This Is Your Brain on Sex

The following is an excerpt from Succulent Sexcraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play and Practice:
brainonsexYour neocortex is the executive headquarters of your brain, perched in the penthouse at the front of your skull. This is not where sex takes place. Sexuality is primarily a function of the older, more primitive parts of our brain. Sexual energy is animal energy and our animal selves live in the limbic system and old brain. Sex taps into ancient evolutionary machinery that resides, so to speak, in the cranial basement. You need to go down the brain elevator if you want to really get down sexually.

Your busy babbling executive forebrain can be more of a hindrance than a help. We’ve probably all had times when our chattering neocortex blocked our sexual energy. People get stuck in their heads—or, rather, neocortex—all the time thinking about things like what you should (or shouldn’t) be doing, if you’re doing it right, if the ceiling needs painting… the list goes on and on.

The simple fact is that to go into erotic trance at all, and especially to go deep, your forebrain needs to turn off so your animal body can wake up and turn on. Your command center needs to stop thinking, deciding, planning, worrying and judging—it needs to go off-line. Until that happens, the primal templates that reside in the old parts of your brain can’t be accessed.

Turning off the jabbering conversations in your executive office is easier said than done. We can do it, though, with the help of our sexcraft toolkit. Focusing on sound and breath, for instance, takes our attention away from all that administrative prattle and brings us to greater body awareness — it makes us, in this sense, more ‘animal.’ Similarly, visualizing heart energy stills the mind and activates the limbic system, which, as we’ve seen, is the mammalian part of the brain that deals with love and attachment.

Great sex brings out the animal in you. not literally, but not merely figuratively either. You go down into the more animal parts of your brain, on vacation from your control-aholic, hyper-active head office.

The deeper we get into our arousal trance, the more difficult it becomes to communicate coherently. talking is a fore-brain activity and when we’re turned on, we’re down in the basement and that upper story is far away. This explains why we tend to communicate in shorthand when we’re having sex (“now!” “please!” “Yes!”) or stay with our animal selves and simply purr and howl.

The three aspects of the brain—the old ‘reptile brain,’ the ‘mammal mid-brain’ and the ultra-modern ‘human new brain’ — can act in coordination or competition. Sex is a great example of how this plays out. It’s a journey where you shift from mundane reality to the altered state of intense arousal. At the beginning of the experience, your prattling neocortex predominates. As you go deeper into arousal, it slowly shuts down, allowing you to descend to where the primeval apparatus of sex resides. In between are the connections, emotions and experiences that form the web of who you are, what turns you on, your dreams and fantasies, your hopes and expectations, your anxieties and fears, your thoughts, sensations, meaning and stories. These can facilitate or inhibit your shift into deep erotic trance. For instance, your command center can assist you on your journey by reminding you to use your tools, advising you to take some deep breaths, make pleasure sounds and rock your hips. You can use your sexual imagination to replace negative thoughts with hot scenarios. Brain management is, believe it or not, a bedroom skill. You don’t want your forebrain working against you. Learn to harness it in service to your arousal—use your conscious brain to get animal and wild.

You can consciously use your brain to change your mind and you can use your mind to change your brain.

The Six P’s of Touch

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photo CC by SA Nelumba

You can become a touch savant by playing with the six p’s — presence, purpose, patience, precision, pattern and progression. When you do so, you get to the ultimate p -— Pleasure!

Presence

It is in the imperceptible space between that which touches and that which is touched that one body can be felt, no matter how closely, to be different from another.

When you are fully present and in the moment with your touch, it will be exquisite. paying relaxed, soft-focused attention is a great way to let your kinesthetic intelligence emerge. If you’re touching your partner’s thigh, be present to the thigh. Don’t think about where you’re hoping to get to after that. delight in the delicious now.

Use your own sexcraft skills to stay present. if you find yourself in a thinking or distracted place, slow down or better yet, get still. Get centered back into your own experience using breath, awareness, intention (or whatever your favorite centering tools are.) Then shift your awareness back to your partner.

Purpose

Touch transmits intention. If someone is rubbing your back as a prelude to getting into your pants, you’ll know it. If someone is intending to give you pleasure, their touch will transmit that, too.

I encourage you to create conscious intentions when you connect erotically with yourself and others. Focus on connection, pleasure and co-creating a great improvisational journey, not on getting or achieving.

Patience

When I’m asked for one single bit of advice about how to have better sex, my answer is this -— take your time. Quickies can be fun snacks, but extraordinary sex usually occurs when you slow down to enjoy the feast.
While I certainly recommend taking time to have leisurely encounters, I mean something else as well. Don’t be in a hurry to get from point A to point B. Dogs (or should i say, core-yang people), this means not diving directly into your pussycat’s nether regions. If you want to do some muff munching, consider starting at her toes, taking time with every digit, then traveling oh-so-slowly up her leg until she’s desperate to have you dive into her glorious genitalia. Slow is good -— it creates anticipation and builds arousal. The more patient you are, the hungrier your kitty will be and the more you’ll be rewarded when you feed her (or feed on her).

Precision

By precision, I mean touch that’s discerning, accurate and exquisitely focused. it’s one of the keys to touching masterfully instead of just “okay-fully.”

It requires you to toggle your attention and awareness fluidly back and forth between yourself and your partner. as we get more turned on, it’s easy to lose our focus and get wild and sloppy with our movements. as things up-regulate and your brain heads down toward the basement, do your best to pay extra attention to the importance of precision!

It also requires presence —- you can’t be precise without being present.

