{"id":15851,"date":"2023-06-30T11:00:58","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yogajournal.com\/?p=112202"},"modified":"2023-06-30T11:00:58","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T11:00:58","slug":"why-mindfulness-may-be-the-secret-to-better-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/30\/why-mindfulness-may-be-the-secret-to-better-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Mindfulness May Be the Secret to Better Sex"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The sexual wellness industry has been booming. The fact that it was recently valued at more than six billion dollars<\/a> would seem to suggest that everyone is having mind-blowing sex. But, as Maria Yagoda explores in her new book, Laid and Confused<\/em><\/a>, that\u2019s just not the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to see more openness and frank discussions around the fact that it\u2019s okay for sex not to be amazing sometimes,\u201d Yagoda says. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to put so much pressure on our sex lives to validate who we are as people and our identities.\u201d<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean we shouldn\u2019t work toward creating better\u2014and more enjoyable\u2014sex lives. For her book, Yagoda set out on this journey herself, chronicling her tries at different techniques and trends to improve her sex life. Including mindfulness.<\/p>\n

Mindfulness and Your Sex Life (Because, Yes, They Coexist)<\/h2>\n

It starts with your individual relationship to your body. Mindful masturbation encourages you to adopt a more conscious attitude around what\u2019s happening, Yagoda says. Experts recommend tapping into your senses\u2014hearing, touch, sight, and smell\u2014during this process, which can be helpful for those who struggle to have pleasurable sex. That\u2019s not to say it\u2019s easy.<\/p>\n

Yagoda says she struggled to integrate mindful masturbation into her sex life. After years of being trained not to feel things in her body and to ignore cues and sensations, she says it was difficult to make the switch to actually tap into her body during masturbation. Those long-established trends can\u2019t be undone with just a few experiences.<\/p>\n

However, when she started seeing a sex coach, she learned a lot from the sessions that involved mindfulness, particularly when it came to the breathing exercises<\/a>. Yagoda says her coach encouraged her to feel the full breath cycle, following it all the way through her body. \u201cI had done yoga for years and years,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I had never felt the wind or the air past my throat. Now it\u2019s something I\u2019m aware of a lot.\u201d This may seem incongruent to her attempts at bettering her sex life\u2014but it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

Deepening your awareness to the internal and external sensations that run through your body can help you connect with similar feelings during sex. It\u2019s a constant practice, Yagoda says. This type of tuning-in\u2014to the softness of your sheets, the birds chirping outside your window, or the beach-scented candle\u2014aren\u2019t things we\u2019re accustomed to. But once you start to feel these sensations throughout your entire body, it can help you experience more pleasure (i.e. sexual arousal and orgasm) during solo or partner sex.<\/p>\n

Sex Is Self-Care<\/h2>\n

Your self-care routine may look like bubble baths, long walks, and reading sessions. You want to think of sex and self-pleasure in the same way. But reframing those activities can be tricky, especially for men.<\/p>\n

Many of the men Yagoda interviewed for her book couldn\u2019t relate to the concept of masturbation as a mindful self-care practice. \u201cI didn\u2019t speak to anyone who was like \u2018Oh, it\u2019s really important to me to draw out masturbation by lighting candles and romancing myself,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like that idea is really uncommon.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, seeing masturbation as another form of self-care\u2014much like exercising, journaling, or meditating\u2014can help eliminate the burden of orgasm. It focuses on the experience, rather than the end result, Yagoda says. \u201cSometimes we get so anxious and in our heads about orgasm that I found it useful to sort of take that off the table,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Like most things in your sex life, you will need to tailor your approach to work for you. If you have PTSD or trauma and feel discomfort practicing traditional meditation, you may also feel uneasiness when closing your eyes during sex or masturbation. If this is the case, you can leave them open and consider seeking support from someone trained in trauma-informed counseling.<\/p>\n

This is the ethos Yagoda encourages throughout her book: It has to work for you. And, like all aspects of health and wellness, your sex life is about trial and error.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope my book can be a jumping-off point for people to say, \u2018Actually, it doesn\u2019t have to be this way,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m a failure if I\u2019m having bad sex. There are actually all of these little tools that exist that could be really helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Laid
(Photo: Courtesy of St. Martin\u2019s Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Buy This Book<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Why<\/figure>\n

In her new book, Maria Yagoda explores why so many people are struggling to have good sex\u2014and suggests the one thing that can help change that.<\/p>\n

The post Why Mindfulness May Be the Secret to Better Sex<\/a> appeared first on Yoga Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37,35,36],"class_list":["post-15851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ayurveda","tag-blogs","tag-yoga","tag-yogacourseware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}