Sensuality Through Senses

Sensuality is often closely associated with sexual pleasure. While it is that, it is also much more. Let’s discuss a few ways you can enhance sensuality and play in your life through heightening ALL of your senses and begin to break down the barriers of sexual pleasure being taboo.

Sensuality is deeply rooted in our existence through sight, touch, taste, sound, scent, and in my opinion, intuition. These senses begin developing at conception. Even before your earth-side debut, you were hearing, feeling, sensing, learning to experience it all. We are each born of feminine and masculine energies and increasing sensuality, female or male, can cultivate connection to your femininity.

Choose one of the following tools to implement for one week. Keep the practice while you move through the next 6 weeks, developing your very own sensuality routine. Talk about self love!

Sight: Could you walk through your home, maybe even drive to work, with your eyes closed? Day to day can become so routine that we lose awareness and connection to our surroundings. Challenge yourself to notice and appreciate something in your existing environment, maybe a piece of art in your home or nature’s beauty as you turn the last corner on your way home from work. Examine it and enjoy it for what it is and why you appreciate it.

Touch: How do things truly feel on your skin? Create a nightly routine of dry brushing followed by sleeping naked. Bonus: if you are sleeping next to a partner, this will increase the sense of touch for both of you!

Sound: What happens when your favorite song comes on? Stop what you are doing, turn up the volume, and move to the music. I’m talking full on dance party. Does a song bring a feeling of sorrow? Allow yourself to feel whatever comes up.

Taste: Do you experience your food or devour it as you shuffle from one commitment to the next? Sit with your meal and truly taste it. Try new foods with new flavors and new textures. Breathe to calm your system before bringing the food to your nose to smell it, let it sit on your palate to taste it, chew it slowly to enjoy it, and by all means, please do this tech-free!

Scent: Do you take time to explore the outdoors? Getting into nature can heighten your senses in so many ways, and taking the time to observe the smells around you is arguably one of the best ways to heighten your sense of smell. I highly recommend getting out of the metro area for this. Like pleasant scents in your home? Ditch the candles and try incense or diffusing essential oils. Scents can create different ambiance, and ditching the chemicals helps keep you and the environment safe.

Intuition: Intuition can be heightened through the exploration of all other senses while connecting you to your personal power within. It is definitely a continuous practice and something many have become uncomfortable with. Create a meditation practice that works for you. Guided or unguided, tuning in to your breath creates space for observation. Notice the times when a person or place brings on a certain feeling and explore it. This means giving your gut the respect of trusting it. Let listening to your gut play out, and notice if your intuition was spot on. Your ‘coincidences’ might become more and more prevalent.

As you enhance your overall sensuality, becoming more familiar with your true self, I invite you to journey down the route of self exploration in sexual pleasure. In my work with women who have questions about returning to sex postpartum, women of all ages with questions about orgasm or lack thereof, and many who are simply afraid or ashamed to ask, I suggest that we get more comfortable with ourselves. This starts with exploration of your own body and learning your own desires via your senses. Take the above exercises and choose to use them to explore yourself intimately and, when and if you are ready, with your partner.

I speculate this is a positive feedback loop. When you are more connected with your own sensuality, sexually and otherwise, you can better create sensuality throughout your human experience. Only then can we fully trust in sexual exploration with another human.

In a time when we are bombarded with stimuli and have become disconnected from our own senses, suppressing sensuality is denying a vital part of the human experience. Intentional time enhancing sensuality on a consistent basis can help you “see” the world through your senses. After all, the experience is what this journey is all about.

Erica Boland

professional@birthfit.com @BIRTHFITWisconsin @emomdc