Your lover initiates intimacy, but you can’t get into it because your mind is elsewhere.
You lay down to begin your pleasure practice and your body is completely numb until you start thinking about the one who turns you on.
You’re about to orgasm but can’t quite get there so you visually play the scene in your mind that will take you over the edge.
Sound familiar?
The problem isn’t where you’re mind is at. It’s the fact that you’re in your mind at all.
This type of pleasure circuit is the reason pornography is so addicting, ultimately keeping people at arms length from real connection.
And it’s not just a sexual problem. It’s a disembodied problem.
As a culture, we have become so over-stimulated and thinking-based, that we have actually desensitized our bodies, our instincts, and even our intuition.
Seeking the doctor for health. Seeking the phone for entertainment. Seeking the fantasy for turn on.
The sooner we return to our animal body, the sooner we can be in harmony with nature and all that is eternally accessible to us.
Allowing our pleasure to be dependent on fantasy keeps us both disconnected from our body AND the person in front of us, if sharing with a partner.
Two people making love, eyes closed, lost to an image of the mind, is no different than two people at a dinner table on their phones.
Even getting lost in sensation rather than heart, can be an escape from connection. Another topic for another day.
The bottom line is, relationships worldwide are suffering from a lack of total presence, reflected in the independent disembodiment of each person.
So what is embodied pleasure? What does it have to offer? And how do we get there?
Embodied pleasure is actually following the threads of true sensation in the body without a goal or agenda.
What if you didn’t have to orgasm?
What if you didn’t have to be penetrated?
What if you didn’t even have to be touched?
What if you didn’t have to be penetrated?
What if you didn’t even have to be touched?
There is an experience of aliveness that can be born of simply observing how energy moves through the body.
When working with pleasure, it’s important to know that pleasure actually exists on a spectrum.
Pain… numbness… pleasure.
In fact, pleasure itself is actually bias!
What one person considers enjoyable may differ completely from the next person.
With embodied pleasure, there is an opportunity for greater pleasure, longer lasting pleasure, self discovery, and pleasure that heals.
When we are present with the real sensations we are experiencing, we are able to follow them like a thread - connecting our physical experience to our emotional and even spiritual experience.
For example: You observe intense enjoyable sensations in your yoni, but notice a lack of sensation on one side. As you investigate more, you watch the numbness dissolve and feel some pain hiding underneath. As you explore more, you are reminded of the birth of your child and the way they came through the vaginal canal. Here it all connects.
Another: You are touching your breasts. You normally ignore them or give them a squeeze, but this time you massage them gently with your eyes closed. You intentionally feel your breasts and the pathways in your chest light up. You notice a feeling of expansion in your heart. It feels edgy and intense and enticing all at once. You continue the practice of feeling all the spaces in your heart that were contracted, unlocking experiences you didn’t know you were carrying, and end with a beautiful release of tears.
Another: You’re with your partner, eyes closed, grasping for an orgasm. He stops and interrupts your escape. He connects his eyes, his breath, slows his movement, and without much movement at all, the sensation is WILDLY enjoyable. The oxytocin floods your system and you meet the edge of your vulnerability and all the distance in your relationship prior to that moment. After that you feel closer than ever.
It is most often THIS kind of pleasure that gets us more than a quick clitoral vaginal contraction - and instead leads us into intense, heart shattering orgasms that move through the heart, cervix, and entire body.
THIS is the pleasure that leaves you with information.
Here are some practical tips to guide your journey into embodied pleasure, especially if you are used to fantasizing to stoke your turn-on:
1. Release judgment of yourself. Pleasure journeys should be ultimately healing.
2. Slow down.
3. Stay with your breath.
4. Focus your attention on the part of your body you’re engaging with.
5. Experiment with avoiding orgasm.
6. Touch your typical go-to body parts (like the clit) LAST
7. Explore other parts of your body, even non-erogenous zones like your arms.
8. Use your hands to touch yourself directly, or a non-vibrating wand.
9. Listen to your body and allow her to soften, open, and become wet before engaging in penetration. Observe the process of opening.
10. When you feel yourself drifting to fantasy, bring your attention back to your body, like a meditation.
11. Practice pleasure in a mirror or with your eyes open.
12. Stay wildly curious!