Sexual Shame and Pleasure: When Your Body Feels Both
Have you ever been enjoying a sexual experience when, seemingly out of nowhere, shame shows up?
Maybe you're feeling aroused. Your body is responding. You're beginning to enjoy yourself.
And then something shifts.
Suddenly there's guilt, disgust, embarrassment, or a vague feeling that you shouldn't be enjoying what's happening.
You might start questioning yourself. Why am I feeling this way? What's wrong with me? Why can't I just relax and enjoy pleasure?
I know this experience intimately.
For a long time, sexual pleasure and shame were so closely intertwined in my own experience that I struggled to recognize them as separate feelings.
Learning to distinguish between them became an important part of reclaiming my sexuality.
In this episode of Embodied Magic with Melinda, I'm sharing that experience and some of the practices that helped me develop a different relationship with shame.
Why Can Sexual Pleasure Trigger Shame?
We often talk about sexual pleasure as though it's primarily a matter of physical stimulation.
Find the right technique, relax enough, and your body should respond.
But we bring so much more than our bodies into sexual experiences.
We bring our beliefs, memories, relationships, expectations, and experiences of being judged or criticized.
We may also bring experiences that were frightening, confusing, or violating.
For some people, sexual arousal becomes associated with emotions they would rather avoid.
And that can be incredibly confusing.
You might genuinely want pleasure. You might enjoy the physical sensations. You might even feel completely safe with your partner.
Yet something inside you responds with shame.
If during an earlier experience, arousal happened at the same time we felt the feeling of shame, disgust, or guilt, the brain can encode that pattern effectively "wiring" turn-on or pleasure, together with the uncomfortable feeling. The good news is this can be unlearned and you can teach your brain a new relationship with these 2 different experiences.
Where Does Sexual Shame Come From?
Sexual shame can develop through many different experiences.
Some people grow up in environments where sexuality is criticized, discouraged, or treated as something embarrassing.
Others receive messages that being a good person means suppressing sexual desire.
And for some of us, sexual shame becomes intertwined with experiences of abuse or violation.
A 2026 narrative review by researchers Anna Grace Coates and Cindy Meston examined the relationship between sexual shame and sexual well-being.
The researchers found associations between sexual shame and several aspects of sexual functioning and distress, although they also identified important limitations in the existing research.
Of course, sexual difficulties can have many causes. Hormones, medications, pain, health conditions, stimulation, and relationship dynamics can all influence sexual experiences.
Today, I want to focus on one particular experience: what happens when shame and pleasure arrive together?
My Experience of Sexual Shame After Childhood Trauma
Because of experiences earlier in my life, shame and disgust had become closely associated with sexual pleasure and arousal.
Even when I was in a safe relationship with someone who had never hurt me, those feelings could show up together.
I would begin experiencing sexual pleasure, and shame would arrive almost simultaneously.
Sometimes I could recognize that one feeling followed the other.
Other times, they seemed inseparable.
For years, I believed this was simply how sexuality would always feel for me.
I thought the sexual abuse I experienced as a child had permanently changed my ability to enjoy pleasure.
That belief carried its own kind of grief.
Eventually, I began experimenting with something that sounds almost ridiculously simple now.
What if I could experience pleasure and shame at the same time without assuming they meant the same thing?
Learning to Separate Shame From Pleasure
Imagine holding your hands out in front of you.
In one hand, you're holding pleasure.
Maybe it feels warm, exciting, tingly, or expansive.
Perhaps there's a sense of energy moving through your body.
Now imagine holding shame in your other hand.
What does that feel like?
Maybe it's heavy or cold. Maybe it feels constricting. Perhaps there's a memory or an old belief attached to it.
You can begin to notice that these experiences have different qualities.
For me, this distinction was profound.
I had spent years experiencing pleasure and shame together, interpreting the shame as evidence that something about my pleasure was wrong.
When I began recognizing them separately, I had more room to explore what was happening.
I could ask myself questions.
Where did I learn this?
Does this belief actually belong to me?
Is something happening right now that I need to pay attention to?
Or is an old association appearing in a new experience?
I also began recognizing that I could acknowledge the shame without giving it all of my attention.
Using Pendulation to Explore Conflicting Sensations
One practice that became meaningful in my own exploration was pendulation.
