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Taking Sexy Back : An Interview With Dr. Alexandra Solomon

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In this interview, Alexandra Solomon PhD joins us to discuss her new book Taking Sexy Back : How To Own Your Sexuality & Create The Relationships You Want (New Harbinger, 2020)

Ready for a masterclass in intimate relationships? Join us in Dr. Solomon’s new online course Intimate Relationships 101

It’s time to flip the script and shift from sexualized to sexual. It’s time for women to construct their sexuality from the inside-out. Instead of awaiting or fearing the label, “you’re sexy,” it’s time to get to know “Your Sexy.” Your sexy is your sexuality – the unfolding story of your relationship to the erotic.

It is time to quiet the noise of the outside world so you can create, from the inside-out, a deeper connection to Your Sexy and reclaim that which has always been yours. Neither earned nor ordained by another, an inside-out experience of Your Sexy is about believing that your sexuality connects to and reflects your physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual self. By cultivating an inside-out experience of Your Sexy, you courageously step outside narrow gender roles and insist on nothing less than self-aware and empowered sexual experiences”

Dr. Alexandra Solomon, Taking Sexy Back (New Harbinger, 2020)

This book is a beautiful and powerful guide on your erotic journey. When you are ready to begin exploring what your sexy feels like, let’s team up: Grab your copy of Taking Sexy Back and send us a screenshot on Instagram or via email and we’ll send you a coupon code for $50 off the Pleasure Mechanics course of your choice.

About Our Guest, Alexandra Solomon, PhD

Dr. Alexandra H. Solomon is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University and a licensed clinical psychologist at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. She is the author of numerous articles and journal publications, as well as her two incredible books, Loving Bravely and Taking Sexy Back.

Ready for a masterclass in intimate relationships? Join us in Dr. Solomon’s new online course Intimate Relationships 101

TED Talk on Relational Self-Awareness from Dr. Alexandra Solomon

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Transcript for Podcast Episode #366: Interview with Dr. Alexandra Solomon

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose (00:00):
Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris from pleasuremechanics.com, and on today’s episode we have a wonderful conversation to share with you with Dr. Alexandra Solomon about her new book, Taking Sexy Back, how to own your sexuality and create the relationships you want.

Chris Rose (00:24):
I loved this book. I love Dr. Solomon. She has been a leader in the field of marriage and family therapy for decades. She is on staff at Northwestern University where she teaches a huge seminar called Marriage 101 every year, and she has her own clinical practice. She has a woven so much wisdom into the pages of this book about how to own your own sexuality.

Chris Rose (00:52):
And you’ve heard us talk about this on the podcast, how to shift from a performance based model of sexuality to a deep sense of erotic embodiment where your sexuality is your own to inhabit, to create, to express and to share with others.

Chris Rose (01:13):
That’s what this book is all about. It is a beautifully crafted book. Check the show notes page because we have set up an offer for you. Grab your copy of this book. Send us a picture of the receipt, or of you holding the book via Instagram or email and we will send you back a coupon towards our online courses, multiple X your purchase price of the book, so you can be guided by this book and join us in our online community of erotic practice and be guided by us stroke by stroke, step-by-step as you learn new or erotic skills. Yes, check the show notes page for links to this book to Dr. Solomon’s brilliant Ted talk.

Chris Rose (01:56):
In this interview we talk all about or erotic self-awareness, how to inhabit our erotic bodies, and discover our inner truths and start listening to these inner voices. It’s a beautiful conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com where you will find our complete podcast archive, and join us at pleasuremechanics.com/free to get started with our free online courses and dive a little deeper with us.

Chris Rose (02:27):
We will be back with you next week with another episode of Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. Here is our interview with Dr. Alexandra Solomon about her new book, Taking Sexy Back. Yes, please. Here we go. Dr. Solomon, welcome to Speaking of Sex.

Dr. Solomon (02:46):
Thank you so much for having me on, Chris.

Chris Rose (02:49):
I’m so thrilled that you’re here. For those who are not aware of your work yet, can you introduce yourself in the work you do in this world?

Dr. Solomon (02:56):
Sure. My name is Dr. Alexandra Solomon. I have been working as a Clinical Psychologist and a faculty member at Northwestern for a couple of decades now. And so I spend some of my week doing therapy with individuals and couples, and then some of my week teaching and training, both graduate students who are studying to be marriage and family therapists as well as teaching undergraduate students. I do have a big relationship education course called Building Happy and Healthy … no, that’s not true, Building, Loving and Lasting Relationships, Marriage 101.

Dr. Solomon (03:37):
And then I’m going to spend the rest of my time really translating clinical tools, research tools to the general public, whether that’s through self help books that I write, or these conversations like I’m having with you. So that’s really, my work is, I call myself a woman on a bridge. I’m bridging all different clinical and research and academia and general public. And that’s my happy place.

Chris Rose (04:04):
And I am so thrilled to meet you on this bridge, Taking Sexy Back. Your new book arrived on my doorstep, and by page six, I was doing praise hands around the room, shouting to the rooftops with gratitude for this book that both honor the complexity of human sexuality, but then offered some clarity and some pathways forward and inward. And we’ll talk about that kind of inward step into our sexuality.

Chris Rose (04:35):
So your first book was very much relational, about loving bravely. How did you come to write this second book, and why, Taking Sexy Back? Why sexy and what does that word mean for you in this book and in this work that you do?

Dr. Solomon (04:51):
Right. So my first book, as you say it was called Loving Bravely. And it was, the sort of centerpiece of the work that I do, is helping people understand themselves in the context of intimate partnership. You know, intimate partnership, whether we are dating and falling in love, or whether we are in year 22 of our intimate partnership as I am with my husband, it’s really easy to focus on the other person, what they’re doing, what they’re not doing. That’s sort of the nature of intimate partnership, I think.

Dr. Solomon (05:30):
And so, Loving Bravely, as well as the work that I do in my classrooms and my clinical office is really taking people into themselves and understanding the lenses, the paradigms, the belief systems that we bring into intimate partnership and how that shapes how we experience. Right? This idea that perspective shapes perception, and that our willingness to look at the complexities we bring in, then helps us open to deeper intimacy, and since it has a kind of curiosity and self compassion.

Dr. Solomon (06:03):
And even in writing that book, I was aware that this entire world of sex was a place where all of that plays out with the volume cranked up even that much more loudly. Right? Because it’s where things get really naked and really tender and those beliefs are so entrenched. And so that was where that second book was born.

Dr. Solomon (06:27):
But it took me a while, because I think that there’s, I became really aware of all these splits. And one of the splits in my part of the world is that we have Couples Therapists and we have Sex Therapists. And so it took me a while to authorize myself to step into this domain, because I am a Couples Therapist who’s had many conversations over the years with my students and my clients.

Dr. Solomon (06:54):
But it took me a while to really feel like I could be authorized to write about the relational and the self aspects of sexuality. And I’m so glad that I did.

Chris Rose (07:05):
I’m so glad that you did too. As a sex educator, we’ve been hands deep in sexuality for this past decade, and this book resonated for us so deeply. So you nailed it. And I think what you nailed is this sense of sexuality, is so complex. It’s so multifaceted, and it is both deeply internal. We have this deeply individual relationship with our own sexuality and so much of our sexual experience is born from there. And yet it is also so relational.

Chris Rose (07:41):
Can you talk about what you call as relational self-awareness and this tension and dialogue between self and social, that as you said, is amplified on the sexual stage?

Dr. Solomon (07:53):
Right, right, right. So relational self awareness is exactly what we were saying before. It’s this idea that I need to understand who I am, and how I show up in my relationships. And if I’m not willing to do that, I’m going to be at risk of taking us again and again and again into the space of either blame or a space of shame.

Dr. Solomon (08:16):
So either I’m going to put our dynamics on you and make you wrong, have to get you to hold the bag, or I’m going to disappear from you, because I’m going to swirl down the tubes into shame, and really feel like I’m wrong and I’m broken and it’s my history and it’s my trauma that’s causing our problems.

Dr. Solomon (08:35):
So relational self-awareness helps me hold onto what I call the golden equation of love, that my stuff plus your stuff equals our stuff. And that is true whether we are kind of debating whose turn it is to give the baby a bath, or whether we are talking about a discrepancy we’re bumping into around sexual desire.

Dr. Solomon (08:57):
But then the cultural piece comes in because if the problem we’re having is something around sexual desire and the challenges of negotiating sexuality over time in our partnership, we then bring in all the cultural loading. Right? Like what it means to have grown up in this world of ours.

Dr. Solomon (09:17):
It tends towards being so sex negative that we don’t have the tools we need to talk with care and vulnerability and honesty about what’s happening for us as sexual beings, which is where you spend your time and the work that you do, right, is helping people just kind of like look at how much shame we come by. We come by it really honestly, don’t we? It just is. We get this inheritance of negativity we didn’t ask for, but it is ours then to take a look at, and name and then process. And through that process, it allows us to choose something else, like to choose some voice around sex.

Chris Rose (10:00):
And with your guidance, you bring these values to the surface of this process. And I wrote down self awareness, self compassion and self discovery. Why is the call to self-compassion so important to you to kind of ring that bell over and over again for us, especially, in all mindful practice, but especially when we’re starting to look within and think about our own sexualities?

Dr. Solomon (10:29):
I want to go back and pull that thread that was about this word sexy, which we used in the title. I think so much about, women have, I think each of us, those of us who’ve been socialized in the feminine, we develop a particular relationship with that word sexy. And I think that’s a really interesting point of self inquiry for somebody, I think somebody who’s been socialized, whether in the masculine or the feminine, but I think especially given the messages in a system of patriarchy around women as objects, kind of unpacking, what have you internalized about that word? What is your relationship to that word?

Dr. Solomon (11:10):
And I think very often what we come to is a sense that it’s a question like, Do you find me sexy? And the idea that our value and our desirability around our sexuality is determined in the gaze of another, and that, that creates the conditions then for sex as a performance.

Dr. Solomon (11:31):
And then it kind of cuts us off from that experience of being sexual. Right? Of this idea that my sexuality is mine to determine and mine to construct and mine to explore. And in fact we can’t even get to, I don’t know how we could even be intimate with another unless we can really feel that sense of ownership, and that it has to be done with self compassion because so often we’ve internalized messages, especially around our bodies that are really, really harsh. You know, that our bodies, we have such narrow ideas in our culture of who gets to be proceed as desirable and who gets to decide what is and isn’t desirable. And so it has to be self compassion that we come back to again and again about our bodies as delicious and whole as they are, and that, that has to really guide this process.

Dr. Solomon (12:31):
I think one of the things, I had this wonderful team of graduate students and undergraduate students that was with me as we worked on this book. And I was really struck by how much we as a community were really moving through our own grief and anger and sadness as we would take a look at these different aspects of sexuality, and just how unfortunate it is that our sexuality has to oftentimes be like a reclamation, rather than something that we kind of grow up with ease and flow right from the get go.

