Researchers around the world are looking for the keys to sexual functioning and some recent studies from the University of Amsterdam are demonstrating that contrary to popular belief, arousal is not a product of desire, but rather a result of it.
Neurobiologists have found that in many areas of life, including sexual response, the brain regions required to perform a specific act are ablaze prior to our thought to act. While this definitely sets in motion all kinds of philosophical questions about being the decider and planner of one’s life, when it comes to our sex lives, it might be a breath of fresh air.
Mountains of writing has been produced in the last twenty years about reclaiming sexual desire for women. Yet, these new studies suggest that the best approach for treating low sex drive may be to focus on enhancing arousability rather than desire. Forget about sexy thoughts and focus on sexy feelings and the physical cues that wake up one’s sexual circuitry.
I have been saying this for quite some time, actually, every time I sell a bottle of love oil. Our sense of smell is directly connected to the limbic part of the brain, the same area of the brain which registers sexuality, emotion and memory. Try as I might sometimes to get myself in a mood with my mind, usually a little love oil scent rubbed around my nose will do the trick in minutes.
So do an experiment next time you are searching for the desire to have sex. Forget it, instead try a flash of visual stimuli which according to the study primes the body for sex before we are even aware of it, whether or not our opinion of the stimuli is sexy…
Better still, dive into an experience of scent- fresh flowers, scented oils, spices…. Instead of thinking about sex, wake up your senses and feel something. After all it was reported in the New York Times Science section, and it doesn’t get any more serious than that… if you wake up the sexual circuitry sitting in the center of your brain, the rest will unwind from there, with the ease of a weighted shade.
