The first piece of good advice is to unplug. As in, when you both get home on a Wednesday night in winter after a rainy, raucous, exhausting commute, and you’ve just looked at each other and decided to order takeout and you both have the simultaneous impulse to pull out your Androids and start scrolling brainlessly through social media. Right then. That’s when you hit airplane mode. On both your phones. And just kind of take each other in.
Slow Down
That’s hard enough, isn’t it? Because often, when we’ve had a long day in a long week in a long year of working and talking and traveling and shopping and spending and saving, the last thing we want to do is actually give our attention to another person. It’s just too much.
But here’s the thing: good sex doesn’t happen without good attention. And since good, wholesome, fullhearted attention is the lost art of human consciousness in post-industrial societies, we’re going to have to take deliberate steps to bring it back online.
Which means that, after you turn off your phones, I’d recommend making a concerted effort to slow down together. Think of it as a kind of foreplay. A thoroughly unsexy foreplay, to be sure, sans lubes and vibrating rubber, but foreplay nonetheless. Because foreplay, as I see it, is about actually feeling yourself, your mind and your body, in this moment, free of the past, free of the future, free of distracting fantasies. And that’s exactly what we’re asking you to do when we’re asking you to slow down.
One important point: slowing down does not necessarily mean talking. In fact, you might want to skip the whole “How was your day thing?” for now. (Those conversations are so much better after a few good orgasms, anyway, don’t you think?) Instead, maybe just lie down on the floor together. Right on your back. Right on your rug. Side by side. Maybe don’t even hold hands yet. Maybe just feel what it’s like to be tired. Or doubtful. Or horny. The trick here is to get extremely sweet with yourself. Let a warm awareness begin to just know your experience, just like we talked about in the meditation chapter. And maybe repeat some of the kindness phrases that we talked about in the chapter on not being a jerk. Start with yourself. Start with just taking care of your own mind.
If you both like to meditate, try meditating a bit. Or if meditation isn’t really your thing, just lie there and do nothing for a minute. Either way, the idea here is to let the mind and body start to unwind, relax, downshift.
Let Your Body Be the Guide
Once you’ve been lying around for a good, long while—maybe twenty minutes, maybe more—then it might be time to check in with your body. What does your body want right now? What would actually turn you on? Maybe a little music could be good. Or how about a bath together? Or, hell, maybe you’re both ready to jump straight into leather and whips. That all depends on you. But see if you can find a way to make this a mutually guided exploratorium, a sensual reaching together in the unknown dark. I mean, not the literal dark. It’s fine to have some lights on if you want. But the dark of the body, feeling into your body, and both your bodies, together, not quite sure yet what you’ll find. Let these bodies lead you into what’s next, whether it’s something new and exciting or something routine and comforting. No judgment, just following what’s next.
Of course, this is a relationship, right? So you’ll need to navigate needs: overlapping needs, divergent needs, all kinds of needs and wants and messiness. You might need to pause and talk gently to each other. Or maybe this is one of those times where things just click and you get on the bullet train and go. You could let each time be a little different. And it will be a little different, if you really let your body be the guide.
Sex, like every relational human undertaking, has a kind of ethics, with its own guideposts, communions, pushes and pulls. When we come into the body, when we pay close attention to what we’re feeling and to the feelings of another, we can naturally begin to discover this organic, uncharted code, this integrity of the heart. I don’t mean to say it will be easy, and I certainly don’t mean to suggest that sex should always be gentle or New Age-y, with deep breathing and lots of silk. If you like it rough, great, that can be really hot. If you’re into multiple partners, play parties, polyamory, then hell, go for broke. But whatever you do, this staying with the body is a gateway to making sex good for you, and making sex good for others, which, of course, ties neatly into the innermost marrow of the Buddha’s most foundational advice on our sexual selves: don’t misuse sexuality.
Don’t misuse it. Which is to say, don’t cause harm, not to yourself and not to others. And in fact, as we really start to tune in and understand the unacknowledged dialogues that our bodies are having, one with another, we might also begin to see how the messages from earlier chapters of this book are weaving their way in, quite naturally, to our forays into union and communion and carnal intimacy. We might see, for instance, how important it is to be clear with ourselves and our partners (chapter 6); why we’d want to say what’s true, even when it’s difficult (chapter 4); how much we actually want to give sensually and receive sensually (chapter 3); how sex can be a kind of healing and help (chapter 2); and how important returning to the body, in formal and informal meditation, really is (chapter 1). But all of this, really, grows out of sidestepping the tsunami of over-information, slowing down—way down—and letting the body be your guide.
A Little Meditation
TAKE BACK YOUR BODY
So let’s experiment with the three steps I just ran through: unplug, slow down, and let your body be the guide. Take a short pause from your normal reading pace so you can move through this exercise more fully embodied.
First, take a minute to put your phone on airplane mode, close your laptop, and maybe move into your bedroom or a place that’s relatively free of electronics and maybe even people and pets.
Now get in a comfortable position and slow down. You could pause here, put a hand on your heart and a hand on your belly, stop reading, and simply breathe. Feel your body and your breath. Allow all the thoughts to slow down, unwind, loosen, and release.
And now, let your body do the practice. Simply feel your bodily sensations, from your head down to your feet. If you want, you can do a simple body scan, moving your attention down your body like a wave washing through you. And then when you’re done, fill your body with awareness like you’d fill a cup with water. Feel every cell full of bright clear awareness.
Rest here for a while.
That’s it. You can bring this kind of attention with you, wherever you go, and especially while you are getting down with your partner. Guaranteed, you will have a better time when you are fully in your body like this. In fact, you might think about coming back to this exercise before sex for the next couple weeks, or even for a couple months, just to get in the habit of being in your body before, during, and after sex.
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AND ANOTHER THING…