I often tell people about how mindfulness can help literally every aspect of one’s life.
I’m careful not to go so far as to call it a panacea (because it’s not), however, I’ve written about and have practiced mindfulness for nearly a decade and have witnessed first-hand from my own experience and that of many others its range of usefulness.
And one of the more surprising things it can improve is your sex life.
We’re so accustomed to doing everything in a state of half-presence that it gets to the point that we don’t even realize we’re asleep behind the wheel. We believe we’re fully awake to what’s going on around us but, in reality, we’re moving about life as if we’ve just woken up, everything fuzzy and less defined.
Mindfulness can help open us to the fullness of each moment, waking us from our perpetual state of semi-sleep, and that has an incredible power.
But if you’ve never meditated before in your life, don’t worry. Mindfulness doesn’t require any special position or movement and it’s easy to learn.
Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life.– Thich Nhat Hạnh
So, if you’re looking to improve your sex life in an organic way, look no further. Here’s how mindfulness can improve your sex life.
1. Focus on the moment
First, mindfulness teaches you to concentrate on the sensations of the present.
According to Marsha Lucas, author of Rewire Your Brain for Love, a big part of having better sex is the ability to focus in on the present moment, both on your partner and on what you’re feeling. Mindfulness is exactly the tool you need to do this.
Concentration is harder than it sounds, with a barrage of distractions such as your to-do list, work, and more distant distractions like next month’s trip or your impending doctor’s visit constantly trying to pull you away from the present. But mindfulness can help train you to stay focused longer and become less distracted over time.
However, it’s important to give yourself some time to practice mindfulness outside of sex to get the hang of it first.
2. Let go of the end goal
In sex, it’s easy to become obsessed with the big finish. After all, that’s what we all want, right?
However, when you go into sex with an end goal the result is you miss so much else because you’re fixated on that one thing in the future and not what’s happening now.
That’s not surprising since we do this throughout the rest of our life as well. We get so obsessed with realizing our goal that we end up ignoring everything along the way that made the journey the real gift and not the end goal at all.
Mindfulness teaches you to let go of the end goal and retain your focus on this moment, right now. That not only makes sex better for you, by concentrating all your mental energy on what’s happening in this very moment, but makes it better for your partner as well.
3. Savor the pleasurable sensations
Mindfulness also teaches you something else valuable: to notice all your senses.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia discovered that mindfulness can help women become more aware of their body’s sexual response, allowing them to not only enjoy sex more but get over challenges with sexual dysfunction.
Most of us go about our life predominantly using our sense of sight, with the occasional smell after we get back home from a long day’s work and realize we forgot to put that leftover fish away from the restaurant last night. Because of this, our other senses end up playing a supporting role and not much of one.
We all tend to have another sense that is stronger for us than the others, however, the point still rings true.
Mindful sex opens up a wide variety of sensory experiences that we can tap into. It doesn’t just become more intense from focusing on the pleasurable feelings it actually becomes more varied and interesting because we notice things we never noticed before.
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