It's vital for mindful acts of emotional and spiritual intimacy to steadily develop as a daily practice for healthy sex. To that end, Center for Healthy Sex has created daily meditations to help you reach your sexual and relational potential. (You can subscribe for free here.)
Even momentarily concentrating on healthy solutions rewires psychological patterns to receive and share healthy sexual love in the present. Here are three meditations with the themes of sex drive, movement, and appreciation for you to ponder and practice this week.
Meditation 1: Sex Drive
"The so-called rational animal has a desperate drive to pair up and moan and writhe." -- Steven Pinker
There's a familiar laughable complaint that driving and asking for directions reveals the basic incompatibility in any relationship. Perhaps this joke points to common underlying issues, like a couple's inability to stop and ask for directions about their respective sex drives. We are all driven toward satisfying sexual and/or emotional desires -- in the context of many other deliberate goals and unconscious drives. It's a sad truth that some are driven to extremes in the pursuit of satisfaction. When we are not driven to action, there might be a lower drive, although there are serious exceptions. Just as we don't want to be stuck in conversations that don't interest us, it doesn't mean that we have a low drive for communication. A sex drive can be physical or psychological, and there are prescribed ways to assess, heal and satisfy a drive in different areas.
A psychological sex drive raises questions of how often you need to have sex. What is sex? What does it mean, and what does it mean to express? Then there is the physical sex drive -- what is the body actually capable of? What are the effects of sex on the body, and what are contributing factors to physical health, such as alcohol or drugs, that might have a physiological effect? What does physical health look like in other activities? What is a healthy physical expression of sex, naturally, without any supplements or medications? What are the effects of taking a supplement or medication to increase physical sex drive? For direct answers to direct one's sexual experience, these are important questions to know about yourself and to know about your partner.
Daily healthy sex acts
- Take time to review your sex drive. Answer the above questions, and share the responses with your lover.
- How are you driven into action by sexual energy today? Compare this with your sexual energy in the past. How has your sex drive changed over the years?
- If your sex drive takes focus over every other aspect of your life, take an online test via a Web search for "sex addiction screening test" today.
Meditation 2: Movement
"We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side." -- Samuel Beckett
Sex is like a dance in that the experience of sexual movement possesses definable qualities such as speed, force, weight, and space, which to the casual eye meld together to create a seemingly-indefinable experience. Each of these qualities of movement find expression within a polarized scale, such as fast/slow or strong/soft. Certain qualities may fluctuate between lovers given fluctuating moods, while other qualities stay fixed due to the personality, physicality and history of each person. All movement is vibration at its core, which includes emotional, mental, psychological or spiritual vibration.
How many times have you experienced incompatibility in movement styles with lovers? We feel and express ourselves in different ways due to the measuring scales of our life experiences. Rather than focusing on any differences with judgments, such as "You're too rough/fragile, robotic/clingy, or passive/intense," try to express literally what you are feeling to synchronize your sexual experience. This can be as simple as sharing, "I am feeling this moment as gentle" or "There is pressure on this part of my body." Simply narrating the play-by-play of what's happening, when it's happening, and how it's happening will help partners get on the same page, creating a springboard for greater sexual experimentation and experience.
Daily healthy sex acts
- How do you move through the day? Be aware of your physical expression today. Do you grace and glide, slump and stumble, jitter and bug?
- How does your physicality inform your sexuality? Think of your ideal dance of sexual expression, and try to bring the energy of that movement to your daily routine. Let yourself move and be moved by life!
Meditation 3: Appreciation
"Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all your fellow humans everywhere in the world." -- Margaret Laurence
When we come to the knowing that we want what we have, we arrive at a new vista of appreciation. We're bombarded daily by messages in the media that something better is awaiting us "out there," usually though purchasing something new or through the fantasy that we'd be better off with a new partner. Breeding chronic dissatisfaction for more than what we have is one of the engines that drives addiction, because more of anything is just never enough. This feeling of lack can begin to wear on our recognition that we're perfectly imperfect, good enough as we are, and that our partners are unique and lovable as they are.
Appreciation is the antidote to the false feelings of chronic deprivation. If you're treating yourself poorly thinking you aren't good enough, pretty enough, physically fit enough, then you're out of appreciation for yourself and your own unique beauty. If you are in judgment of your partner, thinking they aren't "enough" in one way or another, then you're out of appreciation for how irreplaceable they are.
Daily healthy sex acts
- Tell your partner one thing you appreciate about them daily.
- If not in a relationship, make a list of all the things you appreciate about yourself then share those attributes with the people you surround yourself with by putting your attributes into action. For example, if you appreciate your sense of humor, make someone laugh today.
For more by Alexandra Katehakis, M.F.T., click here.
For more on conscious relationships, click here.