How To Deal With A Low Sex Drive Part 1
The path to a higher sex drive starts outside the bedroom door and works its way in. You do that by cultivating sensuality–training your body to expect, appreciate and flourish from stimulating its senses. Doing so trains you to pay more attention to what you’re feeling than what you’re thinking–something you might have problems doing in the bedroom.
Sensuality is a celebration of sensation. Any sensation, even the fresh feeling of brushing your teeth. Sensuality warms the path to sexuality and that’s why it’s so important to cultivate it.
Cultivating sensuality is the enjoyment, expression, and most importantly– pursuit— of physically pleasing sensations. It’s easy to dismiss it as simply pampering yourself or being mindful of your surroundings. That is definitely part of it, but we’re aiming for something that directly addresses a major fault line in men with low libido: A decreased ability to enjoy physical sensations.
Sensuality in many ways is the practice of letting go of criticism and judgment and surrendering thought to feeling. You don’t judge a bath towel when you feel its softness–you simply get lost in its softness.
When you begin to live sensually you cultivate gratitude for the pleasures your body can give you. But the most important thing about creating a space for pleasure is that it teaches you how to be in the moment. Pleasure–whether it’s the smell of fresh coffee beans roasting or the breeze off the bay–directs your attention from your thoughts to your feelings.
The idea isn’t to stop, smell the roses, and call it a day. It’s to be conscious of pulling pleasure into your life on a daily basis. Mindfulness is certainly part of it. Yes, you should take the time to look up at the sky and notice the clouds. Yes, you should feel the thickness and texture of a fabric, a book, or a flower petal. Yes, you should take a languid bath. Yes, you should drink a cup of tea with your eyes closed.
But what I’m talking about is far more than taking a minute out of your day to center yourself. It’s about living a consciously sensual life. It’s about looking at every aspect of your life and reordering it to throw out what doesn’t give you pleasure and introduce things that do.
The connection between cultivating sensuality and improving sexuality is very real. The five senses create emotional states. The best way to improve your mood isn’t to think pleasant thoughts; it’s to rearrange your circumstances so that your body experiences something pleasurable.
You can try to motivate yourself to go to the gym with positive thoughts all you want, but it’ll be a lot more effective to play the kind of music that changes your mood. It’s the same thing with sex. It’s a lot easier to get and stay in the mood by firing up your senses than changing negative thoughts.
Next week: How To Increase Your Sensual Potential.