TSHP142: Is Sex Overrated?

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Being British, sex isn’t something that Sean and Ed have discussed much (it’s more Ed than Sean). Well, no more! This one was prompted by a listener of ours. Let’s dig in…

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

  • Sean advises you to go to a full length mirror and observe you naked body
  • Ed found an offshoot website by The School of Life – Porn as Therapy

Stay in Touch

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Is Sex Overrated?

A listener emailed in and asked Ed and I to talk about sex and whether or not it was an overrated pastime. A very interesting question.

We live in a sexualised society
In a world that is dominated by sexual imagery in all ares of life from art to advertising it would be easy to assume that sexuality was at the forefront of all our minds. The news seems to be full of celebrities and others influential people who have performed sexual misdemeanours. To make sense of this I think we need to separate the emotional concepts of sex and love and dig a little deeper into how our sexual behaviour developed in our evolutionary past.

The sex contract
The study of evolutionary psychology suggests that sexual behaviour and practise developed specifically and if the theory is to believed was driven by women.

The difference between the human female and all other female primates is that human women are always on heat or in season, they are always sexually available even at times of the month when they are not fertile. Mammals come into season and are the sexually available.

The sex contract is this: A woman gave her self sexually and exclusively to one man in return for protection and food. She would be in the cave looking after the kids and the in-laws while he was out chasing the mammoth for dinner. In this are the seeds of the multi-tasking female and the mono-tasking male, they developed different brains.

For the man to be successful in his role the man would need to have fairly high levels of aggression that might include anger an violence. Now, something magical developed. When a woman has sex and orgasms she is energised and able to get up and get on with things. When a man ejaculates he releases hormones that make him sleepy and more docile. It is assumed that the woman controlled the man’s aggression by giving him a good sexual ‘seeing to’ and reducing his aggression.

The development of pleasure
The pleasure incentive that is created in either sexual activity or the visualisation of sexual activity is dopamine, which is known as the love drug. If you recall in other podcasts you will remember that dopamine is the endorphin associated with all forms of addiction. In this sense sex is addictive and that means ‘habit’. The man coming back from the hunt learns to expect sex as a reward for his efforts and build it into his system. Mother nature uses both the glans in male anatomy and the clitoris in female anatomy to create and enhance the pleasure in the sexual act of reproduction.

Sexual attraction
We now know that a large part of sexual attraction is pheromonal, that is to like the smell of each other. This can become confused when we meet someone in a club who is covered in perfumes and deodorants designed to make them smell attractive.

The following morning when the false perfumes have faded and the real body smell/odour appears they may lose all their former attractiveness. Research shows us that we are most attracted to people whose genome and therefore their smell is least like our own.

The closer their genotype the less attractive they appear to us. It is assumed that this is natures way of not messing with the gene pool and creating genetic abnormalities that happen in incestual relationships and is the basis of the taboo that you do not have sex with your relatives.

Sex and love
When we first meet someone we experience the frantic sex drive that is powered by dopamine. This first phase is the creation of the bond between a couple that leads to the exclusivity of “we are partners”. If the relationship is insecure so that the participants are not sure whether it is on or off then the levels of dopamine will remain high. This usually means that the need for continued sex remains high. As relationships become established and secure we developed relaxed sex that is powered by the endorphin oxytocin. This is the bonding chemical. Couples that are secure and well bonded have high levels of oxytocin in their systems.

Dopamine sex tends to be highly erotic and orgasmic and bouncing of the walls. Oxytocin sex is more prolonged and sensual involving higher levels of foreplay and after play, cuddle and kissing. Oxytocin couples touch more, hold hands and hug.

So, is sex overrated?

I reckon people have sex for different reasons. The old sex contract is no longer relevant women do not, in urbanised societies need the protection of rough tough men as they once did. So, I think that sex can have lots of functions…

  • Physical, stress releasing and orgasmic/erotic
  • Sensual warm and soft, re-affirming belonging and support
  • Experimental, fun and variety
  • Passionate loud and demanding
  • Dutiful, sensible
  • Deeply intuitive
  • Inspirational, creative and Tantric

I guess that to be celibate is to also have a sexual identity and to engage in ‘sex for one’ as a lone activity is also sexual activity.

