Prioritize Pleasure For Sexual Wellness

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What role does pleasure play in sexual wellness?

Sexual health and sexual wellness are umbrella terms that cover many concepts going way beyond the absence or effective management of disease, dysfunction, or infirmity. Sexual health and wellness also refer to how our sexuality intersects with our overall sense of wellness. It means you have pleasurable sexual experiences without any form of coercion, discrimination, or violence. Pleasure is, in fact, a huge part of sexual wellness.

Read more about the difference between “healthy sexuality” and “sexual health” here.

Pleasure is so important to sexual health that the World Association of Sexual Health (WAS) recently released a Declaration on Sexual Pleasure to support the idea that all humans have a basic human right to enjoy sexual pleasure.

You cannot separate pleasure from sexual wellness! In the absence of sexual pleasure, sex might feel like a chore, could be painful, or can kill your libido. Not only is pleasure beneficial to sexual experiences, but it is also an essential ingredient of your overall well being.

Sexual pleasure goes hand-in-hand with the release of feel-good hormones, endorphins, and oxytocin, which relieve pain, reduce stress, boost your mood, stave off anxiety, and create a feeling of intimacy for bonding. So, pleasure is beneficial to relationships, too! Those endorphins make you feel more connected to your partner(s) and keep the spark alive in the relationship.

Relaxation for Sexual Wellness

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of relaxation to a person’s ability to experience sexual pleasure. When you are relaxed, it’s easier to enjoy sex because you are more present in the moment and your senses are activated. On the flip side, stress can make you feel stuck in your head and mentally disconnected from your body.

This is one reason people around the world do not always have enjoyable sexual experiences. They are unable to let go during sex. This could be because of stress from busy work schedules, relationship issues, health-related concerns, or taking care of the family.

Stress and the inability to be present and relaxed can lead to difficulty with or delayed orgasm and ejaculation, or people may find it hard to get wet or hard. They do not respond to sexual stimulation as fast as they do when they are present in the moment, and they do not get enough pleasure to climax. Sex can wind up being painful or lackluster. Stress can also make people worry about their bodies, creating negative thought loops: “Do I look good enough?” or “What if he thinks my vagina is ugly?” and so on.

Consequently, the more women worry, the more disconnected they are from their bodies, and the less likely they are to derive pleasure, a key component of sexual wellness.

Fortunately, relaxation relieves stress and this can have a positive impact on your orgasmic response or ability to feel pleasure, which contributes to your sexual wellness. When you relax, you slow down the busy pace of life and this makes it possible for you to feel and awaken your sensuality.

5 Ways To Relax

1. Paying close attention to nature and admiring beauty with no distractions
2. Listening to soothing music
3. Meditation
4. Soaking in a warm bath
5. Guided imagery that makes you imagine yourself in a peaceful setting

Masturbation for Optimal Sexual Wellness

Also known as solo sex, self-pleasure, or self-exploration, masturbation is a safe and reliable source of pleasure. It is empowering because it makes it possible for you to learn and better understand your body, give yourself pleasure, and improve your self-image. It gives you the chance to prioritize pleasure because you seek it on your own.

Not only is masturbation beneficial for the attainment of pleasure, but it also offers you several health benefits to enhance your overall well being.

The benefits of masturbation:

1. It is a great stress reliever
2. It helps you sleep better
3. It makes you comfortable and confident in your body
4. Orgasm can be a natural painkiller and relieve period pains
5. It is a great libido booster
6. Masturbation boosts the immune system

Devoting time to exploring your body in a sensual setting regularly helps you know more about your body’s pleasure potential. It gives you a chance to explore your erogenous zones and discover new ones when you engage your full body in your solo sex experience. You can explore different stimulation techniques, different ways of rubbing and touching your body, and experience different intensities of pleasure. You can explore sex toys, too! Get a new sex toy every couple of months and explore it during masturbation for pleasure and experience new/different sensations.

Finally, you can learn from other people’s masturbation experiences, read books, listen to sex-positive podcasts, etc. to learn new masturbation techniques as a way of prioritizing pleasure.

Foreplay Is Important For Pleasure and Sexual Wellbeing

Foreplay is an umbrella term that covers a broad range of activities that give pleasure and build anticipation for a sexual encounter. It includes kissing, sensual touch, massages, showering together, sending raunchy texts, being in a hot tub together, cooking for a partner, being fed by a partner, dancing together, and many more.

Foreplay affords people the chance to get to know their sexual partners on a more intimate level. It creates a “give and take” pleasurable experience with the stimulation of erogenous zones, exploration of less-obvious zones, and the discovery of new erogenous zones. It is the perfect thing to do if ultimate pleasure is your priority.

Regardless of sexual orientation, foreplay can dramatically heighten feelings of pleasure. However, women who sleep with women tend to have more orgasms during sex, as opposed to women who have sex with men.

In a study that surveyed 52,588 adults on their sexual behavior, women who sleep with women reported always or almost always achieving orgasm during sex, whereas women who only have sex with men reported having orgasms around 65% of the time. This is largely due to how varied intimacy is between women. With the exclusion of penetration with dildos, it consists mostly of activities traditionally classified under the “foreplay” umbrella.

Additionally, a study found that women of any sexual orientation, were more likely to orgasm if their sexual encounter included deep kissing, manual genital stimulation, and/or oral sex in addition to vaginal intercourse. This tells you how important foreplay is to female pleasure.

