Tantric Massage For Women

Love and Sex Coaching start with the body. Joyful woman in water

Although I have a background in tantra stretching back 20 years, I tend not to talk of my work in terms of tantra. And that’s particularly applicable to tantric massage, for several reasons.

The most obvious one is that ‘tantric massage’ is widely used as a euphemism for a sexual massage, generally offered to men by women, understood as a cursory massage with a happy ending.  [To distinguish between the genders, tantric massage for women is sometimes termed ‘yoni massage’]

But the second reason is that in public consciousness, tantric massage is focused primarily on building aroused states, leading to orgasm. And I’ve always been antagonistic to this perspective, as I think it imprisons female sexuality within a body/sensation container which is too small for it. It ignores the heart and the imagination. It falls within the classic patriarchal perspective of seeing female sexuality as like male sexuality, just not as good. But until recently, I’ve not had a language in which I could express an alternative.

Now I do. In my talk at The Manchester Sex Lectures in October 2022, I talked about The Erotic Body and The Sexual Body. The Sexual Body is what we normally think of as sexuality. It’s energetically focused in the genitals. It builds towards orgasm. The Erotic Body is different. Sexual arousal is involved, but it manifests in a different way. Aside from a strong feeling of openness and pleasurable relaxation [within which there is arousal], clients often report unusual experiences: powerful, dream-like visions, seeing colours, experiences of profound connection with the rest of existence, and so forth.

The Erotic Body gave me a language to talk about my work, and my approach to tantra massage. Which is that my focus is on making what is experienced through touch to the body deeper and more vivid. That is, there isn’t an inevitable journey of progressively increasing arousal leading to orgasm. There could be a journey like that, engaging The Sexual Body, but, equally validly, the experience could be an unfolding of The Erotic Body, different in each person, and delineating a sexual identity which is unique to you.

How does it work?

Because the work is a gradual unfolding of your unique sexual nature, the most important thing is to go at a pace which is agreed and which is right for you, because unless there’s trust and safety, nothing of value can be experienced. To establish this foundation, I always suggest an initial -and free- telephone conversation before we meet. That might be enough, but I also offer the further option of a free conversation on Zoom, by phone or in my studio, so you can get more of a concrete sense of what the work entails prior to deciding to do it or not.

Once we start with touch, my focus isn’t on technique or arousal, it’s about you being able to gradually open up to all aspects of your experience. That includes arousal, but it’s not the central thing. In practical terms, it’s very unlikely that there will be internal touch at the first session, and perhaps not genital touch at all. It’s completely tailored to you.

If any of this sparks your curiosity, and you’d like to know more about it, you can contact me here.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach, why not subscribe to my free online course ‘Sexuality Maps’? There’s a subscribe button on the Homepage here

/by

Sexual Confidence For Women

In my experience, lack of sexual confidence in women can be generally expressed in one of two statements:

I’m not feeling how I’d like to feel

I don’t feel confident about what to do

The first statement is covered by what I do and have written about already: through touch enabling you to experience pleasure and arousal in a relaxed state, learning how to communicate your needs, and so on.

But I’ve not really focused on the second statement in my work so far. Broadly, I’ve made the assumption that if you’re more sure of your own sexual nature, you’ll be more confident in your interactions with men.

And most of the time that’s true. But I will come across clients who have no issues with pleasure and orgasm, but who are not confident about taking a more active role when they’re intimate with a man. Specifically, they feel awkward and slightly passive around him, and unsure about how to touch. And the effect of that is to leave them feeling unconfident, inexperienced and dissatisfied.

In response to this, I’ve now, with my fellow therapists in The School Of Conscious Touch, developed a new way of working which addresses this.

Broadly, instead of working with me alone, you work with me and another male therapist, and all three of us fully participate in the process. The other therapist is ‘the body’, but the innovation is that he actively participates too.

I originally worked in this way ten years ago with the great Sue Newsome, and had some of the warmest, most heartful experiences of my life.

You can split the work into two: how to touch, and how to navigate and explore intimacy, in real time, in a safe and contained setting.

