Slow Sex: The Path to Fulfilling and Sustainable Sexuality (11 page)

THE SHIFT FROM SENSATION TO SENSITIVITY

To increase pleasure we need to increase sensitivity, slowness, and sensuality. We need to tune in to our many senses: breathing as a sense of smell, touch as a feeling sense, eyes as a receiving sense, and awareness as a witnessing sense. Sensation as we commonly understand it is not truly sensitivity. Sensation is often the response of an erogenous zone or sensitive area to some form of external stimulation, but this is not cellular sensitivity. To become more sensitive requires that we make a shift away from sensation, which is based on stimulation and excitement, involves the other (the stimulus), and includes the buildup of tension. Certainly sensitivity can also be sensational, but not in the usual sense. Sex today relies almost entirely on stimulation and sensation, which actually leads, in the long term, to less sensitivity.

It has been scientifically proven that long-term overexposure to sensation leads to an ultimate loss of sensitivity. At the end of a couples retreat several years ago, a scientist who had participated told me that the loss of sensitivity in the face of intensity of stimulation had been scientifically proven in the second half of the nineteenth century by German physiologist Ernst Weber and physicist and psychologist Gustav Fechmer. Their research, formulated as the Weber-Fechmer law, is the theory of the relationship between stimulus and experience. Their research showed that the change in intensity of a sensation varies in increments proportional to the relative change of the stimulus. Today this is known to be true for every sensory channel within its range of dynamics. A simple example would be to light a match in the darkness. In this instance the light is like an explosion, but if you do the same in bright sunlight, it is barely perceptible. More sensation correlates to less sensitivity, and less sensation correlates to more sensitivity. Instead of habitually seeking more and more sensation, you can begin working on your senses so that you become capable of feeling the subtle, yet vital life force moving through you.

Fast, hot sex desensitizes the body, and especially the penis and vagina, because it is mechanical and extroverted, dependent on sensation. The more sensation is increased, the more innate sensitivity is lost. This probably accounts for the widespread problem of impotence. Impotence represents a loss of sensitivity and awareness. A man through overstimulation slowly becomes dead to himself, and then to others, eventually unable to respond to the sensation of a strong stimulus.

Very often the fear of not feeling (in man or woman) can be the impetus for seeking sensation. At least you know for sure you can feel
something
in that particular situation. With relaxation everything is wide open, and the fear of not feeling or the fear of the unknown will keep many of us in sensation-seeking patterns. The important thing as you begin to explore is not to expect the same things as you have known up to now. You begin to experiment and gather your own body of experience. You need to become more sensitive, relaxed, and open, and thereby more capable of feeling into yourself. And you need to discover the value of the subtle. There is a shift from mind to body, from sexual desire where the focus is up and out on the periphery in extrovert style, toward the opposite—a full inversion, diving in and down into the body. Finding rest at home. The more aware, relaxed, and present you become (where true relaxation equals aliveness), the more sensitive you will become. Sensitivity creates presence, so they go hand in hand.

SLOW SEX IS COOL SEX

Slowness is always kind of cool, and yet not cold. There’s a kind of distance, but not disconnection, when you are inwardly absorbed by more subtle happenings in your body, and not caught up in making sex hot and exciting. For sure, fast, hot sex can have the immediate appearance of satisfaction—and that’s its curious appeal—but over time its stresses and goals can easily give you the sense of going around in circles. Eventually nothing exciting beckons on the horizon. Sexual boredom, or eventual lack of sex, is one of the main reasons why it becomes difficult for a couple to sustain a relationship over many years, and these days the frequent change and exchange of partners is considered the way to address such an unsatisfactory situation. Sexual frustration and sexual desire underlie the increasingly high demand for pornography, which is invariably focused on stimulation and sensation. When sex is equated with heat, excitement, and stimulation, it can make a man numb to himself, encapsulated by a world of sexual fantasy.

