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Dr. Lana Holstein
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Dr. Lana Holstein, a 20-year expert in sexuality counseling, wants to convince Cincinnati women that sexuality plays a key role in their health and that romance can exist at any age. On Tuesday, Holstein will give a speech entitled "Sexuality and Vitality: Keeping Romance Alive at Any Age" in the Aronoff Center's Jarson-Kaplan Theater. She comes to town from her post as director of women's health at the Canyon Ranch health spa in Tucson, Ariz., via the welcoming hand of Speaking of Women's Health.
Holstein wants to drive home the point that mental and physical well-being cannot be achieved separately.
"The body is not separate," she says via telephone from her office in Arizona.
An important link between the physical and emotional spheres in a woman's health is how she feels about and experiences sex, Holstein says. Sex is not just a physical sensation -- it carries with it a world of emotions and a level of spirituality that can be hard and confusing at times.
Dianne Dunkelman, founder and chief executive officer of Speaking of Women's Health, headquartered in Cincinnati, heard about Holstein through her mother-in-law, who had attended some of Holstein's seminars while visiting Canyon Ranch.
"I called Lana and we hit it off immediately," Dunkelman says. "She has such a wonderful sense of humor, and she has answers to questions that you don't know who to go to ask."
Holstein's combination of humor and frankness draws people immediately. When she refers to romance in her speech, she's not talking about what most associate with a Hallmark store. She's talking about an "open and giving heart," she said.
"Romance is a true heart connection that sometimes uses tokens to show it, but it has everything to do with the way and the meaning to give those tokens," Holstein says.
An open and giving heart is romantic, she says, because it wants to give tangible and intangible things, not because it's expected to or because it expects something in return.
"You can give those tokens and not give from an open and generous heart," Holstein says.
A heart that gives because it feels it has to or because it wants something in return is a "stingy heart," she says.
To build intimacy and increase romance, it's crucial to involve the open and giving heart, Holstein says, which gets its power from the "engine that is the passion."
And it's not as simple as women wanting men to be more romantic, Holstein says, because she's seen it both ways. Although it's hard to generalize, she feels that, on average, women love the signs of commitment such as flowers, jewelry and rings -- tangible things that let them know their lover is thinking of them.
But whether or not a specific lover is romantic is not the issue, Holstein says. Women must recognize the things their partners find important and special and must want to do them to make their partners feel important and special.
"If you're in sales and you want to sell something in a foreign country, you want to do a good job," Holstein says. "So you learn the customs of that country. You pay attention."
She says women must also pay just as much attention to the self to explore their sexuality on other levels.
"Many of us lose track of sexuality as part of our vitality when we get burdened by the rest of life," Holstein says. "Sex is one of the first things to go."
An issue that she says commonly causes discord in relationships is unbalanced desire -- when one partner's sex drive is higher than the other's. When this happens, sex tends to become mechanical because the emotional nourishment suffers. Many women, in fact, would rather not have sex at all, Holstein says.
To address these and other problems, Holstein takes a three-pronged approach to looking at sexuality and making it a vital component of overall health. A healthy sexuality consists of knowledge of the anatomy, emotional health and how it fits into sex, and thinking about sex from a spiritual and soulful perspective.
Although Holstein's speech title might invoke the idea that she's offering advice exclusively to mid-life women, she maintains that her ideas can inform all women.
"Sometimes we know certain things, but there is lots we don't know," Holstein says. "Like the female sexual response cycle, patterns of orgasm and female ejaculation, as well as understanding how to make the experience as full as possible."
Younger women might need help in determining where sexual interaction should exist overall in the relationship, Holstein says. When to have sex, how much and what works are all common questions she says she receives from younger women.
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Fitness defined
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It seems to Holstein that younger women at times need to be guided to work on their own responsiveness to sex and even their ability to be orgasmic.
"Younger women have a different set of issues facing them," Holstein says. "They're more likely to have a series of partners, so they need to be careful about protection."
When addressing issues facing older women, Holstein says she commonly encounters women who describe an abrupt, tremendous onset of sexual desire.
"It could be possibly from freedom, being done with raising the children," she says.
Whatever the age, Holstein says that every woman needs to see that sexuality is a direct path to vitality.
"The more dimensions, the better," she says. "And every woman needs to be willing to look at sexuality as if it's still developing. Look at it like sports -- you start out not being very good, but you develop and become more comfortable."
DR. LANA HOLSTEIN speaks at the Aronoff Center downtown at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Admission is $20. She also will be a featured speaker at the fifth annual Speaking of Women's Health Conference in Cincinnati on March 15-19.
