Another reason why sex will help you feel better has to do with the “placebo effect.” The placebo effect is often brought up in a negative context, but in fact it is a testament to the healing powers of our minds. A placebo is a sugar pill, or “fake” pill, used in medical research. The term placebo effect refers to how a medication often works if you believe it will, even if it is composed of an inert substance. This outcome is created by a person’s positive expectation that his or her health will improve. The placebo effect can work for both physical and emotional problems.
Expectations are crucial in health care, and negative expectations are just as powerful as positive ones. For example, if you were ill and visited a doctor who said, “You know, you’re probably not going to get better,” or even, “You might as well try this—it might work,” wouldn’t you change doctors? Physicians provide treatment, often in the form of medication, for specific physical problems, but the major reasons why people visit physicians are psychological: stress, fatigue, anxiety, or depression. We really seek a physician’s care to have another person convey a positive expectation that we will get better. Don’t you always feel better right after you make a doctor’s appointment? It’s the placebo effect. Your immune system receives a huge temporary boost from your body when your mind knows you’ve done something to help yourself heal.
The placebo effect also works through touch. The “laying on of hands” has been a common medical treatment throughout history and in many cultures. In contemporary society, physicians and other health-care givers who touch their patients promote healing because they nonverbally convey the expectation that the patient will get well. The placebo effect occurs not only in health care, and not just in response to touch. The power of positive expectations in educational settings, in the workplace, and in personal relationships has been documented in many studies. Harnessing this power is the subject of books, seminars, and training.
Understanding mind-body phenomena is important because if you want to heal yourself or your partner of physical ailments, sexual problems, or emotional conflicts, you will need to learn to convey a sense of positive expectations. By imbuing your touch and sexual activities with positive, healthful expectations, you will make the most of the healing mindset you read about in the Introduction and Chapter 14.
If you want to use sexuality to heal yourself emotionally, I would suggest that you begin by doing the relaxation exercises in Chapter 16. Then do the sexual fitness exercises in Chapter 17. Also do the self-touch exercises in Chapter 18. From there, I recommend the peaking process. You could do it as described from the male standpoint (Chapter 23) or the female standpoint (Chapter 26).
I also recommend bodywork, which has its roots in somatopsychology. In particular, I highly recommend massage if you want to help yourself experience emotional healing. Because the mind-body relationship is a two-way street, bodywork, massage, and other types of somatopsychic treatment are very important for people who wish to heal themselves emotionally or deal with stress. There are many different types of massage, used for different purposes. By now you have experienced how sensate-focus, or sensual, massage can heal sexual problems. Well-known massage techniques, such as Swedish massage, are used for treating sore muscles and inducing relaxation. A number of lesser-known types of massage are used to increase both physical and mental well-being. They work by simultaneously easing tension out of the body and bringing up repressed emotions.
In addition to sensate focus, you may want to try other types of massage to heal you emotionally. Here is a list of some somatopsychic massage techniques:• Feldenkrais: hands-on movements combined with a series of slow floor exercises to retrain the central nervous system and improve body functioning, awareness, and self-image
• Rolfing: a type of deep-tissue massage and manipulation that “untangles” the connective tissues and restructures the skeletal system to get rid of tension
• Bioenergetics: use of specific physical movements to work out chronically tense muscles and deepen contact with the body
• Tragerwork: gentle movement of muscles and joints to promote relaxation and playfulness
• Shiatsu: finger pressure placed on specific areas of the body to release tension and increase circulation of vital energy
• Polarity therapy: a system of massage, awareness skills, nutrition, and stretching exercises to balance the energies of the body
If you are searching for emotional healing, I also recommend meditation and yoga. None of the above practices are sexual, but you can use them in addition to the sexual healing techniques outlined in this book to accomplish healing of your emotions.
Too often people approach sex as an emotional one-way street. We may be insecure or have a restricted understanding of appropriate sexual expression. Some people use sex like a drug, to create certain emotions. Sex addicts, for example, use sex in an unhealthy way to relieve anxiety. Other people wait until they feel a certain emotion in order to have sex; they must feel in love or lovable to enter a sexual realm. But sex, when it is lovemaking, is a rich and multicolored emotional experience.
I think most of us could stand to be more aware of our emotions and be more honest about them when we make love. There is nothing wrong with using sex to explore your emotions—that is, to say, “I feel so angry tonight—I want to make love,” or to desire to make love at apparently unusual times, such as after a funeral. Instead of putting your emotions on hold during sex, recognize that sex can be used to convey a multitude of emotions. If you use lovemaking to convey your existing emotions, you can often break down an emotional barrier and release energy. You may find that doing so causes uncontrollable weeping or laughing after sex, but it is nothing to worry about. Releasing these emotions while you are with your partner is potent and positive.
