All photos in this Conversation ©Rainbeau Mars

The CEO of Rainbeau Mars Lifestyles talks about improving sexual stamina through yoga & breath

BY MAGAZINE EDITOR SUSAN MAIER-MOUL

Website RainbeauMars.com

Strala Yoga, New York May 7 Changing It Around with Rainbeau Mars

Brigitte Mars & Rainbeau Mars | Kripalu August 19-21 ra’Yoka and Healing Herbs

Conversation Rainbeau Mars, Part Two

Rainbeau Mars is both elegant and earthy. It’s easy to enjoy relaxed laughter with her, as well as to lean forward with focus and intensity on the issues many of us deal with on a day-to-day basis: love and relationship, health and practice, children and career.

Daughter of raw food visionary Brigitte Mars, and mother of seven-year-old yogini Jade, Rainbeau speaks for many of us who are second generation practitioners passing holistic life to our children, as well as for those whose family relationships are at the center of their world.

An absolute pleasure to be with, Rainbeau relates so easily with women because we share a commitment to practice that’s the foundation from which everything we do gets its energy.

And energy is what we’re going to talk about with Rainbeau in our Conversation.

A family heritage of empowered women

Susan Rainbeau, we’re so happy to welcome you to The Magazine. We hear constantly from our readers they want to relate to the powerful feminine energy at the core of yoga as real women – women with aspirations as well as families and partners.

I love that, for you, empowerment as women is not obscured by an abstract idea. You really live in Mother energy.
 
Rainbeau My own mother has been an incredible role model. Although she grew up in a wealthy family, when she was young she felt, “There’s more to life than this.”

She really never took the easy road. She was a pioneer in every sense of the word, and she was really drawn, like a lot of young people in those days, to get back to the land. She lived off wild edible plants for a couple of years, then started growing her own food, and eventually feeding her community.

Timothy Leary said “We were in the living room talking about the revolution while Brigitte Mars was in the kitchen cooking for it.”

This is something I carry with me always. It’s easy to talk about doing something, but to make change we need to actually do it.

Susan So you were born into a world where people were marching to a different drummer and were serious about making it happen! You have an interesting story about your arrival on the planet, too.

Rainbeau Before my mother gave birth she struggles with whether or not to go back to her parents. She had a tough decision to make – go back to her upscale, stable family, marry someone wealthy and live a mainstream life, or follow her passions and her beliefs. Needless to say, she chose the latter.

I was born in this teepee in Missouri of all places. It wasn’t Hawaii – it was Reynolds, Missouri. And right after I was born there was a double rainbow in the sky. There were ten people – all the hippie folk at my birth, and my mother felt it was a sign, so she named me Rainbow Harmony Mars – it wasn’t originally spelled “beau” I changed that. My grandmere is French.

We moved to Boulder, Colorado when my mother was very young. One of the people my mother hired at her restaurant in Florida was an Ayurvedic doctor, Indian, with whom I had a very close, close bond – Dr. Light Miller, who has her own school and college and has written several books.

Susan So you were growing up with these amazing women! Doesn’t your mother also write?

Rainbeau My mother at this point has sixteen books on natural medicine. So, yes, I come from a community of women who live what they believe in, and I want to make that available to a larger community, the way my mother did, and take it further.

The practice of home, the energy of relationship

Susan Back in your mother’s time women discussed how personal issues were in fact political issues. I’m really impressed by the idea that each of us living our ideas moment by moment makes the political a personal act in turn, and that women can bring positive change.

I know a lot of people are looking for that connection between their personal relationships, their practice and the world. Asceticism often dominates conversations about practices, but it’s really just one choice. It’s not the highest practice for everyone, it’s not appropriate for everyone.

Could you talk about the energy of relationship and home?

Rainbeau We’re here to teach people how to be healthy in the home and create an environment in which you can practice at home. I like to compare us to Martha Stewart – she taught people how to entertain, we are teaching people how to be healthy. If you want to lose ten pounds, you go into what’s in the cupboards and what’s in the kitchen and what’s in the sock drawer.

My philosophy is, what you do in your life and sport is affected by what you do in the kitchen, and what you do in the kitchen affects what you do in the bathroom and bedroom, that’s the home and garden, and what you do there affects what you do in your life and sport. It’s full circle.

I believe that if we can get people dialed into their home, we can heal the planet!

Susan Somebody say “amen”! Let’s look more specifically at our home life. What about our partners? What about the energy and quality of our intimacy and our closest relationships?

We can use our sacred sexual energy to revitalize our lives, heal our organs and heal our loved ones by coming from the heart. 

Susan Are there practices that improve and/or increase this energy?