Sex, like most things is in the eye of the beholder and only truly becomes over-rated when we over rate it. Up to that point it is purposeful and meaningful and great fun.

If you are sexually active, then, enjoy your sexuality.

Take care,
Sean x

TSHP141: What Makes a Good Relationship?

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Valentine’s Day has been and gone. If you were fortunate enough to spend it with a loved one then you’ll know that keeping that relationship on track isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Let’s have a chat about what it takes to keep a great relationship going, year after year…

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Valentines Day – Did you feel the love?

Well last weekend was Valentines Day (14th), the day of love, how was it for you? In our last episode Ed and I were talking about mood boosts and love, feeing loved, being loved and sharing love are right at the top of positive mood, self esteem, raised energy and wellbeing. The magic is in ‘feeling’ loved. Someone may love you desperately but unless they love you in a way that works for you then you simply will not feel it.

In eastern approaches to personality, psychology and the person the various and individual drives of both giving and receiving are seen to describe personality types that I described in the last blog as chakra types. When we share love or use the word love we all mean different things. What do we actually mean when you say love? To use the word ‘love’ in say, “I love you” or “I’d love a cream bun” have very different meanings.

How do you know that you are loved?
What do you want your partner, or lover to mean when they say “I love you”?
Is love for you a simple one stranded thing or is it multi-faceted?
How many strands does it have?
What are they?

It is so strange that someone can love you truly, madly, deeply but unless it is expressed in just the right way so that you are able to receive it then you will simply not feel it, you will not feel loved.

I sit down with many couples in relationship therapy and commonly at some point in their past they both shared their love for each other. The problem that only came to light later was that they did not understand what each other meant when they used the word love. They both felt that their partner meant the same as they did. Later they discovered that they were wrong.

Love, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

It is not being loved that is important
It is feeling loved that counts

Example: A common problem
Woman: “I feel unloved and hurt when you fail to put a X on the end of a text”
Man: “That just feels like you a trying to control my emotions. I only put an ‘X’ there when I am really feeling it. It is meaningless if I always put it there because in the end it just means nothing.”
Therapist: “How about if it is important to your partner to see an ‘X’ and if you do love her and care about her would the act of simply adding an ‘X’ be something that you know would make her feel happy and good. Is it therefore not worth doing?”

Sometimes showing your partner that they are loved isn’t geocentrically based around your need to be honest it is about ensuring that the person that you love feels it. To go out of your way, to put yourself out, to get something or do something that you know will make your partner happy is an expression of love.

If your response to the above is something like, “Well, my needs are as important as theirs and if I need not to put a ‘X’ at the end of a text and they love me then they will respect that”, then you are either emotionally immature or need to be in another relationship.

Once you get into relationships it often happens that love becomes a demand and not an act of giving. Success in relationships come from both people giving it is then that both people will receive. If both people expect love without giving then neither of their needs will be met.

Who is right?
If it becomes a battle it ceases to be love and becomes acts of possession. Think about your relationship and how you both share your love.

Do you need to be told that you are loved?
Do you tell your partner?
Do you feel that by saying it too often that you will wear it out and that it becomes meaningless?
Do you feel that by saying it you are re-affirming your connection and positive feeling?
Do you do things that may seem silly or meaningless to you, because you know that it will make your partner happy?
Do you feel that you should only act in love when you feel the love?

In relationships we sometimes need to fake it to make it. Maybe your partner has really cheesed you off for some reason but still arrange their birthday party and rise above the difficulties. If your partner loves you in the same way they will do the same for you. It is to do with whether or not your love is conditional and demanding or unconditional and giving. In a world where there really is no right or wrong, where there is only a consequence to your action, you need to take responsibility for who you are, for what you do and how you show your love.

I guess I should add that to pour your love, time and energy into someone who does not love you back is like standing in an ice cold shower tearing up twenty pound notes. Not to be recommended.

