De Vuelta al Cuerpo Online Course:
Deja de Pensar Tanto Durante el Sexo

Welcome, everyone. I'm Luna Matata. I'm a sex and pleasure educator. And this webinar Out of Your Head Back to Your Body is one that I've been wanting to offer more publicly. I've taught it to smaller groups and events and in home parties, but I've never had a chance to to actually teach it as a as an open course. And the reason why I'm so excited to bring this topic to you is because every single class, every single in different individual, one on one coaching, we're all struggling with distraction and we're all struggling with being able to be more present during sex. And the reason why it's so important to people is because it disconnects us from pleasure, right? It disconnects us from all of the pleasure and intimacy and eroticism that's available to us in these sexual moments. And no matter where I've been teaching in the world and when I started my my sex ed curriculum or my sex ed career, mainly from a public health perspective, teaching about STI reduction. And I was teaching in eastern and Southern Africa and I've been teaching in Canada all over the place and all over the U.S. And no matter where it was, I mean, people were interested in pleasure and most of us didn't have a pleasure based sex ed experience in our high school sex ed. So we often lack some of the skills that we're going to talk about tonight to be able to not only understand what's happening for us when we get distracted, but also to be able to communicate that and to be able to to reconnect to that. We mostly learn in sex ed about all the scary things about sex. We learn about biology and reproduction. But we also know that our sexual experiences, whether they're with ourselves or they're with up with other people, that they're very much connected to how we are feeling and how we're eroticized our emotions in those moments and what's our experience that includes the physical, but that isn't just limited to the physical. So if right now, if you were to just like rub your nipples or you were to touch your mom or you were to touch your genitals, I mean, it would some people get into arousal very much through the physical, but most of us also need to engage our erotic imagination right? We need all those, like dirty little crevices of our minds to be engaged and activated. And when we are distracted during sex, it becomes really tough to engage those areas of ourselves because it requires a lot of energy and effort and it requires tools that a lot of us just don't have and we haven't learned. So tonight you're going to get a whole whack of tools. We're going to talk about how to unpack and understand what exactly is distracting us and why that impacts our sexual experiences. We're also going to focus on mindful sex. So mindful instead of mind filled sex, right? When all those things are kind of bouncing around like noise in our heads. And we're going to talk about how to sense your way back home. Right. We want to come back to our bodies during sex through tuning into and being open to the sensation that are already there. So everything's already there. We just need to know how do we plug into it so that that voltage is more attractive to us and more engaging to us than what's going on in our heads? And then we're also going to talk about how do we build our erotic connection to ourselves in non erotic situations. So you might be in a situation right now where maybe you're with your partner or maybe you're not with your partner or maybe you don't have a partner. So we're going to talk about ways that you can do this work in in platonic situations as well as in situations that are filled with self-pleasure. So like masturbation or other sensual kinds of spaces that you can take up. So I want to know what are some of the things that you get distracted by or where where do you go in your head? What thoughts are taking up space and kind of creating this blockade to pleasure when you're having sex? And for I would say I say for everyone. I feel like everyone at some time and some of us more of the times we're distracted during sex. And part of it is our approach to sex and sexuality. Part of it is our approach to sex that's usually filled with shame from either culture or society or our families or our faith or so many different kinds of imprints on our erotic imagination can be really limiting when we try to open up and sort of explore being more present during sex. And so these distractions are there. They're a weight, right? Like they're like in our way we were like distraction, get out of here. And so to be able to identify some of the distractions and also to give you solidarity in those distractions, because we're all distracted by a lot of the same topics or categories, yours might be specific to the nuances of your relationship or your life or whatever stress is going on for you. But most of us are distracted by insecurities and putting pressure to perform, so a lot of us have body insecurities. Do any of you worry about how you look, smell, taste, sound during sex? Most people are pretty worried about all of those categories. I also worry about these things and what the tools that we're going to learn tonight aren't going to solve that, that insecurity. We walk around with both our healed parts and our ideal parts all the time. So the goal tonight is not to empty your head. The goal is to find ways to come back. So as soon as that distraction is like, hey, and you're like, Oh, I noticed you, but I'm going to go over here. And so please don't put pressure on yourself to be like, okay, I'm going to heal all of my body insecurity and all of my sexual performance insecurities that just doesn't exist, right? We're in a constant state of trying to reconnect to ourselves and reconnect to the ways that we can have sex that feels more pleasure based. So what we're trying to do is figure out, like, where do we come home to? Where have we gone and where do we want to come home to you? So yeah, these are great. Your own insecurities and the pressure to perform. So in addition to body shame, we also have this pressure on ourselves that distracts us from what's happening in the moment. So that pressure to perform could look like maybe you come too quickly, maybe you take too long to come. Maybe you think that you're not well enough, maybe there's pain during sex, and so you anticipate that pain. And so that becomes also a pressure to perform. Like, are you going to be able to do the things in this body that you want to do? And the pressure to perform also comes from do you ever do any of you ever worry if the things that you're doing to your partner, if they actually like it, or are they bored or are you not doing it the way that's going to make them come? We might also worry when we're receiving pleasure from someone, if someone's going down on us or someone's kissing us or massaging us, we worry that we're okay. Well, I got to do something to them next because they did this thing to me, or I have to come from the thing that they're doing to me. So that's a lot of pressure, right? That's a lot of noise in your brain. Let me know if any of those are relatable to you, because we really want to take stock and be able to name what those distractions are so that you end up being able to recognize them. When we start to name them and recognize them, it gives them a little bit less power and so they're not driving anymore. We're like, Oh, there you are. Body insecurity about my tummy. Oh, there you are about insecurity about my performance because I take too long to come. And so it actually starts to help us develop specific sorts of notions around, well, what can be what can be a powerful way to come back home, right? So what can be a way to come back home from that performance? Anxiety? What can be a way to come back home from body insecurities? Think about what distracts you from sex. Another big category is perform desires and fantasies. So you may really want to do something or like bring out a kind of mood during sex. And maybe you feel like, what if you're going to be judged? What if it's going to be too much? What if the things that you like or fantasize about or that would really get you off? Your partner's going to think you're a deviant pervert. You know what? If I'm giving you new insecurities, am I giving you new ones? You might also be distracted by things that are completely non-sexual. So maybe there's a fight in the relationship. Maybe there's an ongoing issue in the relationship. And, you know, you you're just you're not working on it or it's something that takes time to work on or it's something that you're ignoring or you're giving a lot of attention to. How many how many of you are stressed by the things that you have to do in your life other than sex? Right. It's really tough to make pleasure a priority. It's really tough to even think about our own pleasure as part of our own wellness and part of us being a whole person and nurturing that part of ourselves. So you might be stressed about roommates, you might be stressed about parenting, you might be stressed about money or work or laundry or jobs or groceries or the bathrooms dirty or, you know, we're having sex. And like, there's all these other things that we need to give attention to. And so that's why we're not here to fix our finances through sex and or to in order to have better sex. We're not here to, you know, solve your to do list in order. You're always going to have a to do list, right? You're always going to have some sort of responsibility or distraction outside of the bedroom. So we want what we want is anchors. We want something to be able to anchor us in that sexual moment so that we can notice. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, I got lots of bills to pay, but you can't pay them right now. You're trying to, like, have an orgasm. You're trying to come the other thing that's going to help us get these anchors and be able to use these anchors, and I'm going to give you a ton of examples of anchors that you can pick up on. So when we're thinking about how to to come back to our our bodies and ourselves, understanding that pathway to distraction is is one part of it. We also want to understand what that distraction feels like. So what happens in your body when you start to get distracted? So I'll tell you a story about my masturbation. Whenever I'm masturbating, sometimes I usually master Reed before I go to sleep and I'll start masturbating and I'll get kind of distracted. Like, I'll get an idea for a webinar, or I'll think about like a partner or a problem or I'm like, Oh, tomorrow I want to make waffles. And so sometimes the distraction, these are pleasant. They're not necessarily stressful, but I'll get sort of mad at myself. I'll get sort of frustrated and annoyed with myself that I can't focus on what I want to do in the moment. This relationship to my attention span exists also outside of sex and so if you have trouble focusing, the focus is we're going to try and create different allures for that focus. We want you to be able to seduce that focus back to yourself. And whether it's with a partner or by yourself, who cares? We're going to try and figure out how can we come back to ourselves? So if you if you experience your distraction and you start judging yourself for it, does it do any of you judge yourself or your distraction? Do you sort of feel that you're either cheating your partner of pleasure or you're cheating yourself with pleasure? You might also feel that it's kind of hopeless, right? You might forget what it feels like to be really present during sex. So then what ends up happening is how we feel about our distractions actually affects our desire and arousal for sex. And so it becomes this this extra weight. And so think of like your distraction, sort of, you know, driving the bus and we're fueling it with the energy that should be fueling our desire and our arousal. And so I want to say, none of this is your fault, none of it. You are not to blame for any of your distractions. You are not to blame for not being able to be present in the moments where you should be receiving erotic pleasure. A lot of this is just sort of how we've come into sex and the narratives that that we have around sex and pleasure and performance and body insecurities. We have a lot of pressure on ourselves to be able to be these like sexual, voracious creatures at the drop of a hat. And most of us don't operate that way. And so one of the first things is to be able to let go of that self judgment. And so when you notice it and I'm going to give you some tools for this, but to to think of the concept of being able to judge yourself a little bit less. And so maybe the distraction is there and you're like, oh, there you go, getting distracted. And then come back instead of being like, Oh, now I'm so anxious and like, maybe I'm not going to come. And then my partner is going to think that I'm not enjoying things. And so we go down this little like tornado, and that tornado is really powerful. And it's harder to get out of that tornado than to kind of cut it off when the self judgment starts to come in and starts to squeeze energy out of us. So think about for you're going to have some homework tonight, but part of your homework is really going to take some time to understand those distractions and identify the feelings that happen when you have those distractions. And that's a place where we get to massage our confidence, right? We get to massage the idea that we belong in these erotic moments and that it's not so much about performance or goal focused sex. There definitely is a time and a place to just want to get off or to want to have a quickie or to want to have just a lust filled, body filled type of experience. But when we're talking about more about sex, that's more present. We're talking about sex that's more mindful that actually has opportunities for connections and intimacy in our relationships with our partners, but also to our own erotic energy. So this this all these mindful sex techniques and erotic mindfulness that we're going to talk about tonight, they belong to a muscle. And so building these anchors and understanding your distractions and being able to practice some of these techniques are definitely things that come with time and with letting go of judgment that you're going to get it right the first time or that it's going to have an impact the first time or even the 40th time. Right. And you might have to try different techniques to see what makes you come home, what makes you feel like you have anchors. All of our anchors are going to be different. But don't worry, I've got tons of ideas for you, so you'll have stuff to choose from. So now I want you to lots of times I've been sitting in like yoga classes or mindfulness classes, and they would talk about like tune into yourself and breathe in your, you know, whatever. And I was like, I don't get it. Like, what are they talking about? And how do you do this? So I've got two little exercises for you there that you can do right now, and you can also do them daily just to be able to connect back to what we're feeling the way our society is set up and the way that we're we operate. We mainly are multitasking all the time. Right? So sometimes our heads are thinking about something else and our bodies are doing something else. And so it can be really tough to figure out, oh, my God, like, what does it feel like when I'm actually present with my body and my brain at the same time? And so how many of you are multitaskers? I feel like we're all multitaskers. And if you can remember the last time that you were doing something and your brain was thinking about something else, I actually have a really hard time doing one thing at a time. And so even when I'm cooking, I don't have the patience to, like, just stand there and stir. So I end up like cooking a lot of things in the oven or like I'll do dishes in between or I have to like keep going. And so there's a lot of like frenetic energy for me. So during sex, to be able to come back to that, I have to tune in to not only what I'm feeling, but also about what am I experiencing. So what what's going on with all of my five senses and my five senses are these little portals of pleasure. So they are little openings to be able to receive and give pleasure. And so we often underestimate what that power is of those portals of pleasure, our five senses to be able to come back to our bodies during sex. So I want you to think about think about something really sad. Think about something that didn't make you feel so great. And think about what that felt like. And I just want you to notice any changes in your body. So did you kind of feel like, Oh, I was having a good time? Lulu was funny. And now she said, Did you did your body changed? Did you feel a heaviness anywhere in your chest? Did you feel sort of your mind raising? Did you feel fear? Did you feel a tightening in any other part of your body? Did you feel a change in the way that you were either breathing in or breathing out? So think about think about that for a moment and then I want you to think about like something super, super happy. I watched this adorable video on Instagram. I'm obsessed with the Tiny Chef show. This is a little mini chef, if you like, clicks things. He's so cute. I like anything miniature that was dying. I was laughing out loud. I felt giddy. I was like taking my feet around. And then I wanted to send it to everybody. And so when we think about how we feel, when we remember a happy moment, think about, like, how your face changes. Think about how your body might change. Think about where there's excitement or a different kind of tension, a different build up of a different energy. And so once we can establish a contrast, sometimes a contrast will help us get into our erotic selves through our emotions and how we're feeling about things. And so a lot of times we enter sex from our bodies, but we also want to be able to enter sex through our minds, our erotic imagination is just waiting for us to give it the give it the permission that it