Chris Rose (13:02):
Yeah. I was talking to a friend recently about intergenerational trauma, and when we were looking at the history of sexuality, of sexual pleasure, let alone bodies, how can we expect ourselves to be born with agency, with access to pleasure, let alone access to ecstasy of these expanded states we seek?

Chris Rose (13:25):
So this self-compassion is also this cultural compassion of, “Wow, this is a really new conversation about autonomy, about different relations between men and women, between people of all sexualities, allowing sexual expression to even be part of the cultural conversation, is all really new.” And when we bring compassion to this conversation, it gives us much more space.

Dr. Solomon (13:52):
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then that really big wide lens of like the big historical lens, it’s a bridge, right? To go from that big historical lens to me and my bedroom, but that is so important because it does shape it and it’s a reminder again that I didn’t ask for all of this cultural loading.

Dr. Solomon (14:12):
I carry stuff that really, really isn’t mine. It’s been transmitted again and again and again and it lives in me now and it’s mine to massage, transform shed, but it has to start from that place of like, “Okay, I didn’t ask for this.”

Chris Rose (14:29):
Thank you for that. Can we go back to this piece about shifting from performative sex into more of an experiential sex, a sex that you can show up for with your whole being? You do such a beautiful job shifting this language from, “You are sexy, to you’re sexy,” a sexy you can claim as your own.

Chris Rose (14:53):
Can you talk a little bit about why that process is so important in one’s life, and what are the after effects, like how does going on this journey change and transform other arenas of our life? What is that connection?

Dr. Solomon (15:11):
We had a book event on Saturday and there was a gal in line and she came up with her book to have me sign it. And she wanted me to sign it for her daughter who’s 24. And she said, “My daughter is just so lost right now. She’s having such a hard time deciding and getting clear on any aspect of her life, and I hope this book serves her.”

Dr. Solomon (15:34):
And it was like this light bulb moment for me where I was like, “Oh, I get it. No, this book is about sex, but it’s also about holding onto all of the parts of who we are as people, and the more we can do that, feel kind of whole on the inside and that all that we are in communication with all the aspects of ourselves, that just helps us understand what’s a yes, and what’s a no.”

Dr. Solomon (16:00):
What am I choosing from the energy of love? I’m choosing this because I want this. I’m choosing this because it speaks to me. I’m choosing this because I’m curious about it versus those choices we make from the energy of fear. I’m choosing this because I feel like I should. I’m choosing this because I’m scared if I don’t do it now, it’s never going to happen again.

Dr. Solomon (16:22):
And I think so often those of us who’ve been socialized in the feminine, everybody else’s voices get really loud. Right? And so I think we can realize how much we’re driven by that energy of fear. Like, “I really should. I really should go to the gym. I really should have sex with my partner. I really should, say yes to this new job or whatever.”

Dr. Solomon (16:44):
And that, that’s different than pausing and noticing the different pulls that are happening on the inside. And so to be able to bring that distinction of fear versus love into the sexual arena is also really important. Because, I think, when we talk about these generations of conditioning, that sex for women is a duty. It is a duty that we perform.

Dr. Solomon (17:18):
And then now in the era and this moment in time, I think with so much of there certainly are beautifully feminist produced erotica that I know you talk about and celebrate and support, but a lot of what we see in pornography kind of replicates that, right? It’s sex as a performance for somebody else. But then how do we come back to, “Okay, what are the conditions where I would want to choose a sexual experience, and how would I know?”

Dr. Solomon (17:49):
We even have, if I’m giving a workshop or speaking to people, especially who are dating and looking for intimate partnership, they will say, “Is it okay to have sex on the first date or how long do I wait to have sex,” as if I could give them any answer to that. But it makes sense. It makes sense that’s posed as a question, because it’s predicated upon this idea that somebody else needs to tell me, because it’s really, really radical to consider that I might figure out what are the conditions.

Dr. Solomon (18:16):
That’s a mind shift to be like, “I can’t ever ask somebody else when should you have sex, because I own my sexuality and I have to figure out for myself what are the conditions in which I want to open myself to a partner in that way?”

Chris Rose (18:32):
Yes. Do you think that impulse to want to be on script, to want to be normal, to know how other people are doing it and do it that way, has to do with sexuality’s connection to kinship and belonging?

Chris Rose (18:48):
What is this piece of us that, we each kind of have our internal sexual landscape and yet we want to fit in and belong, and not, there’s part of sexual shame tells us, “If they know what I truly want, they won’t love me anymore.” Where does that voice come from?

Dr. Solomon (19:09):
Yeah. I think it is. Right. There’s something and a fear that somehow I am different and that’s scary, right? That I need someone to give me the rules and the parameters and the boundaries, because I’m kind of afraid of how unruly my sexuality might be if it was unleashed. So just please tell me where the guardrails are.

Dr. Solomon (19:34):
I think it’s some of both of that, right? And I think that’s the nature of slut-shaming isn’t it? This idea that we would otherwise marginalize and silence women especially, who are perceived as just outside of the bounds, and that to be outside of the bounds is to risk being put off to one side and shunned. I think it’s maybe some of both.

Dr. Solomon (20:04):
The external piece is, “I need to know what the lines are because I don’t want you guys to exclude me.” And then the interior piece, “Maybe, I usually know what the lines are, because if I really let myself go here, I may start to live without any lines.” Like a fear of if I don’t manage my own sexual appetite, it might be really, really unruly.

Chris Rose (20:23):
And what do you say to that fear? Because we do hear this of, “If I trust my pleasure, if I go towards pleasure, if I let pleasure be my measure, then I’ll become an out of the control hedonist and nothing else will matter.” And yet you and I both know as professionals, as mothers, there is a way to integrate this and actually allow sexuality to become fuel for the rest of our lives and not a distraction. How do we play that game?

Dr. Solomon (20:50):
Right. My gosh, I just had a conversation recently with a woman who is really struggling in her intimate partnership. She was just really bored and checked out of their erotic connection. And in our conversation she flashed on this memory that she hadn’t thought about in years, of being 17 with her boyfriend at the time, in a sexual experience and just lost in her pleasure. And she squirted with her orgasm and he shamed her. And maybe he shamed her because he’s a really, gnarly dude. But maybe he shamed her because he had really inadequate sex education, and was very confused about what was happening.

Dr. Solomon (21:34):
But regardless, his kind of freak out gave her the message that, “Your sexuality, if it is not tamed is going to freak everybody out.” So it was something that she had just really put away. She hadn’t consciously thought about that, but it was a piece of her that she had locked down, maybe in part because of, but likely in part because of that memory of just, “If I really let myself go, the other person is going to be grossed out or disturbed.”

Dr. Solomon (22:06):
And so I think sometimes it starts there, right, with our early like those conversations we might have with our 16, 17, 18 year old selves or our 12 year old selves, whatever. Like, kind of going back to the beginning of how did I relate to my early experiences of my sexuality? How did the people around me relate to that? Was I told that it was really dangerous?

Dr. Solomon (22:33):
Because you’re right, that as we move into adulthood, it is for us to cultivate and honor because it does become fuel, and the erotic is our life force and it’s our creativity. It’s our aliveness and so there is a shift from fearing it to trusting it

Chris Rose (22:59):
And this sense of trust, internal trust, trusting our felt senses is something we develop over time with practice. What are some of your favorite practices that you do either with clients or that you suggest in your courses to help us develop internal felt sense and a trust of our felt sense.?

Dr. Solomon (23:24):
Well, one practice I think, is noticing our stress level and what is blocking self care. I think that it’s really easy to go kind of full tilt all the time in letting ourselves get exhausted and depleted and the tie between our sexual desire and stress is really strong. Right? For many of us, stress acts as a break.

Dr. Solomon (23:56):
If we think about the sort of Emily Nagoski accelerator and brake model for sexual desire and our stress level is going to act as a break. And it may be that we have stories in our head that, “That’s okay, it’s okay to put sex in the back burner because we must be accomplishing and doing, and one more this and one more that, and one more hour.” And I think there is certainly a reality to that, that we live in time of deep income inequality, and many of us are needing to work extreme hours in order to ensure that we are taking care of our needs and our family’s needs. But just noticing, what are the ways that we may be adding to that and kind of going above and beyond being driven by this sense that like our work is our worth.

Dr. Solomon (24:50):
I know that I’m certainly guilty of getting into this, of kind of compromising and sacrificing the things that I know nourish me. Exercise and sleep and good food and spending time on all of those things are what creates the conditions for me to feel like I have access and permission to also support my sexuality and my erotic health and connection.

Dr. Solomon (25:18):
So that’s some of those, like really basic foundational things that we may not think affect us in the bedroom, but I think they really, really do.

Chris Rose (25:24):
And then I always encourage, if we notice the after effect, the after glow of even something as simple as a slightly prolonged shower, a walk with your partner to talk things out. If we notice and install as we’ve been talking about the effects of this, and then thank ourselves, have an internal sense of gratitude of, “I’m really grateful to have taken that time and I’m noticing the effects,” it kind of self motivates further practice.

Dr. Solomon (25:57):
I was just working with the couple on this recently where she really was asking for more connection with her partner as a way of helping them move into an erotic space. And I think that her partner was hearing her saying that he had to be quote unquote, like a good boy in order to kind of earn access to her, and it became this real rift in their relationship.

Dr. Solomon (26:23):
And I think that what she was really trying to say is, “This is how I nourish connection with you, and connection with myself and so let’s work together to create the conditions where my erotic self can come forward more.” It’s not like, “You need to earn access to me.” It really is like, “This is what I know to be true about my connection to my desire, and will you come with me and support this with me?”

Dr. Solomon (26:48):
Because you’re saying like that walk together is about just celebrating like, “Okay, this is what we can do to support us, to support connection,” that then for some of us, it’s the connection that then opens the door to the erotic.

Chris Rose (27:07):
That’s such a beautiful story too of how by developing a more internal sense of our sexuality, we have so much more to bring to potential partners, to our longterm relationships. That Venn diagram gets so much richer and brighter as we go inside and discover what’s there.

Chris Rose (27:27):
Will you say one thing more about, we’ve, a few times in this conversation, both of us are saying, when you drop inside, when you go inside, scan inside, what are we feeling for there? How would you guide someone who’s new to this? What am I doing when I am feeling inside?

Dr. Solomon (27:50):
It is the stepping away and turning attention inward and quieting down the thoughts. So it’s, I often start with just some deep breaths, in through my nose and out through my mouth and a scan of sort of, I go top to bottom, sort of like top to bottom. Where am I holding tension?

