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• $50 off our Mindful Sex Online Course
• Roundup of Speaking of Sex episodes about masturbation and practicing self love!

Mindful Masturbation : A Practice Of Pleasure & Self-Compassion

The primary erotic relationship of your life is with yourself! Accepting this simple truth can be both confronting and liberating, allowing us to develop a more compassionate, curious and kind relationship with our selves, our bodies, our histories and our desires.

Mindful Masturbation is a practice that invites you into exploring your own experience of desire, pleasure, arousal and climax. By paying more attention to our experiences within the realm of masturbation, so much becomes possible: more pleasure, more turn-on, more joy, more satisfaction.

Yet paying attention to our sexual experience demands we confront the rest of it: the judgment, the shame, the fear, the anger. Learning how to hold the charge of these emotions while staying curious and self-compassionate is the practice of a lifetime!

The good news? You are not alone. We are here with you, as is our community of over 10,000 pleasure seekers from around the world who have been sharing their experiences with us over the years. All of our tools and resources are designed to help you explore more pleasure, joy and connection – while slaying the shame, shoulds and scripts!

Ready to explore with us? Use the code MAY for $50 off our Mindful Sex Online Course

As we celebrate 15 years as the Pleasure Mechanics, we are sharing some of the most popular episodes from our archives. Here’s an encore of episode #334, all about Mindful Masturbation and Masturbation May!

Click here for a full roundup of Speaking of Sex Podcast Episodes on masturbation and solo pleasure

This episode features a clip from our friends at HomeBrewed Feminism Podcast, who featured the original broadcast in their episode “It’s Actually Self Love”

Recently in an interview we talked about our parenting style as “Pleasure Positive Parenting” and it quickly became a household joke – because after 15 years living and loving together as “The Pleasure Mechanics” there isn’t a part of our life that is untouched by our engagement with Pleasure, Joy and Connection as a primary lens for all we do. Pleasure Positive Eating. Pleasure Positive Lifestyle. Pleasure Positive Politics. All of it, all the time.

When we started The Pleasure Mechanics in 2006, we had only been dating a few months, but we knew for sure that our shared commitment to Pleasure, and our devotion to Love was steering the ship.

Ready to explore pleasure with us? Tune into our podcast, Speaking Of Sex and be sure to join our free online course, The Erotic Essentials

Pleasure Positive, At Your Service, Since 2006.

Feeling overwhelmed? Sometimes we need to zoom out to gain a little perspective.

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You are home. You belong right here, right now. We love you.

Please read one or more of the following responses from our community out loud, in whatever voice and style feels right for you. 

Please go slowly and pause between passages.

We will be mixing and blending as many voices as we receive into the podcast episode where we share and respond to these survey responses.

By submitting a recording you are consenting to your voice appearing on Pleasure Mechanics podcasts, social media, online courses or any other media type. You will not be identified nor compensated in any form. 

Thank you for your participation in the Pleasure Mechanics community! We hope this community experiment generates a meaningful episode for us all. To record any other message or question for the show, click here.

Shame Slayers Responses To Record

“My shame told me I was wrong, no matter what I wanted or how or how much or with whom. The shame oozed out of every corner of my upbringing“

“It sounds so simple, but practicing self-compassion has helped me tremendously. My previous tendency was to become ashamed of the shame I felt. I still feel shame, enough that it is challenging for me to talk with my loving partner about my inability to orgasm with him, but when it arises, I no longer turn against myself for feeling it. I’m not sure what “slaying” looks like for me in any final sense, but I am not as haunted by shame as I once was.“

“I avoided sex for a really long time because of enormous body shame and shame around performance/ skills (because of lack of experience). Then felt tremendous shame about being a “virgin”- felt like I was treated as though I was immature, incomplete, or young by peers. It became a self-perpetuating shame cycle“

“I’m just surprised by how previous sexual partners, both the casual encounters and people I felt deeply connected with, would pass subtle judgments on or appraisals of my orgasms, body and love of sex in a way that made me feel like just who I was was threatening to them. Because of this, it is hard for me to have full body orgasms with partners, the kind of orgasms I can have on my own,  and this is a source of shame for me.“

“Accessing Sex Positive material on the internet and podcasts such as Pleasure Mechanics have given me more insight into my own sexuality which helps me see myself as more ‘normal’, whilst increasing my awareness of the dynamics of privilege, gender, sexuality, and patriarchy“

“Learning that I get to choose what works best for me and my life and relationships instead of having to follow societal scripts“

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Shame is one of the most common sexual struggles. Almost all of us struggle with some form of sexual shame – from body shame to faith-based shame, from kink shame to genital shame, almost everyone holds some shame. Shame tells us we are broken, sinful, gross or otherwise unworthy of love. Shame tells us if we were to be truly ourselves, we wouldn’t belong. Shame lies to us, and holds us all hostage in an invisible web-like grip of cultural myth and misinformation.

It’s time to slay the shame. In this encore episode of one of our most popular episodes ever, originally published in 2015 as episode 74, we explore sexual shame, think about where it really comes from, and then share a five step plan to slay your shame and find new freedom.

Participate in our Shame Slayers Survey here!

Ready to explore more shame-slaying, fear-busting, doubt-dissolving resources? Join the Pleasure Pod, show your support for the show, and unlock members only resources!