I tried yoga for the first time at thirteen when my sister had just become a mother and brought home a hatha yoga DVD. When asked about yoga by friends, I joked that I did it to have good sex. I wasn’t even sexually active yet, but somehow, I knew that my fascination with yoga was intrinsically linked to sex.
I continued to dabble with yoga until I was twenty-one. It was then that I developed a committed yoga practice. There were certainly benefits to be had in the short-term, but it was the long-term dedication to a yoga practice where the best gifts emerged in my sex life.
Let’s look at the short-term effects first:
1) Range of Motion (ROM)
Even after just one class you can experience an increase of ROM. A whole new array of postures opens up to you with just a bit of stretching. New postures lead to new sensations and/or new angles for visual stimulation.
2) Endurance & Stamina
The power of yoga comes from the collaboration of breath and movement. The cardiovascular endurance built in a yoga class transfers to all other areas of your life, including your sex life. It can take some women up to 30 or 60 minutes to reach climax, but if their partner cannot endure that long then orgasm remains out of reach.
3) Energy
Unlike many other forms of exercise, yoga is energizing. Coming out of a yoga class, whether it’s your first or thousandth, feelings of euphoria and invigoration are common. How many times have you turned down your partner (or vice-versa) because you didn’t have the energy for sex?
Now for the long-term effects:
1) Body Awareness
Yoga, after a consistent practice, wakes dormant areas of the body. Yoga also encourages you to feel sensations in the body. When you become aware of your body during sex you increase your ability to feel pleasure and orgasm. Body awareness during sex can be the recognition of your body’s orientation in space; the movement of your body; and/or the sensations you feel within the body. With awareness you can recognize what movements, postures, and senses turn you on and get you off.
2) Presence
When presence is paired with body awareness the pleasure is insurmountable. How many times have you been distracted by demoralizing thoughts while being intimate with your partner? Is he/she having a good time? Why is his/her eyes closed? I must not be sexy enough. Did I send that email? Yoga trains you to remain present with the use of mindfulness. Through mindfulness you can change your internal dialogue. My partner is pleasuring me with his/her mouth. My partner moans when I touch him/her like this. My partner is aroused by my naked body.
3) Communication
When you are present and aware of your body while being intimate with your partner you become able to ask for what you want. Touch me here. Slower. Harder. Spank me from this position. With this object. It takes a lot of confidence and security to communicate your desires to your partner. Yoga gives you a safe space to practice communicating your desires with yourself first. With a long-term practice, you can develop the confidence to explore sensation and modifications in a posture in order to hit a target area or to generate a certain sensation. Instead of blindly following the instructor, you learn to lead yourself with a little encouragement or suggestion from the instructor. During sex, your partner is like a yoga instructor, there to encourage you, make suggestions, and engage with you. Your partner is not there to dominate the fuck (unless you are following predetermined dom/sub roles).
Most people love to have sex; Unfortunately, many are not satisfied with their sex lives. Some people aren’t getting enough sex while others aren’t participating in the kind of sex they want to have. If that’s you, do something about it! Try yoga.
-Nicole Berns