Author of Women's Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure
Ah, Breastmilk, Mother Nature’s most perfect food,
the nectar of the Goddess. Evolution has developed an exquisite
system for nurturing young mammals, perfected through millennia.
It is an elegantly simple system, based on supply and demand.
A breast is essentially a milk factory. When a baby sucks
on the breast, it stimulates receptors which tell the breast
(via the brain) to respond by producing milk. As the infant’s
needs increase, they get hungrier and suck more, and thus
more milk is produced. Despite myths to the contrary, the
breast is never empty. There is essentially an endless supply.
There is always as much milk as a child needs. As long as
the system is not interrupted, and the mother is adequately
hydrated and nourished, there will always be an abundance
of glorious milk.
Mammalian milk has evolved to meet the highly specific needs
of each particular species. Human milk contains the exact
nutrients in the perfect balance to grow the complex brains
and bodies of our infants. It contains living immune factors
to protect the health of the child. It teaches both our immune
system and our metabolism how to function properly for the
rest of our lifetimes by mechanisms that are still poorly
understood.
Sweet
and plentiful breastmilk is the perfect food, always ready,
warm and delicious. And it comes in an attractive and time-tested
package, that of the woman’s breast, firmly attached
to the warm, soft, breathing, beating body of the mother.
This perfect food is delivered from within the context of
the first love relationship that the baby knows. This is how
evolution set up the system. When the humanling feels one
of its basic needs, that of hunger, the need is met, not with
an external object, but by their own personal beloved. Fed
from her warm soft body, cradled in her strong arms, enveloped
in her scent, her loving touch, steadied by her heartbeat
and breathing, gazed at by bliss-filled eyes. Ideally, the
human need for food is answered in the context of a relationship,
by a person, with love.
Compare this to the synthetic formula given to most of us
as children and to many babies even now. It’s a nasty
tasting wallpaper paste also known as artificial infant formula.
It’s given in a transparent bottle, clearly in a finite
amount. When the bottle is empty, that’s it. It’s
all gone. There is no more. The need for food is met, not
in the context of a warm and loving relationship, from a soft
and sensuous woman’s breast, but with a ‘thing’,
a hard and separate object. So removed from the context of
relationship that it need not even be given while the child
is held. A bottle can be propped up or self-held by an older
baby.
Is it any wonder that so many people in our culture, as adults,
look to consumer goods, to objects, to satisfy their oh-so-human
needs? But more stuff is never enough to fill those needs.
So they buy even more stuff, newer stuff, bigger stuff, better,
faster, sexier stuff. More, more, more. But it’s really
no good. No matter how much we accumulate, objects will never
satisfy our needs for love, security and acceptance. Only
relationships can do that.
Moreover, artificial infant feeding formulas are unhealthy
and blatantly inadequate substitutes that can’t come
close to Mama Nature's perfect food. Indeed, they cause innumerable
health problems, commonly including gastrointestinal distress,
irritability and malaise. So food, nourishment and the associated
feeling of love can become deeply connected with feelings
of sickness and pain.
Should
we be surprised that so many people have mixed up feelings
of love and desire with pain and dysfunction? After all, for
most of us our first model of relationship taught us that
food and comfort come from an object that is separate from
another body. We learned that nourishment is finite in amount
and unpleasant tasting to boot. That satisfying our hunger
is likely to make us feel uncomfortable and even ill.
It’s no wonder that we feel that love is a limited
commodity with only so much to go around. It’s not surprising
that we can’t get comfortable and form trusting relationships
with others. Is that why it’s so hard for some people
to receive pleasure? Scarcity consciousness and bottle-fed
limits are deeply ingrained. Bottle-contained artificial infant
formula, unsatisfying, toxic, and unpalatable has confused
us about the nature of love.
In the first few years of life we learn some of our most
basic life lessons. Is the world a good or bad place? Am I
loved? Can I trust that my needs will be met? Is my body a
good place to be in?
If we’d had our needs met, completely and efficiently,
with love, security and nourishment all coming together from
the abundant breast of a loving mama—would it be easier
as adults to form secure and trusting love relationships?
To not be possessive and jealous? To trust in the abundance
of love and that our beloved(s) will be there when we need
them? To be able to receive pleasure? I believe that this
is true. And so I’m trying to re-frame my beliefs about
love and attachment, about scarcity and abundance, from a
breastmilk perspective. It’s remedial education, to
be sure. It’s a process that requires practice and repetition
to succeed at changing (or at least influencing) such old
core beliefs.
But I’m doing it. Rethinking love, in the breast-milk
model. I’m granting myself my denied birthright. Reminding
myself, over and over, and over again that there is an abundance
of love. That there is always as much as you need and plenty
to go around. And that if you need more, just suck and more
will come. The breast is never empty, just like the heart.
There is always enough. And my hunger can only truly be satisfied
by human relationships, never by things. True milk, like true
love is plentiful and nourishing, never finite or toxic. And
it tastes really, really good.
No wonder the breasts are right over the heart. It is where
love comes from. Endlessly. Without limits.
Sheri Winston, CNM, BSN, RN, LMT
Womancare Practitioner
Teacher Of Womancraft & Wholistic Sexuality
Women’s Health Care Provider, Educator, Midwife, Massage
Therapist
Sheri Winston is a Teacher
of WomanCraft & Wholistic Sexuality, a retired Midwife, a
Womancare Practitioner, Blood Witch and Pelvic Priestess.
She's also a Registered Nurse, Health and Sexuality Educator,
Women's Health Issues Counselor, Licensed Massage Therapist,
Writer and Artist. In over 20 years of working with women's
health, she's attended over 500 births and provided clinical
health care, counseling and education for thousands of women.
Sheri currently offers wholistic gynecological health consultations
and teaches classes and workshops on women's health, female
anatomy, wholistic sexuality and birth.
Women's Anatomy of Arousal:
Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure
Paperback by Sheri Winston. 266 pages.
Chock-full of information, illustrations, erotic art, games and exercises, a guided tour, wholistic sexuality, orgasmic abundance ...
The clitoris is just the tip of the volcano. Women have a largely unknown network of structures responsible for arousal and orgasm that even most medical professionals don’t know about. ... This fun, sexy, empowering guide combines lost knowledge with ancient and modern sexuality information to illuminate every woman’s secret paths to fabulous, orgasmically abundant sex.
Price: $19.95
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Making Love: An Herbal Guide - digital download
MP3 digital download - David Winston. 8th International Herb Symposium 2007. Run time 1:37:21.
Making Love: An Herbal Guide to Sexual Health.
Sex is an integral part of our lives, yet so many people suffer from lack of sexual fulfillment due to physiological and psychological problems...
Price: $19.95
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Herbs and Sexual Hormones - digital download
MP3 digital download - Matthew Wood - 7th International Herb Symposium 2005. Run time 1:25:03.
A study of the excess and deficiency of estrogen, progesterone, and androgen, the patterns of imbalance they create, their relationship to wider hormonal imbalances, and the herbs that treat them, with a salute to the heritage gift of great women’s remedies received from the Native peoples of America.
Price: $9.95
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Sexy Herbs - digital download
MP3 digital download - Ed Smith. 4th International Herb Symposium 1998. Run time 1:34:52.
Class for Everyone: (1.5 hr): In this informative and fun workshop, Ed covers herbal sexual tonics for men and women, aphrodisiacs, sexual stimulants, eroto-enhancers, and the treatment of erotomania, impotence, frigidity, and other such maladies.
Price: $11.95
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