A key to intimacy is expressing your feelings. Not your thoughts, your feelings: being able to share with your partner how you are feeling and being able to hear what he or she is sharing with you.

It's not an easy thing to do. More commonly people hold back out of fear of a negative reaction from their partner. So they end up playing this weird dance of trying to mind-read what the other wants and feels, and generally getting it wrong.

An exercise I give couples to improve this skill is every evening to have a chat over a cup of tea or coffee and take it in turns to share how you’re feeling.

Some people are fine with that level of guidance; others struggle and need more direction. If you’re in the latter category, here’s an activity for you.

Set aside some time for a chat, maybe after dinner, or if you’ve got young children, once they’ve gone to bed. Do not do this in front of the TV. Sit somewhere comfortable, and if it feels right, have a cup of tea together. Humans have been sharing over cups of tea for centuries. It’s comforting and bonding.

Now take it in turns to share five things from your day, in this order:

1) A good thing that happened today and how it made you feel.
2) A bad thing that happened today and how it made you feel.
3) A good thing that your partner did today and how it made you feel.
4) A not-so-good thing, a neglect, that your partner did today and how it made you feel (preferably small, until you get better at this).
5) Something you love about your partner in general and/or how you’re feeling at the end of this exercise.

So, each of you share how you’re feeling, then each of you share point two, then point three, until you’ve done all five. When you’ve finished, thank your partner for sharing, and tell them how that made you feel.

The important part is that you say how it made you feel. Not just ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘pissed off’, be more specific, expand your vocabulary, such as: “I felt appreciated, as though you really cared” or “I felt really isolated and unsure of what to do”, i.e., be more expressive about what you felt or are feeling.

When you’re in the listening role, it’s important that you tune in to your own reactions. Be the watcher watching yourself. Note what your own emotional reaction is to what your partner is saying. Notice if you feel defensive, if you feel you want to justify yourself, if you feel you need to make them out to be wrong. It’s this response that causes people to hold their feelings in and not share. So, make sure that your focus is what your partner is saying, not your reaction to it. This also applies if you tend to go straight to fix it mode, or even if you go straight to soothing mode, as both these well-intentioned responses don’t let your partner feel heard.

So, listen, and repeat back what you’ve heard. That’s all.

The hardest one will of course be the something you did that made your partner feel bad. The important thing is simply that you acknowledge how they are feeling. You don’t have to fix it or justify it or anything for this exercise, just acknowledge their feeling.

Once you get in the habit of listening actively like this, your partner will become more comfortable with sharing their feelings honestly, because they know you can listen without judgment.

Similarly, your own level of comfort in sharing will increase because you’ll learn to trust your partner’s ability to listen without reacting badly.

This is mature relating. It’s not always easy, which is why you need to practice until it becomes second nature.

Then your relationship will evolve, in all areas, particularly sexually.

I was chatting with an attractive woman in her mid-40s at a party recently. She’d told me that after a brief disastrous marriage she hadn’t been able to successfully ‘do’ the relationship thing, as she put it, so she was fascinated to hear about my work and life.

After a while she got a puzzled look on her face and asked hesitantly: “Do you two talk about your sex life?”

“Why, yes, of course we do,” I replied.

“So do you, like, talk about what you like and don’t like and that sort of stuff,” she asked with curiosity.

“Yes”

“And do you schedule sex; do you plan it?”

“Sure”

She mused on this a while, then said with wide-eyed amazement: “So for you two sex is like a hobby! Something you talk about and plan and discuss…”

“Well, yes,” I smiled, “you could say it’s our hobby.”

“Wow,” she said thoughtfully, “I always thought sex was something that had to be secretive and furtive, something that just had to ‘happen’…. No wonder my relationships never worked!”

She was probably right. Like anything else in life that you share - from the mundane domestic duties through to the fun holidays and outings - it’s a lot better if you talk about it together.

Of course, if your idea of sex is roll on, do the deed, roll off, go to sleep; well, then you probably don’t need to talk about it. But if you fancy something at least a touch more interactive, then communication is required.

People do have funny ideas about talking about sex, or to be more specific, about not talking about sex:

• They find it awkward or embarrassing.
• They feel it would be unsexy to talk about sex.
• They feel, like the woman above, that there is some unwritten rule that says you can’t talk about sex.
• They feel they shouldn't need to, it should just ‘happen naturally’.

