Right after Thanksgiving , shortly after I began working at the Tummy Temple, I was invited to join in the Temple Cleanse: where all the Templers embark on a cleansing or detox regime together, modified to suit our individual needs. My cleanse idea was simple: “I am going to put my fork down between bites.” No big deal, right? Well, a surprising thing happened. As I took the time to really receive my food, I started to feel a little tingle in my nether regions…Oh man, this food is TURNING ME ON!

And why not? Robin Maynard Dobbs of our recent Intuitive Eating course put it so succinctly: “Your connection with food is the most intimate relationship you will have in your entire life.”

It also reminds me of a cool thing I learned from my midwife: it is more difficult for the birth canal to open if the mouth is tight. Keep your lips soft and slightly parted like you are deep kissing or eating a ripe juicy peach (bonus! makes contractions feel a bit more like pleasure and less like pain). And in visceral massage we find that all the sphincters of the digestive system are linked, if you change one, they often all respond.

Try this now:

1) For 3 breaths focus on the feeling in the sling of flesh that includes your genitals, your tailbone and everything in between: your pelvic floor.

2) Now, continuing to breathe and focus on the sensations there, slowly purse your lips hard in a tiny pucker, like you are sucking yogurt through a cocktail straw. Take 3 breaths to get from a relaxed mouth to sucking in as hard as you can.

3) Let the mouth go totally slack and relaxed, almost drooly, and take 3 more breaths as you feel the relationship between mouth tension and pelvic floor tension.

You can also experience this by doing a set of Kegels with an open soft, “peach eating” mouth and then a set with the puckered “unripe persimmon” mouth.

If you’re not feeling this, come see us for a massage, your body may be too tense to engage and relax at will. I know Kegels are often confusing for people, we can help with that too, or check out this video.

(I love her Aussie accent and expressions like “back passage”).

If you are feeling it, you will appreciate why it’s called “purse your lips”.  Very much like a drawstring, drawing the mouth sphincter closed takes up the slack in the fabric (muscles and connective tissue) in rest of the purse. If you uncross your legs, you may be able to feel it all the way to your toes!

Tune in next month for more sexy dining tips to enjoy your juicy summer!

Amanda Coleman, LMP