In the movies, lovers get swept up in the heat of passion, their minds on nothing else but the here and now.
That might not be representative of everyone’s sexual experiences but the movies are onto something.
UBC psychologist and sex researcher Lori Brotto has just published her first book. Better Sex Through Mindfulness outlines how being in the moment will heighten women’s sexual satisfaction.
“Mindfulness is a way of paying attention on purpose, moment by moment, and doing so in a non-judgmental or compassionate way,” she says in a UBC Q and A.
But there are a lot of things that get in the way of being able to say, “I was fully alive” or “I was totally in tune with my partner.”
Being non-judgmental is one of them. Negative thoughts crowd into the ones that are supposed to be about pleasure. As well, instead of concentrating on their experience, women can be preoccupied with other things. That’s why women’s ability to multi-task is actually a disservice in the bedroom, Brotto says.
“The clients we see with sexual concerns will often state that they are chronic multi-taskers and, in fact, take a lot of pride in defining themselves that way. But multi-tasking often extends to sexual activity,” she says. “During those moments, our client’s minds is elsewhere. Sometimes it goes to benign places like, ‘What do I have to do to prepare for that meeting tomorrow?’ but it also goes to those judgmental places like: ‘Will my partner notice those parts of my body that I’m not happy with? Will I not respond in a way that is going to be satisfactory? Will my partner leave me if this encounter doesn’t go well?’”
The practice of mindfulness will help, including learning how to decatastrophize.
“Mindfulness is more than just concentration training,” Brotto says. “It’s fundamentally about how we pay attention and how we concentrate. The compassion and non-self-judgment aspects mean that we’re not berating ourselves for doing it wrong, but rather we’re expressing a lot of kindness and compassion towards ourselves for whatever we observe when we pay attention.”
Brotto wrote the book for two reasons: one is that she knows mindfulness works; the other is the level of interest she generated after being featured in a New York Times magazine article headlined Women Who Want to Want in 2009. A lot of publishers approached her about writing a book then but she felt there wasn’t enough data to conclude definitively that mindfulness is a useful strategy. In 2018, she says, the evidence is strong. Her lab’s research, and others’, show that mindfulness is “a skill that will help women tune in, experience greater desire, greater satisfaction and reduce their depressive symptoms and anxiety. It tackles the physiological effects of stress, and improves relations and satisfaction.”
Better Sex Through Mindfulness is published by Greystone Books. It came out April 21.
