3 Sexual Pleasure Practices For Women with Vulvodynia and Pelvic Pain

By Lorraine Faehndrich

One of the most difficult aspects of vulvodynia or any other type of pelvic or sexual pain can be the inability to enjoy sex and intimacy.

When intercourse or orgasm is painful, has been painful in the past, or causes burning or pain afterward, it makes sense that you might avoid sex entirely.

But giving up on sex and pleasure can not only prevent you from connecting with a partner, it comes with other costs as well.

Like disconnection from your body, stagnant life force energy, depression, and health issues like chronic tension and pain.

Pleasure (of all kinds) supports health and feeds your soul!

When you experience sensual pleasure, your body releases pain-inhibiting neurotransmitters and accelerates healing in many other ways.

So today I’m giving you some tips and tools you can use NOW to start bringing pleasure back into your body and your life.

3 Practices for Experiencing Sexual Pleasure Even with Vulvodynia or Pelvic Pain.

These practices will help you begin exploring sexual pleasure in your body even while you’re still struggling with Vulvodynia, painful sex, or pelvic pain.

They are also fantastic for reconnecting with your sexuality after relieving pelvic pain or for any woman who would like to expand and deepen her pleasure and orgasm.

1. Redefine Sexual Pleasure and Intercourse

For some reason in this culture we’ve been conditioned to think of sex as intercourse, and sexual pleasure as coming primarily from our genitals.

Luckily, the reality is that there is a wide range of sexual pleasure available that has nothing to do with intercourse, or even your vulva or vagina. You can experience orgasm in your entire body, including your breasts, heart, and brain!

Expanding your definition of sex and sexual pleasure, and integrating that into your body (which the following practices will help you do), is the first step to dramatically increasing sexual pleasure not only while you have vulvodynia, but after you relieve it.

2. Loving Touch with Presence

As a woman, your entire body is built for pleasure of all kinds.  One of the keys to experiencing this pleasure is to bring touch, presence and intention together.  

Start a practice of touching your body with loving presence. You can do this yourself and/or with a partner, but I recommend beginning with yourself so that you can stay 100% present with your own experience without being distracted.

Stroke your hair, your face, your neck, arms, breasts, belly and legs with love and care, the way you would touch a lover. Move slowly, breathe into your low belly, and stay present with sensation.

What sensations do you notice at the point where your hand makes contact with your body? What sensations do you notice in the rest of your body? Breathe into those sensations and allow them to expand.

As you lovingly touch your body with presence and awareness, make space for any emotions that arise. If you haven’t been present with your body in a loving way in a while, emotional energy is likely to move. This is a good thing! In order to feel pleasure you have to be in your body, and in your body is where your emotions are too.

  3. Pleasure Breathwork

Conscious breathing is one of the fastest ways to drop out of your mind and into your body. It connects you with the felt sense in your body, and can be focused anywhere, increasing movement, flow, energy, and sensation.

You can use the pace and depth of your breath to soothe and nourish, cleanse and purify, or energize and enliven. This makes breathwork an incredibly versatile and powerful tool for healing as well as enhancing pleasure.

Simply close your eyes and tune in. Ask yourself, “Where’s my body at right now and what quality of breath will support me? What parts of my body feel stuck, tired or heavy?”

When you’re in pain, it can be really delicious to use breathwork to nourish, soothe, and fill your body with gentle waves of pleasure.

  • Choose a part of your body to breathe into. Start with somewhere that isn’t currently having symptoms, maybe your breasts.
  • Begin a slow, gentle, continuous breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Imagine breathing into the part of your body you’ve chosen.  Feel it expand with each inhale and relax with each exhale.
  • With each inhale imagine your breath filling each cell with love, safety, nourishment and pleasure.

When we’re in pain it’s easy to lose touch with the fact that our bodies can also be a source of pleasure. We get very focused on trying to solve the problems and fix our body, and the neural pathways in our brain dedicated to pleasure literally begin to atrophy, making it more difficult to feel pleasure.  

Pleasure is a muscle that we need to build with focus, practice and attention.

These pleasure practices will not only help you build that muscle, they will help you to expand your awareness of pleasure in your body so that you can begin to experience more sexual pleasure, and support your body and soul as you heal vulvodynia and pelvic pain.

If you’d like more support rediscovering pleasure and orgasm in your body, please check out my Healing Female Pain program, and feel free to comment here or contact me with your questions about pleasure, orgasm, relieving pain, or the Healing Female Pain Program anytime.

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