Imagine every cell in your body vibrating with delicious sensual pleasure; the sweet impulses of love completely filling your body, mind and soul. Unfortunately, too many people completely do not use all of their body and deprive themselves from the delightful sensations it has to offer. “There’s a whole world of pleasure in the body, with lots of ‘ohhhhs’ and ‘aaaaahs’ to be experienced—either on the way toward or returning from the big O,” writes American sexologist, sex educator, Dr Sari Locker in Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amazing Sex.
And that world can only be experienced by taking our mind off the genitals and focusing on pleasuring our whole body, deliberately engaging all our five senses. In turn, the senses too get indulged heightening your experience of ecstasy, before, during and after your tryst. Here’s how:
Touch
The feel of skin against skin is beyond words. Touch evokes pleasurable sensations for the one who touches and one who’s touched. It makes both feel loved. “Touch is far more than intercourse alone. The bonds of intimacy are woven through different kinds of touch—a familiar pat on the back, a quick squeeze of the hand, the languorous cuddling that puts us in full-body contact with a lover. Inside the bedroom and out, touch is a powerhouse for intimacy,” says Dr Laura Berman, sexual health expert.
According to Debby Herbenick, a sexual health educator, touch promotes the release of the hormone oxytocin. “[It] carries messages of bonding, safety, overall wellbeing and love to our brains and to our bodies. It also increases sexual arousal. This hormone is released when there is any type of skin-to-skin contact,” says Melody Brooke, author of Cycles of the Heart. Perhaps that’s the reason why the sense of touch is considered the most crucial in lovemaking.
Here’s how you can touch to please:
Focus on the face
“In the head, the region supplied with the finest touch-sense is the tip of the tongue. Next comes the region of the lips forming the boundary between the red and pale parts of their surface: the touch sense here is almost finer than that of the fingertips,” says Ernst Heinrich Weber, the father of psychophysics. The tip of the nose, the eye-lids, the upper edge of the eye-socket come next. The most sensitive part of the face, according to Weber, is the area, just in front of the ear, where the jawbone branches off.
Kiss to ignite
According to the Sinclair Intimacy Institute, for most people, the mouth, including the lips and tongue, is an area of high erotic potential. Kissing is one act that uses the sensitivity of this region in a sexually stimulating way. But the trick to a lingering experience is to refrain from full mouth-to-mouth kisses initially. Start with light lip-to-lip kisses and progressing on to kissing the whole body.
Prolong your kiss
“Your tongue also contains receptor cells that detect touch, which is why thrusting during kissing is so arousing. It is such tongue-to-tongue contact during a kiss, according to Kamasutra that establishes the kiss as erotic,” write Johanina Wikoff, Deborah Romaine in The complete idiot’s guide to the Kamasutra. So, the more you prolong your kiss, the more the passion.
Feel your love
“Close your eyes and really feel your partner against you. Feel their breath, the movement of their stomach,” says psychotherapist Kali Munro. Because our skin in itself our largest sensory organ.
Stroke and caress
Lightly caress each other using your finger tips, which are full of nerve endings that get charged with electric impulses. Stroke, caress and lightly massage the erogenous zones—inner thighs, breasts, nipples, neck, ears, lips—which again are abundant in nerve endings to give and get sensual pleasure.
Use stuff
Touch from head to toe with more than just your fingers. Use a silk scarf or a feather to explore newer erogenous zones in your partner, as everybody has their own private arousing points. But be careful not to overdo it; there is a thin line between tickling for pleasure and tickling for fun. The latter will take the sensuality out of your session right there.
Use the ghost touch
Caress your partner’s whole body without actually touching the skin but by holding your palm just a few inches away from it. The tingling sensation is simply electric.
Touch is the most important of the senses, because the intercourse itself is nothing but touch. But many couples do not know how to suddenly bring the touching part into the picture after having stayed away from it for so long. Such couples should begin by incorporating loving touch—hugs, non-sexual caresses, a gentle kiss or other forms of touching—when they are with their partner, suggests Munro. This eases the transition into sex, making it “a much more pleasurable thing—one of gradual build up, rather than feeling pressured,” says Munro.
Smell
Sometimes merely a fleeting scent of someone passing by excites us. Even if it’s the perfume that’s doing the trick, we all also give out scents [phermones] that are specific to us and which trigger impulses in others. In fact, scents elicit more sexual responses than any other sense in the body, according to a Harvard research. That’s probably why many of us even love smelling our lover’s clothes and sometimes get aroused by it.
Some brain imaging experiments have revealed hypothalamus, the part of our brains that governs sexual function, gets activated by sex-based phermones from the opposite gender. While men get stimulated by oestrogen-based phermones, women react to chemicals found in male sweat. That does not mean you let your secretions dry and cake on your body. Because these excretions invite bacteria in our body puts and then produce unattractive smells the puts your mate off.
We can use this knowledge to make ourselves more sexually attractive to our partners. Here’s how:
Smell good
Bathe regularly. Keep yourself clean. Because “smell is the only sense that bypasses the rational part of our brains on its way to being decoded,” says Berman. You better send the right signals.
Get outside help
Burn essential oils, use arousing perfumes. “Exotic, sensual scents include vanilla, patchouli and ylang-ylang. Experiments have found that the smell of pumpkin pie and lavender increases blood flow to the male reproductive organs by 40 per cent,” says Berman.
Eat sweet
What we eat affects our smells. The Sense of Smell Lab suggests that you eat sweeter foods to smell sweeter and more appealing to the opposite sex. Remember moderation is key, don’t overdo it, it backfires.
Smell your love
When you make love, smell your partner’s hair and skin, and take in their smells. You’ll be surprised how much it will transform your experience.
“Focus on the feelings of pleasure in your body while you make love,” says psychotherapist Kali Munro. The touch and the smell of that wonderful experience will get entrenched in your mind and reinforce your feelings of love. And then when you are alone thinking of your time together, not only will the memory keep coming back to you, but also the sensations, making you smile a mysterious smile.