Just as stress is a barrier to pleasure, pleasure is a remedy to stress. Here is what is actually happening in the body, and how to work with it.
What the body is actually doing
According to daoists, sexuality is our life force, the only energy we can self-create. When the body is pressurised through sensations and arousal, it creates vitality and health for the body.
Increases in stress levels are linked to increases in cortisol and adrenaline, which lead to decreased sexual desire and performance. The body moves away from what we might call our sex mode, and into fight-or-flight. Under chronic stress, sympathetic activation dominates and parasympathetic activity is suppressed. Pleasure is the fastest route back to balance, to homeostasis. It is what we have in our system as a way to naturally overcome stress.
"Arousal is also a physical experience that can be activated through touch, breath and the pelvic floor. The body can be brought toward arousal intentionally. That changes everything about how we think about libido."
Touch is an intimate tool for regulation
One of the biggest things touch can do is reduce stress. Ten minutes of relaxing, sensual, soothing touch with a partner activates the vagus nerve, which is intimately involved with our capacity for connection and safety. Touch and closeness can also trigger the release of oxytocin, the hormone involved in trust and bond.
If you are not in a relationship, you still have access to this. Touch, caresses, and self-pleasure down-regulate the nervous system in exactly the same way. Oxytocin and arousal are both things you can self-generate.
The quality of intimacy outside sex determines what is possible inside it. The quality of the sex is often connected to what happens before penetration. Scheduling time for touch and connection, with no expectation of sex, is what creates the conditions for desire to return.
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.
The laughing practice
Laughter and sex have a lot in common: they both require you to let go, to be present, to stop performing. This practice uses laughter as a direct route back into the body, as a primer to intimacy, alone or with a partner.
Start standing. Take a breath in, and as you exhale, let out a short forced laugh: "ha." Just one syllable. It does not have to be real. Add a few more: "ha ha ha." From the belly, letting the body participate. Continue, and let it grow. The forced laugh and the real laugh live very close to each other. As you keep going, the body starts to believe the signal.
Let it get bigger. Let it shake the belly, the chest, the whole body. Open your mouth fully. Let the sound be as loud as it wants to be. If you are doing this with a partner, look at each other. Eye contact during forced laughter is almost impossible to hold without it becoming real.
Stay with it for three to five minutes. Then let the laughter wind down. Stand quietly for a moment and feel the body after: the ease in the belly, the openness in the chest, the lightness. Sex is allowed to be playful. The body moves better when it is light. This is yours to return to.