mens sexuality Archives - Relationship & Sexuality Counselling Specialists

Men: Improving Your Strike Rate

April 19, 2018 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Guys, could you do with more quality sex in your life?

If your answer is yes, improving your strike rate happens by avoiding the following bedroom blunders that will instantly shoot your desire in the foot. They’ll not only make the rejection you expect more likely, they’ll put sex on the back burner for your woman too.

It’s not because she doesn’t want you.

It’s because she’s made differently (as you might have noticed…)

We’ll show you what to do instead to hugely improve your strike rate in the bedroom (without the need for ball tampering…)

Common Bedroom blunders:

Believing she doesn’t want you.

There will be times that this is true, this is just life and don’t take it personally. It’s that she’s stressed out, busy, tired, worrying about the kids or her friend or her ageing parents etc. Underneath all this she’s likely to want sex as much as you do and it’s important to remember it, as it makes it easier to correct No. 2.

2. Expecting her to make the first move.

Sure, she will sometimes be hot to trot and put the moves on you, but mostly she’ll be waiting for you to approach her. It’s just the way she’s made, she wants to be wanted as it validates her desirability and gives her confidence to step into her sexual power (just like you do really). So instead of waiting, step up and make the move.

3. Using a language that will push her away.

Men tend to think about sex itself as the goal, and along the way they get connected with their woman. She will come to sex wanting to feel connected with you. So, let your language reflect that you see this about her clearly. Instead of asking for sex make it personal, let her know you want ‘her’ not just sex.

4. Being covert to avoid rejection

Because being rejected is so painful many men will allude to getting sex by making hints or jokes instead of asking for it outright. They’ll say something like “the kids are in bed early tonight so I’m in with a chance, am I?” Make your approach direct. Look her in the eye and ask straight up with a smile.

5. Wanting to fix her

It’s been said before, but we’ll say it again. Women mostly want you to just listen rather than to be fixed, so when she talks just listen. Don’t offer a solution unless she asks for one.

6. Not taking care of yourself

You might have noticed the guy with the beer gut and bald spot who still thinks he’s God’s gift to women, yet a woman who looks like Elle McPherson can be riddled with self doubt?

Don’t just take it for granted that you’re attractive, make the effort to at least have clean teeth, fresh breath, and a clean body. Take an interest in your physical wellbeing and keep as fit and healthy as you can.

7. Wanting to take

Men do this when they’re not connected to their hearts in sex. We don’t mean loving to your partner but being connected to your own heart, inside your body. To do this slow down, breathe deeply, put your attention on your body and what you’re feeling, especially around your heart. Doing this will help you make sex about sharing rather than taking, as women can smell this in a man and will pull back (unless she’s in the mood to ‘be taken’, then ravish her with all you’ve got). Remember her pleasure is as important as yours (as your pleasure is as important as hers). Take your time and go on a journey together, rather than just rush to the destination.

8. Neglecting non-sexual touch

It’s hard for a woman to stay present in her body, trying to do everything she’ll disappear into her head and not be aware of the sensual part of her. Feel your desire in your own body, don’t be afraid of it. This is why women love bad boys who carry lots of sexual energy front and centre- they make them feel. You don’t need to be like that, just let yourself feel your desire, relax into it by breathing deeply, then touch her from this place in you. Do so without the goal of immediate sex. Give her a kiss, a melting hug, stroke slowly along the back of her neck, shoulders or lower back to help her get into her body. Look into her eyes and caress her face for a moment, give her a kiss or a smile. Caress the sides of her breasts or hips, don’t go for her nipples, butt or her genitals, as this will shut her down if she’s not warmed up. Leave her wanting more. This is why women love bad guys- they make them feel.

9. Avoiding your truth

Challenge yourself to be honest about yourself and what you feel, rather than avoid difficult conversations and disappear into the office or the garage. Your woman can feel this strength and alignment in you and will be attracted to it (even if it may piss her off at times!). One of the things you need to be honest with ourself about is the fact that you’re not entitled to sex, nor can you expect your partner to give it to you. Sex is something you co create the conditions for it to happen in, taking this approach makes you more creative and frees up resistance in your partner.

