In a letter to the noted writer and psychoanalyst Princess Marie Bonaparte in 1925, Sigmund Freud said, “The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want

Western scientifc thought is great at explaining the world. Eastern philosophy is great at teaching us how to experience it.

Learning to feel is learning to let go of all of the stress of the day, your history, your attachment to how things need to be in the future, and just completely immersing yourself in the present moment. You’ve seen this moment in a lot of superhero or martial arts movies, when in the midst of chaos, the hero just takes a pause, takes a breath, and centers their awareness before engaging further. The way you do this is by feeling your internal and external world through your senses, becoming immersed in your erotic experience, as well as your partner’s, and paying attention to erotic cues like breath and sound. If you were a surfer, this would be a moment when you are sitting on your surfboard, trying to get a feel for the water, your own body, the weather, and the currents. This is the moment when you open your feld of awareness to experience more of what there is to be felt

Once you master feeling and noticing your own erotic experience, you can start to learn to calibrate. Because you can use all the feedback you are getting from your senses, you begin learning to navigate the experience. Calibrating means that you assign meaning to the cues that you are getting from your partner. You begin to understand what that person’s movement, sounds, and emotional expression mean for them. You understand how they respond to specifc types of touch. You are now decoding the language of their erotic cues. You could view this like developing a compass for your experience. You know when to touch softer or harder, depending on what noises or movements they make. As a surfer, this is where you fnd your balance and timing. You’re learning how your movements and techniques interact with the water. You’re getting the hang of surfng

The takeaway: Sex isn’t always perfect. Sometimes it’s awkward, weird, uncomfortable, and messy—in short, it’s real. Instead of focusing on your equipment, focus on being mindful in the moment with your partner. Ask yourself: what’s arousing in this moment right now? Pay attention to your senses. Look at your partner’s beautiful lips and the curves of her body. Soon enough, you’ll be out of the anxiety loop and on to great sex

Our current paradigm is torn between two poles. On one side we have abstinence-only sex education, in which purity is valued and a great sex life will somehow magically work itself out when you settle down into a monogamous marriage. On the other side, we have porn sites that deliver high shock value to drive clicks and sales, and incidentally provide many people with a skewed, ad hoc sex education

In the book Why Good Sex Matters, Dr. Nan Wise argues that sexual pleasure is at the core of our mental health and wellness

When you think about all these myths and the pressure they create, it’s really no wonder that so many men are dealing with low genital self-esteem and performance anxiety. It can feel really crippling to worry about sexual rejection. This worry can cause problems in functioning like psychological erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation, which in turn can evoke yet more anxiety and dread. This feedback loop can crystalize over time, and it’s hard to know how to break out of the cycle. The feedback loop leads to what psychologists call “learned helplessness,” which is when animals and humans get the sense that there is no way out of a situation, and they no longer try to alter their environment to stop a painful stimulus from reoccurring. In the worst case, this leads to incel culture and potentially causes massive harm because of the rage that is stoked in these groups

confdence is a choice; it’s something you can work on and build up, even if bad things happen to you

obsessive ego-consciousness takes you out of the moment

Because there’s a limited bandwidth on attention, paying attention to worrying about your hard-on takes away from your ability to pay attention to your partner’s bodacious tatas

When you’re experiencing choking, and tell yourself you shouldn’t be choking, it only perpetuates the anxiety loop and increases the self-imposed pressure. The hack here is to do a Jedi mind trick with yourself. Tell yourself that your dick doesn’t need to be hard right now, and that it’s OK if your dick isn’t hard and you’re anxious. What you resist persists, and the more you resist these two things, the worse they’ll get. Instead, feel into the anxiety and allow the experience to exist exactly as it is, without trying to change it. By allowing and accepting the moment, you allow it to pass

Next, use your breath to actively relax. Focus on lengthening the breath, breathing in and out for longer periods. Breath work is the foundation of the self-regulation skills used in martial arts, sports, yogic practices, and more. In addition, relax your face, shoulders, solar plexus, abdomen, and pelvic foor

I learned the power of relaxation from Chelsey Fasano, who taught me that when we relax, our natural bodily genius takes the reins. She taught me that the body knows what to do if we give it the space to feel and function naturally. When we stop imposing on and trying to control our bodies, and let the body guide us, it can naturally self-regulate and is capable of more pleasure than we ever imagined. She says that it is also through letting go of unnecessary tension that we see what the body is capable of in terms of performance, and how it can guide us with a unique form of intuitive genius. Relaxation is a skill and depends on paying attention to our breath and body, slowly coaxing them to let go over time

The fnal step is to focus on something other than your dick getting hard. Thinking about how you wish your dick was hard is about as efective as trying to force yourself to feel sleepy when you’re experiencing insomnia. Instead, refocus on an area where you do have control