Other Emotional and Mental Benefits of Sexual Healing
Would you like to have a better body image or higher self-esteem? Perhaps you feel emotionally solid, but wish to improve your mental faculties. Maybe you suffer from boredom, and you want to recharge your inspiration. Perhaps you have a problem such as posttraumatic stress disorder, or wish to get past other toxic emotions such as hostility or negativity. Do you occasionally experience insomnia, fatigue, or stress? If so, you will benefit from introducing the healing power of lovemaking into your life.
Do you want to improve your mental capacity? Do you wish for a sharper memory, longer attention span, or deeper ability to concentrate? The basic sensate-focus exercises should help, since they provide a mental device that improves your focus. If after the basic self-touch exercises or partner exercises you want more help, try the more advanced sensate-focus exercise below.
Exercise 91. SWITCHING FOCUS BY YOURSELF
There are a number of things you can focus on during sexual activity. A lot of people focus only on their genitals, but there is so much more. There are sights, smells, and sounds. An analogy is listening to an orchestra. Most of us probably hear the composition as a whole, but with more listening experience you become able to pick out the different orchestra sections and even the individual instruments. Here’s another analogy: If you are an experienced cook (or, I suppose, an experienced diner), you are able to pick out subtle flavors in foods that most of us would not recognize.
To learn to switch focus, lie comfortably on your bed and begin to caress some part of your body—let’s say your thigh. Be aware that you can be conscious of either your hand touching your thigh or your thigh being touched by your hand. As you focus on the sensations, see if you can switch your focus from how your hand feels to how your thigh feels and back again.
This skill takes a little practice. Don’t expect to get it the first time. When you master this technique, try doing a genital caress, in which you focus on your hand touching your genitals, and then switch your focus to your genitals being touched by your hand. Practice consciously switching your focus back and forth as you continue a genital caress for fifteen or twenty minutes.
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nbsp; More Benefits
Making love can provide other mental benefits. It can inspire your imagination and increase your sensitivity. The sexual healing exercises teach you to channel your thoughts and energies in directions that you wish, thus multiplying their force. Lovemaking also helps you release the bonding hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin may help boost your creativity and heighten your senses, and it may also help increase your concentration, mental acuity, and focus.
Making love will make you less self-conscious and less concerned with what other people think about you. Many of the exercises in this book will raise your self-esteem by showing you that your partner finds your body—and you—desirable. Thus, you will become active and instrumental in gaining what you desire instead of waiting passively for good feelings to come your way.
Lovemaking can also build self-esteem through a more complex mechanism. Research shows that sexuality is tied closely to personality, and self-esteem is a huge part of one’s personality. I do not mean that you can’t feel good about yourself if you don’t make love with another person—of course you can. But I do not believe that it is possible to feel good about yourself unless you accept your sexual feelings and accept your decisions about whether or not to act on those feelings. So sexuality can be a source of self-esteem, even if you choose not to make love with another person. The sexual healing program outlined in this book will build your self-esteem by helping you learn this self-acceptance.
I have tried to show you how sexual healing will work for you and your partner. But you may be surprised to know that it can also work for society in general. Lovemaking can help you get rid of performance orientation and competitive striving, behaviors that help us to be productive at work but are destructive in relationships. Lovemaking can increase your empathy—your ability to feel what another person is feeling—because it can hone your ability to read another person’s nonverbal cues.
Lovemaking can also give you the energy to help others. Because it increases your sex drive or libido, it also increases your life drive, your élan vital, your joie de vivre. Because you will experience this healing energy and will also want to share it with others, making love could actually improve your character and make you a better person!
Other Attitude Issues
Do you have other attitudes that you believe are standing in the way of a fulfilling relationship with your partner? Common stumbling blocks are negativity, hostility, pessimism, and holding grudges or “carrying a chip on your shoulder.” These are considered “toxic” emotions or attitudes—they contribute to physical illness. (In fact, depression, anxiety, and hostility are considered the “toxic triad” that tend to cause psychosomatic illnesses.)
I believe that the sexual healing program presented in this book can help banish these negative emotions. The only other cure I know for them is the “four G’s”—giving, gratitude, graciousness, and the Golden Rule. If you need a quick attitude boost, do one of these things. Think about somebody who is a lot worse off than you are, realize how well off you are, and then figure out some way to help that person, even in a small way. Or show some class by being gracious to someone who isn’t being very nice to you. And, finally, before you do or say something to somebody else out of anger or spite, stop and consider how that person will feel. These actions may sound sappy, but trust me, they work. If the person you end up being nicer to is your partner, then so much the better.
chapter 34
Healing Your Relationship: Bonding and Trust
The exercises in the next two chapters show you how you can use sexuality to heal your relationship. This chapter has to do with bonding and trust; the next chapter deals with play and verbal intimacy.