Rainbeau For many people, detoxing is an important step to improving sexual health and intimacy.

I love and recommend the LEVEL ORANGE/Detoxification practice on www.rayoka.com – it’s designed to detoxify but also activate the water element region of the body and open the sexual meridians. 

But for your readers, I’d love to offer a some advice they can try out right away. Is it ok to be specific?

Susan Thanks! We’d love that.

A few of Rainbeau’s favorite sexual energy exercises

Rainbeau The DEER – This is one of the Tibetan Five Rites.

Sit in a comfortable seated position with one heel up against the clitoris. Gently draw the area in the pelvic floor up and in and take your hands to your breasts and circle your breasts towards your heart 36 times to make the breasts larger and away from the heart to grow smaller.

This is also great to help move blockages such as cysts or painful breasts.

To increase hormone balance and stimulate sexual energy, you should follow with 36 kegels – a contraction of the muscle that would be used to stop the flow of urination – and then do the kidney rub (these organs nourish and build sexual energy). By making fists with the hands and rubbing them up and down 36 times. 
 
You can do this morning and night – in sequences of 36 times each time. 

Susan I love it! What an invigorating practice! You could add self-affirmation, mantras, music and even aroma therapy.
 
Rainbeau I also like to do a daily meditation where I visualize and use my breath to draw up my sexual energy from the core of the body – exhale it up and around out of the head and back to the heart and, with another inhale, shoot it across the heart.

The shape you’re making looks like an Egyptian Ankh, which is the symbol for everlasting life in that tradition. 5 to 10 minutes of this morning and night is more than enough. 

Susan It’s a pranayama that builds capacity for intimacy.
 
Rainbeau You can practice this on your own if you are not in a relationship and, if you are in one, you can connect daily doing the same thing while connecting intimately with your partner to grow as if in a scared temple of divine healing that will nourish your organs and relationship. 

The bedroom gets its energy from the kitchen

Susan So, let’s follow our method and the cycle of energy around the home.
 
Rainbeau Right. Of course, we must mention the tradition of making and eating meals together – that, they say, keeps a mate even more than great sex. 

Susan Would you recommend any foods in particular?
 
Rainbeau The kidneys, which are vital to sexual stamina, like to be warm and thrive on black foods. 
 
I love Nutiva Chia Seeds, which look like little kidneys, and being a black food are rich in minerals that nourish and tone the kidneys.
 
And Nutiva Hemp Seeds are a great form of protein. Animal proteins can be hard to digest and process – taxing the organs and therefore our sex life. 
 
Cooking with Coconut oil is a great alternative to the free radicals found when one heats olive oil and is a also a great body butter that can be used as a wonderful non-toxic lubricant or way to pleasure your mate in a massage. Of course, massaging yourself with these oils is also great. 

Susan There’s the energy exchange between the kitchen and bedroom. It’s true you can’t rub processed food on your body! What are other sexual energy foods?
 
Rainbeau Raw Chocolate is a great way to stimulate the same places in your brain that are stimulated when you’re in love or having an orgasm. 
 
Maca supports the kidneys. It is an aphrodisiac and provides energy. 
 
Eat fruits with lots of seeds to increase your fertility and, of course, eating mostly live foods and doing yoga regularly is going to make you feel more sexy and hot. 

Susan Does anybody need a better reason to give up fast food and the TV remote? Yoga can connect you to both a healthy libido and positive body awareness.
 
Rainbeau If you don’t know how to massage yourself, it’s even more difficult to let someone else touch you, so get on the mat. 
 
Try my 3 Week Fresh Start Cleanse (next one is June 4th) to get you hot, open, healthy and excited in a nourished way where beauty and indulgence co-exist. 
 
I have to say, Yoga For Beauty – Dawn and Dusk and ra’yoKa, as well as all the ra’yoka downloads, are really good for aligning with our sexier, healthier more beautiful selves. (You can find these on Rainbeau’s website)

Susan Thanks for keying us to the right specific products you’ve developed for vitality. Do you have any other advice on sexuality or sexual energy?
 
Rainbeau You know, one other thing. Rather than thinking of a goal as an orgasm, think of the long term health benefits that can be created by climbing a hill together and sublimating this energy to build and tone our bodies and inner core rather than releasing, which can drain our organs of their vital essence, age us and leave us less in the mood for next time. 
 
Would it not be better to connect every day and want more, rather than once a week and be too tired to care until the next week?
 
Too tired to even think about sexual energy? Tomorrow Rainbeau talks about daily energy, and about her signature yoga/ martial arts style, ra’yoKa. Find out how Rainbeau evolved from teenage rebel to yoga devotee.

© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.