Relaxing is a very brave thing to do. Relaxing is a personal revolution. We have tension built up in our bodies for all kinds of reasons—tension that starts to build when we are quite young. As children, we are totally open and vulnerable. We are entirely dependent on our adult (or sometimes pre-adult) guardians to feed us, clothe us, keep our temperature regular, protect us, and love us. Babies are not tense, but by the time we are little kids tension can already be setting in. Our parents, siblings, and relatives pass on their stress and tension to us.
As little ones, we start to form areas of tension in the body, nervous habits, and tics. The tension is there to protect us and to help us brace against the trials of life. Then, we start school and someone makes fun of us or we do poorly on a test, and another layer of tension is added on. When we get a little older, maybe we are in a car accident. We may have no major injuries, but it’s enough to add another layer of tension. Then our parents separate, or one of them gets ill or maybe starts drinking too much. Or we find ourselves experiencing a first heartbreak, or a first sexual trauma. By the time we are adults we have knots in our shoulders, headaches, and/or lower back pain. We just can’t seem to relax, even on vacation, even when drunk. Our body has learned to be tense, and it thinks it needs to stay that way in order for us to be safe.
Learning to relax means teaching our bodies that they are safe. We have to slowly and gently peel back and dissolve the layers of tension. As we get closer and closer to the original traumas and stresses, the resistance can become even more intense. That’s because we are approaching that sweet, innocent self that has been hidden under all the tension for so many years. Our body wants to protect that part of us from ever being hurt again. If we greet that resistance with kindness and patience, it will, day by day, lessen as our body learns to trust us. Eventually, we can start to relate to stresses and traumas in a whole new way. We will let go of these experiences without locking them in. Our bodies don’t need to hold all of this tension.
I was an incredibly tense child. There are photos of me, as young as five, hunched over, jaw locked, with fingers bloody from all the nail biting. Tension was a big part of my life from very early on. As I got older, the tension piled up. A car accident here, an abusive girlfriend there. By the time I was in my twenties, I was very tightly wound. Relaxing meant making myself susceptible to emotional and perhaps physical danger. When I tried to relax I felt awful. My mind would speed up and I’d get angry or very sad. Drinking and drugs helped, but eventually not even oblivion could soften my edges.
I had daily headaches, back problems, and I would grind my teeth so badly at night that I found shards of tooth in my mouth in the morning. I was a stressed-out gal. When I started to become aware of my suffering through meditation, I didn’t immediately recognize how much physical tension I was holding. The first few years of my practice involved a lot of hardcore techniques. I’d meditate for hours without moving, focusing on the most painful and challenging material I could find. I was a bit of an ascetic, using pain to reach deep states of concentration. I pushed through all kinds of discomfort and never practiced relaxation or loving kindness techniques. My spiritual practice was tight and rigid, much like my body.
After a few years of toughing it out, I began to have an inkling that gentle might be better than rough when it came to spiritual practice. Those years of intensity were not without merit. I hurtled along the classical path, encountering insights and awakenings along the way. For me, waking up started out as a series of dramatic crash landings. I’m grateful for the toughie in me who recklessly drove me into awakening, but she takes the back seat these days.
Learning to relax has become a primary purpose in my life. I’m still working on it. I’ve been training my body to relax in everyday happenings, and when stress or challenging emotions arise. I’ve found that it is possible to teach the body to automatically relax in situations where it wants to tense up.
One of the first places I noticed the change was in the car. I’ve had more car accidents than I’d like to recount (some my fault, some not). The trauma of those accidents used to come up a lot when I was the passenger. If the driver hit the brakes a little too hard, or took a turn a bit too fast, my whole body would tighten up, bracing for impact. In reality, being tense actually makes the injuries of a car accident worse, but my body didn’t understand that. Once I became aware of this habitual response to my passenger anxiety, I knew I needed to introduce the practice of relaxation. I started intentionally relaxing every time I felt nervous in the car. At first there was a big gap between the tightening up that happened and the introduction of relaxation. But soon the gap became smaller and smaller. One day, I was sitting in the passenger seat, checking out my lip gloss in the side view mirror, and my boyfriend hit the brakes, hard. My body immediately relaxed completely. I had created a new automatic response.
To begin the process of teaching your body to relax, you can practice REST AND RELAX daily. Spending even ten minutes a day focused on relaxation will start to encourage your body to relax throughout the day. To enhance your relaxation training, practice REST AND RELAX in action as well. While you are sitting at your desk, driving, cooking, having a conversation, reading, or taking a shower, bring some attention to softening and relaxing your body. It will be especially helpful if you practice this while you are engaging with a person or situation that is challenging or stress provoking. If you feel resistance or fear arise, be gentle and kind with yourself. Remember: Relaxing is a brave thing to do.
