Licorice - Glycyrrhiza glabra

She gathered her findings from a study, conducted by Dr. Alan R. Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, IL.

“One of his studies reveals that women who were exposed to the scent of licorice had a 13 percent increase in bloodflow to their sexual organs compared to a 1 percent reduction from the scent of men’s cologne,” Laurel explains. “Though the exact reason that licorice arouses women is unclear, Hirsch believes that it is either an unexplained chemical reaction in the brain or olfactory-evoked nostalgia.”

It seems that Dr. Hirsch is fond of measuring changes in blood flow to the sex organs. He and colleague Dr. Jason Gruss also initiated a recent study to investigate “the impact of ambient olfactory stimuli upon sexual response in the human male.”

Thirty-one men, aged 18 to 64 years, were tested. Dr. Hirsch selected 24 different odorants for the study. In addition, six combinations of two of the most well-liked of these were also chosen. The effects of the 30 odors on penile blood flow were assessed by comparing a subject’s brachial penile index while wearing an odorized mask to his average index while wearing an unodorized mask. This was done for each subject for each odor.

After being attached to a penile plethysmograph (which measures blood flow), three minutes were allowed for acclimation. Then a blank, nonodorized mask was applied for one minute while a baseline brachial penile index was recorded. The combined odor of lavender and pumpkin pie had the greatest effect, increasing median penile blood flow by 40%. Next in effectiveness was the combination of black licorice and doughnut, which increased arousal by 31.5%. The older men tended to respond strongly to vanilla.

The doctors offer several explanations, but the direct connection between odors and sexual response cannot be denied: “The odors may also act neurophysiologically. A direct pathway connects the olfactory bulb to the septal nucleus, which in turn induces blood flow and erection.”

Increase in Penile Blood Flow Produced by Top 10 Odors in 31 Male Volunteers

Alfred Charles Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956)

I just glanced at my “Trends of Twitter” Google widget and noticed something new. Maybe I just never paid attention, but that seems hard to imagine. Nonetheless, today the top of the Twitterverse is dominated by the following sexual timeline hash tags: #beforesex, #duringsex and #aftersex.

In 1948 and 1953 the Kinsey Reports on male and female sexual behavior shocked the nation by talking frankly and for the first time about a subject that had been taboo up until they broke the ice. The greatest controversy surrounded the creation of the Kinsey Scale, that categorized sexual behavior from 0 to 6, with 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual.

Kinsey said, “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories… The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.”

The findings revealed, “11.6% of white males aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 (Equally heterosexual and homosexual – bisexual) for this period of their lives. 7% of single females aged 20–35 and 4% of previously married females aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 for this period of their lives.”

Kinsey further inflamed debate with his findings that an estimated 50% of all married males had some extramarital experience at some time during their married lives and 26% of females had extramarital sex by their forties.

Despite the efforts by many different conservative family-values and religious groups to discredit the Reports, together they have sold more than three-quarters of a million copies and have been translated into thirteen languages. Many people consider them to be among the most successful and influential scientific books of the 20th century. Au contraire, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male has been on two conservative lists of the worst books of modern times. It was #3 on the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century.

Much of the criticism has to do with the sampling methods and the groups that Kinsey utilized for his studies. If only he could see the sampling data available on Twitter…

Twitter on Viagra...

Karen Salmansohn

Karen Salmansohn is a best-selling author with over 1 million books sold. Her goal: wake up sleepy minds, hearts and spirits… spread positive propaganda throughout the land. She’s known for presenting dynamic keynote seminars (Motorola, Unilever, Soho House, etc…) and is a recognized expert on happiness (in career, love and life) on The Today Show, The View, CNN, CNBC, WB, ABC – pick a set of letters! Plus she’s been in The NY Times, Business Week, Chicago Tribune, Self, Cosmo, In-Style, US, People, Fast Company, LA Times, Phila. Inquirer, etc…

Today Karen is launching a 30-day blog post campaign at her NotSalmon.com – Self Help for People Who Wouldn’t be Caught Dead Reading Self Help.

“Right now I will take up Aristotle’s advice… ” says Karen. “To begin with your final purpose in mind, or what Aristotle calls your ‘teleology’ and clearly state my teleology for these next 30 days on this blog. I want to give you techniques to break bad relationship patterns for good so you can snag a happily ever after love future.”

