Topics
Mindful touch: Sensate Focus and mindfulness
Listen instead of reading · 35 minFrom Performance to Presence: Mindful Sex HypnosisWhen part of you watches from the ceiling: a trance that brings the camera down – breath, touch, here. In short
Sensate Focus is a series of touch exercises from sex therapy. The focus is not on arousal or orgasm but on attentively feeling the touch itself. That takes pressure to perform out of the equation. Mindfulness follows a similar idea: noticing what is there without judging. A trance can let you practise this attitude on your own.
Key facts
- Sensate Focus was developed by William Masters and Virginia Johnson and is still used in sex therapy today.
- At its core it is about feeling touch out of your own interest – not about relaxing and not about pleasing the other person (Weiner & Avery-Clark, 2014).
- A short group programme with mindfulness exercises was followed by improvements in arousal, desire and satisfaction in women with arousal difficulties (Brotto et al., 2008).
- Both are therapeutic approaches, not hypnosis. They explain why attentive feeling is valuable.
Touch without a goal
Masters and Johnson developed Sensate Focus as part of their sex therapy: partners touch each other in fixed steps, at first leaving out breasts and genitals, and are simply asked to feel – temperature, pressure, texture. At the start, orgasm is explicitly not the goal. The therapists Linda Weiner and Constance Avery-Clark stress that it is not about relaxing or pampering the other person, but about keeping your own attention on the touch.
Mindfulness instead of judgement
Mindfulness works in a similar way: thoughts and sensations come and go, you notice them without judging. In studies by the psychologist Lori Brotto, this was followed by improvements in women with arousal or desire difficulties – in therapist-led groups over several sessions.
And the trance?
An erotic trance moves in the same direction: away from judging, towards feeling. It is not a substitute for sex therapy and was not tested in such studies. But it can be a gentle frame for getting to know this attitude.
Questions
Can I do Sensate Focus on my own?
The classic exercises are meant for couples and are usually guided by a sex therapist. The basic attitude – feeling touch with curiosity, without a goal – you can also practise alone, for example with your own hands on your arms or belly.
Is an erotic trance the same as mindfulness?
Not quite. Mindfulness observes without intervening. A trance also invites certain sensations with images and sentences. What both share: attention moves from the head into the body.
Trances
- From Performance to Presence: Mindful Sex Hypnosis A 35-minute mindful sex hypnosis for anyone who ends up in their head in intimate moments – watching, checking, wondering how they are doing. You practise a simple way back into your body: breath, touch, here.
- Sex Till Dawn: Erotic Self-Hypnosis for the Night A 24-minute erotic self-hypnosis for the night. No partner and nothing explicit – instead the sheet, the dark and the warmth between things become your lovers, and desire becomes something you hold rather than spend.
Terms on this page
- Hypnosis Hypnosis is a state in which you turn your attention fully inward and engage with your imagination – so much that it feels real, like an arm growing heavy.
- Hypnotic induction The induction is the way into hypnosis: breathing calmly, closing your eyes, sinking gradually deeper – the first minutes of every trance.
- Ideomotor effect The ideomotor effect means: when you vividly imagine a movement, your body makes it in a small way – without it feeling intentional. That is why a pendulum seems to swing on its own.
Studies on this page
- Theory · 2014 Sensate Focus: clarifying the Masters and Johnson's model Weiner, L., & Avery-Clark, C. (2014). Sensate Focus: clarifying the Masters and Johnson's model. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 29(3), 307–319.
- Experiment · 2008 A Mindfulness-Based Group Psychoeducational Intervention Targeting Sexual Arousal Disorder in Women Brotto, L. A., Basson, R., & Luria, M. (2008). A Mindfulness-Based Group Psychoeducational Intervention Targeting Sexual Arousal Disorder in Women. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 5(7), 1646–1659.
- Experiment · 2014 Group mindfulness-based therapy significantly improves sexual desire in women Brotto, L. A., & Basson, R. (2014). Group mindfulness-based therapy significantly improves sexual desire in women. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 57, 43–54.
Related topics
Updated:
Found this useful? Share it.