The Heart and Soul of Sex: Making the ISIS Connection Book

Drawing on the results of her unique national sex survey—and on decades of clinical practice as a sex therapist—Gina Ogden offers a revolutionary exploration of women's sexual experience. The best sex, say thousands of women, doesn't just happen in the body. It is multidimensional, connecting body, mind, heart, and soul. In The Heart and Soul of Sex, Ogden coaches readers to fully realize the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of sex, making what she calls the "ISIS Connection."

Throughout the book are firsthand stories of survey respondents, offering examples of how ordinary women—from ages eighteen to eighty-six and from many backgrounds—have found their own way to sexual expression that is deeply satisfying and even life-changing. The Heart and Soul of Sex takes the reader on a journey beyond the usual emphasis on performance, including practical exercises that can be done alone or with a partner. Ogden shows us that we can be much more than we've been told—not just fun and exciting but deeply healing, magical, and transformative.

Click here to read an interview with Gina Ogden on Oprah.com.

Publishers Weekly

This book was shaped by the results of a landmark sex survey called Integrating Sexuality and Spirituality (ISIS) that researcher and sex therapist Ogden undertook in 1997. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of sex, the ISIS survey asked the mostly female respondents how they experienced sex and what sex meant in their lives. Ogden (Women Who Love Sex) writes, "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." In Ogden's view, sex is (or should be) about more than physical sensation. She cites recent laboratory findings that show multiple areas of women's brains lighting up when they bring themselves to orgasm, including the areas connected with religious ecstasy and spiritual experience. The results of the survey bear Ogden out, as 47% of women say "they've experienced God during sexual ecstasy"; 67% say "sex needs to be spiritual to be satisfying." In this provocative, important book, Ogden functions as a gentle, persistent guide in mapping out pathsphysical, mental, emotional and spiritualthat women can take to locate their sexual "center," where healing, ecstasy and transformation occur. There are also chapters on the chakras, tantric sex and creating ceremony for sacred lovemaking. (July 18) |1400065526 Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City Jed Horne. Random, $25.95 (432) ISBN 1-4000-6552-6 ~ Horne, metro editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, writes with the clipped, raw urgency of a thriller writer in this humanist account of what happened after the levees broke. As already widely reported, residents who ignored the mandatory evacuation order (thinking "Katrina... had all the makings of a flop") quickly found themselves surrounded by bloated corpses floating in toxic floodwaters and without a consolidated rescue effort. Horne quickly moves past the melodrama of a striking disaster to recount the stories of individuals caught in the storm's hellish aftermath or mired in the government's hamstrung response: a Louisiana State University climatologist goes head-to-head with the Army Corps of Engineers over inadequate flood protection and faulty levees; a former Black Panther provides emergency health care at a local mosque. Horne saves his sharpest barbs for President Bush and the Department of Homeland Security ("if Homeland Security... was what stood between America and the next 9/11, then... America was in deep trouble") for failing to muster an appropriate response. Big disasters spawn big books, and though Horne's isn't the definitive account, it's an honest, angry and wrenching response to a massively bungled catastrophe. (July) |0743272730 Hillbilly Gothic: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood Adrienne Martini. Free Press, $23 (208p) ISBN 0-7432-7273-0 ~ Martini, a journalist and college professor, summons her blackest comedic chops to rehash her free-fall into postpartum depressionand the newfound understanding of her own upbringing that buoys her back up. Still mired in the oppressive Appalachia that chafed at her in childhood, she checks herself into the Knoxville psychiatric hospital shortly after giving birth, acquiescing to the "hillbilly Gothic patchwork" of suicides and manic-depression that scourge her family history. As her newborn daughter battles jaundice, her mother hovers intrusively as she awaits the mystical ability to breast-feed; Martini ponders her maternal fitness with a panicked despair nimbly rendered with dry humor and candid self-appraisal. Her misery, so jarringly at odds with the "bundle of joy" in her arms, throws open a window on her own mother's severe depression, helping Martini to make peace with her family and its legacies. Unflinching honesty, mordant wit and verbal flair (she comes apart "like a wet tissue" after giving birth) save this memoir from soggy self-pity. In its humor and empathy, it's a nonjudgmental resource for the thousands of mothers battling the "baby blues." (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.