Every day I hear from frustrated women about their sex lives, and overwhelmingly
they want to know: Is it really over after menopause? My answer, much like
Dr. Christiane Northrup’s, is Absolutely not!
Menopause is actually the perfect time to explore and achieve what you want
in the bedroom. And not surprisingly, what you learn will help your partner as well.
Our culture often sends the message that sex is about pleasing a man, so it’s
no wonder that when women reach menopause, their sex drive fizzles out — they’re
sick of doing everything for everyone else! Menopause is about finding
out what makes you happy — and this should not exclude your sex life. According
to Dr. Northrup, “...a turned-on woman who is having fun and enjoying her
life is a blessing to the entire universe.” And both Dr. Northrup and I have
literally seen marriages and relationships turned around when couples spend time
exploring what turns a woman on.
Come join my longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Northrup, and me for a healthy,
much-needed discussion about sex and menopause. We’ll take a closer look at
some of the breakthrough ideas presented in her new book, The Secret Pleasures of Menopause,
and learn about the endless possibilities women have for great sex during and after
menopause.
Libidos large and small
MP: One thing I often hear in my practice and from the newsletter
community is that women feel so incredibly discouraged by low libido. They feel
like there are no good solutions. And on top of that, women feel demoralized by
the implications of menopause.
CN: Well, our libido is our life force. It reflects the degree
to which we are tapped in to the creative life force of the planet. And in the physical
body, when you have sex, there is potential for conceiving and participating directly
in this creative life force. This is orgasmic. It results in moisture and fluids
and allowing oneself to surrender to a force that’s bigger than oneself.
So why does libido go underground? It is because women have been so confused, and
because the sexual revolution took place according to male values. Heterosexual
women have been taught that our job is to get a man up and off! That it’s
not our job to find out about ourselves and our own sexuality.
A woman gets to a certain age — maybe 45 — and she has been having sex
not on her terms, but on terms she’s learned from the culture that have nothing
to do with her own sexual needs, wants, desires, or her own sexual equipment. So
her inner wisdom arises toward midlife, and every person who comes to you or who
has come to me discouraged is actually on the verge of a breakthrough because her
body is saying, I will no longer have sex in a way that does not celebrate me or
that does not replenish me.
MP: It’s so true. So how can women begin getting in touch
with themselves, to better understand what will celebrate and replenish them?
Did you know...?
- The clitoris has about 8000 nerve endings.
- The clitoris is connected to the G spot, or the sacred spot, which also has thousands
upon thousands of nerve endings.
- The clitoral system has as much erectile tissue or more than the male penis, except
that it’s embedded within the pelvis.
CN: What I specifically wanted to get across in The Secret Pleasures of Menopause
is that women are multiorgasmic by nature and are capable of unlimited amounts of
pleasure. But they are simply unawakened to what is possible with their bodies.
And the only way they’re going to awaken that area is to be willing to move
through the messages that are stored throughout their bodies and in their brains
about what is proper and what isn’t.
You and I both know, because we’ve spent so much time literally in a woman’s
pelvis, there are only two places in this culture where it’s okay to look
at yourself or have someone else look at your pelvis. One is in the clinical office,
while having a pelvic exam
and Pap smear. The other is while having sex with the appropriate partner.
But, believe it or not, it’s still not okay for a girl to look at this area
of her body and admire it, and get to know how beautiful it is to look at herself
when she’s turned on, to see the clitoris come out of the hood, to explore
the sacred spot with her finger, or to do what the Taoists call self-cultivation.
Our culture calls it
masturbation, which is a word associated with shame.
You know when you do a pelvic exam, that the minute you put the speculum in, you’re
right in the soul of a woman’s body. You’re right where she stores all
of her pain.
MP: Yes. I’ve seen so many women literally writhing on the
exam table because of past sexual experiences, and even pain from childhood that
hasn’t been addressed.
CN: If a woman is willing to take the time, by herself, to awaken
this area through self-pleasuring, through talking nicely to this area of her body,
to beginning to see it as a power center, she can turn all that around. So here
we are with all the major drug companies trying to come up with the pink Viagra
for women. The pink Viagra is actually between our ears, and you can learn how to
turn yourself on, and to use your creative orgasmic energy to improve your health
and improve your life. But the first thing it takes — and this takes enormous
courage — is saying Yes to yourself and No to sexual encounters that simply
don’t work for you.
“The pink Viagra is actually between our ears...”
