Understanding a little about desire helps us have more pleasure, find greater fulfillment and create deeper intimacy.
Before anything else, I have a gift for you, at the end of this piece.
I’m a Conscious Sexuality and Tantra Facilitator, based in South Africa.
I work with people,online and in person, on journeys of sexual healing, learning, exploring, growing. I’m interested in depth, in the connection between sexuality and spirituality, the energy of these, how they need to be in the context of our lives, and taking the time to go to the deeper places.
Essentially, we have 2 types of desire, Spontaneous Desire and Responsive Desire.
Learning a little about these is vital in our world today, and how they connect to our pleasure and relationships, both with ourselves and another.
Spontaneous Desire is easy.
It’s there, it’s quick.
It happens when we’re young, it happens in new relationships. It’s a big part of NRE, New Relationship Energy.
It generally flows easily, awakens quickly.
And it changes.
In the world at the moment, it actually changes pretty quickly.
It also changes as we get a little older, as relationships change, as our bodies change.
As women go through peri-and menopause, men through andropause.
And this is important.
It changes with emotions, with stress, with anxiety, with circumstance.
We often think it’s only connected to age, it actually goes much deeper than that.
If a woman doesn’t feel safe in a relationship, in a connection, desire wanes.
If we’re stressed, which in a world of chaos, confusion, stress, desire drops.
An extension of the state of our world, of many lives at the moment, is more people experiencing anxiety and depression than ever, disconnect, loneliness.
Desire drops, and the medications for these conditions, which more people are using than ever, contributes to this.
This is where it becomes important to learn about Responsive Desire.
Responsive Desire is what we create.
And a short, but vital digression, what we often think of as low or not libido, is a shift in desire.
Responsive Desire comes from within.
Responsive Desire is about the context, the intention, the time, the connection to sexuality, sensuality, intimacy and eroticism.
It’s about our relationship with our own bodies, our own sexuality.
We create the desire by creating the arousal.
This is an exploration, a learning, a discovery, as to what turns us on.
What is that we need to light the fire of arousal.
And to understand it’s not just one thing, and it changes.
So communication is a vital aspect of Responsive Desire.
Even before that is the intention, a conscious intention to have pleasure, to be sexual, to be intimate.
Which is deeply linked to the relationship we have with ourselves, with our bodies, our hearts, genitals, arousal, sensuality and eroticism.
It’s deeply linked to feeling, how, what we’d like to feel, which leads to the type of experience we’d like to have, and the pathway we create for that to happen.
Creating desire takes time, that alone is a huge thing to get.
When there’s pressure, when we’re stressed, when it’s about performance and outcome, when we’re not comfortable, it shuts desire down.
Then, knowing what creates different feelings, energies within us.
A soft, gentle experience requires different things to a fiery, passionate experience.
For all of these, regardless of where we’re going, intention, communication, connecting, breath, sound, movement, meditation, touch are some of the elements.
It’s a discovery and a learning, which can be constant, as the elements of desire change.
We love the idea, especially most men, as much as it’s a misbelief, a misperception, that this works all the time.
Responsive Desire is just that, responsive, it dances, moves, changes.
Because it’s alive, vital, creative.
Learning this opens so many paths of pleasure and intimacy, opens us to so many experiences.
As confusing as it may be, especially in the shift from Spontaneous Desire, it’s actually liberating.
It takes us out of the pattern, out of the conditioning, out of what we’ve always done into this present moment, and what our bodies and hearts desire, now.
This is where learning about pleasure, the different practices, touches, massages, kinks, energies etc, become important.
Learning about communication, how to really listen, to express what we want.
It’s a path that is literally life-long and limitless, of discovery, adventure, excitement and fun.
I’m involved in a powerful menopause project, The Mpower Meno Tribe, we teach a lot about this.
I mentioned meditation as one of the elements of creating arousal, it’s actually an incredibly underused sexual tool.
Here’s a link to one of my meditations on desire, I hope you enjoy it, and I’d love to hear your experience of it: https://www.mediafire.com/file/3gaos65qsgqbqx4/A+Meditation+Of+Desire.m4a/file
There’s more, much more.
I invite you…
