TIPS FOR INTIMACY

Revitalizing Your Sensual Dimension

Adopt a "Sense of the Week"
Begin paying close attention to one particular sense for one week. The first sense that might be used would be touch. Put the word on the bathroom mirror or on the fridge. During this week, you might pay attention to the feeling of clothes against your skin, and, in fact, choose them because of how they feel on your body. You might notice the breeze on your face or pay close attention to the sensation you get when you shake someone?s hand. Certainly, I would suggest that you schedule a massage during this week, if at all possible. The following week you might emphasize sound. Play music all week, listen to the rise and fall of a person?s voice in conversation, and hear the wind in the trees.

This delightful task will not only make you enjoy your day-to-day experiences more, but also definitely bring a more sensual self to bed. Take each sense in turn and focus on it yourself or much more fun, do this exercise as a couple. Once you finish the six senses, you can begin again; sensual exploration is never-ending.

The Seven Dimensions of Sexuality is a way of understanding sex as an integral part of the human experience, an important part of our inherent energy and vitality, and a source of nourishment of our spirit. Too many of us miss out on the potential of our sexuality to energize our life because we relate to sex as a small compartment of our existence something we do with a certain part of our body in a certain room of our house at a certain time of day instead of as an essential part of who we are as men and women.

Each of the seven dimensions represents a potential quality of energy in our life, from the most basic bodily functions through our distinctly human emotions to our relationship with spirit and the transcendent. When two human beings connect their energies skillfully in relationship, the flow of vitality is magnificent to experience; when they fail to connect, or actively block the energy exchange, the suffering can be unbearable. We have found that the skills necessary to exchange energy in all the dimensions are easy to learn for anyone who has a true desire to connect in a committed relationship with his or her partner though honing these skills is a practice that can, and should, span a lifetime.

The most basic dimension is the Biologic. It is about the physical and chemical functioning of our bodies, specifically our sexual organs and functions, and the positive energy it has to offer is that of health. The negative energy is that of disease or dysfunction. Menopause would be an example of a biologic issue, as would erectile dysfunction. We find that a lot of people get stuck in this dimension by not being willing to face and deal with these issues, often out of pride or embarrassment. Ignoring problems often leads to secondary detrimental effects in other dimensions.

The second dimension is the Sensual. This is where the energy of pleasure flows through our bodies because of our ability to feel. The reverse of this, where we become drained of energy, is of course pain perhaps a physical pain from a biological problem (say a yeast infection), or more commonly an emotional pain (say from a traumatic sexual experience like rape or incest). Most common of all is a kind of stagnation of this energy because we are always living in our heads planning, evaluating, analyzing, thinking, judging, comparing and forget we have bodies.

The third dimension, and the last of what we call the Animal Dimensions, is the Desire dimension. This is what most of us have come to think of as sexy and sexual: it is the mating dance, the hey, check me out, the Madison Avenue dimension that sells products. The energy here is personal power: the power to attract a mate, the power we feel from desiring and being desired sexually. It's the energy of the alpha male and alpha female of the tribe, the football captain and the prom queen. Its flip side is rejection: the energy drain you feel when you don't get the girl, when the guy doesn't want you, when you get humiliated sexually (or in some other way). Fear of rejection often stagnates our energy in the Desire dimension, as does a power struggle with our partner over sex.

The next dimension is Heart: the energy of committed love and devotion. The turn-on here is I am yours; you are mine, and we celebrate this with many tokens and rituals: weddings, anniversaries, Valentines. It's a particular talent of the feminine, and for good reason: our foremothers who insisted on commitment before mating were more successful in rearing their offspring to reproductive age, because of the survival advantage of a second parent providing resources. But men also have this capacity, which expresses itself as generosity. The trouble is that we all fear at some level the downside of this dimension: abandonment. Think of all the country western songs with the theme of heartbreak! So we hold back, we guard our hearts, and act stingy with our lover, and stay mired in the neutral dead zone between commitment and abandonment and we create our own suffering in the process.

The fifth dimension is Intimacy, and together with Heart comprises the emotional dimensions. The Intimacy Dimension has the energy of truth and trust. Remember the turn-on of staying up all night with a new lover, just talking and getting to know each other's deepest thoughts and feelings? That's the energy of intimacy. And the dark side? Betrayal usually an affair, but sometimes other breaches of truth and trust. Often affairs occur because of a lack of true intimacy in a relationship that has been allowed to languish, and sometimes they can serve effectively as a wake-up call and end up taking the couple to a much deeper place than before the affair though not usually without a lot of pain and professional help. More often, couples find themselves in the middle space of disengagement with one another, not betraying but not fully offering their authentic selves to one another. This lack of energy exchange is a form of suffering too.

The sixth dimension is the Aesthetic dimension. It's not about superficial beauty that's the province of the Desire dimension but rather about inner beauty, a quality of the soul. When we say a person has soul, we're talking about this inner quality of radiance, and when it is our intimate partner, the emotions it evokes are awe and gratitude. So this is the first of the two spiritual dimensions of sexuality. We inspire our lover when we offer our radiance, and when we do things to light them up. But we suck the energy out of this dimension with judgment and criticism whether of them or of ourselves. When we feel ourselves unworthy, we actively sap the vitality of our relationship, just as much as when we criticize our partner. And we also fail to tap the potential of this dimension when we make our lives about our routines, just getting the job done, oblivious to the beauty of our partner and the world around us.

The final dimension is the Ecstatic, another spiritual dimension. Here we have the energy of the sacred contributing to our sexuality: that deep place where we lose our ego boundaries and dissolve in oneness with our beloved. We've found that most people have had at least one sexual experience that touched the sacred or the numinous, but felt it to be a matter of grace, not something that could be accessed at will. There are actually lots of practices that facilitate this level of exchange. But one has to be open to it, and many of us have been taught that, far from being a spiritual endeavor, sex is profane: it takes you to the devil, not to God. And then there is the far more common cynical stance that negates this energy: sex is just a bodily function, spirit has nothing to do with it. In the middle, limiting the potential of sex to enlighten us, is the practical, collaborative approach to sex: you do me, I'll do you, we'll both have orgasms another great time.

So we see that sex can be much more than just genital friction. It has the potential to touch us on every level of our existence. But we have to know how to connect with our partner skillfully in all the dimensions. When we do, we get to have a full-bodied, open-hearted, soulful, multidimensional experience that is far more fulfilling and satisfying than just having sex. It even goes beyond making love. And it is possible (actually easy and enjoyable) to learn how to do this, provided you have a willing and committed partner. Offering couples the practical tools to engage this process as a practice to last a lifetime is our privilege and our specialty.