Customer Reviews

The Heart and Soul of Sex: Making the ISIS Connection

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Here is the Book that so many women that I meet and that long for a sex life that works for them must read. Gina Ogden, conducted a survey with close to 4000 women on aspects of sexuality, spirituality and their meeting place. In addition to insightful and fascinating quotes from many of these women, the book explores in depth the emotional, mental and spiritual connections that mean the most in our sexuality.

One idea that seemed to answer a question that comes up continuously in my conversations about the question of desire is that when feelings of anger and fear are repressed, desire goes right along with it. It is not hard to see the connection and yet I never really understood so clearly how our repressed feelings cut us off from all our feelings. She quotes "you can't heal, what you can't feel."
And it seems that all the places we block, keep us from ourselves.

Particularly refreshing is a new formulation which the author terms ISIS - Integrating Sexuality and Spirituality which shifts the focus from classic definitions of healthy sexuality which is dominated by physical performance and ability to orgasm with specific stimulation to a newly and woman defined space of pleasure and satisfaction derived from a whole experience. In this process she explore a variety of energetic sexual models as well as tools for emotional and mental healing from sexual fears and abuses.

What I loved was the discussion about how our culture focuses and emphasizes the trauma of our sexuality and its lifelong events, but still offers little or no language to allow for the pleasure of our sexuality which is a primary source of our power, beauty and sense of belonging. We largely cannot allow for the "mind-blowing, self-affirming, emotionally juicy, transformational sexual experience" although more and more women are witnessing the remarkable transformations in their sexual identities and their lives.

I am grateful that this resource is available and hope to soon offer it on my website. What a great gift to meet the tribe...

As a sex therapist I often work with couples who want more from their sex lives but don't quite know how. Gina Ogden's outstanding, accessible new book is written for women, and with a tremendous understanding of women's sexual experience, but I think it's a great book for men, too.

Ogden expands our notion of sex far beyond the physical and into the emotional, mental, and spiritual domains. She does this with candor, humor, compassion and imagination. She frames sex within a much broader context than we usually understand it and gives women (and couples!) concrete strategies to move their sex lives into the realm of cosmic sex, a path to oneness with self, partner, and the Divine.

You don't have to be a religious person or even think of yourself as exceptionally "spiritual" to benefit from Ogden's expertise and heart in this book. It is truly a gift to the soul.

Dr. Gina Ogden moves the discussion of sex from a quantitative ordeal (how big, how many, since when?) to a qualitative discourse (how deeply felt, how connected, how passionate?) Or let's say that she uses quantity - 3,800 people, mostly women, answered her survey - to get to the quality of their experience as sexual creatures. There have been very few American sex surveys this large and few that concentrate on what Ogden coins the ISIS: the integration of sexuality and spirituality. In fact, the scope and focus of this in-depth enquiry into what women feel about sex challenges the very nature of classic American sex research, which prefers information it can simply count.

Much research into women's sexuality has focused in some physiological way on their dysfunction, often with the assumption that women lust after "it" less than men. In the cultural background are the messages that sex is dirty and so are the women who are gagging for it. In fact, Dr. Ogden's review of the previous scientific cannon on sexuality makes you welcome her counter-approach. For example, she sites the University of Chicago's 1994 survey in which 1,500 women were asked to own up to any of seven sexual problems and when 43% checked even one, they were characterized as "dysfunctional." The researchers might have concluded that there are gobs of awkward lovers out there, but instead the 43% figure of sexually "dysfunctional" women has become ubiquitous, even used in ads to sell "solutions."

In contrast, Ogden demonstrates that girls want to talk about sex not in terms of how many pulses there are in an orgasm or the length of our clit hoods, but in terms of where sex takes us and what that journey feels like. Ogden's survey has given thousands (33% more than the Hite Report) of women that opportunity.

