This article is excerpted from The Sexual Herbal: Prescriptions for Enhancing Love and Passion, by Brigitte Mars, A.H.G., with permissions from Healing Arts Press (c) 2002. The following excerpt can be found on Pages 11 to 13.
Food, more than a mere filling for the belly, can also pleasure the soul, fuel the body, and promote good health. The ideal food for inciting passion is light, moist, sweet, easily digested and enzymatically active. Moist foods lend their yin to sexual fluids. Yang comes from their enzymes-the spark of life-and from their seed reproducing capabilities. Naturally sweet foods, such as fruits and vegetables, provide energy and stamina.
• Culinary Herbs for Better Sex
How to Set the Mood
The presentation of food is an opportunity for loving expressions of creativity. Make your food a mandala of love, celebrating the fantastic forms and colors of nature! Here are some food presentation tips: Serve entrees on a bed of colorful greens, grated carrots, or cabbage. Decorate with colorful garnishes: try cucumber slices, radish roses, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower buds, carrot curls, sprouts, avocadoes scooped out with a melon baller, buckwheat lettuce, sunflower greens, lemon slices, watercress, almonds, chopped nuts, olives, chopped red pepper, coconut, stuffed celery, berries, slices of citrus, pomegranate seeds or star fruit slices. Stick a small bundle of green beans or asparagus spears in the round of a red pepper.
Sprinkle food with paprika or cinnamon. You can create beautiful designs by placing a lace paper doily or large maple leaf on top of a dish, then sprinkling your colorful powdered seasoning all around it. When you carefully remove the doily or leaf, you’ll have a stunning ornament! Use fresh herbs from your garden (basil, chives, cilantro, dill, fennel, oregano, mint, parsley, or rosemary.) Add crunch and color with sesame, sunflower, or chia, or poppy seeds. Use nuts, dried fruit, or edible flowers to make designs. Use pretty molds shaped like hearts or butterflies for cakes and pates. Set the table with beautiful serving ware. Decorate with edible flowers to cause your chakras to vibrate!
Prepare food with loving intention. Play beautiful music or positive self-help tapes while doing food prep. Remember food magic: When preparing food for you and your beloved, take turns putting a slice or spoonful into each person’s bowl. Energetically, you will be sharing of the same fruit.
Burn a red candle (hemp, beeswax, or soy candles are safer than paraffin) in the kitchen while preparing food for sexual vitality. Green can be used to call in love or health. Bless your food and give thanks
Choosing Aphrodisiac Foods
Buying a product at the natural food store doesn’t necessarily make it healthy. Organic whole-wheat macaroni and cheese in a box is still a processed food. The best foods are unrefined ones that provide a wide range of colors and satisfy the senses. Make snacks an opportunity for health by letting nuts, seeds, yogurt, fruit, and vegetables replace candy and ice cream. If you allow the media to guide your food choices, the next step will be to ask your doctor is if this drug is right for you!
Vibrant food helps you feel great and look good in your body. The organic, free range, fair trade, vegetarian, vegan, organic, local, slow food, and raw food movements are all efforts toward improving the way we eat. A healthy diet is better for us and our planet. Now that is sexy.
Sexual energy is extra energy. If you are exhausted or ill from trying to digest poor-quality foods, your libido will be one of the first things to diminish, so that your body can focus its energy on healing rather than on sexual activity. Enjoy nourishing yourself and your loved ones well to promote sexual excitement.
Exchanging processed foods filled with preservatives for organic foods that are as close as possible to their natural state can effect incredible improvements in your energy levels, emotional stability, mental acuity, and sexual vitality.
Food allergies and sensitivities are also a big problem in our culture. I have seen many people feel amazingly better and discover more energy by going off all gluten products (especially wheat, rye, barley), or all dairy and/ or soy products. Yet many people sabotage their health-and therefore their energy and libido-by persisting in eating the very foods they are allergic to.
We often crave the most compromising foods because when we consume ingredients we’re allergic to, the body temporarily produces more white blood cells to neutralize the allergen. We feel comforted by the revving up of our immune system. However, if a body is constantly dealing with digestive distress, pain, constipation, and other all-too common maladies, it will dampen your sex life. Consider keeping a food journal for a few weeks. Record what you eat and how you feel. What can you do better?
Demonstrating the ability to feed one another, whether it is preparing a homemade meal, creating a spontaneous picnic, or dining in nice restaurants, really is a way of showing your love. When a partner or potential partner shows that he or she is capable of feeding. and nurturing us, it triggers ancient subconscious programming-a sense of trust that at least some of our primal needs will be met. Many couples connect deeply over food and eating, so why not make the most of the opportunity!
Eat colorful vibrant fresh foods and feel your body come alive!
Buy The Sexual Herbal: Prescriptions for Enhancing Love and Passion.
