My erotic aliveness experiment and what I noticed

At the beginning of August, I mentioned that I wanted to spend the month exploring my erotic aliveness.

This has turned into a longer post than I expected. I wanted to include everything I discovered during the month and even after writing all of this, I still feel I have more to say. So make yourself a cup of tea, get comfortable and take your time with this one. :)

My intention was quite simple: I wanted to introduce small practices into my everyday life that would help me connect more deeply with my body, my breath and my s*exual energy. I don’t really experience s*exual energy as something separate from the rest of me. It feels closely connected to how present I am in my body, how much I allow myself to feel and how available I am to pleasure.

Our senses are part of this too. When we slow down enough to notice taste, texture, warmth, smell or touch, we become more present in the body and that presence creates more space for pleasure. I’m also becoming more aware of how closely this is connected to the nervous system. When my body feels safe and isn’t rushing or bracing, I can soften, receive and notice much subtler sensations. For me, erotic aliveness seems to grow from that same place.

There wasn’t a particular goal attached to any of this. I wasn’t approaching my body in the way we usually think about self-pleasure, with the intention of becoming s*exually aroused or having an orgasm. I was more curious about what might happen if I simply paid more attention.

I started the month with quite a lot of discipline. Every day I made a little time to be with myself in very ordinary moments. While eating breakfast, I would slow down and notice the taste of my food. When folding my clothes, I paid attention to the texture of the fabric and folded everything with a little more care. When putting Vaseline on my lips, I would let my fingers stay there for a few seconds longer and actually feel the touch, just little moments throughout the day when I paid attention that I had a body and senses and didn’t have to rush through everything.

Then, as August went on, life happened…I got distracted and wasn’t quite as devoted to my little experiment anymore.

And then something rather lovely happened. A woman I follow announced a mini course exploring almost exactly what I had been trying to explore by myself. Of course I enrolled. :)

Having some guidance made a real difference. The practices were simple and different each day and many were similar to things I had already been experimenting with, but having someone gently lead me gave me the structure I had started to lose.

I experienced some beautiful moments of being very present with my body and I also noticed quite a few things about myself.

One of the clearest was just how much my body responds to very slow touch. And I mean really slow. When I slow down enough to stay completely present with the sensation, something in me seems to soften and I can feel so much more. It was also slightly amusing to realise that I am very patient and focused when I touch someone else, yet there is a different story when I touch myself. It feels like I’m very generous with other people’s time and considerably less generous with my own. I’ve rediscovered how soothing it is simply to touch my own body: my arm, my neck, my face. My work is about touching other people’s bodies slowly and with care, yet I tend to forget to offer myself that same quality of touch. There is something quite funny about having to rediscover something I do all the time.

I also learned more about responsive desire, which was an important realisation for me. Responsive desire is particularly common in women and I realised that this includes me.

We often think of desire as spontaneous: first you feel sexually interested and then you seek out touch, intimacy or pleasure. Responsive desire can work in the other direction. The desire begins to emerge once something has already started, perhaps affectionate touch, closeness, sensuality, relaxation, fantasy or simply giving ourselves enough time to arrive in our bodies and find a kind of movement that we enjoy.

It made me think differently about cultivating pleasure. If pleasure is important to us, we can’t sit around waiting to suddenly feel desire. Sometimes we need to make space for it, begin with something that feels good and allow desire to find us there.

I think responsive desire deserves a post of its own because understanding how desire works can change the way we think about our sexuality, particularly as women.

Something else that came up in our group of women was the pressure around orgasm. We talked about how, when orgasm becomes the expected destination of sexual touch, it can sometimes create resistance to beginning at all. Even touching ourselves can start to feel like something that needs to lead somewhere, rather than something we might do simply because touch feels lovely.

I found this really interesting. Orgasms are wonderful, of course, but maybe they are too often perceived as the goal or the epitome of being sexually fulfilled. There is so much pleasure available before an orgasm, without an orgasm and sometimes without even becoming particularly aroused. Taking the destination away can give us more freedom and less pressure to explore what our bodies actually enjoy.

Another discovery has been a particular way of breathing into my abdomen and pelvis. The breath itself is very gentle, almost as though a balloon is slowly inflating inside me as I breathe in and softly releasing as I breathe out. I’ve found it surprisingly powerful. It helps me notice where I’m holding tension and gives me a feeling of opening and softening through my body, connecting me with my pelvic area in a deeper way.

I’m still learning how to work with this breath and discovering that it feels like more than simply breathing differently. There are new layers of sensation and erotic aliveness appearing as my body learns to soften and open in ways I hadn’t paid much attention to before.

I also experimented with movement, breath and sound together. This part is harder to put into words because, after following the guidance for a while, I started finding my own way.

Movement seems to come naturally to me. It isn’t necessarily a big movement; sometimes it is so subtle that I imagine it would barely be visible from the outside. A small movement through my hips or pelvis begins almost by itself and if I stay with it rather than trying to control it, my body seems to find its own rhythm.

Then the breath joins in. It feels a little like another instrument entering an orchestra, finding the rhythm of the movement and gradually synchronising with it until the two begin to play together. I don’t really have to decide how they should work together, when I give myself enough time, my body seems to know.

Sound is the third part and that one is still finding its way. I imagine it as a new instrument joining the orchestra, a little shy and not quite ready to be fully expressive yet. Sometimes it comes naturally and sometimes I can feel myself holding it back.

I wonder if there is a little bit of me in that. I am soft spoken, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that my voice is the part that needs a little more time and encouragement. For now, I’m quite happy to let this new instrument find its place and see what happens as the orchestra becomes more familiar with playing together.

And then there is dancing. Dancing, I discovered a while ago, is incredibly erotic for me. There is something about music and allowing my hips and the rest of my body to move without thinking too much that makes me feel wonderfully alive. Note to self: dance more often!

Perhaps the most unexpected part of the month, though, had very little to do with anything obviously erotic.

As I became more attentive to my body, I also became more aware of how I feel around people. I started noticing which interactions leave me feeling open and relaxed and which ones make something in me tighten or retreat. I realised how much I enjoy spending time with people who are gentle, who listen and who genuinely care. Those interactions feel nourishing to me.

And strangely, there is something similar between the kind of touch my body responds to and the kind of people I feel good around: gentle, present, unhurried and attentive.

I’ve found myself having more of these interactions recently and new people have entered my life who bring some of those qualities with them. That has been a particularly beautiful part of all this.

Last year, when I did my experiment around pleasure, I remember feeling there was some kind of completion to it. I had done the experiment, discovered something and could look back at what I had learned.

This year feels different. I don’t feel finished, I feel as though this is something that is still unfolding, something I’m exploring and actually living rather than an experiment I can neatly complete.

I’m re discovering what makes my body soften, what makes it come alive, how it wants to breathe and move, what kind of touch it enjoys and even what kind of people it feels good to be around.

These experiments are quite personal and I decided to share them because they are also part of my work. I like to walk my talk and perhaps something I've discovered will make somebody else curious about their own body and their own erotic aliveness.

If something here has made you curious, you could start very simply. Savour a piece of chocolate and let it slowly melt in your mouth. Breathe gently down towards your pelvis, almost as though a balloon were slowly inflating inside you. Move your hips and see how your body naturally wants to move or slowly stroke your arm and notice what you actually feel.

You could touch yourself without trying to make anything happen.

There is nowhere you need to get to. You can simply give your body a little more of your attention and see where it takes you.

Love,

Rosie x