Mindfulness is very important for a sex coaching practice. So many people struggle with being in the present, in their bodies, and in a balanced state throughout their lives. In our fast-paced culture, we are always going, always working, always in the “monkey brain” with rapid thoughts that just don’t seem to stop. It’s no surprise that people often find it hard to fully immerse themselves in a sensation-based experience like sex.
As sex coaches, we hear this narrative often in our work with clients. It’s often described to us as struggling to focus during sex, feeling disconnected, or feeling insecure during the experience. One approach to addressing this issue with clients is through implementing the philosophy of mindfulness. Here is an introduction to mindfulness and some tips on how you can incorporate it into your sex coaching practice.
Incorporating Mindfulness Through Breath
Mindfulness, at its core, is about bringing your focus to the present moment and away from the past or future. Using the breath is one of the easiest ways to achieve this. There are many ways to utilize the breath, and it’s worth researching further to understand the many different techniques.
Depending on your client’s experience with breathwork, it might be helpful to start very small by just simple deep, belly breathing. This means taking 5-10 minutes, sitting in silence with your eyes closed and breathing into your belly instead of your chest. This practice will start to build a foundation for your client to improve their ability to access their breath and bring themselves to the present.
The best way to help someone transition to belly breathing is to have them lie on their back and place their hands on their abdomen. They should breathe in and out through their nose, taking at least four seconds with each inhale, and four to six seconds for each exhale. With each inhale, they should feel their belly filling and pushing up and outward. As they exhale, instruct them to release the air from their abdomen; they should strive to feel their belly collapsing down to their spine and the floor.
You can decide how far you go with incorporating breathwork into your clinical practice—but it can be hugely beneficial to at least offer your client a basic understanding of working with the breath. They can then take this foundation and apply it to their sexual experiences to lessen feelings of anxiety, or bring more focus to the present moment.
Awareness Without Judgment As a Way of Incorporating Mindfulness
Another aspect of mindfulness you can apply to your practice is the idea of awareness without judgment. At Sex Coach U, we are trained to offer a safe container for our clients. This means offering space without judgment. It also means helping our clients practice self-acceptance during feelings of shame, guilt, or anxiety.
We can offer our clients this same perspective and guide them to a place where they are able to experience their emotions, notice them, and name them, all without placing a judgment of good or bad upon them. This is something that takes guidance and practice. It’s so easy for our clients to fall back into a place of self-judgment. If you apply this philosophy to your practice, instill in your clients that it’s important to recognize their feelings without judging them as good or bad, just allow the feeling to be whatever it is.
You can also incorporate the breath into this practice. Remind your clients that all feelings, no matter how bad they may feel in the moment, are transitory. If you can sit with the feeling and breathe through it, it will pass. Just close your eyes and notice the feeling while breathing through the experience of it.
Be Here Now
Another aspect of mindfulness that can be applied to a sex coaching practice is the idea of living in the moment. So many people struggle with this idea and it ends up affecting sexual experiences as well as other areas of life. We can get caught up in the past, ruminating and mulling over our past experiences. Or we can’t stop thinking about hypotheticals, worrying about the future and cycling through constant “what if” scenarios. It’s impossible to attend to what’s happening in the present moment when your mind is stuck in the past or the future. Mindfulness can be used to teach your client how to bring themselves back to the present moment.
Your clients may also fixate on all the other things that need to get done, and they feel anxious about their to-do list and schedule, such that they can’t relax and enjoy sex. How many times have we heard sentiments from our clients such as, “I can’t get my mind off the mountain of dishes, or the load of laundry in the dryer when we’re trying to be intimate…?”
Wanting to be present in the moment but feeling unable to quiet our minds is so prevalent. To overcome this takes practice and guidance outside of sexual experiences. With your clients, you can offer practices such as making gratitude lists at the end of the day, or noticing and naming pleasurable sensations throughout the day. These types of practices can help bring more ease to being in the now.
Mindfulness is a vast and profound philosophy and applying it to your sex coaching practice can bring about so many benefits and breakthroughs for your client—in their sex life and beyond. It’s worth adding these tools to your sex coaching tool box.
Curious about training to become a Certified Sex Coach™? Join the next live Info Session to meet the SCU team and participate in a live Q&A!
