Weekly Meditations for Healthy Sex (Jan. 4-10)
Posted: 01/04/2013 10:34 am
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 sexual positions, grooming, and leap of faith for you to ponder and practice this week.
Meditation 1: Sexual Positions
"The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform." -- Alfred Kinsey
There are endless sexual positions that feel fantastic, and it can be very powerful to own one's sexuality through mastery of sexual positions. However, it can take a long while to try and master or even feel comfortable in certain sexual positions, just as it can feel intimidating to learn in front of an audience, which is how you perform a position -- you learn it. We often rush to acquire the basics of physical intimacy and then assume we're done learning. Just like starting a new job, it can be embarrassing to repeatedly ask, "Where does this go?"
To learn a new position, it helps for a partner to be kind, caring and patient enough to practice or instruct. But we don't have to wait for the right person, the right sexual mentor, to teach us a position. We can take stock of where we feel comfortable, where we don't, why we don't and how we might learn to appreciate a certain position. We can share our discomfort. It's important to cultivate enough patience and empathy where we can try out these positions, having faith that there is a way to make them work and feel great.
Self-limiting associations may limit pleasure, such as that you somehow lower your worthiness by going down on a lover or taking it from behind. We can own the faultlessness and vitality of our entire energy field, which gives us mobility, openness and expression. Like a yoga pose, we never finish learning but there are "aha!" moments where we grasp the energy of a pose so that it becomes part of the sensual vocabulary of how we express our physical connection to life.
Daily healthy sex acts
- With your lover, take time to experience a new position today. Breathe into any discomfort. Don't worry about the sex, just experience the feelings in your body and thoughts in your head. Safely and lovingly share your feelings and thoughts, and observe where this level of intimacy takes you.
- If masturbation is a healthy expression of sexuality for you, try masturbating on your bed in a new position. The goal isn't to achieve orgasm or to heighten pleasure, but to find new levels of comfort as a means of carefully discovering the full range of your own body's pleasure possibilities.
Meditation 2: Grooming
"For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge you'll never walk alone." -- Audrey Hepburn
We've all known excruciatingly beautiful people who were not very beautiful human beings. Looks are not what necessarily constitute beauty for beauty emanates from within, but perceivable attraction is what moves us toward one another sexually. Grooming, the act of caring for oneself through bathing, cleanliness, dental hygiene, and tending to health concerns are habits learned in childhood. A neglected child will have difficulty as an adult with grooming habits such as flossing his teeth or tending to her hair and appearance, which can leave them feeling shameful thereby keeping others away from them. Over-grooming, like wearing make-up to bed or too much cologne, can be another way of avoiding being seen and creating intimacy.
Your standard of grooming is part of defining yourself as a functional adult. As a child, being forced to brush your teeth may feel like an assault on autonomy, but as an adult, you have to make choices about your self-care and what you want to attract in your life. Once you've taken a stand for your standard of self-care, then it's okay (and even a good idea) to care and adorn yourself for your lover. Find out what your partner likes, and then see if that fits your self-perception. Maybe your partner tells you that he likes the color red on you. Challenge yourself to wear red one day, notice your discomfort and whether you can adjust, and remember that we sometimes unconsciously bring people into our lives that activate certain issues we secretly need to hear. If, however, wearing "red" is against your value system then don't compromise yourself but do talk about it with your partner. It's good to have a healthy discussion about grooming rather than let any concern build up where it becomes a resentment or turn-off.
Daily healthy sex acts
- What areas of bodily self-care do you need to tend to? What do you know about why you let your general hygiene or medical care take a back seat to other activities in your life?
- Plan a discussion with your partner about what turns them on and what turns them off about grooming and appearance. Be truthful about your preferences without being judgmental, mean, or hurtful. Listen to your partner's response without reacting out of hurt or shame.
Meditation 3: Leap of Faith
"Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul." -- Simone Weil
It's a leap of faith to trust someone, and when that sours it can seem like the problem lies with taking the leap of faith. We've all asked life for something in return and experienced disappointment. It's necessary to examine where your past disappointment still currently spells out doom or disaster, because holding on with resentment and fear to any disappointment becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the future. Whenever you have doubt about your partner's mentality and motives, take a leap of faith and assume the best, secure that you will be guided at the right time toward the next right action you need to take. We all synthesize past experience with right action. We do this with an open hand and with the knowledge, the belief that the right solutions to all life's problems are out there. Life is an invitation. We invite the right path for us, the right solutions, the right partners.
To cultivate healthy sex, we practice what we learn and perceive with intention and dedication regardless of the results we are getting in faith that eventually a psychologically-mature eroticism will emerge. Faith demands that we let go of results, yet faith requires participation. You can't make the miracle happen by yourself, but you must show up to take the next right action. Have faith that there is a heart-affirming reason for all hurt and rejection, and do not let sorrow censor you from participating in life and love with an open heart and mind.
Daily healthy sex acts
- How have you handled your disappointments? Standing or seated, notice your bodily posture and energy. Now carefully summon the biggest disappointments in your life while observing the flow of energy in your body. Release any energy blocks to restore your bodily posture to its original state at the start of this exercise.
- Summon your greatest breakthroughs and achievements. Notice the effect of these thoughts and feelings on your body. Take a leap of faith and let your body return to this exalted state throughout the day.
- It's been said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. What right action can you take right now to move closer to your heart's goals?
For more by Alexandra Katehakis, M.F.T., click here.
For more on conscious relationships, click here.