I am always thinking about how to make life more green sustainable so when I had the opportunity to review a new eco-line of sexy swimsuits I offered up my two daughters happily. As a devoted green business owner, I know how much effort and education it takes to make consumers aware of how their choices in what they buy and wear impacts not just their lives but how we all live. The girls were skeptical until I pulled out the fashionable and comfortable samples that Eco Panda sent.


 
Eco Panda’s launch in 2009 makes them the first company to begin the green revolution in the swimwear industry. Their suits are sustainable both for the environment and you’re pocketbook. Fashioned from recycled nylon and X-tra life Lycra, the suits last three times longer than the average suit (think old fishing nets). The production also saves 27% petroleum resources and reduces greenhouse gases.  


 
Yet if the suits didn’t rate in style, all that eco-consciousness would be for nothing. Everyone struggles with how swimsuits fit and look, even on the seemingly perfect body, but my girls gushed about not only how good the suits look but also how comfortable and well cut they are. The beach cover-ups have served as the perfect cover up- cute, stylish and quick drying.
 
When it comes to bikinis though, the real test is how the suit stands up not just to the sunning but the water play. Unlike the other suits that my eldest daughter has collected over the years, this suit actually stays in place, so when she comes up from a wave her younger brothers aren’t surprised about what has frequently become uncovered. Her younger sister who is vying for the suit exclaimed- “It’s so comfortable, you can hardly even feel it.”   
 
Here is the other silver lining, with true sizing, good cuts and comfort, I can see my hours spent in swimsuit dressing rooms coming to an end. The girls are already excited to preview the Eco Panda new 2011 collection for this summer.  So now you know, next time you are looking for a swimsuit you can find comfort for your body and your conscience with the Eco friendly swimsuit line- Eco-Panda.  

Learn more about Wendy at http://www.goodcleanlove.com/

“The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of this planet.”  -John Fitzgerald Kennedy

The life of the heart is one of contradictions. It is where our greatest strengths are often our most profound weaknesses. Finding balance between seemingly opposing forces or feelings is key to finding balance in love. I can’t think of any two more complementary forces for love than the capacity for vulnerability and the experience of confidence. Consider each one on its own: The confident but invulnerable heart can be brash, ego driven and unavailable. The confidence does not serve because it is not tempered. The vulnerable insecure heart is pitiful, full of self doubt and starts to resemble childlike dependence. It is easy to see how the vulnerability of childhood is easily confused with its more mature adult version.  

To really love life, yourself or others these traits must work together. Ancient eastern scripture has long valued the cultivation of the heart broken wide open. The teachings say that it is raw, confident vulnerability that allows you to deeply feel with true compassion and leads you to the road to enlightenment. Confident vulnerability allows you to keep showing up for yourself and others even when your heart gets a bit trampled. You have the courage to actually feel what happens to you. In turn, experiencing your feelings as they happen builds courage. 

Vulnerable confidence lets people say what they need to say and trust the listener to be kind. Balancing these forces in your heart everyday has the added benefit of ensuring that real lines of communication are always available. Combining the courage to self disclose with the confidence to be yourself feeds a relationship’s integrity because everyone knows where they stand. The more confident vulnerability shapes your communication, the more that trust thrives.

Confident vulnerability doesn’t turn minor disappointments into big storylines about the places where the relationship falls short. You can keep your vulnerability intact if you have a little confidence.  Relationships, by definition will always disappoint you at some time, and heartbreak goes with the territory, which is sadly the state of things when it comes to the human race.   Accepting the frailties and imperfection of ourselves and the people we live with and moving into relationships instead of away from them is the reason to cultivate a vulnerable confident heart.

Perhaps the most rewarding gift of cultivating a vulnerable confident heart is that these are the odd bedfellows that create deep and lasting passion. Closing the bedroom door with the capacity to fully open to the moment and your partner without fear of judgment and the freedom to find out what it means to be sexual is the treasure of sex most people search for in a lifetime. Vulnerability and confidence don’t preclude one another they require each other. The mystery of sexual connection unravels and becomes a dance of union and spiritual rediscovery.  

Confident vulnerability is the mature path to making a life with love as its central axis. It is the only path that has real heart. 

Learn more about Wendy at http://www.goodcleanlove.com/

Recent studies have found high correlations between the music that teens are listening to and the onset of sexual activity. Teens who listen to highly sexualized lyrics are twice as likely to engage in sexual activity than teens who don’t listen to that kind of music. While these kinds of studies can’t really explain if the correlation is coincidence or causal, the fact that there is a link leaves us to ponder what kind of listening affects us sexually. How do one’s listening skills and habits influence intimacy in all ages of life development?  


photo: sol lang

One of my favorite lines by James Joyce is “Men are governed by lines of intellect, women by curves of emotion.” This might explain why most women need to both be heard and to hear loving remarks from their partners in order to turn on their sexual feelings, and why many men don’t get it. Twenty-five-years later, I am still training my husband around the kinds of comments and endearments that I would like to hear before, during or after sex. But it is no longer a deal breaker for me because I have realized that his failure to say these things is not a reflection of how he feels about me.

