What’s the connection between a woman’s sexual aliveness and the state of the world?

Probably a lot more than most of us think.

As a feminine empowerment and sexuality coach, I work with women all over the world, helping them regain their mojo and work through the obstacles preventing them from experiencing pleasure and orgasm.

The most common thing I hear is that at some point in her life, a woman has had sex she wasn’t ready for, didn’t consent to, or felt powerless to say no to.

The other prevailing factor for most of my high-functioning clients is what I call “busy woman syndrome.” We spend all our time and energy getting sh*t done, being stuck on the hamster wheel of life. Working to tight deadlines in the office, going all-out in project launches, month-end stress, lunch at our desks—the list goes on. Exercise becomes another chore to be ticked off on our ever-expanding to-do list.

Get home, throw some food together, put the kids to bed.

Crash on the sofa at 8 p.m. (if we’re lucky), reaching for the comfortable numbness of Netflix/wine/snacks.

Is it any wonder that so many women don’t feel like intimacy? There’s nothing left in the tank; “It can wait ’til the weekend.”

But the weekend rolls around and the to-do list is larger than ever, with all the things that didn’t get done in the week because we’re so bloody knackered!

And intimacy becomes this thing at the bottom of the to-do list (that never quite gets ticked off), and self-care feels, at best, selfish or, at worst, a chore.

So many women I work with have patterns of putting everyone else first. They’ve lost the ability to feel a connection to their body and find it hard to access pleasure. The idea of actually experiencing orgasm with a partner feels like the Holy Grail (particularly as recent statistics say 80-percent of women struggle to climax with a partner).

So what’s this all got to do with the state of the world right now?

We live in a culture that prioritizes fastness, productivity, and “convenience.” We do everything on the go. We’re glued to our devices, meaning we’re tuned out from the world, from nature, from our senses that give us vital clues to our health and energy.

We ignore the feelings of tiredness in our bodies, pushing through on caffeine. We don’t rest when we menstruate, ignoring the opportunity for our built-in system to reboot each month.

We eat fast food and have fast sex. We interact via apps, cutting down actual human connection.

My take on this, as a pleasure activist and advocate for quality intimacy, is that this is a crunch time on the planet, highlighting the desecration of the feminine.

As women, we’ve become shut off from our feminine nature. One of the reasons I had such a hard time in the corporate world was because of the lack of sensitivity, the linear, rational thinking, and the stifling lack of creativity.

Men are also shut off from their inner feminine nature. They’ve been brought up to suppress emotions (big boys don’t cry) and not talk about their feelings. And often this gets suppressed for so long until it explodes as anger, and sometimes violence.

And Mamma Earth? It’s pretty obvious she’s been disrespected and desecrated, too. The way we treat our environment seems a direct correlation to how we treat our own bodies.

So what’s the answer?

I can only talk about personal steps here, on top of the obvious recycling and reducing our carbon footprint.

What if we all just slowed the f*ck down?

Wouldn’t that be deliciously, radically subversive?

Imagine if we stopped rushing around.

Enjoyed our tea in a café rather than getting it to-go.

Cooked simple food from scratch, rather than plastic food wrapped in plastic eaten at our desks.

What if we switched off our phones, went outside, got some fresh air, and planted our feet in the ground?

How would it feel to make pleasure the first thing on our to-do list, not the last?

If we prioritized meaningful human connection?

Imagine if we actually looked people in the eyes and said hello to strangers in the street.

And how about giving men permission to access and share their feelings and emotions, and to encourage women to connect with their natural intuition and body awareness?

I encourage each of us to find 20 minutes to lie down and just rest, focusing on our breath. To put on some music at home and dance like nobody’s watching. To go for a walk in the park. To give a stranger a compliment.

Look for the micro-moments in our day when we can reconnect and recharge.

Most importantly, I would love to see all of us drop this glorification of “busy” and make pleasure our priority.