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 eroticism, security, and health for you to ponder and practice this week.
Meditation 1: Eroticism
"We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way." -- Audre Lorde
Eroticism points to the deliberate seeking of pleasure in an exotic land that emerges through the synergy between you and your partner during love-making. Begin your journey into this territory with a conscious commitment to venture into the unknown with your loved one, trusting your heart and soul to be your guide. When trust is the foundation of sex, you and your partner will resonate as one, creating a mystical third. Stay open and fluid. Watch your erotic connection deepen and take different forms as you develop and grow your sexuality both individually and together.
A big part of aspiring to erotic sex means challenging your limiting beliefs and fears about certain sexual acts. Addressing your own inadequacies and the parts of your partner that turn you off requires a certain kind of mettle. Forge forward, warrior-like, as you take a trip to the erotic landscape of your lover's body to discover yourselves and your erogenous zones together. Your intent is to give up control and be in service of the other so as to make contact with the depth of your life force.
Daily healthy sex acts
- Familiarize yourself and your partner with your erogenous zones.
- Ignite your carnal desires during sex by using all five senses.
- Pick one of the senses to focus on next time you have sex, such as smell, then investigate your lover's smell or introduce a new scent into your sensual practices.
Meditation 2: Security
"I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." -- Maya Angelou
Relational security cannot be pointed to as a thing we possess. We're not sexually or romantically secure because we've built the perfect bodies, homes, or lives. And even material success is relative at best. Of course, the relative security of fit bodies, safe homes, and fulfilling lives are often the result of hard won inner work. But history (and gossip) presents an endless parade of people who "had it all" and either threw it away or lost everything. Any security deriving from outside of us cannot be expected to be permanent. The only lasting security results from self-trust, self-care, and choosing the people and actions that fit our values. Security is a spiritual quality we can share with others only after we've achieved it for ourselves. Likewise, we may only share love, honesty, integrity and all our ideals only if we've secured them first within.
The survival instinct is one of our strongest drives and the single greatest reason children can withstand terrible circumstances rather than risk abandonment. From youth to adulthood, we instinctively spend incredible time and effort plotting our security in every situation. Especially if we've ever felt genuinely unsafe, we will feel an urge to grab at any straw: People who have endured trauma, like drowning victims, may create a whirlpool of chaos trying to find a foothold in calm waters. If we don't heal our wounds from within, the survival instinct will goad us to seek external forms of security, however undependable these may be. Casting another in the role of rescuer devalues the authentic self of both parties and impedes intimacy. The trade off often requires turning a blind eye to character defects, which creates simmering internal conflict. Ask yourself just how secure it feels to relinquish personal power, and at what price.
Daily healthy sex acts
- Watch yourself for signs of wanting to be rescued in your relationships. Do others give you security? In what form? Does this devalue either of you?
- Release yourself from the bondage of using others to feel safe. Write an inventory of all the ways you seek out security, and how each has worked out for you.
- What gifts or superpowers have you uncovered in yourself? True inner security will see you through any storm. Today, face your fears and lovingly confront any relational conflict that blocks your light in order to increase your spiritual security in this world.
Meditation 3: Health
"The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life -- the fountain of bodily longevity." -- Josiah Gilbert Holland
Most of us understand the value of physical health and have received helpful programming so we know to seek treatment for medical emergencies like broken bones or chronic pain. But although physical health includes sexual health, for many people it's embarrassing even to have sexuality, much less to care for it or share information about it. Perhaps some people have grown up to believe that concentrating on sexuality will exaggerate it or lead to preoccupation -- a superstition that would feel ridiculous if it were about any other health issue. An all too common response to this belief is not to think about sexual problems at all. The obvious absurdity of that response provides an important clue to this error, because normally we're able to think about a problem without fearing that doing so will automatically worsen it.
Traumatic or genetic issues might permanently affect sexual health. It might not be possible for everyone to reach an optimal state of sexual health, but we can each attain our personal potential for sexual health, given our circumstances. If a sexual act doesn't feel right, we can develop a process to discern the underlying issue and either set it right or get help. What would it look like if sexual dysfunction, addiction, or trauma manifested as an actual medical condition? Truthfully any sexual problems, whether physical or psychological, are health problems. People with chronic physical health issues deserve sexual expression and healthy solutions can be sought. As a society we have much work to do in order to restore the concept of sexual health to its own state of health.
Daily healthy sex acts
- We can express deep sexual energy with a partner without getting physical. If your partner has health issues or is ill, you can still radiate erotic energy toward their inner being. Affirm sexual health regardless of the external circumstances.
- Restoring your sexual health might include examining your sexual history, as you would review your medical history for a physician. Twelve-step programs often require a sexual inventory as part of the healing process. An online search will guide you to complete your own version of a sexual inventory.
- For medical problems, you find the right specialist. What sexual issues recur in your life today, and where would it be most sensible to go for help?
For more by Alexandra Katehakis, M.F.T., click here.
For more on conscious relationships, click here.