Episode 1: Cultivating Female Sexual Desire through Mindfulness

“There are so many age related myths surrounding female sexuality too like, it goes down with age, and once you hit menopause its gone, and old women don’t have sex, and old women don’t fantasize…I mean every one of these…is a myth and we have data and anecdotal experience to counters them” -Dr. Lori Brotto

In this episode, Dr. Lori Brotto joins us in the first episode of Season 2 to discuss cultivating female sexual health and empowerment. She addresses sex myths, research and historical issues that may influence why many women experience sexual concerns today. Dr. Brotto will go over how one can cultivate sexual desire through interventions, mindfulness and female empowerment.

Links to resources mentioned in this episode:

• Mindfulness and Sex Education for Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder: Mediators and Moderators of Treatment Outcome
• Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good 
• Tell Me More about Sex in Long-Term Relationships with Dr. Lori Brotto
• Better Sex Through Mindfulness: How Women Can Cultivate Desire
• The orgasm gap: can Netflix’s new sex ed show revolutionize women’s lives?
• We can do hard things: Pleasure is the ultimate frontier
• Exploring the Concept of Perceived Female Sexual Empowerment: Development and Validation of the Sex is Power Scale
• Sexual Education, Gender Ideology, and Youth Sexual Empowerment
• Recovering Empowerment: De-personalizing and Re-politicizing Adolescent Female Sexuality
• Exploring the Effect of Sexual Empowerment on Sexual Decision Making in Female Adolescents

Guest Biography

Dr. Lori Brotto is a professor in the UBC Department of Gynecology, a registered psychologist in Vancouver, and Executive Director of the Women’s Health Research Institute of BC. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of British Columbia (UBC). Then, she trained at the University of Washington where she completed her one-year internship in the Department of Psychiatry followed by a two-year Postdoctoral Fellow in Reproductive and Sexual Medicine. Dr. Brotto is a member of the International Academy of Sex Research, the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, the Canadian Sex Research Forum, and the Canadian Psychological Association.