In A Deeper Sensuality is Waiting, we spoke with a trio of doctors, healers, and culture-changers on what true sensuality means and how it’s central to our overall well-being. Here, we share snippets from our most provocative conversations with sexual healers and doctors on how to tap into our innate arousal centers. Passive and active, big and small, these practices and shifts in perspective can help keep a consistent sexual awareness that feeds our libido and our life force each day.
Start Your Engine
The more you feed yourself healthy, nutritious foods, the better you're going to feel. “You're putting gas in the engine, good gas. You're revving yourself up,” says Emily Morse, a doctor of Human Sexuality and host of the Sex with Emily podcast. “If we are stimulating the blood flow through our body we're going to be more turned on.”
Embrace Your Pleasure
Hani Avital, the founder of Sheelah, the female sensuality empowerment platform, encourages each woman to find what pleases you and relish in it. “What's beautiful about pleasure is that it's so subjective, right?” she says. “Pleasure is anything that makes you feel more turned on and more alive. It can be having five minutes to yourself as a new mom. That can feel super pleasurable. Is it sexual? No. But add that to the well of pleasure and it’s a drop. This accumulates and it ultimately helps you feel more turned on and alive.”
Know Thy Erotic Self
Jaiya Ma, the award-winning sexologist and best-selling author of Red Hot Touch: Cuffed and Tied and Satisfied helps people uncover their specific erotic language to manifest a more intimate relationship with themselves and their partners. She recommends the first step is to understand your erotic self, in all its beautiful uniqueness. “There's no pressure to be like me or anyone else. You do you. You are your own erotic self,” she explains. “It gives other women permission. And then we have this whole world that's lit up. It's like one torch lights another torch, lights another torch and we have this whole world of turned-on, radiant, alive women and men. Because when we're radiant and alive, it lights them up too.”
Share Pleasures Daily
“We don't talk about pleasure, enough,” says Hani Avital. “I love the practice of being active in seeking pleasure and noticing pleasure because when you look for it, you will find it. The more you look for it, the more it comes. My husband and I try to share three moments from each day that turned us on. It is a mindfulness practice that stirs up the energy between us as we are going to bed.”
Indulge The Senses
Dr. Megan Fleming, an NYC-based sex and relationship therapist advises enlisting all of your senses. “It need not be a mind-blowing orgasm,” she says. “Taste three or four chocolates, notice the subtleties in texture and flavor.” Training your brain to be in the moment is the key to living a sensual life. “If you’re in your head all the time, it can hinder your intuition, your gut, your curiosity.”
If we peel back all the layers, we are unconditional love, we are ecstasy. We are orgasmic.
Take Away the Goals
Kiana Reeves, somatic sex educator, full-spectrum doula, pelvic health practitioner, sexologist, and CBO of Foria, likes to create a nightly practice to tap into her sensual side. "I'll put on my favorite music of the moment; I just get in my underwear and I dance in the dark. I roll around on a carpet. I wouldn't even call it dancing because sometimes it's just breathing and moving as feels right." Step two, she prescribes, is the self-cultivation practice. "I like to work with clients on making masturbation less goal-oriented. A lot of us learned when we were younger and we were masturbating, be quick, quiet and don't let anyone hear or see you and get there as fast as you can. Instead, can you allow for not only all of the hot, sexy, pleasurable pieces, but can you also hold space? There is such an amazing portal to feel your heart deeper after you experience that type of pleasure; after you climax, you open up. I've had some of the craziest cry sessions of my life after a self-pleasure practice."
Be In The Moment
Dr. Fleming recommends women stand naked in front of a mirror and seek out five things they like about themselves, big or small. “It can be the way your hair falls, your jawline, your breasts,” she says. “By focusing on what you like, you start to appreciate what is a turn on for you. Bring your attention to that. Studies have shown that when women love their bodies, they feel more pleasure, they have more orgasms.” She also recommends letting go of the superficial. It’s a fact that women have a complex relationship with their bodies. Dr. Fleming advises embracing your body at the moment. “How much pleasure you feel is not related to your current weight or how many wrinkles you have,” she says.
Be One With Ecstasy
Jaiya Ma suggests tweaking how we think about the hunt for ecstasy. “I think we are the ecstasy,” says Ma. “It's not that we're chasing ecstasy. Yes, we can go into ecstatic states of consciousness through pleasure, through orgasm, through dance, through music, through breathwork, or through food experiences. But this idea that we're separate from it? We are it. If we peel back all the layers, we are unconditional love, we are ecstasy. We are orgasmic. The universe is orgasmic. Everything is orgasm. There's no separation.”
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