needs to like just like run wild. Right? Okay. So that was a that's a little sensation exercise to just notice what it feels like in our bodies when we change something in our minds. So now I want you to. I want you to. So if these are your toes. So I want you to wiggle your toes. Like, just wiggle them around you just, like, scrunching them together. And then you're going to grasp your toes. So bring your toes in. Like, just squeeze your toes either together or squeeze your feet together. Whatever. Grasp if you're wearing socks, the socks. If you're wearing shoes, grasp the shoes. Grasp the shoes. Or if you're barefoot, like try and like feel the the floor with your your toes. And so I want you to tighten those toes, and then you're going to try and tighten your ankles together. So you're going to squeeze your ankles together. Then you're going to squeeze your knees together, squeeze those thighs together, squeeze your your elbows against your waist, and then you're going to bring in. So you're holding everything. You're holding everything super tight and you're bringing in your hands into little fists and you're just going to hold everything really, really, really tight. And then you're going to release. And so tell me what that that felt like or think about what that felt like. Did you feel a rush of blood coming back? Did you feel the effort of holding so tight? Did you notice your toes for the first time today? I certainly did look like I had not noticed my gels today. Did you feel sort of a relief when you got to let go? How are you feeling now? Is there more sensation in your knuckles? Because we brought blood flow to them by giving a contrast to them. Are you feeling your legs are tired? Maybe you don't normally squeeze your legs together. Maybe you've got really muscly legs that that took a lot of energy to to bring together. So doing that exercise and do it again when you've got more time to do it. But notice how that brings in an opportunity to see the contrast of release versus tension, because we're going to use that technique in some of our sensual practices to come back and create those anchors we want to be aware of. When we talk about sensation, what does that feel like? What does that how can we describe that? And so if I asked you to, you know, breathe into your knuckles right now, you'd be like, I don't know what that means. My knuckles don't have any lungs. I don't know what to do. But once we start to tap in through our bodies in that contrast sensation, whether that's also think about the next time that you get into the shower and you remember that first time that you step from a room temperature body into that warm shower and all that tingling sensation, that happens. That's also an example of sensation that you can be aware of, right? We can be aware of even when you wash your hands. So we're all washing our hands a lot right now. Right. Mine are really dry. And so when we're washing our hands, even the change of the temperature from our hands to whatever warm or hot water that we're using in our hands. Once you started to identify some of these these feelings and if you struggle, if you're like, okay, I get it. But like, I don't I don't get what sensation is like, even take it a step back. So think about like having a glass of very cold water. And when you drink that water instead of just like drinking it and then kind of walking away, feel how cold it is in your hot mouth, because we're also going to use that knowledge, that body wisdom, in order to be able to tune into what our bodies are doing, what your back is doing, what your shoulders are doing, what the backs of your knees are doing. So when you're scanning your senses, I'm just going to give you ideas. But there is infinite creativity that you can take on to create these little anchors back to yourself, depending on what you like. And I promise, the more that you practice coming back to yourself and identifying what those anchors are and unpacking your distractions, you will actually feel more creative during sex. Whenever I have folks that I'm coaching one on one that want more erotic creativity, a lot of it comes when they start to practice letting go of self judgment and focusing less on Did this thing do it for you? Did this thing work? And more on just like curiously creative, right? Like what is this spot do or how does this spot taste or Whoa. I didn't know that was good for me. We start to when we let go of that judgment, the creativity actually starts to flow through our sensory experiences. So when we think about touch during sex, the idea of tightening your toes, so tightening any part of your body. And so let's say someone's going down on you or you're going down on someone and you start like worrying about like, oh like is this Zizi? Are they bored? Is this doing anything for them? Like, are they going to come or do they not like it? Do they not like me? Are they going to break up with me? And so we want to be able to tighten a part of our body. So tighten your toes, even if your hands are not visible or they're just sort of they're not in the works. Tighten your fingers and tune in to that tightness. And once your brain has gone to that tightness, whether you have a vulva or a penis in your mouth, who cares? Once your brain is tuned into that, then let it go. And if you need to do that a few times, that's okay. We want something that will be able to remind us that there's a body here, right? There's a body. Having someone give them oral, there's a body that's giving pleasure to somebody else. So creating that contrast and using that as a small tool, if you start to get distracted, let's say you're lying on your back and someone's going down on you. You know, just even bring your hands in and grab the sheets and tighten them against your fingers and then let go. And if you need to do it a couple of times, do it. You'll start to notice if you were holding your breath while you were getting distracted, you'll start to notice if there was tension somewhere else. Another thing that you can do with tightening and releasing, we all have to go muscles, right? So regardless of what genitals you have, we all have key goals. And the key goals are actually part of our pelvic floor network of muscles that kind of look like this right there, sort of criss crossed within our pelvis. And so what you can do is actually tighten your keyhole and then let it go and then feel that that that sinking into the root part of your body. Right. That sinking into that sensation around your pelvis. And the more that you're able to hone in and focus on an area that you tighten, you will actually notice different levels of release. So with your kegels, there's the tightening and then there's the release from the tightening. But then there's also a further release into relaxing. And so that comes with being able to also use your breath as well. But the point of both tightening exercises is not necessarily to provide performance or pleasure to anybody else. It's to be able to remind ourselves that there is a very city of interest, interesting sensations that are available to us. And so once you've done that, you've been able to bring yourself back a little bit. You can then be like, okay, cool. Like, we can keep going. I'm going to try and tune in now to like what's happening somewhere else. So identifying the sensations and the contrast to sensations is step one, I'm going to give you a bunch more. So you've got let's say you are having partnered sex, you're having sex with somebody else, and you start to get distracted and you worry about their performance. I'm going to give you some tools for communication later, but what you could also do is use your sense of touch to be able to just even like you can scratch their back if they like that. If their head is between your legs, just run your hands like through their hair and feel their scalp and you're feeling you feeling them. So it's less about, you know, oh, like does this feel good for them? Feel like is their scalp bumpy, is it soft? What is their hair feel like if you grab their shoulders? What does that feel like? Where is it tough? Where is it? Whatever. And so your fingers almost become your eyes and so your fingers are going into their skin that you're focusing on. Like, do they feel hairy? Do they feel soft? Do they feel strong? Do they feel curvy? Do they feel weighted? Do they feel whatever? We're looking for descriptive sensations that our fingers are able to suss out for us. How does that sound? Do we sound? I've got a couple more for touch. I want to see if you were all on board for touch. If you're not on board for touch, don't worry. Some of us actually take in more sensory appreciation and pleasure through a different sense, and that's totally okay. We're going to get there. So I actually really like to touch myself when I get distracted and so what that could mean, it can look sexy. It doesn't have to be like, Oh, I'm going to give myself a hug in the middle of sex. What it can look like is even just like dragging your hands across your