The Sean Orford Blog

In the month of love - To Love is to Live

Posted on Friday, February 26, 2010 0 comments so far

ShareThis

Comments (0) | Permalink

All life is just an idea

Posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 0 comments so far

All life is just an idea

Read More ...

Tags: Law of Attraction Business

ShareThis

Comments (0) | Permalink

St Valentines

Posted on Monday, February 01, 2010 0 comments so far

Tags: Law of Attraction Business

ShareThis

Comments (0) | Permalink

You can’t have one without the other

Posted on Monday, August 10, 2009 0 comments so far

Tags: Law of Attraction Business

ShareThis

Comments (0) | Permalink

The chemistry of love and sex

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 0 comments so far

Love month continues ...

Today, we move on in our journey of love to have a quick look at what is going on inside us, beyond and below our awareness. After all, love and attraction have chemical components that have led man to invent various perfumes, lotions and unguents to titivate and attract a mate.

The chemistry of love and sex

A client asked me, ‘Why is it that when I am having sex with my girlfriend it feels so good? It is as though we fit together perfectly, as though we were made for each other.’ My reply was, ‘In that, my friend, you have just discovered the science of ergonomics.’ When something is ergonomically designed, is fits perfectly to its task. An ergonomic tool fits perfectly in your hand; your body feels perfectly at rest in an ergonomic chair. It has taken a lot of evolution, but human bodies were designed to fit together and that is why it feels natural and good. In this, we have to accept that people are created different sizes so that, as the Karma Sutra puts it, an elephant man does not fit with a deer woman, and so on.

The body can be completely devoid of emotion

Your body, as an Eros object, will have responses of its own that may be at odds with your thoughts or your feelings. Your body may tumble into a wonderfully erotic encounter, when all the time your mind and your emotions are shouting, ‘No!’ If you have ever had your body reflexes tested, you will have experienced, when the doctor hits your leg just below the knee with his hammer, and, outside of your control, your lower leg moves. This is a reflex action that is outside of the control of your mind. I have worked with several female rape victims who have been completely confused and horrified when, during their fear and disgust of what was happening to them, they found their body going into spontaneous orgasm. This, as you can understand, can lead to total bewilderment, guilt and self-disgust. The question is always: why?

Let me tell you a story

Imagine this.

There you are in the middle of Tescos. The lighting is bright, there is a flashing display, music is playing in the background, and the store is full of people all out for their weekly shop. Your trolley is half-full and you are looking at your shopping list, when that horrible feeling begins to get to you. It starts with a tingling in your extremities, almost like pins and needles in your hands and feet, and starts to move up your limbs to your torso. Your heart is pounding so fast that you feel sure it will explode out of your chest and your breath is coming is short gasps. You feel a wave of heat flow through your body and feel a sheen of sweat on your skin; you feel as though you will pass out. In terror, you leave your trolley and run to the main door, fresh air and freedom.

Ok. Now imagine this.

You are in bed, you feel relaxed and very at peace with yourself. You are where you want to be and with whom you want to be with; all is as it should be. The lighting is low and gentle music is playing in the background. Then that feeling begins. It starts with a tingling in your extremities, almost like pins and needles in your hands and feet, and starts to move up your limbs to your torso. Your heart is pounding so fast that you feel sure it will explode out of your chest and your breath is coming is short gasps. You feel a wave of heat flow through your body and a sheen of sweat on your skin; you feel as though you will pass out. In the pleasure of the moment, you leave your present behind and you tumble into the petite mort, little death, or orgasm and freedom.

Arousal and arousal

One of the strange things about how our chemical physiology functions is that arousal is simply arousal. It is us, the experience, that then puts the value on the arousal. The same chemistry, flooding through our bodies, is seen subjectively as either good or bad, depending on the associations that we put on it. Therefore, the same act by one person may feel amazing, but from another person may feel repulsive or abusive, yet the physiological response is the same in both cases.

The physiology of sex

This leads us to understand that the issues of attraction and being attractive are subjective and we may surprise our self when we are attracted to a person when logically we see it as ridiculous, yet that person may obsess our every thought. Once we begin to realise that the physiology of arousal can be the same for extreme fear as it can be for extreme eroticism, it begins to explain all the oddities in sexual behaviour, the perversions and even violence as an aspect of sexuality. All is subjective. It is not what happens; it is how we process what happens that makes our experience meaningful.

A few years ago, I was working with a young, gay man who was also a childhood sexual abuse survivor. He was in confusion as to why the things that were done to him as a child felt abusive, yet the very same acts done to him as a adult were pleasurable. He acknowledged that the levels of arousal were the same in both cases, but it was his feelings about the two events that made them different. I am not being simplistic here, I realise that one event was consensual and the other was not, yet in both cases the physiology was the same; remember the rape victim experiencing orgasm.

