Sex as Yoga:

Exploring Sensation, Intention, and Breath

This post was written by Community Partner, Pleasure Coach & Sex Educator Andrea Bertoli

The tools that deepen your yoga practice offer an opportunity to explore deeper pleasure in the bedroom, too. Learning how to be mindful of sensation, tuning into conscious breath, and finding slowness are the keys to more conscious, connected experiences..

I’ve been a dedicated yoga practitioner for more than 20 years. Yoga is my primary embodiment and physical movement practice. This beautiful practice has given me a foundation of breath, embodiment, and depth of spiritual practice that I can’t imagine living without, and I have deep respect for the art, science, and spirituality of yoga disciplines. .

I continue to practice yoga daily alongside building my other practice as a Sex Coach in Honolulu. The more I practice, explore, and teach about mindful sex and build my own intimacy practices, the more I realize that yoga is sex … and sex is yoga. Using the tools of mindfulness, slowness, and sensation we can learn to show up in new ways on the mat and in bed. 

But it wasn’t always like this for me, as a yogi or as a lover.

Yoga as Performance // Sex as Performance

I started yoga when I was 20 as a physical exercise practice to complement my surfing. I was strong and fast, and at the time, yoga was very performative for me. I focused more on how long I could stay in pincha mayurasa or how aligned my chaturanga was that day. I was pushing myself and showing off—not dropping into the depth that yoga offers. I think it took me about 10 years of practice to realize yoga was really about breath and my brain (and not just my cute butt and my growing trapezius muscles). 

Even now, I occasionally drop into the physicality of yoga without the depth. I can go to a vinyasa flow or other fast-paced class and move quickly, mindlessly through the postures; I can zone out with the loud music or the dance of sequence. I can move through the flow without really feeling too much, and let my mind wander over my grocery list or my tasks. Sometimes, if I’ve had a busy week or feel stressed, that’s exactly what I need—just to sweat and move quickly, without feeling too much. 

But usually I prefer to really embody the practice. I move slowly into each posture, letting my breath and sensation guide me to my edge. This allows me to be more present and feel more within each individual pose. I feel the breath in my body, the touch of breeze on my skin (it’s an open-air studio), listen to the trees, hear the music, feel the blood-bones-muscles-ligaments-fascia in my body being awakened. 

Either way, I’m doing the same postures, but the entire approach is different. Even though I’ve studied these postures for two decades—and have been in like 20,000 downward dogs—I can always find something new when I take a mindful approach. This differentiation offers you totally new ways to experience the postures. 

Hopefully, you can see the clear parallels to sex and pleasure. 

In my 20s, I approached sex in the same way. Moving through the motions, making sure it ‘looked good’ to the person I was playing with, trying to tune into them and not paying much attention to myself. This led to mostly unsatisfying encounters, and I was craving something MORE, but I didn’t know what it was. I moved through the actions, without conversation or agreement about what we’re really doing here. 

Embodied Sex: A Yogic Approach to Sexual Play

For sexy time, you can show up to the bedroom with the same partner, do the same activities, and move through the same ‘sex scripts’ each time. You can move through the motions mindlessly, maybe reaching an end goal (ie: an orgasm). 

Or you can slow it down. Breathe in the scent of your body or your lover’s body. Really taste their mouth and skin, deeply sense the feeling of your fingers on their face. You can bring breath, presence, stillness and attention to really FEEL MORE and BE MORE within each moment. Just like in yoga, the breath (pranayama) is an equally important part of the practice (and one of the sacred eight limbs of yoga practice. Breath is what we use as the guiding light during the full practice: Is my breath constricted? How can I breathe more deeply in this posture? 

Focusing on breath during sexual play is also a helpful guide to your pleasure. The same questions apply: Is my breath constricted? How can I breathe more deeply in this position? What does the Breath tell me about my sensation, my arousal, and my relaxation?  

Breath is also the way we add newness to our play and stay tuned in to ourselves and our lover. A lot of my clients tell me they feel bored with their sex life—their long-term sexual relationship is stale and routine. This is common for many people, and there are ways to move through this and add depth and pleasure and curiosity, and breath is the gateway to that depth. I know that it’s possible to continually find novelty within repeated activities if we approach them with breath, reverence, slowness, and curiosity. This to me is the goal of an embodied yoga practice, and the goal of an embodied sexual practice.

Mindfulness and Sex: Bringing Awareness to your Play

One way to improve your sex life is to bring mindfulness into your sex life. The path to better sex is through being mindful of each moment (as many as you can) and then feeling into each thing that might be happening. And you can use mindfulness before, during, and after your playtime. 

Before you begin, drop in with your lover (or yourself) and slowing down your breath, dropping into the moment, noticing your body and mind, and consciously approaching your playtime is key here. Ask yourself, ‘what do I want to feel today?’ or ‘what is my intention with this play session?’ Set the stage for either playfulness, connection, exploration, or deeply erotic pleasure. 

During sex, notice when your mind wanders. Gently and non-judgmentally, bring it back. Focus on a scent, a taste, a feeling in your body to reconnect with the physical and distance yourself from the mental chatter. 

After sex, notice what you’re feeling in your body, in your heart: are you feeling relaxed, connected, more turned on and hungry for more, or are you satisfied and want to rest? Take a gentle approach to a debrief with yourself (or you lover): do you feel good together, what did you like, how would you like to close our session?

Slowness & Sensation: Adding Depth to Your Practices

Slowness and stillness allow me to feel more on the yoga mat, and it can do the same during sex. I love a good vinyasa class for the dance and flow, but the classes that always feel the best in my body are those that include slow movements, awareness, and subtle sensations. Often I feel those the most intensely on the next day, too! 

So too, with sex. Often we move through stuff quickly, trying to do many things at once and giving and receiving, but I love to invite people to slow it down. Focus on the kisses only, try touching the skin in new ways (as slow as possible, to activate all that oxytocin), and leaning into giving OR receiving—not both at the same time. One of the phrases I use with my clients is, ‘slow it down by half, then slow it down by half again’ to get the ultimate sexy, slow burn. 

With slowness comes an opportunity to tune in more fully to sensation. This itself is a mindfulness practice: do I feel warm, tingly, nervous, tense? Where does it feel good, and where might it feel better on my body? I invite people to experiment with lots of sensations using a practice called Pleasure Mapping: a sexy game to find out what items feel best on their body. It’s a fun way to play, learn more, and practice really sinking into sensation. 

Focusing on slowness and sensation might feel counterintuitive if you’re accustomed to having more goal-oriented sex. I also encourage people to take orgasm off the table (once, twice, a few times) so really lean into the play and exploration of sex. Orgasms are great, for sure, but I invite you to explore pleasure all along the way. 

As they say in yoga, it’s not about touching your toes, it’s what you learn on the way down. So too, with your sexual play. I hope these tools help you find expansive joy on the mat, in the bedroom, and beyond.

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