Pendulation involves gently shifting attention between different internal experiences, often including sensations associated with comfort or stability and sensations associated with distress.
In my personal practice, I explored moving my awareness between pleasure and shame.
I would begin by noticing pleasurable sensations.
What felt warm? What felt exciting? Where did I experience expansion?
Then, briefly, I would bring my attention toward the shame.
Where did I feel it in my body?
What was its texture or shape?
I tried to notice the physical experience without becoming absorbed in the story surrounding it.
Then I would return my attention to pleasure and sensations of safety.
I repeated this process, gradually becoming more familiar with the differences between the experiences.
And yes, I sometimes practiced this during conscious masturbation.
That gave me an opportunity to explore my own responses without the additional dynamics of a partner.
A Note About Sexual Trauma
I want to be particularly careful here.
If you have a history of sexual trauma, deliberately exploring distressing sensations during sexual arousal may bring up intense emotions or memories.
I encourage you to seek support from a qualified, trauma-informed mental health professional before attempting that kind of exploration.
You don't need to recreate distressing experiences to learn about your body.
There is also no requirement to use sexual stimulation as part of this process.
Research into mindfulness-based approaches to sexual difficulties is promising, although it doesn't establish that my particular practice will produce the same results for everyone.
For example, a 2021 randomized trial involving 148 women with sexual interest or arousal difficulties found improvements following both mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and supportive sex education.
For me, the value of developing awareness was discovering that I had more choices in how I responded to familiar feelings.
What If Shame Could Ride in the Backseat?
Another approach I love involves parts work.
Sometimes it's useful to imagine our conflicting feelings as different parts of ourselves.
Maybe there's a part that's excited about pleasure.
Another part feels curious.
And another feels frightened, ashamed, or protective.
Rather than immediately trying to get rid of the uncomfortable part, we can become curious about what it needs.
Perhaps that response developed during a time when expressing sexuality felt unsafe.
Maybe suppressing desire helped you navigate an environment where pleasure was criticized.
Those experiences may have shaped how you respond today.
I sometimes imagine speaking to that protective part.
I hear you. I know you're concerned. I want to understand what you're trying to tell me.
And I'm the one who gets to decide what happens next.
If it feels appropriate, I imagine inviting that part into the backseat of the car.
It can come along. It can express its concerns.
But it doesn't automatically get the keys.
This imagery helps me remember that I can acknowledge an uncomfortable experience while remaining connected to my own agency.
And there's an important distinction here.
If something genuinely feels unsafe, painful, or unwanted, that's information worth honoring.
You can stop.
You can slow down.
You can ask for something different.
You never need to override your boundaries to pursue pleasure.
How Hypnosis and Imagery Can Help Us Explore Sexual Beliefs
One of the things I love about hypnosis is the opportunity to work with imagination, focused attention, and suggestion.
Sometimes we intellectually understand something long before our emotional experience catches up.
You might know that sexual pleasure is a natural part of being human.
You might believe that you deserve to enjoy your body.
And yet shame can still appear.
Imagery offers another way to explore those experiences.
Perhaps shame feels like a heavy coat you've been wearing for years.
What would it be like to imagine taking that coat off?
Maybe you hang it on a hook beside you.
Perhaps you simply create a little more space between yourself and an old belief.
Or you might imagine meeting the part of yourself that feels ashamed and asking what it needs.
I love the possibility of developing a more compassionate relationship with our internal experiences.
We can listen, explore, and experiment with new ways of responding.
Surrender, Sexual Pleasure, and the Importance of Choice
Surrender is a word I use frequently when talking about pleasure and orgasm.
And I think it's important to be clear about what I mean.
Surrender involves choice.
Sometimes that means allowing pleasurable sensations to expand.
Sometimes it means slowing down.
Sometimes it means asking for something different.
And sometimes it means stopping entirely.
I believe that becoming more connected to our boundaries can create greater freedom to explore experiences that genuinely feel welcome.
We're able to remain connected to our own desires and preferences.
That connection matters when we're learning about sexual pleasure.
It also matters when we're learning about ourselves.
A Gentle Exercise for Exploring Pleasure and Shame
I'd like to offer you a reflection exercise inspired by the practice I share in this episode.
You can do this fully clothed, outside of any sexual situation.
You don't need to recall difficult memories or deliberately create uncomfortable sensations.