Ogden believes that sexual feelings are with us from birth to death, and wins my agreement in associating dance as strongly to sex as orgasm or penetration. It takes me back to the days when slow dancing was the most reliable foreplay a girl could use on a femme. "The Heart & Soul of Sex" addresses the need of women to take control of their own sexuality through the sex-positive message that all of us have the right to intimacy and pleasure. The book then provides tools (the ISIS Connection) and self-help material to use in connecting spiritual and sexual sensibilities.

WHO TOOK THE SURVEY?
I couldn't help but turn directly to the end to check out the survey data. Ages start at 18 and reach 86 and 82% of those surveyed identify as female. They are mostly well-educated and work in business or the professions, with only 5% calling themselves homemakers. With 86% checking Caucasian and only 8% African-American, Native-American or Hispanic (and an additional 5% Multiethnic), people of color seem somewhat under-represented. But sexuality better reflects the population as a whole with heterosexual respondents at 80% and 12% identifying as bi, gay or lesbian. Only eleven transgendered people took the survey, Ogden told me.

Ogden made a particular effort to include people likely to have opposing views, including, she reports, "Catholic clergy and pro-choice activists, male sex offenders and female abuse survivors, fundamentalist Christians and lesbian women." Her survey was eventually distributed by two national magazines, New Age and New Woman, and she appeared on Oprah in May, 2000 to talk about early stages of the research.

WHAT DOES THE SURVEY COVER AND WHAT ARE THE RESULTS?
Ogden explores the connection between spirituality and sexuality and finds that 69% always or sometimes feel that really satisfying sex needs to have a spiritual element. The vast majority connect that spiritual sense to being in love or feeling committed. This would come as no surprise to lesbians, perhaps, who as two women often have a double-dose of the love-huggies. The survey shows a good deal of overlap between the respondents who felt sexuality involves "excitement" (97%) and "oneness with partner" (94%) and the 91% and 85% respectively who felt the same thing about spirituality. I was surprised that a full 15% (the largest number) said drinking or drugs contributed least to spiritual sex. So much for the 1960s!

Dr. Ogden points out that this has been a self-selecting survey: women who identify as spiritual are likely to have been receptive. Still, it is interesting that 84% of those surveyed said they had "experienced sexual ecstasy" and a bit surprising to my cynical mind that a full 70% felt the same about "spiritual ecstasy." But the final (44th) question of the survey is revealing indeed. How important are these three things to your present life, it asks: Sexuality (84%), Spirituality (91%) and Religion (34%). Clearly Ogden is on to something: women want it, but they want it heart and soul.

Gina Ogden's new book gives women unrefutable evidence that they don't have to compromise who they are - uniquely - to have a full experience of who they are as sexual AND spiritual beings. She has the statistics to back up her statements, but the book is not a scientific treatise - it's a flowing and exciting map of new territory for those who have not yet discovered the depth and breadth of their sexual/spiritual connections.
I highly recommend this book for any woman of any age, and for any man who wants to learn more about "his" woman.

Gina Ogden's beautifully written book, The Heart and Soul of Sex, gives women the permission and encouragement to explore our total body-and-soul female sexuality. With her unique blend of science, sexology, spirituality, and tantric practice, Dr. Ogden offers a variety of resources to stimulate the sexual imagination and realize greater physical and emotional pleasure. For anyone wanting to more fully expand her sexual experience, with or without a partner, into the realm of the magical and transformative, I heartily recommend this informative book.

Dr. Gina Ogden opens up a wonderful exploration of the body, mind, soul and sex connections based on years of research in women of all ages, including the senior set. It offers vital and fresh information delivered with a style and grace that is inspiring and an enthusiasm that's contagious. Read and enjoy!

Wherever we look, overtly sexual symbols and images confront us. Whether you explore the Internet for on line discussion groups featuring a variety of sexual preferences, a DVD rental shop or a bookstore for both fiction and non-fiction devoted to it, sex is everywhere. Most of it is genitally focused. You might respond, "Isn't that what sex is all about?" To quote Gina Ogden Ph.D.: "It's not just about intercourse and orgasm. It's about receptiveness and movement...our most profound emotions...how we think and feel and love."