Bonding
When psychologists use the term bonding, they’re referring to the emotional attachment that develops between an infant and its primary caregiver. Caregivers create this vital, intimate bond by spending lots of time holding, cuddling, hugging, and playing with their children. Sharing these activities gives children the love, security, and self-worth necessary to venture out into the world and mature fully.
As adults, we can bond with each other, too. The following exercises create and strengthen intimate feelings between partners. But I warn you: Don’t try these exercises with your partner unless you are sure you want to feel closer to him or her. They will help you become relaxed with each other and attuned to your heart rhythms. They express your acceptance of your partner, and they help you feel accepted. It is easy to tell your partner, “I love and accept you,” but that does not have the profound impact that holding, stroking, and physically calming your loved one does.
Many skeptics believe that an “exercise” for emotional intimacy is a gimmick, that intimacy just naturally happens with physical closeness over time, and that you can’t do anything to force it or improve it. I disagree. These exercises are not gimmicks if they are done from the heart, with honest openness, and without manipulative intent. An emotional bond cannot be forced, but it can be given the opportunity to grow.
Exercise 92. EYE GAZE
Lie together on your bed and face each other. Wrap your arms comfortably around each other and gaze into each other’s eyes for several minutes without talking.
Sometimes it’s hard to gaze into both of your partner’s eyes at the same time when you’re this physically close to each other. Try gazing into just one of your partner’s eyes. It’s best to gaze into the eye that corresponds to your partner’s nondominant hand. In other words, if your partner is right-handed, gaze into his left eye, and vice versa.
I’ll bet you two used to do this when you first met. Remember how good it felt? Enjoy the feelings that come up for you now. How have they grown richer with time?
Exercise 93. NURTURING
Everyone needs a little nurturing from time to time. Too often we forget that it is okay to care for our loved one and that it is okay for him or her to care for us. If one of you has had a bad day, have your partner nurture you with this exercise.
You can nurture one another just about anywhere—in bed, on the couch, or on the floor leaning against the couch. One person sits with his or her back against the wall, headboard, or back of the couch. The other person lies down with his or her head or torso in the lap of the partner who is sitting, in whatever way is comfortable. The person who is sitting tenderly wraps his arms around the person who is lying down.
Share this embrace for ten minutes. Feel each other’s warmth. Listen to each other’s breathing. Feel your hearts beat.
Exercise 94. LYING TOGETHER
Have you ever wanted to feel as much of your partner’s body as you could at one time? So often we support each other emotionally, but what is it like to support each other in other ways?
Lie on your back on your bed, and have your partner slowly lower himself or herself on top of you. The person on top should gradually allow his or her full weight to be supported by the person on the bottom. You can move your heads around until you find a comfortable connection. Lie together like this for several minutes without talking. You can lie together nude or with clothes on.
Surprisingly, this position is possible and comfortable for most couples. It does not seem to make much of a difference if one partner is larger than the other, since your weight spreads out over a larger area (and the bed). If one of you is much larger than the other, move around until you find a position that works for you. Many couples like having their faces very close; others enjoy hearing and feeling their partner’s heartbeat on their cheek.
Exercise 95. PALM ENERGY
This is a wonderful way to become aware of the intangible energy in your relationship. Sit cross-legged facing each other. Gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes. Don’t let your gaze waver. Just as your arms can embrace each other’s bodies, can your gaze caress each other’s souls?
Raise your hands and place your palms against each other. Hold them there for ten seconds. Feel the heat running between the two of you. Now slowly move yo
ur hands apart so that they no longer touch but are just close enough so that you can feel a current of energy flow between you. Concentrate on that flow for five minutes.
Exercise 96. PALM ENERGY AND BREATH SHARING
This exercise may sound innocuous, but it will really knock your socks off! The combination of palm energy and breath sharing sets up an energy exchange that gets your endorphins flowing and takes you to an altered state of consciousness.
Begin the palm energy exercise as described above. When you feel the energy flowing between you, lean together as if you were going to kiss. Keep your faces close enough together so that you feel your partner’s breath. When one of you breathes in, the other should breathe out. Visualize your breath flowing in a circle—from your mouth to your lungs to your stomach to your pelvis, and then back into your partner and up through his or her pelvis, stomach, chest, throat and mouth. Now try to reverse this energy circle. Imagine that you are healing your partner by giving him or her the breath of life.
Trust
In Chapter 15 I talked about trust in the context of sensate-focus exercises. You build trust when you follow the directions and stay within the limits of the exercise. When your partner can predict your behavior, it builds trust.
Another aspect of trust is allowing yourself to stretch your limits or boundaries. That’s what the next few exercises do. They have long descriptions because they are psychologically a bit more complicated than most of the other exercises in this book. Their payoff is not only an increase in trust between you and your partner, but also a reduction in performance pressure.
Sexual Healing Page 40