When touch is consciously taught and experienced, that touch is very different from the customary approach we learn through our culture, which is goal driven, focusing on arousal and orgasm, and often pretty functional, like clearing a blocked drain or something. In place of that performance model, you’ll learn a way of touching which is much more focused on feeling, pleasure and connection.

How does it work? You and I will have an initial session, where we’ll discuss if this is a good way of working for you, and then we’ll set up a joint session. Sessions last two hours, and you should start to see meaningful change quickly.

As you’re paying for two of us, they’re not cheap.

But far cheaper than doing nothing.

/by

Sexual Confidence For Men

A lot of men have the sense that their idea of sex doesn’t really work for their partner, which means it doesn’t work much for them either.

Men have been brought up on an intercourse, technique and orgasm focused way of being sexual, which is physical, energetic and ‘harder, harder; faster, faster’ until they ejaculate. It’s very porn focused.

Except, it doesn’t seem to work. And they don’t know how to make it different, other than make it last a bit longer, or to try and improve their technique.

But the remedy isn’t technical, it’s relational. And that starts with learning how to touch differently.

Specifically, there needs to be a shift from a performance model, where the emphasis is on doing something to bring about arousal, to a relational model, where the focus is on connection.

But how do we learn to touch differently?

With my colleagues from The School Of Conscious Touch, I have created a way of working which, uniquely I think, addresses this.

Essentially, you work with me and with a female fellow therapist, and all three of us actively participate in the process. We will both work with you on how to create connection and intimacy, and you and I will then both work with touch on my colleague, who will give us feedback and responses. Rather than have her as just ‘the body’, she is fully participating, and rather than just modelling what intimate touch might look like [ you see the technique but not the effect], we will actively enact intimacy, so you get a clear sense of how connection, intimacy and arousal occur, and the confidence to take that back into your own life.

It’s a tremendous opportunity to unlearn the deep patterning which we all have around intimate touch, and to learn a new way of being with another person which is far more heartful and connected.

Obviously, as you need to pay for both of us rather than just one, it’s not cheap at £300 for a two hour session, but you don’t need many sessions to make a fundamental shift, which will have huge consequences for your life and for your happiness.

Prior to working with both of us, you and I would have a one hour consultation where I will explain the procedure in more detail, I can get a sense of where you are and where you want to go and whether this is right for you.

 

 

/by

Journey to Growth: take a break in Edinburgh for in person work tailored for you

tIf you don’t live in or near Glasgow or Edinburgh, I offer the option of working with me in a focused yet spacious way over a short period.

How does it work?

Firstly, we’ll have an initial conversation, either by telephone or Zoom so I can get to know you and  get a sense of whether I can help, and what your goals might be for our work together. That call is free.

If you decide to go ahead, we’ll then have a more detailed discussion to go into this in more depth. That may be over one or several calls.

These conversations are important, because they help to establish  safety and connection, which is a prerequisite for any real change.

We agree in ballpark terms what sort of work we’ll do, the hours we’ll work together, and the time period within which we’ll work, and I’ll keep that period completely free, so we have maximum flexibility.

I live in the beautiful city of Edinburgh, so you could tie in our work with an exploration of this wonderful city.

And once you get the idea of physical distance out of the way, and think in terms of time distance, it’s eminently do-able. The chances are high that there’s frequent and cheap flights from an airport near you direct to Edinburgh. It will take less than an hour. That’s less time than it takes to get across London. And if there isn’t a flight, but you’re in Birmingham say, or Manchester, or Newcastle, there’s very likely to be a direct train, which won’t take that long [and we can tailor the time to match up with your best travel options].

After our work, we’d then have a further, detailed call in the following week, to help with integration.

There are big advantages to working this way. There is enough time to go quite deep, but -crucially – enough time and space so we can go at the right pace and not rush things, with enough flexibility to slow or quicken the pace, or take breaks, as the work between us develops. It’s helpful to think in terms of spaciousness, rather than intensity.

Obviously, the cost isn’t insignificant. You can see details of costs on my Contact Page [which are flexible, depending on your income], but because I like working in this way, I’d give you a quarter off my applicable rate.

If you’re interested in exploring the possibility, let’s chat. You can either email me at johnwebberfraser@gmail.com, or text me on 07545707751, and we’ll get something in the diary.

