October 31, 2015
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2015/10/how-to-increase-sexual-endurance
[00:00] Introduction/Kimera Koffee/Athletic Greens
[04:27] About Kim Anami
[06:20] How to do Vaginal Weight Lifting
[11:11] Why Kegels Don't Work for Urinary Incontinence or Sexual Strengthening
[15:29] The Core and Glute Strengthening Exercises
[23:00] The Technique Kim Uses to “make love to her partner while he is on the other side of the planet”
[24:33] Kim's #1 Tip for How Men Can Go Longer and Have Multi-hour “Sexercise” Sessions
[35:50] How to Have “sex dates” With Your Partner
[42:10] What Kim Thinks About Porn, and How Porn Affects Your Sex Life
[45:00] Coconut Oil as a Lubricant
[50:53] End of Podcast
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In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:
“This whole practice with the jade egg actually has its roots in ancient Taoist sexology practices and Taoist Kung Fu practices, and so there's a whole other energetic component to it.” “When people don’t strengthen their genitals, be it male or female, they become disconnected. They become numb and just like any other muscle in the body, if you don't use it consciously it atrophies.” “After you have sex or you masturbate, you ought to feel like you want to go to the gym and if you're not feeling that way, you feel like you want to pass out then you’ve done it wrong. And again, when I say ‘do it wrong’ it’s about energy not a judgement.”
He’s an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America’s top personal trainer and one of the globe’s most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. “Power, speed, mobility, balance – whatever it is for you that’s the natural movement, get out there! When you look at all the studies done… studies that have shown the greatest efficacy…” All the information you need in one place, right here, right now, on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.
Ben: Hey, folks, it’s Ben Greenfield here and I have a photo on the post that accompanies today's podcast of a woman lifting a weight plate with her vagina and that woman is Kim Anami. And Kim travels around the world doing, among other things, lifting with her vagina, possibly more than many of us can lift with our biceps. Kim is not just a vaginal weightlifter however, she's also an intimacy coach and she teaches, among other things, what she calls vaginal kung fu along with pelvic floor muscle strengthening and she teaches how to have better sex, stronger orgasms, a host of other sexual health topics. And throughout the year she runs online, a series of courses that she calls ‘salons’ that include not just vaginal kung fu but also things like coming together for couples and sexual mastery for men.
So obviously, as you've probably guessed, this is a bit of a more explicit episode. So if you’re used to your kids listening in to hear about things like how to hit tennis balls faster, this may not be the episode for you, but in it we're gonna cover very practical material for both men and women for enhancing sexual pleasure, sexual endurance, sexual health. However, if the acknowledgment of the existence of sex or talk about sex offends you, this may not be the episode for you. But if this stuff does interests you and you do want to perform better in the bedroom, longer in the bedroom or you want, what I think I've seen Kim describe as “soul- stretching, bed-shaking, neighbor-complaining sex”, keep listening. So, Kim, welcome to the show and just to break the ice, can you tell me what vaginal weightlifting actually is?
Kim: Thank you, Ben. That was a very lovely introduction. Well, vaginal weightlifting is a form, the only effective form of strengthening the female pelvic floor and this is a practice that not only increases strength, but also sensitivity, articulation, orgasmic potential, lubrication, the ability to ejaculate, and the long lost skill of shooting ping pong balls from one’s vagina which is every woman's god given right.
Ben: Yes and of course every woman's dream.
Kim: Yes!
Ben: So in terms of how exactly one does this, I've written an article, for example, on this device that men use that I personally use called the Private Gym. It's a magnet that you attach to your penis and you do weightlifting exercises with it. However, how do things work on the female end? Do you use like a device that you would purchase? Do you use a small dumbbell? I mean how exactly does it work logistically?
Kim: Yeah. So, I use, mine is actually based on a 5000 year old practice that was done by courtesans in the emperor’s court of ancient China and they do something. They use jade eggs. It’s basically, it's a carved stone in the shape of an egg. There’s a hole drilled through it then you place some kind of string threaded through the hole and then you can attach weights to the other end of it. So obviously the egg goes up into the vagina then you hold and contract with your pelvic floor muscles, vaginal muscles and then you can lift different objects with that. And initially when women start the practice they sometimes don't lift anything. Just the weight of the egg itself is enough to start with and then you can add weight as you go.
Ben: Okay. What would be an example of like a brand name, or something like that, that someone could go look for on Amazon or elsewhere. Do you have recommendations?