Dr. Solomon (28:15):
And just getting into those five senses and quieting down the thoughts, what the Buddhist would call, sort of like that monkey brain, right, where we’re kind of scrolling from this to this, to this, to this and slowing that process down. Because when we do that we notice that we are having thoughts, versus we are the thoughts. And then it sometimes is, especially around this no, the way that I feel when there’s a no, I’m not saying is I feel it in my gut.

Dr. Solomon (28:49):
But different people may hold their unspoken no in different places. It may be in their chest, like a tightness in the chest. For me, it feels like a twist kind of in my gut, and it’s sort of then, sometimes asking, “Okay, so hello twist in the gut. What are you holding? What do you want me to know?” Kind of asking our body, like I think we imagine that we are these top-down creatures that our thoughts drive the whole thing, and that checking in that body scan, that paying attention to where the tension is, is going from the body wisdom up.

Dr. Solomon (29:27):
And then we’re asking, “What is this tightness in my chest telling me? What does it want to say?” So it’s kind of that listening from the more base level of the body and then attending to that, and allowing that to be a source of information versus the idea that we have to think our way through a decision or a challenge.

Chris Rose (29:54):
Thank you so much. That was really beautiful. And it reminds us that our feelings, we can feel the feelings of our feelings. And so when a no is present, what does that feel like, versus a yes? We can do so much of this through fantasy alone, engaging the imagination and then checking in the body, or in small moments out in the world as we notice we gain literacy. And these voices get louder, I think, is one thing people need to hear because sometimes it’s like, “well I don’t feel anything.”

Chris Rose (30:24):
And it’s a process. It’s a practice to trust these voices, to hear them. And as you said, to quiet the external noise so we can hear. And what would you say to those who, when we’re choosing to focus on our own experience, instead of finding pleasure or curiosity, even we start finding numbness or sadness or grief welling up? How do we ride that edge of allowing these feelings, feeling the feelings, but also kind of keeping ourselves regulated?

Dr. Solomon (31:02):
Right, right, right. I had a message a couple of months ago from a woman who had survived a sexual trauma in her childhood. And she shared a story with me that was just so sacred, and so precious for her to let me know about, that she had gone through a process of prosecuting her abuser. And she said that the day of the sentencing she came home and she masturbated and she wept.

Dr. Solomon (31:32):
And it was a really, really powerfully healing experience for her. It brings tears to my eyes as I even say it out loud to you right now. And that, we do have these stories I think of which emotions we’re allowed to pair with pleasure. And for her, that was such a moment of reclamation and healing, right, was to pair her own experience of bringing herself pleasure, and reminding herself that trauma doesn’t break us.

Dr. Solomon (32:00):
It may disconnect us. It doesn’t break us, and that she could have pleasure and sadness and grief all in the same place and that, that wouldn’t mean that that was all going to be together in that space forever. But in that moment it was.

Chris Rose (32:16):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Solomon (32:17):
And so I think it is right that we want to be mindful, to think about a bell shaped curve and be in some sort of sweet space. Right? And that we can give ourselves permission that if there’s a lot coming up for me, I can slow down, I can pause, I can stop. But I can also just kind of stay present to it and trust that emotions have a timestamp, right? They are like waves. They will rise and they will fall.

Dr. Solomon (32:45):
And that when there’s trauma, I think one of the important skills that survivors of trauma learn is when am I present, when am I absent. Right? Sort of dissociation. What does the dissociation feel like to me? And, knowing how to bring ourselves back to a place of safety when we feel ourselves beginning to dissociate.

Dr. Solomon (33:12):
And so that would be, I think, like we talk about that in the book, that allowing ourselves to pause a sexual experience, whether it’s by ourselves or with a partner, as we notice ourselves dissociating because dissociation is a coping tool. It was at some point in time an incredibly important coping tool.

Dr. Solomon (33:34):
And that in our healing, what we can say to ourselves is, “Sweet darling, love me. I feel you slipping away and you don’t need to. I can make you safe in this moment.” Right. So treating that dissociation as that part of us, that’s saying, “It’s too much for me.”

Dr. Solomon (33:52):
Okay. So then we can stop. Then we stop for now. And that’s okay. And I hear you that I think for those of us who are doing a bit more of the self help and distant healing through books, through courses, I think we do need to be talking about trauma and being aware that there’s always always a space for therapy, right? Like, in face to face, old school organic therapy, psychotherapy with a clinician who’s trained to support healing trauma.

Dr. Solomon (34:23):
So I think both those things, I think that therapy on its own, probably isn’t enough for trauma recovery. I think all these different pieces, there’s lots of elements, and that survivors of trauma can really make use of on their journeys.

Dr. Solomon (34:39):
And so we don’t have to say that it’s only one way or the other, but I hear you that I try to be really thoughtful also when I’m in these conversations or writing a self help book that it’s different than therapy.

Chris Rose (34:50):
Yeah. Thank you for that. The book is full of self-reflections and practices and ways of engaging with ourselves. To discover who we are as sexual beings, what is one question you want everyone or you invite everyone to pause and ask of themselves?

Dr. Solomon (35:13):
Well, one that I really like is, “What is the no that I am needing to say, that I haven’t said?” Like what is, I think especially for those of us, we’ve been talking a lot about those who’ve been socialized in the feminine, where we feel driven by sort of obligation and responsibility, and what is the quiet no, that is kind of hanging out in the corner that is I’m asking for my attention.

Dr. Solomon (35:41):
That’s one question, I think that can be just an important way of asking it, kinda scanning on the inside, and where is a place where maybe I’m letting my boundary be a bit looser, that is good for my health and is good for the health of whatever the relationship, and how might there be a no that would would serve everybody a bit better?

Chris Rose (36:01):
Your book is such a beautiful guide in that discernment process and is really, I think a rich practice guide. There’s so much within these pages, so you can engage with the ideas, but then also take the time, drop into your own life, and engage these ideas with your own body and see what emerges for you.

Chris Rose (36:22):
So thank you for putting together this resource guide. It is a really beautiful offering. Thank you so much for your work. Thank you so much for your work.

Dr. Solomon (36:30):
Thank you so much. Thank you for making the space that you make, to allow these conversations to happen. I think it’s so, so, so important. And a podcast is just such a nice way to be able to listen in, gain some knowledge in a way that’s really nonthreatening and safe. So thank you for the work that you do.

Chris Rose (36:49):
One image I love is couples will listen to the same episode, while walking through the city streets together. So they have kind of the same audio scape and can exchange knowing glances or send each other notes as they listen to episodes. And this is all about having the conversation. So whether you’re reading the book, engaging in the podcast or engaging in our online courses, this conversation happens over time.

Chris Rose (37:14):
Look in the show notes page, we have a special offer. If you buy Dr. Solomon’s new book and send us a quick screenshot, we will send you a coupon code for the online course of your choice, so you can engage these practices in our online practice community together with other pleasure seekers from all around the world.

Chris Rose (37:33):
Thank you so much, Dr. Solomon, for joining us on Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics.

Dr. Solomon (37:38):
Thank you for having me.

Chris Rose (37:39):
Check the show notes page for more from Dr. Solomon, and we will have another episode for you next week on Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. Cheers.

How To Be More Romantic

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Want more romance? Want your partner to be more romantic? Want to be more romantic and be able to express your love? Let’s start with thinking about what being romantic even means! Beyond the package deal scripts of Valentine’s Day style romance, what does it mean to be more romantic? How can we approach romance with a fresh lens that reveals the heart of romance that so many of us crave?

On this episode of Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics, Chris and Charlotte Rose bring their irreverent wit and wisdom to the perennial topic of romance to try and understand: what is at the heart of romance, and how can we all learn to be way more romantic?

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Transcript for Podcast Episode #365: How To Be More Romantic

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose: 00:00 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:05 I am Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:06 We are the Pleasure Mechanics and on this podcast, we have honest, heartful, soulful, and explicit conversations about sex, love, relationships, pleasure and joy. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com where you will find our complete podcast archive and visit us at pleasuremechanics.com/free to enroll in our free online course and find ways to dive deeper with us right away. That’s pleasuremechanics.com/free. We are a 100% community-supported erotic education. So if you love what we do, show us the love at pleasuremechanics.com/love.

Chris Rose: 00:52 All right, we’re going to show you the love on today’s episode. We’re talking about romance. Romance. We are approaching Valentine’s Day. The shops are full of red foil hearts and chocolates galore and red rose farms are going crazy snipping those roses that are ecologically disastrous. So, what do we do with romance? What role does romance play in our busy modern lives? In our lives burdened with eco grief and climate change? What about the romance? What role does romance play and what is romance?

Chris Rose: 01:32 Someone the other day referred to me as a highly romantic person and it took me aback for a second because I do not subscribe to the scripts of romance. I said hell no to the package deal of romance when I was a child. But when I looked at it, I was like, yes, I actually am very romantic. If you look at romance anew that’s what we would like to do today. And I think people have so much pressure around wanting and needing to be romantic, but how do we unpack that and make it simpler and doable and feel fun? I think romance now has this reality show hyper real version of it, the package deal of red roses and champagne and candle lit dinners and fancy clothes and this heteronormative cisgender couple eye gazing across the table. The bachelorette version of romance.

Chris Rose: 02:33 And that is supposed to speak to this huge part of the human soul and it does not. And so we feel this emptiness, this saccharin quality to romance, because it has been commodified, and packaged and normalized. And what we want to do in this conversation, is go to the heart of romance. What is romance? If we look at it anew and honor it for some force that we can play with in our lives every day of the year. So, not just for Valentine’s day, but we’re hoping that this episode we’re recording in the first week of February, hoping it catches you in time to make this holiday a little more meaningful for you, and give you the opportunity to put some of this conversation into practice for this holiday.

Chris Rose: 03:24 Whether or not you’re in a “romantic” relationship, whether or not you’re in a sexual partnership, you can play with the force of romance. So what is romance? So, romance to me is very much this process of creating a moment or an event for a beloved, for someone else on purpose to be savored, to be cherished, to be shared, just out of this gesture of love and adoration and wanting to give pleasure to another.

Charlotte Rose: 04:02 So, what I hear you saying is generating a moment or an experience of pleasure on purpose.

Chris Rose: 04:10 For another.

Charlotte Rose: 04:11 For another. Boy you could probably generate, can you generate a romantic moment for yourself?

Chris Rose: 04:15 Well, I think this is something to be explored because I think that’s a different force. I think there’s something about romance that is interpersonal. It can be communal, it could be outside of the dyad of what we traditionally think is romantic relationships. But the thrill of a romantic moment for me, is pleasure on purpose that comes out of this intention of serving and loving and cherishing you. So, it’s a thing that is received and generated and shared. I don’t know. I guess if we get esoteric, I think you could share a romantic moment with the universe as a whole. But I think through this conversation we should really think of it as something we do on purpose for each other.