I believe the reason women are so discouraged is because they don’t know they’re
sitting on a throne of gold and that they are in fact erotically intact. Everything’s
fine there! They just haven’t been paying any attention, or the right kind
of attention, to that area.
I look at the number of women who’ve had hysterectomies and the number who’ve
had their ovaries removed, or have had radiation, or are on antidepressant medication
— all of this can interfere with libido. But here’s the good news: when
you decide that libido is important to you, that it is your life force, you can
actually learn how to increase your libido simply with your intent.
MP: Do you think what turns us on becomes different in menopause?
I mean, does what turned us on at 20, change at 50?
CN: No. I think that what turns us on at 11 is the same as what
turns us on at 50. But we’ve suppressed it. See, there’s one thing that’s
quite wonderful about turning 50: it’s the beginning of “My give-a-damn
is busted!”
MP: Agreed! So what about those women whose sex drive really soars
at menopause, but their partner’s is really low?
CN: As Dr. Oz said on the Oprah Show, “The penis is the dipstick
of men’s health.” And what I love about that line, Marcelle, is —
do you recall when we were doing all that HPV testing in the old days? And we decided
we would have a “dip-dick clinic” because no one was testing for HPV
in men; so we were going to dip their penises in acetic acid to show that HPV wasn’t
being harbored only in women.
MP: I remember very well...
CN: So when Dr. Oz said the penis was the dipstick of men’s
health, I just died. I loved it, and it sort of brought my life together in one
seamless circle.
But anyhow, what we know for sure is that if you’ve got to use Viagra, you’ve
already got cardiovascular disease. The blood vessels in the penis are simply reflecting
what’s going on in the rest of the body. The good news is, men do not need
a penis to pleasure a woman. And it’s very important to a man’s self-esteem
that he know how to pleasure a woman.
In Steve and Vera Bodansky’s book, The Illustrated Guide to Extended Massive Orgasm,
they have very explicit directions on how you can teach an extended, massive orgasm,
and how you can bring a woman to that state where she is simply enjoying pleasure
for as long as she wants using only manual stimulation. I think that the penis has
been overrated, and that oral sex or use of the fingers often does a much better
job. And many men will tell you that they are more rejuvenated by bringing their
partner to ecstasy than by their own pleasure.
Testosterone for low sex drive
MP: We know that testosterone plays a major role in libido for
both women and men, and some women may be deficient in it. What do you think about
women with a low sex drive taking testosterone?
CN: I think that is the most interesting question. Because if you
read all the literature and you put it all together, you find that the studies on
giving testosterone are mixed. Here’s what I think: Low testosterone is a
symptom of adrenal burnout. And I noticed in your book, The Core Balance Diet,
you talk a lot about adrenal burnout. Thank God. Because to me, it is the overstressed
adrenals, from the fight-or-flight reaction, that are pumping out cortisol and epinephrine
for years and years. Then, when the ovaries start to change function, you don’t
have any reserve anymore. When you can heal the adrenals, you don’t need nearly
as much exogenous hormone therapy because the body itself will naturally begin to
make those hormones.
We know from Roland McCraty’s work with the Institute of Heart Math that when you learn
how to think with your heart, and you learn how to change the beat-to-beat variability
of your heart through appreciation, you actually increase your DHEA levels —
and that’s the precursor for testosterone.
No sex is okay with me
MP: I’m sure that over the years you and I both have had
patients who’ve said, “I am not interested in sex; I haven’t thought
about it in years, and I’m in a marriage where both of us are okay with that.”
What do you have to say to those people, Chris?
CN: I think that is a fantastic question. What I’d say to
that is yes, you can go to McDonald’s and have a burger with fries and a milkshake
every day, but when you call that “eating well” and when you call that
partaking of the culinary pleasures and delights of the world, then you are sadly
missing out on the gourmet meals that are available with a little imagination and
a little thought.
But it’s up to the woman to heat things up in this area. A man goes along
with what’s going on with a woman because his penis is a barometer of her
turn-on. What turns on a man is a turned-on woman, which is why the perennial “lesbian
fantasy” keeps coming up in sit-coms. Because when men see two women together,
it’s double the turn-on.
Some of Dr. Northrup’s suggestions for “turning it on”
- Rent a DVD on the art of striptease.
- Take a belly dancing class.
- Rent some erotic movies (not porn).
- Start an erotic book club with other women.