Kim: Well, honestly, I don’t because the way that I teach it, when I sell a program on my website called Vaginal Kung Fu where we explore this practice and I run everyone through a guided weekly strengthening regime, but at the same time it's a mind, body, spirit thing. To me, it's kind of like there are some more mechanical devices out there, but they usually only have a certain capacity. They can only go up to a certain weight and then they're very kind of sterile and gynecological-looking and this whole practice with the jade egg actually has its roots in ancient Taoist sexology practices and Taoist kung fu practices and so there's a whole other energetic component to it. It's kind of like deciding you want to lose weight and going on some kind of a fad diet versus deciding that you want to change your whole lifestyle and so you not only change and revise your diet and, say, have a whole foods lifestyle, eliminate junk food, things like that then you have an exercise regime.
You look at the emotional reasons why you might be over eating, that's more along the lines of what I do and I coach. And so I used to just sell a mini weightlifting kit on my website and I stopped doing that because I realized that it wasn't as effective just sending that out to somebody in the mail than actually running them through an 8-week whole revision of their relationship to their vagina to their sexuality. So when people don't strengthen their genitals, be it male or female, they become disconnected. They become numb and just like any other muscle in the body, if you don't use it consciously it atrophies and there's an insane statistics around women and weak pelvic floors. It's thought that up to 60 percent of women have urinary incontinence issues meaning their peeing without control either through coughing or laughing or sneezing or exercising with their kids or anything and then 50 percent of women after childbirth experience pelvic organ prolapse. So some part of their physical anatomy starts to literally fall out of them and these are both stats from the Yale University School of Medicine. So this is a rampant issue for women in our culture and to me it's basically this sort of like we just don't talk about it.
I was being interviewed by a woman awhile ago and she said, “You know, I know ever since I had my child eight years ago I'd have an issue with urinary incontinence, but I know it's normal so I don't feel bad about it.” And I'm like, “Wait a minute. It's not normal. It might be normal lives, but that's not the natural state of being.” My argument is that the natural state of being for any healthy vagina on the planet is to be able to shoot ping pong balls, open beer bottles, and smoke cigarettes if it so desires, but I don't endorse the cigarette smoking rather than having you know women wearing like undergarments to protect them from urination. That's ridiculous to me and yet that's become normal because we just don't talk about these things and women are given the absolutely incorrect advice to do their kegels. So kegels, the way that they're taught in modern culture, do not work. The original exercise developed by Arnold Kegel in 1947 was inserting a device into the vagina to give feedback and resistance. If you don't have those two things, it's just like going to the gym, staring at the weight rack in front of you, flapping your arms and legs around, and then leaving, and say, “Hey, wasn’t that an awesome workout?” Like no. Any idiot would know you need resistance to build strength. You have to pick up weights.
And so that's the same principle with doing pelvic floor strengthening. If you don't have something to provide resistance and feedback, you will not see any difference. And so over the years these women would come to me and be like kind of whispering shamefully, “You know, my kegels don't work. I don't know what's wrong with me.” as though they were the only one and then I realized over time they’re not [censored] working for anyone. Anyone. And the reason that's why because they're useless and the way that they got adapted is like gynecologists telling women to just flap their vaginal muscles around them. It’s not doing anything. And I honestly think the source of that is that gynecologists in this day and age are so terrified to tell women to go home and put something in there vaginas that they just modify the exercise to the point of uselessness.
When Kegel started doing his work, he had something like a 90% improvement rate with women and urinary incontinence when he started these exercises and then somehow when other doctors started applying them they removed the piece about having a device inside the vagina and then women, immediately at the success rates, fell by 50% and more. So it's documented that you need something to provide resistance and feedback. The way that I teach it is this whole mind, body, soal reconnection where I've got women who think, “Oh, I've got menopause now and so I don't lubricate naturally.” Well, the issue is actually, for the most part, some of it can be psychological, but the rest of it is that lubrication is produced through circulation and you have better circulation when you have strength in the vagina. So I've had women in their sixties, who've been devastated by the loss of their fluids, do my program and within weeks they've got, just they're gushing like nobody's business because they now have a stronger and more intact vagina.
Ben: Interesting. So when it comes to Kegel exercises, do you actually think that they should not be done at all or do you think that they need to be done along with the use of something like jade egg weights and some of these other strategies that you're talking about?
Kim: Well, the Kegels’ essentially a type of contraction, right? And so, if you're not doing it with the device it's useless. No, I say don't bother doing it. You definitely have to be using some kind of device in the vagina to provide that strength and feedback with that resistance.
Ben: There is a biomechanist who writes online, has written a couple of books, named Katie Bowman. I don't know if you've heard of her. She talks a lot about issues that she has with Kegels. But one of the issues that she has with them is that they don't incorporate the glute muscles which seem to be extremely crucial for pelvic floor strength and for fighting off things like incontinence, for example. So I'm curious, in addition to this vaginal weightlifting that you do, do you have an exercise program? Do you have a specific type of exercise that you do?
