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Passion, presence and communication
This document discusses developing presence and mindfulness to improve passion and pleasure in relationships. It defines presence as being fully focused on the present moment. Mindfulness is described as inwardly directed self-observation of one's current state without judgment. The benefits of mindfulness include improved ability to tune into erotic sensations with one's partner. Barriers to pleasure like cultural messages and being out of practice are discussed. Techniques taught include mindful touch to deeply experience one's partner's body, and slowing down sexual encounters to focus on bodily sensations and communication with one's partner. Developing presence through mindfulness is presented as a way to overcome barriers and generate more pleasure.
Passion, presence and communication
- 1. Passion, Presence and Communication RebeccaChaplin, MA, LS Somatic Sexologist (& Gerontologist)
- 2. Today’s Presentation • Understandmore about the relationship between passion, presence and communication. • Learn how presence can improve your experience of Passion and Pleasure in sexual relationships • Barriers to experiencing pleasure • Ways to overcome / integrate barriers • Powerful pleasure generating principles
- 3. What does presencemean to you? • Passion occurs in this moment • Connecting with the nectar of the present moment • Developing Mindfulness
- 4. Mindfulness • Special stateof consciousness • Inwardly directed self-observation • Object of observation is what is happening inside, right now • Neutral attitude without self judgment • Something you can develop or learn © Halko Weiss, HEART
- 5. Characteristic Features ofMindfulness • Internal observer / witness • Soft, unfocused, not directed • Passive • Curious open to what happens • Slow and precise © Halko Weiss, HEART
- 6. What does Presence haveto do with Passion? • Focus on what is happening right now • Feel physical sensations • Identify the thoughts, words, ideas and memories that are arising • Notice the feelings and moods • Tune into the erotic potential of the images, colors, sounds, tastes, sensations, smells… • Notice your personal impulses in the moment © Halko Weiss, HEART
- 7. Mindfulness Practice • Sitin a comfortable and upright position • Turn your attention inward • Become aware of your body • Observe the flow of breath • If (when) your mind starts to wander, return to your breathing © Halko Weiss, HEART
- 8. Personal Meaning ofPleasure • When you hear the word pleasure, what comes up for you? – Image – Thought – Bodily Sensation
- 9. Benefits of Pleasure •Neurochemical benefits • Better able to turn-on partner • Relieve pain • Connecting the heart and genitals • Change the world!
- 10. Barriers to Beingin Pleasure • Cultural Context – Messages from upbringing – Result-orientated society – Power and Pleasure • Pleasure /Pain Bind • Out of Practice!
- 11. Three Areas ofAttention Things outside of us Thoughts Bodily Sensations
- 12. Pay attention toBodily Sensations
- 13. Mindful Touch • Explorea part of your (or our partner’s) body as if it is the first time. • Explore the landscape, temperature and all other characteristics. • Direct your attention to the point of contact between the finger and body • Track your (or their) response (skin tone, breath, etc) • Pause when if discomfort arises, if you are not sure how to proceed or disconnect) • Wait for a Fresh moment • Ask © Maci Daye and Halko Weiss, Passion and Presence
- 14. Erotic Practice asa Portal • Celebrate Erotic Embodiment • Present Moment Awareness • Mindful Practice Regulates Nervous System • More Fun & Less Expensive Than Other Habits
- 15. Communication is the heartof passion and presence • Mindfulness • Articulate your experience • Ask for what you want • Ask your partner to communicate what he/ she heard • Allow your partner to share how they feel • Slowly experiment!
- 16. Slowing Down andSpeeding Up
- 17. Tompkins Affect Theory Interest/ Excitement Enjoyment / Joy Cultural context / metaphor dominates male western human sexuality Mona lisa or smiling Buddha Love/Lust dilemma desire for nonstop hot, lusty sex triggered by love- maps, core erotic themes and pornography Love and communion Triggered by contentment, bliss, peacefulness, and savoring embodiment Correlates with Masters and Johnson’s First two stages of human sexual response - excitement and plateau Second two stages of human sexual response - orgasm and resolution Neural firing Increased rate Decreased rate Muscular Patterns Muscular Tension/rigidity Muscular relaxation / ease Vascular system Vasoconstriction Vasodilation Nervous System Sympathetic Parasympathetic
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- 19. Relish in theAnticipation of Pleasure
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- 21. Take Home • SlowDown – Evoke mindfulness – differentiate areas of attention – Relish in Anticipation of Pleasure • Focus on Sensational Experience • Communicate YOUR Needs • Practice
- 22. Enjoy your EroticJourney • www.Interbeing.me • interbeinghealing@gmail.com • 828-335-7187 • Always15-minute telephone consultation
Editor's Notes
- #4 Moving from negative imprints of the past or projections from the future into the possibility to deepen into the moment. True intimacy occurs in this moment.
