Part Two of Book Cheat: Better Sex Through Mindfulness: How Women Can Cultivate Desire
Hello and welcome to another Book Cheater Blog!
This month we’re exploring a book I have been itching to read for months, Better Sex Through Mindfulness: How Women Can Cultivate Desire by Lori A. Brotto, PhD.
Chapter 3: Introducing the Raisin
Brotto opens the chapter with a story about a female, Sarah, who loses her sexual desire and drive due to disengagement. Females having a lot on their plate mentally isn’t a surprise. Women carry so many titles, mom, wife, cousin, sister, vice president, CEO, etc. We balance many roles with ease (so we think).
Brotto understands that a woman’s drifting thoughts are hard to harness and recommends mindfulness practices that focus on the breath. Brotto provides a mindfulness practice for the reader to do at home, which I will save for the book (I can’t give away all the secrets Brotto shares). When we practice this mindfulness exercise it helps focus our attention on one thing. Our minds may drift to something else, however, bringing our attention back, is mindfulness.
Brotto introduces two updated terms as factors to be considered when discussing a female’s level of arousal:
Facilitators: level of arousal, power dynamics between a woman and her partner, environment
Inhibitors: inattention, focusing on judgmental thoughts, making grocery lists
Both inhibitors and facilitators need to be considered in every sexual encounter. Finding balance between both inhibitors and facilitators is key. There can be too many facilitators as well as too many inhibitors, suggests Brotto.
Millennia of Mindfulness
Mindfulness, despite the trend, is not a new practice. Mindfulness has been utilized for quite some time, by even dating back to ancient times. Monks, nuns and those who wish to develop their insight and focus used and still use mindfulness today.
Brotto explains there are two types of mindfulness:
Samantha: where the focus is on concentration
Vipassana: where the focus leans towards paying attention to change.
Mindfulness is not about turning off distractions or relaxing, though these can be wonderful side effects.
Mindfulness is about accepting the moment, sensations, aromas, and landscapes of life. When we practice mindfulness, we look upon reality without judgement, not labeling it as good or bad, just that it is.
John Kabat-Zinn
John Kabat-Zinn is widely known in the mindfulness realm. Once a molecular scientist, John Kabat-Zinn now teaches meditation and mindfulness retreats. During an 8-week mindfulness course, Kabat-Zinn noticed improvement in his patient’s pain levels and quality of life, “Mindfulness practices guided them to fully attend to their current feelings and thoughts and to curb the tendency to think in future-oriented ways such as, ‘oh no, my depression is back!’” (Brotto, 71).
In mindfulness, we watch our thoughts and emotions pass by us, instead of tending to the thoughts which lead to another. The recent success of mindfulness practices has launched mindfulness-based strategies into treatment regarding stress, pain, treatment resistant depression and so much more.
The Raisin
The raisin mindfulness practice is where many start their mindfulness journey.
The Raisin Exercise
Each participant is given a raisin and is encouraged to look at the raisin like it is the first time they have ever seen a raisin. Observing with the five senses is key, no judgements allowed. Then, lifting the raisin closer to the face, the participants are instructed to touch the raisin with their lips and to smell the raisin. Finally, putting the raisin in their mouths to fully taste and appreciate the raisin.
This practice helps participants pull away from how we normally see a raisin through observing. This can be parallel to sexual activities as well. How we interact with the raison typically may reflect our sexual encounters as well; Mindlessly, while not noticing the intricacies. Afterwards, participants believe that they could in fact, slow down and experience sex differently, just like with the raisin.
Chapter 4: Becoming Aware of Your Body
Remember that when we talk about meditation and mindfulness, there are two meanings. Brotto suggests that mindfulness is just an activity like brushing our teeth or getting dressed in the morning. Meditation is also an exercise that works the mindful muscles of present awareness.
Body Scan Meditations
During Brotto’s body scan meditations, women are guided though awareness of their body and genitals. The participants are instructed to pay attention to emotions or thoughts that arise. Even if emotions are unpleasant, the women are encouraged to move forward with the emotions without acting on them. The idea is to realize there is space to notice all the sensations, pleasant or unpleasant. Brotto also suggests to her participants to do other tasks mindfully, such as take a bath.
The Circular Sexual Response Cycle
Dr. Rosemary Basson created the model of sexual desire for couples. This model suggests that conductive context and appropriate sexual stimuli creates sexual arousal.
Conductive context is something like a setting that is free from distractions, and sexual stimuli includes like smells or other triggers that might prompt arousal (or inhibit arousal).
