How satisfied are you when it comes to your intimate life?
Both clients and friends share with me that though they know it’s important, their sex, intimacy, and play, tends to fall last on the list of important things “to-do”. They say that often when it comes time to focus on finally doing it, they’re zapped from a busy day at work, paranoid about their kids interrupting, or they’re just not able to relax enough to allow the experience to actually feel good.
If this sounds familiar, you are not broken..there is nothing wrong with you.
Having a rich and fulfilling sex life, on top of everything else going on in our worlds, does take a bit of practice, but it doesn’t have to look, feel, or be perfect! With a little attention, and a re-wiring of sorts, even the busiest of us can have great sex, deeper connections, and a body that is authentically responsive to sensual touch..
Here are 2 things you can do that will greatly enhance your sex experience tonight!
1. Release the Pressure to Perform and instead, Feel the Moment
Sensate focus, a tool introduced by the Masters and Johnson team back in the Sixties, is a foundation in the work that I offer my clients. It works by refocusing intimate partners on their own sensory perceptions and sensuality, instead of goal-oriented behavior focused on the genitals and penetrative sex. For example: If you’re tired, don’t fight it. Instead, allow yourself to just be tired, moving with more mindfulness, following where your pleasure is. You can even notice your pleasure in the simple things like the way the sheets feels on your skin, your partner’s scent, the texture of their clothing or the temperature of the air around the two of you. When we take away the expectation of where this moment should go and find the pleasure in where it is, we simply feel and enjoy ourselves more, which leads to more connection and less disappointment in what we think it should be.
2. Redefine “Sex”
By your own body’s definition, at what point would you say sex begins? Some say sex begins when clothes come off, or when the kinky cuffs snap on. When genitals are touched or when there is penetration with fingers, a tongue, or a phallus. If we were to ask 100 men and women this same question, we may get 227 different answers. I like to tell my clients that sex doesn’t have to be a big, planned out event with rows of candles, the perfect playlist, or four hours of kid-free time. It doesn’t require multiple orgasms and oral sex for both partners. In fact, “sex”, depending on how you define it, can be something shared with yourself or a partner while clothes remain on. Why? Because we are re-defining what we consider sex to be, and when we do that, we create more possibility and more opportunities for our bodies to be nourished in new and different ways. Nourished in intimacy, instead of being limited by a fixed definition of “sex”. By re-imagining what is considered sex, we remove the pressure of what the experience has to look like. We let go of the idea that certain actions need to take place before we can complete our sex-to-do list and feel like we won so we can go to bed.
So tonight I invite you to simply work off of #1, (sensate focus), and explore your self or your partner in a way that allows your body’s pleasure to simply be there in whatever way it wants to be, without trying to force it to be somewhere.
When we fixate on where it should go or be, we often miss the whole point of intimacy and the healing magic of pleasure.
xo
Melissa
