Stop the presses.
Turns out, after thousands of years of searching, there really is one simple thing we can all do to enhance the pleasure and satisfaction of sex. And it’s something we all do all the time without even thinking about. It’s so easy that you’ve already done it several times while reading this. It is, of course, breathing.
Sex can be stressful. It can make us nervous and self-conscious, some of us always feel underprepared for it, and sometimes the plans we’ve made for it go wrong. Our hormones and chemicals can run amok, creating a panicky feeling of unease. In these moments, breathing can help us relax, and enjoy the experience more than we ever have before. Here, we’ll look at a few benefits of focused breathing, and some tips to make the most of it.
Destress
Stress can ruin good sex. One of the most effective ways to tackle stress, and reduce its impact in stressful situations like sex, is to concentrate on your breathing. Well-controlled breathing can improve concentration, cognition, and circulation, and give us a little boost of energy to our body and libido.
For most of us, there’s a direct correlation between a lower stress level and higher satisfaction with sex. Deep breathing is central to keeping calm, because breathing is intrinsic to the parasympathetic nervous system. That system is responsible for the rest and digest response. Shallow breathing, on the other hand, is connected to the sympathetic nervous system, which governs our fight or flight response.
While everybody experiences sexual arousal differently, most of us will enjoy sex in a relaxed state more than we do in an agitated state.
Activate Your Muscles
When you take a particularly deep breath, it engages your pelvic floor. That refers to the core muscle that attaches between your tailbone and your pubic bone. This muscle is essential for all manner of reproductive and sexual responses, and is exercised through Kegel activation. This can be done quite separately from sex, while you’re sitting in a chair, for example.
The pelvic floor muscles are particularly connected with orgasm, and activating them with deep breathing during sexual activity can help to induce orgasm, and make it more intense. To assist you in identifying the kind of breathing you need to be doing to engage these muscles, try vocalizing them. Deep breathing would sound more like a moan, coming from deeper within you, while shallower breathing would be more like higher-pitched yelps.
Many of us are missing out on more fulfilling orgasms by slipping into shallower breathing around our climaxes, instead of focusing on large, slow breaths. Deeper breathing throughout the orgasm cycle can lead to longer, more intense, and longer orgasms, all of which also help us feel closer and more intimate with our partner.
Use Your Body
Tip: try focusing on your most intimate parts while you’re breathing. This takes practice, but picture yourself drawing your breath in right from down in your genitalia to enhance your pleasure. As your excitement begins to grow, visualizing your genitalia, coupled with the deeper breathing, will help you to focus your concentration, heightening your awareness of your sensations. This should not only make your orgasm more likely, but also more pleasurable,
Breathing through your nose brings in more oxygen than breathing through your mouth, and gives you a natural high from the nitric oxide. It also helps to engage your pelvic and core muscles more effectively. This technique is very useful, but requires practice, perhaps during masturbation, since it takes a little discipline to be able to maintain nose-breathing throughout orgasm.
But breathing adventurers beware: This is an exercise to start out, as it will get decidedly more difficult as things heat up.