Chris Rose: 05:03 Because seeking your own pleasure is one thing. Being handed a pleasure, like on a silver platter, here darling, I created this just for you. Whether that’s a gift, and we’ll get into talking about how romance can show up. But a gift, an experience, an event, a sensual experience, a word, like something that you receive from someone else to delight, thrill, surprise, and please you. I think that is worth exploring, and I am willing to call that romance. And as always we turn to the dictionary to look at what they say about romance. And it was actually less prescriptive. They didn’t have a picture of the bachelorette. What it talked about was the mystery and thrill of love. The mystery and thrill and suspense of love. So, how does that play in? So, let’s really operationalize romance so we can do it more.

Chris Rose: 06:03 Because I think what I’m hearing from people, is in our eco grief, in these moments of high stress, we’re craving something from one another, and it’s something we can generate for each other on purpose. So, this is a bit of a call to arms. Let’s all get more romantic with each other and see what happens if we start delighting, thrilling and surprising one another with pleasure on purpose.

Charlotte Rose: 06:29 Beautiful. Because also part of creating romantic moments or experiences is about creating time that is outside of our normal every day life. It’s about taking us out of the ordinary, and hopefully in our life there are many moments of caretaking and loving things that we do for our partners, that show we are in this together and we are caring for one another. But romance has a different element. It takes us beyond that. It is a special generated experience.

Chris Rose: 07:02 So, I think that’s really important. This baseline pleasure in your relationship, the baseline give and take of love and caretaking and nourishment that we hope you fold into all relationships. And then romance comes in to create peak moments within that, to create spikes, to create memorable moments of intensity, of thrill, of delight, of mystery. And in naming that we want to go for peak experiences. We don’t mean it has to be really big.

Chris Rose: 07:36 You don’t have to go for a sky riding event. You don’t have to hire a hot air balloon. It can be really simple. It can be cheap or free. It has to be personal. It has to be curated for the intended object of this romantic gesture. And that’s where the magic is. The more specific you get, the more you are generating this romantic act, gesture, gift out of your exquisite attention. Knowing what will bring your beloved pleasure on their terms. Lavishing, surprising and delighting has to be really specific or it doesn’t land.

Charlotte Rose: 08:22 So, we’re talking about personalization here. We’re talking about you paying attention to your lover over time, over the years, over the months, to really listen for and remember what they like, what they love, what delights them, and taking notes. Have a Google document, do what you need to do to register that and to prime yourself to pay attention for this information, because this is where the thoughtfulness comes in. When you’re able to specifically respond to their pleasures and delights. There’s something so meaningful about that. You may have experienced this in your life, where you’ve been given a gift that just feels so right, that you have been seen, you’ve been paid attention to, and someone notices who you are and what you are about in the world and honors you with a gift that is just right, and that feels so good.

Chris Rose: 09:18 So yeah, personalization matters a lot. And we’re about to talk about five love languages, and then how to get even more personal beyond that, how to get really unique with our romance. But there’s also something that has to be named here, where romance is really about pleasure, sensuality and it has to stay in that realm. You can’t buy someone a vacuum cleaner and expect it to be romantic because it’s not in that pleasurable sensual realm. It’s functional, it’s utilitarian. Perhaps there are some people that would romanticize a vacuum cleaner. But how do we think about this, of staying in that realm of the sensual, the pleasurable?

Charlotte Rose: 09:58 Yes, so many of the examples that are traditional tropes of romance, are about opening the senses, the flowers, the chocolate, the champagne. There is a sensory activation that invites us into the realm of pleasure and connection and presence and paying attention to one another. Because we’re slowing down enough to savour a sense, which then brings us into the present moment so we can be more available to one another.

Chris Rose: 10:28 And the luxury helps there. Luxury beckons us to slow down, which is why the box of truffles, each one is individually wrapped or the champagne you want to sip. So, luxury is one way to slow down and signal that this is meant to be savored. But we can also do that just intentionally, like bringing someone to a bench in your favorite park because the trees are in full bloom, and then you bring out a thermos of their favorite coffee that you have brewed just to their liking. That is not luxurious, but it can be deeply romantic, and we can slow down and savor these things on purpose. Yeah. I just keep wanting to bring us back from romance and creating something special means spending more money, because that is not always the ticket.

Charlotte Rose: 11:21 Totally. I remember one moment where there was a gorgeous tree in bloom, and you said, “Come with me, I have to show you something.” And we went out of our door and we stood under a tree that its petals were all falling from the sky. And it was an exquisite and very romantic and epic sensual moment that definitely cost nothing, but was a beauty and a pleasure that you wanted to share, and created and generated an experience around. When we allow and intentionally use the senses and the sensual to invite us into a state that is not ordinary, we will allow ourselves to go deeper into enjoying and experiencing the moment together.

Chris Rose: 12:09 And this is when we talked about savoring as a practice. When we talk about installing the good as a practice, getting better at pleasure, learning how to experience pleasure, developing our capacity for pleasure, and also for emotional presence and our capacity for feeling, feeling emotions, and feeling physical states. We practice day to day for these peak moments. So, if you have that feast of a lifetime laid out before you, if your partner has gone to great lengths to create this experience for you, we have to then be able to show up for that joyfully. What helps to show up for it joyfully and not let these moments fall flat, are when these moments are curated specifically to our tastes.

Chris Rose: 13:00 So, we are not taking someone who is afraid of heights on a hot air balloon ride. It really is easier to show up for romantic gestures that are curated just for you. So I think it’s important to learn how to do that. And I want to give you a few examples using Gary Chapman’s, The Five Love Languages. We’ll have links in the show notes page if this is not familiar to you. And this is a useful framework to think about five different ways we can show up and love one another, but it’s not limiting. Let’s go beyond this. Let’s find all new love languages. Let’s make fusions. It’s all about figuring out how you can show up in this moment for the person you want to shine some love on, on purpose, and then doing it a little bit bigger and brighter.

Chris Rose: 13:52 And creating these extraordinary moments also then create this arc. We have talked about micro pleasures, so the 62nd pleasure points throughout your day. We also need to create these macro pleasures, peak erotic experiences, peak pleasure experiences, peak emotional experiences throughout our year. And we do this and other realms with holidays, birthdays, there are ways we create moments to celebrate, look forward to, remember and cherish the memories of, to anchor our lived experience into these peak moments. How do we do this in our sexual lives, our romantic lives? How do we create these things that it’s like, Oh, I remember how loved I felt in that moment.

Chris Rose: 14:42 So, how do we do this? We start paying more and more attention to one another. One of the ways we pay attention is to learn love languages. So this is Gary Chapman. He’s a Christian. God bless him. But he has this very lasting framework, of the five love languages, how people give and receive love best. So, the five love languages being gifts, that’s the obvious one. Buy something and stick a bow on it. Quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation and…

Charlotte Rose: 15:22 Touch.

Chris Rose: 15:23 How did I forget that? And touch and physical connection. So, thinking of those five categories, what are romantic gestures you could do once you know how your partner best receives it? Some people love getting gifts, and the perfectly curated gift that hits their pleasure point makes them feel incredibly loved. For other people that falls flat. So let’s get beyond gifts. What’s a romantic gesture in acts of service because the day to day love language of acts of service is, I picked up the dry cleaning without you having to ask. I replaced the milk. I’m bringing you a warm blanket on a cold day. All of those ways we show up and make someone else’s life easier by shouldering a little bit of the burden.

Chris Rose: 16:12 How do we amplify that? What is an act of service that feels romantic and thrilling? But in acts of service romantic gesture might be, let me take you out to dinner. Meanwhile, I have hired someone to come and do a deep clean of our house. And when you come home you are thrilled and surprised by that. Or we’re going away for the weekend and when we come home, my landscaping friend has planted whole new beds of flowers for this season, and I’m going to thrill you with that. It’s about going for that, ah, moment, like you did this for me? How do you get that? When someone wants acts of service.

Chris Rose: 16:54 Words of affirmation. We have to go beyond, love you baby, have a good day. And even, wow, you look really beautiful today. How do we go beyond that? Poetry, song, love letters. Taking ink to paper is one of the most romantic things you can do in the digital age. And if your lover’s love language is words of affirmation, and you are not a writer, go to the library there’s all sorts of books. Or fricking Google, like best love letters of all time. And steal classic love letters and say, when I saw this I thought of you. And then just copy it in your own handwriting, sign your name, and it will count like it’s the doing of the thing and we get better over time with this.

Charlotte Rose: 17:47 And quality time is of course about spending time together, that that is what is most important. Having experiences together hopefully with as little distraction as possible. That creates the most meaningful feeling of being loved.

Chris Rose: 18:04 And so how do you amplify that? If you’re a couple that spends a lot of time together. It’s going beyond the ordinary and perhaps this is where anchoring it into a shared experience, an event where you are having to learn a new skill together. Something like a cooking class, would be really good here because it forces you to not only spend that time together but deeply engage during that time. And quality time people love that stuff. And then touch. If touch is your love language and you cuddle every night. How do you amplify that? How do you make that thrilling? Well, we have a lot to say about that realm. But this is where something like an erotic massage, where you are carving out an entire hour or two to pamper someone with an entire erotic experience start to finish. So it goes beyond the cuddles and it’s like, I am inviting you into this experience. Come with me baby. I want to pamper you soulfully.

Chris Rose: 19:06 So, how do we amplify all of this? And then how do we get beyond these constructs of the five love languages, and just deeply pay attention to our partner at this moment in their life, and at least once a day, ask yourself, how can I generate pleasure for my beloved? How could I make their life a little more thrilling, joyful, pleasurable, erotic, sexy, whatever realm you want to take it in. What do they need right now? That goes beyond the day to day love and caretaking that is the lifeblood of a relationship. All of that is super important. How do we create moments of peak pleasures? How do we elevate it and amplify it for one another? And when I say peak, peak can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, I’m talking about amplifying it. And just like it’s important to know how to personalize. So, what the pleasure is, what the gesture is, what the amplifier is, is also important. Is that intensity, is that surprise, is that thrill, is that novelty.

Charlotte Rose: 20:13 Is that drama. There is this other element that we’re adding in that creates the non-ordinary state and a not ordinary experience. And it is a little extra, that adds to the epicness, adds to the interest and intrigue. And different people will be most excited about different elements here. Some will really love surprise or mystery. Others will really go for thrill and drama. Depends on your relationship and your propensities, but it’s something to think about. That it’s one element that really makes something different than regular life. So play with that element and see what you are longing for, and what your partner may be longing for, and use this knowledge to choose how to amplify the experience together.

