Because of the constant mental stimulation that we experience in our everyday life, having ways to come back to the body is essential. Learning to stay present during sex through breath, movement, smell, touch, voice, helps us surrender deeper to the moment, and feel, rather than perform.
How to come back when you have drifted
Begin with breath. Synchronise with your partner, or at least notice their breath. Inhale deep into the belly and pelvic floor, and exhale with a sound, a sigh, let go.
Use micro movements of the hips and pelvic floor to connect with each other's pleasure. Connect with the stomach and chest to slow down, be with all the sensations as they arise.
Use your sounds of pleasure to guide your partner towards what feels good to you. Encourage them to do the same, making little sounds to express what the body is experiencing on the inside. If the sounds increase or accelerate, continue to hold a slow pace for longer, letting the pleasure build.
Connect to smell and taste, inhale their pheromones. Share moments of deep eye contact.
Building presence outside of intimacy
Presence is built by shifting attention to sensations as often as we can during the day, through daily sensorial awareness. It does not require to add anything to your schedule, rather to put intention and care to all the moments of the day that could be more sensorially felt.
"The more often you choose sensation over thought in ordinary moments, the more you train your capacity for intimacy."
We become more embodied when we experience the world through our senses, not just through our thoughts. Feeling from the inside of our body, attuning to our internal felt world, gives us greater grounding, and safety.
The most important is to connect to physical sensation, by bringing awareness to your senses as often as you can during the day. Smelling nice things, like flowers, tasting juicy fruits, touching your own skin softly, or getting a massage. If you are drinking, you are drinking and you are connecting with whatever is in that drink.
To practice, start noticing all the ways that your senses are engaged in what you do. Can you feel more through your fingers, are you aware of the temperature or scent in the air, touch your own skin softly, receive that touch.
Who is it for?
During intimacy with a partner, as we immerse into touch, sensations, and pleasure, it can take some time to get into a flow, or we can immediately get lost. How can we focus on our own pleasure, while also attending to our partners? Should we take turns?
When you are doing something to your partner, engaging with a motion, a position or a type of stimulation, check in with yourself: is this for me or is it for them? If you are not sure, ask to pause. Take a moment to reset. Have a breath.
Being able to stop, and start again is a way to reconnect, and go deeper.
Try this
As many of these practices require privacy, which might not be immediately available, I invite you to simply imagine the practice. Visualise, sensualise, how you would do this practice, and what it would feel like.
Interoceptive awareness
Practising feeling pleasure from the inside of the body helps with staying connected, and attuned to what's arising in our body.
Use one hand to gently caress your other forearm. Move it very slowly, and start feeling through your fingers. Can you feel the texture of your skin, the temperature, the little hair?
Now bring focus to the sensation itself. How does it feel on your arm, can you feel the skin brushing, what sensations are created, how deeply can you feel it in your body. Receive fully by focusing on the effect, rather than who is doing it to you.
Play with exploring with your fingers, and then shifting to feeling through the skin on your arm. Try to differentiate the sensations as you focus on what you can detect through your fingers, versus how does it feel on your arm.