The program I describe in Chapter 31 of this book is for women. That’s because I have never seen a case of psychologically based sexual pain in a man, and in my reading I have not come across any treatments for it. The program in this book also treats only deep, psychologically based dyspareunia. I honestly don’t know whether the exercises I describe in Chapter 31 will help superficial dyspareunia. If you have superficial dyspareunia, you will be better off using the exercises described in Chapter 30 for vaginismus.
In most cases of women’s sexual pain, a physical problem can be found and treated. Vulvar vestibulitis is much more complicated, because it could be either psychological or the result of an autoimmune condition.
Lydia
Lydia, age thirty, came to a sex clinic complaining of sexual pain. She experienced pain at the opening of her vagina when she attempted to have intercourse. By the time she came to our clinic, she was desperate. When she was in her early twenties, a gynecologist told her that her vaginal opening was abnormally small and recommended a surgical procedure to widen it. She underwent the surgery, but the recovery was extremely painful for her. When she attempted to have intercourse again eight weeks after the surgery, it was even more painful than before.
Lydia’s sex history revealed that she had never masturbated and had a shocking level of ignorance about the female genitals, especially considering the surgery she had been through. To solve her problem with sexual pain, she went through a treatment program that began with extensive education about self-touch and the female anatomy, as well as many weeks of relaxation exercises. It took a while, but eventually she was able to experience pain-free intercourse.
Part III
BEGINNING SEXUAL HEALING
In this section you’ll find chapters on the importance of touch and on how to do the touching exercises. Next come chapters on relaxation, sexual fitness, and self-touch. These three chapters include exercises you can do by yourself. The last four chapters of the section contain basic sensate-focus exercises you can do with your partner.
chapter 14
The Healing Touch
The essence of touch begins inside our skin rather than on its surface. We may not realize it, but many of us need to heal some aspect of our relationship with our own body. Beginning in our early childhood, society bombards us with unrealistic messages about what our bodies should look like. At the very least, most of us grow up to be out of touch with our bodies.
Sexual healing reconnects our mind and our body, and it uses the power of that unity for our health and well-being. If whole-body (holistic) health is what we are after, how our body feels is more important than what it does or how it looks. The key to knowing our bodies’ feelings lies in the simple ability to give and receive touch.
Touch Is Vital
Touching has been a traditional treatment for illness throughout human history. Religious figures such as Jesus and some saints used the laying on of hands to heal people. Later, in Europe, those who were ill or infirm were brought before the king, whose touch supposedly could cure them. Today, curanderos in Latin American communities often use touch as part of their treatment.
Touch can communicate a number of things, such as comfort and positive expectations. As a result, touch influences our physical well-being. In fact, quite a bit of research has been done on the positive health effects of touch. Much of it was brought together by Ashley Montagu in his classic book Touching. Although Touching was first published in the early 1970s, it is still in my opinion the best book available on the healing powers of touch. Montagu describes how skin contact affects both mental and physical health throughout all stages of our lives, beginning with birth. Studies show that infants who are touched have much higher survival rates than those who are deprived of human contact. Infants who are stroked and caressed develop more healthily, and in later life they experience fewer emotional and mental problems. Studies with adults have found that being touched can lower heart rate and blood pressure and promote physical relaxation in general. Even simply stroking a pet can lower a person’s blood pressure and heart rate.
There is no doubt that infants and children need touch to survive, and although research hasn’t been conducted to study whether adults need touch to survive, why would our need to be touched end with childhood? The countless ways that touch benefits us—heals us—may be the reason why we feel so good when we are touched. While I hope this book introduces you to the wonders of sexual healing, I believe the greatest thing it will do is deepen your appreciation for the power of touch.
The Nonverbal Power of Touch
In the language of the study of nonverbal communication, touch is known as an “intensifier.” This means that whatever mood already exists in a given social situation, touch will make the mood stronger. Remember the first time your partner reached out to touch you before you became lovers? Or when you were a little child and bumped your head, do you remember how having your mother hold you and hug you made the pain go away much faster than if she’d simply said, “There, there … now go and play.”
Not all touch intensifies good feelings. Here is a common example. Let’s say you have just met someone who for whatever reason gives you the creeps. If this person touches you while the two of you are talking, your mood toward him or her will become even more negative. In the same way, not all sexual touch is healing. Sexual touch can be used coercively, especially the use of inappropriate sexual touches between adults and children. This kind of touch is highly destructive and exploits power dynamics. Sexual molestation and abuse are especially sad because they pervert something good. People who experience harmful touch in childhood often have difficulty with sexual touch later in life.
Touch also conveys power, especially in the workplace. If an employer touches a subordinate during an interaction, it intensifies the individuals’ awareness of the difference in power between them. Whether consciously or not, many people use touch to communicate their feelings and intentions.