More than six years in the making, the Heart and Soul of Sex reveals a profound understanding of female sexuality. Because Dr. Ogden, sexual therapist and clinician since 1974 wanted to show how much more there is to be gained from sexual experience than the traditional physical responses, she devised a survey and distributed it nationwide. With 3810 replies the Heart and Soul of Sex was born. To quote from the introduction: "In some ways the language of spiritual experience comes closest to expressing the fullness of our sexual response, for it is the language of connection and ecstasy."

"My goal with this book is to expand how we think and talk about sex by offering information from thousands of women and suggesting how their experiences might broaden sexual meaning and language for all of us. Called the ISIS connection, integrating sexuality and spirituality, Dr. Ogden's survey reveals the marvelous varieties of ways that her respondents experience their sexuality, demonstrating as Dr. Ogden says "The truth is our sexual energy is always with us, whether or not we choose to act on it in a genital way." Her book delineating the responses of women from 18 to 86 and a few men, will be of help to anyone wishing to learn more about this vital aspect of themselves.

In the first section Dr. Ogden speaks as a woman, as a therapist, as a guide. She shares from both her life and her clinical experience, integrating them smoothly into an ongoing discussion of the depth of connection available in the ISIS connection. In the second section she gives the reader a broad spectrum of suggestions, exercises, and ceremonies to enhance and expand not just sexual experience but the totality of our experience as human beings. A careful, informative book the Heart and Soul of Sex will be useful to a broad spectrum of women as well as to the men who wish to better understand them.

Tasha Halpert, Author of Heartwings: Love Notes for a Joyous Life

As a veteran college health and human sexuality instructor I've read and skimmed more than my fair share of self-help books and research texts on female sexuality over the past half-century. Very few of them would I recommend you read cover to cover. Gina Ogden's Heart and Soul of Sex (2006 Trumpter/Shambhala) is. Not only does it report the results of a first of its kind nationwide survey on Integrating Sexuality and Spirituality (ISIS) in a refreshingly readable welcoming fashion; the gentle tone and language she uses to weaves four decades of professional experience as a therapist with the stories of 3810 respondents (18% men), models the very gentleness and depth, which I for one, hope sexuality can be for all of us.
Part One reviews the physiological facts about sex and goes beyond performance oriented 'functioning, to describe Ogden's 'ISIS Wheel' of the multi-dimensional nature of human sexual response. Women's journeys to interconnect (or not) the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of sexuality are beautifully synthesized and narrated. At the center that Dr. Ogden labels 'healing, transformation, and magic,' she gives us litanies of how some women describe the indescribable: their experiences of ecstasy, union, wholeness, oneness, feelings of acceptance and love. ' Part Two 'Paths to the Heart and Soul of Sex' includes eight chapters of steps and strategies individuals or small groups could use to incorporate the ISIS discoveries into their own lives.
If ever there was a blueprint for sexual health through the ages this is it. As a reviewer it was difficult to find something to criticize or that was missing. More about the paths men take to unite sexuality and spirituality would've been nice; but that's another story and study that no accident, hasn't happened to date.

This book changed the way I think about sex. It offers a new framework to think about sex--less linear and more complex. It has helped me break down some walls I have put up. I think it can be especially mind-opening for women who have been sexually abused or who have issues with self-worth. There is a poem in the last chapter that moves me to tears each time I read it titled :"For a woman who fears she is too damaged to love again." I felt like the author must have had me in mind when she wrote it.

I am a sex therapist and researcher. Many clients have never experienced the kinds of sexual experiences described by participants in the study presented in this book. It is heartening for them to know - women of all ages and orientations can have deeply meaningful, joyful, and pleasurable sex. Viewing sexuality from a perspective other than the traditional performance and dysfunction model allows anyone a tool to access and develop a new or different pathway to satisfying sex, however each person may define that. This book provides the brain science and qualitative research to back up the existence and virtues of whole person, spiritual, positive sexuality.