Sex is supposed to make you feel relaxed, right? There is the quintessential image of someone, naked and sweaty, falling back into a bed with a big sigh, utterly relaxed from a romp in the hay. But while the moment of orgasm may provide a burst of pleasurable relaxation, a lot of folks are not experiencing much relaxation during the act of sex. The reasons vary from worrying about climax, to pain during sex, to insecurity about physical appearance.
From the beginning of my sexual life, I always carried a lot of tension when engaging with a partner. It was part of the way I checked out during sex, locking myself off physically from the other person. It was also simply a habit. I was a stressed-out teenager and adult just like I was a stressed-out kid. I didn’t know how to relax—or even that I was so tense.
A lot of my tension during sex involved trying to orgasm. I trained myself to tighten my whole body up in order to reach climax. I couldn’t come unless my vagina was under lockdown. I’ve since talked to many women who have had the same experience, and who believe that extreme tension is required to get off. While some targeted contractions (and releases) can increase pleasure for both men and women, being tense the whole time limits pleasure. It seems to me that when I tightened up and held on, blood was not able to flow as easily, which lessened the pleasurable sensations.
It took practice for me to have relaxed orgasms. For years, I had been relying on tension to make me come. My body would automatically tighten up when I started nearing climax. Releasing tension seemed like letting go of my chance to have an orgasm. I had a lover who once said, “Relax. You’ve got my cock in a vice grip!” Eventually I began to incorporate more relaxation into sex and got a big surprise. I found that as I learned to relax, my orgasms didn’t go away—they got better. I had extended orgasms that lasted for what felt like hours. Relaxation led to me having cervical orgasms—also known as deep orgasms. They were more intense than any orgasms I had felt before.
Foreplay and sex become a lot more delicious when you know how to relax. There is a delightful opening that can occur when you let go of tension during sex. Sensations begin to feel more fluid and the breath starts to flow more freely. It might feel like you and your partner can take up more space, spread out, and luxuriate in each other. Sex isn’t meant to be bottled up in a tight little ball. Sex is vast, wild, and mysterious. The more we can relax, the deeper we can connect with our partners and the hotter our sex can be. This is taking embodied sex one step further. Once you learn to be aware of your physical self during sex, you can start to relax into your body and access more of what it has to offer you.
You may want to start by exploring relaxed sex with yourself. Like I said, we have tension for all kinds of reasons. It might feel too scary or not enjoyable to relax with a partner at first. I invite you to make a little time for some relaxed self-loving.
After a little practice with relaxed masturbation, introduce some relaxation into your partner sex. You may wish to do a session of REST AND RELAX before getting things going. Ideally you and your partner could practice together before sex. Encourage relaxation from the start. Relax while you are kissing, touching, and moving into sex. Let your perfectionism go and just do your best to relax as much as possible. You’ll be using some muscles, of course, but relax whatever muscles are not in use. You might also want to take turns being physically passive, letting the other partner do all the heavy lifting.
This doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If having your focus on relaxation is challenging, you might just do that for some of the lovemaking session, or on and off throughout the session. Good sex is about being flexible with yourself. Being too rigid about relaxed sex can take all the relaxation (and fun) out of it! This doesn’t have to be the only way you have sex, but it’s important and wonderful to have the option.
Certain questions and insecurities can arise when we consider having relaxed sex. Here are a few.
No. Your vagina is not supposed to be anything. It, just like you, is a living thing that changes and evolves. Learning to relax your vagina will not make it “loose” or limit your partner’s pleasure. It will give you more options for how your vagina experiences penetration, which will in turn add variety to your partner’s experience. Your vagina is beautiful. It deserves your unconditional love, just like the rest of you.
You may have heard of or practiced Kegel exercises (which people with penises can do as well), when you tighten and then release the pelvic floor muscles. Sort of like a pushup for your privates. This can help with increasing pleasure during sex, including giving you stronger orgasms. Kegels also help you to avoid incontinence after childbirth or in old age, and uterine, vaginal, and rectal prolapse. The release in doing Kegels is just as important as the contraction. If your pelvic floor is especially tight, I would recommend taking it easy on the Kegels and focus on relaxing.
