Liz Goldwyn - Sex, Health, and Consciousness: How to Reclaim Your Pleasure Potential

Praise for Sex, Health, and Consciousness

In Sex, Health, and Consciousness, Liz Goldwyn gives us an inspiring vision of a world where our sacred sexuality isnt something to hidebut something to cherish and nurture. Liz artfully guides all of us toward this new normal, with tools and skill-building that unleash healthy pleasure and provide us with a more expansive definition of full-body health. Read this book, and watch your sexuality flourish.

Emily Morse

doctor of human sexuality, CEO & founder of Sex with Emily

Sex, Health, and Consciousness offers an approachable, welcoming path to opening your mind to new ways of thinking around sexuality, allowing the reader to discover for themselves what is possible. Liz is a nurturing companion for the ride, sharing her hard-won wisdom, vulnerability, and often hilarious experiences along the way.

Marisa Tomei

Academy Award-winning actress, activist

In Sex, Health, and Consciousness, Liz introduces a new, expanded approach to sexual liberation that urges the reader to explore sexuality through a holistic, fully embodied state of emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.

Sophia Amoruso

New York Times bestselling author of #Girlboss

With humor and unflinching honesty about her own struggles and awakenings, Liz brings down to earth topics most of us are uncomfortable asking about. Sex, Health, and Consciousness is full of helpful information and practical advice, discussing the complexities of human sexuality with compassion, clarity, and, most importantly, an absence of shame.

Tony Goldwyn

actor, director, producer

Whether recounting stories from surfer buddies, her dying father, or burlesque queens of the past, Liz Goldwyn imparts the wisdom she has learned about sex from her extensive research and life experiences to her reader in the most inspired yet relatable way possible. Sex, Health, and Consciousness is a collection of lived experiences, not just of the author but of the many sexperts shes had the privilege of knowing and interviewing over the years. The book ties together history, myth, religion and spirituality, comedy, porn, pop culture, technology, and the environment to allow its reader to ascend to a greater understanding of the power sex has in each of our lives. One walks away from this book with a better understanding about how to appreciate the changes our bodies and mind go through over time and how sex and sexuality are key ingredients to a happier and healthier existence.

Joshua Gonzalez, MD

board-certified urologist, specialist in sexual medicine

Liz Goldwyn has done it again! Sex, Health, and Consciousness is sure to reinvent the way you think about intimacy, relationships, and yourself.

Natasha Lyonne

actress, director, writer, producer

Also by Liz Goldwyn

Pretty Things: The Last Generation of American Burlesque Queens

Sporting Guide: Los Angeles, 1897

Liz Goldwyn

With love and gratitude for all past, present, and future versions of me, you, and us.

W hat do you think of when you read the words sex, health, and consciousness? Do those seem like three entirely different subjects? If you bought this book in a store or online, did you find it in the self-help/spirituality section, or in wellness, or in sexuality? Have you, like me, ever wondered why these categories are separated from one another? Collectively, we tend to silo our sexuality away from our mind, body, and spirit instead of integrating it. This strikes me as counterintuitive, especially as sex (and love) drives almost every aspect of human existence.

I believe that, as a culture, we need to radically redefine how we think and talk about sex. We need to take an honest look at how often we compartmentalize our sexuality and how disconnected we are from the primal energy (or life force) that our sexuality, and the act of sex itself, holds. Even thinking of sex as an activity that requires another person or must result in an orgasm needs to be questioned.

Sex can be a verb; a noun; a state of mind; an energy; a feeling; a source of power for some, of trauma for others; it can serve as a function of procreation, lust, even transcendence. Can we agree that whatever our current viewpoint, sex is a powerful act, action, or experience? Health is an easier word for which to land on a commonly accepted meaning: the condition of being well. What steps do we take to make ourselves healthy? Is it being mindful of the food we eat and of how much exercise and sleep we get? What about our bodily functions, genitalia, orgasms, masturbation, intimacy, and communication with sexual partners? The kind of content we consume and the sex we have? Where does our relationship with technology, pornography, dating, and love fit in? I believe all these parts of being a human in the twenty-first century affect our state of health. Consciousness is the area where most of us have entirely individual ideologies. In the simplest terms, consciousness is a state of being awake. For you, this could mean trying to be in the present moment and truly aware of your body, surroundings, and the people around you. Others may think of meditation, yoga, spirituality, or religion. Or maybe you have no relationship to any of the aforementioned terms. This is okay. For our purposes together, lets think of consciousness as heightened awareness.

A deep dive into the intersection of and holistic alignment between sex, health, and consciousness is what follows in these pages. I see our cultures current take on sexuality as kind of like using a twelve-color Crayola box to draw with. A ROYGBIV (red orange yellow green blue indigo violet) rainbow is great, dont get me wrong, but what if colors are missing that could help us create a masterpiece? One that would blow every piece of art weve ever seen out of the water? This book is designed to help you access the latent Michelangelo lurking inside each of you.

To help on this journey, within these pages you will find homework, suggested practices to incorporate into your daily/weekly/monthly routine. You can integrate existing religious or spiritual beliefs into the framework I am laying out, and if you identify as atheist, you are welcome, too! All practices are in invitation, whatever your previous relationship to sex, health, and consciousnesseven if youve no prior connection to these topics at all. I encourage you to make the exercises I offer here your own. Only you know best how to move, honor, and pleasure your body and soul.

What makes me the right person to be your guide on this trip?

Let me take you back...

I was an endlessly curious kid with an insatiable desire for more knowledge than was deemed age appropriate. I was especially fascinated by this mysterious word, sex, that grown-ups spoke of in hushed tones. I recognized from a very early age how much this word drove adult behavior. But no one would or could explain to me what exactly it meant and why everyone was obsessed by and secretive (ashamed) about it.

When I was eleven, I started borrowing my fathers Playboy magazines, prompted by the appearance of my then idol, Madonna, on the cover. It was our Sunday ritual to go for breakfast at the coffee shop at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Afterward, I would wait for Dad while he got his nails trimmed at the barber salon next door. I got caught lifting the Madonna cover from the salon while he was at his weekly grooming appointment. His manicurist, who was in her late seventies, reprimanded me for looking at photos of naked ladies. I didnt see what was wrong with studying body parts that Id soon develop myself. How was I supposed to understand anything if grown-ups were keeping me from it?