I’m delighted by the interest in my talk, ‘We Are Not Undressed Yet!’ which I gave to open The Sex Lectures, an event about real relating, in Forest Row, Sussex, March 21st, 2023. 

As someone put it, speaking to an audience is a bit like making love to them. There’s no place to hide, all our characteristics and qualities are revealed, our love, vulnerability and joy. 

Talking in public is still a bit terrifying and talking is exhilarating, connecting with people in the audience, sharing from my heart, and hearing afterwards, how it was useful learning for them.

Sex

I spoke about sex often being thought of as casual, fast, dramatic sex. Sensation without soul. But many of us are more sensitive than that superficial idea, in how we live our lives and in our intimacy.

Perhaps, we are on a date or in a relationship, being very physically intimate with someone – while being barely really intimate with them. Removing our clothes is just the beginning of becoming emotionally intimate with someone else. There’s a lot to share and discover together.

We are all in the process of getting undressed from the singular idea of sex as just one act. One activity. Although many of us know this cognitively, it can be not so easy to undo the repeated conditioning we are surrounded by. It takes curiosity, passion and care, to find out the varied and beautiful ways that you and your partner or partners really like to be in intimacy.

What can help us to get more fully undressed in our lovemaking? Creating for ourselves personal safety, authentic self-expression and really dropping deeper into our sensuality. 

Creating Safety

Sex is not impersonal, it is very personal. When we meet physically together with another person’s body, we are bringing together all of our personal history, hopes and fears, emotions and energy. That is a lot of information. Care is needed. So we’re safe enough to start and stop.

Safety is something we build together, for ourselves and the other. We begin with a spark of genuine attraction and interest. We want to arrive (from our stress and distraction) into our body, with a dance or shower. We create a container by talking together a lot about what we feel, want and don’t want; good communication is vital. And we want to pay attention, to notice our own responses and the responses of the other, as we all need slightly different words and touch.

I encourage you to go slowly so you can stay present to all the sensations happening to you. Slow enough to be present to all the choices available in the wonderful playground of intimacy. Slow enough to interrupt all the activity to have a chat, a laugh or a break…

Developing Self-Expression

Sex is not just about genitals. It’s a whole body, whole being experience. Mind, heart and genitals.

Can you give yourself permission to really be the unique person you are, in all the many ways that you are you? Can you allow all your different moods and qualities, shy or enthusiastic, in control or passive, emotional or earthy or angelic or mischievous…  into the conversation and dance of being intimate with another.

Can you give another person permission to be how they are? And not to try to use them as an object in your sexual gratification? Instead of a mental formula to reach a desired goal, allow your body to be your guide. Perhaps it will surprise you.

Sensuality

Sex is not something we can do by thinking. Being anxious to try to get it right is not very sexy. 

We want to be able to really feel and sense. To drop out of our busy thoughts, allowing the delicious feelings of the body to be really deeply experienced. We can choose to practise somatic presence and sensitivity by sensing our own body and self, and that of the other. 

Where and when is your pleasure? Is it at the end, the beginning or now? Is pleasure already here, waiting for you to notice and appreciate it?

Getting undressed

There is enough space to become really intimate with someone else. To be really fully undressed together. It is a process that unfolds slowly over time. Becoming a deepening, expanding and authentic soulful sexual experience. You and they are gloriously revealed!