Sexual Healing
Page 20
Finally, many of us have trouble focusing on one thing because we are so used to multitasking—talking on the phone while eating or driving, or using a computer and a personal organizer at the same time. The sexual healing program is the exact opposite of multitasking. The most important thing you learn to do in this program is to give your full attention to only one thing at a time. Being able to return to this ability will improve the quality of your life in general.
5. Did you feel anxious during the caress? Were you able to deal with the anxiety by focusing, breathing, and relaxing? (See number 9, below, for more guidelines about dealing with various issues, including anxiety.) Could you feel yourself becoming less anxious as the caress went on? The important thing is not how high or low your anxiety level was at any point during the caress. The important thing is that you are less anxious after the caress than before.
6. If you felt sexually aroused during the caress, did you just accept it and keep your attention on where you were being touched, or did you try either to make the arousal better or to get rid of it?
7. Did you enjoy the caress? Did you feel pressured to perform when you were active, or did you touch your partner the way you wanted to touch him or her? When you were passive, did you feel pressured to respond and tell your partner how great it was, or did you feel free to just relax and accept pleasure for yourself?
8. Was it easy for you to stay within the bounds of the exercise, or did you want to touch areas other than the face? Did you stay within the limits? It is natural to want to continue and do something more sexual, but in order to build trust, it is important to do what you both agree to do in the beginning.
9. Did you have a problem with feeling anxious? If so, you need to focus on your breathing. Did you have a problem remaining passive? If so, you need to relax the muscles in your stomach, thighs, and buttocks. Did you have a problem with staying in the here and now? Did you want to please your partner? Were you working at doing a good job? If so, you need to practice focusing on the touch. Did you have a problem focusing? You may need to caress more slowly. Most of the problems you encounter during any sensate-focus exercise can be resolved by three familiar words: focus, breathe, relax.
The face caress will help you identify any problems you may have at a basic level because it is nonsexual and nonthreatening. If you were able to focus and relax, if your anxiety level decreased as a result of the spoon breathing and the face caress, if neither of you felt much performance pressure, and if you stayed within the limits of the exercise, you should go on to the next exercise, in Chapter 20, which is the back caress. If answering these feedback questions pinpointed some problem areas for you, you may want to repeat the face caress until you become completely comfortable with it.
And finally, here is a time sequence to remind you how to do the face caress and most of the subsequent sensate-focus exercises:• Spoon breathing: five to ten minutes
• Face caress, first partner: twenty minutes
• Spoon breathing: five to ten minutes
• Face caress, second partner: twenty minutes
• Spoon breathing: five to ten minutes
• Feedback
chapter 20
Basic Partner Exercises: The Back Caress
So far in this program you have done relaxation exercises, sexual fitness exercises, self-touch exercises, and spoon breathing and the face caress with your partner. Spoon breathing is done to give you a chance to relax and make the transition from the everyday stresses of your life to a mode in which you will be receptive to sensual arousal. During the face caress, you learned to focus on touch and practiced active and passive roles.
The back caress will introduce several new elements. It is the first sensate-focus exercise that you will do in the nude, and it is the first sensate-focus exercise that involves parts of the body you may already associate with sexual arousal, for example, the buttocks.
Exercise 19. THE BACK CARESS
To do the back caress, you need a bed or some other comfortable surface with plenty of room for both of you to stretch out. This whole session will take about an hour. As always, you need a quiet room where you won’t be disturbed; you also need a large towel and possibly some talcum powder.
The back caress is done in the nude, and includes the entire back of the body from the neck to the feet, but not the genitals. First, to relax, do some spoon breathing for about five minutes. Decide which partner will be active first. The passive partner should lie comfortably, face down, with a towel underneath his or her body. The passive partner keeps the arms at his or her sides or underneath the head. The active partner should lie on his or her side next to the passive partner and maintain as much body contact as possible during the exercise.
Remember the basics: focus, breathe, relax.
Let’s say the man is active first. Begin to stroke your partner’s back with one hand. Slowly run your palm or your fingers over your partner’s shoulder blades and then down her spine. Remember, this is not a massage. The object is to use your hand to feel as good as you possibly can by touching the back of your partner’s body.
The way I usually do the back caress is to snuggle up against my partner and use my hand to reach as many parts of his back as I can. Then I change positions so I can touch his legs and feet. I usually use some type of baby powder or body powder to do the back caress. It increases the sensual arousal for me because my hands tend to perspire, which makes my touch a little rough. You can decide for yourself whether you think powder would feel good.
Some authors recommend doing the back caress with the active partner straddling the partner’s back and using both hands. I find that I get much more feeling when I do the caress as I have described—lying up against my partner and exerting a minimum of physical effort. I find that doing a back caress in a traditional massage position (straddling my partner) tends to set the exercise up as a performance situation right at the beginning, and then the expectation is conveyed to your partner that he or she must respond. Also, if you do the caress as I suggest, you will be much more comfortable and you won’t get sore leg muscles from sitting or kneeling. This leaves you free to enjoy more sensual arousal.