In Sexual Healing you will learn to use the intensifying power of touch for positive purposes: to bring healing energy to your mind, body, and intimate relationships. If a healing attitude already exists between you and your partner, sexual touching will intensify the healing intent the two of you already share.
The Healing Powers of Touch
Touch has been shown to have various positive healing effects. I believe this is because touch addresses both the body and the mind. For example, touching in a pleasant situation has a positive effect on the immune system. Touching also makes it easier to share feelings. Studies show that touch encourages self-disclosure. Patients touched in the genital region by doctors and nurses during physical examinations often reveal personal sexual information. It appears that being touched in intimate areas taps into intimate thoughts and feelings.
Not surprisingly, touch has positive effects on people facing medical recovery. Patients who are touched by nurses recover from surgery faster than those who are not touched. It is unknown precisely how touching in this situation helps people get better. It could be that touch directly promotes relaxation, or that it stimulates a person’s pain-killing and healing mechanisms. Or it could be that the act of touching communicates caring and imparts to the patient a sense of self-worth and the expectation of becoming well. I suspect it is a combination of these things.
Sensate Focus: The Touch that Heals
An intimate sexual relationship offers an excellent context in which we can experience the healing powers of touch. Sadly, the social norms for adults in North American culture do not encourage or allow much physical contact. For many of us, especially men, sexual encounters are the only situations in which we are allowed to touch other people and to enjoy being touched by them.
There is a particular kind of sensual touch—and a particular way to do this kind of touching—that promotes healing. It is called sensate focus. The exercises that appear later in this book are built around the sensate-focus approach. As mentioned, sens
ate focus was developed by Masters and Johnson and has been refined over the years by others. The term sensate focus may sound technical, but it is actually quite simple—and self-explanatory. It is a technique in which you focus your attention as closely as you can on the sensations that you are feeling. This is the essence of all of the sexual healing exercises: Direct all of your attention to where you touch your skin or your partner’s skin, or to where your partner touches you.
The specific type of touch we will use is a caress. A caress involves a delicate touch on the skin rather than a massage-type stroke. Other books may refer to this kind of touch as “sensual massage,” but strictly speaking, it is not massage. A massage generally involves manipulation of the large muscles of the body and is performed for the benefit of the person being massaged. A sensate-focus caress benefits both the person touching and the person being touched.
A healing sensate-focus caress has the following characteristics:• It is very slow.
• It is done for the toucher’s own pleasure.
• It is free of psychological pressure, including pressure to perform.
• It is focused.
• It happens in the here and now.
• It is sensuous.
There are no specific techniques for caressing in the “right” way. Whether you are caressing yourself or your partner as part of an exercise, caress in the way that feels best for you, within the general guidelines outlined in this section.
First, your caress should be light and very, very slow. Remember that touching and being touched in a slow, sensuous, or comforting way relaxes both touchee and toucher. A rapid or heavy touch triggers the sympathetic nervous system rather than the parasympathetic nervous system and conveys a sense of psychological pressure that is not relaxing for either person.
When you touch your partner, explore his or her body for your own pleasure. You may use either long, sweeping strokes or short ones, as long as you touch slowly. This is up to you. Try both long and short strokes and use the style that feels best to you.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of a slow caress! If you think you are moving your hand slowly enough, consciously cut your speed in half and see how this affects your ability to stay focused. Both you and your partner will feel more free to relax if the exercises are done very slowly, with eyes closed and without talking. You cannot caress too slowly.
The exercises don’t require getting into certain physical positions for doing particular caresses. I find that the best position for any caress is the one that enables you to touch with the least amount of physical exertion. For example, if you want to caress your partner’s back, rather than straddling his or her body, try lying in full body contact with your partner while you touch his or her back with one hand. You can also use other body parts, such as your hair or chest, to do a caress, as long as you stay comfortable.
When doing any sensate-focus caress, always maintain contact with your partner. Avoid surprising your partner with a sudden touch when you switch hands. If you use lotion or body oil for a caress, warm the lotion or oil in your hand before you apply it, and maintain contact with your partner’s body when you put more lotion on your hand.
Several elements of the sensate-focus caresses can help to take the pressure off of you and your partner. Most sensate-focus exercises are broken down into two roles: active and passive. One person caresses while the other person receives the caress, and then you switch roles so that both partners have a chance to experience both roles. Making a clear agreement about when it is each partner’s turn to be the active partner and when it is time to trade roles can eliminate the pressure caused by wondering whether you’re “giving enough” in response to your partner’s caresses. When it’s your turn to be the passive partner, that’s your job: to simply enjoy the sensuous attentions of your partner.