If the subject feels activating, you're welcome to leave the exercise for another time.
Step 1: Begin With Something Pleasant
Think about an ordinary sensory pleasure.
Maybe it's dancing.
Maybe it's the smell of your favorite food.
Maybe it's sitting outside in nature.
Allow yourself to imagine that experience.
What do you see?
What do you hear?
What can you smell, taste, or feel?
Step 2: Notice What Else Appears
As you imagine enjoying that experience, notice whether any other thoughts or feelings arise.
Maybe there's a thought that you should be doing something productive.
Perhaps you notice guilt about taking time for yourself.
Or maybe nothing uncomfortable appears at all.
There's no particular response you're supposed to have.
Step 3: Imagine Holding the Experiences Separately
If an uncomfortable thought or sensation does arise, imagine placing it in one hand.
Notice its qualities.
Now imagine gathering the pleasurable experience into your other hand.
What does that feel like?
Take a moment to notice both experiences.
You can observe them without needing to resolve anything.
Step 4: Ask Yourself What You Need
What would feel kind and supportive right now?
Maybe you'd like to return your attention to something pleasant.
Perhaps you'd like to write in your journal.
Or maybe you'd simply like to stop, have a cup of tea, and look out at the trees.
Any of those choices is valid.
The invitation is to meet yourself with curiosity and compassion.
Reclaiming Pleasure Is About More Than Orgasm
I'm a big fan of orgasms. Obviously.
But I think the work of reclaiming pleasure can touch many parts of our lives.
When we've spent years organizing ourselves around other people's expectations, reconnecting with our own desires can be a profound experience.
We might begin asking different questions.
What do I actually want?
What feels good to me?
What am I allowed to ask for?
How much space am I allowed to take up?
What would happen if I stopped treating my desires as inconvenient?
These questions can open some very interesting doors.
In my work, I often return to three elements of orgasmic exploration: sensation, expansion, and surrender.
We begin by recognizing what feels pleasurable.
We explore how attention, curiosity, and stimulation can help that pleasure grow.
And we practice allowing ourselves to experience pleasure without demanding a particular outcome.
I hope this conversation leaves you curious about your own experience.
Because curiosity creates room for exploration, play, and learning.
And perhaps your body has more possibilities than you've previously imagined.
If you've recognized yourself in this conversation, I'd love to invite you to explore this work with me more deeply.
I'm creating Becoming Orgasmic, a six-module educational experience focused on understanding your body, expanding your pleasure, and exploring the skills that can support more satisfying sexual experiences.
Our founding cohort begins February 4, 2027.
You can also explore my free Embodied Pleasure Guidebook.
You don't have to become a different person to deserve pleasure.
You can begin right where you are, with curiosity, compassion, and a willingness to listen to your body.
Your pleasure matters <3
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why do I feel ashamed when I'm sexually aroused?
Sexual shame can develop through cultural messages, family beliefs, religious teachings, past relationships, or experiences that made sexuality feel frightening or unacceptable.
Sometimes those associations remain familiar even when your current circumstances are different.
Feeling shame during arousal doesn't automatically mean that you don't want the experience or that something is wrong with you. It is also important to consider whether your current circumstances feel genuinely safe, wanted, and comfortable.
If sexual shame is persistent or distressing, a qualified sex therapist or trauma-informed mental health professional may be able to help you explore it.
2. Can childhood sexual trauma affect sexual pleasure later in life?
Yes. Childhood sexual trauma can influence how someone experiences sexual arousal, intimacy, trust, boundaries, and pleasure later in life.
However, experiences vary considerably. There is no single sexual response that all survivors develop.
Some people experience avoidance or distress. Others may experience conflicting feelings during arousal, while some experience few or no ongoing sexual difficulties.
Trauma history doesn't determine someone's sexual future. Supportive relationships, appropriate professional care, and opportunities to develop greater agency may be helpful.
3. What is pendulation, and how does it relate to sexual shame?
Pendulation is a term used in somatic approaches to describe gently shifting attention between different internal experiences.
In this episode, I describe how I personally explored moving my attention between pleasurable sensations and feelings of shame.
The intention was to become more aware of each experience and develop greater choice in how I responded.
This particular application hasn't been established as a treatment for sexual shame. People with significant trauma histories should seek appropriate professional guidance before deliberately exploring distressing sensations during sexual activity.