You are hot just the way you are. And learning to relax during sex and otherwise will probably make you look and feel younger. Good sex means loving and cherishing your body. Part of caring for your body includes feeding it healthy food and giving it exercise. It also includes letting it enjoy sex without being shamed or judged. If how you look during sex is keeping you from being able to relax, practice the self-love exercise discussed earlier in the book. Send love to your body, even the cellulite and flab. Do that for a month every day and see how your love for your body blossoms.
I’d say that’s a good sign. It means you’ve allowed yourself to open up deeply. It’s normal to be overwhelmed with emotion during or after sex. A loving and mindful partner will have no problem with you crying—in fact, they may recognize that it means they did something right.
There are two things that many people don’t do enough of. One is relaxing, and the other is breathing. How often are you running around, doing your day-to-day tasks, full of tension and taking only shallow breaths? The answer for most folks is most of the time. Bringing a little mindfulness to your muscular and cardiovascular systems will bump your quality of life way up.
Let’s do some breathing and relaxing right now. I call this Relax and Reset.
How do you feel? I’m going to bet you feel more relaxed than you did a minute ago. This is an exercise you can do many times throughout the day, and I suggest that you do. It’s a great way to infuse your day with relaxation and to encourage deep breathing.
Breathing fully is something that a lot of people are not doing on a regular basis. Have you noticed how often you actually take a nice deep breath? In yoga class a few times a week, maybe? Shallow breathing, or actually holding the breath, seems to be a chronic issue for a lot of people.
In my late twenties, I was introduced to an actor’s voice training technique called the Fitzmaurice Technique, which is all about breathing and relaxing. My teacher, Saul Kotzubei, led me through exercises that gave me deep access to my breath and profound states of relaxation. It was a big insight for me to realize how little I was actually breathing most of the time. After a workshop with him I felt like my lungs had actually gotten bigger. Really, I was just breathing more fully. I am still learning to consistently allow myself to fully breathe, but there has been a massive improvement. Doing exercises like Rest and Relax, going to yoga, and continuing with voice classes and breathwork is quite helpful. The more I encourage breath and relaxation in my life, the more enjoyable my life is.
I remember when I first discovered the intense pleasure of breathing deeply during sex. I had a friend visiting from Florida, and she had recently been exploring ecstatic breathing techniques. She shared with me how breathing deeply during sex intensified her orgasms tenfold. She explained how the breath moved the pleasure through her body in waves. I was keen to experience these oceanic orgasms for myself, and tried it the next chance I got. My friend hadn’t been exaggerating. It was divine.
Here’s a simple breathing exercise you can practice with your partner. You can also do it on your own while masturbating.
You may find that you have some strong emotional openings while you practice this breathing exercise. Deep knots inside of you can untangle as you release tension and allow your body to fully experience the breath. Let the emotions, as well as any jerks or twitches in your body, arise and pass while you continue to breathe and relax.
Learning to invite breath into sex is a necessary ingredient for good sex. Once you feel it you’ll know just what I mean. Breathing and sex are the best of bedfellows. Add relaxation to the mix, and we are getting into some Tantric sex territory.
Tantric sex has been around for over 5,000 years. It has truly stood the test of time. In Tantric sex, the lovers weave and expand the flow of energy between them through breath, eye contact, relaxation, and other sexual practices. This creates more intimacy and connection, as well as otherworldly pleasure. Exploring Tantric sex is a great option for many who are looking to improve their sex lives. There is, however, often dogma and firm philosophy within this tradition. If that isn’t your jam, not to worry. You can borrow from the practice of Tantric sex without buying the cow.
Two of the main themes in Tantric sex are breath and relaxation. Tantra takes the emphasis off of orgasm and puts it on deep connection and spiritual merging with your partner. Some of the practices of Tantric sex involve relaxing and breathing with your partner, while moving very slowly or not at all. This is almost entirely the opposite of how most people are having sex. Most people think of sex as hard and fast. While fucking can be absolutely delightful, it’s nice to have other options too. Tantric sex is a very special kind of lovemaking, and it can take time to develop a taste for it.
In our incredibly fast-paced world, slowing down for anything can be a challenge. We have everything the Internet has to offer at our fingertips, we have multi-hyphenate careers, and an app for everything. Everyone seems to be racing the clock to catch some imagined goal—the thing that will make us feel complete. It’s no wonder so many people are chronically stressed-out and exhausted. The antidote for this fatigue is simply slowing down, breathing, and relaxing. Learning to make love slowly and with relaxation is something that can expand our sexual awareness and teach us to take it a little easier in general. Sexuality is a spiritual path—that’s what Tantric sex teaches us. Tantra values relaxation and breath as a primary component of good sex. It gets more complicated than that, but those are some basic tenets. I don’t personally subscribe to one right way of having sex, so I take what I like and leave the rest when it comes to Tantric sexual practices. I do, however, think that Tantra can offer invaluable guidance in the realm of breath and relaxation.