The physiology of love

The physiology of love is different to the physiology of sex and we can have one without the other, though some people would say that they cannot. This is probably more due to lack of experience and sexual inhibition, perhaps related to moral or religious coding, rather than an understanding of physiology. The chemicals of sex are those of general arousal. These include adrenalin and cortisol that are the major components of the fight and flight response. It is this that creates the similarity in fear and in orgasm.

Dopamine

The real love chemical is dopamine. This endorphin is produced in the brain and creates that wonderful feeling of joy and expectation that we associate with all the googly feelings of love. And I guess you will realise that the thing that promotes dopamine the most is foreplay. The foreplay of wooing may include love letters, texts and emails, as well as gifts and acts, meals and poetry; it all goes towards creating this wonderful expectation, the feeling that something wonderful is about to happen. In the good relationship, this is exactly what does happen and our dreams are fulfilled. Remember the blog on can we learn to love? Well, if we can get the dopamine flowing, we have done it.

As an aside, it is the same endorphin that is released when we sip alcohol. The problem is that we sip and then have the expectation that something wonderful will now happen. When it does not, we then take another sip of alcohol to maintain the same ‘high’ feeling.

(Look out for September on www.seanorford.com when we will be having a month all about addiction and detoxing: it will change your life. This will include your chance to join me on a thirteen day detox, with daily blogs, which by then should be video-ed – wow!)

Now, one last thing about sexual chemistry before I go.

Pheromones

We are not the best smellers in the animal kingdom, and mere amateurs compared to our canine cousins, but our sniffers are active in our sexual arousal. There is some wonderful research, in which students of both sexes wear underwear, day and night, for a week, so that their garments are fully impregnated with their smell. The clothes are bagged and then other students are asked to smell them and score them in terms of their attractiveness. The research shows that people with a similar genome, that means they are physically similar, do not find each other attractive. It is assumed that this is the reason that siblings are not attracted to each other and is the basis of the human taboo about incest. From a genetic point of view, this behaviour acts to keep the gene pool developing and changing and strengthening. It is easy to see the results of inbreeding and the problems that this causes.

Cosmetics

The perfumeries have known these things for an age and will even go so far as to include processed animal sex glands, known as musk, to enhance the attractiveness of their products. People attempt to create aphrodisiacs that will affect the sexual chemistry of their partner, to create greater heights of sexual pleasure.

There is no love-o-meter in this blog, though there will be in the next. However, you might like to consider how important the chemistry of love is to you. Napoleon, famously, is reputed to have sent a message to Josephine telling her that he would be home in three days so that she was not to wash. I assume that he liked his females to be powerfully scented. We should appreciate that in a society where water comes out of taps in the corner of the room and washing in warmth is considered a right, along with deodorants, people, in times past, must have been pretty whiffy. I wonder if they were any sexier. All evidence is that the most potent pheromone is fresh sweat generated in the act of foreplay.

Stay happy, be sexy, clean or not.

Take care.
Sean x

Read More ...

Tags: Law of Attraction Business

ShareThis

Comments (0) | Permalink

Mania, Level 4 in the Eight Levels of Love

Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 0 comments so far

I am writing this to you whilst lying on my back not, sadly, from a wonderful encounter, but because I managed to slip down three stairs and put my back out. The main staircase in my house rises to a small landing and then splits into two small flights, both left and right. It is not uncommon for me to come out of the bedroom in the morning, clothes over one arm and brain in another place, and slip down the first step. I have always seen this as a combination of carpet, step design, naked heel and the fact that there is always something else to manoeuvre around; currently, this is a linen basket. As I said, these features, combined with my wandering mind, are set for disaster. Well, last night was the biscuit.

I had just watched a TV program with my eldest son in his room, Michael McIntyre, very funny, and was on the way downstairs to make my youngest son's packed lunch and there I go and slip, but this time, down all the three steps and bounced on my back. For those interested in spines, it was the Svadisthana Chakra, and I am now successfully pinching my sciatic nerve and my back is locking up if I twist. I didn't know that I knew so many four-letter words. I had come out of big son’s room when youngest son sticks his head out of the top of his door, from his loft bed, and says something. I turned at the same time as negotiating those stairs and, hey ho, down I went.

Now the wine glass in my hand, that, like a true professional acrobat I did not drop, should not be taken as material evidence of inebriation. It was actually the other way around, the wine in my system acted as a muscle relaxant that cushioned my fall, else I would probably now be lying in the emergency room rather than in my own bed, popping Ibuprofen and Paracetamol. Well, I have always said that you are as young as your spine and right now I am at least one hundred and ninety-seven. In a minute, I am going to try for a shower and a shave, then I can get on with this blog.

Managed the shower, real issue putting on my pants, makes you think about old age and the need to stay supple, as I said you ‘are as young as your spine’. So on with our task, I'm talking about love, and today we are into passion.

