In modern society, a lot of pressure is placed on younger women to appear a certain way, to be appealing and have a healthy libido or healthy sexual drive. In Latin, libido means desire, willfulness or lust—akin to libore, meaning to be pleasing. Cultural expectations, and not living from one’s own heart, can interfere with a healthy libido.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung states that “the libido is identified as psychic energy… that manifests itself in the life process and is perceived subjectively as striving and desire.” It also represents a healthy balance between the feminine and masculine—the yin and yang aspects of ourselves.

In Chinese Medicine, the libido, with its chemical mix of neurotransmitters, neuropeptides and sex hormones, is associated with qi and yin and a healthy balance between the heart and kidneys. The heart is said to house the mind and spirit (yang), and the kidneys (yin) rule our life essence. The kidney energy naturally dissipates as we age. However, consciousness and resonance of the heart grow stronger with awareness and joyful expression.

As women age, we can certainly remain “juicy” and pleasing through a healthy lust for life and becoming more and more pleasing toward our authentic selves. Women of mature age are becoming “sexier” through knowing who we are, trusting our own authority and becoming more playfully expressive. There need not be anything “anti” about aging. Graceful aging cultivates spiritual maturity—acceptance, appreciation and celebration of the natural cycles of life.

Barbara Marx Hubbard, vital 86-year-old futurist and visionary, invites taking libido to a higher level. Imagine a new embodiment of the “suprasexual” that is discovered through “vocational arousal”. In essence, it is doing and expressing what we love and what we are passionate about.

Passion is heart medicine. Add into the formula that most delicious ingredient of all—humor—and we can enhance the life force. We are certainly in a time of dramatic awakening and liberating change, and we have the opportunity as the wise visionary trickster, to essentially reinvent ourselves and live a juicy, lush life.

Linda Joy Stone, OMD, L.Ac., practices acupuncture and Chinese Medicine at her private practice, in Tucson. Connect at 520-444-6901 and
LindaJoyStone.com.