In regard to the last three:

• Does talking about food make it less delicious? No, in fact it can add to the experience of eating.
• There are no rules about sex, other than that it be consensual, and there is certainly no rule about not speaking.
• Humans are not mind-readers so can never know for sure what’s going on for you unless you verbalise to some degree.

As to feelings of awkwardness when talking about sex, I’ve found that’s very common, and it takes practice to increase your comfort level.

Having a chat about your love making session immediately after, when you’re both languishing in the post-coital phase is a good time. The happy, bonding hormones are flowing, and you can share what you liked with each other. Gradually you can add what you might like more of, or what else you might like to try, or what you didn’t like.

Then you can start having a pre-sex chat, then during-sex chats, and chats outside the bedroom - until you feel comfortable almost anywhere.

As your comfort level with talking about your sex life gets better, so will your sex life.

Soft, rounded curves of femininity: breasts are the archetypal symbol of womanliness.

It’s probably the reason we women have so much trouble with them! They’re too small or too big, too saggy or the nipples are funny… We don’t pay them a lot of attention, and when we do, it’s generally negative thoughts.

In the Tantric tradition though, a woman’s breasts are her positive pole, and it’s essential that we focus positively on our positive pole (and that our partners do too).

The lack of attention to a woman’s breasts and over attention to her genitals is one of the reasons why women can find it hard to become aroused sexually. So it’s important that a woman’s breasts are honoured by her partner as part of their sexual play, that her partner caresses and holds them with love and desire (and some delicious nipple play too if she’s into that!)

A lovely simple exercise you can do to become more aware of your breasts and their beautiful energy is to sit facing each other. If the partner is male he brings his attention to his penis (which is a man’s positive pole), feeling the power and goodness of his penis energy and allowing it flow over to his partner. She brings her attention to her breasts, feeling the power and goodness of her breast energy and allowing it to flow over to her partner. Once you’re feeling that he can also focus on welcoming in her breast energy and she can welcome in his penis energy. You can gaze into each other’s eyes as you do this, or keep them closed. Do this for a few minutes, or the length of a song. If you’re both women, share your breast energy together.

Don’t leave it just for couple activity though, a good bit of self-loving when it comes to breasts is essential.

Do you love your breasts? Do you anoint them with oil or lotions and caress them regularly? It’s important that you do. Pay them loving attention and you’ll feel a lot better about yourself as a woman.

Whenever you’re naked, in the shower or towelling down afterwards, spend a little time honouring your breasts. Stroke them with oil, touch them gently, send them love and positive energy. Do this before self-pleasuring too for a more complete experience.

If you honour your breasts, give them lots of cuddles, treat them well and love them, and allow and invite your partner to do the same, you’ll feel a lot more positive about yourself as a woman, about your sexuality, and you’ll have better love-making because of it.

To discover more and celebrate your female sexuality, enrol in my online women's course!



Or if you live in Australia, come along to my gorgeous women's weekend workshops!

If you want to become a great lover and have wonderful sex, you have to ditch the myths that plague us.

Our society is full of sex myths. Because we don't talk openly about the details of our sex lives and there have been so many moral issues associated with sex for so long that so many beliefs are taken for truth. These beliefs are so entrenched they can be challenging to let go of, but until you do, you're holding yourself back. If you buy into a belief that there's something wrong or bad about being a certain way, you'll inevitably be judgmental about yourself and others.

Judgement is the biggest impediment to growth in any area, including sexuality.

I'm going to challenge you by starting with three big myths that are very entrenched in our society:

1. Men have evolved to 'sow their seed widely' and are therefore naturally non-monogamous
2. Women are naturally monogamous
3. Monogamy is naturally innate to humans

Not one of these myths is true!

I'm certainly not saying that we shouldn't be monogamous. Monogamy is a very good thing! But it's not the only way of relating sexually and it's not the only "right" way of relating. If you're constrained by a belief that it is, then you're limiting yourself, and you're limiting other people's choices too. If you accept that monogamy is a choice rather than an innate state, then that frees you up enormously. You'll ditch all the negativity that surrounds the beliefs and the shoulds and ought to's and allow yourself to be honest with yourself about what is really right for you, or others, sexually. This freedom and honesty will enable you to be free and honest in your communication with your sexual partner(s). That's what leads to good on-going sex over the long-term.