4. Can hypnosis help with sexual shame?
Hypnosis uses focused attention, imagination, and suggestion to explore thoughts, sensations, and internal experiences.
Some people find imagery helpful when working with beliefs or feelings that remain emotionally powerful despite intellectually understanding them.
For example, someone might imagine setting down a heavy coat as a symbolic way of exploring an old belief.
Research on hypnosis for specific sexual difficulties varies, and hypnosis should not be presented as a guaranteed treatment for sexual shame or trauma.
For trauma-related symptoms, qualified mental health care is important.
5. Does feeling physically aroused mean I want sex?
No. Physical sexual arousal and subjective desire are related, but they don't always correspond.
A 2010 meta-analysis by Chivers and colleagues found that genital arousal and self-reported arousal showed varying levels of agreement across laboratory studies.
Physical responses cannot establish whether someone wants, enjoys, or consents to sexual activity.
Your preferences, comfort, and freely given consent matter regardless of how your body responds.
6. How can I explore pleasure without putting pressure on myself to orgasm?
You might begin with ordinary sensory experiences that feel enjoyable.
Notice warmth, movement, texture, sound, or other sensations that you genuinely appreciate.
If you choose to explore sexual pleasure, give yourself permission to be curious about what feels good without treating orgasm as a required outcome.
You can experiment with different forms of stimulation, pause when you want to, and notice how your preferences change.
There is no requirement to push through discomfort.
Pleasure exploration can be an opportunity to develop greater familiarity with your own desires and boundaries.
7. Can I experience sexual pleasure while I'm still healing from trauma?
Some people experience pleasure alongside complicated emotions, including shame, grief, fear, or uncertainty.
There is no universal timeline for when someone should feel ready to explore sexuality after trauma.
You don't have to achieve a particular state of emotional healing before you deserve enjoyable experiences.
At the same time, you never need to pursue sexual activity before you feel ready.
Your choices, boundaries, and access to appropriate support are important parts of deciding what feels right for you.
Episode Research Links
Research 1: Sexual shame is associated with sexual well-being
Source: Coates and Meston (2026), Sexual Shame: A Narrative Review, published in Sexual Medicine Reviews.
This review examined research specifically measuring sexual shame.
The authors found associations between sexual shame and several aspects of sexual well-being, including sexual difficulties and experiences of sexual violence. They also emphasized limitations in how researchers define and measure sexual shame.
Importantly, the findings do not establish that shame causes every sexual difficulty or that removing shame necessarily resolves orgasm difficulties.
Suggested use: Include in the blog section explaining why shame can accompany sexual pleasure.
No audio addition is necessary.
Research 2: Physical arousal and subjective arousal are different experiences
Source: Chivers and colleagues (2010), Agreement of Self-Reported and Genital Measures of Sexual Arousal in Men and Women: A Meta-Analysis.
This meta-analysis examined 132 studies involving 2,505 women and 1,918 men.
Researchers found that measured genital arousal and self-reported feelings of arousal did not always correspond closely, particularly among women in the studies.
This research supports an important distinction: a physical sexual response does not necessarily indicate subjective desire, enjoyment, or consent.
It does not directly establish that shame and pleasure are separate physiological systems, which is how you describe your own experience. PubMed
Suggested use: Include as additional context in the blog, especially where you discuss experiencing arousal and shame simultaneously.
Research 3: Mindfulness-based approaches may support sexual well-being
Source: Brotto and colleagues (2021), A Randomized Trial Comparing Group Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy With Group Supportive Sex Education and Therapy.
The study randomized 148 women experiencing sexual interest/arousal difficulties to two eight-session group interventions.
Both groups experienced improvements in sexual desire, arousal, and distress. The mindfulness-based group showed greater improvement on some outcomes, including sexual distress.
This supports the potential value of approaches that develop awareness of internal experiences.
However, it doesn't establish the effectiveness of your particular pendulation exercise, and the study did not test your specific approach to separating shame and pleasure. PubMed
Full Episode Transcript
When Pleasure and Shame Live Together: Reclaiming Sexual Turn-On
Embodied Magic with Melinda
[00:00:00]
Just because the shame has appeared doesn't mean that pleasure is wrong.
Just because the pleasure appears doesn't mean that the shame doesn't need to be validated and healed.