10. Fearing being rejected.

Men propose, women dispose. The way to deal with rejection is being willing to feel it. This might sound like a recipe for self-flagellation but it’s actually the opposite. The more you fear and resist rejection (which is a physical and emotional pain) the more intensely you feel it. Ironically, if you’re willing there is no wall for the rejection to cut through and hurt. Any rejection you do feel can be actively breathed through your body to release it. It sounds weird but it works. The more you practice this the less pressure your woman will feel from you allowing her to find her own desire and step closer.

See which ones might be true for you, take them out of your sexual repertoire and notice your sex life significantly (if not amazingly) improve!

And if you’d like any further assistance putting these tools into use call Annette & Graeme on 1800 TANTRA or email here for a chat.

Sexual Breathing Enhances Your Pleasure

December 4, 2017 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Sexual Breathing brings more pleasure and more connection…

Start simply…breathe in down to your belly, breathe out through your mouth…this is the beginning of Sexual Breathing.

Once comfortable breathe in all the way down to your genitals, breathe out through your mouth…

Then squeeze your pelvic floor muscles as you inhale and relax them as you exhale…

Keep coming back to this practice, whether you are making love, self pleasuring, driving the car or sitting on the back verandah with a cuppa.

In lovemaking actively play with your breath

Sexual Breathing is consciously playing with your breath. Speeding your breath up increases your pleasure (build up slowly if you’re new to it), breathing fully and deeply spreads your pleasure through your body as it relaxes. Nb. You create room for more pleasure in a relaxed body than in one full of tension, especially as you get close to orgasm. This is true for both men and women. It might seem to fade a little at first as you relax, that’s just because it’s spreading. Keep breathing and relaxing and your pleasure will come back stronger! Once you go into orgasm take short sharp breaths to keep your pleasure going longer. This also reduces the ‘owie’ oversensitive feeling on your clitoris.

Get a little more fancy (and more powerful) here:

The Feminine & Masculine Breaths

Sexual Breathing begins with the Feminine Breath, as this is an energy building (or receptive) breath.

The Masculine Breath is a discharging breath so it makes sense to build your energy first.

Then you can try a free breath which combines both…

Try it alone first, then with your partner, one doing the feminine and the other masculine breath.

The Feminine Breath:

Lie on the floor or the bed on your back with your feet flat on the floor or bed with your knees up and leaning in a little. Your feet are up near your hips, and your sacrum is contacting the ground. Stay relaxed. Move very slowly. As you flatten your lower back your pelvis curls up. Add a deep inhalation as you do so. this in breathe is in through the mouth, breathing energy into the Yoni. Breathe all the way up to the chest. Expand the chest and then expand more. Draw the shoulders back and apart and inhale more. Take in everything you can imagine needing on your inhalation, on your breath. Take in all you have ever missed out on receiving on your inhalation. Take in so much so you feel totally full. Keep the inhale larger than the exhale..

Breathe out through the nose, constricting the throat slightly and sighing or making an “mmm” sound. As you breathe out slowly release the pelvic curl to sink into the ground, arching your lower back as you do so. Let go, let go, surrender all control. Visualize or feel the energy moving up from the pelvis and radiating out the heart. Pause at the bottom of the exhale.

Repeat at your own pace for 5 to 10 minutes, breathing in everything you need.

Allow the body to shake or orgasm if it wants to, allow feelings to come, but return to the breath as soon as you can whatever else is going on. Pause, rest and observe your feelings for a few minutes.

The Masculine Breath:

Keep your knees up but allow your legs to fall apart slightly. Feet are still up near your hips. Continue to move very slowly with the pelvic curl but in the reverse direction to what you’ve just done. Tilt the pelvis down (or arch the back, pressing the sacrum into the ground) as you breathe into the heart. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth making the exhale bigger than the inhale.

Pause at the top of the inhale and slowly curl the pelvis up, flattening your lower back as you exhale out through the genitals with an open mouth, making a “ha” sound. Let everything go on the exhale.