So what the woman has to do — and this requires some self-esteem and willingness
to take a risk — is go back to the things that would normally turn her on
but which she has talked herself out of. And that would be maybe getting a little
DVD course on the art of striptease, or taking a belly dance course, or renting
some erotic movies. Not porn. Porn turns off women because they know that it’s
a “power-over” thing, and that’s not a turn on.
But what is truly erotic is life force, and when a woman decides she’s going
to do this for herself, she can rejuvenate the marriage. Here’s the truth:
we know that those who have an active sex life live longer, because turning on the
so-called lower chakras illuminates everything. Most women after menopause live
from the heart up; it’s like they’ve been taught, the rest of the body
goes to sleep now, and so it’s dormant. But we know that sexual energy never
goes away and that you can cultivate it.
Sex is the ultimate life force, but it can be scary to let go and surrender. On
the other hand, when you allow yourself to work through the pain that’s stored
in this area, you can break through into enormous bliss, and that is what the book
The Art of Conscious Loving, by Carolyn and Charles
Muir, is all about. They actually give very specific instructions for couples to
work with. And it will take a woman saying to the man, “I would like to do
this, and I would love to have you join me.” What I’ve found is that
men are usually more than open to this. They’ve been waiting for an invitation.
MP: These are great reminders about
igniting sensuality, as well as igniting other areas of our lives. We have
to be mindful of and open to what works to solve the things that aren’t working.
CN: Let me share the story of one of my colleagues. She attended
Mama Gena’s
School of Womanly Arts, having already gone to a lawyer to file for divorce.
She had separated the finances. She was ready to go, and I suggested that she take
the course simply because, if she was going to be a divorced single mother, it would
be nice for her to have some female support and to get more friends and to learn
how to bring more pleasure into her life on other levels.
While she was there, she realized that she had never once allowed her husband to
see her vulva or her clitoris, or to be involved in that area of her body. She learned
as part of this course that the female genitals are the source of life and that
they can rejuvenate a relationship. So, since she had never allowed her husband
to have access to this area EVER, she thought, Well, okay, I’ll do an experiment.
So she tells her husband what she’s learned, and they make a date to go out
and do a little dancing. Then they go home, he takes the baby-sitter home, and she
puts on some music. When her husband gets back — I kid you not — he
is wearing a camper’s headlight on his head! He says, “Okay, if I’m
going to do this, I gotta see what it is I’m goin’ for, right?”
So now she calls him Captain Headlamp! I will tell you that they had the steamiest
session that they have ever had, and it completely turned their marriage around
— by allowing him to provide pleasure for her. It had nothing to do with him
getting up or getting off. This just had to do with him honoring and worshipping
her sacred anatomy. I have seen it over and over, but it has to be the woman who
is going to make the first move. Over the years I’ve had men write to me,
each telling me that he knew he could help his wife, but she just wouldn’t
let him.
Talking with your partner about sex
MP: What about those people who have a hard time communicating
with their partners about any of this? Perhaps they’ve been taught the lessons
from their mothers about keeping things to themselves, and they’re still carrying
those patterns into menopause.
CN: Well you know, menopause is that fork in the road where one
side says “grow” and the other says “die.” In having gone
through this particular transition myself, I can tell you that it all depends on
a person’s desire to change, because menopause, just like the premenstrual
time, or the postpartum time, or the fall of the year, is an open window. It is
an invitation to go deeper. And I think you could say to a woman, you either wake
this area up and fuel your life with it, or decide that you’re getting old
now and this is the end for you.
It’s your decision. You get to have the life force for your entire life or
you can bypass it. I realize many women are inhibited in this area, but could I
suggest that they simply start with some affirmations, looking lovingly at themselves
in a mirror.
And there’s another part. We’ve been taught that you never discuss sex
with other women, other than to complain. And one of the things I learned at Mama
Gena’s School of Womanly Arts in New York City was that when a bunch of women
get together and egg each other on in this area, the other women become the source
of shakti, or life force, the same force that makes the green shoots come
out of the earth in the springtime. Women have that. We literally form a placenta
for one another, and we can learn to support each other in the fullest expression
of who we are. And that includes our sexuality.
Sex and body image
MP: Let’s talk for a minute about body image. We both know
that the image women hold of themselves is a large part of self-esteem and happiness.
How do you think body image contributes to feeling sexy?
CN: Your erotic potential is there and can get better and better.
