Queer Sex and Intimacy

          

  Relaxation: it can be helpful to have a period of relaxation before a sexual engagement, to tone down the parasympathetic (fight, flight or flight response). Stress works against circulation, constricting tissues. It’s difficult to bring warmth, blood, and engorgement to tissues in a state of high tension and anxiety. Relaxation can help us arrive, invoke the much needed presence we seek in sex, and ground us in our bodies and intentions.

Herbs for relaxation space:

• Adaptogens*: Tulsi, Ashwagandha, Ginsengs,
• Nervines: Cali Poppy, Scullcap, Damiana, Lavender, Kava, Passionflower, Lemon Balm, Catnip, Vervain
  • Aromatics: Lavender, Rose, Jasmine, Geranium, really any pleasing essential oil or scent, hydrosols. Orange Blossom Water.
  • Euphoriants: Rose, Cacao, Vanilla, Kava, Clary Sage, Poppers?
• Heart Tonics/openers: Rose, Hawthorn, Bleeding Heart, Violet
• Ease Panic: Anemone, Bleeding Heart (low dose 1-3 drops)
• Pelvic opening/decongesting: Ginger, Ocotillo, Angelica,
• Sweets: Chocolate, pomegranate, ripe fresh fruits, 
• Food: feed each other? Eat with fingers? Have a food fight?
• Ambiance: Music, Lighting, Time of Day, Setting, dancing, making music together, incense, bedroom, dungeon, outdoor

Negotiation/Scene development

•             We can honor our trauma and need for safety by incorporating a negotiation space together prior to engaging sexually. Asking those involved, “so what would you like to do tonight? How would you like to get off?, “what are your triggers? Your hard “no’s”. “What is too much? Too little?”. “what is our safety word”? Agreements and discussions that make your time together as safe and rewarding as possible.  Even in the event that we want to engage in consensual,  unsafe sexual encounters, the negotiation space . Its important that we view negotiation as a part of the sexual act, negotiation is hot, its sexy, its ripe with possibility. Negotiation can be as short and too the point, or can be long and elaborate.

Herbs for negotiation space/Scene development:

Flower Essences For Agreements:

• Chamomile: helps those struggling with commitment issues, seal an agreement on a bed of chamomile. 
• Lemon Balm: release and heal sexual trauma, helps with body image problems resulting from sexual trauma, to reclaim sensuality/intimacy.
• Yarrow: help understand where you end and another begins, boundaries
• Skullcap: binds fidelity in couples
• Protection: St John’s Wort, Rosemary, Cedar, Sage,
• Olive: for peace making, treaty making
• Sunflower:  for cultivating self- radiance, shining your particular light, standing up in yourself
• Goldenrod: help couples get through hard times
• Love medicines: Meadowsweet, Violet, Rose, Bleeding Heart, Bougenvilla

Herbs to support personal needs:

• Ocotillo: spiritual barbed wire, opens up personal power and get down into             the pelvic region, highly recommend for tops, dommes, sex workers
• Selfheal: releases negative self talk, aligns the body and spine
• Protection: St John’s Wort, Rosemary, Cedar, Sage
• Damiana: invokes a sense of play
• Prickly Ash: opens you to your fire and passion
• Wild Yam: calms emotions, trouble with sexual identity and maturity around it.
• Willow/Bamboo: lets one be flexible
• Manzanita: for when there’s dissociation/leaving one’s body or revulsion      towards one’s body. For embodiment & acceptance.
• Ginkgo: for a sense of belonging in one’s self, being comfortable in one’s own           skin.
• Vitex: helps femme be sexual, helpful with dysphoria
• American Wolf Berry: finding and being in your territory, getting in your    body.
• California Poppy: to ease mind/body disconnect. To mix body heart and mind.
• Bleeding Heart: to bring back the sparkle
• To leave a partner: Kidney Wood, Poke
• Oak: deep grounding
• Blue flag/Douglas iris: to bring forward someone who is overshadowed by a lover, helpful for trans people in relationship with a cis lover.

warmth, engorgement and play, and beyond.

Once relaxed, and after consent, desire, boundaries and expectations are negotiated, we might then introduce our warming herbs, and stimulating herbs, and begin moving into our scene or sexual engagement. This is the time for tissue engorgement, ‘aphrodisiacs’, play and foreplay.    

• Warming*: Turmeric, Ginger, Wild Oat, Damiana, Cinnamon, Cayenne, Rosemary, Garlic, Rosemary,
• Stimulating: Ginseng, Damiana, Rosemary, Chocolate, Caffeine, Maca, Potency wood, Yohimbe (not for bipolar), 
• Oils Infused with Herbs: Violet on the heart, Coconut Oil
• Lubrication: Coconut oil, evening primrose supplement daily amount up to 3000mg can help keep the reproductive system lubricated, a             supplement of P-5-P (b6) can increase vaginal/reproductive lubrication. This supplement sometimes can make one a little nauseated, so, it could be a hit or a miss.
• Fear of incontinence/urgency: Couch Grass (agropyrons), Kidney Wood, Yerba Mansa 
• Androgen rich: Damiana, Puncture Vine, Horny Goat Weed, Pine pollen
• Estrogen rich: Licorice, Black Cohosh, Red Clover, Soy

TRUE APHRIDISIACS

• Damiana: old school, warming, androgenic, invokes a sense of play, increases sexual desire and frequency, pleasure. Nitris Oxide effect.
• Maca: warm, deep nourisher, increase desire without changing hormone levels. Bio-piracy involved, ethical w/o ritual use? Great for menopause.
• Potency wood/Muira Puama: stimulating, warm/dry, nervous system stimulant, just need fluid excitement/engorgement. Not for high blood pressure. 
  • with Ginko: increased erection and orgasm
• Yohimbe: herbal viagra, engorges tissues, can make people aggro, use carefully: Can lead to stroke. Great for mental/psychogenic erectile dysfunction. 
• Horny Goat Weed: Another herbal viagra. 
• Shatavari: increased labido.
• Puncture Vine: “androgenic”, Nitris Oxide effect.
• Cottonwood Bark: not actually aphridesiac : for Low oxytocin: sign no sensation in nipple/low labido

Herbs as Sex Toys

• Cordage plants/whips braids, rope, restraints: Stinging Nettles, Mugwort, Pacific Aster, Goldenrod,
• Canes: Bamboo, Sugar cane, Elderberry, Willow,
• Thorns/prickles: Rose canes, Hawthorn branches, ocotillo branches,
• Stings: Stinging Nettles
• Bed of Petals: Rose, Calendula, Violets, etc