When you are the active partner, caress your partner’s back, buttocks, and legs for your own pleasure. Think of your partner’s body as a playground and touch anywhere that feels good to you. You will maximize your ability to focus on sensations if you close your eyes during the caress. Remember to stroke your partner’s body slowly. If you have trouble focusing, consciously slow your caressing motion down to half the speed it was before. If thoughts about whether your partner is enjoying the exercise intrude, bring your mind back to the exact point of contact between your skin and your partner’s skin.
Pay attention to how your partner’s different body parts feel when you slowly stroke them with your palm versus your fingertips. Some areas on the back of your partner’s body that may feel especially good to touch include the back of the neck, the spine, and the thighs right underneath the buttocks. You may find that different parts of your partner’s back feel especially good to you.
As a variation, you could use your upper body to caress, in addition to just your hand. Use your hair, face, or chest to caress if you can do it for your own enjoyment without worrying about whether your partner likes it.
Pay attention to temperature and texture. Run your fingers around the depression at the base of your partner’s spine. Run the tip of one finger slowly up your partner’s backbone. You may want to conclude the caress with a final gesture, like a soft pinch on your partner’s earlobe, or by running your fingers through your partner’s hair.
If you are doing the back caress and you feel or see your partner’s body tensing up (for example, as you touch his or her thighs, you see the muscles tighten), lightly pinch or press down on the tense area as a reminder to your partner to relax. You should be able to notice your partner tightening up or moving around. Remind your partner to breathe, and conti
nue with the caress.
When you are the passive partner, enjoy yourself. Allow yourself to soak up the sensations like a sponge. Breathe evenly and relax your muscles. Keep your mind on the exact point of contact where your partner is touching you. Try not to move. Just passively accept stimulation into your body. The only time you need to communicate with your partner is if he or she does something that bothers you or hurts you.
If you become sexually aroused during the back caress, fine. Just enjoy the arousal and bring your mind back to the exact point of contact between you and your partner. We are not concerned with sexual arousal yet. What we are doing is practicing sensate focus so that it becomes natural whenever you touch your partner or whenever you are touched. We are building a foundation so that when you move on to exercises that are more overtly sexual, you will naturally focus on how your body feels when you touch or are touched.
Each partner should do the back caress for about twenty minutes. Spoon breathe for a few minutes both between role changes and again at the end of the exercise. Please continue at this point to observe the instructions for active and passive roles. There should not be any mutual caressing yet. Finish the exercise by discussing the feedback questions with your partner and recording the answers in your journal.
The most common problem when doing the back caress is using a massage technique rather than caressing. The goal is not to manipulate the muscles underneath the skin in order to make the person being massaged feel good. The idea is rather for your skin to become alive with sensations. You should not even be aware of muscles—you should just be aware of skin.
A more serious problem is failure to stay within the limits of the exercise. For example, did either partner reach between the legs and attempt to caress the genitals? The genitals are not part of the back caress, and when you include parts of the body that are not in the exercise, you put performance demands on your partner and interfere with the ability of both of you to focus on sensations, to enjoy the caress, and to learn from the exercise. If you touch your partner’s genitals during the back caress, you are jumping ahead to a future exercise, which means you aren’t staying in the here and now. You need to learn the basics of sensate focus first. Furthermore, if you go beyond the limits of an exercise, your partner will go into a vigilant, spectatoring mode, instead of being able to enjoy and focus, and will wonder, “Will he keep doing this? Should I say something about this now?” This vigilance response is a sign of anxiety and is physiologically incompatible with the relaxation that is necessary to enjoy sensate-focus exercises.
Underlying this problem of jumping ahead is feeling sexually aroused and thinking that you have to do something about it. If you do experience sexual arousal during the back caress or any other sensate-focus exercise, just enjoy it. As the passive partner, you should not wiggle around or push yourself against your partner’s hand or the bed. Men, if you get so aroused during the caress that you get an erection or even ejaculate, just enjoy it. Don’t try to push the arousal away or make it better somehow. Women, if you lubricate or feel aroused, just enjoy it and continue the exercise. Contrary to popular belief, nothing bad will happen to you if you become aroused and don’t have an orgasm. You don’t need to experience sexual arousal in order to learn from the caress, but if it happens you can still complete the exercise.
