Sensate focus

For couples who have become caught up in performance pressure, it can sometimes help to take a step back from the expectation that every intimate encounter needs to lead to sexual intercourse or orgasm.

In sexual counseling, approaches such as Sensate Focus use structured, gradual exercises to help partners reconnect with touch and sensation while reducing the pressure to perform.

The specific approach depends on the couple and their needs, but the broader principle is that intimacy can become easier to explore when the experience itself matters more than achieving a particular result.

Of course, this doesn't mean that erectile difficulties should be ignored or that medical treatment is important.

It's because it's actually really effective and anything that allows you to get back in touch with your body will help with that.

On a sex therapy specific tool, one of the tools I will use is a protocol called Sensate Focus.

This can be done either partnered or solo.

I actually ended up having people do this kind of work solo a lot.

Big thing into small space, the point of Sensate Focus is to focus on your sensations.

And so we will start with a series of touching exercises that build up over time.

where you are focusing only on temperature, texture, pressure.

And I want to end with an exercise.

And this is a very popular exercise used in sex therapy and somatic sex coaching, which is called Sensate Focus.

Now, Sensate Focus was developed by Masters and Johnson, and it's a structured approach to help people explore physical sensations while at the same time reducing their performance pressure and anxiety.

And this approach has actually clinical history.

There is a lot of research around it.

and that leads to the physical part.

Kerner talks about sensate focus, which is a technique where you take intercourse and orgasm off the table for a while.

You just explore touch, with no goal except pleasure.

It removes the pressure and teaches you to be present and curious.

For years, the school has promoted the perception that it is deeply invested in students' welfare, even as it feeds them a constant stream of guidance on sexual activities that are fundamentally at odds with that goal.

In 2019, Cornell Health authored a guide titled Sexual Pleasure, Finding the Sweet Spot.

That same year, Cornell Health published

Self-Exploration,

a document that tells students they are entitled to experience all the pleasure their bodies can provide and instructs them to set aside private time in pursuit of that goal.

Another guide, Sensate Focus, meticulously describes touching exercises between parts.

It gets

a lot worse.

I'm not gonna say Ron has a thing for latex, but they just edit that part out.

Uh, another worksheet is called Sensate Focus, discusses mutual touching.

And let's not forget these are adults.

I mean, why not? You're 18 and over, do what you want, but as long as you're not stepping on somebody else.

So they apparently posted these things in dorms, including a worksheet, Sexual Pleasure: Finding the Sweet Spot, which discusses BDSM, fetish gear, and sex toys.

Another worksheet called Sensate Focus discusses mutual tusting, touching.

So Cornell encouraged RAs at the college to display the materials on bulletin boards in their dorm halls until April.

That is bananas.