Available as a podcast: download here!
I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but a couple of weeks ago I was in an emergency ward with a suspected heart attack. Yes, me, the supposed expert on chilling out, taking it slow, enjoying life and love....Oops!

So what happened? After all, I do regular yoga, meditation, relaxation...or do I?

Being attached to a machine that goes 'bing' for eight hours gives you a lot of time to reflect. It's kind of a forced meditation, especially as I was having trouble breathing and had to focus on my breath.

Well, the honest truth is that my regular self-care had become more than a little irregular. I hadn't been practising what I preach. I was proving that not doing what I advise to do does in fact result in a lack of peace and harmony.

This kind of work, where I'm constantly giving out nurturing and inspiring energy to people, plus having three children of my own, means that I have to keep filling up my love tank. So: physician heal thyself.

I share this so that you know that even we 'experts' struggle at times. In this era where there are so many things competing for our time, and where the truly important things in life tend to put aside in favour of the non-nurturing and the non-loving, it's so important that we each stay focused on what's important.

I often talk about how couples need to prioritise time for themselves, to fill up their mutual love tank. Before you can even get to that, you need to fill up your own self-love tank. It's like when the oxygen masks come down in the plane, you have to put your own on before you attend to anyone else, or else you'll be dead and no use to anyone.

For people with a stronger bent towards tending others, it can be hard to focus on yourself. "Who's got the time," you say, or "I'd feel guilty".

But if you don't, you either become a withered up drained shell of yourself, or you become harder and harder (and unhappier and unhappier) which leads to grumpy, bitter and twisted, and other nasty traits.

So, go through your life and start removing the irksome, the time-consuming, the draining, and prioritise the rejuvinating, the uplifting, the peace-inducing. And if you feel you 'can't', then book in for some sessions with me, so I can help make that a 'can'.

As for me, I have reinstated daily mediation and yoga, I have modified a lot of the ways I work, and I am heading off to a tiny little island in Indonesia called Gili Air to do an eight-day rejuvination retreat from the 10th of May....

The love tanks are re-filling.

Available as a podcast: download here!
A key to intimacy is expressing your feelings. Not your thoughts, your feelings: being able to share with your partner how you are feeling, and being able to hear what he or she is sharing with you.

It's not an easy thing to do. More commonly people hold back out of fear or a negative reaction from their partner. So they end up playing this weird dance of trying to mind-read what the other wants and feels, and generally getting it wrong.

An exercise I give couples to improve this skill is every evening to have a chat over a cup of tea and take it in turns to share how you’re feeling.

Some people are fine with that level of guidance; others struggle and need more direction. If you’re in the latter category, here’s an activity for you.

Set aside some time for a chat, maybe after dinner, or if you’ve got young children, once they’ve gone to bed. Do not do this in front of the TV. Sit somewhere comfortable, and if it feels right, have a cup of tea together. Humans have been sharing over cups of tea for centuries. It’s comforting and bonding.

Now take it in turns to share five things from your day, in this order.

1) How you’re feeling right now.
2) A good thing that happened today and how it made you feel.
3) A bad thing that happened today and how it made you feel.
4) A good thing that your partner did today and how it made you feel.
5) A (preferably small, until you get better at this) not so good thing, a neglect, that your partner did today and how it made you feel.

So each of you share how you’re feeling, then each of you share point two, then point three, until you’ve done all five. When you’ve finished, thank your partner for sharing, and tell them how that made you feel.

The important part is that you say how it made you feel. Not just ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘pissed off’, be more specific, expand your vocabulary, such as: “I felt appreciated, as though you really cared” or “I felt really isolated and unsure of what to do”, ie be more expressive about what you felt or are feeling.

When you’re in the listening role, it’s important that you tune in to your own reactions. Be the watcher watching yourself. Note what your own emotional reaction is to what your partner is saying. Notice if you feel defensive, if you feel you want to justify yourself, if you feel you need to make them out to be wrong. It’s this response that causes people to hold their feelings in and not share. So make sure that your focus is what your partner is saying, not your reaction to it.

So listen, and repeat back what you’ve heard. That’s all.

The hardest one will of course be the something you did that made your partner feel bad. The important thing is simply that you acknowledge how they are feeling. You don’t have to fix it or justify it or anything for this exercise, just acknowledge their feeling.

Once you get in the habit of listening actively like this, your partner will become more comfortable with sharing their feelings honestly, because they know you are capable of listening without judgement. Similarly, your own level of comfort in sharing will increase because you’ll learn to trust your partner’s ability to listen without reacting badly.

This is mature relating. It’s not always easy, which is why you need to practice until it becomes second nature. Then your relationship will evolve, in all areas, particularly sexually.

If you or your partner are finding it difficult to express your feelings then book in for a private sex therapy session or come along to one of my Tantra Fusion workshops.

Available as a podcast: download here!
I'm often asked what I think is the biggest problem people have with sex these days. I'd have to say it's the performance model of sex, that's it's all about giving each other orgasms. It's not surprising so many people think sex is a performance activity, given how driven we are in this society, all driving harder, harder, faster, faster to achieve more and get more. It's so exhausting! And leads to a number of problems in relation to sex.

First, if people think sex has to achieve something, but they’re not really feeling up to it, they might not bother.

Second, people get performance anxiety. This reduces their confidence and enthusiasm, which tends to result in less satisfactory sex (if any at all) and sets up a negative feedback loop of low sexual confidence.

Third, and most importantly, if you’re focused on the endpoint of sex you miss all the good points in between! 

The point of sex is not orgasm. The point of sex is a complete luscious experience. Orgasm is a delicious outcome of sex, not the point of it.

Sex is a journey, not a destination.

Otherwise you might as well just masturbate. That’s the difference between solo sex and partnered sex – solo sex is generally just about orgasm, partnered sex has so many more aspects to it.

Great sex has peaks and troughs, softness and intensity. It’s all good. You have to get into the pleasure of the valley as much as the pleasure of the heights. The feelings are different, but the valleys can be just as orgasmic, in a gentler, exceptionally exquisite, blissful way.

Paradoxically, by savouring all the different aspects of sex, rather than just going for the one big O, you can experience more orgasms and more varied orgasms in the one sex session.

Men can too! One of the important steps for men in becoming multi-orgasmic is to fully experience both the valleys and the highs of sexual sensation and learn to appreciate sexual sensation in a whole body way, rather than being genitally focused (I’ll write more on that another time). 

One other paradox, if you move away from this performance-oriented it’s-all-about-the orgasm style approach to sex, you’ll experience a wider range of sexual sensations – even without orgasm. For instance, the style of sex I call “Cup of Tea Sex” can be absolutely gorgeous, just gently lying together without much activity at all, just feeling close and bonded. 

Have you ever tried having sex without any intention to orgasm? Try it, in fact try it several nights in a row – just lie together, him inside her (spoon position is good, on your sides, her back to his front), and do nothing. You can both squeeze your pelvic floor muscles now and again to keep the erection, but move as little as possible. Align your breathing as you do it, and you’ll find it even more interesting. Do that for 15 minutes or so, see how it feels. This will get you learning to appreciate the quiet, soft, troughs. This is so different to what we usually think of as good sex that it might seem really odd at first, but do it every night for a week and I think you’ll find it’ll change the way you make love ever after. 

So, what makes for better sex? Relax, switch off your brain and get into the groove of sex, enjoying every exquisite moment – the highs, the lows and every point in between.

Enjoy!