Suggestion:
How about you ask your partner “How do you know that I love you?” Or you could get more direct and ask them if there are things that they would like you to do so that they would feel more loved.
There are two sides of this coin. You might also share with them that when they do certain things they make you feel loved, unless you tell them already.

Think about this for a while. How do you express your love? Not just for your partner but to the other people close to you. Do your parents, brothers, sisters children, friends, community, country, humanity feel your love?

Love is the magic glue that holds the whole world together. It may be expressed as the law of attraction, as gravity, in the relationship between particles and atoms, it might be in the caring for the sick and needy or it might simply be in a bunch of flowers.

However you share you love, I hope that Valentines Day confirmed the love that others have for you. And if it didn’t there are plenty more days in the year, love isn’t just for Valentines Day.

Take care

Sean X

TSHP140: How to Boost Your Mood

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Up, down, left, right. Our moods are all over the show! Some can hold theirs steady for a while but eventually we all have an up or a down. So how can we level things out? Do we even need to?! Let’s talk…

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

  • Sean had one of his creative resources to share – use your ears, take responsibility, use your creative potential, stop moaning!
  • Ed demands you read James Altucher’s blog – How to Use Heroin Legally

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

How to boost your mood

In the world of mindfulness the acknowledgement that ‘thoughts become things’ leads to the understanding that we are all responsible for our own feelings. All that we think, feel and do will boost our mood either positively or negatively. The point is one of choice. It is only in awake-ness that we realise we have a choice. Up to that point of awakening we are simply on a default setting and do what we do because that is what we learn to be. So when we boost positively, how do we do it? Magically in Ayurvedic philosophy we have the answer to that it is in the different levels of mind, body and emotion that is called the chakra system. I’ll start from the bottom end and work up.

1: Muladhara – Base chakra – Red – Perineum – Gonads – Karma
This is your physical body, the meat and bones, the solid hardware of who you are. The mood boost at the red level is physical health. The mood boost here is to be fit and health. Choices include weight, diet and exercise. It is said that a healthy body equals a healthy mood. If you choose to be unhealthy and over weight and not exercise your mood will be down. If you choose to exercise be fit and eat well your mood will rise. If you develop a good relationship with your body doing a bit of exercise will raise you mood quickly.

2: Svadisthana – Energy chakra – Orange – Just below your navel – Adrenals – Hatha
This is your energetic body. When you add energy to the body, orange to red, you have life. in separation you have death. The energy at this level has several names – Bio-Energy, Chi, Ki, Prana, Etheric energy, Auric energy. Emotionally this is sensuality. It is a world of touch that includes massage and healing but also friendship, groups and belonging, social networks and family. When we become tense, when the meat and bones of the red level ache and are sore it is because the orange energy is blocked or is not flowing. When we get our body moving in exercise we allow the energy to flow. The social interactions of exercise classes enhances this effect. Zumba, Aerobics, Yoga and so on are all group activities that feed orange energy. At the level of a couple the act of making love, orgasm and most importantly foreplay and after play all allow for free flowing orange energy. To boost you mood at this level you need to develop and nurture your relationships and pay attention to the tensions in your body and do something about them, go for a massage, join a club, make love.

3: Manipura – Perceptual chakra – Yellow – Solar Plexus – Pancreas – Janana
This is the extrovert intellectual world of experience that includes words like, new experience, challenge, difference, newness, novelty and fun. When we have low yellow energy we may feel bored, tarnished, lack energy and feel subject to the same old, same old feeling of ground hog day.
The experience of perpetual routine, repetition and feeling trapped in a position or circumstances will create a low yellow mood. Boosting your yellow mood means fun, newness and challenge. Studying, learning new skills, taking up a hobby, reading a new book, meeting new people, when did you last do something new, play or do something just for the fun of it?

