Erotic Self Care
Category: Advice
Ever felt too tired, too undesirable or too stressed to prioritise the erotic in your life? Has your favourite sex toy languished under your bed slowly collecting dust while you tell yourself you’re just ‘too busy’ to give yourself an orgasm? If so, you’re probably feeling the effects of a seriously neglected sex drive crying out for some care and affection.
Sex negativity, late capitalism and a white supremacist, cishet normative, fatphobic, ableist society all conspire to zap our natural juicy orgasmic powers. As a result, most of us believe that we just aren’t young enough, cis enough, white enough, thin enough etc to deserve sex and pleasure.
We are literally bombarded with messaging telling us that sexual pleasure is something we need to earn rather than something we deserve, and it’s stripping us of our orgasmic power faster than a tinder hook-up who can’t find your g/p-spot when it’s sitting on their face.
As a sexwitch and sexual empowerment coach, I work with people of all genders who feel disconnected from their body in different ways. Some people struggle to remain present during sex, some people have no idea what they like or dislike sexually and almost everyone struggles to step up and advocate for what they want in bed – both with a partner and with themselves.
Although every problem/blockage is unique in its own way my advice is always the same: Get yourself on an erotic selfcare schedule and start dating and pleasuring yourself regularly! Treat yourself like the delicious snack and a half you know you are and get to know what turns you on, what turns you off and how to give it to yourself.
What is erotic self care?
Although it probably brings to mind memes about baths, wine and white feminism, erotic selfcare is simply the act of prioritizing and honoring your body, sexuality and libido through asking your body what it wants, listening and exploring without agenda. Whether it’s dancing around the room to a sexy playlist or indulging your freakiest fantasies on your own – erotic selfcare is an essential tool to having a strong, healthy and orgasmic sex life.
We live in a world that is intensely sex negative – not just for non-normative bodies but for everyone who desires pleasure, sensuality and connection outside of monogamous procreation. Sex education is almost impossible to find and when it exists, it often focuses on STI’s and preproduction rather than joy and juiciness.
When we finally do get our hands on images of sex and sexual expression it’s often in the form of airbrushed, performative sex involving able bodied cis skinny white women submitting to the male gaze. While there’s nothing wrong with that in theory – it doesn’t exactly teach the average person how to connect to their needs and desires and express them in an empowering way.
Erotic selfcare is the antidote to the feelings of dissociation, inadequacy, and shame caused by societal messaging, stress and a sex negative society.
What are the benefits?
A heathy erotic selfcare routine will help you nurture your sexuality and desire and build an awareness of your body and how it works. It will also help you discover what turns you on and what turns you off.
Not only is erotic selfcare great for your sex life - but your confidence, communication and body image will also get a huge boost. Any fan of Audre Lorde’s essay ‘uses of the erotic’ knows that erotic knowledge empowers us to demand pleasure and satisfaction from all aspects of our lives, empowering us ‘not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe...’
In short – once we believe we are entitled to erotic pleasure we start to realise we are also entitled to satisfaction in other areas of our lives. We simply won’t settle for crappy sex, crappy relationships or communication when we know how good the alternative feels.
Many of my clients report feeling more sexually sensitive and orgasmic after just a month of at home erotic selfcare. Not only that, but they often tell me how they have learnt to make peace with their body insecurities, viewing their bodies as a part of themselves that deserves compassion and pleasure. It’s legitimately life changing – and you can do it at home, on your own and for free!
Ideas for your own Erotic Self Care Ritual
Here’s a list of some of the fun and sexy ways you begin to integrate erotic selfcare into your life that don’t require any equipment or consumerism. Remember that when you’re feeling anxious or self-conscious to simply slow the fuck down! Take a breath, relax, quiet your mind and take a break if need be. This is your time to explore and discover on your own terms.
1. Mindful Masturbation
Mindful Masturbation (also known by the highly appropriative ‘orgasmic yoga’) means bringing intention and awareness to your self-love practice. Most of us masturbate simply to have an orgasm as quickly as possible and rarely explore different types of touch or technique. There’s nothing wrong with a fast and dirty self-session of course, but mixing things up is necessary if we want to discover new erogenous zones and bring a higher level of sexual awareness to our bodies.
Take some time to touch your whole body, light candles and get dressed to impress – then touch yourself in front of the mirror. Create an affirmation or intention to focus on or say out loud during your practice. It could be anything from ‘I deserve to love and pleasure’ to ‘I want to discover what kinds of pleasure I can experience in my ass’.