Kim: Well, both in the vaginal kung fu course that I teach, I actually do additional core strengthening work and glute strengthening work that were compliments because I do believe it is all connected, that area. And partly, I mean the difference in a way between what I'm teaching and say traditional Kegels it's not just about the strengthening. It's about increasing that sensitivity, reconnect into that area of the body, developing that sentience in the genitals, reclaiming that part of ourselves. So it's not just a physical practice. And then for me, like my physical exercise regime is I do, I’d say a combination of high intensity interval training. I do Pilates. I surf. I swim. I do yoga sometimes and lots and lots of sexercise.
Ben: Well, what would be your favorite core exercise or one of the ones that you recommend most frequently?
Kim: Like it’s such a different series of Pilates. I mean I love planks I guess, and then like different Pilates exercises like too numerous to mention, but more like mat pilates, I do.
Ben: Right. Right. Yeah and planking is obviously fantastic. What about glutes? What do you do for glutes in terms of your go-to moves?
Kim: Squats and deadlifts.
Ben: Okay. Gotcha. Cool. Simple. Now, I've seen you write online about how you have 20 orgasms in a row. Now, is this because of the vaginal weightlifting or do you have other techniques that you throw into the mix?
Kim: Having a strong vagina is definitely part of it because you wake it up. It becomes more, I guess you can create more friction in it and it becomes more sensitized and powerful. For sure that's part of it, but it also say that that comes from years of focusing on my sexual development. So I would say that involves clearing any sexual blocks that I would have had, exploring my body on my own, learning how to open more deeply emotionally with a partner and within myself, and how to really let go and surrender during sex.
And so all of those things combined to be able to make a woman, any woman multi-orgasmic, and as I say that, I want to make it extremely clear that every woman is capable of having every single type of orgasm whether it’s clitoral, g-spot, cervical, energy orgasm, every single woman can have those things. Those people out there who pat women on the head and say, “Oh there, there. Don't worry if you’re not experiencing this. Not all women can.” I say that's complete [censored]. Every single woman on the planet can. You just need to open the right doors and most of the time western science has no clue about what doors to open. If it can't be proven in a lab they think it can't. It doesn't exist. So it's a little more nuanced than that when it comes to sexuality and people’s emotional stuff that can’t always be measured in a lab. So using my techniques, I've been able to get all kinds of women who thought that they were this ‘that woman who couldn't do it’ to have an orgasm that very day.
Ben: Now, is this related to the concept of tantric sex?
Kim: I mean not specifically. I mean tantra and Taoist principles definitely form a strong part of my work where there's this whole emphasis on mind, body using sex as a pathway to enlightenment and as a tool for self-actualization. So that's definitely part of it because I think that the way we show up in bed is the way we show up in life and if we look at how to open up our sexual expression that usually opens up our life expressions. So we become more, I mean this is, I had this phrase I used called the well [censored] woman where it's based on the idea that when someone's really, and it applies to men as well, but when someone's really receiving that level of gourmet sex like really being seen, adored, cherished, and having cataclysmic transformative sex, which I believe is everyone's ability and birth right, that we change. We become more radiant, more confident, more charismatic, more productive in the world. These are visible, tangible things that we can see that come out of having amazing sex.
Ben: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I know that my wife is a ton of fun to hang out with when we're having regular sex. Not that she’s not normally, but it’s just a much, much deeper connection. So I mean I have seen exactly what you're talking about.
Kim: Yeah.
Ben: Now, how did you get into this, Kim? I mean did you just one day begin vaginal weightlifting or did you have some kind of an experience or interest that led you down this path?
Kim: How did I get into the vaginal weightlifting specifically?
Ben: The vaginal weightlifting and even being kind of like a sex coach in general. Is this just something that you've always done?
Ben: Well, even from a young age I had a strong awareness of my sexual energy as this like portal like something you could kind of step through to get to this higher state of consciousness and even from a young age I had an interest in exploring, “How do people change? How do we grow? How do we become the best versions of ourselves?” That was always very fascinating to me and so from my teenage years I began studying everything from health, nutrition, exercise, meditation, transpersonal psychology, alternative healing and medicine like herbal treatments, homeopathy, all this stuff. How can we optimize ourselves? And for me, sex was always a part of that equation. Having amazing sex made me feel like I was becoming more of who I was. It was like the false parts of me would dissolve and I would become more self-realized through amazing sex which it often was from the start of my experiences. And then I read about tantra and Taoist sexuality in my early twenties and I thought, “Ah, here's an actual language and framework where they are talking about what I am already experiencing.”
Ben: Do you remember what you read or do you have now a specific book you recommend?
