_{FEN: Female Erectile Network}

Greetings and Happy Friday Beautiful. How did another week just blow by? Seriously. The days seem to speed up and my question to you is, “what have you done for yourself lately?” Did you get to see the full Buck Moon last weekend? Did you enjoy some time in your birthday suit?

Each week this newsletter will show up in your Inbox, inviting you to add more pleasure and play into your life. It’s good for you. It’s a short read….I promise. And, I give you full permission to prioritize your well-being on a daily basis.

Chances are you are the hub of your family unit. But, giving, giving, giving, until your cup is empty is sooo last Century and NOT what we want to model to our children, Godchildren, neices, nephews, grandchildren, etc. Are you with me?

It’s not easy to break the chain of hundreds of years of conditioning to put yourself last and overcome the guilt and/or shame of finding daily healthy pleasure. That is why we are building a community to support you. We are thrilled to share this newsletter with you today.

In this week’s edition we will review some important pleasure centers of the female body called the FEN: Female Erectile Network. Sheri Winston, author of the book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure, coined the term FEN.

While I wish Captain Jack Sparrow was reading the secret maps to my Buried Pleasure (a girl can fantasize!), we all know that taking personal responsibility for our own pleasure (discovering it, being open & curious, and communicating these discoveries to a partner) is the more empowering way.

Feature Article

Female Erectile Network “FEN”: An Erector Set of Her Own

Let’s start with understanding how our tissue even gets erect. It starts with the capillaries. Capillaries are the tiniest blood vessels in the body with a wall only one cell thick. This allows for the exchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide, nutrients, and waste.

Erectile tissue has special capillaries that have many, tiny one-way valves. When you are not aroused, they stay open for regular blood flow. When you get turned on, the valves coooperatively close, allowing the tissue to fill up with blood.

This erectile tissue also has extra balloon-like spaces where it can pack more blood, increasing the firmness and its sensitivity. This delightful state is called “engorgement”. The FEN is an entire network of structures made up of this beautiful, expandable, erectile tissue.

Similar But Not the Same: Both men and women have the same erectile tissue but a big difference is the layout. The penis essentially works like a single unit with all the valves coordinated. This enables men to have an erection and then release all the valves together to provide the force for their ejaculation. After ejaculation is a refractory period, the mandatory time before the valves close again to create the next erection.

Women don’t need a propulsive ejaculation. Our FEN isn’t one funtional unit. It has different compartments that can work together or independently. Women have no refractory period.

I hope that you are understanding the potential that your body has for more pleasure (multiple O’s of many different varieties), than perhaps you have allowed yourself to experience (I agree with Anne Hathaway gif above!).

If you are wondering why you are learning this now as an adult and not when you were 12 years old, it has to do with the fact that we were taught about reproduction from a patriarchal point of view, NOT from a pleasure centric point of view. As Sheri stated in our interview, we live in a sex-negative, pleasure-negative, and woman-negative culture.

But, it is not too late to take some time to let this new info sink in and get curious. Remember you can be a Cycle Breaker and create real change. Approach your body and your erectile network with a “Beginner’s Mind”. You really do have some Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure.

Now, it’s time to introduce the wonderful parts of your FEN. The FEN has interconnected but separate structures of the a. clitoris, b. vestibular bulbs(2), and 3. the two sponges. The clitoris has three parts: the head, shaft, and legs. The two vestibular bulbs look like fat parentheses around the vaginal opening and are located under your outer labia.

One of the two tubular sponges of erectile tissue surrounds the urethra and is located above the roof of the vagina. The second erectile sponge is located in the floor between the vagina and the anal canal. We want these sponges to get puffed up like a jumbo roll of paper towels!

Women are more like ovens with Yin Energy (inward & flowing…not fast acting) as compared to Masculine energy that is Yang Energy (go, go, go). The typical male erectile tissue responds quickly more like a microwave.

An aside: Yin and Yang can be thought of as complementary, and at the same time opposing forces, that interact to form a dynamic system where the whole is greater than the assembled parts.

And both parts are important for cohesion of the whole. This means you feel better when you can embrace both your “Go” & “Flow” nature (just not at the same time) in balance, like Day/Night, Sun/Moon, etc.

It is completely normal for FEN to take 30-45 minutes to achieve complete engorgement. As Sheri said in our podcast episode, S3Ep12 having a clitoral orgasm can be beautiful just like playing the guitar and singing a song, but what if you have the whole “orchestra” playing? When we have our entire FEN activated and engorged, our orgasms can be bigger, wider, deeper, and more diverse. (Umm, Yes Please!)

If you want the best orgasm, take the time to get it all activated.

Mind/Body Stuff

So, why can’t all women have experience orgasms?

This question will be explored in another issue of Bloom, but for now, we’d like you to remember that your body needs to feel safe for it to relax and open. Prior sex-negative experiences prevent your body from opening.

What can you do to create a safer environment for yourself and your pleasure? This is where creating more daily pleasure helps to rewire your nervous system to let it know that pleasure is not dangerous or associated with negative consequences.

What can you do today to combine a pleasureable activity with a feeling of safety? Here are three examples of combining pleasure + safety. Feel free to create some of your own. 1. Take a bubble bath, while eating delicious fruit or dark chocolate, and reading a book (or self pleasuring if you feel like it).

2. Dance, inside or outside in nature, alone or with your partner or with a group of friends, while wearing something that allows you to feel sexy (jewelry, clothing, shoes, belly dance scarf with jingles, feather boa, fairy wings, etc).

   

   Photo by Junior REIS on Unsplash

3. Sit outside with your favorite beverage, a chair, and a journal and write out a pleasureable experience or fastasy you would love to have happen in real life. Use your five senses when writing. What will your body feel? What will your mouth taste? What will your eyes see? What will your ears hear? What sounds will you be making? What will your nose smell? You can seal this in an envelope, share it with a friend or lover, or burn it after you write it. It’s your call. It is more about the experience of creating the pleasureable fantasy in your mind’s eye.

Now it’s your turn

What is your take away from this issue?

What can you do to give your FEN more time to get activated? A couple years ago, I had to ask a prior partner to give me more time in foreplay and not rush intercourse. I was scared to share this and was afraid he’d judge me for needing more time.

I ended up sharing Sheri’s book to explain that women needed more time for our erectile tissue to get fully activated. He actually liked learning about this and we both had better pleasure from this.

Tip: Sheri suggests that we are not stimulating our vestibular bulbs enough to activate their erection. These sexy bulbs are located inside of our outer labia. Try holding them, lightly pressing or tapping them, pinching them, or squeezing them.

Have you ever spent time giving yourself a breast massage? We have erectile tissue in our breasts, areolas, and nipples. Try circling your breasts gently and slowly while soaped up in the shower or bath. Or use body lotion after a shower or bath. Try going very slowly and mindfully and lovingly. It can bring up a lot of emotions or just feel great.

Remember, mix pleasure with what feels like safety to your body to create new neuropathways in your brain.

Thanks for reading this week’s edition. We would love to hear from you regarding your reactions to this issue, the suggestions or your experience actually trying the challenge. Just hit reply, and let me know what you think or how you feel. I’m definitely interested 😀 

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