Affirming your sexy bod and right to pleasure with mindful self-loving is the fastest way to get your orgasms flowing and your self-confidence pumping! The most important aspect of mindful masturbation is installation; spend a few minutes afterwards relaxing into the sensations and letting your new awareness of your body and desires really sink in before you get up and move on with your day.
2. Pleasure Mapping
You can do this activity on your own or with a partner as a great way to discover your erogenous zones without the pressure of orgasm. However, I highly recommend pleasure mapping on your own body first. Take the time to slowly explore your body inch by inch with your hands.
Experiment with different pressures, speeds and levels of intensity. Make a mental note of what feels good as well as what doesn’t. The goal here is to discovery what types of touch you like so you can give them to yourself and request them from partners in the future. I also recommend incorporating different materials like ice, silky fabrics or feathers – whatever you have around the house is fine! Sex School has a great video on pleasure mapping for couples you can watch to get a better idea of what this process might look like for you.
3. Make a date with your genitals
Grab a mirror and get comfortable because it’s time to get up close and personal with your intimate body parts! Many people have never actually seen their own genitals close up and almost none of us can name each beautiful and unique part. Take the time to look at yourself closely and touch and explore yourself with curiosity and compassion.
Everyone’s genitals are unique in their colour, shapes, sizes and that’s a beautiful thing. Make a note of what you like about yours, write them down and put them somewhere in your room where you can see them when you’re feeling less than confident. This exercise is particularly empowering for trans and intersex people getting to know their new genitals, as well as people wanting to reconnect to their vulvas after childbirth.
4. Body worship
Treat yourself like the sex god/dess you are with some full body worship. By that, I mean take the time to explore what makes you sacred. Maybe it’s your cute feet? Your soft belly? Your collarbone? Your gorgeous nose? Sacred can mean myriad things to different people but in this context, I want to encourage you to honor the parts of you that bring you feelings of joy, pleasure and confidence.
If you love your hands, then spend time giving them a soft massage with hand lotion straight after a bath. If you love your curly hair spend time playing with each tendril – feeling the texture of each follicle against your skin.
The point is to indulge in yourself. Lavish yourself with positive attention and treat yourself with the same affirmation and positive regard you would give to a lover. Worshiping your own body in its current state is the perfect antidote to body negative, racist/transphobic/ableist society. It’s medicine without side effects – so drink up!
Author: Dion De Rossi
Ever felt too tired, too undesirable or too stressed to prioritise the erotic in your life? Has your favourite sex toy languished under your bed slowly collecting dust while you tell yourself you’re just ‘too busy’ to give yourself an orgasm? If so, you’re probably feeling the effects of a seriously neglected sex drive crying out for some care and affection.
Sex negativity, late capitalism and a white supremacist, cishet normative, fatphobic, ableist society all conspire to zap our natural juicy orgasmic powers. As a result, most of us believe that we just aren’t young enough, cis enough, white enough, thin enough etc to deserve sex and pleasure.
We are literally bombarded with messaging telling us that sexual pleasure is something we need to earn rather than something we deserve, and it’s stripping us of our orgasmic power faster than a tinder hook-up who can’t find your g/p-spot when it’s sitting on their face.
As a sexwitch and sexual empowerment coach, I work with people of all genders who feel disconnected from their body in different ways. Some people struggle to remain present during sex, some people have no idea what they like or dislike sexually and almost everyone struggles to step up and advocate for what they want in bed – both with a partner and with themselves.
Although every problem/blockage is unique in its own way my advice is always the same: Get yourself on an erotic selfcare schedule and start dating and pleasuring yourself regularly! Treat yourself like the delicious snack and a half you know you are and get to know what turns you on, what turns you off and how to give it to yourself.
What is erotic self care?
Although it probably brings to mind memes about baths, wine and white feminism, erotic selfcare is simply the act of prioritizing and honoring your body, sexuality and libido through asking your body what it wants, listening and exploring without agenda. Whether it’s dancing around the room to a sexy playlist or indulging your freakiest fantasies on your own – erotic selfcare is an essential tool to having a strong, healthy and orgasmic sex life.
We live in a world that is intensely sex negative – not just for non-normative bodies but for everyone who desires pleasure, sensuality and connection outside of monogamous procreation. Sex education is almost impossible to find and when it exists, it often focuses on STI’s and preproduction rather than joy and juiciness.
When we finally do get our hands on images of sex and sexual expression it’s often in the form of airbrushed, performative sex involving able bodied cis skinny white women submitting to the male gaze. While there’s nothing wrong with that in theory – it doesn’t exactly teach the average person how to connect to their needs and desires and express them in an empowering way.