Believing that sex is based on the heat of excitement, we keep looking down the path of sensation when, in fact, we should turn in on ourselves and look at (and feel) the ecstatic sensitivity of our inner cellular vitality. But you need to cool down so that you can bring the focus back to yourself, where you are rooted in your body and your being, not focused on excitement, orgasm, or on your partner. The thing about coolness is that it is eternal, it does not burn out and come to an end the way jumping around in excitement eventually does. Being hot all the time will eventually become exhausting! A cool stance gives you some centering and repose, and at the same time will have you gently plugged into something much vaster than you. There are no rushes, rises, or falls.

Staying cool is easily done by holding your attention in your own body. Find an inner home to anchor your awareness and attention, as described earlier in the exercise at the end of chapter 3. From this sense of rooting yourself in your own body (you can also include the whole spine as your midline) comes an absorption in the enchantment of your inner cosmos. From here, from your very center, you can expand endlessly outward into the beyond.

INCREASING THE CAPACITY TO PERCEIVE THE SUBTLE

Sensitivity is pure pleasure and increasing our sensitivity makes us increasingly capable of feeling the subtle. Sensitivity requires that you give yourself the opportunity and space to perceive subtle sensations. And to identify them as a source of pleasure. You tune in to yourself on a much finer level and doing so makes the body more porous; the cells become more vibrant and fill with light. With accumulated tension over years, the body becomes tight, and eventually hardened, which makes it dense, less porous, less sensitive, and less receptive. Relaxation and the inner expansion that follows is basic to the quest for more sensitivity and pleasure. Relaxation implies turning inward and getting closer to yourself, first and foremost, on an inner level. And it is this closeness to yourself, your own inner friendliness and familiarity, that will bring you the experience of greater closeness and intimacy with another person. The other doesn’t change;
you
change. And because you transform your own approach, your partner usually follows suit and responds with sensitivity and presence.

It’s an incredible and mysterious alchemy. The pleasure and delight of nature’s genital intelligence and sensitivity is something that will usually grow with time and exposure, meaning that you actually make love and open up to experience deep fulfilling pleasure. Not a pleasure that leaves you wanting it again and again, but a pleasure that nourishes, fulfills, and uplifts you. When you are turned on by sex, when you experience sex in full-bodied pleasure, there is an impact on the entire sexual metabolism. A fast sexual style and fast lifestyle close a doorway of perception that decreases your pleasure threshold. There is a fascinating mind-body-spirit connection linking sexual metabolism, pleasure, and beauty. Opening to the finer pleasures of sex presents a thrilling arena that invites love and transformation.

7

THE SEXUAL POWER OF THOUGHT

M
any years ago I heard it said that a man thinks about sex every two to three minutes, and a woman, every five to six minutes. Whatever the real statistics are, there is no doubt that sexual thoughts tend to dominate our minds. Even when we don’t generate the thoughts ourselves, sex-related thoughts are continually provoked through advertising, media, films, pornography, jokes, and fashion. It is safe to say that the majority of us think about sex more than we actually have it.

The sexual domain is powerfully influenced by pleasant, painful, fantasizing, guilty, lustful, desirous, angry, disrespectful, disappointing, frustrating, or insecure thoughts. For many, the associations with sex are neither positive nor pleasant, and sex tends to be blanketed by a mantle of disappointment and discontent. In some individuals, searching for satisfaction can reach the level of an obsession or addiction in an attempt to fulfill seemingly endless and unfulfillable urges.

People think about sex more often than they engage in it because humans are not really having enough sex of the fulfilling and sustainable variety. As a result, our sexual energy is repressed and becomes diverted, sometimes in unhealthy, unloving ways.

THOUGHT AS DISTRACTION

The problem with our thoughts is that they are an aspect of the mind, separate and distinct from the body, where sex physically takes place. However, thoughts can have a strong impact on the body and alter the ensuing experience. Thought basically disconnects us from the inner subtle experiences of the body. I noticed how easily I slipped into irrelevant thoughts right from my first sexual experiences. I remember being shocked to notice myself having arbitrary thoughts during sex, thoughts that were not necessarily sex related. Any old thing would pop up and disturb my involvement in the present. In my innocent virginal imagination, sex should have been an all-consuming, overwhelming event that would somehow take control of me and obliterate my thoughts. But instead, when I found myself “still thinking,” I remember being quietly devastated.