4: Anhatta – Emotional chakra – Green – Heart – Thymus – Bhakti
Agatha means ‘the unstuck sound’ it is the essence of self, of who you are. It is often expressed as the ego as either confidence, arrogance, or service, love and care, which is termed ‘Bhakti’ in Ayurveda. When our green mood is low we tend to become depressed, lack confidence and feel a lack of value or worth. Low green also means lack of energy and fatigue and is related to M.E. Chronic fatigue and the various myalgias. Green health comes from doing things that you can feel proud of. It might be achievements that come with great accolades or it might be the simple acts of giving or care. The law of attraction suggest that in giving we attract more of the same back to ourselves. To give love leads to receiving love. To give money leads to receiving money. When we feel in a low green mood often we become boosted by doing something for others. Unattached, egoless giving to others raises and boosts our mood.

5: Vishuddi – Cognitive chakra – Blue – Base of throat – Thyroid – Mantra
This is the internalised mind, cognition and conception, it is the store of information and long term memory. It is also the part of ourself that determines the rules that we live by, our sense of morality and of what is right and wrong. The two things that create the most low blue mood are dishonesty and disorganisation. This maybe our own disorganisation when we are unable to find things or forever turn up late or it might the frustration of the same behaviour from others. Honesty is a huge issue. When someone is unfaithful or let’s us down we can hold that hurt for a lifetime. If we have been dishonest the emotion that follows on is normally guilt and that may also drag us down. The blue part of the personality can easily become fixed. This is the part that comes up with phrases like ‘it is known fact that …’, or ‘everyone knows that’. Such fixed attitudes come from frozen emotion. Often our blue attitudes, concepts and ideas are born of solidified emotion that is the fixing. When these fixed attitudes are moved there is often a huge release of emotion that is termed an ‘abreaction’. Blue health and mood boost comes from being honest with yourself, doing the right thing and living ‘righteously’ thus avoiding feeling of guilt or regret. The second most important thing is learning to let go, as in step one of the live in the present book. While we hold on to past hurts and ideas we are unable to progress and develop as a person. All personal development begins with letting go of the unresolved past – also known as forgiveness.

6: Ajna – Intuitive chakra -Indigo – Centre of forehead – Pituitary – Raja
The intuitive mind is governed by meaning. The meaning of something is the sound behind the music, the substance behind the word, the feeling behind the emotion. It is the knowing without knowing. The heard sound of one hand clapping. Intuition tells us things beyond logic and cognition. The main tool in the intuitive arsenal is empathy. Sympathy is when we resonate with ‘our’ feelings of what ‘you’ are experiencing. Empathy is when we can walk in your shoes and feel what you are feeling directly. Many people who think they are empathic are really sympathetic and are re-interpreting the feelings of others into their own framework. When we have low intuition we have lost, or are losing, the meaning in life. ‘What is the point?’ The extreme of this is suicidal ideation being intuitively healthy is when life feels meaningful and purposeful. Often the key to this is in giving yourself time and value, in looking after your own needs. After all we cannot really look after others unless we feel good in ourselve. When did you last do something for you? What do you do to attend to your own wellbeing? Bottom line is ‘what you feed grows and what you starve dies’. If you want to live happily you need to feed yourself, to feed you emotional, intuitive self.

7: Shasaram – Creative chakra – Violet – Top of the head – Tantra
The creative mind is the tool of visualisation. The word Tantra is often mistaken to be about sexuality, actually it is about creativity. Tantra is the science of the imagination and it is the imagination that is the seed of creativity. In modern mindful psychology you will hear two main concepts. The first is that “thoughts become things” or “what you think about you bring about”. The second is we become what we visualise which is the basis of sports and performance psychology. We are all scriptwriters. Each day when we wake we decide on the day we will have. Before we attend a meeting or an interview we have already decided the outcome. Perhaps we should be saying that it is not thoughts that become things, it is the visualised images that we hold that are the script that we live. After all anxiety is when we imagine a future that may never happen and then live it in the present as though it has. Where as creativity is when we imagine a positive future and then work towards it. When we have a low level creative energy we visualise the worst possible outcomes and then go and live them out. To be creatively healthy we need to focus on those things and events that serve us well and then go and live those out. We are what we imagine ourselves to be.