chest super, super slowly. So if your partner's going down on you, that seems to be my only example. But if your partner's doing something sexy to you, even just like taking your hands and dragging them across a part of your own body. And so for part, for those of us who have partners that are voyeurs, lots of people love the esthetics of sex. So it's just going to look really sexy. If you're on top of a partner, you can also take your hands and just like, you know, like move it through your hair. And it's not about looking sexy for anybody. It's about feeling your scalp. It's about touching your scalp and if this feels like if it feels like you're creating a disconnection because you're going into yourself, that's so not true. Think about how sexy it is when someone is authentic, when someone is feeling themselves, there's a difference between confidence and arrogance. So arrogance is in competition and confidence is like I belong. I belong in my sexiness, and I'm inviting you to join me. So you might have a move that you think about, and it could be subtle. It could even be, you know, if you're going down on someone, even like bringing your own hands together, if you're going down on on a penis, if you're going down on a vulva, even, like bringing your your two fingers up together and then bringing them back down together. So anything that encourages you to touch yourself, to remind yourself you have a body here so it doesn't have to be performative, sexy, it can be if you want to. And even the term performative, sexy, it doesn't have to look like porn is basically what I mean. It doesn't have to look like, you know, you fell out of a porn movie, right? It can just look like, oh, yeah, I'm so ready for you to go down on me. And you're just touching the top of your chest, not even your if you have breasts, not even nipples if you're on top, even like being able to, if you like your tummy, you know, touch your tummy or like just like move your hands down your sides if you don't want to touch yourself, even just like roll your shoulders back, you know, and like move your neck like opening your neck a little bit. So you're just doing a little like and then your breath is going to come where you talk about breath a little bit later. But any of these moves can be combined with breath or with another scent. So you could be doing this and like making eye contact with your partner. Another one is to oh, to rub your body like up against theirs. And so how many of you like hugs? Who are my hug huggers and cutlers during sometimes during sex we we get kind of we save all of the intimate touching hugging kind of stuff snuggling and we lump it into like pre sex or foreplay. But those are also tools that we can use to deepen intimacy and connection and presence in the middle of things. Right? So even like if your partner is on top of you or you're on top of your partner, just like giving them a squeeze, right? You're just giving a little squeeze. You're giving a little. It could even mean if you are, let's say you're going down on your partner and maybe you're straddling their legs. So they are lying down and you've got your face in their genitals and you're straddling their leg. Maybe you squeeze your thighs against them, maybe you rub your your body against them. If you're about to go down on your partner and even think about like kissing them and then like dragging your body down them. So any of that that full body contact or using areas of our body to touch that don't necessarily focus on our hands that can deepen in your physical connection, but also remind you that there are there's a whole physical body here and not just the parts that you happen to be focusing on in the moment with your mouth. So your mouth can also be a great place to use your your sense of touch or your your sensory kind of physical connections. So think about when you kiss your partner, if you kiss them so you're going out and you're going to inhale them. So you're going to, you know, sometimes when we're kissing and we're like, you just take a deep breath and like breathe back into them while your lips are pressed against them. So if your mind started to wander, you're just like and then press back against them. And what that can do is you're already in an intimate kind of connection with someone. It'll bring you back to like, woo. Like their lips are soft or their lips are full or their lips are like they're wet or their lips taste like me. Maybe they've just gone down on you and so they taste like you. We're going to get into taste as well. How do those sound? You will sound like touch ones for my touch, folks. They feel like like ones you could use. We want to keep them simple because in the moment when you get distracted, your anchors need to be clear, accessible and simple. And any of those can actually bring you back to the moment and allow you to even readjust. Sometimes our distractions are actually about things that are happening in the moment. So your partner may be doing something to you and you don't really like the way that they do it. But, you know, maybe you don't want to tell them you're afraid that they're they're going to reject you or they're going to feel bad or they're going to take it as a rejection. And so being aware of coming back to our body and tuning into sensations, we also get wisdom and information that can help us have our or give information to our partner so that they can be more responsive, so they can actually meet our needs or we can ask for what we want, right? So we might think, I want to change positions, but I don't know if they're going to like that. And so as soon as you start going into the debate in your head, you know, either grab on to your partner or take a deep breath and be like, okay, I want to do you now and like switch positions. So it gives us a little bit of clarity. Also about what pleasure would feel better in the moment. Are you ready for visual stuff? How many of you love the aesthetics of sex? So aesthetics could be bodies. It could be you. Maybe you like lingerie. Maybe you like watching yourself or watching your partner. Maybe you like porn. Maybe you like seeing how someone sort of changes during sex. Their eyes like it all floaty, maybe like seeing genitals, whatever. If you're someone that appreciates the esthetics of sex, it could also just be eye contact. How many of you like I fucking you? You like eye contact? If you're thinking about how to connect through your portal of pleasure in your vision, I've got a few ways for you. So one way is to meet your partners gaze until it feels awkward as fuck. That awkwardness is actually a good way of being present because it's hard. So awkwardness is also kind of a form of anxiety, right? So instead of the anxiety of like the dishes aren't done in my finances are a mess, the anxiety now is like, Oh my God, it's so awkward. And so that that awkwardness is actually a form of mindfulness. It's a form of setting up routines. It's a form of like, I don't know exactly what's next. Sometimes our distraction is about like, oh, we've got like, okay, I kiss their mouth, then I suck their nipple, then I go down on them and then we have some sort of penetrative sex and then we cuddle and then we go to sleep. And so that that established menu that you have, we can disrupt it with some of these techniques that bring us back to the body so you can do the same things that you already like to do, but you're going to deepen and expand the potential for pleasure in them. So you're going to you're going to meet their gaze. And the way that you can actually practice this is try staring at yourself in the mirror, try meeting your own eyes in the mirror, and then try being like sexy in the mirror. It's going to feel so awkward. It's going to feel hella, hella awkward. But you want to be able to recognize that that awkwardness is not necessarily a sign that something's going to bad is going to happen. It's not a fearful type of anxiety. It's more of a I'm being seen. I'm being witnessed either by your own gaze or by somebody else's gaze. Think about the last time you stared at your own eyes. You probably have it right. I was trying to do it this morning because I knew I was going to recommend it to you, and I felt I started sweating while I was doing it. I was like, Oh my gosh. Like, What's this about? And then I made myself do it again later, and it started to feel a little bit like a little bit floaty, a little bit like, okay, so meeting your partner's gaze, you can also do it by closing your eyes. So this is a this is one of my favorite ones that I use when I get distracted during sex. So I'll close my eyes and then open very slowly and meet their gaze. And doing that actually creates a pause and so sometimes what we need from getting out of our head and back into our body are those moments of pause and not necessarily rushing, not necessarily rushing to the next activity or the next feeling or the next orgasm or the next, like service of pleasure. But being able to like close and then slowly the open so hot, but also very