Chris Rose: 21:01 Right. You can create peak experiences through duration, intensity, surprise, novelty. There’s all sorts of ways to create peak experiences. So, in the personalization, there’s these factors of, what you’re offering, what is the romantic gesture, and how do you amplify it in a way that will land and be received? So, this is all about really creating a very specific gift that you are offering. And that’s what makes it romantic because it is for you. Birthday parties are not romantic because they are group celebration that’s for everyone. So, even if one person is the center of attention, that entire experience is not just for you. There is something about romance that puts your desires, your pleasures, your thrill, your enjoyment at the center. And then says, let me savor this with you.

Chris Rose: 22:00 It’s delicious. And I think that we could all use more of it in our lives. It doesn’t just have to be within a sexual, romantic relationship. You can be more passionate and romantic with your friends and find ways to amplify pleasure with and for each other. That is a romantic vision I can get behind. All right. We will see you next week, on Valentine’s day, for another episode of Speaking of Sex. If you are looking for ways to amplify your ability to show up with touch, with your hands, with the erotic experience, we invite you into our mastery courses.

Chris Rose: 22:41 You can find them all at pleasuremechanics.com. Use the code, Speaking of Sex for 20% off the online course of your choice. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com we love hearing from you. We will be featuring our first voice memo from a listener on an upcoming episode. If you have something you want to say about Pleasure Mechanics, how our ideas have touched your life, a question you want us to wrestle with on a future episode, record us a voice memo on the device of your choice. They all have voice memo apps now, and email that over to us at chris at pleasuremechanics.com or charlotte @ pleasuremechanics.com. Share your beautiful voices with us. Let us know how this work is touching you. What’s going on for you? We love to hear from you. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 23:33 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 23:34 We are the Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 23:36 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Finding New Pleasure Pathways

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We all develop pleasure ruts – our most reliable pathways to pleasure, arousal and orgasm. How do we break out of ruts and find new pleasure pathways? How can we encourage exploration in our relationships – without losing any of the reliable standbys that we might depend on for accessing pleasure?

This is an encore presentation of Episode #127: New Paths To Pleasure: Here’s How

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Podcast Transcript:

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose: 00:01 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris from pleasuremechanics.com and on this podcast we have honest, soulful, explicit conversations about all arenas of human sexuality. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com to explore our resources. A great place to get started is pleasuremechanics.com/free. That will get you enrolled in our free online course and you can become part of our community of pleasure seekers all around the world.

Chris Rose: 00:37 On today’s episode we are taking a little time travel back into our archives. I chose this episode out of our archives because we’ve been in this conversation over the past few weeks about savoring pleasure, finding micro pleasures within our days. This episode is all about shaking ourselves out of ruts. How do we interrupt the patterns, the operating systems of our pleasures, that were laid down when we were perhaps children, things that have become habituated and even have become invisible to us that might be really limiting our pleasure?

Chris Rose: 01:13 I thought this was a great conversation to encore. We hope you enjoy it. We will be back with you next week with another episode of Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics. Don’t forget to subscribe on the podcast feed of your choice. That way you will also be able to explore our archives. If you love the show, be sure to leave us a rating on the podcast app of your choice. It really helps other folks find the show and join the conversation. Here is an encore presentation of episode 127 originally aired in 2015 where Charlotte and I discuss laying new paths to pleasure. Cheers.

Charlotte Rose: 01:55 Hello and welcome to Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 02:00 I’m Chris. We are The Pleasure Mechanics and in this podcast we offer our expert advice so you can have a stunningly pleasurable sex life. You can submit questions for future episodes by heading over to pleasuremechanics.com and hitting the Ask Us Anything button. While you’re there, get on our newsletter for a free weekly dose of erotic inspiration delivered straight to your inbox. When you’re ready to master new erotic skills, check out our online courses designed to help you master everything from couples massage, who wants a foot massage, to erotic spanking and so much more. Use the code speaking of sex for 20% off the online course of your choice. On this episode we’re going to be talking about how to break out of routines and ruts to expand your arousal. Charlotte’s going to get us started by reading a question submitted by a listener.

Charlotte Rose: 02:59 He writes, “Hi there. I recently discovered the podcast and hope you might be able to help me on an issue. My wife really only orgasms when her legs are locked tight together. There have been a couple of exceptions where she has orgasms while straddling me and using a toy. I’d like for her to be able to orgasm with legs spread to allow for a variety of positions. I have read using the wonderful world of Google… Sarcastic he says in brackets… That this would just take practice. Supposedly leg locking was what she learned at a young age. I’d like to know if practice would really affect this. I don’t want to encourage her to change something that can’t be changed. I’d hate for her to feel like she’s doing something wrong. Do you have any guidance or could perhaps point me in a direction for reliable information. Thank you so much.”

Charlotte Rose: 03:52 We totally get that the wonderful world of Google can lead you all sorts of strange places and this is partly why we do what we do and we want to offer you free sex advice week after week.

Chris Rose: 04:07 We’re the reliable information.

Charlotte Rose: 04:07 Yeah, we want to be a reliable source of information.

Chris Rose: 04:10 That said, when we don’t know something, I will point you in the right direction for trusted resources when it’s beyond our scope of experience. For example, medical issues I tend to pass on. For this kind of thing, here we are, doing what we do. There’s a question within this question and we’ll address both. This idea of locking your legs together to orgasm is actually quite common. A lot of women have that pattern around their orgasms. The question that is relevant for all of us is, can you train your body to build arousal and have orgasms in a variety of positions? Can you expand the possibilities beyond your trusted routine towards orgasm? The great news is yes. Without giving anything up, you can unlock new pathways to pleasure. That’s what we’re going to talk about, is how to break out of your ruts and expand your arousal repertoire. I love that word, repertoire.

Charlotte Rose: 05:15 It’s true that the way that we start masturbating as kids often does stay. It’s sort of incredible. If you reflect on your own style of masturbation and notice if you are doing what you have been doing for many, many years, many of our foundational masturbation practices are set up from a young age and often that wants to be quick and quiet and we want to be done before we get caught. This pattern really stays for many of us for decades. For all of us, this is a great subject to look at, to reflect on and we can all benefit from shaking up our masturbation routine even if it’s going well for you.

Chris Rose: 05:59 It doesn’t even affect just your masturbation as an adult. It affects the way you want to be stimulated by your partner as an adult and how you reach orgasms as an adult. Early childhood masturbation patterns affect your entire sex life. This is why it’s so important to work on sex positive parenting and dialogues about masturbation because so many of us started masturbating under really dire circumstances. The fear of discovery, the shame of it, not having freedom to express yourself.

Chris Rose: 06:31 I’ve even met women who started masturbating with the plastic nose of a specific teddy bear that they would put between their legs and rub their clitoris with. They are still as adults, on the quest of finding that same feeling so they buy stuffed animals with different plastic parts to masturbate with, or people who only masturbate lying face down legs tightly clenched around a pillow and muffling their sound into another pillow. This is the only way they can experience pleasure with our partner as well. They end up having a sex life totally from behind, smothering their pleasure into a pillow.

Chris Rose: 07:10 First of all, reflect on your patterns. What patterns in your sex life have been established by early childhood masturbation practices? Now on a bigger level, think about your routines and patterns in general. The biggest question here is how can we slowly but surely expand our arousal patterns so we can feel pleasure, we can enjoy sensation and build towards orgasm in as many ways as possible, we have an expanded repertoire, our palette of colors has just expanded, our spice rack has grow.

Chris Rose: 07:49 A quick little anatomy lesson here. The way things are interpreted as erotic is this basic interplay between your nerve endings and your brain. Your nerve endings are responsible only for registering stimulation and sending a message to the brain, sending a signal to the brain where it is interpreted and it’s in the brain that something gets sorted into these erotic, non-erotic, threatening, non-threatening, buckets and are interpreted and then messages are relayed back. Hormones are released and our experience of the sensation happens. These pathways establish themselves over time. If a signal is sent to your brain and that signal has led to orgasm a hundred times before, the brain is very quick to say, “Ooh, goody, orgasm stimulation, lets go,” and releases that flood of hormones and sets your body on the track towards arousal and orgasm.

Chris Rose: 08:49 These are the routines that work for us. These are the kinds of stimulation, the precise strokes, the location, the positions, that we’ve been in when we’ve had orgasm after orgasm after orgasm. Usually by volume, that’s masturbation, which is another interesting thing here just to pause and reflect on, is that most of your orgasms of your life have probably been with yourself? Isn’t that true for most people?

Chris Rose: 09:13 Charlotte’s like, “Well, I don’t know.”

Charlotte Rose: 09:15 I mean I think it depends. I think there’s a range, but certainly a large amount, hopefully for many people, are from solo sex.

Chris Rose: 09:24 Especially for people who start during their childhood. I guess that’s what I’m thinking is, from ages six to 12 or whenever you started masturbating, for many, many years, a lot of kids did it a lot.

Charlotte Rose: 09:38 Yeah, I think that’s certainly true.

Chris Rose: 09:40 Then during long phases of adulthood when some of us are single for long periods of time, and then even when we’re in relationships, we’re masturbating. I don’t know. I would be interested by the numbers, what percentage of orgasms are through masturbation?

Charlotte Rose: 09:53 All the more important to do it well then.

Chris Rose: 09:55 Right. We have to relearn that because no one, as a kid is rooting you on, saying, “Go masturbate well. Be creative and do a variety of things and explore your body and your sounds.” We don’t give kids that coaching, of course. The surgeon general was fired for even suggesting that masturbation be taught as something that’s healthy. Geez. We have a long way to go. That’s why, as adults, we need this kind of sex education that we’ve dedicated our life to, is to undo so many of the patterns we’ve established that is limiting our pleasure and our expression.

Charlotte Rose: 10:33 With that, I love Mr. Anonymous, I don’t know your name. I love that you’re saying you’d hate for her to feel like she’s doing something wrong. That is very attentive and very thoughtful. I think that it’s important that when you discuss this with her to really make sure you’re letting her know that you don’t think there is anything wrong. You’re merely wanting to expand the pleasure that she can experience and that you guys can explore together by being able to explore different positions. Making sure that you’re framing it as an expansion of pleasure, that you don’t have to give up what she already knows and how she already generally cums. You just want to play and experiment and is she up for doing that with you? Absolutely she’s not doing anything wrong.

Chris Rose: 11:19 Right. That’s this attitude we all need to take on. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re not fixing anything that’s broken. We’re expanding our repertoire of pleasure, our capacity for arousal, starting from wherever you are now and knowing that there’s no end in sight. No matter where you are now, if you can orgasm one way or three ways, or you’ve never had an orgasm in your life, or you orgasm at the site of a beautiful flower on the side of the road, whatever your pleasure capacity now, you can always expand it. It’s the perfect time to begin.

Charlotte Rose: 11:55 Yeah. I love what you’re saying that there’s never any limit. That really no one has ever found a limit to the amount of expansive pleasure we can feel. May we all remember that and may we all continue to increase what we can feel. It is infinite. Let us keep going.