The propensity of the mind to drift off into thought and away from the body is something I have continued to observe, both in daily life and during my exploration of sex. It’s like a lateral shift. The mind slides in sideways, distracts, and effectively darkens the inner light and subtle sensations present in the body. However, the instant the shift to mind is detected or observed (using the awareness), the reverse shift can be managed very easily. The inner connection to the body can be reestablished and the inner sensations resumed. It is not as if the inner sensitivity actually goes away in those moments of thinking. The inner cosmos continues to spiral and swirl in spite of us, but the finer level of subtlety and sensitivity moves out of the awareness and becomes swamped by thoughts.

THOUGHT AS SEXUAL CONDITIONING

Unsatisfactory sexual experiences and unhappy associations with sex are not due to sex per sex. Definitely not. Sex in and of itself is God-given and divine, and we will explore the sexual power of the sacred in chapter 8. The negative associations of sex are more a result of the way in which sex is used by the human race. It’s focused on the spilling of semen and continuation of the blood line, and this has many consequences, some visible, others less visible. The stresses of survival and the ensuing speed with which we live our lives disconnect us from the cellular vitality of the body. As humans we generally turn sex into something profane by not being able to manage our magnificent sexual force with wisdom and insight.

The subject of sex is seldom directly addressed. Regularly I ask the participants in my groups, “Who received a sex education?” Only on occasion will one or two, out of a total of fifty people, raise their hands. And when I then ask, “And was it helpful?” the raised hands are slowly lowered. Not always, but usually. At school we are taught biology and the basics, the sexual organs and process of reproduction, but nothing is said about how to actually engage oneself, express oneself, and share of oneself during the sexual act. The sex education we receive is accidental.

In truth, anatomical and biological reproductive information about sex is of no real support to us, and at the same time, sex is a vital force that nobody can really avoid. Instead, we are directly influenced and affected by the powerful sexual vibrations in the atmosphere. We hear things, we see things, we feel things, we imagine things, and so become unconsciously conditioned by these mighty, yet invisible forces. The style of sex that we know is an acquired condition, and it is not necessarily how we are born to be in sex.

This unconscious conditioning has altered our minds and our psyches, and penetrated the very cells of our bodies. The orgasm urge holds us firmly in its grip, almost as if we are under a certain spell, which is why it is virtually impossible to conceive of another style of sex. Especially as we get a bit older and more settled in our sexual ways. My observation so far has been that the young couples (ages eighteen to thirty) who come to our seminars are noticeably more open to exploring and finding new ways than couples in their forties, fifties, and sixties, who are more identified with their sexual personalities.

When we are young we are more innocent, and our bodies and psyches are more pure. We are not encumbered by a sexual history that has accumulated over years. Younger people need only a small shift; it feels natural and easy for them to be aware and relaxed, whereas for someone older, incorporating these aspects into sex can feel like an imposition on their expression.

This situation is a by-product of our sexual conditioning and a lack of insightful sex education. We are not to blame for the limitations imposed on our sexual expression, and at the same time it is good to realize that the situation is a direct result of blindness to our true sexual design. It is as if we have been looking through glasses that restrict our vision, so we cannot see the wider or higher purpose of sex. And perhaps our sexual approach is understandable, because until a certain point in time, humans were compelled to reproduce and master their environment to ensure their survival. Their whole orientation has been to focus their attention outside of themselves. There has been neither opportunity nor encouragement to explore the inner workings of human sexuality. And most of those who have turned away from the material outer world to the inner world have been religious groups promoting withdrawal from the body and denial/repression of the relentless urges of the flesh. Sexual energy cannot be tamed or contained, so it has been forced underground to become something secretive, impure, and guilt ridden.