"We think fast food is equivalent to pornography, nutritionally speaking."-Steve Elber
As a culture, our diet often suffers from the overwhelming demands of schedule and time constraints; we pick up food on the run and call it a meal. Even when we take the time to prepare a meal at home, we often eat it in front of a screen, eating quickly and mindlessly. Taking the time to taste our food is a luxury many of us don't know we are missing. We leap to the main course, over eating but never really filling up.
In many ways our sexual drive sadly gets the same treatment. We take the sensuous part of our humanity for granted, forgetting the power that scent has in waking up our memory, sexuality, and emotions. It is well documented that people who become anosmic, suffer not only a significant drop in their ability to taste, but also to emote. Thus, sexual drive also often plummets.
Learning to pay attention to scent and associated tastes is a way of building a sensory vocabulary. The more layered an experience is with all of our senses, the more memorable and rich it is. This multisensory approach invites mindful sensuality, allowing us to savor our sensory capacity and make life rich. Nowhere is that more true than in our intimate lives. Thinking about our sex life like a gourmet meal both takes the pressure off of any preconceived ideas of the main event and opens a gateway to the wonders of what it means to be a sexual being.
Often when I teach about expanding our capacity for physical love I use the analogy of a gourmet meal. When we sit down to dine, we don’t jump right to the main course. Think of the last fabulous meal you had; hors d’oeuvres, second course… the tastes, conversation, and lingering touches awake with all your senses. Why rush to the main course? Adding scents and flavors to your lovemaking extends the pleasure, introducing a whole new synergy of scent and flavor to kissing and even to our most sensitive tissue. This sensory mindfulness enervates with sensuality, the pressure is off and the pleasure is on. Scented Love Oils that heighten your own pheromones and awareness of the scent chemistry between you and your partner, trigger the limbic brain through the olfactory bulb. The arousal mechanism is stirred and so is the feel of your partner’s body as the oils give the curves and valleys in the body an effortless glide.
I always tell people that personal lubricant should be reserved for the moment you can't wait, then it can really do its job. The best lubricant in the world is a penetration aid, and contrary to the millions of dollars of KY advertising that "a little lube is all you need", a satisfying intimate encounter takes more than a squirt of lube.
Picking up a bottle of lubricant at this point makes infinitely more sense. This is the moment when a penetration device can do its job, adding the old familiar slip to the deepest communion we can manifest. Rushing to the main course is anti-climactic at best and painful at worst. Take time to explore what it means to feel sensuous. It is a close cousin to our most satisfying experience with delicious food.
Read about our slow sex movement here, and follow our Instagram account, goodcleanlove, for a visual representation of tricks to slow down sex in the coming week.