Chris Rose: 12:11 Yeah, your life might be committed to that, my dear. How do we do this? The simplest solution, the simplest recommendation, is to slowly and with a spirit of curiosity, expand your repertoire. Think about the positions you pleasure yourself in, the strokes you use, what parts of your anatomy you’re stimulating, your pace and pressure, and what you’re thinking about in your head or what you’re focusing on in your body. Switch all of those things up in different combinations and you’re going to expand your capacity for pleasure. That is the most basic suggestion here, is mix it up. See what feels good. Do more of that. Be willing to explore things that might not feel good at first and then slowly warm up as an erogenous zone. Don’t you think that happens a lot? You’ll try something once and you don’t feel it the first time.

Charlotte Rose: 13:06 It’s totally true that sometimes we have to do the work of waking up our anatomy. For instance, if you get used to stroking one side of the clitoris using your dominant hand, that location on the clitoris gets sensitized and then is more responsive. Perhaps the rest of the clitoris, you don’t feel as much when you explore it, but if you start including it and stimulating it on a regular basis, even though you might not feel as strong at first, over time it will get sensitized.

Chris Rose: 13:40 I just want to highlight that point that a pattern can be established simply by, where your dominant hand falls when you reach down and touch your genitals.

Charlotte Rose: 13:49 Absolutely.

Chris Rose: 13:49 You reach down across the clitoris, that spot is where you touch most often, therefore it’s most sensitized to orgasm.

Charlotte Rose: 13:57 And becomes quote unquote your spot.

Chris Rose: 13:59 Right.

Charlotte Rose: 14:00 Really all of it can become your spot if you stimulate it. It just takes sensitizing it, which takes time, which takes attention, which takes effort. We’ve mentioned changing positions, changing your strokes, changing way you’re stimulating on your penis or clitoris or vulva. Pace and pressure is also a valuable one to pay attention to. We often are in the same place doing this at the same pace and-

Chris Rose: 14:27 Same place, same pace.

Charlotte Rose: 14:29 Totally. Play with slowing it down.

Chris Rose: 14:31 Right. Everyone does things too fast.

Charlotte Rose: 14:34 Or we go really fast so that we can get to orgasm quickly. If we want to just play, slow everything down. Make it lighter. Make the pressure deeper. Play with that. It’s another place to bring your attention to, to get out of your habits.

Chris Rose: 14:52 The same nerve ending can be stimulated with featherlite touch, right on the surface of the skin or even just stimulating the hair above the skin or you can then sink deeper into the skin itself or deeper yet into the muscle and the bone and all of these create different pressure points and different kinds of stimulation in the same square inch of your body. Really the combinations here are infinite.

Charlotte Rose: 15:17 Right. Which is just sometimes hard to remember when you’re in the throws of it because the habits are so strong and we just do what’s routine.

Chris Rose: 15:25 Hear our voices in the back of your head your are in bed. Be creative.

Charlotte Rose: 15:29 Play a little.

Chris Rose: 15:31 Go deeper.

Charlotte Rose: 15:31 Switch it up.

Chris Rose: 15:32 Slow down.

Charlotte Rose: 15:35 Only if that doesn’t feel funny.

Chris Rose: 15:37 That might be a total boner killer or it might work for you. I’m not sure.

Charlotte Rose: 15:42 Then the other piece to pay attention to is where your attention is within your own body. Are you focusing deeply on the sensations or are you running fantasies in your mind? You can explore either end of that spectrum.

Chris Rose: 15:57 Right, and the same thing applies to the positions you’re in and how you’re stimulating yourself. This also is really relevant with sex toys. A lot of people find a vibrator that works and they find their quickest route to orgasm and lock down on that vibrator and have that pattern. This, over time, really starts to limit the kinds of pleasure you’re capable of feeling and the strength of your orgasms. It’s just really important to diversify. You can do this in your masturbatory life or with your partner. I think it’s actually really liberating and fun if you go into sex with your partner being like, “Let’s try to find three new things to do to one another. Let’s try to stimulate parts of our body that we usually ignore.” Getting out of your routine together and just putting it as a challenge, a creative process, and saying, “Let’s take a little adventure and try to do something new on purpose.” Not knowing what the outcome’s going to be. You might not reach orgasm and that has to be okay, but at least you’ve shaken things up and aroused new nerve endings and gotten creative together, which is part of the erotic process.

Charlotte Rose: 17:06 Right, and with this couple, for instance, as you’re exploring new positions, as Chris was saying, it’s totally possible that no orgasm will be happening for awhile because she will have to retrain her neurology to associate those positions with high levels of turn on and eroticism. That’s what you want to be focusing on, seeing how much arousal you can bring to her body in those positions, not necessarily with the goal of orgasm.

Chris Rose: 17:34 I will mention as a sidebar here, there can be a certain level of avoidance when routines become routine. Meaning, she might not want to explore certain positions because they trigger something from her past that her body would rather not remember. Other people avoid entire bodily regions because of past trauma or an association with pain or unpleasant and stimulation. That has to be okay. You have to be willing to have that conversation that’s like, “Yeah, no, I’d really not rather explore that area or that position or that kind of stimulation because it doesn’t feel good to me.” At least you know, and are identifying the reason and putting it in context, so it’s not just a avoidance that becomes routine and really creates this electric fence in your sex life. It’s more of a gentle boundary. You can choose to explore it over time with real care and compassion and start reclaiming those areas of avoidance. Don’t let avoidance dictate your patterns in general, because then you’re really giving them too much power.

Charlotte Rose: 18:40 I like the electric fence idea. That’s a useful one. We should explore that more in a later podcast.

Chris Rose: 18:46 We will.

Charlotte Rose: 18:47 Okay.

Chris Rose: 18:48 It is a really great metaphor.

Charlotte Rose: 18:50 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 18:51 [inaudible 00:18:51] about that. All right.

Chris Rose: 18:52 We hope we’ve given you some insight and some motivation to expand your arousal capacity to locate alternative pathways to pleasure. I’ve got another metaphor.

Charlotte Rose: 19:05 Go for it.

Chris Rose: 19:06 The GPS metaphor.

Charlotte Rose: 19:07 Oh yeah, always good.

Chris Rose: 19:08 Okay. So just like you have your trusted path to orgasm, when you plug an address into the GPS, it will give you the most direct path. Yet, we all know that you could go to the grocery store the same way for 25 years and you’ll get there. If you start exploring the side roads, you will discover untold pleasures. You’ll find that cute pond with a beautiful willow tree. You’ll find the gorgeous expansive views that you’ve never seen before. You’ll go by that little rickety house that pleasures you each time with its charm.

Charlotte Rose: 19:41 It might take longer. You may get lost looking at the view and never actually get to the destination, but you’ve had an adventure and that’s part of it.

Chris Rose: 19:53 There will be some days where you go the GPS route, the most direct path, and that’s what makes total sense for that day. Other days, you have time to wander and enjoy the scenic route.

Charlotte Rose: 20:02 You can also do the exploring and then come back to the GPS to get back, if you want to be playing with all of the options and then have your trusty orgasm at the end.

Chris Rose: 20:12 Recalculating. Recalculating.

Chris Rose: 20:15 All right, so you get the point. We are here to guide you every step of the way as you expand your erotic repertoire. Our online courses are a great way to do it. Gentle reminder, if you want to explore erotic spanking say, come on over to Pleasure Mechanics, sign up for our course, and we will guide you every step of the way. The same goes for things like anal play and prostate massage and expanded foreplay and even couples massage. All of these are ways of expanding your repertoire and come over to pleasuremechanics.com, explore our resources and be in touch. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 20:53 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 20:54 We are The Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 20:56 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

The Pleasure Mechanics Visit Sex Talk With My Mom

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We stopped by the Sex Talk With My Mom studios in Los Angeles to talk with our old friends about opening up to pleasure, mindful sex, erection and ejaculation issues, and so much more. We hold nothing back in this candid conversation!

This episode originally aired as episode 264 of Sex Talk With My Mom. Our first conversation with them was episode 121. Check out their podcast for more candid conversation about sex, dating, love after loss and lots of great laughs. Big thanks to Karen Lee and Cam for having us on the show again!

Savoring: A Foundational Pleasure Practice

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Savoring is the art of slowing down a moment enough to be fully in it, while it is happening, with presence and gratitude. Fully savoring pleasures of all kinds – from small sensual pleasures to the deepest joys of intimacy and connection – is a skill set that we humans can develop, on purpose, over time.

The Science of Well-Being course from Yale highlights savoring as an essential practice for overall well-being and happiness:

Savoring is the act of stepping outside of an experience to review and appreciate it. Often we fail to stay in the moment and really enjoy what we’re experiencing. Savoring intensifies and lengthens the positive emotions that come with doing something you love. ~ The Science of Well-Being

The practice of Savoring can bring a full body positive experience, create lasting benefits for our entire being, and create meaningful bridges between people through shared experiences of pleasure. Savoring, when practiced consistently over time, develops our ability to feel more pleasure and joy – these positive body states become easier to access and we are able to drop deeper into our experiences. In a very practical way, Savoring is the practice of expanding our capacity for feeling.

In this podcast episode, we share the why and how of Savoring – why it is such a powerful practice and how to put it into action in your life. For more pleasure practices and support in deepening your pleasure capacity, join us in the Mindful Sex online course.

Love the show? Show your love and support our work at PleasureMechanics.com/love

Resources Mentioned On This Episode:

Mindful Sex Online Course : Join us in exploring how to manage erotic distractions, stay present during sex and explore your erotic potential. This link is preloaded with a podcast listener only discount to the online course.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D. Explore the neuroscience of well-being and connection

Yale University’s Free Online Course The Science of Well-Being

Podcast Transcript:

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose: 00:00 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:05 I am Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:06 We are The Pleasure Mechanics and on this podcast we have honest, soulful conversations about every facet of sexuality, love, relationships, fantasy, desire, how it shows up in your lives. We are 360 some episodes deep into this conversation, so thank you to all of those who have been listening for years perhaps and welcome to all of our new listeners. Because we have a lot of new listeners every week now, so we welcome you on board. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com ,where you will find our complete podcast archive or explore the podcast feed in your favorite podcast app. And definitely come over to pleasuremechanics.com/free where you can find ways of going deeper with us and joining our free online courses and being in touch via email so we can provide even more resources to you. That’s pleasuremechanics.com/free.

Chris Rose: 01:12 On today’s episode, we are going to be talking about a skill that is such a beautiful skill. It’s like almost a, I don’t know, it feels like less romantic to call it a skillset. But it was a skill I was reminded of both because… So last week we talked about micro pleasures and this idea of seizing 60 second pleasure points throughout our day, and that was a couples therapy exercise that we started the new year with. And we heard from some of you that said, “Oh, this structure is giving me so much life. I’m definitely noticing these little pleasures throughout my day. Thank you for this.” And then some of your emails said things like, “I noticed that I’m waiting for the 60 seconds to be up.” Or, “I’m finding myself noticing how excruciatingly slow 60 seconds can be. I’m not really finding things to enjoy.” Or, “Once I’m enjoying it, I don’t know how to stick with it and 60 seconds feels so long when you start to notice.”

