What if you made ecstasy part of your daily spiritual practice? How would that change the richness and the quality of your life? If you want to reclaim your sexuality, and learn how to live on the ecstatic spectrum, do yoga. You don't need to learn 450 positions; that won't do it if you're numb. Clearing the numbness is the first step to owning and celebrating your sexuality. Practice playing with sensating individually and with your partner, and you will have sensational sex!
Viscerally explore how to wake your skin up. Tactile sensation starts with the skin and vibrates inward. Sex isn't just about the "sexual" organs. Involve the whole skin and body. Enjoy learning different qualities of touch and sensation -- it's essential, and fun!
Here's a good exercise to stay connected and track feeling. Inhale, running your finger from inside of wrist to elbow, deliberately inviting in all sensations. Exhale, go back down from elbow to wrist studying, through feeling, the difference between sensating with inhale and exhale. Track what part of that you can feel. Any feeling is a win.
For a long time I couldn't do this. I challenged myself to learn how to feel a subtle touch and enjoy that. Cats are good teachers that way, because if you pet one correctly, it purrs and feels good. Learn to touch yourself and your partner in a way that makes you both purr! If you are a dog person, when you rub your dog just right, it wriggles in ecstasy. That's a clue you're on the right track!
In choosing to become a whole person, I had to explore what it means to be sexual in a way I could respect. I decided to cleanse the taint of abuse and insane cultural conditioning from my sexuality and my cell tissue. As I explored this, I realized that many of us don't know how to be sexual in a way that is healthy and authentic. I am learning, (and so can you), to put my conditioning aside and feel what it means to play with and enjoy sexual energy as a way both for sacred connection and for good, sweaty fun.
I started teaching my body how to feel pleasure, because it didn't know how. I began to hunt my sexuality and learn how to avidly ride those energies internally, instead of shutting down around them. I began doing my practice in way that ran pleasurable energy. Wow, just ride that wave! Moving with awareness from subtle sensations all the way to a huge rush, without shutting down, was good training for sexuality. One of my quantum leaps was learning how to use my orgasm muscles in my yoga practice! That's fun!
Let's learn a few intriguing ways of coming into passionate aliveness right now!
First, practice deep breathing to build feeling, thus opening the pathways to heal the cell tissue and the mind. Use your deep breathing to build your sexual response. Inhale fresh aliveness and new, sparkly, stimulating life-force to your nerve receptors. Exhale, intentionally moving the numbness out like wind clears smog.
Now uplevel with some deep breathing into your pelvis. You can do this while just sitting and reading. Inhale, bearing down using the same muscles that you use to evacuate your bowels. Tune into the subtle sensation of feeling sitbones moving and genitals, perineum, and anus pressing into whatever you're sitting on -- chair or floor. Do this for at least five breaths as it takes a while to disperse numbness. Check out how sensation changes with each breath. Stay feeling what's happening, not thinking about it!
If you have more space and privacy, breathe into your pelvis while in a hip opening pose. Start with Baddha Konasana done lying on your back. Lie down. Bend your knees, feet together. With the outside edges of the feet together, relax your legs out to the side in a diamond shape.
Then place your hands on your genitals to help you direct your breath. Be compassionate with yourself. If this is scary, give yourself more time (10-20 breaths) to breathe through the fear. Disperse the fear just like you did the numbness. Get curious about what's the next layer behind the fear. Use this exercise to clear the backlog of emotional baggage (numbness, fear, shutdown, trauma, lousy teachings about sexuality etc), teaching your pelvis how to respond authentically to new and wonderful sensations.
Another great way to bring more aliveness into your genitals is through abdominal poses that connect you with the low abs and pelvis. For Frog Lifting Through, bring the legs up, bend the knees to a right angle. Relax the legs out to the side, keeping the feet level with the knees. Clasp hands behind the head, cradling the skull, elbows shoulder distance apart. Inhale, curl head and shoulders up off the floor. Exhale, curl tailbone up, pubic bone rolls towards navel. Pull belly down. Relax pelvis down. Inhale, right down into genitals, keep building the feeling connection. Exhale, curl tailbone up, using genital muscles to help lift pelvis. Even the littlest bit is a win! Pull belly down. In the middle of all this work, celebrate you bringing aliveness to belly, low back, pelvis. Each inhale, penetrate your breath deeper into pelvis. Each exhale build more feeling as you curl tailbone and pubic bone up. Make as many feeling connections as possible. Congratulate yourself for doing such wonderful work! Do 5 to 10 repetitions. To release the pose, inhale, lay shoulders and head down. Place hands on the outside of thighs, exhale, use your hands to ease your legs together. Take a feeling breath, tracking the effects of the good work you just did.
Finally, Agni Sara in Horse Stance will wake up your belly, orgasm muscles and legs- - how great is that?! First, come into Horse Stance. Stand with your legs three feet apart and bend the knees to a right angle, aligning knees over heels with the feet turned out slightly. Traction out the back by taking the heel of the hands to the crease of hip and thigh, then straightening the arms. Now, add Agni Sara. (If you have high blood pressure, only hold the breath for a couple of pumps per round. If you are pregnant, wait until after delivery to do this.)
Inhale through the nose, then exhale forcefully through the mouth. Empty of breath, pull your belly back toward the spine and up, simultaneously lifting and flaring the ribs. When pulling the belly back, contract the genitals, perineum and anus. Still empty of breath, relax the belly before pulling in and up again. Relax belly, feeling for relaxing genitals, perineum and anus. Repeat this pumping action until you need to inhale, then relax the belly and take a deep breath. Do this two to three times, still in Horse Stance. Make sure you are feeling the action you're doing. Don't disconnect from it. Each time, connect the wisdom you're feeling to your genitals, perineum and anus, building a bridge of connection. This will create a more intelligent connection between abs and orgasm muscles, which enhances sexual responsiveness and sensitivity so your orgasms have a much bigger ripple effect through your body.
Healing and exploring your sexuality through Forrest Yoga has powerful and wonderful repercussions. Choose to clear the numbness out. Learn to feel and bring that beautiful deep breath and responsiveness into intimacy with a partner. Your orgasms will change, your whole body will respond differently; your brain, your heart and Spirit will open up -- why wouldn't you want that? Are you ready for that much sweetness?