What happens afterwards might be more important than what happens before.
We spend a fair amount of time talking about the importance of foreplay, and if you’re lucky, as a woman, a fair amount of time in foreplay.
I teach a workshop called Conscious Connection and Intimacy, which is even before the foreplay, and is a really important part of our pleasure and sexual experiences.
We have whatever experience we’re going to have, and then…it ends.
And more times than not, we disconnect.
We’re done.
In old-style movies it would be a man rolling off and lighting a cigarette, in our times it’s picking up a phone or putting Netflix on.
We disconnect.
Physically, emotionally, energetically.
Sometimes pretty suddenly.
Which, deep inside of us, at a level of awareness we can’t identify but feel, we know.
And a lot shuts down within us, unfulfilled, empty, still wanting, needing.
Let’s take a moment to look at why what happens afterwards might be more important than what happens before.
Afterwards is what lingers.
Afterwards is what stays with us.
Afterwards is how we feel about ourselves, our lovers.
Afterwards is also what connects us to next time, and the more we’re left with that emptiness, the less we’re open to the next…
It’s subtle, and it might take a while to identify.
And over time, in a relationship, it has deep impact.
I use the term Afterglow.
And it can become that, a Glow, that suffuses us, body, mind, heart.
A light, a vibration, a pulsation that helps our nervous system comes into a frequency that is the afterglow of pleasure.
In this Glow we’re open, so open.
It’s a time of intimacy, maybe the deepest intimacy, a time for the deepest connection.
And it’s the time so many of us move away.
There’s a line from a song I’ve quoted before.
‘Sometimes when we touch, the honesty’s too much and I have to close my eyes and hide.’
This is when our bodies, love, pleasure, invites us into deeper and deeper intimacy.
This is when the masks drop, the armour falls away, the walls crumble.
This is when the light from within shines out, with the longing to be seen, to be met.
This, Afterglow, is not something we pay much attention to on social media, in so much of our education and talk about sex.
And this, for women, is why what comes after is vital.
It’s the continuity, the flow.
I’ve spoken a lot about why and how sex is in the context of our lives.
This is such an important part of that.
None of our experiences are in isolation, they don’t just start and end with nothing.
Our sexual and pleasure experiences are a part, an intrinsic part, of the fabric of our being.
They’re woven into all of who we are, mind, body, spirit. heart, energy…
Muscles, nerves, blood, bones…
And what happens in sensuality, sex, touches all these parts of us.
When that contracts, and that’s what the sudden withdrawal does, it closes something inside of us.
This is the time of openness, and for that to expand, we need to stay connected.
In the world of bondage play the concept of aftercare is well known. It’s specific, its importance is understood.
All of our sexual experiences are the same.
It’s vital.
Part of our lack of awareness of this, the after, and what it does, is we’ve come to see orgasm as the end of sex.
That’s the goal, the achievement.
When that happens, we’re done.
And in that, which has always been a limited definition of sex, we’ve left out this huge thing.
Orgasm never was the end.
There’s so much more…
Come and explore this, come and learn a little about the Afterglow, how to stay there, how to stay connected.
How to keep the channel open.
I invite you…
