Touching for pleasure

When did you last take time to delight in sensation on your skin – a luxuriously soft piece of velvet, for example, or cool flowing water – just for the sheer joy of it?

You might be thinking that gay touch coaching would be all about learning fancy techniques or strokes.

But it’s really much simpler than that.

Consider this for a minute:

Your hands contain more nerve endings than any other part of your body (except your lips and genitals).

Yet I’m willing to bet you rarely think of them as anything other than tools for achieving tasks.

If you want to feel good you need to learn how to feel

Actually your hands are the perfect conduit for accessing a world of pleasure.

But the truth is, despite all those nerve endings, most of us don’t really know how to feel with our hands.

Because feeling is different from doing.

In order to feel you need to be able to notice – really, properly notice – the sensations coming into your skin.

Would you be able to tell me the texture of the last thing you had your hands on?

Or whether that texture felt enjoyable to you, or not?

Why we’ve become disconnected from sensation and pleasure

Despite having this amazing direct route of sensation into our skin, through those millions of nerve endings, most of us have become disconnected from it to some extent as we move through life.

There are many reasons for this – cultural or social conditioning, shame, trauma, are just a few.

For gay and queer people especially we learn that it can be safer not to feel, so we shut down our connection with sensation.

What is pleasure anyway?

Most of us also have learned to have a very narrow definition of what pleasure means.

If we’re not experiencing fireworks or intense delight we think there’s something wrong with us.

But when it comes to touch there can be just as much pleasure and delight in a cuddle, or a soft loving kiss, as an orgasm!

The trick is learning to notice what actually feels enjoyable to you (as opposed to what you’ve been told ought to, or what someone else wants you to).

And believe it or not pleasure is not something anyone else can ‘give’ you, it’s an experience that happens in your own body.

So the best place to start learning how to touch for pleasure is with your own body.

Start touching for pleasure

If you want to begin touching for pleasure, rather than just for function, gay touch coaching with me can help you (re)build the connection with your direct route of sensation – in your own skin.

The more sensation you can take in, the more you can start to feel, and the more pleasure becomes possible.

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Try this quick practice for 5 minutes each day:

1. Pick up the nearest random object. Hold it in your hands. Let your mind notice it, name it, give it a function.
2. Then let those thoughts go, close your eyes, and bring all your awareness to your hands. Start to explore the object with your hands, with curiosity.
3. Notice the sensations you experience in your hands – the textures, shapes, weight, even temperature of the object. After a few minutes slow the speed of your touch down by half and see what you notice.
4. Explore the object with as many different parts of your hand as you want – try your fingernails, your wrist, the back of your hand. If your mind wanders bring your attention to back to the sensation you notice in your hands.

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(You can also get a guided audio version of this Touching For Pleasure practice below.)

And if you want to build a more pleasurable relationship with interactive touch I can help you with that too – just get in touch!