/by

Why the language of arousal often isn’t helpful

What do you pay attention to when you’re touched? Say, for example, as you are reading these words, you allow yourself to become aware of the touch of your clothes on your body. What do you notice?

If you pay careful attention, you’ll become aware of a number of things. You will be aware of how an item of clothing feels, in a double sense. You can feel it as a matter of sensation [warm, soft], and you can also feel it as a kind of emotional colouring: the warmth feels comforting. And if you keep your awareness, you’ll probably become aware of an imaginal dimension as well: the feeling creates images, or memories, or associations. Likewise, you will become aware of the alive, dynamic quality of your body: the interface between the fabric and your skin changes with the movement of your breath. And, of course, you’ll be aware of a constant or intermittent patterning of thoughts.

When I do bodywork with clients, I encourage them to experience my touch in the widest way possible so their body becomes like a living three dimensional world, where there is always something new to be discovered and experienced.

But what most often gets in the way of that unfolding depth is a curious question:

“Am I aroused?”

And behind that question is a persistent internal dialogue, which goes something like this:

When I’m touched in a sexual way, I don’t seem to be aroused. I should be aroused, but I’m not. What’s wrong with me?

or

When I’m touched in a sexual way by x, I don’t seem to be aroused. What’s x doing wrong?

Asking questions like this is like asking “Why am I not seeing elephants?”. If your attention is focused on what’s not there, you won’t be aware of what is.

Why do we equate desire with arousal? And what do we mean by arousal?

To ask the question is, I think, to answer it: in the heterosexual world, we commonly think of arousal in terms of the wish, preparedness or willingness for sexual intercourse.

And when you think in those terms, you suddenly realise the weirdness of a question we often ask ourselves:

“How do I know if I want to have sex?”

Why is this question weird? It’s weird because we don’t normally have to go hunting for our desire: when we want something, it’s – at least most times – clear that we do. I generally don’t have to infer my desire from something else.

But in sex we do. A woman might notice she’s wet and think something like “Well, my body is ready for sex, although I don’t feel I want it. But I supose I must really”. Or a man might think “I’ve got an erection. I’m supposed to do something about it. So I’d better”.

What are the assumptions behind this? Well, they include:

  • the point of sex is sexual intercourse
  • if our body appears to be ‘ready’ for sex, we should be too
  •  because our body is more reliable than our mind

No wonder there’s so much terrible sex. All subtlety and nuance is whisked away, replaced by the on/off machine analogy of a dimwit.

In our nervous system, sex is under the jurisdiction of the parasympathetic branch, rather than the sympathetic [‘fight or flight’]. And it makes sense. The parasympathetic is colloquially known as ‘rest and digest’ and ‘feed and breed’; it’s in charge of those activities we can do when we’re safe, and don’t need to mobilise our systems to deal with danger.

So, paradoxically, if you want to become sexually aroused, you should get more relaxed. But here’s the thing: if you’re anxiously scanning your system for signs of arousal, you’re going to become less relaxed, not more. You’re going to be more in the sympathetic branch. And that’s often why there’s a negative feedback loop. One of its most obvious manifestations is with erectile dysfunction, but it plainly applies in a more widespread yet more insidious way to female sexuality too.

When I was learning dance, in my thirties, I was taught how to jump. I imagined that to jump, what I needed to do was to will myself up. But in fact, if you want to jump, what you need to learn is how to relax, how to fall into the earth. And then, as you’re falling into the earth,  jumping happens.

LIkewise with pleasure.

And the best way to relax and be present is to open up to the complete range of our somatic and imaginal experience. If you’re curious what that might be, I write about it in more detail here

MORE ARTICLES
CONTACT ME

HOME

/by
,

Why Sensate Focus [often] doesn’t work for Couples – and what might

Almost every Couple I’ve worked with has been to Couples Therapy.

It’s not surprising, given the ubiquity of Relate and similar organisations, and the widespread belief that sexual issues within a relationship are best addressed by talk therapists.

