Yoga for Better Sex
How to be more present and cultivate better awareness during #realworldsex
The term yoga loosely translates to union; to unite your mind, body and spirit. More simply put, to practice yoga is to pay attention. Yoga poses and breathing exercises are very useful tools you can use to cultivate more awareness and presence. When you pay close attention to what is happening around you, the way your body feels and the fact that you are breathing, it dominates your thoughts in the moment. Creating this focus can help you release anything else that may have been on your mind that isn’t relevant to this moment. It can also help you reach that sweet release during sex.
As someone who has been practicing different styles of yoga for about 15 years and teaching for almost a decade, yoga has become more than just a class for me. It took several years before I started to understand how practicing yoga could spill over into other areas of my life, beyond the obvious physical benefits that drew me to practice in the first place. Now I think of yoga as synonymous with life, rather than just an activity that is separate from everything else I do. It is my way of being. It has definitely affected my sex life positively and I’d love to share some of the lessons I’ve learned from yoga with you so that you can experience some of the benefits for your sex life too.
It’s Not About The Poses
You can benefit from yoga regardless of what poses you do and the same goes for sex. In the same way that the kinds of sexual stimulation people enjoy varies from person to person, the kind of yoga that you specifically might connect with and benefit from varies. Moving your body is wonderful, but it’s the intention and awareness behind your movement that counts the most. In yoga, we practice bringing together breath, movement and mindfulness, and if you can hone these skills, you should be able to apply them to improve your sex life.
Physical activity of any kind is beneficial for your overall health and sense of well-being. The physical movement facet of yoga is low-impact, improves mobility and circulation, and can be made accessible to all bodies and abilities. Most yoga teachers will give options and hold space for a variety of experiences throughout class, catering the practice directly to you so that you can move in a way that feels good for you.
Learning to listen to your body and taking care of your body in this way can help you move with more ease during sex. When you feel good in your body, you’re more likely to want to have sex!
Just Breathe
Breathing is largely what distinguishes yoga from other physical activities. Interestingly, breathing is one of few bodily functions that can happen both consciously and unconsciously. Meaning, we can control it with our mind if we choose to. How cool is that? In yoga, the breath is known as “prana” or “life force”. It has an energetic quality, sends more oxygen to your blood and is a tool to cultivate presence. Annie Sprinkle, PhD explains, “The single most important key to sex that I’ve yet discovered is conscious rhythmic breathing; the more you breathe the more you feel and the more you come alive. Many of us breathe only enough to survive but not to live fully. Deep breathing is a door to waking up to healing and to more personal freedom.” No matter what kind of yoga you practice, it will include some form of breathing technique that can be employed during sex. Harnessing your breath can be surprisingly sexy.
Feel More Deeply
In addition to improving overall physical health, practicing yoga can also help you heighten your senses and strengthen your mind-body connection. When you move in a way that is mindful, you are bringing more awareness to your body and your senses, rather than just going through the motions. Practicing presence, even if that feeling of presence only lasts for a few seconds before your mind gets distracted and wanders off can allow you to fully experience what you feel and feel pleasure more deeply. It also needs to happen in order to reach climax. Laurie Mintz, PhD explains, “Having an orgasm requires fully immersing in the sensations of the moment and letting go. The best way to learn to do this is to practice mindfulness during your everyday life, and then transfer these skills to sex.”
Cultivating conscious awareness through yoga can help you feel more connected, confident and sexy in your body — not to mention more in touch with what feels good.
A regular yoga practice can also help with emotional regulation and stress reduction. Our ability to feel “turned on” is greatly influenced by our emotions. It is well-documented that people express higher subjective and physiological sexual arousal when they are in a good mood to begin with. Since practicing yoga and mindfulness can send calming messages to your mind-body, otherwise known as your nervous system, it can help improve your mood so that you can more easily get in the mood, so to speak. Sometimes it’s as simple as just taking a few intentionally slow, deep breaths. Notice how your mood shifts.
Let It Sink In
If you’ve been to a yoga class before, you likely know that it always ends in savasana, otherwise known as corpse pose. This pose typically looks like laying on your back or however is most comfortable for you and doing nothing for a few minutes. While it doesn’t look like much, this pose is touted as the most important yoga pose and is arguably the climax of any given yoga class. The difference between just laying there and savasana happens in your mind. The idea is to achieve an active relaxation where you are completely resting your body, but still practicing being present in your mind. Practice is the operative word since ultimately your mind will drift off elsewhere. However, when you practice continually catching your thoughts and refocusing on simply being here now, you can reach a heightened state of relaxation where you might momentarily realize that you are not your thoughts and transcend everything you thought you knew. This is not unlike the French expression, la petite mort meaning “little death” or “the brief loss or weakening of consciousness”, often used to refer to post-orgasm bliss. Cynthia Grow shares, “More widely, it can refer to the spiritual release that comes with orgasm or to a short period of melancholy or transcendence as a result of the expenditure of the ‘life force’.” Sex and savasana have this in common.
Whether or not you experience an orgasm, it can be beneficial to pause and consciously rest as the last thing you do during sex. This is where you get to reflect, savour what you’re feeling and absorb all of the benefits of sex for your mind, body and spirit. Let it sink in.
Bend Over Often
Much like yoga, sex is a skill we can learn and explore with practice. No one is perfect at either doing yoga or having sex and no one is inherently good or bad at either. Both are a form of creative expression and can be a wonderfully positive energetic outlet if we nurture ourselves through practice. The more you do something, the more familiar it becomes as you strengthen the related neural pathways that make it part of who you are. Practicing yoga can give you the tools needed to get more enjoyment out of sex. See what happens if you think of sex as a practice, practice often and simply allow yourself to have an experience.
See how MapleSyrup integrates yoga into her sex life by watching her #realworldsex videos on MLNP! Check out our #bendy tag for more inspiration.