Repeat at your own pace for 5 to 10 minutes, slowly moving your pelvis together with the breath.

Using either the masculine or the feminine movement, breathe both in and out through the mouth, more rapidly, keeping up a steady pace.

Or simply let go of all technique and let your body breathe and rock as it desires to.

Pause. Cease all and feel your body/mind. Lie quietly and notice what you’re experiencing.

You can use this as a sexual warm up or as a meditation.

Once you feel comfortable with your breathing invite your partner to join you, and breathe in the opposite way to each other. Breathe in and out together but one in masculine style and one in feminine. Your connection will flow quickly and powerfully. Enjoy!

You can add in a few Feminine/Masculine breaths anytime to add some juice to your love play.

NB. It is particularly valuable for women who generally breathe in the masculine style, or who find themselves in a masculine role to practice the Feminine Breath to nurture and re energise yourself.

If you would like to learn more about the power of your breath check out our coming events here.

The No.1 Tip to Keep Your Woman Wanting You

February 21, 2017 By Annette & Graeme 4 Comments

Keep your woman wanting you by touching her.

Your woman needs to be touched.

Something that often stands out for us is the way guys are missing one of the most basic rules in lovemaking.

Well, it’s more than a rule really, it’s a necessity!

What is even more surprising is that sometimes women don’t know this rule either…

Women need to be touched everywhere else before their genitals for them to work fully!

This is especially true in relationship sex- what we call sex for the long run. Any woman’s body that is not touched in lovemaking will sooner or later completely shut down, leaving her lover scratching his head wondering what happened.

This leaves him sadly buying into the belief, likely to be endorsed by his mates that a loss of interest in sex is “normal” in a woman. It is not.

A woman’s body is made to be touched, it’s not only luscious to look at its yearning to be fully appreciated.

Her body, not just Female sexuality more than just lingerie her vagina, needs to be penetrated with attention.

Anything else leaves her uninterested in sex and sometimes uninterested in her partner. It will also leave her more over emotional, critical even bitter; or cold, withdrawn and unapproachable.

A lack of touch makes her more interested in being with her kids where some of these needs for physical and emotional (not sexual) intimacy get met.

The interesting thing is that these people aren’t lacking in intelligence.

They’re smart, caring, creative and competent so it’s not that they aren’t capable of touching it’s just that they literally don’t know the importance.

And they’re not alone.

Why DON’T men touch?

Of course many men do touch, we’re looking here at the ones who don’t yet.

Survival of the species

A guy’s primal drive in sex, as it is in his life, is to produce.

To get to his goal as fast and as efficiently as possible. His primal urge to “get there” can override everything else in his pathway, leading him to ignore anything he perceives as distracting along the way.

And at its most basic level a woman’s pleasure, or anything beyond the perceived openness of her vagina, is not required for man to achieve his primal objective.

This is not an excuse but it is part of the reason behind a guy’s blindness in bed.

We’ve moved on from sex being merely about the survival of the species.

We’re now capable of sustained physical pleasure, emotional closeness and intimacy in sex, closeness and intimacy that men, given the opportunity, will admit they crave as much as women.

They just don’t know how to go about it, and the complexity of a woman’s body can be overwhelming.

Part of it is that men lack the quality information that can teach them.

Nowhere to learn from

Men have little opportunity to learn from others in their environment.

Open, honest conversations about sex and how it happens are as rare as hen’s teeth and mostly what we hear is disinformation about sex that perpetuates the stereotypes we labour under.

It’s one of the things we most love about our work- making these kinds of conversations possible.

Of course, pornography is the master of disinformation about sex- about truly satisfying sex at least.

Porn is great for titillation and getting us to the end point but terrible at showing us how to make the most of the bit in between.

Porn shows men penetrating women increasingly without any kind of touching beforehand and mistakenly portrays the women screaming in pleasure from the mere act of having a cock inside her.

Porn is teaching women too that she doesn’t need to be touched. A woman’s body doesn’t work that way.

Except on the occasions she is really hot with all systems firing and there’s usually reasons behind this other than just the immanent sex.