Her first article in the 30-day series, posted today covers a lot of ground, but in it she manages to link brain change, exercise, meditation, Kaizen visualization and positive affirmation with the likes of Woody Allen and a plan to send e-mail to yourself.

Karen explains, “Brain science says it takes 30 days to change a habit – and change neural pathways! When you change your daily thinking to support love/joy, your negative neural pathways shrink and positive neural pathways widen.”

Her first thought exercise will only take a total of 15 minutes out of your day, but that small investment could change your entire life… and it gets even better when you combine it with physical exercise.

“I’ve found that when I merge this ‘thought exercise’ with ‘physical’  exercise I get even more positive results, even more quickly,” says Salmansohn. “I got this  technique from Tony Robbins — and I gotta say, I’ve personally found  that exercising while I’m thinking positive thoughts has truly helped me in speeding up getting what I want!”

Current brain theory confirms the fact that your brain is continually evolving and that cardio-vascular exercise greatly facilitates the formation of BDNF. In Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, Dr. John J. Ratey validates the mind-body connection, presenting some startling research that proves that exercise is one of the very best defenses against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer’s. He describes how brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that acts on certain neurons of the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system, helps to support the survival of existing neurons and encourages the growth and differentiation of new neurons and synapses.

The link between body, mind and spirit is fundamental to Karen’s entire premise. She introduces the concept of linking thought to action with a brief discussion of the Japanese practice of Kaizen, “…celebrat(ing) the joy of doing small tasks that, over time add up to the joy of experiencing large life changes.”

Toyota manufacturing co-opted the principle of Kaizen (Japanese for improvement) applying the concept to its assembly line workers who were empowered to stop the production line and consult with a supervisor if they saw a way to improve the flow of productivity. Doing the same repetitive physical motion all day could actually become enlightening rather than mind-numbing.

I like the Chinese interpretation of gai-shan (from Wikipedia below) even better.

• 改 (”gǎi”) means “change” or “the action to correct”.
• 善 (”shàn”) means “good” or “benefit”. “Benefit” is more related to the Taoist or Buddhist philosophy, which gives the definition as the action that ‘benefits’ the society but not one particular individual (i.e., multilateral improvement). In other words, one cannot benefit at another’s expense. The quality of benefit that is involved here should be sustained forever, in other words the “shan” is an act that truly benefits others.

The Chinese form of intentional thought exercise… (and my very first Web video, shot on location in Dali, Yunnan, China, 2007)

Check out Karen Salmansohn’s latest book: Prince Harming Syndrome: Break Bad Relationship Patterns for Good—5 Essentials for Finding True Love (and they’re not what you think).

Tiiu Kuik

It started gaining steam last month with the appearance Tiiu Kuik in Marie Claire’s May 2009 feature (Pace dei Sensi or Peace of the Senses), uncovered quite nicely in Nudity: another fashion shoot without the fashion by Fashionising.com. They note a growing trend in Blogs > Fashion Diary > Fashion Photo Shoots on the lovely, lithe, Tiiu Kuik naked for Marie Claire Italia – again.

A naked Natalia Vodianova graces the cover of Vogue UK’s June 2009 issue… led by the fashion-transitioning of Playboy France, featuring  Lily Cole in the October 2008 cover and inside, a 14-page photos spread, “Sweet Lily” (inspired by Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson album) with editorial by Xevi Muntane.

Gisele Bundchen

“Supermodel Gisele Bundchen once vowed to never pose nude; ‘I would never be naked in a fashion picture.’ So we have no idea what the pictures in Vanity Fair, May 2009 thus constitute. Perhaps being topless isn’t quite the same as being naked, but if so then what of this picture (above) where she appears to have forgotten her clothes altogether?”

For more on this wonderful shift, check out Fashionising’s editorial, with tons of links: Nudity and fashion: who needs clothes?

Italy, France, the UK… whassup wit dat? Why don’t I get to live in a grownup country? You can trace it all back to a very certain aggressive Middle Eastern cult, that currently has some very paranoid fears about other aggressive Middle Eastern cults.