Another problem you may encounter in doing the back caress is the presence of anxiety. Your partner in the active role will notice if you are tensing the muscles in your thighs or buttocks during the exercise. Other signs of anxiety include rapid breathing that does not slow down or squirming or twitching during the caress. What can you do to get rid of the anxiety? If you are the active partner and you notice your partner tensing up, moving around, or breathing rapidly after the exercise has gone on for a few minutes, stop the caress and talk quietly to your partner about it. If your partner is feeling some anxiety, go back to spoon breathing for a few minutes, or do some deep breathing of the kind you learned in Chapter 16.
To review: Did you have a problem with anxiety? If so, you need to focus on your breathing. Did you have a problem remaining passive? If so, you need to relax your muscles. Did you try to please your partner? Did you have a problem staying in the here and now? Were you trying to do a good job? You need to practice focusing on the touch. Did you become distracted? You need to practice a slower touch. Remember, focus, breathe, and relax.
In the initial sensate-focus exercises such as the back caress, people with specific sexual concerns may find it difficult not to be preoccupied with their issues. For example, if you are having erection problems, your biggest concern may be whether or not you are getting an erection. Remember, we are not concerned with erections yet and it is not necessary to have an erection during the back caress.
If your problem is premature ejaculation, you may be worried that you will ejaculate during an exercise. If you feel any sexual arousal at all during an exercise, don’t try to make it better and don’t try to push it away. Just accept it. It’s all right if you ejaculate during any sensate-focus exercise as long as you don’t try to stop it. If your problem is inhibited ejaculation, you may be tempted to go beyond the limits of an exercise to something more sexual. Keep the sensate-focus exercises separate from any sexual activities you may do later.
If you are a woman and your problem is the inability to have an orgasm, your biggest concern during the back caress will probably be whether or not you are aroused. Don’t try to become more aroused than you are, but if you feel arousal don’t try to push it away. Remain passive when you are in the passive role, and when you are active don’t try to turn yourself on. Just enjoy the touch.
If you have vaginismus or a phobia about sexual activity, anxiety may be your biggest concern during this exercise. Your partner can help you monitor your anxiety level and help you make sure that you are breathing evenly and that your muscles stay relaxed.
Here is a time sequence for the back caress and many of the subsequent exercises:• Spoon breathing: five to ten minutes
• Back caress, first partner: twenty minutes
• Spoon breathing: five to ten minutes
• Back caress, second partner: twenty minutes
• Spoon breathing: five to ten minutes
• Feedback
chapter 21
Basic Partner Exercises: The Front Caress
The next exercise is the front caress, which includes casual genital touching. The new element that is introduced in this exercise is caressing the front of the body. Most people associate areas on the front of the body with sexuality. In addition, most people feel somewhat vulnerable when they are on their back with their breasts and genitals exposed. This exercise may trigger some performance pressure or a perceived need to please your partner.
Exercise 20. THE FRONT CARESS
You will need to set aside an hour to an hour and a half for this session. You will need a quiet room, talcum powder, a towel, and some baby oil or mineral oil.
Before you do the front caress, do a few minutes of spoon breathing to relax. Then each partner can do a focusing caress to become even more relaxed. A focusing caress is a shortened version of a nonsexual caress done to make a transition into a new, more sexual exercise. The focusing caress can be either a face caress or a back caress. You may each decide which you would like to do. You should each do a focusing caress for ten minutes prior to the first active partner starting the front caress.
For the front caress, the passive partner should lie on his or her back in a relaxed position. The front caress includes the whole front of the body from head to feet. It also includes the genitals, but only in a “casual” way, which means that you do not spend any more time on the genitals than you do on any other part of the front of the body. If you use baby powder on the front of your partner’s body, when you begin to caress the genitals use the towel to wipe the baby powder off your hands, and use baby oil to caress the genitals. The front caress does not include finger pene
tration of the vagina; it is a sensual exercise and is not done to arouse your partner sexually.
The instructions for the front caress are the same as for the back caress. The active partner should lie next to the passive partner and maintain as much full body contact as possible. Use some talcum powder on your hand and on your partner’s body if you tend to perspire. The active partner should slowly stroke the passive partner’s body, beginning with the face, neck, shoulders, and arms, and moving down across the chest, stomach, abdomen, and genitals to the thighs, calves, and feet.
Caress as slowly and lightly as possible. It is important to be systematic; don’t jump from the feet to the head but rather proceed down the body, caressing one part at a time. It is also important to maintain contact with your partner’s body. Keep your hand on your partner as much as possible so as to avoid touches that are surprising or startling. Maintaining contact on your partner’s body with your hand also helps him or her to relax.
Touch for your own pleasure. Think of your partner’s body as a playground and touch whatever parts feel good, in the way that feels best for you. You may use your palm, fingers, back of your hand, or arm. Toward the end of the caress you may want to kneel and caress your partner’s body with your face, hair, or chest. This can be very sensuous. Don’t concern yourself with what your partner is thinking or feeling during the caress. Your partner will tell you if you do something that makes him or her uncomfortable.