Chris Rose: 02:18 So this brought me to this skillset called savoring. And then, synchronistically, I joined this year an online course from Yale University called the Science of Wellbeing. I will link to it in the show notes page. It’s actually a free offering from Yale as an online course. And I love these online courses because I try to stay up on how science is talking about things like wellbeing and happiness and connection and love and then map that into kind of our erotic wisdom as a community from the past 10 years plus.

Chris Rose: 02:58 And the first lesson of the year in their offering to the public about the science of wellbeing and happiness was practice number one, savoring. And so of course then I immediately forwarded that to Joe Kramer, who is our teacher of erotic massage because it struck me immediately that Charlotte and I have both been practicing this fine art of savoring, this skillset of savoring, for over a decade together because we were invited into the skillset through erotic massage from Joe Kramer. Who, part of his erotic practice, so you build up all this erotic energy, you build up this full body orgasm, you have this breath practice, you have a climax and then you savor. Built into our structure was this act of savoring and being in that afterglow after the climax. And Joe of course, wrote me back. He was like, “Yes, of course. I’ve been talking about this for decades.” And I was like, “I know. That’s why I forwarded this to you.”

Charlotte Rose: 04:13 I remember so clearly sitting in a classroom with him sharing this idea and saying that this is an erotic skill that we need to cultivate, the skill and art of savoring. And it’s such a beautiful word. It’s such a beautiful idea. And it’s something that can be practiced day by day, moment to moment, out in our regular life as a training ground for when we get into the bedroom and when we’re having erotic experiences, we can then have that skill more firmly locked into our body. It’s such a beautiful skill to practice, in and out of the bedroom.

Chris Rose: 04:55 So let’s talk about this skill. What does savoring mean? Because as you say, it’s not only something we can practice and build our capacity around, Yale University science says that it’s one of the most important skills for wellbeing. So why is this? What is savoring?

Chris Rose: 05:13 Savoring is the act of stepping even deeper into a pleasurable moment, noticing that it is happening as it is happening and installing that pleasurable moment into your physiology, into your neurology, into your lived experience, so your system learns from it. So it’s the act of capturing pleasurable moments. So instead of becoming very fleeting, they are deeply felt and remembered and lodged in your body. This turns out to be super important for our overall wellbeing is how well we are able to saver pleasures. And pleasures, very small sensory pleasures to very big pleasures of joy and connection with other human beings. The full range of pleasurable experience, how much we are able to pay attention to it as it is happening, how deeply we are able to feel it and how much we can remember and rejoice in it afterwards, turn out to be major factors in our lifelong wellbeing and happiness and access to joy.

Chris Rose: 06:35 We’re going to talk more about this, but it turns out the more you install joy and pleasure, the easier it is to feel those things. And the way we do this is we pay attention to it as it is happening. It is a practice. So wherever you are in your experience of being able to experience joy, you can build your capacity through practice. And this is science, babies. This is both ancient wisdom and knowledge, right? That we have to practice our capacity for these things. And this is backed by science that this has some of the most direct tangible results, not only in our overall well being in happiness, but in our overall wellbeing in health.

Chris Rose: 07:21 It does things like boost the immune system and protect heart health and give you deeper sleep. Surprise, it makes us more at ease humans, right? When we systematically, on purpose, practice pleasure and joy. So savoring. Why is it important? How do we practice it? What does it give us access to? How does it accumulate over time? I want to turn this over to the queen of savoring. Because when I think of savoring, Charlotte, you are so good at this skill.

Charlotte Rose: 07:57 I feel like it is a central organizing principle of my days.

Chris Rose: 08:03 Yes.

Charlotte Rose: 08:04 But there’s just so much joy to be soaked out of simple, mundane moments and I find myself really enjoying them. And I think as the science points out that the more you do it, the easier it becomes. So it becomes sort of a natural part of your vocabulary.

Chris Rose: 08:24 So you have mastery over this skill?

Charlotte Rose: 08:26 I do feel like I do. And it creates a lot of joy and pleasure and simple fulfillment.

Chris Rose: 08:33 Yeah. One of the ways this has shown up for us socially, is during a meal you are what I call a multi cheers-er. Like we’ll have a cheers at the beginning of a meal and draw attention to how grateful we are to be there together and how lovely this is and we’ll all clink glasses. And then like five or 10 minutes later, you’ll raise your glass again and then 10 minutes later. And I’ve teased you for this, but what you’re doing is drawing our attention back to this moment, how pleasurable it is, how wonderful it is, how grateful we should be to be there. And this is exactly the science of savoring.

Chris Rose: 09:13 So the science of savoring tells us that we need to either create a pleasurable experience, a joyful moment, or a moment of joyful social connection or seize upon it when it happens to us spontaneously. So we need to find ourselves or create a pleasurable moment, be in it as it is happening. So draw more of our attention and go deeper into the moment. Put it in context and find gratitude for the moment, recognize that it is a blessing, that this moment is even happening. And then you feel it deeply.

Chris Rose: 09:53 So you’re in the moment. You draw attention to the moment. You create context and gratitude for the moment and you feel it as deeply as you can. And it turns out what this does is it installs the good into your system. And this is the language of Dr. Rick Hanson, who’s a neuroscientist, PhD, Buddhist teacher. I love him. We really get a lot out of learning with him. But he talks about installing the good, letting the good in. And what this does is it takes pleasure from being a fleeting moment to a learned capacity. You install it into your system and get the benefits of that pleasurable moment and over time the accumulation of this does quite miraculous, wonderful things for our systems it turns out. So this is a central skill we want to invite you into, savoring. Savoring.

Charlotte Rose: 10:55 Also, just a note that even if there’s nothing that awesome going on in your life right this minute, you can also gain these benefits by paying attention to a memory. Your body doesn’t totally know the difference. And so if you take a moment to remember something that brings you joy or pleasure or connection and then really experience it, stay with it for a few seconds longer until you get some feeling states in your body that feel good, that has an impact on your biology as well. Which is great to remember, and a wonderful tool.

Chris Rose: 11:32 Well it’s kind of a super power that pleasure can bring us all of these benefits, not only in the moment it is experienced, it can connect us and weave us with other human beings by sharing it together. And it can be recalled later to offset, to trigger, a positive hormonal cascade in your body down the road. These become assets in your body, in your psyche, these pleasurable moments of feelings deeply felt and shared.

Chris Rose: 12:06 So this can happen alone. You can deeply savor. And I’ll often turn the corner and find Charlotte deep in a moment of pleasure, completely on her own. You can savor moments alone, because truly we’re never alone. We experience these moments with the entire universe. And for me it’s often, especially after I’ve shaven my head, a freshly shaved head, the wind on the back of my neck can feel like an orgasm with the universe.

Chris Rose: 12:34 So we can savor all of this pleasure just out in the world, but we can also share it together. And the science actually supports this, that by sharing these moments of pleasure, and this is what we were kind of talking about in the micro pleasures episode, creating bridges between people with shared pleasures. The act of sharing a pleasure actually helps you install it as well. It is a form of savoring. So feeling the experience deeply in your body, sharing it, feeling gratitude for it, all of this taps into our ability as humans to learn. And so what we are doing very deliberately is learning pleasure. And our Twitter handle for like 13 years, because back when Twitter started there was a character limit, so our Twitter handle instead of pleasure mechanics was learned pleasure was the phrase that we have been riding behind. We don’t even use Twitter anymore. I don’t know why I mentioned that.

Chris Rose: 13:34 But learned pleasure has been this phrase that for me has always been really important because… So for Charlotte she was a natural pleasure connoisseur, a bon vivant. She grew up saturated in pleasure and global travel and safety and learning how to feel joy and pleasure and connection very deeply. I did not. I came to this work, very stripped of pleasure and with a very low capacity to feel pleasure. I would hit pleasure anxiety very quickly. We all have these capacities for pleasure and our systems are literally wired and capable of feeling certain feelings. They have capacities for emotions and feeling states. And if you hit your capacity, you often trigger into anxiety or fear or numbness or shutdown or dissociation. And so this can show up for us in all different ways.

Chris Rose: 14:33 But I came into sex education from the wounded healer place. I was abused as a kid. I grew up in an abusive home. And I wanted to feel more, I wanted to feel more pleasure. And I had just enough touch with it honestly through masturbation that I knew what was available to me and I was kind of like a hungry seeker. Like, “Teach me how to learn pleasure.” And I found erotic massage and erotic breath work and all my work with Joe Kramer and Sexological Bodywork and then Pleasure Mechanics and this 10 years of practice as this community and all of the work we do together.

Chris Rose: 15:11 And I have learned over the past decade how to feel pleasure, how to run more pleasure, how to expand my pleasure capacity. And that has happened over time practicing this. And I think so much of it as being in partnership with you because we’ll be, for example, at a beautiful sunset, we’ll be driving, there’ll be this beautiful sunset, we’ll pull the car over, we’ll get out and we’ll start looking at it and I’ll be like, “Cool, let’s go.” And you’ll be like, “What? It’s still going on. Stay with it.” And I’ll be like, “Okay, so what do you want to talk about?” And you’ll be like, “We’re looking at the sunset.” Like you can just stay in the joy and pleasure, whether it’s the food or the sunset or the sex, right? The orgasmic state. You can stay in that for so long.

Chris Rose: 16:06 And I really want to draw our attention here that we can all learn this. We can slowly expand our capacity around this and how we learn it. So going back to the Yale science, the practice they recommended is once a day, one pleasure, really feel it as deeply as you can. Expand it a little bit in duration, if possible. Share it, if possible, and then log it. They have an app you can log it in, but you can also just log it down in a journal or really just in your memory. As you’re going to bed, what was the most pleasurable moment of your day? Feel it. Remember it.

Charlotte Rose: 16:47 One of the images that stuck with me from Rick Hanson was this, “Adding even just a few beads of joy changes the whole necklace of seconds that make up your day.” I feel like that’s a useful image that just taking a moment to savor something deeply throughout the day will shift your day.

Chris Rose: 17:07 So he’s talking about that even on mundane days, even on days filled with despair, right? Because he’s recognizing a lot of us have a lot of stress, anxiety, fear, despair, rage, in these moments. And even in those times, it is even more important to practice this and to turn on purpose towards joy. Because part of this too, and I think we should do a whole other episode on this because it’s important and it shows up in very interesting and unexpected ways around sex, is the negativity bias. In human psychology, in human physiology, we are to pay much more attention to the threats, to our survival than to the yummy treats in our days.

