Claiming Your Body Freedom

Divesting yourself of your body’s armor, so that you can be fully at ease in your body and share it completely with your beloved, requires learning a few new things and unlearning some old ones. In addition to the common misperceptions already mentioned (people naturally know how to make love, and touch is optional), you’ll come up against others. You’ll need to replace limiting, sabotaging notions with body-affirming and relationship-building ideas. This transformation includes:

Letting go of “Pleasure, touching, and sex are dangerous, bad, and sinful” and affirming that “Pleasure, touching, and sex are biological, emotional, and spiritual needs—sensual nutrition.”

Shifting “My lover is responsible for my pleasure” to “I am responsible for my pleasure.” No matter how skilled, adoring, or attentive your partner may be, unless you allow yourself to open to pleasure, you won’t experience it.

Transforming “My partner should know how and when I like to be touched—sexually and non-sexually” into “I have to let my partner know what I like and need.” Very few are mind-readers when it comes to lovemaking, and sex is one place where you don’t follow the Golden Rule of “do unto others as you’d have others do unto you.” Everyone has individual preferences for loving touch. So push past your barriers of shame, guilt, or embarrassment and ask for what you want.

Changing “Sexual touching is the most intimate touching” into “Non-sexual touching is just as intimate as sexual touching.” Intimate describes the quality of your touch, not the activity itself. Intimacy goes far beyond the physical. The deepest intimacy is grounded in an emotional, energetic, and spiritual connection which you can cultivate through both sexual and non-sexual touch.

Modifying “Young, hard bodies have the best sex” to “Bodies have better sex as they age.” Sexual mastery evolves over a lifetime of learning, because great sex requires knowledge and practice. Our culture says young bodies are the sexiest, but simple physical attractiveness doesn’t provide the emotional maturity and self-confidence that are essential elements of extraordinary sex.

Qualifying the notion that “Great sex is primarily a matter of physical technique” into the realization that “Great sex combines physical technique with emotional and energetic connection.” While skill is definitely an asset in lovemaking, an open heart and a willingness to surrender to your lover makes the difference between sex as pleasant pastime and sex as ecstatic experience.

Excerpted from our new book Sensual Love Secrets for Couples: The Four Freedoms of Body, Mind, Heart and Soul, by Al Link and Pala Copeland, Llewellyn, 2007