It's not just about big things like monogamy though. I find that people often hinder themselves with small beliefs, such as:

• Sex has to be last thing at night,
• You can't have sex if the children are still awake,
• You can't have sex when your parents/guests are staying,
• Having regular "nooky nights" is unspontaneous and therefore bad.

Then there are age-related myths such as:

• Sex naturally gets worse as you get older,
• People reach their sexual peak in their 20s (they reach their reproductive peak then, not sexual),
• Women dry up and become asexual after menopause,
• Men only like young women,
• Your sexual partner should only be a few years older or younger than you,
• Women with younger partners are "cougars" and somehow "bad".

There are plenty of myths around homosexuality vs heterosexuality (even if we've let of the big one that homosexuality is unnatural and wrong):

• If you're primarily heterosexual you shouldn't find people of the same sex in any way sexually appealing,
• You're either completely homosexual or completely heterosexual,
• Women are more naturally bisexual than men,
• Men who cross-dress must be gay.

There are countless myths about male versus female sex roles, too many to go into here, but here are a few:

• Men are gagging for sex all the time,
• Men want to have sex to have an orgasm, rather than to pleasure their partner,
• Men don't like foreplay or sensual sex, they're only interested in the "main event",
• A woman should have sex with their partner whether she wants to or not or he'll lose interest in her,
• Men should initiate and lead the way sexually, always,
• There's something wrong with a woman if she has a low libido,
• You need a hard erection for good sex,
• You need a penis for good sex.

Then there are all those myths about what you should or shouldn't do sexually.

To quote from my book Sex Secrets for Busy People:

'If you think oral sex, anal sex, sex toys, erotic videos, crotchless knickers, latex catsuits, bondage, swinging, pain and pleasure or any other activity is wrong, evil, immoral and takes you straight to hell, well, it's time to loosen up and push those boundaries a little.'

Nevertheless, there are laws around sexual activity, and for good reason. These laws are meant to protect the innocents. But the healthiest attitude is that as long as the sexual activity is between consenting, living, adult, humans, then it's your personal choice, and nobody else's business but you and your partner(s).

Human sexuality is a wonderful thing, with so many possibilities, and so much potential for self-expression, self-knowledge and personal growth, not to mention bonding, pleasure, stress relief, well-being, better physical and mental health, and plain old fun!

To be able to make the most of your sexuality, start by ditching the myths that hold you back.

Relax your hips,

relax your buttocks,

relax your abdomen,

breathe,

and feel…,

That’s how you experience sensational sex, fully sensing the experience.

Whether you’re engaged in love-making that is soft and tender, intense slam-fucking, or anywhere else on the very wide spectrum of sexual sensation, relaxing your muscles, remembering to breathe, allowing openness throughout your body and through that connection between the two of you leads to…

…delicious, pleasurable, gorgeous sensation.

Continue that into orgasm, and well, just try it.

It might take a while to break the habit of tension, but when you do, it’s a whole new ballgame…

When a woman gets to a level of arousal where she’s in a different ‘zone’ - love-drunk, in a heightened state, an altered state of consciousness - the sex changes.

There’s a different energy in that state, strange things happen. You can become aware of different sensations in your body: feelings of ecstasy and rapture, of transport and transcendence.

The description of this state sounds almost religious.

The pleasure is there, yet it’s not just genital, it suffuses the body and the mind.

Sex in this state can be wild and crazy or it can be completely serene, and it can go from one to the other and everywhere in-between.

She can spend time in what appears to be suspended animation, barely breathing, hovering in an ecstatic state.

She can feel animal energies move through her - such as big cats and snakes - and she will roar and writhe in tune with these energies.

She can feel goddess energies - energies of compassion, of destruction, of power, of lust.

She can sense the presence of beings and entities, gods and goddesses.

She can feel herself merge with her partner or merge with the entire universe.

She can only get to these states if she is free to be herself. She must free herself of the limiting beliefs she holds around sex, let go of any awkwardness or shame around sex, ditch the myths around what she feels she should or shouldn’t do - and her partner has to do this too.

Until she can be this free, the sex remains in the physical realm. Physical sex is great, no problems there, but if you want to experience the truly sublime then sex needs to be spiritual; and to be truly spiritual the woman has to be completely free to be her true self.