much about like coming back into the visual stimulation that's available in the moment. Another one for your your eyes to come back to the body is if you watch a part of your body on their body or interacting with their body. So whenever I'm touching penises, I love to see my hands in my like painted nails, gripping a penis. I love to see the way that that my fingers look wrapped around something. I love to watch anybody's hand go on my chest or be on my breasts or be on my tummy or in another part of myself. And so noticing like, look at their hands, like see their knuckles, see that if it's your hand, look at your hand, see, you know, what does your your skin look like all covered in lube or spit, you know, what does it feel like in the same time that you're looking at it? Often when we enter through one sense and we start to focus on that one sense, our other ones wake up too. So you might be looking at your hand on a penis or on a vulva and looking at like, oh, like a lot of the way my fingers look. And then you're going to be like, Oh, they feel so good. They feel like all wet and juicy or hard or I can feel how swollen they are. So we give permission to the other senses to to kick in. Another one is to. So if you're doing self-pleasure stuff, how many of you have masturbated in front of a mirror? Think about masturbation. Not necessarily as having the goal of an orgasm. We just want to be able to tune into sensations that we might miss during sex because there's two of us sharing that space during sex, right? You have to be sort of co-creative in that moment, but when you're by yourself, you get to focus just on your pleasure. And so if you have a vulva, think about, you know, what does it feel like to just focus externally on your vulva? What do your labia feel like? What does it feel like when you put your fingers between your labia and you spread them? You know, what does the contrast between like your labia and your vagina look like? That space that everyone has between their thighs and their crotch basically, I call it like a little sweat catcher. So that sweat catcher, you know, it never gets touched. It doesn't get it doesn't get stroked. It doesn't really get played with. So what would it be like if you just dragged your finger between your thigh and your groin? What would it feel like if you you added a little bit of scratchy texture to your outer or to your inner thighs? What would it feel like if you dragged your whole palm up your your vulva if you have a penis, even thinking about like, well, what would it feel like instead of stroking this way? What if I stroked this way? What if I stroked this way? What if I held the head and I played with the base? What if I played with my balls in a certain way? What would it look like if I just stroked really slowly or opened my labia really slowly? And so what this does is it helps you shed a little bit of the shame of what we look like during sex. We're not asking to be turned on by masturbating in front of the mirror. What we're doing is we're trying to tap into those sensations and those sensations will create arousal for you. They may or may not lead to orgasm. Who cares? All we're trying to do is figure out, okay, so yeah, I do like my labia played with that feels really good. Maybe it doesn't feel good enough to get you to orgasm. Maybe it does. But it might also be a way to kind of connect to the parts of your body that you either feel shy about or shame about, or you just don't necessarily have an understanding of like their maximum pleasure potential. So I had watched I've watched porn, obviously, but I was watching porn a lot at this one period. And I was I wanted to sit in front of the mirror and look at myself, and I was going to try and touch myself in front of the mirror because someone had recommended this to me. And I was actually shocked because I hadn't looked at my vulva in a really long time at that angle that like sort of spread legs sort of open. And I'd been watching so much porn with bodies that weren't like mine that I was shocked that my vulva didn't look like a lot of the vulvas that I'd been seeing in porn. So first of all, my my vulvas, hairy, my vulvas, darker than a lot of the vulvas I was seeing in porn. So that made the contrast between my pink vaginal opening and my dark lips much more stronger, more intense of a contrast. My clit is like farther away from my hole than a lot of people, and this is like just the diversity of vulvas that are out there. So looking at your vulva in front of the mirror and even just like allowing yourself to touch whatever you want to touch, if you get distracted, who cares? You know, set a timer, feel like I'm going to do this for half an hour, I'm going to do this for 20 minutes, whatever. And if you get distracted, like bring yourself back through some of the techniques that we've talked about with Touch, meet your own gaze in the mirror, look at areas of your body that maybe you do like or that you feel are sexy on their own. All right. Another one for your eyes. It sounds counterintuitive, but blindfold yourself or blindfold your partner, whatever. If we're doing it for ourselves to blindfold ourselves, your mind might get a little bit distracted. But whenever we take away one of our senses, we get to enhance the other one. So if you if you heard all the touch ones that I talked about and you're like, I don't know. So even like taking away our sense of sight and use a blindfold instead of just closing your eyes because the blindfold gives you a little bit of a blackout. And it also doesn't put the pressure on you to have to do the blackout. Right. And so blindfold yourself and or have your partner blindfold you and then focus in on their sensations because you're not going to be able to see exactly what they're going to do. If you blindfold your partner, take turns with the blindfold and just see what it's like and even set the intention of, Oh, I just want to surprise you. And then you're going to go to all those underserviced erogenous zones and see what happens in their genitals without them, even without you even touching them. Right. And for yourself. So I blindfolded myself even during masturbation, just to see what that would feel like. And the idea that we don't have control over our sight sometimes relieve us of the burden of kind of like judging everything where where we catch it, right? Like judging everything that we see. I love blindfold. I think there's such a simple, simple tool and they don't necessarily require a lot of technique or equipment, you know, like even use. I've used pantyhose as blindfold. I like bondage tape a lot as as blindfold because it doesn't stick to hair. You just don't want something covering your head, right? You can even use those like little like sleep masks or with like the eyes drawn on or so. Those are also pretty cute. Okay. We're going to go into scent. All right. We've got scent and taste and sound still to go. So, so many opportunities. If you're like, touch meh, eyes meh. Okay, don't worry. I'm going to get you. So with the scent, how many of you are worried that you smell bad, that maybe your genitals smell bad or your body odour. I don't know, another part of you smells bad. Another crevice of you smells bad. There's an entire industry designed to make people with vulvas think that they smell bad and that their natural scent isn't attractive or sexy, and that, in fact, it's actually unhygienic. So the equivalent industry doesn't exist for penises and testicles, even though like folks with penises and testicles can also feel shame around their their scent. It's very, very pervasive because of these industries that are designed to make me think that my vulva is supposed to smell like cupcakes and roses or whatever. And so lots of us have shame around what we smell and tastes like. And so when we're thinking about scent, sometimes that shame also is part of our distraction. We think that as we start to get aroused and maybe we get juicier, I get so sweaty during anything but particularly sex. And so we start to judge the natural things that are happening as part of arousal. And so that can be really distracting because how are you supposed to have a good time if you're worried that your partner thinks that you're ripe or rank right. And lots of partners also really like scent. And so we're we're kind of stealing from their sensory enjoyment when when we worry, when we're worried about our scent as well. Scent also isn't a sign. High scent isn't a sign of someone who's not clean or unhygienic. We all have different body chemistries. We all have different, you know, metabolisms and ways of metabolizing things. So it doesn't necessarily mean that they're they're unhygienic. So when we're thinking about scent, it is a great way to come back to body. It's also a great way for our partners to to bring us back to our body by telling us that we smells so good that they can't get enough of our scent. So one way to do this, I've got three for you. One way is to inhale a crevice on your partner's body. And so