As a former record exec and music teacher, my world for many years was music, music, music.

Every day was filled with analyzing chord structures, lyrics, melodies or grading student projects from their recordings.

My ears were full. By the evening, I just wanted silence.

For many years, the radio in my car was tuned to talk radio, as music was simply nauseating.

After leaving the music industry some years ago, my “hearing” started to return. My desire to listen to a soaring melody again was piqued, and when a great song came on the radio, my body began to respond again.

Now, years later, the joy of music has returned and upon hearing great music—be it pop, rock, classical or jazz—there is a stirring in my soul that responds.

I’ve since started pondering about the parallel to our sexual lives.

We grow up, and typically in our teen years, we are inundated with sexual activity and images. Life is all about the other gender and how to “get with” them.

Often we “settle down,” as they say, and family, jobs and busyness (especially at this time) take our focus away from our physical pleasures—we stop “listening to the music” of sex. The idea of exerting physical energy just to “get it on” becomes too much for those in lifetime partnerships or sometimes even those with relatively new relationships. So we crash into bed exhausted, and the needs our bodies have—to heal and release and enjoy—are put on the back burner for stuff like buying groceries, putting in eight or more hours in a job we often dislike or chasing kids all over town and watching them play sports, as beautiful and important as that is.

Listening to music again—after shutting it out—was the best thing that ever happened to me. So too can we feel about our bodies. Embracing them again after allowing them go nearly dormant is more important than another soccer game, another piano lesson or another list of edible food.

How can we embrace this again you ask?

With music, it wasn’t about sitting down and intentionally listening and analyzing my response—it was only allowing the time to have music playing again, with no intention or goal.

Just be in the space of joy.

What does that look like?

Not to be crass or vulgar, but we’re all adults here right?

Touch yourself.

There, I said it.

Give yourself permission to touch yourself. It’s not a sin—you won’t lose your eyesight or go to some place of punishment.

Just touch yourself.

Learn about your body again. What is it that feels good?

Buy a book on how to find areas of response that you may not know existed. There are so many more ways to orgasm for women than just your little sex button. And men—learning how to relax under a full body massage can help create space for mind-blowing levels of pleasure you may never have felt before.

And then there is getting into intentional pleasure. That’s like going to a concert!

Now, after my ears have healed, a live music experience is like fireworks for a blind person who just found his eyes again.

Taking time to find professionals who can change your pleasure world can open up a whole new arena you never knew existed. There are growing resources all around us for finding heightened sensual experiences, and I’m not talking about anything seedy or taboo.

If you have ever had a Tantric massage or taken intentional training from the many forms of advanced sexuality, you will be nodding your head right now.

The power of combining sexuality with spirituality and intention is like moving from listening to Mister Rogers to the Beatles (or Beethoven if that’s your style).

Your body is an amazing, wonderful instrument—capable of infinitely more than the vast majority of people ever allow it to feel. You deserve to know—rather, I would say it is a responsibility to take the tine to understand—how significant and vital this area of our lives can be to both ourselves and all those around us. And I won’t even get into how this practice with intention can bring about healing, restore relationships, bring back levels of confidence and restore a sense of purpose and joy in our daily lives. Sitting in the bleachers of your child’s next game, you may get questions from the other parents like, “What have you done, you look different? There’s a lovely glow about you.”

Seriously. So, it’s time to listen again. To music, yes, but more importantly—to our bodies.

Take the time, allow the space and simply start with one action—touch yourself.

.

Relephant: 

Reach Out & Touch Yourself.

.

Author: David Harder

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina

Photo: Flickr/Mario Antonio Pena Zapatería