Kim: Well, there was an article I read in a magazine, this is where it all started, and they talked about sexual energy as being this tangible energy that you can exchange and move between partners. And at the time I had this very sensitive lover and I decided I would try this experiment and they said, they suggested this in the article, they said, “When you’re with your partner, imagine that you're shooting energy into their bodies.” So say you imagine that there’s energy coming from your heart into their heart or your genitals to their genitals or your elbow to their knee or whatever. And so, I was with him and we were kind of like sort of beginning to make out and I was barely touching him and in my mind's eye I would just visualize moving energy from one place in me to a place in him and he would moan. Every time I would do it, he would have some kind of physical or verbal reaction to it and I wasn't even touching him and I thought, “Okay. So there’s something to this.” and then I believe the time I think I read some of Margot Anand’s work and then some Taoist book: “The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity: A Modern Practical Guide to the Ancient Way” I believe it's called and then [21:48] ______ books and then that combined with my own practices about holistic living and trying to be more self-aware in general. All of that just kind of congealed to become what I do now which is I build myself as a holistic sex and relationship coach where I don't give Band-Aids to people. I really look at how our sexual expression is a metaphor and indicative of deeper issues that we can explore in ourselves.
For example, when I look at erectile issues in men I see the cock as an extension of the man and so when the cock, when the man is performing really well in life, in the world, in business, so is the cock. And if the cock is weak and limp and not performing very well, generally the man isn't either. So there's all these amazing and beautiful metaphors that you can peg or that I work with to help people to grow using their sexual expression and looking at those messages has science from the deeper self to heal and to grow.
Ben: Now, on your website you say that you can “make love to my partner while he is on the other side of the planet.” Is that what you mean the ability to connect via the spreading of sexual energy?
Kim: Yeah. Like just that example that I gave, that very first experience or known experience, I guess, where I was shooting energy into my partner would be like a starting place of what I can do now where I can just tune in. I can give myself an orgasm on the spot by tuning in to that energy and give myself an orgasm. I can tune in to my partner and his energy and make love to him. Give myself an orgasm, stimulate him sexually as well. So I think it's a process of becoming more in tune with ourselves and that energy. We all have it. We all have that ability to tune into it, but it's the things that we do like practices I'd say on going for me like meditation and different forms of exercise and having a really clean diet that helped me to become more sensitive to those flows of energy in my system.
Ben: I have a question for the men out there or question that relates to the men out there who are listening in especially when it comes to, for example, the term that you threw around, sexercise. And I personally think that sex is a fantastic workout. But when it comes to men and specifically the ability to have sex for hours or to have multiple orgasms or even to be able to just go longer, do you have specific tips or techniques or anything that you want to share with the guys who are listening in when it comes to just being able to do something like sexercise or a multi hour sexual experience?
Kim: In one word, breathe. So most people, especially men people, when they get close to orgasm they tend to hold their breath or breathe really shallow and tighten up the body. And so all of those things curtail the flow of energy and then it basically makes it so that any of that concentrated energy that's built up at the genitals just get dumped out, ejected, and that's why men are depleted typically after orgasm. They’ve just thrown away all that high quality energy. And so the very least that they can do which will also help with building stamina, is to breathe. And so throughout the sexual buildup, you come back to your breath and you'll notice, once you put your attention on it, that you're probably holding your breath at times.
So obviously when you're kissing or your mouth is occupied you won’t be as focused on deep breathing, but otherwise you do want to be like aiming for a good, whatever you call it, vinyasa flow. Four count, inhale. Four count, exhale. Breathing deeply into the belly, into the pelvis, and then especially, when you reach the 7 to 10 zones, you're getting close to orgasm but not quite yet at the place of going over the edge, then you want to pause and breathe. So let's say that you hit your 7, you pause, do several rounds of breathing, let yourself subside down to a 6 or a 5, and then do it again. Build yourself back up, hit that edge, and then breathe, and do that at least three or four times and then whether that'll start to build up your edge and your stamina so that may be where your edge was a 7, it'll become a 7.5, it will become an 8 and 8.5. And eventually, and in the tantric sense of the expression, you want to be able to hover at a 9.5 to 9.9 for hours and you can. Again, that's every, that's possible for every single man, to be able to stay there and for women to reach the more deep, powerful, vaginal, what I call, life-changing orgasms, they need to have a man with stamina. Most women need to be penetrated and made love to for upward of 30 minutes. Once they get adapted to these orgasms it can be much less, but initially…
Ben: Now, for this 4 count breath work that you recommend, 4 count in and 4 count out, is there any type of rule about doing it nasally versus mouth breathing or anything that would be better for sexual energy?
Kim: I mean, nasally is probably a little bit better in terms of containing the energy, but honestly when you're starting, just do it. It doesn't matter. It'll work either way that you do it. It’s just important to breath period. And I wouldn't worry about much else. Once you become more even integrated that into your routine then you can focus on like keeping the breath within a circle in the body, but otherwise it doesn’t matter.