Chris Rose: 17:59 And this makes sense from the evolutionary perspective, when we are really literally just surviving as animal bodies, we need to pay attention to the threats to our survival. We need to learn the dangers and teach one another about the dangers, which mushrooms not to eat. And remember the alarm in our system around those things. But now in today’s modern world, we are now threat tracking machines and positive experience can wash over us. Rick Hanson, we’re quoting a lot of Rick Hanson today. We love him. Rick Hanson talks about it like our neurology is Velcro for the negative and Teflon for the positive.

Chris Rose: 18:47 And we know this in our bodies. Think about an average day. One bad thing can happen to you… On an average day full of joys, full of pleasures, full of sensory pleasure, waiting to be savored. One bad thing happens to you and what do you come home raging about? What do you go to bed thinking about? And all of that time you are cycling around on that negative thing, on that threat to your existence, on that annoying person at work, all of that negativity cycles in your brain are throwing off stress hormones, are throwing off cortisol are keeping you in that fight or flight mode and this is an anti-erotic.

Chris Rose: 19:30 This is one of those forces in our lives that when we think about like, “Why aren’t I more interested in sex? Why can’t I connect more deeply with my partner? Why aren’t I more available for orgasm? Why do I get distracted during sex?” All of these struggles for so many of us are informed by the fact that our systems are threat tracking all day long. Every day we’re saturated in it. A lot of people have trouble sleeping because our systems are not resetting from the stress cycles. Our systems are not getting practice, are not getting time, are not getting the opportunities to feel pleasure, joy, relaxation, connection, comfort, let alone ecstasy, euphoria, bliss, rapture. All of these positive states our human bodies our capable of and want to be in. Want to be in.

Chris Rose: 20:24 So what do we do? We practice it on purpose. We do it on purpose, we learn how to savor. We install the positive moments throughout our day. And low and behold, it gets easier. We learn how to expand those moments and drop deeper into them, right? These two vectors of duration and depth of engagement and we have more access to them in our systems. And we can all follow Charlotte into the lands of pleasure. Take us.

Charlotte Rose: 21:01 Come with me. Come with me. Yeah, and it’s this idea, I just love this idea that it’s a simple practice that we can be with and we can cultivate. And then it is laying the foundation within our bodies that for the moments where we’re having peak erotic experiences, we’re in a 45 minute athletic sex act, and we have trained ourselves to pay attention. We’ve trained ourselves to be with the sensations, to be really enjoying what’s happening and focusing on the enjoyment instead of all of the concerns and distractions that’s also very human.

Charlotte Rose: 21:40 So we are training ourselves to be able to enjoy life and sex more deeply. And that will change the course of your life slowly over time. These moments like savoring a sunset is not going to change your life in that moment, but cumulatively doing this again and again over every day is going to change the arc of your next decade. And so it is a very powerful, simple, easy skill to cultivate.

Chris Rose: 22:08 Well one of the big why’s that the science gives for why savoring is so important, why it creates so much positive uplift over time, why it is so cumulative, is because it thwarts what they call hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation is, on a pure sensory level, it means you can’t really feel the clothes you are wearing in every moment. Your sensory nerve endings get kind of used to that stimuli and then adapt and await new stimuli, so you can feel the bug landing on your face. So we adapt to what is normal and we kind of normalize what is repeated. And on the bigger level of our lives, this accounts for things like why we always want to shop for new shit. We buy a new object, it gives us a moment of pleasure, we normalize its presence in our life and then we begin seeking something new.

Chris Rose: 23:07 We seek novelty, we seek new stimuli. That’s just part of who we are as sensory beings. And science points to hedonic adaptation as a source of suffering. It’s part of the reason we get restless in good situations and it’s part of the reason we can’t feel grateful for the abundance that we have available to us. So what do we do to thwart hedonic adaptation? We learn how to savor. When we talk about slowing things down. When we talk about really being deeply in the erotic moment.

Chris Rose: 23:42 Part of sexual suffering is we’re always for the next big thing, the next novel thing, the next big hit of the pleasure hormones of oxytocin, of dopamine, of those hormones in us that say, “Ooh, fun. Good. Yes. Delicious. Yummy.” New, novel experiences hit those buttons really well. Daily pleasures do not because of hedonic adaptation. The antidote to this is paying attention, is savoring. Because when you really slow down in your day to day life and bring your full attention to that house plant that is just right in bloom and bring your full attention to it and literally stop what you are doing to fully immerse yourself in that experience. And then maybe remember your friend who gave you that house plant, right? You give it context, you lean in for a sniff, you give yourself that full sensory immersion. You maybe stroke a nice glossy leaf, right? You’re having an erotic… If it sounds sensual and erotic, it’s because it is.

Chris Rose: 24:54 Savoring is a deeply erotic experience if we go to Audrey Lord’s definition of the erotic as feelings deeply felt and shared. So you’re having a moment of savoring with that house plant and that thwarts hedonic adaptation. It brings that moment of pleasure, of joy, of wonder, back into that moment of your life, of passing through your hallway.

Charlotte Rose: 25:21 And then that positive moment will affect your biology for two to four hours afterwards is what the science is saying. So these moments really do accumulate in our day and make a difference.

Chris Rose: 25:33 And so what the Yale studies don’t mention are the erotic benefits of this, right? We know the health benefits, the overall wellbeing benefits. Savoring, when you learn how to savor, and Charlotte hinted at this earlier, becomes an erotic super power. Because it allows you to drop in and deepen your experience of whatever is happening to your erotic body. And instead of this novelty seeking, like we need the new lingerie, we need the new position, we need the new kink, which is fine, novelty seeking is an important part of eroticism too, but so is depth of engagement. And depth of engagement…

Chris Rose: 26:14 Actually bringing it back to Joe Kramer. I remember him talking about how deep can we go, so if someone is just massaging your toe, you can feel it throughout your body, right? You bring your full attention to whatever is happening in your erotic touch. Someone is fucking you, licking you, kissing you, touching you, whatever is happening to you, or you’re playing by yourself or you’re out in nature and that wind is hitting you just right. Whatever is happening to your body, if you can feel that moment deeply, it just… I get what wordless. If you feel these moments deeply, the universe is available to you erotically. Meaning there’s no…

Charlotte Rose: 27:02 There’s no limit to the erotic stimulation that is out in the world.

Chris Rose: 27:06 There’s no limit to the pleasure we can feel, right? Yes.

Charlotte Rose: 27:08 Yeah, the universe can be your lover in each and every moment or many moments of the day.

Chris Rose: 27:14 Or you find the universe in your lovers touch, right? So like the universe is your lover. Yes, all of the stimuli can be deeply erotically felt, but what I was trying to say is like when your lover is touching you, if you are truly feeling it, your whole body yearns for this. And so when a lover touches you with love and care and reverence, or you get a kiss from a stranger that you want or whatever that moment is, when we start paying attention, the full body response is really fun to pay attention to because it’s not just that one part of your body being touched, your whole body lights up.

Chris Rose: 27:52 Even just thinking about one of your peak erotic experiences. Think about one of your peak erotic experiences and then start noticing those flicks of arousal and desire and want in your body. The more we can pay attention to this and come home to it and make space for it and learn pleasure, and in this case learn erotic pleasure, learn sexual pleasure, learn arousal, the bigger we can go, the deeper we can go with it. So this is literally what we’re talking about when we say learned pleasure, is installing the fuck out of these moments when things feel good and right.

Chris Rose: 28:32 This is a lot of the experience we welcome you into in the Mindful Sex course. So if you are saying yes to this, if your body is responding to this conversation with like a, “Mmm, this feels good, I want more”, notice that in your body and come over to pleasuremechanics.com/mindful where you will find the best deal currently on our Mindful Sex course. Enroll with us and start practicing with us. This course is full of practices where you can put your attention on purpose to different parts of your erotic experience to start learning some of these skills together.

Charlotte Rose: 29:12 Our culture is so focused on good sex being about what’s done to us, but the other piece of that equation is how deeply we can feel what is happening to us. And so when we cultivate both of those skillsets, we’re going to have a really dramatically different experience of sex because there’s so many more skills in that bedroom.

Chris Rose: 29:36 I just wanted to make like a cartoon like, “Pew, pew, superpowers engaged.” And that’s really what we’re doing. We are tuning into our human superpowers and why we called ourselves Pleasure Mechanics in the first place all of those years ago, my love, was to really draw attention to the mechanics of pleasure in the human body. What are we designed to do when it comes to pleasure, orgasms, fucking, loving, connecting, creating with one another. What are we designed to do? What does the body tell us is possible? Let’s play there together.

Chris Rose: 30:13 All right, I think enough for today. Let us know your experiences of this. We love hearing your stories about how this work lands for you. All we can do on this podcast and through our courses is invite you deeply into practices, kind of lay out the why and the how and let you know what other people are experiencing and then it’s kind of turned over to you to put this into practice in your life and our aim is to help you make that as easy as possible. To try to make it really simple to opt into exploring some of these things for yourself and then ask you to report back to us.

Chris Rose: 30:56 How do these things emerge for you? What shows up as you engage with these practices? And this year and beyond we’re going to start formalizing this a little bit and collecting these stories from you. So if at any point you have something to say to the Pleasure Mechanics community, we are over 10,000 strong around the globe listening and engaging with this podcast. If there’s something you want to share, either a question to be answered or a testimonial about how this is showing up for you and your life, record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at beintouch@pleasuremechanics.com or charlotte@pleasuremechanics.com or chris@pleasuremechanics.com. Get it to us at pleasuremechanics.com and share your experience with us because we are listening and integrating these 10,000 bodies and more into this body of erotic wisdom that we’re sharing back with you. That’s how we roll here. Thank you for being a part of it.

Chris Rose: 31:59 So we will have some links on the show notes page. So whatever podcast app you are using, if you click through to the show notes page, you will find links, ways of engaging more deeply with us and with the themes of the shows. You will also find full transcripts of every show, which we are providing to increase accessibility and searchability of this show. So if there’s something you heard and want to go back and find it, you can easily do that through the transcripts. Yes.

Charlotte Rose: 32:30 Thank you to everyone who supports this show and makes this community supported erotic education possible.

Chris Rose: 32:36 Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s important to notice we have no sponsors, we have no ads. We do not interrupt our shows with minutes of ads selling you mattresses and prescription pills and all of those things because we are community supported erotic education and we want to just provide you the most efficient, effective resources for a more erotically engaged, happy life. Yes. Help us do that. Show your love for the show at pleasuremechanics.com/love where you will find ways of going deeper with us, showing your love, supporting the show, and keeping this work going for the coming decade.

Charlotte Rose: 33:17 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Rose: 33:18 Thank you for being here with us. Send us your voice memos. Send us your love. We are sending you our love. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 33:26 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 33:27 We are The Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 33:29 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.