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 bodily pleasure, endowment, and choosing your partner for you to ponder and practice this week.
Meditation 1: Bodily Pleasure
"Here in this body are the sacred rivers: Here are the sun and moon, as well as the pilgrimage places. I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body." -- Saraha
How blissful do you feel in your own body? Slow down and be aware of the pleasures and sensations you're experiencing in your body while being touched or massaged, when feeling the wind in your hair, the sun on your back, or during sex. Be aware of how much you allow for your own bodily pleasure during sex vs. how much you're preoccupied with your partner's pleasure. See if you can abandon control while receiving touch from your partner and relax into the sensations of your body. What happens to you when you do this? Do you feel entitled to receive bodily pleasure, or do you feel ashamed?
Many have had the experience of bodily pleasure being squelched in childhood by limiting and critical messages that led to shame and guilt about corporeal pleasure. Don't believe those messages! It's time to take back your sexuality from the shameful messages you may have received and remind yourself that those are not your thoughts, but the thoughts of misinformed others. Your pleasure belongs to you and is a celebration of the unique temple known as your body. Celebrate and rejoice in your bodily pleasure and share your reverie with your beloved.
Daily healthy sex acts
- Today, notice all the sensations in your body and note those areas that are most pleasurable when it comes to touch.
- Make yourself familiar with your erogenous zones so you can communicate those to your partner. Massage, tickling, gentle touch, and whispering into your ear all create pleasurable sensations in the body.
- Take a chance and find a new pleasure zone today, then share it with the one you love.
Meditation 2: Endowment
"It looks like an egg in a nest. This girl once said to me, 'Who are you going to satisfy with that little thing?' I said, 'Me!'"-- Johnny Knoxville
It's the Goldilocks complex. This one's too big, and the next one's too small. Typically, the competitive nature of Western civilization equates bigger with better. Be it penis, breast, brain, or bank account -- we want it all super-sized. Body parts are one area where this mentality plays out, and it speaks to a tremendous psychological dissatisfaction stemming from the highly-contagious dis-ease of never feeling good enough in comparison. In actuality, sometimes physically-large attributes can make no sensory impression, while small attributes can cause a tremendous reverberation. Why is this? There is a physiological reality that erogenous stimulation requires direct contact on the body's pleasure zones -- and yet, anyone who has engaged in astral sex play knows how the body can be brought to an orgasmic state without any physical touch whatsoever. So much of what we consider our physical experience is psychological -- and comparative in a scale. We situate ourselves within a scale that only we perceive. Others do have different scales for all the many attributes of endowment, including penile length, girth, strength or mammary size, texture, flexibility to name a few.
Perhaps the most important sexual tool is consciousness. If we think we are not enough or too much, we surely are. Feel the intrinsic pleasure of being able to bring yourself to pleasure. Cherish and share this. Just like when you give a gift, create artwork, or perform any task with the thought that it's too much or not enough -- for internal success, it's vital for you to feel just right about yourself.
Daily healthy sex acts
- Through creative visualization, you can stretch the scale of your perceptions. Start by imagining various body parts as smaller and then larger. Come to peace with yourself in the beautiful combinations of being that are possible.
- Imagine inhabiting the bodies of others -- all the shapes, sizes, colors, styles of those around you. How would you find yourself if this were the body to which you were born? Accept and appreciate the diversity of all body types today, especially your own.
Meditation 3: Choosing Your Partner
"The only way love can last a lifetime is if it's unconditional. The truth is this: Love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love." -- Stephen Kendrick
Being honest with yourself about what you want, need, like, and desire in a mate is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, so choosing your partner is an act of self-esteem and self-worth. Settling for what comes your way, or criticizing your partner for their nature are both acts of emotional violence. By being in reality about the person you're dating, or to whom you're relating, you're making a conscious decision to choose that person -- warts and all. Once you make that choice, you're no longer a victim but an informed participant in the relationship. When you stop feeling like your mate is doing something "to you" then, and only then, can you love.
When you make a choice to be in your relationship, you get to make a whole lot of other choices too. For example, people often complain that their partner isn't romantic or sexy enough, yet don't shine the light on themselves to examine how romantic or sexy they are. Putting effort into making yourself feel sexy and vital is part of being a sexual adult and essential for an exciting sex life in a long-term relationship. Taking responsibility gives you endless freedom and makes a space for your partner to move toward you in ways you might find surprising. When you choose your partner and take responsibility for your sexuality you recognize that, ultimately, only you can make yourself happy.
If you've chosen your partner, and they've stepped outside of their integrity or broken their vows to themselves and to you, don't deny your situation. Ask yourself if you can heal from the pain in order to choose your partner again or if it's time for you to go. Choosing after a betrayal can take time; be honest with yourself about what you need to be happy and whole in the end.
Daily healthy sex acts
- Have you chosen your partner, or are you waiting to be rescued? Do you blame and shame your partner, or do you look at the choices you have made and reconcile them with yourself? If you made a bad choice or no longer want to be in your relationship, stop torturing your partner and yourself.
- Do you need to take action in order to adjust to how you're seeing things, or is it time to end the relationship? Be careful about blaming and shaming yourself and the other.
For more by Alexandra Katehakis, M.F.T., click here.
For more on conscious relationships, click here.