if you find you're making out and you start to get distracted, you know, do you give some kisses? Like along the jawline is also a really sensitive hot spot. So give some kisses. Make your way to, like, behind their ear or their neck, and you're going to give a soft kiss and then you're just going to give a Hmm. You smell so good. Or I can't wait to do this to you or that to you or who cares? You remember anything, just inhale them. You can inhale them and then keep on going wherever you're going. That moment it gives you not only an inhalation and stimulation of your your nose and your sense of smell, but it also gives you an opportunity to take a deep breath when we get distracted, we forget our whole lung capacity. We forget that like we need to breathe to live. Right? So inhale if you like. I love the smell of armpits. I think they smell so arousing what you like in an erotic situation you might not like outside of an erotic situation. Like I'm not getting turned on on public transit with someone's like sweaty armpit at 5 p.m. in my in my face but I like smelling a partners scent during sex is totally in arousal for me and it's very primal. So put your face, you know, in their armpits smell areas of their their body that don't necessarily get a lot of attention. So if they have breasts smell in between their breasts underneath their breasts, everyone's got that little sweat captured crevice between the groin and the thighs. Any area that you think would feel sort of sexy, even the scent of their skin. So even kissing their wrists and then like just taking them in can be a really good way to come back to what's happening. All right. How do we feel about scent? Are we into scent? I feel I'm really into scent, but it took me a long time to get there. Another way is to also notice your scent on them. And so if you've just had contact with their genitals, if they've gone down on you and now they're kissing you, if they've had their fingers on you or in you smelling or inhaling there there's your scent on them is also very intoxicating for some people. It can feel like, ooh, like it's like a mixture. Now I'm like, on you, right? I'm like, in you. It is a road. It is a journey because we've been taught so many things that sex has to be like this, like, sanitized, you know, like, perfectly quaffed, sophisticated act. And in reality, it's messy, right? There's like fluids and juices and sweat. There's so many primal things happening because of arousal in our sexual moments. The other one that that you can do, and especially if you have any shame around excuse me, around your your own center, your own body is to smell yourself. And so that could even mean, you know, if you're going down on someone, like taking in, like what they smell off of, off of your face. And so it's just another reason to take in a breath if you've had your fingers in them or if you like, have the your fingers near their mouth or something, even just like smelling them and being like, Ooh, I love smelling you on me. That can bring you back into the moment like that, right? Because it's also a little bit of like awkward. It's like they might giggle if you do any of these things that engages your partner in more of a sensual way, and some of these things are more sensual and some of them are more like just mindful. And if you they all come from like coming back to the body. But if they giggle, remember that they also might be feeling awkward. They might also giggle as a response to vulnerability. They might also giggle as a response to authenticity and that giggle is just like a release of of joy. It's a release of like that, like, oh, okay. Do I do I smell that? I don't know. And so, you know, don't don't take it as they're laughing at you, it's it's a little bit of like, oh, cool. Like I got them to feel a little bit like playful. I got them to feel a little bit free and that's totally okay. But remember, not everyone's partner is here right now. And so a lot of us are still having sex that are very much about like in our heads, like orgasm, focus, goal, focus. It's supposed to look like porn. And so when we start to be more authentic, it also changes the way that that we relate to our partners. All right. Since you can also influenced by using it as a ritual. And so that ritual might be, you know, you're going to set an intention as you start to go into this sexy time, whether it's masturbation or whether it's with a partner. And so maybe you put on a scent so that it changes the scent of the room. And so that could be incense. That could be a scented candle. It could be, you know, I don't know, some people like lavender on their their pillowcases. And so what that does is that also is an anchor for the moment, because we've infused the space with something that can give to our sense of scent and so we get to, you know, get wafts of it as it as it's happening. But as we enter the space, we know that we're creating an intention of feeding all of our senses. All right, I'm taking you to taste. Are you ready to go to taste? So with taste, you can taste their skin. Think about, like, the. The saltiness of someone's skin. And even if their skin doesn't necessarily have a flavor, like, if you're not like, Oh, my partner, your skin smells like vanilla latte. It's the idea of of using your mouth and your lips and your tongue to be able to, to taste someone. So if you were to taste your hand right now, what would how would you describe it? You'd probably be like, Oh, I don't know. Then like like lick your hand and be like, I don't know. It doesn't taste like anything. So what part of your homework tonight is going to focus on on taste? And when we tune into things like our even our food, right? So our food is a way that we can start to come back to our sense of taste. I my my ex-husband is actually from Kenya. We met in Kenya and eloped there. And when he came to Canada, he was like, you people like walk around with food a lot. I was like, Oh my God, we do, right? It's like in Kenya there isn't as much like takeaway and like delivery and like. And so I was like, yeah, like I guess people aren't like, like sitting down and like tasting their food. And so the same thing happens with sex is that we don't realize like what that sensation would feel like if we were to taste our partner. So their skin is one area that you can taste and think about when you kiss them. What do they taste like? And we're not looking for scents or flavors. We're looking for like the experience of tasting them where you could taste their fluids, right? You can taste like their juices or whether that pre come or semen or sweat or if it's vaginal fluids and vaginal secretions and whatever it is, whatever, spit, maybe like to spit swab. So if you're doing anything with your mouth and you start to get distracted, that's a good opportunity to just like drag your tongue or even drag your lips across whatever part of their body that you're on. So it's a little bit of touch, a little bit of taste. Another one is due to suck their taste. And so instead of just like like lapping up their taste, but you really like, like suck their taste. And so that might mean getting into crevices again. So either it could be your sucking their labia or their clitoris and trying to taste them. It could be you're going behind their their testicles and trying to taste them. They're maybe you're trying to taste what does this neck taste like? Does it taste different than over here? Because, remember, our sense of scent also influences how we we taste things. This one is one of my favorite ones to do to bring myself back because it looks so hot. So one thing that you can do is if you're about to touch their genitals is you can make eye contact or don't make eye contact. Maybe you're like looking coyly away or you just like looking at their genitals and you're going to suck on your fingers. So you're gonna put in your mouth and drag your spit on your finger, and then that wet finger is going to go down and do some things. And maybe that's just like dragging from the tip of the penis right down to the balls. Maybe it's like circling around the hood of the clitoris and down one labia and up the other one. And so all it is, is it's cueing a little bit of a it's a hot ritual, but it's a little bit of a a practice to be about. You're tasting yourself and then you're mixing your taste with them. How does that sound? I really like that one. Um, you get a taste, you and give them some. The other one for your taste is that if you want to taste yourself, taste yourself. I think it's, if any of these feel intimidating for you, think about the last time you learned a new skill, right? If you went to a dance class or you went to a martial arts class like, you know, you didn't do the thing right away. You didn't get it perfect right away. You probably didn't even get close to being perfect right away. And if you're like me, I put a lot of pressure on myself and I am immediately disinterested in things that I am not an expert at right away. So you have to let go of like some of that judgment, some of that, and give yourself some patience and some time to be able to sink into these sensations. Remember, you're going to try them a bunch of times before you find which one makes you feel sexy. But the process of trying is already your anchor. It's already giving you more presence in your body. Doesn't matter if you get turned on. What we're trying to do is come back from that distraction. That distraction is over here and you're like, Oh, no, babe, I'm right here. Right. So with sound. How many of you like sex sounds? Are you into like moans or dirty talk or like when their breath changes? Sound is a great way because a lot of us have been having sex, including with ourselves, in places where we couldn't make a lot of sound. So maybe you've got kids at home, maybe you've got roommates, maybe you've got other people living in the house. We grew up masturbating in houses, presumably with other people, she says. Breath and breathing changes. Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love hearing when someone's breath deepens or it gets kind of rugged, right? So even tuning into the breath sounds from your partner and even trying to remind yourself through like listening to their breath. So put your head on their chest or get like really close to their mouth and put your ear against them while you're doing something, maybe with your hand to another part of their body or while they're doing something to you. My favorite thing in the world is being kissed and being fingered at the same time. And so that allows me to like be really close to their face as well as feel like, oh, like I get to like hear everything that's happening for them. They get to like take in my moans too. So with when we're thinking about sound, a breath is one way to think about also trying to use sound when you're masturbating. It sounds silly again. It might feel awkward. The first couple of times that you do it, but sound is actually one of our. All of our senses can offer release, but sound is one that's really underrated. And so there are even things like sound therapy or like scream therapy, right? Or like singing is a way that people engage in coming back to that sense of sound as well. So think about masturbating and just allowing whatever sound to come out. And that doesn't have to be dirty talk. It can be moans or grunts. Most of the sounds that we all make during sex are actually much more primal and more guttural than we hear in porn. So those high pitched noises in porn, they're usually performative, so most of us aren't going to sound like that. So we've been trying to to masturbate with sound can be a way to remind yourself that that potential for pleasure and eroticism also exists. I like this one. Okay, so whispering your wants. And so if you're doing something to someone and you make their way, you make your way close up to their ear. If you're at all shy about dirty talk, and most of us are, it's one of my most popular webinars because we all need it as a skill. It's totally a skill you build. Most people aren't just naturally good at dirty talk, so but what you can do is get up close to someone's ear and just whisper something that you would like to do to them or you want them to do to you. And that already is dirty talking. You're changing the sound and you're also changing the content and so that gives you an opportunity to use your own sense of sound to connect to someone else's sense of sound, but also to get what you want. Maybe you want to change things up, maybe you need a break, maybe you want them to go down on you. Maybe you want to go down on them. Think about also when they're moaning, if their eyes are open or if their eyes are closed. And so either way, like if you're hearing them moan, like what the changes in their face, watch the changes in their body, do they start to sort of gripe and are they like undulating? Are they like flailing? I don't know. Are they wiggling? Are they are they moving in a way that feels or that looks interesting to you? That's a change. That's a contrast from what you were noticing beforehand. Another one that you can do is listen to audio erotica. This one's great because it's this one's a good self-pleasure one. So if you're listening to audio erotica, it's you will get distracted, but then you're going to come back because they're reading it in a way that is filled with sort of sensual seduction. The other thing that that you can do around erotica is if you're not with your partner right now, is to send little voice erotica messages and have them send them to you, too. And it could just be about, you know, ask them like, oh, like, can you send me a message? And, you know, like, tell me like your favorite parts of the last time we were together or text them and be like, Hey, babe, can I send you a voice message about what I want to do to you the next time that I see you? And so the the beauty of that is that you get to kind of practice tuning into what that verbalization of your desire or receiving the verbalization of somebody else's desire. How does that make you feel? How does that change your mood? How does that change how you feel in your body? So there's there's stuff that we're doing directly to our partners and then indirectly for that. Remember, there's like a little circle of arousal and then we've got this like bigger one. And so we want to massage both, right? We want to. That's the only place I want you to multitask. I've got a couple of tips for your mindful sex dates. So I think it's really fun to create moments, right? So we're going to create moments that are dedicated and filled with the intentions of erotic presence. And so what that might look like is maybe you bring in a toy or a tool. And so a toy or a tool, some of us, when we're doing something with our hands or if we're sort of tactile or we feel kind of industrial something. So if you're using I've got something like a massage glove on someone, right? Or I've got like a cock sleeve that goes over a penis. So if you're using any of these tools, this is also a good way to guide your vision right? So you're like guiding your sense of sight to be able to take in like, oh, like, look at my hand, like, rolling over that person's body or that person's thing. So if it feels a little bit too raw or it's like it's too much to just see your own hand and notice that on somebody or notice your partner's hand, use a tool like bring in a sex toy, bringing a tool. It could also just be something like using, using a lube that this is a silicone based lube. When we use lubes that are very silky, they can double as like a massage oil. And for any type of penetrative sex, whether anus is or vaginas. And if we have something like a like a lube or a massage oil, when you're thinking about any of the lubes that have frills, so we call them frills lubes. And so if they're warming or cooling or they've got a taste to them, to them, you want to make sure that they don't have glycerin in or sugar in them. Because if you're playing with vulvas or you have a vulva, those types of lubes can often increase your chances of UTIs or yeast infections. So the brand that I showed you is called Wicked. Wicked has cooling and heating and taste lubes. You could eat a pink lemonade at if you want to, you can tune into my butt stuff. Webinar one. So using something that that kind of gives you like a toy or a purpose or something to do things with can also help anchor you in the moment because you're focusing on the thing. You might start to judge yourself about the thing, but that's where we bring in all of the other tools that we talked about. Like once you're busy, like noticing how that feels on someone, noticing how their body relaxes, what are they saying? How do they sound like? That can be a really good way to to come back to yourself. All right. Two more tips for you. So for for mindful sex days, you might also want to I've done this with a partner who had a really hard time receiving. And so they they always were like waiting till I do the next thing or like go to the next move. And I was like, hey, I'm like, why don't we make tonight all about you? And tomorrow morning all about me. And so dedicating time where you don't feel the pressure to give and receive can be really intimate and really pleasure serving to your partner because it also just gives them a chance to like up their game and like figure out like, oh, like where where can I tickle you next? Like we got like 2 hours to do this thing and it also helps you both support each other's unique sexual response times and as well as your your own moments of distraction. And so you're not worried about, like, managing each other's. If you don't want to do two separate date nights, you can even do like a two separate time periods. And so maybe for the next 30 minutes I'm going to drive you wild, and then the next 30 minutes you're going to drive me wild. I set a timer with this partner because they were so distracted and it was amazing to watch them let go and just be like, okay, I don't know when the 30 minutes is up, but