Ben: Now, when it comes to combining these exercise and breathing techniques with what you put into your body from a nutritional standpoint, do you follow a specific diet or do you have specific supplements or “super foods” that you eat prior to sex or to specifically support your sexual health?
Kim: Not specifically. I'd say it's all part of the choices I make in overall where I've been eating an organically grown diet for the last 22 or 23 years unless I'm traveling and it’s just not an option. I only eat and buy organically grown food and whole foods. I am kind of raw, kind of paleo, like I'm a vegan who eats fish that's caught off of the boat that I live on part time. I know where the fish are coming from, I will eat them.
Ben: That's the ultimate mix of kind of sustainable living off the grid and eating. I guess kind of like ovo-lacto-vegan type of approach.
Kim: Well, yes and then I actually do some hacking in terms of supplements that's not so vegan. So I take colostrum and whey and then I started to take the Great Lakes gelatin in college and I started those a few years ago. It just felt intuitively like I needed some kind of animal products but I wasn't really comfortable eating. I haven’t eaten any chicken or beef or pork for probably 25 years and so, but I felt comfortable eating those supplements. So I do take those and overall a lot of, I mean I live in the tropics most of the year. In Bali, in parts of Indonesia, and so I eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and fresh caught fish. That's probably a big piece of it.
Ben: Gotcha.
Kim: And I think that overall though, I'm really aware of not, like I don't eat processed foods and in Indonesia, so much of the food, the natural local food has MSG in it and it's a massive exercise to avoid MSG here. They even cut the table salt with MSG. You don’t want to say, “Please don’t put MSG on my food.” and then they put salt in the food that’s got MSG.
Ben: Yeah, it’s right there on the table.
Kim: And so it's just everywhere. It's quite an, it's easier in Bali. Bali has a lot of western restaurants there that are aware of these things but out in the remote areas where I spend time as well, it's not so easy. So I bring suitcases full of food with me. Nut butters and supplements and seeds and nuts and things that will last and like high quality energy for me.
Ben: Yeah, it makes sense. Why did you choose to live in Indonesia or Bali?
Kim: I first came to Bali about 20 years ago and before it's always been on the map for a certain kind of traveler but before it got Elizabeth Gilbert on the map. I just loved it. The people, they have a beautiful, beautiful reverence for life and they really walk their spiritual path. It's really woven throughout their everyday life and the island’s beautiful. I love that there's sunshine. I believe that the sun is the great healer and curative for many things. I love being in the salt water. I surf. I like just wearing bikinis or nothing. That's pretty much my wardrobe. The whole time I’m here is bikinis and so many reasons and I feel more at home in that culture than I ever had in North America, honestly. And there's an element of the Wild West out here.
There's not the same kinds of left brain, law abidingness that goes on in North America which can be good in many ways and frustrating for some people who are really used to that and really need it. So there’s a great opportunity to create your own reality, create businesses here, all kinds of things that people who just want something different in their lives than the typical North American way of being. So for me it's wonderful and Indonesia’s this wild vibrant ring of fire, incredible place. It’s just so beautiful. I mean in Sumatra where I am right now they still have wild tigers on this island. They have wild orangutans. They have wild elephants. There's still a wildness left in this part of the world that’s really not available very much anywhere else on the planet.
Ben: Interesting. Now, there is, in the biohacking/health realm, this concept of among men limiting the number of ejaculations that you have per week. There's even like an equation floating around out there somewhere about X number of days based on your age spent between ejaculations so you don't lose your sexual energy. What is your take on that?
Kim: I definitely think there's some truth to it. However, what I've seen in my work and experientially in my own life and relationships is that when men practice the breathing that I talked about like they really recirculate like that breath, what it does is it takes the sexual energy that's concentrated at the genitals and it recirculates it throughout the body. So when you practice that breathing throughout sex and then you go ahead and have an ejaculation or an orgasm what I found is that the energy loss for men is minute. It’s substantially, substantially less and so if you practice the breath, I don't think it's as crucial. If you're not practicing any kind of breathing then yeah, you'd be dumping out a lot of energy during ejaculation. So you know I'm also of the mind that like we… when I hear formulas and really rigged things like that it feels kind of mental to me and like we’re at the power or the mercy of something else rather than we have control of our own bodies and our own domains. But that's a level of energetic sophistication, I guess, but I guess overall, like I said, I find that when people do that practice they don't lose nearly the kind of energy that most people would typically.