8: Ashtanga – The whole – White
In the Ayurvedic world these different chakras where considered a path that was described as a. Yoga as in Karma, Hatha, Janana, Bhakti, Mantra, Raja, and Tantra. Each path was considered to be suited to different personality types enabling their self development. The alternative was to study all seven. This was termed Ashtanga or integral. The white signifies the total of all things, like light before it is split through a prism into the seven colours. Each colour is a subset of the whole. The white is the mixed balance of all the colours together. This equates to what we would call spirituality, consciousness or the higher self. It is only when we have boosted and balanced each of the colours that we can achieve or obtain Ashtanga.

Have a good look a yourself. Check your chakras. Which ones are open and working well and which are creating problems for you? The next step is to put things in place that will serve you well, boost your mood and emotions and create the best version of you that thee can possibly be.

Take care, be happy and live in the present

Sean X

TSHP139: The Many Benefits of Mindfulness (the Anxiety Killer)

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Is mindfulness the same as relaxation? Do you have to meditate to be mindful? These are questions that a listener of ours had so it got us thinking about mindfulness and it’s many benefits.

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Are You Mindful or Mindless?

Moment by moment, throughout our lives, we choose to invest our energy into being positive or negative. What we feed grows and what we starve dies. Do you choose to be positive or negative? Do you choose to be mindful or mindless?

Mindful people are always part of the answer.
When you are faced with an issue or a problem, perhaps it is for you or maybe for a friend or colleague, do you do your best to see the positive and attempt to make the situation better?

Mindless people are always part of the problem.
Of course it could be that you are so finely tuned into the negative that you always see the worst in every situation and end up saying things that make the situation even worse.

A mindful person always has a plan.
In response to difficult situations some people just go off half cock, headless chicken syndrome, and simply create more difficulties, because they do not plan or think ahead.

A mindless person always has an excuse.
Some people find other to blame, “it was not may fault”, ” I didn’t realise”, “It wasn’t me it was him”. We can always find an excuse or we can take responsibility for our action and who we are and choose to make it right.

Mindful people say: “Let me do it for you.”
When we all look after each other we can create heaven on earth. When you only look after yourself, to the detriment of others, we only create hell.

Mindless people say: “That is not my job.”
When we leave it to others and we expect them to get it right, then, no one’s needs get met. This is the height of mindlessness and the basis of most human problems.

A mindful person sees an answer for any problem.
When we do not have problems but we have challenges and opportunities, they can then lead to solutions and resolutions – life can change if we decide that it will.

A mindless person sees a problem to any answer.
Some people see that nothing is solvable, and that we only have problems, life is a road to hell in a handcart, it will never get better. This is a downward spiral to loss, depression and desperation.

A mindful person says: “It may be difficult but it’s possible.”
Mindful people never, never, never, never give up. Nothing is impossible everything can be solved, all can be achieved, life is good, anything can be solved.

A mindless person says: “It may be possible but it’s too difficult.”
Mindless people do not even give it a chance. They give up at the first hurdle. They assume the worst from the outset. They assume success is not for them. They concentrate and work on failure.

Mindful people see the past as what they learned, they challenge this, do not make it a habit and move forward.
Mindful people learn from what happened, they move forward and do not allow past emotional events to hold them back.

Mindless people remain attached to the past, become depressed and stuck.
Mindful people live in the present and purposefully and positively create their future. They get rid of the past through forgiveness and letting go.

Mindful people see their future with creative potential and positive expectation.
Mindful people see a positive future and bring it into their present and live it now. They assume that with positive intent all will turn out ok.

Mindless people see their future with fear, anxiety and negative expectation.
When we focus on negative futures and feel anxiety in the present we need to use mindfulness to live in the now and be happy. We can never be happy in the future. We can only be happy in the now.

Mindful or Mindless?
It is your choice moment by moment.

To be mindful, effective, and happy, you need to Live In The Present and treat everything that happens to you, whatever it is, as a wonderful opportunity to grow.

Life is good, if we want it to be.

Be Happy – choose mindfulness

Sean X