And it going there, she takes her partner with her...to bliss.

Lips part, faces draw near, lips touch. 

Close your eyes and imagine this, feel it, fully present in your lips, in your tongue. 

Your lips are soft, testing, sensing. Your mouth is relaxed, your tongue gentle.

Gently, gently kiss. How much sensation is there in that gentleness? Your lips are alive, they are the predominant sense organ of the moment.

Feel how the subtlety creates so much strength of feeling, all though out your body.

Feel how that softness allows your body to awaken, how it allows you to sink in to the feeling of softening, opening, receiving, joining.

Feel how that connection through your lips atunes you to your partner.

Be aware, through your lips, of your own and your partner’s feeling. Allow yourself to submit to the flow of the kiss. Let your lips dance together, tease, explore.

Include the tongue if that feels right in the moment, soft, testing, always relaxed. Your tongue too, a sensory organ feeling and transmitting pleasure to the whole of your body.

Take your time. There is no rush, there is no sense of this leading anywhere, it is not a ‘preliminary’. It just is.

As the kiss ends and you draw apart, stay with the feeling in your body, feeling the pleasure, the yumminess that suffuses your being. Be aware of how your partner is feeling this too.

Be aware of where you want to go with this. Is the kiss complete in itself? Does it leave you yearning for more? If so, is your desire to continue with subtlety or with more passionate intensity?

Feel it and flow with it. Wherever it leads. There is no right or wrong, no ‘should’ just what is emerging in the moment between the two of you.

Intense sex can be wonderful, transporting you on a wave of fervour, even ferocity. You’ll find the pleasure of passion there, but if you want ecstasy, rapture, you have to look elsewhere…

Because the ecstasy is found in the spaces in-between…

Imagine…just the barest of touches…not quite a touch at all…just the knowledge of the presence of the other…

I'm always amazed at what happens when a couple is radically honesty with each other.

Let me share a couple of recent examples:

In one case, a young man told his wife that he didn’t find her sexually attractive and never really had. He had naturally felt he couldn’t tell her that for fear of insulting and upsetting her, but he was really finding it hard to have sex with her because of this feeling.

With my encouragement, he told her how he truly felt, which was, as expected, insulting and upsetting for her. However, because they were able to have this conversation from a gentle, open, sharing place, he could give her the space to sit with the information. There was no intensity of emotion on his part, no aggression, no judgment or condescension or fear, and this enabled her to sit with the news, process it calmly and accept it.

On his part, releasing this huge burden, this terrible secret he’d been keeping, freed him up enormously.

The outcome: he actually opened up to the possibility, and then the reality, that he did find his wife sexually attractive.

She found freedom in understanding what was behind their sexual problem, realized that now that she had the knowledge, she could make a choice of her own volition.

Now their hearts are open to each other, he’s not shutting himself off from her due to his secret, and she’s not resentful and confused because of his withdrawal. And guess what? Their sex life is improving.

In another case, a man in his mid-40s came to me after his wife told him she had never found him sexually attractive and had only married him because he was what she considered “good husband material” (which apparently didn’t include sexuality). Of course, it was hard for him to hear this, but because it was presented with gentleness and love, he was able to take this news and decide what to do with it. In this case he realized that he had been living quite unconsciously and has set out on a remarkable journey of self-discovery and growth.

What was required in both cases of sharing the information, was a level of unattachment to the outcome. Such honesty always brings with it the possibility of a strong negative reaction from the partner. But if it is done with an open heart, with space for the other to take the news and work it, then a positive outcome is inevitable. The outcome might not be quite what you had hoped or expected, but there is inevitably growth.

I’ve had the same experience in my own relationship, where my partner and I both realized we had been ‘putting up with’ several issues and holding back from speaking for fear of upsetting the other. Yes, we ‘experts’ have the same struggles as everyone, with the result that our relationship was becoming increasingly strained. Over a few radically honest conversations, we were able to craft a new type of relationship. How radical honesty pans out in the long run, who knows? But it will be better than before and after our sharing my heart was more open to him than ever.

Whether it’s an issue as big as not finding your partner sexually attractive, or something smaller, such as finding your partner too noisy or too quiet in bed (other recent examples from my practice), if you hold back the truth, you’re holding back energy from your partner, which leads to resentment and confusion and misunderstandings on both parts.