Ben: Yeah. Yeah. It make sense and I think there's somewhere, some type of ayurvedic philosophy that's based off of, rather than like a pure mathematical equation. But I was just curious what your thoughts were on that and it does make sense what you say about the breath and being in control of the breath without just like wasting your sexual energy. Now…
Kim: I think it's, I’ll say one more thing too. I think it's unconscious versus conscious like when somebody is, let's say, masturbating to porn three or four times or every day and there just sort of dumping all that energy that will be much more depleting than a man who has a very loving, connected, beautiful relationship with his wife and I talk a lot about energy exchange and absorbing fluids of each other. And so when you’re consciously, say, taking in fluids from your partner men can absorb the fluids, the essences from women and women from men. When that happens I also think there's very little energy lost because the energies exchange. So I'm talking here on more of an energetic level that just a strictly physical ejaculate level, but it's as from what I've seen it’s this valid or more valid.
Ben: Yeah. It makes sense. You can actually absorb the fluids from your partner through any parts that are touching that actually have blood flow or skin.
Kim: Yes. Yeah.
Ben: Yeah. It's interesting. Now, one of the things that's obviously a big part of what you teach are these longer, whatever you want to call them, multi hour or tantric or multi orgasmic sexual sessions that last often well into the night. Now, when you're working with, for lack of a better description, like a modern couple, like working, have kids, etcetera, how do you strike a balance between something like a tantric sex session and the fact that the kids are in bed, you're exhausted, and it's 10:00 PM and you have to get up for work the next day. I mean, how do you strike that balance between getting enough sleep, taking care of everything else that you have to do, and tantric sex?
Kim: Well, there's a few ways I would address that. First of all, I wouldn't have sex at 10:00 PM at night when you're exhausted. Instead, get up half an hour earlier in the morning and then make love to your partner because you’re much more fresh, you got better energy to exchange with each other, and that would be for a shorter session. But I also recommend that people set aside time, they make time to have a weekly 3-hour sex day. So you get childcare, you arrange your schedules, like say, every Friday night from seven to 10, that's your sex day and it's non-negotiable. And so you start literally building in that time for that marathon sex and if you're doing it right, if you're practicing the breath, then you will feel energized after sex.
So when I have these all-night sex sessions where maybe I get two hours of sleep, I feel higher, more rejuvenated, smarter, more energized throughout the day than if I didn't have it. If I just had like a six hour or seven hour night of sleep without that kind of sex. So my barometric question is, “Is sex a deeply pleasurable, massively transformative, extremely rejuvenating experience for you?” and if it isn't then you're doing it wrong and that's not that judgment it’s just to say that sex to me is also about harnessing and harvesting sexual energy. And so if you're doing it in the ways that I recommend, you will feel revitalized after. That's the goal. And then in terms of scheduling things, so I had a couple come to my retreat or one of my retreats last year, they are both on their second marriage, they both had pretty dismal long-term marriages that were sexless, miserable 15-year type marriages and then they got out of them and they're like, “Wow, you know I really don't want to repeat that again in my next marriage. I'm gonna really put my effort in and make it different.” So they met, they connected, between them they have five children, he's the CEO of a large corporation. She also works in upper level management. They have sex every single day.
So you know, if he wants it and clearly they did. They came out of a place of knowing that they wanted things to be different and they committed to it. If he wanted it to happen, it happens. I just posted a photo on Instagram where I said that the irony is that when we’re busy and we’re stressed we think, “Oh, I don't have time to meditate. I don’t have time to exercise. I don’t have time to have sex.” yet those are the practices that will give you the extra oomph that you need to triumph in your life. Like, those things are non-negotiable for me like I get up every single morning. I meditate. If I'm with my partner, we have sex. I exercise in some form. Those are non-negotiable. No matter what I have to do, they're non-negotiable and so it just becomes part of my life.
Ben: Do you have a specific form of meditation that you think is most conducive to sex?
Kim: Not specifically. I think anything that brings you inside of yourself and quiets you and directs that inner focus will help you to become a better lover because meditation brings you inside to confront your own self for your own demons sometimes. Gets you comfortable with tuning into your body and its rhythms and so I think any form of meditation would have a benefit for somebody sexually.
Ben: What do you personally do for meditation?
Kim: I’m into the idea of chanting a mantra and I chant a word called Hu. H-U. It’s sung like “hu” and I chant that for about 15 minutes every morning and then I spend about 5 or 10 minutes in silence just listening. So the idea with the mantra, if anyone doesn't know, is that it uplifts your state of consciousness and brings you into a higher vibrations so that you’re more receptive and open to your inner guidance and your inner wisdom and your intuition. And so that word is actually an ancient name for god and it's been found throughout different cultures all over the world, in South Africa, in Persian cultures, in Celtic writings, and so it's this word that meant, it's actually Rumi, you now Rumi the Persian poet?
Ben: Uh-hmm.
Kim: He writes about that word in his poetry as this sounds, this word that's meant to have also a higher vibration than a word like “Om”. So I'm really into that idea of uplifting and then asking or going inside and doing visualization about what I want to create into my life but it all starts with the mantra to focus and settle down and calm and uplift.