As part of their therapy, the Couple will have been given Sensate Focus exercises. These would either have worked a little bit, or not at all. The Couple would have lost heart and discontinued the therapy. And then, through the dizzy mystery of the internet, they found me.

Sensate Focus was created by Masters & Johnson around 60 years ago. In essence, it takes heterosexual intercourse as a given and dramatically slows it down. Instead of focusing on the goal of intercourse and orgasm, the couple are encouraged to take turns to explore the body of the other in a sensuous way, pleasing to them and, at least intially, avoiding explicitly erotic touch and intercourse. The other partner is encouraged to say what they like and don’t like. It is specifically intended to reduce performance anxiety and stress around sexual activity, and to encourage better communication.

To the extent that it works, it’s completely unobjectionable, but often it doesn’t. Why?

We can understand better how it doesn’t work by understanding the ways in which it does.

It makes sexual intercourse less rushed But what if, for you, sexual intercourse isn’t actually that great? Your partner might enjoy it, and want you to enjoy it too, but what if you don’t? What if you never, or very rarely orgasm in partnered sex?

It encourages touch But what if this is problematic for you? What if you don’t particularly like how you’re touched, but you can’t seem to say what you prefer? Or you don’t even know? What if you lack a language of touch?

It encourages saying what you want But what if you don’t know what you want? Perhaps you only know what you don’t want, which makes your partner feel criticised and you feeling disappointed. Perhaps you have a vague sense “There must be more than this”, but don’t know what.

In other words, Sensate Focus takes a whole load of things for granted:

  • the point of [heterosexual] sex is intercourse
  • that’s what everyone wants, so long as there’s enough build up
  • sex is natural, so people don’t need to learn how to touch or how to communicate, they just need to let go of their hang-ups
  • sex is purely physical; it’s just  learning to do it at the right speed so there’s enough arousal and little anxiety

But what if none of this were true?

When I started working with [ largely heterosexual] Couples, one of the things which struck me was that one partner, usually [but not always] the woman, would complain that it was impossible, or at least very difficult, for there to be any physical intimacy which didn’t have the expectation of ending in intercourse. If it didn’t, their partner would be annoyed or disappointed. In consequence of that, intimacy would often be avoided altogether. And often, when intercourse happened, it was more to keep the peace than because of genuine desire. The partner would still be annoyed or disappointed -just not quite so much – because they expected their partner to enjoy intercourse as much as they did.

A variation of this was that one partner, again usually the woman, would complain that their partner would avoid any physical intimacy, and they didn’t know why.. On enquiry, it was usually that the man had anxieties around intercourse, around getting or sustaining an erection, but didn’t feel able to talk about those anxieties, because it felt shameful.

And a very common complaint was boredom and repetition.

So what can be done?

The most obvious thing is to widen the sense of what sex is, and can be, and that widening can take a number of forms.

sexual styles. There’s lots of different schemas. For example, there is an idea popularised by David Schnarch in ‘Passionate Marriage’, that there are three sexual styles: trance, partner engagement and play. Trance is where our experience is very inner. We will tend to be quite still and fairly quiet. Partner Engagement is the opposite; lots of talking, eye contact, connection. Play is newness, experimentation, role-play. If you know your partner’s style, then behaviour which appears disconnected, or wanting approval, or insincere, suddenly makes sense. And if you understand your own, things might become a whole lot easier. I write about this more here. Another perspective is the idea of erotic blueprints. The American Sex Educator Jaiya has said there are five: The Energetic, The Sensual, The Sexual, The Kinky and The Shapeshifter. I write about this more here.  The thing about these topologies is to think of them, not as absolutes, but as useful lenses to see the sexual world, our own and other people’s, in a way which is inquisitive and expansive rather than blaming or shaming.

the realms of sexuality. I believe there are eight dimensions of sexuality. I write about this idea here. Carefully curated exercises exploring these various realms is a wonderful antidote to boredom caused by a very restrictive idea of what sex is.

the use of the imagination. The greatest single failure of the Sensate Focus perspective is that it fails to take into account people’s erotic fantasy life.To remedy this, I have developed work on The Erotic Imagination, which you can read about here. I find it very helpful to use this in my private work.

challenging the idea “there’s something wrong with me”. An exclusively physical notion of what sex is, and an over focus on orgasm through intercourse, leads many women to think there’s something wrong with them. It is a human catastrophe, and entirely avoidable. I write about that here

How do you start working with me?

