Meet your nervous system
Let’s set the scene. You’re mid-sex, or having a perfectly nice solo evening, and your brain has decided now is the time to start thinking about your to do list. Or how does my body look at this angle? Or is my kissing style weird?
Your mind has wandered off to do anything else but stay in the present.
When we’re under stress, the nervous system prioritises survival over pleasure. It starts scanning the room for threats, and when the body is braced for danger it can’t relax into a sexual context.
There’s a name for the calm, grounded zone you’re aiming for instead. The window of tolerance, a term coined by Dr Dan Siegel for the state where you feel safe and regulated enough for pleasure to emerge.
So if you’re carrying chronic stress, mental load, or the general weight of late-stage capitalism, you’re asking your body to do two opposite things at once.
The good news? Presence is a skill, which means you can learn it.
1. Get to know your body outside the bedroom
If you’re spending most of your day disconnected from your body, like many of us, you won’t magically be able to be present during sex.
The fix is to practise outside a sexual context so it’s easier during one. As you move through your day, bring some attention to what you’re noticing. What is my body telling me right now? What does it need?
The more you practise noticing your body’s signals outside of sexy experiences, the easier it gets to feel them during sex.
2. Build a toolkit of grounding practices
Once you can notice you’ve drifted, you need practical ways back into your body.
Here’s one to start with. It’s called 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and it works by pulling you into the present moment.
Name five things you can see. Then four you can feel, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste.
There are plenty of other ways to do this, like box breathing or feeling your feet on the floor, but the principle is always the same. Pull your attention out of your head and into your body and its sensations.
3. Name it
When you notice you’ve checked out, name it.
It can be as simple as saying to yourself I’m noticing I’ve gone somewhere else, or I’m feeling distracted.
It might sound obvious and oversimplified, but a lot of this work is noticing. Once you’ve noticed your mind has drifted out of the present, you can guide it back.
4. Bring it into sexual contexts
When you catch yourself drifting mid-sex to your to do list, or literally anything else, slow things right down and say it out loud to your partner. Can we take a moment to reconnect?
Then bring your awareness onto one thing you can physically feel. The warmth of their skin, or the weight of their body against yours.
You can do this solo too, by checking in with yourself and noticing what you can physically feel in your own body.
5. Follow the pleasure
None of this is about reaching orgasm, or performing presence perfectly. Even as a sexologist, it’s something I continue to practise.
It comes down to following what genuinely feels good in your body, because you deserve hot, pleasure filled experiences.
And this won’t happen overnight. There will be periods in your life when it’s harder to access, thanks to stress and other factors, which is completely normal. The important part is that you keep seeking pleasure in sexy contexts, and finding joy in your everyday life too.
Written by Jassy Rennie
Jassy is a Sex and Relationship Counsellor and Somatic Sexologist at Felt Sense Therapy. She works with vaginismus, vulvodynia, sexual pain and intimacy, with individuals and couples - Book a session