Ben: Interesting. And I’ve just completed a transcendental meditation course in which it’s emphasized that the actual words, the actual mantras used do have a specific phraseology that makes them important in terms of the way that the word itself actually sounds either when you repeat it silently or when you say it out loud. In your case, do you find it important to actually say that word that “hu” word out loud so that you get the actual sound vibrations?
Kim: I do it either way. Ideally, yes. I find that it's more powerful to do it out loud and hear it and have that vibration, but it's still as effective to do it inwardly. Like if you're in a public place, like the way that I’ve used that word is also, say, if I'm in a situation, let’s say a conflict with somebody and then I'll try to remember to go inside and chant that word to bring harmony or bring upliftment to the situation. Not to change it, not to influence anyone else, but simply to uplift my own consciousness to handle it better. So it has and I’ve found it still to be very effective that way without chanting it out loud, but when I do my morning practice, for sure, I find a quiet place where I won't be interrupted and I let whoever is in my space know that I'm going to meditate and then I do that practice. And to me like 20 minutes a day is manageable. It's not like an hour a day or two hours a day. It's like anyone can find 15 or 20 minutes to sit quietly and connect.
Ben: Yeah. Makes sense. A couple more questions for you. There's a website out there, I believe it’s called, Your Brain on Porn or something to that effect…
Kim: Yeah.
Ben: That talks about how repeated exposure to pornographic imagery might exhaust our dopamine or make us insensitive to sex. Things along those lines. What are your feelings on porn?
Kim: I've seen that website and I think it's fantastic. I think that he brings up a lot of valid points energetically, physiologically about the downside of porn and I agree with them. I don't judge. My assessments are always coming from an energetic perspective. Like, “Does this give you energy or take away energy? Does this uplift you or does it make you create a negative impact?” And so for the most part, I’d say that porn and that kind of level of masturbation tends to be unconscious, what I was referring to earlier, and the dumping of energy. And rather than something that’s more building and sustaining and collecting energy. Masturbation itself isn’t inherently bad. I would say it's more about the intention associated with it and so if a guy is masturbating and he's breathing like practicing that breathing technique that I talked about, then it sounds almost too simple to be as powerful as it is and yet it's extremely powerful.
After you have sex or you masturbate, you ought to feel like you want to go to the gym and if you're not feeling that way, you feel like you want to pass out then you’ve done it wrong. And again, when I say ‘do it wrong’ it’s about energy, not a judgement. Let’s just say that you obviously didn’t harvest your energy properly and instead you were depleting yourself. So that’s where my perspective comes in with all that is this thing bringing me into more conscious awareness or unconsciousness. Is it lifting me up and giving me energy or is it draining me in some way?
Ben: Gotcha. Yeah, and it does make sense of what you would do while masturbating is work yourself up to that 7 or 8 or 9 and then back off and then yourself up again and then back off.
Kim: Yeah, and eventually that will lead to, men can separate orgasm from ejaculation and again, every single man is able to do that and that will lead you there or to having full body and/or having full body orgasms. And so there’s practices in and of themselves will make you to become, make you a better lover and also help you to tune into you and harness your sexual energy.
Ben: Now, another question that I have for you regarding sexual health is when you wander into the average sex shop that might be selling lubricants, etcetera, or you look at the ingredient label on a lot of these, everything from sexual lubricants to even a lot of condoms and things along those lines, you tend to see a lot of these things that we’re warned to avoid in most other health care products.
Kim: Like anti-freeze.
Ben: Parabens and propylene glycol and all these different things. Do you have some go-to lubricants or items that you keep around that you would consider to be more natural, high quality ingredients that enhance the sexual experience?
Kim: Coconut oil. You know coconut oil is a great massage oil. It so sensual, really glidy, it makes a great lubricant. But to be honest, I actually forbid my female clients to use vaginal lubricant because I consider it to be like female Viagra. If a woman isn't wet, it's because she's not emotionally turned on or physically turned on. So this is my holistic perspective is that you have to go back and figure out where you’ve missed something, where is she not connected emotionally or physically instead of using lubricant. I don't let anyone use lubricant. For anal sex, bring on the lube. Lots and lots of lube, but for vaginal sex I do not recommend it.
Ben: But for like for massage for a woman…
Kim: Massage? Yeah.
Ben: Pleasuring a man like those type of things.
Kim: Yep.
Ben: You would say coconut oil would be your go to?
Kim: Coconut Oil. Absolutely.
Ben: Yeah. Interesting.
