Valentine’s Day is near and great sex is always a trending topic. As many of you know yoga is great for a variety of reasons, improving flexibility, decreasing stress, and increasing muscle strength. However, did you know that yoga can also improve your sex life? By stimulating your second chakra, the sacral chakra, you increase the blood flow in your genital region which can significantly enhance sexual encounters. This chakra also enables you to open yourself up to true pleasure and liberates you to explore your creativity and desire to experience new adventures.
Additionally, studies have shown when individuals have higher levels of stress their sexual desire tends to decrease. Therefore by establishing a consistent yoga practice and decreasing your cortisol levels you will in turn increase your libido. A regular yoga practice can also improve your body control and awareness which will allow you better to explore aspects of yourself and your partner during sex.
In understanding all these aspects of the physical and metaphysical components of yoga, these five postures will increase your hip flexibility, decrease stress, and lead to an all-around better sex life.
Feel free to grab a yoga mat, blanket, or towel to dive into the following postures.
Note: Hold each for 30-60 seconds.
Cat/Cow Pose
Cat pose
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For our first stretch, cat pose and cow pose will be performed together. Start with cat pose by getting into a tabletop position, pressing into your mat, drawing your chin to your chest, and rounding your shoulders.
Cow pose
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Then move into cow pose by continuing to press your hands down, look up to the ceiling, press your collarbone forward, and pull your shoulders back.
Continue to flow between cat and cow pose for 30-60 seconds.
Camel Pose
Camel pose
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For camel pose, stand on your knees, bring them to hip distance, place your palms on the small of your back, and look up to the ceiling. Begin to take your gaze back, press your chest up to the ceiling, and your hips forward to the front of your mat.
You can also bring your hands to your heels as long as your hips remain stacked over your knees.
Butterfly Pose
Butterfly pose
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Butterfly pose is a classic hip-opening stretch. In order to do it, come to a seat on your mat, bring the soles of your feet together, press your knees towards the mat, and fold forward.
Seated Straddle Pose
Seated straddle pose
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For the seated straddle pose, come to a seat, and spread your legs the width of your mat (or as far as you can without bending your knees). Then, fold forward and extend your hands away from the mat.
Happy Baby Pose
Happy baby pose
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Happy baby pose is great for relaxation in addition to being a variation for the missionary sex position. To do it, lie on your back, bring your knees to your chest, grab for the outside of your feet, bring your knees to the outside of your ribs, and press your feet up to the ceiling. Once settled, press your heels up and flex your toes down.
Use your hands to pull down and ensure your entire spine, including your lower back is on the ground. If your lower back is off the ground, grab for behind your knees instead of the soles of your feet. You also have the option to straighten your legs.
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Those rumors were more than laid to rest when Jodie and Joshua went to the 2023 Oscars together earlier this year, and even more recently, when they celebrated her birthday together last month during the September unveiling of the Lotus Emeya.
Jodie Turner-Smith celebrates her birthday with husband Joshua Jackson at the unveiling of the new fully-electric Lotus Emeya on September 07, 2023 in New York City.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for Lotus
Despite seeming particularly happy and in love, perhaps the writing was already written on the wall even then. In the past, Jodie has been very celebratory publicly about her love for her estranged husband, even boldly recounting their love story for the books in a 2021 interview with Seth Meyers.
When Jodie and Joshua met, it was while at his birthday party in 2018. Their relationship was hot and heavy from the start, with Jodie openly noting that they began as a "one-night stand." During her 2021 interview with Seth Meyers, she jokingly referred to their love story as a "three-year one-night stand." She shared:
"First of all, I saw him before he saw me and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that.' And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him. He had to yell across the room to me, and I was wearing this T-shirt from a movie called Sorry to Bother You and [actress] Tessa Thompson plays a character called Detroit, and she has this T-shirt that says, 'The Future Is Female Ejaculation.'
"And so, he shouts across the room, 'Detroit!' He comes over and… does this really cute, charming thing that he does and just all night -- he just basically followed me around the party."
The couple were together from that moment forth, and even made things "Instagram official" less than two weeks later while on a dinner date. Joshua would later clarify to Insider that the night they met in 2018 was not a 'one-night stand' or a 'three-year one-night stand' like his then-wife joked but instead, it was "technically a three-night stand."
"It was sealed with a kiss that night and then we didn't leave each other's sides for, well, three years now," Joshua continued at the time.
In a July 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Joshua dropped more details about the why behind getting married. He revealed that he didn't know he wanted to get married to Jodie until "the moment she asked me."
"She asked me on New Year's Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach and she asked me to marry her."
He added, "I did not know [she would propose], but she was quite adamant and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made."
Joshua Jackson Reveals Jodie Turner-Smith Proposed To Him
Jodie received quite a bit of flack for proposing to Joshua because it goes against tradition and what society sees as acceptable for a woman to do to a man, and proposing isn't one of them. No matter how much time has passed, the viewpoints around who should do the proposing and who should be proposed to are still very traditional.
After being on the receiving end of such backlash, Joshua would later clarify to the media in a separate interview that it wasn't just Jodie's proposal to him that sealed the deal of them getting married, he proposed to her too. She might have initiated it, but Joshua followed through.
"I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist," he explained to Refinery29 that same year. "We were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic."
David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images
He continued, "And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'"
"She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up."
Joshua and Jodie would eventually marry in December 2019. Shortly thereafter, Jodie gave birth to the couple's first child, Janie, in 2020.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, Jodie shared the ways becoming a mother to Juno helped to heal her of her wounds from colorism she experienced in the past. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie shared with the outlet.
She continued, "Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.' Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
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