Our first official release is set for the New Moon, Saturday, April 25 and the focus is on Understanding, Experiencing, Balancing and Empowering your Chakras.

You are cordially invited to submit informative, artistic erotica… articles, short stories, poems, photos, audio narratives, art, music, links to your videos. Deadline is the end of the day on Thursday, April 23. Click for Submission Guidelines.

We are also re-emerging on the Internet air waves with a new show on BlogTalkRadio. Please, let us know if you are interested in being a featured guset.

Under the leadership and guidance of the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, an international Buddhist community and monastery was established on the 488 acre site. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas as it is known today, is one of the first Chinese Zen Buddhist temples in the United States, and one of the largest Buddhist communities in the Western Hemisphere.

Into this pious realm, steps our heroes… Amara and Shyena, two westerners, lifelong students of eastern philosophy and yet advocates of the sensual life – ready to undertake a 7-day retreat, meditating and celebrating Guan Shi Yin, the Goddess/God who helps us cultivate compassion.

“I never imagined I would visit a Buddhist monastery, and to tell the truth, I often felt something too complex or grand in all of it for me,” Amara explains. “It took hearing Guan Yin’s name to lure me into the Dharma Realm, and the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, after which, perhaps, nothing will ever be quite the same.”

Read all about her life-changing adventure in “How Lucky We Are… About the Guan Yin Retreat.”

Monks at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

It turns out that Amara has more secrets to reveal and what better place than at a Buddhist Monastery that was once an insane asylum to come back to one’s senses.

“Returning to our room after an entire day of recitation I am dying for a cigarette,” she reveals. “Of course there is no smoking permitted within the place, so I must go outside to sneak one. This is day one of seven. I’m thinking, God, this is awful. Ridiculous! I can’t do this here.”

Find out how she beat back the Nicotine Demons and rekindled her love of film making while you enjoy her latest online video production, a  glimpse within the walls of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in “Two Confessions… on the making of this video.”

During her career, Muhlhahn has delivered more than 700 babies and has practiced midwifery in New York, Texas, and Oregon. She is the midwife featured in Ricki Lake’s controversial documentary, “The Business of Being Born,” which provides an insider’s look at natural childbirth in the home setting, and her expert opinion has been included in articles in The New York Times, Vogue, and Parents Magazine.

Muhlhahn’s debut memoir, “Labor of Love” hit bookshelves in December 30, 2008 and includes tales of the homebirth of Muhlhahn’s son, recounts the formative experiences of her adolescence, and offers readers engaging stories culled from her practice of midwifery. This powerful book chronicles the unconventional decisions she has made to find, then honor her profession.

Poetry, candy, flowers… we’ll provide the poems in our emerging Poetry section to include the erotic from ancient to modern author/poets.

photo: Sara Barrett

Rafael Campo was born in Dover, New Jersey, in 1964. He is the author of several books of poetry, including the forthcoming collection, What the Body Told, which received a Lambda Literary Award… more

to tell her she is a female
and their flesh knows it,

are they a sort of tune,
an ugly enough song, sung
by a bird with a slit tongue

but meant for music?

Or are they the muffled roaring
of deafmutes trapped in a building that is
slowly filling with smoke?

Perhaps both.

Such men most often
look as if groan were all they could do,
yet a woman, in spite of herself,

knows it’s a tribute:
if she were lacking all grace
they’d pass her in silence:

so it’s not only to say she’s
a warm hole. It’s a word

in grief-language, nothing to do with
primitive, not an ur-language;
language stricken, sickened, cast down

in decrepitude. She wants to
throw the tribute away, dis-
gusted, and can’t,

it goes on buzzing in her ear,
it changes the pace of her walk,
the torn posters in echoing corridors

spell it out, it
quakes and gnashes as the train comes in.
Her pulse sullenly

had picked up speed,
but the cars slow down and
jar to a stop while her understanding

keeps on translating:
‘Life after life after life goes by

without poetry,
without seemliness,
without love.’

photo: © David Geier Photography

Denise Levertov was born in Ilford, Essex, England, on October 24, 1923. She went on to publish more than twenty volumes of poetry, four books of prose, and translated three volumes of poetry… more