Do you practice mindfulness during sex? Can being mindful help increase pleasure, connection, and intimacy? The practice of ...

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The Secret Science of How Your Brain Can Enhance Your Sexual Pleasure

do you know that you probably have everything you need to improve your sex life it's really simple it's all up here it's all in your brain I'm Dr Rita Malik urologist and pelvicers and today we're going to talk about how mindfulness can improve your sex life and I'm going to show some scientific evidence of how mindfulness has improved sexual dysfunction particularly in women so mindfulness is described as a practice where you basically pay attention to what's going on but the key is you see what's happening you accept it as it is in a non-judgmental way and actually there's five tenants to mindfulness that people often describe the first one is non-reactivity to your inner experience typically this is described as being able to sit with your thoughts without overthinking it without having a reaction to what your thoughts are just allowing them to be there the next one is observing just kind of taking note of what's around you of the sounds around you or the sensations that you feel and even your emotions some people will also include describing as part of mindfulness so being able to describe those things again without judgment non-judgment is key in kind of all these areas so it's again being able to see feel think about all these things without being critical of what you're feeling and the most important domain particularly in regards to sex is acting with awareness so that means actually being in the moment not being an autopilot not just thinking about what you need to do next or being distracted by other thoughts that are not letting you engage in the present feeling so mindfulness has an abundance of ways it can improve your sex life and I'm going to cover four major ways but the key and the most fascinating part about this is that there have been studies that have looked at how the brain changes when engaged in mindfulness and what they found is two things they've seen increased brain volume in parts of the cortical brain called the insula and the anterior cingulate gyrus which are responsible for things like actually perceiving your feelings in your body called introceptive awareness and it also showed decreased activity in parts of the brain that are responsible for rumination or the default mode so this is super powerful and make sure you stick around till the end because I'll share some mindfulness practices that you could use on a daily basis to help improve your mindfulness overall that will hopefully also improve your sex life if you're starting to use those more regularly so the first way is it improves attentional control a lot of the times when we're having sex we might be thinking about oh does my body look okay like this am I performing well enough is the other person enjoying themselves enough and those distractions can cause a lot of distress ultimately or make sex less enjoyable so the number one thing that you're gonna see when you include mindfulness in your sexual practice is that you will have more attention towards your feelings and perceptions that are ongoing during sex and this will also lead to an improved body image again a lot of the times more often in women than men but occurs in all genders is actually poor body image and poor body image can really affect your confidence during intercourse and your ability to enjoy intercourse so incorporating mindfulness will actually help prevent those distractions that go on in your head during sex and allow you to focus in on the act itself in fact in a study of a thousand undergraduate students they looked at the effect of mindfulness on a number of different aspects of sex and what they found was that people who were more mindful should have less body insecurities better self-perceived performance and self-perceived body and overall better sexual satisfaction number three is it will improve pleasure so this is the key right we all want to have more pleasure during sex so everyone who's watching you should be really motivated right now to incorporate mindfulness in your day-to-day practice because it will help you improve pleasure and this comes from bringing awareness to your body so during mindfulness you do things like body scans you kind of try to perceive how your body feels every part of your body and when you're focused on that and you practice mindfulness even if you get distracted your body notes that distraction and then focuses back on its Sensation that it's feeling right there and then and using that and really focusing on your physical Sensations can certainly increase pleasure during intercourse however if you're using judgment during the course of your Sensations like oh am I aroused enough am I ready am I about to climax if you're spending a lot of time thinking about that it's not going to work it has to be again in the frame of no judgment you are just feeling the sensations and enjoying wherever you are at that moment and number four mindfulness can improve some of the long-standing negative thoughts you have about sex so many people have long held thoughts about sex whether it's how they were raised or just thoughts that they've developed and held on to that could include thinking you're not really good at sex or maybe that sex is shameful and and your response to sex is wrong or that maybe you're not capable of Performing well enough and those thoughts if you bring those thoughts with you to a sexual relationship whether it's with yourself or someone else can lead to a negative experience so in people who use mindfulness they can overcome these negative thoughts they learn to perceive these things as just what they are thoughts they are not facts they are just thoughts they can let women who feel like they're frigid or cold during sex realize that that's not actually true and help them perceive their own arousal better it can help people who feel that sex is shameful or embarrassing overcome those feelings and ultimately it can help you get over any sort of negative thoughts you might have about yourself in relation to sex lastly mindfulness can improve communication and relationship quality in fact the study where they provided mindfulness-based education to couples and partners they found that these couples had significant increases in emotional intimacy as well as communication overall mindfulness allows you to be more accepting of your partner in a positive way and also communicate in more positive ways like using things like reflection rather than criticism when talking to your partner it may also allow you to be more open to discuss your sexual preferences and also increase your acceptance of those preferences and allow you to experiment and explore more easily you might be thinking okay this sounds great but does it really work well you don't have to take my word for it there's a handful of studies that have been done looking at mindfulness based education and how it affects particularly female sexual dysfunction in a recent study of 1700 women coming to a clinic for regular checkup they asked them a series of questionnaires about their mindfulness as well as their sexual function and what they found is that those who had higher rates of mindfulness were less likely to have female sexual dysfunction meaning having any sort of problem associated with sex as well as a better sexual function overall in studies where women had sexual dysfunction to start with when they implemented mindfulness-based treatments for patients they found that they increased women's desire as well as reduce their distress and even their subjective amount of lubrication that they created was higher in women who underwent mindful based education in other studies they found that mindfulness-based therapies have caused increases in desire and arousal as well as decrease in fear around sex for women usually what mindfulness-based education refers to is a number of techniques that are used to help bring mindfulness I'll review these shortly but often in these studies they also did some form of Education they educated on what a normal orgasm is and what common myths are related to sex and actually debunked those men and this is one of the reasons I have this channel your bodies and also helps you know what's accurate from what's just myths that people have perpetuated over many many years so what can you do to increase your money well there's a few things that people often discuss first is awareness of the breath so actually taking time every day to close your eyes sit down and actually be aware of your breath take deep breaths in and out and focus on that breath exactly what it feels like how your body moves how your chest your abdomen moves when you inhale and exhale another often used techniques is a body scan so actually sitting again typically they're suggest sitting in a chair or on the floor with yourself firmly grounded and your back straight and then kind of closing your eyes and trying to go through your body from head to toe through each part of your body to feel exactly what that part of the body is actively feeling any of these sort of activities if you feel like your mind is wandering that's completely normal you just notice it and then once you notice it you come back to doing whatever you were doing again without judgment without saying oh my god you messed up right it's okay everyone does that lastly there's loving and kindness meditations where you sit and you think about someone and kind of think about loving thoughts about them and caring thoughts about them like I wish for them to be happy I wish for them to feel loved to be safe or live with ease those are all sorts of things that often people use in a mindfulness practice but for me what I've done and I found helpful is use different types of apps to help me meditate now this video was not sponsored by anyone I used headspace for a long period of time and I loved it particularly because you could do meditation with your kids they have little kid meditations which are really designed to help kids listen and and sit with you so I often did that with my kids a couple years ago and now I have a Peloton membership so I just do the meditations on the Peloton with my kids and there's also a free app called insight timer and so I use these to help me work on a meditation practice and increase my mindfulness I find that it makes me a happier person and overall enjoy many aspects of my life I hope you will too and as always we're going to take care of yourself because you are worth it [Music]

Dr.

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