When it comes to sensuality, What do you like or dislike?
Understanding your ‘yeses’ is key to understanding your sensual self.
Sex, sensuality and intimate communication can be one of the most important aspects of our lives and relationships.
It can impact how we feel about ourselves.
How we relate to our partners.
And how we experience our world physically/with our senses.
Considering it’s such a crucial part of life, you’d think we’d be more broadly taught how to do it.
But when it comes to sex education in school, it’s pretty bleak.
Some schools have none at all.
Many of us as adults were taught only this – that sex is penetrative intercourse between a man and a woman, how not to fall pregnant, and how to avoid STIs.
This lack of formal education means we need to look elsewhere to inform our beliefs about navigating and practicing intimacy.
We learn it from our friends, the internet and our family systems.
We learn it by fumbling along, experimenting and figuring it out as we go.
As we do, we don’t always get a chance to fully understand ourselves – what we like and dislike, our ‘yeses’ and our ‘nos’ – and how to communicate that.
And this understanding is fundamental to a healthy intimate life. So how do we work it out?
The World Health Organisation defines sexual health as:
“A state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity.
Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence.
For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected and fulfilled”
Take a moment to consider:
How did you learn to navigate how to have pleasurable and safe sexual experiences?
What is your relationship like with your own sexuality?
Do you have the capacity to experience and feel pleasure in your body? Or in connection with another human?
Do you struggle to communicate what kind of intimate connection you want in your sexual relationships?
Are you able to receive compliments, praise and pleasurable touch from another?
Are you familiar with consent?
Do you know what you like and don’t like in a sexual connection?
When we engage in physical intimacy with another person, we are allowing someone else into our personal space and we are entering someone else’s.
That means we not only need to understand our own yeses and nos, we need to understand someone else's too.
You may have a really good idea about what you like and don’t like. You might even have been lucky and found a partner who knows this and can follow through.
Or you may not!
You might also find that:
Your interests, ideas and enjoyment may have changed over the years.
Your interests, ideas and enjoyment may have shifted by changes in your body or your life.
You are in a rut of exploration where your usual yeses are not as fun and you might be keen to explore what might have previously been a no.
Sometimes all we know is what we don’t like (the nos) but we struggle to identify what we do like (the yeses). Sometimes we don’t know either!
Then it comes to relating to a partner. How do we understand their yeses and nos?
How should our yeses and nos interact with each other’s? What if one person’s yes is another’s no?
Exploring all this is a process, AND I believe it starts with understanding your sensual self.
When I say ‘sensual’, I mean the part of you that is connected to your senses (sight, touch, hearing, smell or taste).
We receive information through our senses all the time. And our body responds.
It may like what we sense (and want to move towards that) or it may dislike it (and want to move away from that). OR it may not like it but still want to move towards it, or like it and feel compelled to move away! This might be a reflection of previous relationship issues, trauma or how you were raised.
Developing an attunement to how you relate to pleasure and sensuality is extremely important for fostering healthy intimate physical relationships.
Knowing what your body enjoys, learning how to stay with this longer, stretching this out, allowing yourself to be with it and relishing the experience are all important skills to be able to enjoy physically connecting with another human.
Ways you can start to understand your yeses and no:
When you're about and about, notice when you are asked a closed question. If you have the impulse to say 'no' or 'yes'- check in with yourself. What was it that helped you make that decision? What was happening inside your mind? What was going on in your body? If you aren't sure, start to just notice the times you are saying yes, and no. Write those down and journal or meditate on it later.
Notice how your body responds when it is engaged with pleasurable things associated with your senses (particularly touch). Washing your hair, having a shower, getting a massage. How do you know your body likes/doesn't like it?
Often I'll have people do self sensual exercises like hand or foot massage. Noticing how their own body receives when in charge of the giving. Can you sense into what you like/don’t like and respond, when it is just you?
In any of the above what happens if you want to say yes/keep going or no/change it up and you don't follow that (i.e. you override)?
Once you know your yeses, it is much easier to take that into a partnership and ask for what you like (as well as understanding what you don’t).
On your journey of exploring your sensual self, you might find complexities or barriers that get in the way. Sorting through these is part of the process.
An important part of holistic and trauma informed Sex Therapy is working through barriers in a way that does not override your no, overwhelm you or cause you to shut down further.
A big part of my work is helping you learn to access and understand pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sensations.
When we work together, we seek to:
Understand what your relationship to pleasure is like.
Develop what you want your relationship to pleasure to be.
Learn how you can understand when your body is saying yes, and whether this is also fully aligned in that your heart (emotions) and mind (thoughts).
Communicating what you like and providing positive and constructive feedback to your intimate partner.
Developing a connection to your own sensuality.
When we work together, part of this process is also me understanding your 'yeses' and 'nos' - we cover only what is comfortable for you to discuss and work out along the way what is not comfortable.
Throughout my work, I aim to demonstrate consent by noticing both your verbal responses and your body - and checking if a 'yes' to talk or discuss something is a full 'yes' - and if not, we explore what might be showing up as a 'no'
This helps us to begin understanding the language of your body and also allows a space where you and your partner understand what it is like to attune to both yeses and nos.
During our work together, you will receive individualised exercises or practices to build your understanding of your body and communication skills so you can bring that into a partnership. So your ‘yes’ and ‘no’ is clear and you can deepen your relationship to your sensual self and your relationship to a partner.