Welcome to Embodied Magic with Melinda, where we explore the science and magic of reclaiming your pleasure, trusting your body, and transforming inherited patterns so that you can experience deeper intimacy and live a joyful, creative life on your own terms.
What happens when something feels good in your body, but at the very same time, something inside of you says it's wrong?
Maybe you begin to feel sexually aroused, and suddenly there's shame or disgust or even guilt, or this inexplicable feeling that you shouldn't be enjoying yourself.
And then maybe you try to push that feeling away because you don't want to feel ashamed. You want to feel the pleasure.
But the harder you fight the shame, the more attention you give it.
[00:01:00]
And now you're not really experiencing the pleasure at all anymore. You're having an argument with yourself.
So today we're exploring something that is a little personal to me because for a long time, pleasure and shame were very tightly bound together in my own nervous system experience.
And learning to separate those experiences was an important part of reclaiming my sexuality.
So let's talk about when pleasure becomes complicated.
I think we often talk about sexual pleasure as though it is a purely physical experience. Find the right stimulation, use the right technique, relax, and then your body should respond, right?
But our sexual experiences don't happen in isolation from the rest of our lives.
We bring our beliefs into the bedroom, our memories, our relationships, our expectations, our experiences of being judged or criticized, and sometimes experiences that were frightening, confusing, or violating.
[00:02:00]
That comes in the bedroom, too.
For some people, sexual pleasure becomes associated with emotions that they don't particularly want to feel, and I think that it's incredibly confusing when this happens because you might genuinely want pleasure, you might be physically aroused, and yet a part of you is saying, "No, this doesn't feel okay."
Now, I wanna be really clear that this can happen for many different reasons.
Not every experience of shame during sex is caused by capital T trauma, and not every difficulty with orgasm has a psychological explanation.
Medical conditions, medications, hormones, pain, stimulation, and relationship dynamics all play a role.
[00:03:00]
But today, we're exploring one particular experience. What happens when shame and pleasure show up together in the bedroom?
So here is my experience of separating the shame and the pleasure.
And this is something I talked about in depth during my interview on the Sexology Podcast with Dr. Nazanin Moali.
And it's something that feels important to me to share because it played such a meaningful role in my own journey and how I see...
[Editorial note: The original recording contains an unclear passage here: "And the journeys of some women that I see being, experiencing difficulty in reclaiming their sexual pleasure." Check the audio before making any cuts.]
It's also a gap that I see in some sexual trauma healing.
So because of some of the experiences in my earlier life, shame and disgust had become very closely wired together with sexual pleasure and turn-on for me.
And I noticed that when I became aroused, even if I was in a safe relationship with a person who had never hurt me, the feeling of arousal, of turn-on, and of pleasure would come together with disgust and shame.
[00:04:00]
There was pleasure, and then at the same time almost, the shame was just there.
Sometimes there was enough of a difference where I could separate the two of them and see that shame and disgust followed.
But many times they arrived as one, or what I thought was as one.
And for a long time, those experiences felt like they were the same thing.
So I thought that that's the way it would always be for me, and that that was how the sexual abuse I experienced as a child would ruin the rest of my sexual experiences for the rest of my life.
What I eventually began experimenting with was recognizing that these two emotions are separate experiences.
There's a separate set of signals that happens in the body, and the body responds differently to these two emotions.
[00:05:00]
But for me, these two emotions were happening at the same time, so I was feeling all of it together.
And that might sound really simple, but this is me sharing this from a place of having pulled the two things apart that once felt like a huge bound-up mess.
So whereas before I thought, "I'm feeling pleasure, therefore I should feel ashamed of myself."
After deconstructing this, I found that I could experience the pleasure and I also experienced the shame, and they're different things.
I started exploring what it might be like to hold both of them in my awareness without automatically treating one as proof of the other.
So the way that I imagine this is to hold your two hands out in front of you.
In one hand, you're holding the pleasure and the turn-on.
Maybe you see that it feels warm, it feels exciting or tingly.
[00:06:00]
Maybe it's this beautiful expanse of sensation in your body.
You feel that.
And then in the other hand, holding the shame or the disgust and seeing what that one feels like.
Maybe heavy, cold, constricting.
Maybe there's a memory connected to it or a belief about your sexuality.
And instead of treating these two experiences as one inseparable thing, you begin to recognize them separately.