For example, a woman might smell something unpleasant, therefore throwing off the arousal cycle. This is when we want to incorporate mindfulness skills. If we can let go of judgments about our environment and become mindful on the stimuli that is in front of us, we may be able to increase our sexual arousal.
Integrating Tools with Building Sexual Awareness
Brotto suggests that women learn to understand how tools can help us achieve this mindfulness we crave.
A Free Tool, our Fantasies
Sexual fantasies are completely normal to have. Fantasies can be used as a tool to discover our stimuli. Fantasies can include your partner or have another partner. Some women may feel guilty because of this, and if you notice this guilt, you can discontinue fantasizing if it's not for you. Do what works. The key is to imagine yourself enjoying sexual benefits, however that may look to you.
One practice Brotto suggests is that women create a fantasy in their mind for about 5 minutes and stopping before they reach a high level of arousal. Immediately following this, the women are instructed to listen to a recording of a mindfulness practice to observe the sensations they are feeling (Brotto, 100). By doing this the participants are able to identify sexual feelings that they might not have noticed in other sexual encounters.
Give yourself permission to experiment with different tools like vibrators or other erotic materials. According to Brotto, most women have a response to erotica. What feelings does erotica bring up for you? Brotto also shares a “Sexual Sensations Awareness Exercise” in this section of the book.
Is Mindfulness Effective?
Brotto has been studying the effects of mindfulness on sexual desire since 2003. Her and her team have collected surveys, data, and even have a small vaginal probe which can be inserted into research participants’ vaginas so researchers may measure responses to erotic films. Brotto’s research revealed that mindfulness-based groups improved sexual desire sexual satisfaction and overall mood in women that were seeking treatment (Brotto, 106).
Brotto has also completed similar research with those who have experienced sexual violence or have phobias towards sex. In 2012, Brotto’s researchers had participants who had been victims of sexual violence “ride out” their anxiety and observe their thoughts as clouds passing through. In this study, researchers found that women had more agreement with their body and arousal than before (Brotto, 107).
Chapter 5: Your Attention, Please
Our mind is pulled every which way all the time. Our minds truly cannot be in two places at one time.
Attention and Sexual Functioning
Remember Masters and Johnson? They used sensate focus to guide attention to the body and away from worrisome thoughts. Since then, there has been evidence to show that sexual response is a little bit like emotions in that it requires a trigger to be activated. These triggers or cues can change over our lifetime (Brotto, 116).
Attention is a key component of observing sexual triggers. When our response is transmitted to the brain the sexual cue turns into sexual arousal and communicates with other physical sexual responses it acts as a domino effect.
Many women have thoughts during sex about how they look or how their partner is feeling sometimes women may think about the sexual abuse they have encountered. When we do this, we are pulling our attention away from erotic triggers which can have a negative effect on sexual arousal. Then what happens next? We think to ourselves, when will this be over? Or we decide to disengage. To alleviate this, clients are encouraged to find the middle path between self-focus and attention to sexual cues. Letting go of negative self-focus is a challenge and takes time.
Manipulating Attention
Brotto shows the reader that multiple studies have proven that women can control their physical sexual response. Another factor Brotto considers, is Novelty. When humans are subjected to the same thing repeatedly, it makes sense that the interest goes down. The same could be said with sexual encounters. When researchers added new erotic stimulus to women’s attention, the genital response raises (Brotto, 122).
Can Mindfulness Improve Attention?
Abundant evidence has been found regarding how distraction interferes with sexual arousal and that those with attention impairments might have sexual concerns.
The incentive motivation model is a model that evaluates a sexual trigger and the participants response to the trigger. When coaching participants in mindfulness, we remind them to be gentle with themselves if our minds do drift away. We hope that we can teach self-compassion rather than judgment. Brotto then discusses multiple studies that have shown that mindfulness can increase attention.
The Brain
Nothing says sexy time quite like looking at brain scans…
Brain scans measure the level of activity in the brain through imaging. Brotto explains, a study completed with an fMRI, the women who had low sexual desire had less brain activity in the occipital cortex and more activation in the left interior parietal lobe. What does this mean? The women who reported less sexual desire had more brain activity in the part of the brain that has to do with fawning and reflecting. This makes sense considering women with less sexual desire typically are worried about how they look during encounters rather than noticing sexual cues (Brotto, 127). Our brain is responsible for most of our sexual arousal, if you think about it.
Brotto also shares the practice of Mindfulness of Current thoughts. A wonderful meditation practice to start to notice your drifting attention and bringing it back (and also, a DBT skill).
Brotto’s most important thought of Chapter 5 (in my opinion) is a reminder that we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts that we can observe, and they change moment to moment. We have control over our wandering minds.