they were able to just kind of like ride it out, right? Another way that you can do it if you are someone, how many of you like do you like sexy playlist? Do do you like music as part of your arousal? Or for some people it's distracting. For other people, they love it. So you could co-create a playlist with your partner, and maybe for three songs there, your three songs and the next three songs are their three songs. And so whenever your jam comes on, you know you're the one that gets to do whatever you want. Or maybe you're the receiver for your songs or you're the giver for for their songs. And that can also help you kind of like let go into like a groove, whatever your anthem is, whatever makes you feel super sexy. I also do that with masturbation and so having a masturbation playlist to like fuck yourself to the songs that make you feel sexy can actually help you be more present to your sense of pleasure and tune out that noise in your head. A sexy playlist is also really good for keeping your out of your head and back to your body practices, not just in your sexual moments. So if you have, let's say, let's see how long are songs like 3 minutes. So if you've got three songs, so that's what, almost 10 minutes or so. So if you've got three songs maybe at night or during the day or whatever, whatever moments that you have to yourself, you put on those songs and you just stretch like just like stretch without instruction, without, you know, make it very intuitive and it might become very sensual if your songs are very like sexy or sensual. But anything that is going to help you relax into feeling your body, like open up once we tune in to what those sensations are outside of a sexual situation, it's actually easier to come to them in a literally or whatever, figuratively come to them in a in a sexual or an erotic situation as well. So here's your your erotic mindfulness homework. So you don't actually have to have a partner to be able to do this. One of the the issues that a lot of us have is being able to prioritize pleasure and to make space for it. You're all very busy. We all have a lot of stress. We have a lot of responsibilities and maybe accountability to other people and other people's needs. And so it's really tough to prioritize something like pleasure, which we can see as hedonistic. And so maybe sort of for people who just have a lot of time and I'll tell you, because I teach at a birth center for postpartum parents, and if postpartum parents can do it, I think that we all have a good shot. And so when we think about it, bringing our our erotic mindfulness into our platonic situations, our day to day situations, it's actually about finding moments where we just tune into sensation. That sensation does not have to be arousing. It does not have to bring us to a mood of sex. It does not have to bring us to masturbation or sex with a partner. It's about starting to be able to create those relationships back to our senses that we have numbed out because we're such multitaskers and we're disassociated in a lot of ways with our bodies. So you're going to find 10 minutes, you know, 10 minutes or 5 minutes a day, whatever it is. But it's important that it's regular. It's important that you have a regular practice of prioritizing your pleasure through practicing, knowing where these anchors are, like knowing where these these of the availability of things are, if someone's. All right, there you go. So, for example, you all brush your teeth every day, right? Right. You got 2 minutes, right there for erotic mindfulness. And so bringing your attention to what does your toothpaste taste like? What do those bristles feel like on your gums versus your teeth versus your tongue? Even watching yourself in the mirror and just looking at like, oh, yeah, like this is where. Okay, yeah, I didn't even make it. Meeting your own gaze in the mirror a few times a day whenever you're washing your hands. And even if that means you meet your own gaze and you give yourself a big smile, maybe it means that you, like, wink at yourself and you notice how cute you are today. Meeting your gaze and brushing your teeth are things that that are available to you every single day. But it helps you tune into things that we sort of take for granted and everything that I've given you tonight in all of the five senses there, things that exist for all of us. And we just either don't tune into them, we take them for granted, or they're just underappreciated because we're focused on like the Big Bang kind of sexual things. Another one is when you're washing your hair and so when you're washing your hair, I'm definitely not doing it as much as I normally do. When we could go places. Let's say you're washing your hair, it's tuning into like scratching your scalp, right? Like scratching and just like, you know, taking one extra minute to do that. I used to just kind of do this and I'm like, okay, I want to get out of the shower as fast as possible. And so this isn't really adding any more time. It's just tuning into what your body is doing and how your body is receiving it. Another one is when you're washing the dishes. I hate washing the dishes and so you don't have to like the activity. It doesn't have to bring you pleasure. But we we want to tune in to what do the what do the sides feel like on our hands, right? What does the water feel like? What does the sponge feel like? What is like? The bristles feel like if using a brush, what does the soap smell like? I always buy scented soap that I like, but ask me if I could tell you what scented soap I have, right? Like we we tune into it as a choice and then we never actually take it in. Another one is when you're having dinner. So whether you're having dinner alone or you're having dinner with other people, light a candle. And so just change the the scene, the dynamic, the experience of I used to just like eat food in front of Netflix and like I probably do most nights, but on the nights where I'm focused on like I want to take in the scent, the taste, the color, the texture of my food, lighting a candle is something that reminds me, okay? Like, I got to sink in to this moment. I'm not going to be distracted by other things. How many times have you eaten food and you reach back like four more and there just wasn't more because we didn't even notice that we finished it right? Or you've eaten food, but you couldn't tell me if it was like super tasty. You just like, ate it to not be hungry. And so this doesn't have to add 20, 30 minutes to your meal. It's about just shifting the experience. Another one, this is the one that is kind of connected to food. So if you've got any type of fruit at home, you've got an apple, even a strawberry, you've got great fruit. Whatever I want you to the next time that you eat this, whatever fruit and I'm suggesting fruit, if you don't like fruit, it could be chips, it could be vegetables, it can be whatever. But we want something that you choose because it's like the color you can notice, the smell, you can notice the taste. And so when you're eating it, I want you to eat it. So sensually. And what that means is that maybe it's kind of messy, you know, maybe you eat that strawberry and the juices start to flow down your chin and you just let it go for a minute. You can clean it up later. You can always wash your face, right? You're going to notice, is it juicy or is it tart? Is it sweet, is it savory? Is it high taste, high flavor, or does it make you want more? Is it crunchy? Is it soft? What does it smell like? Is it like vibrant kind of fresh smell? Is it more of like a tangy kind of smell? So I want you to tune in to this piece of fruit and you're going to eat it as if it's like the best thing that you've ever eaten. This is a practice called sensual feasting, and I learned it in a sensual self care workshop by this amazing, amazing person, Rasheeda miller and I'm going to include her stuff for you in your notes. And so the idea of taking sensuality into our everyday things actually helps us awaken our senses and allow them to be active. So it's easier to activate them and to leverage them in our moments of sexual pleasure when we're used to them, when we're used to tuning in to them, when we know what it feels like, when we smell something we like, when we know what it feels like when we taste something we like. When we can identify contrasts. All right. How are you feeling? Are you feeling good? Are you feeling excited to try all of these things? Even if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling doubtful, that's all okay. To just be where you're at. Everyone sort of takes on learning and coming back to the body in different ways because we all have different intensity levels and ways of encouraging our own transformation. And so this is definitely a practice. So commit, if you can, to 10 minutes of some sort of sensory practice every day because we're going to sense our way back to our body. That's what we're trying to do. Those anchors are all based in our sensations and our ability to give and receive sensation.