Slow Sex: The Path to Fulfilling and Sustainable Sexuality by Diana Richardson

which is more related to memories in the body as a residual emotional tension or defense. However, the sensitivity required to experience pleasure at its deepest level requires an internal connection to the flesh—an awareness of the inner cosmos and all the magical sensations that can be experienced there. The key to activating the metabolic power of pleasure is to trust your body and your ability to experience pleasure.
    SLOWNESS ENHANCES SENSITIVITY
     
    The undeniable reality is that as soon as you slow down you become more sensitive. One of the remarkable things noticed by the men in our retreats is that after three or four afternoons of slow sex practice, their penises very quickly get more sensitive and perceptive. They can feel into the tissues much more deeply when their movements are slow and conscious; the penis has a much finer type of magnetic sensitivity, perception, and intelligence—different from the intense sensations experienced through stimulation. I am so often awed by the body and how quickly it responds when awareness and intelligence are brought into the sex act. Through awareness and its by-product of slowness, the tissues heal and become resensitized in a very short space of time, in both men and women. When asked, most women will admit that their vaginas are more sensitive and receptive after just a few days of making love in a more relaxed (and not focused on orgasm) way. The body regenerates as soon as it is granted the space and the trust. Pleasure loves slowness. Pleasure loves sensuality.
    THE SHIFT FROM SENSATION TO SENSITIVITY
     
    To increase pleasure we need to increase sensitivity, slowness, and sensuality. We need to tune in to our many senses: breathing as a sense of smell, touch as a feeling sense, eyes as a receiving sense, and awareness as a witnessing sense. Sensation as we commonly understand it is not truly sensitivity. Sensation is often the response of an erogenous zone or sensitive area to some form of external stimulation, but this is not cellular sensitivity. To become more sensitive requires that we make a shift away from sensation, which is based on stimulation and excitement, involves the other (the stimulus), and includes the buildup of tension. Certainly sensitivity can also be sensational, but not in the usual sense. Sex today relies almost entirely on stimulation and sensation, which actually leads, in the long term, to less sensitivity.
    It has been scientifically proven that long-term overexposure to sensation leads to an ultimate loss of sensitivity. At the end of a couples retreat several years ago, a scientist who had participated told me that the loss of sensitivity in the face of intensity of stimulation had been scientifically proven in the second half of the nineteenth century by German physiologist Ernst Weber and physicist and psychologist Gustav Fechmer. Their research, formulated as the Weber-Fechmer law, is the theory of the relationship between stimulus and experience. Their research showed that the change in intensity of a sensation varies in increments proportional to the relative change of the stimulus. Today this is known to be true for every sensory channel within its range of dynamics. A simple example would be to light a match in the darkness. In this instance the light is like an explosion, but if you do the same in bright sunlight, it is barely perceptible. More sensation correlates to less sensitivity, and less sensation correlates to more sensitivity. Instead of habitually seeking more and more sensation, you can begin working on your senses so that you become capable of feeling the subtle, yet vital life force moving through you.
    Fast, hot sex desensitizes the body, and especially the penis and vagina, because it is mechanical and extroverted, dependent on sensation. The more sensation is increased, the more innate sensitivity is lost. This probably accounts for the widespread problem of impotence. Impotence represents a loss of sensitivity