Firstly, you email or text me to arrange a chat. This can be on Zoom or in person. In person is better. The only catch is you have to bring cake. During this chat, which is free, I can get a sense of your situation and whether I’m right for you, and you can get a sense of whether I’m the guy for you.

I set out the process in more detail here

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach, why not subscribe to my free online course ‘Sexuality Maps’? There’s a subscribe button on the Home Page here

You can also browse my extensive and diverse list of articles here

 

 

 

/by

What is the ‘Somatic’ in ‘Somatic Sex Therapy’?

“Somatics is a field which studies the soma: namely, the body as perceived from within by first person perception. When a human being is observed from the outside..from a third person viewpoint, the phenomenon of a human body is perceived. But when this same human being is observed from the first person viewpoint of their own proprioceptive senses, a categorically different phenomenon is observed: the human soma” [Thomas Hanna]

Somatics is the belief that our body and our mind aren’t separate, and that everything we experience within our bodymind has value.

When I am working with clients, whether touch is involved or not, I am primarily interested in what they are feeling, in the widest sense.

But what does that mean? In our very psychologically orientated culture, if I were to ask you “What are you feeling?”, you would be likely to take this to mean “What are you feeling emotionally?” And you would probably have the supporting belief that there are, at any time, one or more emotions inside of you, persisting for a time which you can accurately identify and name.

So our exchange might go:

“What are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling happy?”

Rather than:

“What are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling a whooshing buzziness in my chest”

Before I left the psychotherapy world, I certainly felt that supporting belief: if we pay attention, we can identify what’s going on emotionally for us, and we can name that, and that’s the most important thing; everything else is just noise.

I don’t believe that anymore. And not just in the sense that people often misidentify their emotions, saying they’re sad when they’re angry, or vice versa, but that it devalues or ignores everything else which is going on, which has real consequences, particularly with our sexuality, because it tends to trap us in unwelcome and restricted positions.

For example, people might be aware of an overwhelming emotion: anxiety, for example, yet have no idea what to do with the emotion, other than try to work out intellectually what might be causing it, and hence what might be needed to make it go away. That tends not to work, so the temptation is to seek medication to deal with this “illness” of anxiety.

In her wonderful book ‘Call of the Wild’, the great Kimberly Ann Johnson [whom I worked with in 2015], describes the range of our possible experience with the acronym T I M E S

T thinking

I imagery/imagination

M movement

E emotion

S sensation

Classically, people will tend to get stuck in one or more of these channels, so the way to resolve the stuckness isn’t primarily to resolve the content [although that’s the temptation], it’s to broaden the scope. And to change our focus: from interpretation to curiosity and exploration.

Take anxiety as an example.

The anxious person will tend to be stuck in their Emotion and Thinking channels, and will want to think their way out of their anxiety. Except, that doesn’t generally work. What does works is to pay attention to a neglected channel, Movement for example.

If I were to have an anxious client, I could get them to engage with the Movement channel. I could do this in a number of ways. I could have the client make movements, or I could have them focus on the breath, and how to change that. When anxious, our breath tends to become very shallow. We can go in two ways. The more common one is to focus on breathing from the belly, and to try and have a long outbreath, which tends to calm us down. The less common one is to assume that ‘anxiety’ is unachieved excitement: the excitement is trapped as ‘anxiety’ because we’ve restricted our breathing and gone into an anxiety/thought vortex. We can resolve that by dynamic diaphragmatic breathing, which then actualises the excitement.

Either way, this activation of the Movement channel in turn brings the Sensation channel into play; we’re suddenly aware of feeling a lot more in our body, and this itself is liberative, not least because we understand that our experience isn’t a fixed range of ‘things’, it’s a whole set of processes, all flowing into each other.

When psychotherapy was invented, it was revolutionary and liberating to have people give attention to their emotions. And for some people, it still is. But for a lot of us, emotional repression is no longer the issue, the repression has moved elsewhere, to the vast expanse of our experience which can’t be labelled as ‘thought’ or ’emotion’. Somatics isn’t anti-thought or anti-emotion, it just takes everything as valid, and worthy of investigation.