Here's pleasure and here's shame.
They're both present, but they aren't necessarily telling the same story.
And just because the shame has appeared doesn't mean that pleasure is wrong.
Just because the pleasure appears doesn't mean that the shame doesn't need to be validated and healed.
That distinction became really meaningful to me because I could begin to ask, "What is the shame trying to tell me?"
[00:07:00]
"Where did I learn this? Does this belief actually belong to me? Is there something I need to pay attention to right now? Or is this an old association that's showing up in a new experience?"
Because something in my brain learned long ago that these two things happen together.
Once I had acknowledged the shame, I could choose to bring my attention back towards pleasure.
Not pretending that shame's not there, but recognizing that I didn't necessarily have to organize my entire experience, my entire focus of attention around the shame.
I used a process called pendulation, which means, like a pendulum, I'm allowing my attention to shift from one to the other.
I focus on pleasure. I focus on safety and warmth.
And then for a very brief period of time, I allow my attention to go over to the shame.
[00:08:00]
I notice how it feels on a body level.
Where do I feel it in my body?
Not getting lost in story or listening to the words, but feeling the actual sensations.
And then after a very brief attention focus on the shame, moving back to the pleasure, noticing where it feels good.
What is the quality of the sensation?
Does it feel tingly, expansive, warm?
And really remembering to root into the safety before I pendulated back to the shame.
Noticing if it's still there.
What is it shaped like? Does it have a face? Does it make a noise? Who is it?
Telling it that I see it, telling it that I acknowledge its presence, and then moving my awareness back to the pleasure again.
And just doing this over and over until I notice they're two different things.
[00:09:00]
And yes, I actually did this while having a masturbation practice.
That's how I would bring it up in order to process it.
Now, if you're thinking you want to try this at home, if you've experienced capital T sexual trauma, I really wanna encourage you to do this while in the care of a therapist or a trauma resolution facilitator of some sort.
That doesn't mean that you're doing the process on a call with them.
That means you have someone that you can talk to, to help integrate the experience afterwards.
It's very important because this is extremely powerful and it taps straight into the source of wounding around the pleasure.
That's why it's really important to do it with support so that your nervous system feels safe.
Understanding what does my nervous system need in order to know that I'm safe, that I'm here in the present, and that I'm not getting stuck with my attention on the shame.
[00:10:00]
We want to be able to shift out of it, back into focus on the pleasure, and then out of that into a space where we can hold all of it.
So back to the process.
The next thing I wanna talk about is putting shame in the backseat so that we can experience more of the pleasure more of the time.
And this is where I love bringing in the parts work.
Because sometimes it can be useful to imagine these conflicting feelings as different parts of ourselves that have different needs, different values.
Maybe there's a part of you that's curious about pleasure, a part that wants to explore, a part that feels excited, and another part that feels frightened, ashamed, or protective.
And instead of trying to destroy or push away or hide that uncomfortable part, what if we get curious about it instead?
And what if we ask what it needs? What is important to it?
[00:11:00]
Because sometimes these responses developed in circumstances where they served an important purpose.
Maybe shame helped you to navigate an environment where sexuality was criticized.
Maybe suppressing desire felt safer than expressing it.
And maybe you learned that being a good person meant denying certain parts of yourself.
And now years later, those patterns may still be showing up even though your circumstances have changed.
So rather than telling that part to be quiet and go away, I might imagine saying, "I hear you. I know you're here. I understand that you're concerned, and I wanna listen to what you're trying to tell me. But I'm the one here that decides what's happening next."
And if it feels appropriate, we can invite that part to ride in the backseat of the car rather than letting them take the wheel and drive.
[00:12:00]
We wouldn't give a child the keys to the car to drive us down the road.
So we don't wanna be giving these younger parts of ourselves the keys to drive the car of our life.
We don't make this part disappear. We don't banish it.
We allow it to be here.
We allow it to even talk and tell us what it's concerned about, but we don't let it call the shots.
And so this feels like a good time to make an important distinction.
If something in your current experience genuinely feels unsafe, painful, or unwanted, that's not a feeling that we need to override in the pursuit of pleasure.
We can always stop. We can always change course.
We can always slow down.
We can honor the information our bodies are giving us.
This practice is about developing more choice in how we respond to familiar feelings, not teaching ourselves to ignore boundaries.
