A while back I wrote about merging your feminine and masculine attributes and addressing your shadow self.  You can read those blogs here:

• Only 50 Shades of Grey — What Happened to the Rest?
• Is Humanity Being Raped?
• How Suppressing Your Shadow Self Can Destroy You

I was approached by author Michael Hallett, after he read what I had to say about the above-mentioned articles, and we started discussing issues of sexuality that we both felt needed to be addressed in society — after all, sex should no longer be a taboo subject.

Healthy Sexual Attitudes

In fact, we should be opening dialogues all over the globe looking at and re-examining our belief structures with regards to sex and our own sense of sexuality.

Sexuality and sensuality are gifts that have been severely abused but that doesn’t mean we can’t heal our perceptions.  We can reclaim our divine sexual power and reinstate a healthy respect for our bodies and the bliss we can evoke in them through loving relationship (both with ourselves and with our partners).

We each have a responsibility to heal our own sexual wounds, no matter what shape or form they come in.  It is detrimental to not hand these wounds down to our children — we need to break the link in the chain now before more harm can be inflicted.

The global closet is teaming with skeletons and we can’t fit one more femur in there without dem bones collapsing on us!  Now, onto bones of a different type…

Porn Addiction — A Dirty and Avoidable Topic

It’s hard to be open-minded when it comes to porn — a highly emotive and generally frowned at subject of discussion.  We would rather sweep this kind of stuff under a heavy rug and never peak at it again.

However, I was seriously blown away by Michael Hallett’s book (that he kindly sent me after our discussions) Porn Addiction 101 — a brave, insightfully thought-provoking and well-researched publication that had me hooked from start to finish.

He admits, in the book, to his battle with porn addiction and takes the reader through a journey of his own personal self-discovery and healing.

It was such a powerful read and something that I feel is badly in need of discussing that I want to introduce you to some of the astute highlights from his book.

“Once I queried my previously unassailable conviction that my addiction was an unwelcome character flaw, a disgusting habit, a shameful craving, everything changed.  As they say, ‘don’t shoot the messenger’. 

What was the message?  The message, loud and clear, was that I did not believe that I deserved an open, joyous and fulfilling sex life.  My craving for sexual images was a futile, treadmill attempt to find outside of myself what I did not believe I deserved or could ever have from within.  The message asked me to value myself, and in particular my sexuality…to be unashamed of myself…to love myself in my entirety.” — Excerpt from Pornography Addiction 101 by Michael Hallett

Partner Advice, the Compassion Factor and Rock ‘n Roll

This book is not only for the person who wants to overcome his/her addiction but also for the partners and other people who are affected by this destructive obsession.

Michael offers the partners of pornography-users a looking glass, window of opportunity to address their own sexual fears by encouraging conscious and open dialogue — to look at their own sexual wounds and encourage a new and healthier relationship (whether or not they move on to other partnerships).

The book offers the reader compassion and a real sense of understanding.

Michael also takes you through an interesting look at societal sexual history, which I found to be not only captivating and interesting but enlightening too,

“Music became a primary means for expressing socially illicit emotions, through jazz in the 1920’s and later through rock ‘n roll — the term itself derives from negro slang for having sex.” — Excerpt from Pornography Addiction 101 by Michael Hallett

Towards the end of the book, Mike says:

“Today I have complete control of my responses to sexualized images.  I have no adult filters on my computer.  I don’t need to avoid films or TV with sex scenes.  Even if I were chained up in a cinema with my eyelids pinned open like Malcolm McDowell in The Clockwork Orange and bombarded with bed adverts and/or hardcore porn, I wouldn’t lapse into my former emotionally disempowered porn binges because I have understood, accepted and healed the underlying impulses” — Excerpt from Pornography Addiction 101 by Michael Hallett

Good for you, Michael, in your courageous attempt to shine a light on this socially taboo subject!

Pornography Addiction 101 Book Review:

“Having developed men’s health many years ago in my region in Australia I find that Michael’s book is most timely. It is very much needed in the world we have created today where sexuality is a subject which is both taboo and fraught with misinformation and distortion. An area where research is often overlooked. Michael is obviously a deep thinker and this combined with his rollicking writing style makes for an easy and entertaining read without losing the wonderful depth of meaning he offers us. I suggest it is an essential read for all adults and especially men.”
—Joan Morgan McCarthy, author of “Peace and Harmony: Re-envisioning Sexuality Education”

For more information about Michael Hallett, you can visit his site www.michaelhhallett.com (‘Exposing Humanity’s Invisible Shame’).

His book, Pornography Addiction 101, can be purchased on Amazon HERE.

Lastly, I would like to encourage you to watch this amazingly refreshing and impactful video by Sheila Kelly called ‘Let’s Get Naked’ — I promise that you won’t regret it: