7 Practices for Great Sex

You might ask, “What’s your definition of great sex?”  I define great sex as any experience that truly unites partners in the exploration of love and pleasure experienced through body, mind, and spirit.  Once we know the qualities of great sex, we can learn the practices that cultivate those qualities.  To be specific, the key qualities of great sex are…

Union – We are connected, moving, and being together for our mutual pleasure (Contrast:  I’m not in it to get myself off, let the stress off, or find a way to get to sleep faster.)

Love – our hearts are expressing as much as our genitals.  We’re engaged emotionally and physically with each other.

Pleasure – our bodies, minds and spirits are co-creating an experience that brings our entire being to the edge of ecstasy and beyond.

Body, mind and spirit – The whole of our being is engaged.  We’ve left no part behind.

So what practices integrate our bodies, minds, and spirits in sexual union.  What practices awaken and enhance love and pleasure?  What practices truly unite us in the dance of lovemaking?

Practice 1:  Do it Often

Your lovemaking, your sexual passion will grow and deepen together when it remains a constant in your lives.  It’s easy to fall into the distractions of kids, deadlines, to do lists, and tired bodies.  Yet your active and passionate sex life will support and fuel all the other parts of your life, when you consciously open to it.  When you chose distractions over intimacy, the depth of your connection suffers.  Each time we separate from each other’s bodies for longer periods, we must then reawaken to each other.  We must reawaken our emotional connection, our physical connection, our spiritual connection.  Why not practice more often and keep yourselves deeply open and connected?

This need to reawaken and reopen is especially true for women.  After a period of separation, most women need the opportunity to reconnect fully – once again feeling their trust and opening their being and body to their lover.

I recommend connecting daily, simply committing to 10 minutes and seeing where it goes.   You can stop after 10 minutes or if it feels good to both of you, continue.  It doesn’t have to include intercourse, oral sex, or even genital touching for that matter.  Simply meet each other in physical connection and touch, holding the intention to allow sexual energy to move within and between the two of you.  It might be massage, stroking hair or an arm, kissing, sitting astride each other, or holding each other.  It doesn’t matter what, just do it. 

Practice 2:  Warm up

It’s all about foreplay.  Your connections will be deeper and your orgasms more powerful if your bodies are awakened and harmonized.  Men, this includes you.

In your masculine energy you can lose touch with the myriad of sensations that run through your body.  Let them be awakened by a tongue on your belly, kisses on your nipples, and nibbling on your neck.  Let it awaken you to more pleasure, let it enliven you in anticipation and opening to full body orgasms.  Even though you can be “instant-on” men, during foreplay let the energy spread from your loins to reach and extend through your whole body, out to your fingertips.

Staying with the “instant-on” analogy, you might have heard that men are like microwaves and women are like crock-pots.   That’s pretty much how it works.  We women are much slower to turn on.  Men if you want great sex at night start warming her up in the morning.  Breathe close to her ear, caress her back, let your hand drift gently down her arm, kiss her deeply leaving her breathless.  Continue fanning the erupting fire throughout the day.  Call her or leave a voicemail letting her know how beautiful she is, how much you value her, how much you’re looking forward to spending the evening with her.  Find out what words most turn your woman on and use them.  When you see her again… hold her tightly, kiss her deeply, draw her into you.  Now her whole body is awake to the pleasure you’re about to share.

Practice 3:  Breathe

Breath moves your energy and energy movement within you and between you is a primary source of your physical pleasure.  In sacred sexuality practices, you learn a multitude of breathing practices to awaken and heighten pleasure.  Not only does breath move your energy, intentional breathing also harmonizes and synchronizes the separate energies of you and your partner.

You might start out by mirroring your partner’s breath, often called Coupled Breathing.  It’s common for the man to mirror the woman’s breath and in this case, she breathes normally and he mirrors her breath, or in other words, when she inhales, he inhales.  We she exhales, he exhales.  And, either of you can lead or follow, simply reverse rolls.  This type of breathing can bring both of you present to your own bodies as well as to your partner’s body.  Try this breathing not just in your lovemaking, but try it in your hug when you greet each other at the end of the day.  It’s yummy.

Reciprocal Breathing, another way to breathe together, has one of you exhale while the other inhales.  So it’s a continuous pattern of inhaling and exhaling exactly opposite each other.  Again, it’s common for the man to follow the woman’s breath, and either of you can follow.  This type of breathing heightens the energy, creating a circuit of energy between you.

To truly feel pleasure coursing through your body, you must breathe throughout your sexual exploration.  It might seem obvious, but many of us slow our breathing way down or stop breathing altogether at the height of passion.  It can be a form of self-control or we simply forget in the ecstasy.  I had an experience once where I completely stopped breathing at orgasm.    Just about the time I realized I wasn’t breathing my partner yelled “Breathe!”  It’s funny, but I wonder how much pleasure I missed out on because I cut off my breath? 

Practice 4:  Eye Gaze

The eyes are the gateway to the soul.  You’ve likely heard this before and yet we forget.  Or if we’re not comfortable with meeting someone’s eyes, you might have ignored the thought all together.   Connecting through the eyes can create a connection so deep and so vast that it transcends every thought, every fear, every need.  Eye gazing allows us to connect in the space of the divine.

When was the last time you stopped and really looked into your beloved’s eyes?  They will carry you deep into their heart…into their soul.  When you meet their eyes, simply soften your gaze as you look at each other.  You’re not trying to see anything… and you have the opportunity to see everything.  You just may see your partner more deeply than you ever have before.

Start connecting with your partner’s eyes the moment you know you’re moving toward lovemaking.  Pause, be still, and really see him or her.  And, it’s not all about seeing, it’s also about being seen.  Let your partner see you.  Couples who embrace this practice can stay connected in a gaze for many minutes.

Try opening your eyes while you’re kissing.  Meet each other in the depth of the kiss… and for the most powerful connection, meet your partner’s eyes as you each orgasm.  Eyes open orgasming may take practice, but keep practicing.  It’s worth it.   Fully open to your orgasm and your eyes will stay open more easily.

Practice 5:  Make Sounds

Sounds serve many purposes in our lovemaking.  Probably most importantly, sound heightens our experience of pleasure.  Sound moves energy and the more energy we allow to move through our body the bigger our pleasure.  The more we contain our energy, the more we contain and limit our pleasure.  One of the many ways we unconsciously contain our energy is by withholding our sound.

We’ve been conditioned to keep our sexuality quiet, to keep it hidden.  “Oh my goodness…what if someone hears us!?”  I say, “Let some one hear you!”  What would the world be like if we could openly acknowledge about our sexuality?  There’s so much pleasure in letting the fullness of our sound come through… whether it’s a moan, or a scream, or anything in between.

In sexual healing, we use sounding to move stuck energy, energy that has been held for too long, that is blocking our sexual potential.

Not only does sound enhance our pleasure and heal us, our sounds give our partner feedback on how much pleasure we’re experiencing.  Our partners so often want us to feel amazing… for us to have our greatest pleasure… but in our quietness we deny them the very feedback that would make the experience even more ecstatic for both of us.

What if you didn’t have to be ashamed of or hide the intensity of your pleasure?  How much sound would you, could you, make?  Women, most men are incredibly turned on by our screams of passion.  Can you let yours out?

Practice 6:  Give and Receive

Lovemaking is a continuous series of giving and receiving moments.  Unless someone has taught us differently, most of us sexually give and receive simultaneously.  Unfortunately, that practice actually limits our pleasure potential.  It limits our pleasure because we’re not actually connecting with our pleasure because our focus is on our partner.  We experience the deepest and most intense pleasure when we have the space to actually FEEL the sensations and stimulation we’re receiving.

Giving and receiving happens while we’re kissing, during foreplay, during oral sex,  while your making love.  If you can slow down and separate the two, you’ll see that the giver tends to the more active partner at any moment, the receiver the more passive partner.  The giver is offering pleasurable stimulation while the receiver simply ENJOYS the pleasure being offered.  The receiver, if he or she is truly receiving, has no need to offer anything in return and therefore can be fully present to the sensations of the body… expanding the pleasure potential immensely.

Many of us imagine that we’re always supposed to be doing something… touching, pleasuring, speaking, moving.  Many of the greatest moments of pleasure arise when we’re doing nothing… except allowing ourselves to be pleasured.  This goes for you too men.  How awesome is it when you can relax and just let her give you a good blow job?

Here’s another great part of separating our giving and receiving… giving is receiving and receiving becomes giving.  Isn’t it absolutely awesome when we get the pleasure of watching our partner feel pleasure?  You’re receiving as you’re giving, while your partner is giving by receiving your touch.  As you perfect the practice of separating your giving from your receiving, you’ll discover that they become one in the same. 

Practice 7:  Slow down

This practice really sets the foundation of all the other practices.  Our hurried lives can leave precious little space for this most profound and important connection.  So not only do you want to slow down once you start to connect, but be sure you’re slowing down your life enough to create space for your lovemaking.

Once connecting, you can slow down everything in your lovemaking… your touch, your breath, your foreplay, your pauses, your in and out stokes, your words, your kisses, your tongue as it teases a nipple, a clitoris, or an earlobe.  Draw out your kisses… hold her lip between your lips just a little bit longer… slowly run the tip of your tongue around his lips.

Anticipation can be a major turn on for many, especially women.   If you’re in a hurry, there’s no space for anticipation.  Trying to get to the main event too quickly will sadly circumvent the depth of potential pleasure for both of you.

Conway Twitty said it perfectly years ago in his song Slow Hand, “You want a man with a slow hand… you want a lover with an easy touch.  You want somebody who will spend some time… Not come and go in a heated rush…”  She feels sooooo much more when you slow down.

The truth is, we all feel more when we slow down.  We can actually tune in to the physical sensations happening in our body, we can feel the love in our heart, we can feel the waves of energy coursing through our bodies. These sensations and emotions heighten our arousal, but only if we slow down enough to be aware of them.

Enjoy great sex!