- #5 Special state of consciousness – different from everyday consciousnessInwardly directed self-observation – not about what is happening for your partner but about what is happening for youObject of observation is what is happening inside, right nowNeutral attitude without self judgmentSomething you can develop or learn
- #8 Conduct short mindfulness practice and ask what participants notice their experienceFrom a mindful state ask what passion means to them (next slide)
- #10 Neurochemical benefits nitric oxide, Prolactin (bonding hormone - enhanced by sexual activity, breast feeding, childbirth, and good times with friends); beta endorphin (as well as serotonin, and dopamine)better able to turn-on partner!relieve painchange the world!
- #11 Cultural Context:Judeo Christian link between pleasure and guilt or shame.(a) Story of creation: Nudity and relationship to shame and the fall humanity; idea of “original sin” that we are born with shame and guilt; (b) the need to confess one’s transgressions and temptation to authority figures(c) The idea of Immaculate Conception by an all good virgin(d) Separation of spirituality and sensuality(e) Patriarchy and the related misogyny and all that the female represents – earth, nourishment and sensualityPleasure / Pain Bind: - Pleasure-pain bind - developing erotically as we are developing our sense of self. If we have negative or painful experiences as we are also experiencing the release of hormones and erotic pleasure we can learn that pain is actually pleasurable. As the pattern repeats it will be strengthened and re-affirmed and we cannot experience pleasure without it’s cousin – pain. Low-Self:esteem: we integrate this low self-esteem into our erotic story; so that our story re-affirms our low self-esteem.
- #12 Let us again, return to presence or mindfulness: WE generally have our attention on these three areas. Without distinguishing them, they can easily collapse into one. (1) Things outside of us(2) Bodily Sensations(3) ThoughtsNow let’s warm up! Allow your attention to move into the observations of your surroundings. Notice what is happening around you. Take in the information from your environment. Try not to label or judge what you notice. Just notice. I invite you to write in the dashboard what you notice in your environment.Return to neutral. Now, turn your attention inward to your bodily sensations. It might help if you close your eyes for a moment. Notice what you feel in your body. Allow your attention to follow any sensations. Again, try not to label or judge what your feeling . Just notice. I invite you to write in the dashboard what you observed.Return to neutral. Now, turn your attention inward to your thoughts. Notice what you are thinking right now. Allow your attention to witness your own thinking. Again, try not to label or judge what your thinking. Just check it out. I invite you to write in the dashboard what you noticed in your thinking. Ask for one or two people to comment:- What did you notice in this exercise?- How do you feel now, as opposed to when we checked in? Notice if this exercise shifted your experience. What we experience is determined by the interrelationship between these three – Thoughts/ Bodily Sensations/ Things outside of us. The process of collapsing these three into a perception or a judgment is called “conditioning.” Our thoughts create ‘filters’ that condition or color future experiences. For example, if I am sitting on the washing machine and experience the vibration moving through my body as pleasurable, the thought “laundry is exciting” may arise. On the other hand, if the washing machine is a routine chore that I do not enjoy, the thought “laundry sucks” may arise. Each of these thoughts will have correlated body sensations. Shifting our attention from our thoughts to our bodily sensations or things outside of us is another way in which we can get ‘unstuck’ from a pattern that doesn’t serve us, although it may be repeating because at one time it was associated with pleasure.
- #13 One very basic way to bring presence back to pleasure is to focus on the experiences of the body. In this way OUR body becomes the focus of our attention.
- #15 - Accessing Erotic Embodiment brings presence to the power of creation – well worth the celebration- According to eminent neuroscientist Daniel Siegel, mindful practice done over time produces enormous neurological benefit. Mindful practice helps us with “regulating our bodies, attuning to others, having emotional balance, calming fear, pausing before acting, having insight and empathy, being moral in our thinking and our actions, and having more access to intuition.”
- #18 We all know that the mind has an influence on the body. This is one reason why the feeling of pleasure can be beneficial to the body (and mind). We all have habitual patterns for accessing pleasure. Silvian Tompkins developed the affect theory as a way of understanding the impact of the mind/emotions on the body. Basically, affects are biological representation of emotion, “Affects are sets of muscle and glandular responses located in the skin of the face and also widely distributed throughout the body that generate sensory feedback which is either inherently acceptable and rewarding or inherently unacceptable and punishing.” Tomkins identified nine basic affects:Two inherently rewarding or positive affects: interest-excitement and enjoyment-joyOne neutral affect: surprise-startleSix inherently punishing or negative affects, which he listed in increasing order of toxicity as shame-humiliation, distress-anguish, disgust, fear-terror, anger-rage, and dissmell The two rewarding affects: interest-excitement and enjoyment-joy are most relevant as we enter this discussion about pleasure. These affects describe our common association of sexuality with pleasure, the relationship of these emotions on our bodies and on our patterns of living:
- #19 We must have this duality of interest-excitement / enjoyment-joy in our sexual and our human experience. It is when one goes to its extreme that we are able to access the converse. Once again – through balancing these energies in our sexuality we can cultivate more balance in our life. Balancing these two energies is also at the heart of tantra. This includes and also goes beyond simple yin and yang and our associations with masculine and feminine. Rudi’s book! Moshe Feldekrais speaks to this interplay of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous function at the root of experiencing sexual potency and gratification. In our culture, many of us live in the sympathetic nervous system so much of the time it becomes increasingly difficult to release (self-assertive functions are continually over-excited and remain active despite our efforts to relax – difficult to experience sexual pleasure and pleasure from our life activities). By learning to experience this balance in our bodies – through our sexual experience - we can begin to feel a pleasure from embodiment rather than a need for release of tension - which is never quite enough. Have you ever heard anyone or said yourself that sex is such a release? When we begin in a relaxed / joyful or blissful state we are in a state of greater choice. When we are in a state of excitement we are more driven.
- #21 This next exercise speaks to both practice element and integrating different parts of ourselves – specifically connecting our heart and genitalsLet’s start to explore sex magic through a warm-up. We’ll start with a brief version of the erotic embodiment breathing exercise that we did in week four. Then, we will move to a Heart Pleasuring breathing exercise. (1) Basic Breath - sit in a chair with your feet planted on the floor and bring consciousness to your breath. Notice how deeply you breath, what parts of your body move when you breathe, whether you hold your breath after the inhale or after the exhale.(2) Place your hands in the center of your chest and take 2 deep slow, breaths directed into your chest. - Allow the breath flows towards your hand.- Feel the breath rise and fall in your upper body - Open to sensations in this part of the body and your emotional self.(3) Place your hand on your solar plexus, the upper part of your stomach right below your ribcage, and take 2 slow, deep breaths into the stomach.- Let go of being goal orientated as you breathe into your solar plexus.- Feel the breath rise and fall in your stomach and open your body to your personal power.- Feel your free will and your boundaries. The ability to say “yes” and “no” have profound effects on your ability to feel sexual energy in your body.(4) Moving down deeper into your body, place your hand on your genitals and bring your breath all the way down to your pelvic floor. - Notice what reflex, if any, happens around your pelvic floor when you breathe deeply visualizing your breath filling your pelvis and genitals.(5) Begin to breathe deeper and fuller breaths- with your next inhale, tighten the perineal muscles in your pelvic floor, between your anus and genitals- exhale, release and relax. Inhale a full deep breath and tighten the muscles, exhale let go. - begin to inhale and exhale through your mouth as you continue to tighten and release. Inhale tighten, exhale release. Start to make your breathing more circular without pausing between the inhale and the exhale. Feel free to make sounds with your exhale and move your body to express your pleasure. (6) Visualize that with the inhale and tightening you are pulling the energy up to your heart. Exhaling opening and relaxing the heart. Inhale pump the energy up to your heart, exhale open your heart.