Why, when history is full of gods and statues whose sole purpose is to promote sexual well-being, are we today afraid of what it means to link spirituality to sex? In The Return of Desire: A Guide to Rediscovering your Sexual Passion, Dr. Gina Ogden has discovered that we do, just not openly. Dr. Ogden asks us gently and tactfully to look into our sexual pasts, whether they were abusive or blissful, and discover what our experiences mean to each of us spiritually.

Everyone, says Dr. Ogden, regardless of sex drive, orientation, marital status, or number of partners, is hiding parts of their sexuality which are waiting to be explored and expressed. Nor do you have to ascribe to a particular religion to understand and utilize Dr. Ogden’s ISIS (Integrating Sexuality and Spirituality) Wheel, a principle wherein we join our mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical paths to engender a balanced sexual center within each of us. It is this system and the nationwide survey from which it was born that are the joint focus of The Return of Desire.

Dr. Ogden discusses with us in depth her latest book and the stunning research behind it.

What first interested you in the study of sexuality?

In the 1970’s I was studying to become a family therapist and there were all these clients coming into our clinic with sex problems—and nobody there had any idea at all how to help them. I looked in the family therapy books under “S” and sex was not even listed. So I decided to get trained—and ended up with a PhD in sexology—from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.

How and why did you begin to question the old, accepted methods of sex research?

Right from the beginning I understood that sex researchers were systematically shortchanging women (and men, too) by asking the wrong questions. The questions were all about performance—as if all there is to sex is what you can count and measure—“how big?” “how much?” “how many?” etc. Long before I’d spent 3 decades as a sex therapist, I knew that sexual response is intrinsically complex—including body, mind, heart, and spirit—and brain imaging studies are now finally convincing even the doubters among us.

When did spirituality come into play?

When the first edition of my book “Women Who Love Sex” was published in 1994, I went all around the country giving readings—and audiences kept saying, “These women in your book are talking about sex—but they’re also talking about spirituality.” I began to research the specific connections between sex and spirit and found lots of opinions, but no one had ever done a survey—so at the end of the 1990s, I created my own survey, from questions clients and students had been asking me for many years—about how sex feels, and what it means in your life. I called the survey “Integrating Sexuality and Spirituality” (ISIS). 3,810 people responded, which makes it one of the largest US sex surveys.

Why do you think so few people have a spiritual reaction to sex?

This is a complex question. Many of us have been conditioned by our culture and our religious traditions to believe that sex and spirit are separate—or should be. But since I’ve analyzed my survey results, I actually think that most of us do have some kind of spiritual response to sex—if we think about spirituality as being about personal connection and meaning, and not religion (which is about traditions of worship). I’ve found that sexual experience has meanings for all of us—even rotten, boring, or abusive sex. And how we respond to those experiences can be transformational—can change the course of our lives.

Put another way—think about the “Oh God!” factor in sex. This is what people cry out in bedrooms all over the globe—because those moments of sexual orgasm and ecstasy are the closest most of us can get to feeling really connected to the vastness of the universe. And for some of us this feeling can be downright scary.

Why did you choose to focus The Return of Desire (and other studies and books) strictly on women's sexuality?

It isn’t that I don’t value men’s opinions. It’s that most models of sexuality begin with men and end with women not quite measuring up. It’s the old Mars-Venus view of the universe, where men are supposed to be the fixed sexual stars. So to focus on women—on what we feel and what we can do to reclaim sexual desire and feeling on our own terms—opens up a sexual cosmos that’s never been fully explored.

Many of your respondents' descriptions of whole-self sex are so spiritually grounded that they border on the mystical: have you received any criticism for blending accepted psychology with spirituality?

Oddly enough I haven’t received criticism that I’m aware of. I don’t think I’m in denial. It may be that my work literally flies under the radar of traditional models so critics from these camps don’t even notice it flying by. And if you think about it, there’s lots of psychology that is spiritual in nature—from Maslow to Jung to Mihaly Cxikszentmihalyi the author of best-selling books on the psychology of optimal experience and “flow.”

Is it difficult to convince women (and their partners) that spirituality and sexuality are connected? For what kinds of people is the ISIS model most difficult?

My experience has been that the people who gravitate to my work are both relieved and excited to find a model that so easily helps them understand the complexity of their sexual response and communicate it to their partners. The ISIS model is based on a medicine wheel of body, mind, heart, and spirit. It’s a totally user-friendly model. Anyone can fit their experience into it. And it’s non-judgmental. At first, some people may find it difficult to let go of the blame game—where they stay stuck in the old “performance” mindset and blame themselves or their partners because the sex isn’t working. If they’re serious about broadening the definitions of themselves on the ISIS Wheel, though, they find ways to move beyond that.

What has surprised you in your research and practice?

One surprise is how many men answered my ISIS survey—684 of them—and most of them indicated that they felt sex was far more than performance—just the way most of the women responded. This says to me that there is hope for our sexual conversations to go way beyond the divisive Mars-Venus idea that men and women have incompatible feelings and goals.

Another surprise in the ISIS sample is that sex actually became more satisfying with age—the 50-, 60-, and 70-year-olds were having a better time than the 20- and 30-year-olds. More eye contact, more laughing, richer relationships. Sex doesn’t necessarily go downhill the minute you spot your first gray hair. Halleluiah!

What is the next step for you and your studies?

I’m working on the next book in the Shambhala series: “The Best Is Yet To Come—Women Talk about Love, Sex, and Aging.” Beyond that, I’m collaborating on a number of fascinating projects, from tele-seminars and on-line courses to further research on my “ISIS” data. A current collaboration I love is recording a CD for the blindness community to bring my ISIS workshops into a format that can be used by non-sighted women as well as sighted women.

The Alpha Five:
1. Name one piece of work-novel, painting, movie, etc.-that really influenced/motivated you? Explain how/why.

Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.” I read it when I was in a power struggle with my second husband—and it brought me the sudden clarity that I was one in a long line of women caught in an age-old dynamic of being dominated by men. I left that husband and began my career as therapist and writer—eventually naming that dynamic “cultural missionary position”—man on top.

2. What is the biggest challenge/obstacle you have encountered thus far?

By far the biggest challenge is my own belief system—the old brainwashing that says “you’re not good enough.” This is trite, I know, but true.

3. What is your biggest regret?

That it took me so long to outgrow the notion that I have to do it all myself—it is such a revelation to be able to call on my friends and allies for help.

4. Describe what you envision your life to be like in 10 years-what has changed, what has stayed the same?

I dream about having time to delve into nature and into an enriching spiritual practice. I’m so overwhelmed with busy-ness right now that all I can imagine is spending about a year just staring at the ocean watching the waves break on the shore. Then I can think about the next nine years after that. I know there are more books in my future, and many more collaborations.

5. What is the one piece of advice that you feel has been the most valuable to you and which you would like to pass on to others?

A wise supervisor once said to me: “The most important skill you need to develop as a therapist and researcher is how to pick yourself up off the ground—because if you’re an original thinker: don’t follow the crowd. You’re going to fall flat on your face numerous times. You need to be able to get up again and keep on keeping on.”

Find out more about Gina and her work—you can even download the ISIS survey—at http://www.ginaogden.com The Return of Desire is available next month.