Allow yourself to get in touch with what is occurring that is erotic to you. Direct your attention back to what feels good about the moment. Engage your fve senses, and actively notice what kinds of smells, sights, touches, sounds, and tastes are enjoyable. Luckily, there are a lot of these to focus on in sex (if the sex is good). Notice things like the softness of her skin, what kind of noises she’s making, the shape of her body, curve of her hips, beauty of her eyes, the smell and taste of her vulva. Eventually, this sensory experience will take on a life of its own, and you will

be immersed in your sense of eroticism, all thoughts and feelings of anxiety far away. And then voilà, you’ll notice that your dick gets hard as easily as when you are at home alone, consumed by your favorite porn

Accept yourself and the moment as they occur, focus on your breath and relax your body, and pay attention to what feels good through the fve senses. Learning is a process, but you can trust that by engaging with these three practices, change will slowly begin to occur, and eventually, those nagging insecurities won’t be keeping you from enjoying a very enjoyable experience

Betty Martin, who taught me that sexual pleasure is derived from a combination of three important ingredients: • Tactile data • Mindfulness • Erotic context

Paying attention to the present is the most efective tool we have discovered to break habit loops. If we’re caught up in a bad habit, the only way to hack it and start a new habit is through the power of attention. You could have the sexiest partner, the perfect erotic context, and the right techniques—but if you’re not paying attention to your own pleasure, you’re fucked (or rather, the opposite of fucked). Mindfulness is a vastly undervalued tool in the pursuit of great sex

When I can tell that the person is starting to feel good with the sensation, I say, “Okay, now focus. I’m going to count to thirty, and as I count up, I want you to feel more and more of the sensation and focus on the sound of my voice.” I steadily begin to count. By coaching the person to listen to the sound of my voice, we’ve snapped her brain into focus. Sometimes by the time I get to twenty, she has had an orgasm. You don’t need a dungeon or a Sybian machine to give your partner mind-blowing orgasms. Often, you simply need to help your partner focus on her own pleasure and direct her attention entirely on herself

Chasing an orgasm is like chasing a fairy: the closer you try to get to it, the farther it fits away. If a partner I’m with tells me she’s frustrated at having a hard time orgasming, one of the ways I hack this is to fip the script. At the start of sex, I tell her she’s not allowed to cum. All of a sudden, when she feels close, she realizes the waves of sensation are building—and she has a new experience of choosing whether to fght the sensation or not. This reversal helps her experience her pleasure more fully, and focus on the sensations in her body—because in order to not cum (or at least playact at resisting), she has to pay attention to what it feels like to cum. Ironically, she’s no longer focused on how she’s not cuming, because denying her an orgasm takes away the pressure to cum. When we release our expectations and stop chasing a particular sensation, we can experience the sensation more fully

If you can draw her out about her concern, you may fnd there’s a simple solution that will help her relax. Being relaxed is the only way to get aroused—and whether your partner is scanning for a lurking saber-toothed tiger or the potential that she might be shamed by her partner, she won’t be able to relax until she feels it’s safe. By showing care for her concerns, you can help build the intense connection that comes from being authentic and present in the moment with each other

Don’t try to fx or change the emotions that are coming up for you or your partner. Observe the emotions that are coming up with as little judgment as possible, like watching a cloud pass across the sky.

One hack you can use to shift your partner’s attention to her own body and her own sensations is to start with massage and slow, sensual touch at the beginning of sex. Tell her to pay attention to your touch and focus on where your fngertip goes as you trace the lines of her body. Simply by paying attention to your touch and anticipating the movements of your fnger, your partner will have a higher degree of focus on the sensations she’s feeling

watch how your own body and your own responses mirror hers in a process called attunement. We all have mirror neurons in our brains that fre when we see another person act or emote; we end up feeling their action or emotion in our own bodies to a degree. This wiring in our brains makes us each a resonating chamber of what is happening around us. Some people have a high degree of activation in their mirror neurons and access to empathy, and others don’t. But wherever you’re starting out from, you can learn to tune into your partner’s feelings in the same way you can learn to hear more variation in pitch when you’re learning music

There are four major nerves that connect the genitals to the brain and control most of our sexual pleasure. The frst is the pudendal nerve, which in women connects to the clitoris. Then there’s the pelvic nerve, which connects to the vagina and the cervix. The vagus nerve runs down to the cervix, and the hypogastric nerve goes to both the cervix and the uterus. These four nerves are like superhighways that carry information up to the brain, and as they run through the body, they pick up additional signals from the muscles and organs they pass along the way

You can create pleasure across many different areas of the body, and when you build up enough pleasure, orgasm occurs (nipplegasm, anyone?). It’s possible for women to have orgasms from visual stimuli and anal stimuli, because orgasms actually happen in the brain. The important factor is to increase pleasure until there’s enough to trigger an orgasm; where the pleasure comes from is less important (to the body, at least—obviously your partner knows what she likes!