Here is an exercise based on Tantric sex practices.
Slowing down and not “performing” during sex can bring insecurities and attachment to the forefront of consciousness. There can be a lot of identity wrapped up in how you have sex, and trying something new can be confronting. We like to stick with what we are good at. Slowing down will reveal aspects of yourself that you may have been hiding behind your ability to fuck with abandon. Now you have to actually be with your partner, in a soft stillness, stripped down to a bare and profound connection. As you uncover the insecurities and attachments and let them peel away, you’ll find an entirely new way of relating to yourself and your partner. You’ll have a new wrench in your sexual tool kit.
Being mindful means taking the time to actually have the experience you are having. I used to be chronically busy, speeding through life. I never stopped to smell the roses. There were too many things to get done! My sex life was a reprieve from my busy life, but I didn’t suddenly become mindful while having sex. This made it difficult for me to really listen to what my body wanted during sex. If my body didn’t like something, I tended to just push through it, ignoring pain or discomfort.
For people who experience pain during sex, relaxation can be a lifesaver. For most, there is a tendency to tighten up and brace against pain. I used to just clench my jaw, tighten my vagina, and squeeze my eyes shut when I experienced sexual pain. On some level I believed that sex was supposed to be painful some of the time. I’ve come to know that sex should only be painful if you want it to be (and have a safe word!).
(Note: If you are having pain during sex it could be a sign of a health issue and it’s always a good idea to talk to your doctor. Mindfulness is great, but sometimes Western medicine is required.) If you are enduring sexual pain and thinking that it’s just supposed to be this way, think again. You deserve to feel good. Recognizing that you are tolerating unnecessary pain is an insight worth exploring. Perhaps there are other areas of life in which you are toughing it out and don’t need to be. Many people have deeply embedded beliefs that they deserve to be in pain. You can work through these old belief patterns using FOCUS ON SELF to deconstruct the thoughts and emotions involved. Remember to also offer yourself lots of love, patience, and acceptance during this process. It’s also good to work with a therapist or meditation teacher on this kind of material.
It’s always important to tell your partner if you are experiencing unwanted pain. If you’ve been open and honest about the pain and want to try to work through it, you can use relaxation and breath to help you. Make whatever adjustments in position, penetration depth, and speed you need to be as comfortable as possible. Don’t push through intense pain. Be gentle with your body. Here is an exercise to help you relax and breathe into pain, rather than brace against it.
I have had several sessions of pelvic floor massage with great results. I was suffering from chronic inflammation of the bladder and urinary tract and experienced relief after the massage. It also seemed to give my sex drive a boost!
Grasping is another word for holding on too tightly to something. Do you find yourself grasping on to pleasure during sex? Well, you’re not alone. A big portion of grasping during sex is related to reaching climax or holding off on climax. New students often report feeling all tied up inside in anticipation of orgasm, becoming tense, and narrowing their attention to that one goal. This sexual grasping can be a manifestation of grasping in other parts of life. I know that I used to always be afraid that I wouldn’t get what I wanted or would lose what I had. This attitude makes for a very small life. Trust me, I know.
The mind is built to grasp, and then inevitably distorts what it grasps. The more it grasps, the more it distorts. This cycle leads to suffering. It’s not just our minds that grasp and distort. Our bodies can do the same thing. The more tension, or grasping, we have in the body, the more distorted our relationship with the body becomes. With more tension comes more pain, and more reason to avoid embodiment. As you learn to relax your body, the grasping will lessen. This will in turn lower the grasping in the mind, leading to less and less needless suffering. Training your body to relax during sex will translate over into the rest of your life. The pleasure you get from relaxed sex will give your mind and body the message that grasping is for the birds. As you fully see how much you are grasping, you’ll start to see the path out of grasping and into acceptance.
When I’m in the company of someone who is deeply awake, their level of relaxation is palpable. It’s a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual relaxation that infuses all of their actions, even the subtlest of movements. My experiences with relaxation of this kind have been a roadmap for my own awakenings. This type of relaxation comes when you truly give in to each unfolding moment, without judgment or expectation. Even tiny flashes of this kind of relaxation can be utterly transformative. You can relax your way to good sex, and perhaps into radical acceptance.