I have often compared the act of making love to a physical conversation. Recently, I have been practicing what I have learned about listening in my bedroom as well. The results have been surprising and heartening. Perhaps the most powerful way we can listen to the people we love is not just with our ears and our mind but with our whole body. The concept of generative listening which trains us to listen for what is beneath the words goes to the very core in a physical conversation where words are  language communicated with sweeps of fingers, backs relaxing into a caress, a pelvic tilt becoming a shudder.  

Our hands can feel vibrations as much as they can tactile sensations. Let them lead the way into a new kind of listening in your intimate life. The practice of laying on of hands, which has biblical references to its healing powers, is a simple but powerful technique that can provide real insight into the body. Things inside me literally shift under the steady weight and patient attention of my husband's hands and he can feel it too. What is more tender than soft hands across a tired forehead or a finger tracing a heart?

If you're not sure how to start this, the tantric traditions of sexuality are a great place to learn more about whole body listening. For many serious devotees, tantric techniques are not about mind blowing pleasure, but about the deep connectedness of souls. Here is a simple exercise where you are likely to get some of both. It requires that both partners first agree to the meaning of shallow and deep penetration. Once the parameters are set, the partners agree to breathe and count together in cycles of 10 shallow- 1 deep, 9 shallow- 2 deep, 8 shallow-3 deep,  and count down to 1 shallow – 10 deep. Finishing a cycle at the same pace you began it should be the goal and repeating the cycle in the other direction is for true aspirants.

Thinking of our lovemaking as another form of listening is I think as close as we come to hearing deep into another person’s soul.

Learn more about Wendy at http://www.goodcleanlove.com/

Photo via neloqua 

Think back to some of the hottest sex you ever had and you might remember that you were fully clothed and that the sex happened entirely between the lips- and what lips we have for the job… It turns out when you study philematology that human lips have the slimmest layer of skin on the body and are among the most densely populated with sensory neurons of any bodily region, more so than fingertips or even genitalia. That isn’t the only place where the human body is wired to kiss. Half of our cranial neurons influence the kiss by releasing a cascade of neural messages and chemicals, which create the intense euphoric sensations and the vital signals about the sexual/mating potential.  

“I felt it shelter to speak to you.”  Emily Dickenson

I am not sure if there is a more challenging aspect of relating than communicating.  It is the currency of all relationships, personal and professional and reflects us in the world more deeply than any other part of who we are.   Professionally, it is not uncommon for less qualified applicants to get a job over a more qualified competitor based solely on their ability to communicate.   Our personal relationships thrive or fall victim to our willingness and capacity to disclose and listen to the people we love.

An ancient greek philosopher, Epictetus once commented that “we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”   For all of my work on loving relationships,  I have never been a good listener.  In  my earliest childhood memories, my capacity to articulate and charm almost landed me on tv and kept the peace in my dysfunctional home.  I learn about my thoughts by speaking them.  Not surprisingly I married a strong silent type who makes a living listening to people.   

In some ways our very opposite styles of communicating fits,  and certainly in my own life I could attest to the fact that not everyone has the same need to be heard.  Yet, I have also learned, and often the hard way, that not listening to others with the same attention as you are given guarantees a pretty bumpy road to relating.  Even after decades with the same man,  I must learn and relearn how to listen to him.  How many times he has forgiven me for the unconscious ways that I run over him with my fast paced, fast thinking articulation and kill the very thing I work so hard to nurture.   

There are no excuses for my poor listening ability because I know full well that even as I form my next thought in my head, I am only half listening.   Even the best multi taskers among us cannot truly be listening while doing anything else.  My children will attest to the lack of genuine attention they feel while half listening in the midst of getting something else done.   So many communication errors occur in this  half awake state;  we believe that we communicated when in fact the message has not been sent or more likely misinterpreted.   

This is largely a result of a thinking error that we all share.  Often, we go to our conversations with an agenda,  determined and sometimes desperate to have our point of view heard and acknowledged.   We rarely go into them with the openheartedness of the explorer.   Curiosity and a genuine desire to understand the person you are talking to changes everything.   Creating the uninterrupted space to listen is so close to being loved that in the heart of the one being heard, there is no difference.  

This is where our communication, both verbal and non-verbal is a shelter.  Speaking my heart to one of my few beloved friends, those who always laugh at the right time and want to listen to me until my last sigh are the safe havens of my life.   We are always communicating- whether it is with what we choose to say or what we hold back.   Our eye contact, the way we hold ourselves near others, all of these messages are exchanged continuously.   Just as breathing changes by the consciousness we bring to it,  adding deliberate and loving intention to what and how we communicate can build shelter in our lives.  

Learn more about Wendy at http://www.goodcleanlove.com/