Foreplay is also very beneficial for solo sex. It prepares your body and mind for the solo experience and makes the genitals more sensitive because of increased blood flow and heightened arousal. It can involve setting the mood by dimming the light, putting on scented candles, playing sensual music, dancing sensually, looking in the mirror while undressing, touching your lips, and engaging every other erogenous zone before manually stimulating your genitals, etc. Foreplay has the power to increase arousal and intensify pleasure for a more enjoyable sexual experience.

Prioritize Pleasure Through Your Lifestyle Choices

Photo by Jonathan Borba from Pexels

Your lifestyle choices can influence your ability to experience pleasure. Excessive smoking can hurt a man’s sex life because it predisposes him to erectile difficulties. It can affect a man’s ability to respond to sexual stimulation. Getting hard and staying hard can be a challenge for smokers.

Secondly, not drinking enough water can negatively impact your ability to have pleasurable experiences. Dehydration can cause headaches and fatigue, which can inhibit sexual desire, or make it hard to let go and be present in the sexual moment to feel pleasure. Dehydration can also make it hard for women to get wet during sex. It can make sex unpleasurable and/or painful. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is necessary if you want to prioritize pleasure for optimal sexual health.

Healthy Habits To Adopt:

1. Exercise regularly
2. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables
3. Stay hydrated by drinking lots of water
4. Devote time to relaxation and relieving stress
5. Limit alcohol intake
6. Consume less caffeine
7. Smoke less or quit smoking

Communication Can Enhance Pleasure & Sexual Health

Communication is one key to pleasurable, partnered sexual experiences. How do you know what to do to please your partner sexually if they don’t communicate their wants and needs? At the start of every sexual relationship, partners need to have a conversation about their sexual expectations, turn-ons, turn-offs, stimulation techniques that work to give them pleasure, kinks, fetishes, etc. This is to ensure that each partner can work toward giving the other partner(s) pleasure whenever they can.

Communication also makes it possible for your partner to avoid certain things that might be a trigger for a past traumatic experience that can impede sexual pleasure. When you communicate, you know and understand why your partner prefers some sexual activities to others. Let’s say your partner doesn’t enjoy nipple stimulation and prefers butt rubs and spanking for pleasure. If you never talk about it, how will you know?

Not only is communication important before initiating sex with a new partner, but communication during sex is also important! It is necessary to ensure that each partner gets pleasure from sex. You can learn how your partner feels when you finger them a certain way by asking or communicating. In some scenarios, an inquisitive look from you and an approving nod from your partner is all you need to know that they are enjoying sex.

So, have a conversation about ways to check in with your partner during sex. You can decide to go with verbal check-ins like, “Do you like this?” “Are you enjoying this?” or “How do you feel?”

You can agree on a safeword to communicate about discomfort, pain, withdrawal of consent, or the need to stop. Mentally, it’s liberating to have a safeword because you are assured that your boundaries won’t be crossed, and your partner is only working to please you. Agreeing on a safeword gives you the power to stop sexual activity when you need to. A safeword can be the name of a vegetable, fruit, color, activity, etc. Choose a word that resonates with all partners and remind each other whenever you have to.

Many BDSM practitioners use a simple color system as safe words: red means “stop,” yellow means “slow down and check in,” green means “all systems go.” What about you?

Non-verbal safewords are also important for pleasurable sexual experiences. Think about scenarios in which a partner cannot speak. How do they let you know when they are in pain or their boundaries are being crossed? Let’s say you have a ball gag in your mouth and you feel sick and need to stop the session for immediate healthcare? How do you let your partner know if you don’t have a signal they recognize as a cue to stop?

Here are some ideas for a safe sign:

1. Hitting a surface multiple times with your palm
2. Snapping your fingers
3. Dropping something on a floor (e.g. keys)
4. Stamping your feet

Do Your Research!

You can prioritize pleasure by pursuing new ways of getting and intensifying pleasure. Read books about varieties of ways to go about sexual activities like kissing, fingering, hand jobs, oral sex, masturbation, etc. A simple Google search about various ways men and women get sexual pleasure can reveal a whole lot. You can join a sex-positive community and get ideas about what to explore from your peers.

More importantly, be daring and adventurous. Don’t be scared to try new things! Put together a sexual bucket list for every year and make it a point to do as many as you can on that list. This is important for your journey to sexual wellness, so do not take it for granted.

Talk To A Sex Coach

A Certified Sex Coach™ can help you achieve your full pleasure potential if you have any concerns inhibiting your ability to have pleasurable sexual experiences. Whatever sexual concern you have, a Certified Sex Coach using the MEBES© model can assess how your body, emotions, mind, energy, and spirit play a role in your sexual response cycle. With the results of the assessment, they will work with you to come up with an action plan that clears your pathway to sexual pleasure and improves your sex life. You can find a Certified Sex Coach near you by clicking this link.

Become A Sex Coach

You can learn more about sexual wellness, prioritizing pleasure, and how to guide people on their journey to sexual wellness by training to become a Certified Sex Coach™ yourself.

The Certified Sex Coach™ program at Sex Coach U is the ORIGINAL, most advanced, up-to-date, and in-depth sex coaching and clinical sexology certification in the world. If you are passionate about sex education, sexual healing, and helping people resolve their sexual concerns, you can begin your journey to becoming a successful sex coach by clicking this link to join the Sex Coach U waiting list.

Your time to claim your right to pleasure is now. Don’t waste it!