 

Back to HOME

Back to ARTICLES

CONTACT ME

 

 

 

/by
,

Sexuality Maps

The idea that sex is natural is one of the many terrible ideas which – alongside Revolutionary Terror and Totalitarianism – we can attribute to the appalling 18th century philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. It’s the source of a lot of our unhappiness about sex: “If sex is natural, why is it so difficult for me?”

Fortunately, the ‘one size fits all’ model is now challenged by the emergence of a different perspective on sexuality: the idea that we have individual erotic natures, or maps.

Those of you that have seen Netflix’s ‘Sex Love and Goop’, which I highly recommend, will have come across the idea of erotic blueprints, the creation of the contemporary American Sex Educator Jaiya.

She says there are 5 erotic blueprints: The Energetic, The Sensual, The Sexual, The Kinky and The Shapeshifter.

I’ll write about this in more detail elsewhere, but I think you can immediately see how this can be useful. The Sexual blueprint describes the person whom our society would deem ‘normal’. The focus is on the genitals,  and on arousal leading to intercourse. Because sex is really straightforward for this type, they’re liable – in the absence of information – to think of the other types as weird or deficient. They’re likely to think of the Energetic type, for example, as very easily and peculiarly put off sex by something extraneous like the duvet cover or something, rather than appreciate the Energetic as having a much wider sense of what sexuality is; the capacity to have energetic orgasms, for instance, without any touch at all. The shadow of the Sexual type is that they can be somewhat limited and goal focused. If you’re the partner of a Sexual type and not this type yourself, you’re probably bored and dissatisfied, and they think you should get yourself fixed.

Our socialisation as men and women can mask our type. Because men are supposed to be Sexual, many men have to distort their natures. Likewise for women, who are expected to be Sensual or Energetic, when a lot of them might well be Kinky, or Shapeshifting.

When I started working in this field, a map I found very useful was Donald Mosher’s idea of three distinct sexual styles, popularised in David Schnarch’s ‘Passionate Marriage’: Trance, Partner Engagement and Role Play.

Again, this is very helpful in understanding and appreciating behaviour which is not your own. My dominant sexual style is Partner Engagement: I like a lot of eye contact, talking and heart connection. The problem for my type is being with one of the other types while taking our own type as being ‘natural’. The Trance style, for instance, is very inner: this style can often be very still, because they are focused on their own sensations and experience. But Partner Engagement people are going to think they’re something wrong: why isn’t the person reacting more? Maybe they’re bored, or not into me? Likewise, if I came across a Role Play type, I’d be likely to wrongly see them through my lens as emotionally shallow and insincere. And, like the Sexual type in Jaiya’s system, the Partner Engagement type is the one approved of by our society, so the other two are liable to be dismissed.

My own attempt at creating a map focuses more on the different areas of sexuality, rather than individual types, but within this map, I can position the maps of other systems. I call this map the Compass of Sexuality, and it breaks down the areas of sexuality into 8: Agreement, Energetic Practices, Tantra, Intimacy, Innocence, Risk, Body and Play. I particularly like using this in my Couples work, because it enables me to take people to lots of different places, but then for them to explore those places in terms of their specific natures. You can read more about this here

The idea that we have different sexual natures and we can understand these and connect across our differences is a major corrective to simplistic notions like ‘incompatible sex drives’ which bedevil sexual relations between people, particularly Couples.

These maps should be treated as tools, or lenses, not reality. We shouldn’t cling to them too tightly, or identify ourselves too much with our type, but used fluidly, they can be tremendously useful in explaining ourselves to ourselves, and -crucially- getting out of this idea that there is something in us which is broken and needs to be fixed. You wouldn’t call a ziggurat a broken pyramid, would you?