In An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Colonel Chris Hadfeld described how he was able to control all the functions on his spaceship with a very small interface: a keyboard, a mouse, and a small screen.31 With just these tools, he could manipulate all the parts and functions of his craft. I think of the vulva and the vagina in a similar way. They’re the interface for your partner’s entire sexual experience, and by engaging these parts with diverse sensory experiences, you can engage with your partner’s entire body

“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifcally your own

My friend Chelsey Fasano, who we mentioned above, studies the neuroscience of meditation and attention at Columbia University, and she helped me understand how this works. When we pay attention to a sensation, the sensory processing areas of our brain in which neural activity occurs as a result of the sensation actually fre more. This causes a subjective sense of the sensation being focused on increasing. On the other hand, we could be adding tons of stimuli, but focusing on something else, and our sensory processing areas could remain relatively inactive. Our brains are designed to conserve energy by deactivating things we don’t focus on, even to the extent of pushing them out of awareness altogether. Have you ever been engrossed in a book, and someone says something to you that you literally don’t hear, and have to ask them to repeat? If we are focused on something besides sex, we can tune out sexual stimuli in exactly this way, becoming “deaf” to the sensations in our own bodies

The sensations we feel during sex are only part of what turns us on and brings us pleasure. The other part is the erotic narratives that play through our minds during sex. Erotic context is the meaning we place on the experience. Two people can have very diferent responses to the exact same activity. Take spanking: a smack on the ass could be highly erotic for a partner who wants to play with a fantasy of being a naughty, dirty girl, while another woman could fnd it super hot to be a goddess worthy of worship, who would never allow a man to bend her over his knee or hit her. The erotic context stems from the relationship your partner has with that activity

In the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, authors Sai Gaddam and Ogi Odas analyze search engine data in an attempt to discover what turns women on. Want to know the fve cliché characters that seemed most sought after by women? Surgeon, pirate, billionaire, vampire, and werewolf

Neurons that fre together wire together. Each time we practice something, we cause neurons to light up a pathway in our brains, and that pathway becomes stronger and stronger. The more we travel along that path, the easier it gets to travel it

Porn stars are performing for clicks and popularity, bros are performing for their own ego, and insecure guys are performing to soothe a nagging, self-critical sense of inadequacy

One of the best ways to sense anyone else’s feelings and desires is through our own body. As Om Rupani, a teacher of mine, says, “The key to feeling your woman is feeling yourself

or losing confdence, and that’s the moment he chooses to strike. You might think this is a foreign concept, but most of us have had this feeling while watching a movie! Think of a time where you were super engrossed in the plot of a movie and found yourself laughing and crying along with the actors. This is because you’ve directed your entire attention to the actor in the flm, and your mirror neuron system causes you to feel the same emotions the actor is displaying

You might think this is a foreign concept, but most of us have had this feeling while watching a movie! Think of a time where you were super engrossed in the plot of a movie and found yourself laughing and crying along with the actors. This is because you’ve directed your entire attention to the actor in the flm, and your mirror neuron system causes you to feel the same emotions the actor is displaying

In doggy style, your partner is on her hands and knees. Her back is arched, her knees are wide apart, and her butt and vulva are on full, beautiful display. Take a moment before you enter your partner to stroke her body and appreciate her. Have her look back at you to connect—it’s super hot. As you enter your partner in this position, push the head of your penis up towards her anus, again where her vaginal wall is most stretchy

Having your partner lie on her side is a great way to put her in a comfortable position while still giving you access to play with your partner’s boobs, slap the side of her thigh, or caress her body. This is also an easy position for her to play with her own clit with toys or a hand. With her hips turned to the side, she gets diferent kinds of stimulation than in other positions. Have her split her legs so her bottom leg is straight and her top leg is bent at the knee towards her chest

One of the most ergonomic positions is to have your partner hold the backs of her knees with her knees bent and her legs wide. This gives you full access to her vagina, and it tilts her hips in a way that feels good to most people. You can accentuate this tilt by putting a pillow under her hips. Tease your partner’s vulva and clit with the head of your cock. When you’re ready to penetrate your partner, hold the head of your penis and push it down against the bottom wall of her vagina as you slide in

Kinky or not, giving her simple instructions on how to focus on the moment, her body, and her senses is usually very helpful. Say something like, “I want you to take a deep breath in, feel the temperature of the room, and as I touch you, focus all your awareness on your body and how it feels right now.

Great sex can be the key to lasting confdence, not because you can make a girl cum twenty times, but because to have great sex you have to be authentic, present in your body, and connected with your partner

We’re living in an age where many people are faking it—faking orgasms, faking connection, faking intimacy, faking pleasure. When you learn to deliver the real thing, it nourishes you and your partner to the core

In an interview, Bruce Lee once described how he experienced this kind of authenticity as an actor and a martial artist.80 He said, “Honestly expressing yourself…it is very difcult to do. I mean, it is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and be fooded with a cocky feeling and then feel pretty cool…or I can show you some really fancy movement. But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself…now that, my friend, is very hard to do.” When you can combine sexual skills with great communication and your own authentic sexual expression, sex can be deeply satisfying. And the confdence you gain from being able to deliver so much pleasure to your partner and to yourself—that confdence is lasting because it’s real

Sexual mastery is transferable to every other area of your life. Put a nice suit on a competent dom, and he’ll know exactly how to be assertive in the boardroom. Learn to wholeheartedly submit to a lover, and you’ll be able to better handle moments when you feel out of control.