Cultural conditioning

Men grow up in the bullshit culture of how men should be big, strong and tough, not sensitive or ‘girly’, primed for fighting rather than loving, leaving them numb in their bodies and less sensitive to touch than they’re capable of.

Believe us guys, the more sensitive you become (without losing yourself) the more powerfully masculine you become where it counts- in the lingam (cock) and in the heart.

Men often grow up in an environment where touching, even non sexual touching wasn’t a normal part of daily life for them.

Such as hanging out on the couch together, having hugs, being held when they’re sad or even being kissed goodnight at bedtime.

It can be true for women as well. This kind of touch may even have been shamed.

Growing up with a lack of touch makes it difficult to know what it feels like and what its benefits are.

Performance based touch

When men do take the time to become good at touching a woman they’re unfortunately taught to “turn her on”.

As Leonard Cohen so powerfully sang “I didn’t know how to feel so I learned how to touch”.

A man can even believe he knows how to touch so well that his woman ‘should’ like it, no matter what.

This external touch can leave a woman feeling pressured to perform in order to validate his skill and feeling manipulated rather than fulfilled no matter how pleasure she has.

It limits the connection possible in truly intimate lovemaking.

Men also carry shame about their sexual needs and often have anger towards women who as they see it, don’t provide for their needs.

This leaves them resentful about having to “give” touch in return.

Men haven’t been taught how to take responsibility for their own sexual needs and having unsatisfying sexual relationships makes this worse.

Not knowing what is possible

And finally it’s just that most people don’t know what is possible in sex, beyond having a “genital sneeze” type orgasm.

In the rush for the mechanics the intimacy in sex is lost. In relationship sex in the absence of intimacy much of the pleasure is lost.

And why do women accept it?

A woman is primally driven to open and receive in sex.

This leaves her without a voice to ask for what it is that she needs for her own arousal and continues to happen despite the growth in women’s liberation elsewhere in life.

It leaves her lover in the dark operating on instinct leaving her to just “go along” and hope that it’s over soon.

Woman’s strength has been in her capacity to endure rather than her ability to speak up.

She knows intuitively there is more but she is at a loss in how to create it, and with today’s orgasm performance based sex so much the norm she can even doubt her instincts.

So how DO you touch a woman in sex?

Begin getting into your own body first so she can feel you.

By touching her outside the bedroom to help her get into her feeling body too- not groping, just relaxed touch without an agenda.

Then by asking her.

Ask questions to make sure you understand her fully.

Dropping any expectations of a result, just enjoy each moment.

Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback as you touch her, not from a place of insecurity but from caring- would you like it slower/faster/softer/firmer/to the right/left etc.

And keep asking. She will love you for it.

If she really doesn’t know, start with kissing her a lot.

Then follow the basic idea of imagining she has a bikini on and touching her everywhere else but under her bikini.

Particularly the back of her neck, her head and her hair, her breasts (all of them not just her nipples), over her heart, her lower back, buttocks and inner thighs. For more see Tantric Touch

Once you arrive at her genitals (or yoni as we like to call it which means sacred space) take the same approach- touch from the outside in- pubic mound, outer labia, perineum, inner labia, clitoris, entrance to her vagina, gspot and aspots (at cervix).

If she’s liking it do more of it, at the same speed or keep coming back to it.

Touch her from a place of exploration rather than performance.

Breathe and invite her to breathe with you.

And women, ask for it. And love touching yourself too so he’ll want to join you.

Make it a team effort.

She will love you for it and so will you.

Foreplay can Ruin Great Sex

April 18, 2015 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Relationship Killer: Foreplay as the ruination of great sex

Foreplay- defined as what you do in preparation for the real thing- sex.

It will, if all goes well, get you some good sex.

Yet in order to have really satisfying, even memorable sex foreplay (unless you spend hours and even days at it like like Christian Gery and let’s face it who does that?) is more likely to get in the way.

Foreplay creates an implicit power struggle that limits and separates the lovers rather than uniting them. It becomes a doing with predetermined outcomes along with increased expectations and a high potential for mere performance or disappointment. In other words it activates the egos in your relationship.