When you are the active partner, touch your partner for your own pleasure, not your partner’s pleasure. That’s right—your own pleasure! This is another reason why the sensate-focus exercises are so good at taking the pressure off. One of the biggest sources of anxiety and pressure in sexual encounters is wondering if you are pleasing your partner or if you are doing a good job. By touching for your own pleasure you remove that source of pressure and take a sexual encounter back to its most basic elements.
Does this seem like a “selfish” way to engage in a sensual encounter with another person? It’s true that many of us have negative feelings about the word selfish. We may have been told as children that we were selfish when we wanted to do things that gave us pleasure. However, many people with sexual problems are actually too “unselfish.” As a result of trying to give too much, they have lost the ability to enjoy their own feelings. Think of your behavior in sexual encounters as lying on a continuum from “selfish” to “unselfish.” Some of you may be on the unselfish side—a little more concerned about your partner’s enjoyment and satisfaction than about your own. In the early sensate-focus exercises I will ask you to move closer to the “selfish” end of the continuum by concentrating on your own feelings without worrying about your partner. When you are touching your partner in any exercise, touch for your own pleasure and for no other reason. Touch and caress strictly for your own enjoyment without considering at this point what types of touches or caresses your partner might prefer. Find what pleases you.
You may notice that this advice goes counter to what is recommended by the authors of many highly regarded books on sexuality. They recommend that sensate-focus caresses be done with the goal of pleasing one’s partner. Where I use the phrases “active partner” and “passive partner,” some authors refer to the roles as “pleasurer” and “pleasuree,” or “giver” and “receiver.” I have found that this orientation toward the exercises increases anxiety and performance pressure. In my experience, encouraging clients to touch for their own pleasure has brought nothing but positive results, while allowing a client to attempt to give me pleasure generally results in increased pressure to perform, increased anxiety in a sexual situation, and a shutdown of arousal.
It is normal and loving to want to please your partner and to want to know that your partner is enjoying himself or herself. Learning to focus on your own sensations and your own enjoyment will actually make you more sensitive to your partner’s needs and feelings in the long run. Knowing what you enjoy will make it easier to communicate those things to your partner. Learning to concentrate on and enjoy your own sensual and sexual feelings when you are the passive partner in a sensate-focus exercise will give you the confidence that your partner enjoys the same freedom when you take the active role.
When you are the active partner, do a caress as instructed and try to keep your attention on the exact spot where your skin touches your partner’s skin. There is no need to speak to your partner during an exercise or ask for any feedback. Assume that the caress feels good or at least neutral to your partner. Do not worry about whether or not your partner is enjoying the caress. It is his or her responsibility to let you know whether you are doing something that causes discomfort.
When you are the passive partner, lie in a relaxed position. Relax any of your muscles that feel tense. Pay attention to exactly where your partner touches your skin. Mentally follow your partner’s hand as it caresses your body. Do not respond to your partner in any way. Do not tell him or her what to do, and do not moan and wriggle around. The only time you should give your partner any feedback while you are passive is if he or she does something that hurts you or makes you feel uncomfortable (for example, rubbing too hard or scraping a nipple by accident). Remaining passive will allow your body to fully experience your sensual arousal.
As you read the instructions for the active and passive roles for each exercise, you may be concerned that this is not the way in which sexual encounters proceed in real life. In real-life sexual encounters, both partners do various activities, often simultaneously. But in real-life sexual encounters, partners often intentionally or unintentiona
lly pressure each other to perform sexually, and in real-life sexual encounters partners often worry about what the other person is thinking or what the other person would like. People spend a lot of time in real-life sexual encounters being distracted.
The program I describe here is innovative. It teaches you to free yourself of intrusive thoughts like, “I wonder if she’s really enjoying this.” By concentrating totally on where your skin touches your partner’s skin, you will be fully involved and present in what you are doing. And although only one person is active at a time, there is an aspect of mutuality, because both partners are focusing on the same thing at the same time. You will find that this is actually more sensually arousing than when you and your partner are doing different activities at the same time.
The reason for artificially breaking down the sexual encounter into clearly defined active and passive roles is very simple: You need to experience nondemand interaction. You avoid giving feedback to your partner when you take the passive role so that your partner can touch you for his or her own pleasure without having to worry about what you like or want. Similarly, when you are in the active role, you can touch for your own pleasure without worrying about whether or not you are pleasing your partner.
You may feel some resistance to the labels “active” and “passive.” Some people feel uncomfortable about being labeled passive. It is important, however, for each partner to fully experience both roles. If you are a woman having problems becoming aroused or reaching orgasm, learning to feel comfortable with the active role will help you. If you are a man having problems with getting erections or reaching orgasm, being in the passive role will be a valuable experience for you. Try not to limit yourself to “traditional” male and female roles—you may find that being in an unfamiliar role can be quite enjoyable and liberating.
Sexual Healing Page 15