Honesty, radical honesty, is the best policy.

Honesty shared with love, with calm and with no judgment or expectation, magic happens.

I had an interesting few days recently, running a workshop for women, followed two days later with a seminar for men.

For me it was truly wonderful to work with a group of 16 women over two days and feel and see them come more fully into the strength and softness of their femininity and become more sexually confident and expressive. Such gorgeous strong feminine women!

And then two days later to work with a group of 15 men for an evening of coming into the strength and softness of their masculinity, becoming more sexually confident and (according to feedback from participants and/or their partners) more sexually expressive. Such gorgeous strong masculine men!

It really brought home to me how equal men and women are in their innate sexual energy, but how differently that energy is expressed.

Vive la difference!

We are all equal, and thank god for social changes that have given reasonable social, political, economic, etc equality between the sexes. God forbid that we should ever go back to a time when women were considered inferior to men in so many ways or that that inferiority be entrenched in society.

But equal does not mean same. Women have proven that they can be as tough as men and can change tires and lead boardroom meetings; and men have proven they can be as tender as women and can change nappies and bake muffins. And that’s great. But please women, don’t lose what is so intrinsically and wonderfully feminine about you as a woman when you do; and please men, don’t lose what is so intrinsically and wonderfully masculine about you as a man when you do.

I’ll say it again: vive la difference!

One of my recent blog posts describes the energetics of the feminine and the masculine in more detail. The essence of it is that for the majority of the population, a balanced women has her softness, her yin, on the outside and her strength, or yang, on the inside and a balanced man has his yang strength on the outside and his yin softness on the inside. It’s this opposition and complementarity that in large part maintains the sexual tension, the ‘oomph’ factor. (In same sex relationships a different but similar dynamic is working.)

If this is lost because the man is a WIMP (weak inept mopey purposeless person) - all softness and no strength, or a SHIT (selfish hard insensitive tosser) - all hard on the outside and no entry to his internal softness; and/or if the woman is a DRIP (docile rueful ineffective person) – all softness with no inner strength, or a SHREW (stressed hard resentful emasculating woman) – with hard barriers on the outside, not allowing access to her softness or her true inner strength, then you’re not going to have the kind of connection that allows for good sex, if any sex at all.

I’m not implying here that to be masculine means macho and aggressive, nor that feminine means pathetic and weak. Far from it. One of the reasons I’ve developed the concept of the Seven Elements of Sexuality is to show the breadth of ways to express oneself sexually, for both sexes.

I see it over and over again in my clinic and when talking and working with people all over the place – men are not being true and real as men in the bedroom, and their women want them to be; and women are not being true and real as women in the bedroom, and their men want them to be.

And everyone is so confused about this!

Because it’s been drilled into us, for example, that it’s bad for women to be submissive and for men to be dominant. But it’s not! Submission does not mean weak, and dominance does not mean domineering. (Nor am I even implying that women should be submissive and men dominant.)

So, we hide from what might be real and do and act the way we feel we should. But over time that acting becomes just that, and we either can’t be bothered or else get frustrated because it isn’t real, it’s an act.

It’s hard to find the right words to describe what I’m talking about, because these words have become so loaded with meaning. Even the word ‘feminine’ has come to imply something weak and dependant, rather than strong and gorgeous. Which is one of the reasons why I encourage people to come to my workshops and retreats to start to feel what it’s like to be real.

I met up with one couple during the week who had done my men’s and women’s workshops over the previous week, and they were beaming! He said that in observing how my partner and I interacted, he actually ‘got’ what it meant to allow his masculine energy to come out in a powerful yet softly respectful way. Already he’d found that this enabled his wife’s feminine energy to emerge without her needing to control so she could let go – and both have truly awesome sex!

Another client who had attended the Luscious Woman workshop walked into my office so transformed from her hard-edged resentment into glowing gentleness that it was all I could do not to hug her - and her husband was finding it so much easier to come into his masculine fullness because she wasn’t terrifying him! Again, great sex resulted!

This is powerful stuff. I really admire you for coming on this journey of self-discovery, particularly in a part of life that is so very screwed up in our society. It can be hard and confusing, but this is fantastic work that can effect deep realisation and true expression of self, without all the barriers that constrain us in expressing who we really are, particularly in relation to our intrinsic masculinity or femininity (and we all have both).