And this is part of the reason why doing this practice on your own through conscious masturbation is a great place to really be able to understand what your body is generating and your mind is generating inside the experience of your turn-on and your pleasure.
[00:13:00]
Because when we add a partner into the mix, it's not just what is happening inside of us, it's also what our relationship is with that person.
So I want to introduce you to the tool of hypnosis.
Now, the tool of hypnosis offers a way to explore our inner experiences using focused attention, imagination, and suggestion.
And I find that imagery can be particularly useful for working with experiences that don't always respond to logical arguments.
Because you can intellectually know that pleasure isn't shameful.
You can tell yourself that you're an adult, that you're allowed to enjoy your body, you're allowed to experience orgasm, and that sexuality is a natural part of being human, and yet you still may experience shame.
So this is where working with imagery can be really powerful.
[00:14:00]
Maybe shame is like a heavy coat that you've been wearing for years.
Maybe you imagine taking that coat off and setting it beside you or hanging it up on a hook.
Maybe you imagine creating a little more space between yourself and an old belief.
Or maybe you imagine meeting the part of yourself that feels ashamed and asking what it needs in order to feel supported.
I love the possibility of developing a more compassionate relationship with our inner experiences and taking back some of that ownership and empowerment around our sexual pleasure, because I don't think we need to fight ourselves in order to change.
Sometimes we just need to listen.
There's another important distinction I wanna make.
When I talk about surrender and surrendering to pleasure and orgasm, I'm not talking about forcing yourself to relax, and I'm not talking about making yourself receive touch that you don't want.
[00:15:00]
And I'm definitely not talking about pushing through emotional distress because you think you're supposed to be enjoying sex, because you think this is the prescription for orgasm.
Surrender involves choice.
Sometimes that means allowing pleasure to expand.
Sometimes it means the choice to slow down the experience.
Sometimes it means asking for something different or stopping entirely.
It's an expression of agency.
That moment of surrender to orgasm is something that we choose to step into.
Creating as much safety as our nervous system needs in order to meet that moment of surrender and feel fully held is the work of moving into more expansive orgasms.
In fact, I think the more connected we become to our own boundaries and our own choice, the more freedom we have to explore experiences that genuinely feel welcome, the more pleasure we get to allow ourselves to experience.
[00:16:00]
Because we're not abandoning ourselves in order to please someone else.
We are staying connected to our own desire, our own pleasure.
So I want to offer you a gentle reflection exercise, and this is something that you can do fully clothed outside of any sexual situation.
You don't need to bring up difficult memories or deliberately create uncomfortable sensations.
If this subject feels activating, you can simply listen and leave the exercise for another time.
So begin by thinking about something that brings you a small amount of ordinary pleasure, sensory pleasure.
Maybe it's being outside in nature or dancing or the smell of your favorite food.
[00:17:00]
And you can allow your eyes to soften and even close if you want to as you do this.
And just allow your body and your senses to indulge in that experience.
Just allow it to be all-encompassing of your vision, your hearing.
What do you smell? What do you taste? What do you feel?
Just noticing your full sensory experience of this pleasurable thing.
And notice when you allow yourself this, what else comes up?
Is there a thought, "I shouldn't be doing this," or, "I don't deserve this right now," or, "I should be doing something different"?
And when you notice those things, just let it be there, but don't attach to it.
You might notice a feeling in the body that comes up that is distinct from the pleasurable experience.
[00:18:00]
Where is it in your body?
Does it feel familiar?
Or is it just a general sense that something's not right?
But take a moment to see if you can notice the difference.
You imagine something wonderful, something enjoyable, even pleasurable, and then what else responds to that pleasure?
And name it.
Is it a thought, a sensation, an old belief?
Or maybe you even hear it as the voice of someone else who told you a negative story about pleasure.
Is this something that you actually believe today?
Or does it sound like something you learned a long time ago?
You might imagine placing that sensation or that thought, whatever the thing was that came up in response to the pleasure, placing it in one hand, allowing all of it to just move into one hand like it's a ball or an object.
[00:19:00]
And allow it to be there.
Feel the weight of it, feel the temperature of it, the texture.
And then you're gonna allow the pleasure that you felt to be alive in your body.
Notice what that feels like, and allow that experience to move out onto your other palm,
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