Amongst the multitude of different modalities that support people to connect with and enjoy their sexuality, there is often one profound piece that is completely left out of the discussion: the deeper meaning of sexuality. This lack of awareness of this facet of sexuality may be the reason so many practitioners unknowingly impede deeper intimacy and sexual satisfaction, rather than support it. This is of no one’s particular fault, other than being immersed in a society that predominantly regards sexuality as a commodity.

What is sex as a commodity? It’s transactional. Used as a form of currency in order to get something from someone such as love, opportunity, pleasure, orgasm, affection, attention, stress-relief, affirming a relationship, appeasing a partner, and so forth. It can have very little substance, and normally very little satisfaction. However, it can also feel rewarding and satisfying, especially to sexually inexperienced. This type of sex is so prevalent that we mistake it for the norm – even if not cognitively, then certainly behaviorally.

In sex research and trainings, this viewpoint can also be associated with what is known as the functional model of sexuality: do this to get that result. Yet our sexuality is much more than just using the newest sex toys, techniques, and conscious sexuality workshops.

Learning different techniques can often lead to a compensating behavior, one wherein we are avoiding looking at the deeper aspects of our erotic nature. When we start to consider that sex may also be an inherent part of who we are, we start to touch on the meaning model of sexuality, one where a deeper meaning can arise. Sex can be a doorway to deep healing, wild expression, and sublime beauty. This type of sex includes a wider ranger of sensations, along with the meaning we assign to those sensations.

This is when we begin to touch in on psychosexuality, sexual intimacy, and transcendent sexual experiences, rather than just the physical aspects of sexual expression.

When practitioners focus solely on techniques, toys, and special effects, while ignoring the profundity that a person can experience with just a tiny shift in their awareness, then they are doing the client a disservice. Performance sex often leads to missing the cues to deepening intimacy. Intimacy is the result of first connecting with oneself, and then offering connection outwardly to another. Natural intimacy has more opportunity to arise when we support our clients to access their pleasure not only through a variety of sexual techniques, but also through simultaneously encouraging them to deepen their connection with their desire, their hearts, their sensations, and the meaning they give to their erotic experiences.

Years ago, a client came to me completely shut down sexually. She had seen many sex therapists, been given prescription drugs, and had also ventured a little into “tantric sex” classes, yet she remained numb. She was desperate to feel, to “get on with her life” as she put it, yet she felt that nothing was working. I invited her to relax and simply turn her attention inwardly, guiding her to become aware of her innermost self. This is when the tears began and she revealed that her beloved husband had died of a heart attack while they were making love. She believed that somehow, she was responsible for his death, and that her sexuality and pleasure were dangerous. She’d been told that if she could induce orgasm with “this toy, that technique, or that group experience,” she would free herself from her past. Yet, trying to shift a psychosexual wound by forcing a physical orgasm will rarely be sufficient for transformation.

By uncovering the meaning she had assigned to sex, we were able to reassign a different meaning. This core shift brought sensation back into her body, and she felt, for the first time in 15 years, her body and her genitals respond to her desire. If we had tried to just use the latest technique or meditation or practice, the belief that she was broken and could not be fixed would have remained intact, and possibly even strengthened.

I have witnessed this remarkable shift in nearly every single one of my clients, many of whom have given up on sex because they thought of themselves as broken. Yet by understanding that we are all sexual beings (erotic aliveness) far more than we are sexual doings (the different acts of sex), we can help our clients tap into the deeper expressions of sexuality and liberate both their psyche and their body. If you are a practitioner who would love to bring in an embodied psychosexual method into your current modality, you may be a fit for my professional certification training. You can find more at https://dareyourdesire.com/ambassador-program