Erotic selfcare is the antidote to the feelings of dissociation, inadequacy, and shame caused by societal messaging, stress and a sex negative society.
What are the benefits?
A heathy erotic selfcare routine will help you nurture your sexuality and desire and build an awareness of your body and how it works. It will also help you discover what turns you on and what turns you off.
Not only is erotic selfcare great for your sex life - but your confidence, communication and body image will also get a huge boost. Any fan of Audre Lorde’s essay ‘uses of the erotic’ knows that erotic knowledge empowers us to demand pleasure and satisfaction from all aspects of our lives, empowering us ‘not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe...’
In short – once we believe we are entitled to erotic pleasure we start to realise we are also entitled to satisfaction in other areas of our lives. We simply won’t settle for crappy sex, crappy relationships or communication when we know how good the alternative feels.
Many of my clients report feeling more sexually sensitive and orgasmic after just a month of at home erotic selfcare. Not only that, but they often tell me how they have learnt to make peace with their body insecurities, viewing their bodies as a part of themselves that deserves compassion and pleasure. It’s legitimately life changing – and you can do it at home, on your own and for free!
Ideas for your own Erotic Self Care Ritual
Here’s a list of some of the fun and sexy ways you begin to integrate erotic selfcare into your life that don’t require any equipment or consumerism. Remember that when you’re feeling anxious or self-conscious to simply slow the fuck down! Take a breath, relax, quiet your mind and take a break if need be. This is your time to explore and discover on your own terms.
1. Mindful Masturbation
Mindful Masturbation (also known by the highly appropriative ‘orgasmic yoga’) means bringing intention and awareness to your self-love practice. Most of us masturbate simply to have an orgasm as quickly as possible and rarely explore different types of touch or technique. There’s nothing wrong with a fast and dirty self-session of course, but mixing things up is necessary if we want to discover new erogenous zones and bring a higher level of sexual awareness to our bodies.
Take some time to touch your whole body, light candles and get dressed to impress – then touch yourself in front of the mirror. Create an affirmation or intention to focus on or say out loud during your practice. It could be anything from ‘I deserve to love and pleasure’ to ‘I want to discover what kinds of pleasure I can experience in my ass’.
Affirming your sexy bod and right to pleasure with mindful self-loving is the fastest way to get your orgasms flowing and your self-confidence pumping! The most important aspect of mindful masturbation is installation; spend a few minutes afterwards relaxing into the sensations and letting your new awareness of your body and desires really sink in before you get up and move on with your day.
2. Pleasure Mapping
You can do this activity on your own or with a partner as a great way to discover your erogenous zones without the pressure of orgasm. However, I highly recommend pleasure mapping on your own body first. Take the time to slowly explore your body inch by inch with your hands.
Experiment with different pressures, speeds and levels of intensity. Make a mental note of what feels good as well as what doesn’t. The goal here is to discovery what types of touch you like so you can give them to yourself and request them from partners in the future. I also recommend incorporating different materials like ice, silky fabrics or feathers – whatever you have around the house is fine! Sex School has a great video on pleasure mapping for couples you can watch to get a better idea of what this process might look like for you.
3. Make a date with your genitals
Grab a mirror and get comfortable because it’s time to get up close and personal with your intimate body parts! Many people have never actually seen their own genitals close up and almost none of us can name each beautiful and unique part. Take the time to look at yourself closely and touch and explore yourself with curiosity and compassion.
Everyone’s genitals are unique in their colour, shapes, sizes and that’s a beautiful thing. Make a note of what you like about yours, write them down and put them somewhere in your room where you can see them when you’re feeling less than confident. This exercise is particularly empowering for trans and intersex people getting to know their new genitals, as well as people wanting to reconnect to their vulvas after childbirth.
4. Body worship
Treat yourself like the sex god/dess you are with some full body worship. By that, I mean take the time to explore what makes you sacred. Maybe it’s your cute feet? Your soft belly? Your collarbone? Your gorgeous nose? Sacred can mean myriad things to different people but in this context, I want to encourage you to honor the parts of you that bring you feelings of joy, pleasure and confidence.
If you love your hands, then spend time giving them a soft massage with hand lotion straight after a bath. If you love your curly hair spend time playing with each tendril – feeling the texture of each follicle against your skin.
The point is to indulge in yourself. Lavish yourself with positive attention and treat yourself with the same affirmation and positive regard you would give to a lover. Worshiping your own body in its current state is the perfect antidote to body negative, racist/transphobic/ableist society. It’s medicine without side effects – so drink up!