Level four: Mania

Associated with passion, possession, envy and jealousy, the Anhatta Chakra, the bio-energy centre over the heart, Bhakti Yoga and the colour green.

Mania

Mania, as it might suggest, is maniacal. It is the home of extreme passion that in its most positive form is ‘making love’, certainly not simply having sex, though in its negative forms are the extremes of envy and jealousy to the point of murder. When the French talk about ‘crimes of passion’, they mean Mania in negative action. When you read in the news about a person murdering their partner, it is usually Mania at work.

Eros is physical and violence may form a part of Erotic love or loss, but if someone gets killed it is usually an accident. One person lashed out and the other one went down and hit their head on the fireplace, that sort of thing. Mania is a completely different kettle of fish; outbursts of passionate violence can be prolonged, fatal and may be premeditated. Issues of torture and abuse often belong to this level. But, hey, it is not all bad; Mania can be a wonderful place to be, especially if it involves controlled passion, or when the energy of Mania is put to the service of others.

Power is the ability to do work

Mania people are powerful and power can be used for good or ill. An engineer defines power as the ability to do work, so that the engine of your car will generate a measurable amount of power; this is its ability to perform. We all need power to enable us to do what we need to do in life. Mania people seek more power than other people as they want and need to do things in a bigger, grander way than do other personality types. Mania houses tend to be bigger and flashier, their cars are 'look at me' cars and their jewellery can be very loud and showy.

Say it with flowers

When my Mania friend, Danny, visited his wife after the birth of their first child, he presented her with one hundred and forty-four red roses: one dozen, dozen. Now, for an Eros person, they would rather you brought them a bottle of something to ‘wet the babies head’; the Storge person would be just as happy with a small bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates; and the Ludens person would probably grab some wild flowers or pick some fresh from the hospital grounds. Mania types want big shows and elaborate displays that tell of power and importance. It may not be the gift so much as the cost that shows the real value to the Mania type

A life in business

Many people in business are powerful Mania types. The drive to succeed is a drive of passion. Often a partner is seen as an accessory and a part of the image. As a partner to a Mania type, you will need to be seen as desirable, but unavailable. There are many cases of the middle-aged man who trades in his middle-aged wife for a younger, trophy wife. This is becoming true the other way around, where the middle-aged woman has a toy boy.

A life of service

There are those with a larger Mania who are not so self-obsessed and self-centred. These are the people who see themselves as advocates for others. Mother Teresa identified with the poor of Calcutta and did all that she could to attend to their needs. This was an act of love; she was a Bhakti Yogini, that is, she took the path of serving others. Her service to the poor, that she identified with, was as much an act of passion as is the business putting together a million-dollar deal; same energy, different direction.

The sexual Mania

Ok, so, Eros is straight to orgasm, Storge is the sensuality of touch, while Ludens is all about fun and new experience. Mania is about passion and shows of passion and desire. It is the Tango and the Spanish dancer. It is the man on the advert delivering chocolates ‘all because the lady loves...’ It is big shows, often sweaty and very loud. If someone is pounding the mattress shouting, ‘yes, yes, yes!’, bet your life they are a Mania. At the point of orgasm, some people pull a pained face, some squeak, some moan, some whimper. Manias will scream and carrying on screaming, often demanding more. When Manias are making love, everybody knows about it.

So how is your Mania? Do you want to be desired passionately? Do you want to be possessed or obsessed over? Would you like people to fight for you? Do you like expensive gifts and powerful shows of emotion?

Bring on the Love-o-meter

Have a loving and passionate week.

Drop by Wednesday, when in the Talk2Sean slot, we have an interesting issue: ‘Is it ok to have a relationship with someone that you know you don't love?’ And that takes us through to Friday for the next level of love, Pragmaticos; you'll love it.

Be happy.

Sean x

Read More ...

Tags: Law of Attraction Business

ShareThis

Comments (0) | Permalink

The eight levels of love. Level 1 - EROS.

Posted on Friday, July 03, 2009 0 comments so far

The Eight Levels of Love

I hope you managed to read the July newsletter so that you know that July is the month of love. Love is a simple word used to express a complex thing. In the English language, there is this one word for love that can mean whatever you want it to mean.

I love you so much that I will die without you

I would really love a cream bun

I just love the way he sings that song

One word, but it has many meanings. Did you know that in the Greek language there are six words used to describe love? In Sanskrit, in Ayurvedic philosophy, there are eight levels of love.

So, before we begin and look at level one, ask yourself: What do you mean when you use the word ‘love’? If you were to tell me that you loved me, what should I expect from you? Also, you need to consider the same question the other way around, so that if I tell you that I love you, what would you be expecting from me?

Tags: Law of Attraction Business

ShareThis

Comments (0) | Permalink