Pattern

If you touch someone in the same way over and over again, it can get monotonous or irritating. if you deviate non-stop, it can feel incoherent and chaotic and keep the recipient from going into trance. There’s a middle ground between chaotic and boring. Masterful touch is like music -— it creates patterns with its combination of rhythm, repetition, harmony and syncopation. Repeating a move creates space for appreciation and feeds anticipation. It creates a pleasing expectation -— a sort of touch security, as it were —- and escalates entrancement.

Syncopation offers an accent note. It delivers the element of surprise, and it does so without taking the recipient out of the zone. Use motion and stillness, just as music works with sound and silence. Remember: stillness is a ‘move’ just like motion is a move. Play with a beat, melody and cadence. Use repetition, surprise, rhythm, syncopation, tempos and motifs to create your very own symphony of touch.

You can also play with touch as if it were visual art. Pretend you’re finger-painting, sculpting, outlining or shading. Here, too, use designs, motifs, recurring themes, and gradually changing patterns. Doodle with their body! There’s a larger takeaway here: touch is an art form—and mastery equals artistry.

Progression

Pattern and progression are closely related. in fact, progression is how you get from pattern a to pattern B, or from location a to location B, without having it feel rushed, jumpy or chaotic. Let your touch have internal consistency, a sort of touch logic. Don’t jump around randomly from one place on the body to another. Play with progressing coherently from place to place, or from one layer to another. Shift fluently between languages. Transition gradually between tempos or from broad strokes to detailed ones.

Generally, use smooth, gradual transitions (except when you want to delight with the surprise of an accent note). For instance, going from deeply therapeutic shoulder massage directly to genital stimulation might be disconcerting. However, if you move from deep kneading of the big back muscles down to the buttocks, shift to a lighter sensual rhythmic stroke down the thigh, followed with a teasing, feathery flit up the inner thigh, a quick brush past the crotch, to almost touching the genitals, and finally to landing there with a deliberate firm hand — well, that can be utterly delicious.

During all of this, of course, you’ll want to practice another of the ‘p’s —- patience. There’s an art to finding the balance between taking your time and being too slow. Here, look for the receiver to give cues. as long as they’re loving it, linger there. When they’re not responding positively, it may be time to move on to something else.

Receivers, there’s a message in this for you: Be actively responsive. Not only will this amplify your pleasure, you’ll be letting your giver know how you love to be touched. And that’s a positive pleasure circuit!


This is the Prime Directive of Sex

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The following is an excerpt from Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play and Practice.

THE PRIME DIRECTIVE: SEX IS ABOUT CONNECTION

1. Your sexuality is first and foremost about your connection to your self. Your whole self.
2. Your sexuality is also about your connection to others. Naturally that includes the people you have sex with—partner sex is fundamentally about connection. And it’s also about your connection to everyone and everything, including all life on this planet.
3. Sex is both natural and learned. While an important part of our sexuality is based on our inborn animal templates, an astounding amount of human sexuality is learned.
4. To fulfill your sexual potential, it helps to have structure, support and guidance — and, more specifically, accurate and effective maps and models. Anything short of that is like trying to find a special spot in the woods without a map (or with one that’s just plain wrong).


Connections your sexuality is connected to everyone and everything. Here are aspects of the web of life that surrounds and supports you, and that co-created you:

YOU

• Hardware: nature, evolution, genetics
• Software: learning, environment, culture
• mind, body, heart and spirit
• energy and matter

EVERYTHING ELSE

Families

• your family of origin (the place where nature and nurture overlap and sometimes collide)
• your families of choice (the people you choose to create family with)
• your families of creation (your kids, if you have them)

Partners

• including any people with whom you are or have been intimate, sexual, and/or romantic
• current partners
• past partners
• fantasy partners
• potential partners

Communities

• friends, acquaintances, and all other communities and connections
• where you live
• political institutions, spiritual, religious and other institutions
• other institutions
• the media
• your work
• all living beings
• the world
• the ALL… The mysteries (leaving room for all of the energies and influences that we don’t know or understand)

What is Sex?

Have you ever stopped to wonder, “Just what exactly is sex anyway?” Here’s our definition — see if it doesn’t expand yours.
(Excerpted from our new book Succulent SexCraft.)

What Is Sex?

Sex is any erotic activity: it’s something you do. Sexuality encompasses the whole of who we are. It incorporates our thoughts, emotions, stories, beliefs, values, relationships, boundaries, choices, behaviors, knowledge and experiences.

Sex makes life. It made you—the one and only complex entity you are.

Sex is the vital life force, the energy that infuses all living creatures. It connects all life (including you).

Sex is the pervasive power of creation, the force that fuels sexual reproduction. It drives evolution’s mix of competition and cooperation. It generates diversity, beauty and complexity.

Sex permeates everything. our political systems, spiritual traditions, institutions, mythologies and cultures are shaped by it in myriad ways, both positive and negative. Eros fuels fertility, creativity, connection and love.

What Is Sex For You?

For starters, ponder these questions, remembering that there are no right answers. If you choose, record your responses in your journal.

• How do you define sex?
• What did you think sex was when you were a child?
• What would you like your sex life to be like?
• What do you like about your current sex life? What do you dislike about it?
• What are some positive feelings you have about your sexuality?
• What are some negative feelings?
• What do you believe would make your sex life more fulfilling?
• What would you like to learn?


We encourage our readers to answer these questions
beforSucculent SexCraft Book Imagee and then again after reading the book, to clearly show the progress they’ve made. Of course, you can’t do that if you don’t have the book, but that is an easy problem to fix!

5 Stars! “Engage your curiosity and transform your erotic play” By Kate Chopin