More articles here

Contact me here

HOME

/by

How to start working with me [for individuals]

When you get in touch with me, you might be clear about what you want. You might want a tantric massage, for example, or learn about The Wheel Of Consent, or talk and explore. In that case, all we need to do is to have a telephone conversation so I can clearly know what you want and we can both decide if we want to work together, then we can just arrange our first working session. My charging rate is £75 an hour. I generally suggest that if we’re doing bodywork, before starting work with me, you also visit me in my studio for an informal, free chat, so we can meet face to face and you can see where we’ll work. I find that contributes to a sense of safety and connection, which is a very good foundation for working together.

You might be intrigued by the possibility of exploring your sexuality, but where do you start? To orient you, I find it helpful to categorise my work with individuals in three ways:

Awakening the body to pleasure

This is for you if:

-you just want to have a loving, sensual experience

-you feel a bit disconnected from your body and want to explore and expand your capacity for pleasure

-you are suffering from something which substantially interferes with your happiness: an inability to orgasm or vaginismus, for example

If you know what you want, just get in touch with me, we arrange a free telephone conversation [followed, at your option, by a free visit and chat, as outlined above] and then we can arrange your first session

 

Sex Coaching

You may have a specific issue which you need some help with, for example

-lack of confidence, experience or knowledge

-a non judgemental space where you can be free to talk

-learning new skills

-exploring the various aspects of sexuality

Again, please just get in touch with me, we can arrange a telephone call, talk over the options and then arrange your first session.

Bespoke

As far as the Bespoke option is concerned, this is important because lot of the time I find that people are uncertain about what they might want from me. They can describe the issue -boredom with sex, lack of confidence or pleasure, body shame, inability to orgasm, for example – but they are uncertain about what’s needed to resolve it. And that’s not surprising. In our sex lives, we’re notoriously confused. Which is made worse by often thinking of our situation in unhelpful psychological terms [“I have attachment issues”]  or that there’s something wrong with us [“why do I not know how to do this?”], rather than “How can my deep need for pleasure and connection be met?”

If you know what you want to change, but don’t yet know how, I find it helpful to work like this:

You contact me and we arrange a telephone call. Please budget for at least 40 minutes for this call [which is free], as I want to get a good sense of the issues.

After that initial call, we will arrange a one hour in depth Exploratory Session, which is chargeable, and where I will give you an outline of the various ways in which we could work together, and we can talk about these in depth, decide what works best for you, then arrange future sessions. To get the most from the session, I will ask you, at your option, to fill out a detailed questionnaire which will enable us to start from an informed position.

 

You can contact me here

Back to HOME

 

 

/by

How to start working with me [for Couples]

Our first point of contact will generally be one of you filling in my short enquiry form  giving me your contact details and I will then arrange to meet in person with both of you. Prior to the meeting, it would be helpful if you had a look at my articles, which give a good sense of my range and approach. You can find them here. You can get my perspective on my work with Couples here.

The purpose of our first contact is for me to get a general sense of the issues and whether I can help, and for you to decide if you want to work with me. This is important, because you both need to be prepared to engage positively. Just wanting your partner to be ‘fixed’ doesn’t work. If there are underlying issues elsewhere in the relationship having a knock on effect on your sexual life, you’re probably better seeing a talking therapist.

There’s no charge for this chat, and it usually takes around 30 minutes.

If you both decide that you do want to work with me, we then arrange a further meeting. Prior to this, I will have had you both separately complete my questionnaire, which will give me a very good sense where each of you are coming from, and how the relationship is:  both the challenges and the opportunities for growth and  positive change.

In the course of the Exploratory conversation, I will speak to each of you separately, then together, and we will map out what the issues are and how we can work together to make the relationship more nourishing and satisfying. This usually takes around two hours, and is chargeable. My charging rate is £75 an hour. Subsequent sessions, unless we are working on Zoom, are also 2 hours.

At the session I will give you individually tailored exercises for you to practice together privately at home, based on our discussions and the information you’ve both given me. In subsequent sessions, I’ll get feedback from you and we will build on these exercises, adapting as necessary, to re-establish pleasurable intimacy and good communication, and will work to broaden your repertoire, so you don’t fall into the repetitive sexual boredom that afflicts so many couples. Although a lot of my work is touch based, my work with Couples is almost always just talking.

You can contact me here

 

 

 

Back to HOME

 

/by