Foreplay happens when…

both of you are at your most vulnerable, when you’re beginning to be naked physically, emotionally and sexually. This is the time when your ego is most fearful and most wants to protect you from being embarrassed or made wrong!

It is not so much what happens in foreplay that creates the problem it is the mindset that goes with it, this idea that foreplay is the lead up to the main game. It means there is a goal oriented agenda towards what IS the main game, thereby creating a need to get somewhere.

We commonly believe that ‘foreplay’ is for women and real ‘sex’ is for the man. This ignites a not so subtle power struggle, focussing each in their minds thinking about what they should be giving or getting, disconnecting them from their feelings and blocking enjoyment.

There is also the vital question of how much foreplay is enough, and who gets to decide?

All of this limits the ease and openness that makes being sexual in your relationship feel so great in the first place.

For a man foreplay can:

Be seen as something he needs to give in order to get his ‘real’ pleasure. Or that he needs to ‘give’ his partner an orgasm first to be a good lover.
So he creates a plan of action in order to get to his goal, and his focus is on getting his partner ‘ready’.
His level of skill and confidence will determine his degree of enjoyment and performance pressure.
Sub consciously he can carry resentment at this having to focus on her and hold himself back.
He may have fear of failing to get his partner aroused, or of enjoying it so much he doesn’t last long enough for the ‘main game’. With his focus on his partner he is less aware of, or able to relax and enjoy his own experience.
Carrying this weight of success on his shoulders can reduce his interest in trying again.

For a woman foreplay can:

Feel like foreplay is something she needs to do to ‘get ready’ for penetration.
This puts her into her own performance pressure with the feeling that the clock is ticking, putting her in her head ‘trying to get there’, creating tension in her body and stress from her overactive mind, the total opposite of the relaxation she needs.
If she has a belief it’s the man’s job to get her aroused it leaves her cold or pissed off if he doesn’t/can’t do so. This can stop her from actively participating in her own arousal.
There is underlying fear or resentment about either performing, being good enough or not getting ‘there’ in time and missing out.
In not being fully aroused woman’s pleasure in penetration is limited and it becomes something to get over with as quickly as possible.
The focus on goal orientation limits her ability to relax, open and surrender into the endless full bodied pleasure she is capable of, reducing her interest in ‘next time’.

In porn the focus is almost totally on penetration. In many women’s articles penetration is often seen as getting in the way of a woman’s pleasure. Both of these are limiting points of view.
In foreplay we’re trying to make things happen, getting caught in routines that soon become acutely boring and passion killing, where we know exactly what is going to (or not going to) happen.

If these are not reasons enough to change your mind about your need for foreplay in your sexual relationship there is an even more compelling one-

That our most profound experiences in bed, the ones that stay with us for days, weeks and even years, giving life meaning tend to come from moments of spontaneity or unforseen creativity that surpass anything we could have planned for.

Our very best experiences are nothing like our best-executed agenda.

In fact, all of our trying just gets in the way.

The more we let sex happen rather than making it happen, the more these breakthrough experiences can arise.

Instead of foreplay explore being in each moment fully from beginning to end.

Choose to be simply present without agenda in each moment of sexual connection, whether it is the beginning the middle or the end.

Experience it fully as it is right now, in this moment, exploring it fully, then this one, then this…

Regarding each moment of sex as one of unlimited potential just as it is, rather than a mere passage to somewhere better. Whether it is a moment of high arousal or valley like stillness, experience each one fully.
This experience of what is real and acceptance of what is builds trust and openness, great stepping stones to pleasure, especially for women. It is not about expecting a woman to allow penetration without being ready, more that this way of being invites it to happen without forcing. It also creates a freedom and spaciousness for magic to enter that gives a man a performance break.

Rather than foreplay

Focus instead on getting connected with yourselves – being present inside your own bodies, in the moment, breathing, connecting, feeling, opening. This allows your bodies to respond naturally, opening to the innate creativity that lives within us rather than being forced into following our own, or our partner’s egoic agenda.