Kim: There might, I think there’s one brand, which is Firefly Organics, which actually is fully pure. Most of them will be like 98% pure and then have carcinogenic preservative in them like propylene glycol or paraben or something or worse than that. And then they have these horrible, horrible things out there that are like, “Put this cherry Cola poof poof cream on your partner's genitals if you don't like the taste of their genitals.” like that's just the worst advice ever. I really advise people to, I want them to fall in love with their partner's genitals and like drink from the fountain of youth and energy instead of like throwing this disgusting carcinogenic cream on them because you can't handle the smell. So this is where I differ from most people in a holistic perspective is that I want people to have this fully absorbed conscious experience with their partners and if you're not having it, there's some kind of block there and then the work is to uncover that block but not to put, like slather lubricant on the problem or some smelly cream on the problem. To me, that's not a solution. It's just a band aid.
Ben: Yeah. I've always been a little bit wary about products like that that promise to make things taste like cherry coke or make things tingle or glow in the dark or anything like that, but I’m like, “There’s got to be something going on there that can't be quite natural.”
Kim: That and that I just think defeats the purpose. I love the smell of my partner's genitals. That's like manna from heaven for me you know.
Ben: Yeah. It makes sense. Now, you have, currently, about the time that this particular episode is coming out, I know you've got a course going on. You teach these courses all year long and I think the one going on right now is the one for men, the sexual mastery for men, what exactly is that?
Kim: So this is an 8-week online program for men to become more, I'd say, masters of their own sexual domain and the domain of women’s. So I teach everything from different emotional concepts to physical techniques about either pleasing women, how to bring them to their different types of orgasmic states including cervical orgasms, g-spot orgasms. There are Taoist and tantric sexual practices to strengthen your core like everything from your drive to your strength of your erection. I even teach some cock lengthening and strengthening exercises as well as pelvic weightlifting, different nutritional, high graded kind of supplement superfood approaches. So it's a whole sexual education for men that man probably never had.
Ben: Interesting. Okay. So that one’s called “Sexual Mastery for Men” and then you also have one for women called “Vaginal Kung Fu?”
Kim: Yes. I have a couple for women. One is called “Vaginal Kung Fu”. That one comes out in January. That one receives quite a bit of attention based on my global vaginal weightlifting adventures and then one that I'm just in the middle of right now called “How To Be a Well [censored] Woman”.
Ben: Interesting and yeah, you certainly do have some fascinating photos on Instagram. I like in particular the one of you lifting a coconut.
Kim: Yes! I’m glad you look at that…
Ben: Perhaps I’ll put a photo at the show notes for folks who want to see what the coconut vaginal lift looks like. Along with everything else that Kim and I talk about for you guys out there who want to look into the sexual mastery for men course, I’ll put that over there as well as the vaginal kung fu course that Kim teaches in her website and you can find the show notes for this episode over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/kungfu, that's bengreenfieldfitness.com/kungfu. If you don't know how to spell kung fu, you may want to Google that. So Kim, thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing this stuff with us.
Kim: My pleasure.
Ben: Awesome.
Kim: Thank you for having me.
Ben: Well, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Kim Anami signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com. Have a healthy week.
Kim Anami, pictured above (yep, she's the one with the weight plate between her legs) travels around the world lifting things with her vagina. Possibly more than you can lift with your biceps.
Anami is an intimacy coach who teaches, among other things, what she calls “vaginal kung fu,” along with pelvic floor muscle strengthening, how to have better sex, stronger orgasms, and a host of other sexual health topics. Throughout the year, she runs a series of online courses, which she calls “salons”, on topics with titled such as “Vaginal Kung Fu”, “How to Be a Well-F**ked Woman”, “Coming Together for Couples” and “Sexual Mastery for Men”.
So obviously, as you have probably guessed, this is a bit of an explicit episode, but in it, we cover very practical material for enhancing your sexual pleasure, your sexual endurance and your sexual health, including:
-Exactly how to do vaginal weight lifting…
-What it feel like to lift 10 pounds with your vagina, and what kind of weight do you use?
-Why Kegels don't work for urinary incontinence or sexual strengthening…
-The core and glute strengthening exercises that are crucial to include if you're doing vaginal weight lifting…
-How women can train their bodies to have 20 orgasms in a row…
-How do you strike a balance between tantric sex and optimizing your sleep?
-Kim's #1 tip for how men can go longer and have multi-hour “sexercise” sessions…
-The technique Kim uses to “make love to her partner while he is on the other side of the planet”…
-Why Kim uses colostrum and glutamine…
-Kim's feelings about whether men need to restrict ejaculation or orgasms…
-How to have “sex dates” with your partner…
-The form of meditation Kim uses to enhance her sexual energy…
-What Kim thinks about porn, and how porn affects your sex life…
-The single, most natural lubricant you can use to enhance sex…
-And much more!
Resources from this episode:
–Kim's “Sexual Mastery For Men” and “Vaginal Kung Fu” courses
–Jade eggs for vaginal weightlifting
–Book: The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity: A Modern Practical Guide to the Ancient Way