It has nothing to do with your age. It has nothing to do with your weight, or how
your body looks compared to models in Vogue magazine. Men stand up and
cheer when I lecture and say, “Men are a lot less hard on your bodies than
you are.” Most of them don’t care nearly as much as women care.
I think the main thing is that, as medical authorities, we can shore up people’s
ability to get it that their bodies are fine, that they are erotically intact, no
matter what they look like.
Let’s say you are in a committed relationship, and your guy looks at another
woman’s breasts and you go up in a flame ball. Well, what you learn over time
is, all he’s doing is participating in the life force, the shakti
available in the world. So when he appreciates her but has made a commitment to
you, you both can admire her and bring that back into your relationship.
When you have a committed relationship, you can collect all the goodies of the world
and bring them back into a primary relationship, and that keeps it new and renewing
regularly. So all that jealousy between women goes away as you realize that other
women can bring you a better product.
MP: You spoke earlier about Mama Gena’s School of Womanly
Arts. It sounds like such an incredible program, but what about those women who
can’t afford it? Is there something we could connect them with to get more
of this information?
CN: Yes. I think that they could read The Secret Pleasures of Menopause,
which has the scientific basis for why pleasure is so important to your health,
through the nitric oxide connection, meaning nitric oxide is the molecule of chi
or prana. It is life force, and it creates balance in neurotransmitters
and increases circulation throughout the body.
So first of all, they get the scientific basis. Then, the second thing is, they
can just read two of Regena’s books: Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts
and Mama Gena’s Owner’s and Operator’s
Guide to Men. These books are very cheeky and very funny.
The connection between nitric oxide, sex, health and happiness
MP: Let’s talk a little bit about the science of nitric oxide.
How does nitric oxide work to our advantage in the body?
CN: Nitric oxide is a gas that’s produced in the endothelial
lining of every blood vessel in our bodies, including all the capillaries. Every
cell of our body is only about one micron away from the lining of a blood vessel.
And when you are doing anything that feels good, or taking a good antioxidant supplement
or exercising or praying or having an orgasm, your nitric oxide levels rise and
your blood circulation is increased. More than that, nitric oxide is the über neurotransmitter.
It is the one that regulates all the other neurotransmitters and because it’s
a gas, it goes through the body instantly. So high nitric oxide levels, let’s
say from clitoral stimulation, will instantly change the neurotransmitter levels
of the brain and balance them out.
This is why, after a pleasurable session — whether it’s a massage or
foot reflexology or sex — your face is flushed and you look a certain way,
because you’ve got this huge rush of nitric oxide throughout your body that
has begun to balance everything out. Ferid Murad, MD, PhD, who’s done Nobel
Prize-winning research on nitric oxide, agrees that this is most likely the way
in which life energy is made into a physical substrate. When an egg and sperm get
together at fertilization, there’s a huge burst of nitric oxide. And nitric
oxide is responsible for the white light at the end of life, too. So I like to think
nitric oxide has us coming and going, and that it’s associated with ecstasy
and with pleasure.
MP: What I love about everything you’ve said is that it gives
women such inspiration and hope, especially in a culture where so many women go
into menopause thinking, Okay, now it’s over. We’ve unfortunately
been taught that men are in their prime in their 50’s and 60’s, and
women are washed up. But that’s not how it is at all and thankfully, you’re
letting these secrets out.
CN: I believe these new ideas are what’s behind the resurgence
of interest in belly dancing, the “S factor,” pole dancing, and the
sacred art of striptease. One of my friends teaches the art of erotic dance, and
I’ve never seen anything that improved the self esteem of women faster than
these things.
And not one of these classes is about performing for men. Not one. It’s about
women bringing each other along. And a turned-on woman who is having fun and enjoying
her life is a blessing to the entire universe.
MP: It’s so true. And then, not only are those women turned
on sexually, but they’re turned on sensually, and their biochemistry changes
and the inflammation decreases and the heart disease decreases and the adrenals
get better — it’s all connected. We aren’t kidding when we say
sex is good for your health!
Chris, I want to thank you for sharing this time with us.
There are so many wonderful things I took away from my discussion with Dr. Northrup,
but I believe the best lesson for all of us is to simply find out what makes you
feel good! When we’re doing the things we love — in and outside the
bedroom — our cells respond by sending those pleasure signals to every system
in the body. Our instincts have told us for decades that happiness is intimately
linked to health, and now we know it’s true. What is pleasurable is different
for every woman, but it’s so worth the time and energy it takes to get there.
And it’s about time you said yes to yourself!