, things like stress, which we’ll go into more later in the episode. Things like hormones – progesterone, estrogen, testosterone- fluctuate over life and in different phases for men and women. And that can impact sex drive. So just to bring a little bit of science to it, so that it also helps to decrease shame around it. And again, just bringing curiosity to your sex drive.
So in each episode, I’m going to be inviting you listeners into an embodiment practice. A somatic practice to help us get out of the head and drop into our bodies. These are going to be short, one to three minute practices that you can do along with us if you’re in a safe place to do so or you can listen to later. I will make a note in the show notes of the time for the embodiment practice. But today, since we’re talking about sex drive, I’m just going to invite you into a short practice to feel into your sex right to connect with your pelvic bowl to connect with the place of your power the seat of your power. To connect with your sex – anatomically and geographically.
So go ahead and just close your eyes or soften your gaze whatever feels best to you. Go ahead and just begin to draw the breath in through your nose all the way down into your belly and exhaling out the mouth. Empty, inhaling through the nose and exhaling out the mouth. These next few inhales just with your mind’s eye as you draw the breath and drawing the breath all the way down to your pelvic bowl on wherever you’re sitting. You can even do if you’re standing and just being aware of the sling of muscles that holds our sex and slings within our pelvis and sits between our hips. And it can help to Kegel and squeeze the muscles you would use to stop and start your stream of urine. And to squeeze your anus and just kind of remind yourself, “Oh, that’s right, that’s where my sex is.” Sometimes I’ll do a little shimmy back and forth, wherever I’m sitting. As you draw the breath in all the way down into the pelvis and exhaling out. Just a few more breaths like that. you’re doing fabulous! When that feels complete, you can open your eyes. That’s just a simple practice, bringing awareness to your pelvic bowl and bringing awareness to your sex and it’s really powerful to actually help you wake up your sex drive. So thanks for joining me in that.
Okay, so the number one practice to help you increase your sex drive and these actually arent in any order they are just seven that I really like and believe in. Number one is moving your beautiful body. The studies show that the more we move our body and that can be whatever exercise feels good to you. Increase your blood flow, increasing circulation, increasing feel good hormones. Moving your body to increase your sex drive. A 2018 study showed that the more we exercise, the higher sex drive we have. And even for women, this study showed that the more the improvement in orgasms that we have. So even further frosting for you to go out and move your beautiful body!
The second practice is self-love. And that might sound woo or not important. But it is so important. If we’re not feeling good about our body, we are not going to feel good when we’re having sex, and we’re going to be in performance mode. The research is super sound that if we’re in performance mode, we cannot enjoy sex as much and we don’t desire sex as much. Michael singer, who is an author I love who wrote The Untethered Soul talks about our “inner roommate”, the critic that lives within. how we talk to ourselves is so important. So shifting that relationship with our inner roommate, right? Instead of focusing on your flaws, shifting to focus on your attributes, and that’s a really powerful neuro brain hack to change that thought patterning. And that’s a super helpful tool to find deeper love for yourself. And the more you feel in love with yourself, the more you’re going to desire sex. Pressure is a pleasure buster! So if we’re feeling pressured to have sex or pressure to perform or pressure to look a certain way, that’s like a pleasure buster. And it makes us not want to engage in sexual activity. So working on minimizing that performance aspect.
The third strategy is self pleasure. Make fabulous love to yourself without the goal of orgasm. There are so many more episodes on that later. It’s a huge passion of mine…. but learning to have sex with yourself. So you can do this. If you’re single or partnered. I absolutely recommend it for both. And learning to make love to yourself. how do you want to be touched? what feels good to you? this helps you get more deeply in touch with your own pleasure and your own desires. And then you can communicate that if you’re having partnered sex and that will fuel your sex drive. If we think that sex is going to be okay or not great, or any of the things we may have experienced in life. But knowing how you want to be touched, made love to, kissed, licked, and all of those things, and then communicating that. We find how we our body wants to feel pleasure through self pleasure. But I love the idea that you self pleasure. So go ahead and self pleasure to increase your sex drive!
The fourth way is that stress is a sex buster. Cortisol is one of the major stress hormones, and this hormone decreases the sex drive and decreases libido. So where are you stressed in life? And right now in this place of pandemic times, there’s a higher level of stress collectively, and individually, obviously, also. So where is your stress right now? And what are some strategies you can do to manage your stress? So one of the things research has proven to increase sex drive and manage stress is meditation or mindfulness. Whether you want to meditate or whether you want to just do mindful walking or mindful eating, there’s so many beautiful mindfulness based practices, and we will go way more in depth in those in future episodes. But adding in five to 10 minutes of mindfulness or meditation per day is proven to increase your sex drive, decrease your stress, lower your cortisol and increase your sex drive. The research shows that approximately 50% of people when they’re feeling stressed their sex drive decreases. And so it’s a fabulous question to check in with your partner. Ask them when they’re feeling stressed do they want to have sex or do they not want to have sex? Because people respond to it differently. For some people sex is a stress buster, and for many people, 50% according to the research, when you’re feeling stressed you won’t want to have sex. So communicating that with your partner can also be a powerful in the relational aspect as well.
The fifth way to increase your sex drive is to get enough sleep. When I when we don’t have enough quality sleep, our desire for sex is less. The research has shown that poor sleep or poor quality sleep decreases our desire for having sex. So look at your sleep patterns. Things like just basic sleep hygiene -no screen time for two to three hours before bedtime really helps with sleep and circadian rhythms. And that’s a tough one, right? Because we all can be really on our phones or on our screens, particularly even more so during these COVID times. But looking at your sleep and valuing your sleep and improving your sleep will lead to a higher sex drive.
The number six tip is to add aphrodisiacs to your diet. There’s not a lot of scientific research. And it shows that might be more psychological than physiological. But who cares?! These are easy ways to add some space – literally and figuratively – to your life . So things like oysters, and different fruits, and chocolate. Chocoloate is my personal favorite. Chocolate stimulates ethylamine, seratonin. And even anandamide (which is the bliss molecule) are all stimulated by chocolate. So I treat myself to fabulous, good dark chocolate every day. So adding in aphrodisiacs to your cooking into your diet is a great way to increase your sex drive.
And the last way to increase your sex drive is a really sweet one – hug it out. Even a 20 second hug increases oxytocin and oxytocin is shown to increase our sex drive. And right now during pandemic times, I know our hugs are very limited and feel even more special and sacred than normal. So with who you can safely do so, hug it out every day.
So your sexy homework for this week is move your beautiful body. Move your body in a way that feels good to you and watch your sex drive improve. And then take one other strategy that I talked about today and implement that into your life this week before our episode next week. And I just invite you this week to also think about your sex drive as a spectrum. Think about your sex drive. Get curious about your sex drive, and know that you have the skills and capacity to increase your sex drive, improve your sex life.
Thank you so much for joining us and listening this week. Next week we have a guest on I can’t wait to share with you around masculinity in the subject of masculinity, the masculine and the feminine within each of us and how to cultivate and practice true fabulous masculinity. So I look forward to that.
Thank you for joining us. Please feel free to subscribe, rate review and share it really matters to us. Your feedback really matters to us and it’s really important to me. So thank you so much for joining us and thank you for being brave and opening your hearts to LOVE DEEP!
