All articles of

Lilja Kanerva

Writer

May 2, 2022

Mindfulness and Sexual Desire: Treating Female Sexual Interest Disorder

‍The multi-billion-dollar industry with the little blue drug to treat the erectile disorder, viagra, is booming. However, a similar wonder drug has not been introduced for women’s sexual problems. The lack of medicine is not, however, an indication that women do not suffer from sexual problems… There are, indeed, many women struggling from a lack of desire and arousal. Mindfulness has been proposed as a solution to these issues, and that will be the focus of this article.

March 21, 2022

Yoga and Mental Health: Challenging Body, Mind and Spirit

‍The origins of the word yoga come from the Sanskrit word ‘yuj’ which means linking together or uniting. By uniting the body and mind, yoga was (is) seen as a way to spiritual liberation.

February 21, 2022

Vipassana meditation

I hear a gong echoing in my sleep and I am quickly pulled awake by the sheer depth of the sound made by this huge instrument. It penetrates my sleep and forces me to wake up, even though it is only 4 am. The sound of the gong is quickly forgotten as I get up, pour a bucket of cold water over myself, and head towards the meditation hall. It’s still pitch black outside, and it will continue to be that way until halfway through our first-morning meditation, which lasts one and a half hours every morning, during the 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat. I sit still and try to focus on the sensations on my body by scanning it from head to toe and from toe to head, over and over. My mind quickly thrifts, but I patiently bring it back to the bodily sensations, over and over.

January 3, 2022

Jealousy in romantic relationships

An article by Guardian titled "I can’t come to terms with my boyfriend’s female friendships" deals with a jealous girlfriend who is checking his boyfriend’s phone and feeling uncontrollably scared that he will cheat on her, without much proof at all. She explains that the fact that he had invited a female colleague to his place to eat after golfing, while there was also another man present was enough to make her feel terrified. I think we can all, at least to some extent, recognize that little stinging feeling in our chest when a person we are attracted to, be it our partner or a distant crush, expresses some interest in another person and we feel threatened. In this article, we are going to dive into what jealousy is, what evokes it, how it interacts with the binary genders, how it is related to attachment styles and how it is related to and different in non-monogamy.

December 3, 2021

Trauma: are we overusing this word?

The word trauma finds its roots in the Greek word τραύμα, meaning wound...

Freeze your worries away: Cold-water swimming

I take a deep breath in and descend the stairs of a pier into what is literally ice-cold water. The cold hits immediately as my body gets immersed in the water, my breathing becomes shallow and I have an immediate reaction to get the heck away from the water, as quickly as possible. But I stay in...

November 8, 2021

Vulva diversity: Genital appearance, satisfaction and sexual pleasure

“Western society considers itself free, liberal and nurturing of gender equality, yet genitalia remains a taboo subject. We rarely say the word "vulva", and instead, describe their external genitalia using a vast array of different terms, often using euphemisms (e.g. ‘down below’) or incorrectly calling it "vagina". How does this affect our body satisfaction and sexual pleasure?

October 15, 2021

The shifting landscape of Porn

“Porn isn’t just porn, porn is actually a discourse, a discourse about sexuality, about masculinity and the roles we play” -Erika Lust