We grow up learning that discipline is part of how we achieve excellence. Yet we rarely consider being disciplined about how we explore and develop our sexuality. We may feel ashamed of not feeling sexual or of wanting to be more sexual. Or we may judge sexuality as wrong, troublesome, dangerous, or unimportant. We may view it as the one area where discipline is counterproductive because things just “are the way they are” when it comes to arousal and desire.
Shame Can Kill Desire
If we feel ashamed of our sexuality or if we judge aspects of our own or other’s sexuality as negative, bad, or taboo, then applying discipline to this area of our lives can seem counterproductive. But being disciplined in the way you explore and understand your own sexuality and sexual identity can help you systematically dismantle self-judgement and shame.
Discipline Can Bring the Sparkle Back
If you believe passion must always be spontaneous, the idea of applying discipline to arousal and desire can seem peculiar. However, our lives today are so full and busy, it’s easy to let our sex life take a back seat to everything else that’s clamoring for immediate attention. Add exhaustion and stress to the mix, and you have a recipe for an uninspired erotic life. Developing discipline can actually help to bring the sparkle back to your relationship.
Connecting to our sexual selves takes discipline and commitment. Erotic growth is important and valuable in and of itself.
Creating Space to Explore Eroticism Takes Courage
It can help to experience emotions and judgments related to eroticism and sexuality from a bit of a psychological distance. This creates a space for curiosity, learning, and a new perspective. Our eroticism is tied up with how we view and feel about our bodies, our genders, our gender identity, our power, our worth, and our desirability. Creating space takes a particular type of courage: the courage to question assumptions.
A prerequisite to this courage includes relinquishing certainty and stepping into the tremulousness of the unknown. It can be a challenge to allow for the possibility that what we’ve come to believe about our own and others’ sexuality may be questionable. We may have developed these ideas from a place of judgment or fear. Perhaps we accepted our parents’, friends’, or spiritual community’s viewpoints. Wherever these negative thoughts originally came from, you have the power to shift them.
Negative attitudes about our bodies or our sexuality can lead to self-sabotaging in our marriages and relationships. So, it’s vital that we begin to practice acceptance, compassion (including for ourselves), and curiosity.
Discipline Can Be Used to Dismantle Negative Attitudes
Desire can fuel discipline. Desire for a more vital life, a more connected relationship, a more vibrant experience of your own aliveness. Whenever you notice your mind rehearsing the same, negative messages about your body or sexuality, gently interrupt that automatic flow of thoughts with the words, “Thoughts are not truth.” Cultivate a sense of compassion for the judgmental part of your brain. Get curious about how you can shift or release these reflexive judgments and beliefs to make room for a more receptive point of view.
For example, imagine looking at yourself in the mirror. Your mind may start playing the old familiar refrain about how skinny or fat you are, or how some part of your body or face doesn’t measure up. Look at whatever it is in YOUR head, take a deep breath, and say gently to yourself (as if to a younger you):
“Okay, that’s enough judgement for one day. These thoughts are coming from my past. I refuse to be run by them. Today, right now, I choose to be thankful for my blessings / for being alive / for how strong my body is / etc. I am beautiful as I am.”
You may not actually believe the words — yet — but with practice and discipline, you can gradually stop accepting habitual negative thoughts and judgments as true.
What If You Embraced Your Sensual Nature?
The same kind of discipline can be applied to desire. Open yourself up. Is what you believe about yourself, your sexuality, or others’ sexuality a deep truth or a thought? Allow yourself to become aware of the negative messages that can take hold of your thoughts, perspective, and behaviors, when it comes to desire and sex. Forgive yourself and be curious.
Breathe into the space of “What if…” What if you did actually feel good about how you experience yourself in your body, and how you look, the pleasures you allow yourself to pursue and receive? What if it were okay to feel and expand into your arousal with fewer thoughts, fewer fears and judgments, fewer inhibitions? What if you enjoyed your sexual nature fully, unapologetically? What would your life and your loves be like then?
Make space every day for this practice and over time you will begin to feel a shift in your desire levels and your everyday enjoyment of life.
