Translator: Denise RQ Reviewer: Samuel Titera
What comes to your mind when you hear “sex”?
Is it something you want more of,
less of,
or in a different way than you know it?
This was my motivation 20 years ago
when I was in my first long-term relationship,
thinking, well, sex...
It’s not bad, but it’s not great either.
There must be more to it.
This drove me to my first course
that dealt with sexuality.
Then I went to more and more of them.
Gradually, I realised
that sex courses are not just about sex,
but that sexuality is linked with my whole life
and determines the quality of all my relationships,
not just partnerships.
That it determines the way I feel when I get up and when I go to bed.
That it influences my perception of what makes sense in life
and the way I want to live.
This determined my career of a teacher and consultant
in the area of intimacy and conscious touch.
When I talk about sex,
I often meet different kinds of worries.
The massage studio we have is visited by many men and women,
and I often hear questions
because we work with intimate massage.
Men ask: What if I have a hard-on?
What if I don’t have a hard-on during the massage?
What if I come? What if I don’t come?
Women would say,
"This is so interesting, but I am afraid to undress."
I don’t want anyone to see my body.
I have the lights off even with my husband in our bedroom.
What should I look like during the massage?
What should I do?
Behind the questions there is a lot of worries, fear, and tension
related not only to massage,
but pervading our intimate lives.
We are worried about our performance,
about our appearance during sex,
we are worried about expectations.
Why is it so?
Let me introduce Martin.
He is not a real person. This is a story of a man.
When Martin was a boy,
he spontaneously and naturally explored his body, as kids do.
He touched his genitals,
he was interested in what the girls had under their skirts,
they played the doctor.
But when an adult happened to see such a situation,
Martin instantly understood there was something wrong with that.
There came a scalding look, telling-off, or even a slap.
Martin was coming of age and discovered
he was able to experience much more in his body and sexuality.
There was no Internet at the time.
He found his Mom’s Neckermann catalogues
and used to lock himself in the bathroom with the bra pages.
Quietly, full of tension, and worried that someone might enter,
he “cultivated” his sexuality.
These are the kind of codes that we create in our lives,
connected with our bodies and our intimacy
and that later, govern the quality of our intimate life and partnerships.
I remember a sexual education class
when I was 14.
It was a biology class.
Our biology teacher entered,
but something was different about her.
Her face was red, we could see how nervous she was.
She expelled the boys out to her office, only girls stayed.
Then she gave us a very quick, technical and biological description
of certain facts regarding menstruation.
I was definitely not able to say what I was supposed to do,
and I don’t remember what she said about sexuality.
A year ago I was at a conference on sexuality
where one of the contributors mentioned results of a survey
carried out at primary schools,
and it dealt with sexual education.
In Czech schools, it is still taught by lecturers
whose main subject is something else
and most of whom does not want to teach it at all.
During the class, they feel very uncomfortable and awkward.
Feeling like this,
probably similarly red and nervous as my biology teacher,
they face the children and say something about preventing unwanted pregnancy
and contracting STDs.
Imagine what it would be like if sexual education classes taught us,
apart from such practical information
also about the possibilities of cultivating our sexuality,
about the differences in the perception of sexuality between men and women,
what to do
so that a woman could open to intimacy,
how to touch a man,
how can men learn to
choose whether they ejaculate during orgasm, or not,
how to experience whole-body pleasure.
How to experience pleasure
that lasts not just minutes of releasing tension,
but which can last for hours,
and makes us full of energy for days.
How to cultivate love-making to deepen our partnership,
so that after a year, two, or three, it doesn’t get stuck in a rut
that sometimes erases sex from our intimate lives,
but how to make it more beautiful and deep with the years.
This is often almost unthinkable in our society.
I would like to give you some inspiration.
What can you do in your life?
The host mentioned a client of mine who designed an advent calendar during sex.
She shared this at one of our courses for couples.
Those who listened were amused and laughed,
her partner was offended...
(Laughter)
It tells a lot about sexuality in our culture.
Here, it is nothing unusual to be in our thoughts during sex.
We often think about our jobs
or about shopping lists.
And if we don’t think about things to do,
we have sexual fantasies.
How to make sex something full of life,
joy and fulfilment,
something that makes our body rejoice for hours and days?
The basic quality we miss in sex
is presence.
I’ve talked about the moments we are in our heads.
But real pleasure, fulfillment, liveliness, energy,
inspiration, and creativity are always in our bodies.
We need to be more present.
There are three keys that help us get here:
movement, breath, and sound.
As I speak you can try
to take a deep breath
and exhale.
Once more, inhale ...
... and exhale.
Notice, what it does to your experiencing.
Same with another key:movement.
Try to take your hand,
start shaking it, just one hand,
properly,
more, keep shaking, keep shaking,
last few seconds,
and stop.
Notice the way you feel
the hand that has moved,
and the one that hasn’t.
Usually, the one that moved feels more alive,
sometimes it feels bigger, it is full of energy.
We need to do the same with our body.
We need to activate it, to de-frost it so to speak
from a learned numbness we often bask into.
A number of you probably wants to experience
more joy in the area of intimacy,
but when you get home from work in the evening,
some of you help your kids with homework,
do household chores, then you go to bed,
and sex is the last thing you feel like having.
And if you do feel like having sex,
your partner doesn’t.
I would like to offer you a different perspective on lovemaking.
I want to tell you that you can make love to your partner
without feeling like it, without being in the right mood,
without being fresh and relaxed.
I want to suggest
that you approach lovemaking as a practice,
as something you can undertake and cultivate every day.
What often hinders us when it comes to intimacy
is the idea that we have to perform,
that we must be aroused,
that we have to bring our partner to a climax.
Sometimes there is so much pressure
that we are afraid to even touch each other
so that our partner doesn’t think we want something from them.
Let’s look at the word.
In English we say “to make love”, to create love.
I want to inspire you
to see lovemaking as an opportunity
to use our body, and the other person's body
to create more love,
to go to bed next time,
hug with your partner,
touch each other.
Not with the intention to get more aroused,
but use the physical contact
to create more love between you,
deepen your breath, move more,
and try to be present.
Let your thoughts come and go, don’t cling to them,
keep returning to the present moment.
For this practice, you don’t need to be in the right mood,
you don’t need to be fresh
and your practice can be short.
Five or ten minutes every day are enough.
Five to ten minutes of conscious attention.
Five minutes of conscious creating of love an contact.
If you don’t have a partner,
you can do the same with yourself.
Give yourself a loving touch.
Give yourself a hug.
Take a deep breath, breathe out...
And if you practice this not just on the first day,
but also the next day, third day,
you will see
that after a week, you are going to have a different life.
Create love.
Thank you.
(Appluase)