Erotic Embodiment Practices for Nourishing Sex (Part I, Stillness)

In this five-part series, I'll share my favorite erotic embodiment practices that will help you have more connected, nourishing sex (with yourself or with another).

This week I’m sharing my most deliciously nourishing erotic embodiment skills. Read the full series using the links below:

→ Erotic Embodiment Skill 1: Stillness

→ Erotic Embodiment Skill 2: Slowness

→ Erotic Embodiment Skill 3: Presence

→ Erotic Embodiment Skill 4: Giving & Receiving

→ Erotic Embodiment Skill 5: Skills-Building

---

As someone who often gets stuck in her head and can easily be distracted, erotic embodiment practices have been my gateway into sweeter, deeper sex with myself and with my husband. Taken together as a suite of practice tools, these six practices have been deeply helpful for me and create the most connected, juicy, nourishing sexual play.

In my work as a sex coach and educator, I treat sex and pleasure as a practice. That is, something you may inherently like and/or have an aptitude for that can always be practiced and explored more deeply. After 25+ years of yoga, each time I step onto the mat I’m new, my body is new, and my experience is a result of how these intersect. It’s the same for sex.

When we approach sex like a practice, it gives us permission to try, explore, and play with it (and give ourselves permission to learn new things). Like any new practice, coming home to your body takes time. This is especially true if you have a trauma history, or just live in a world that keeps you constantly distracted. Erotic embodiment tools give us new ways of being in the body while simultaneously unlearning any (mal)adaptive habits we have picked up over the years. This might look like checking out, tolerating discomfort or pain, assuming you know what your partner wants, and dismissing your own desires at the altar of people-pleasing.

---

The Myth of the Good Girl & the Good Wife (Not in the Sexy Way!)

---

Embodiment is a practice of feeling into yourself, feeling into your mind, body, and energy all at once. If you’re a yogi, being really present in your yoga class means you stay connected to your breathful edge, feel into the muscle-fascia-bones, while being spacious with all that arises. If you’re a runner, this might look like feeling your breath as it moves your forward, observing your mind-state, and trusting your pacing. If you do neither of those things, you can feel this while eating mindfully: tuning into the sensation of each bite, savoring the layers of flavor, and trusting your body’s signals of satiety.

Creating nourishing sex uses similar tools: learning to tune into your own erotic and sexual energy, and practicing presence in the moment.

These practices are especially helpful for men, who tend to burn quickly in the fire of their arousal. Most men don’t yet know the power of their full turn-on, and they have not yet mastered holding their arousal. And, because most men train themselves for sprinting during their masturbation, partnered sex goes quickly, too. Learning to hold, savor, and breathe into their pleasure not only prolongs their own delicious arousal, but makes their partnered sexual experiences more of a marathon and not a sprint.

And for women, these tools can help you slow down, pay attention, and feel more. Too many women are rushing their own sex (often to keep up with male partners, but often because they don’t yet know that their deepest arousal is a slow flow requiring 30-45 minutes of attention). Practicing touch and pleasure using these six erotic embodiment tools can help make sex more comfortable, pleasurable, and multi-dimensional. I believe that all women have the capability to be multi-orgasmic and it starts with these embodiment practices.

Below, I’ll map out the six erotic embodiment practices that will transform your sex life, and I’ll dive deeper into the first practice, stillness. Over the next few days, I’ll dive deeper into the other practices, too.

6 Erotic Embodiment Practices

• Be still: Stillness of mind, body, spirit, and sexual energy. You are not rushing physically or sexually.

• Be present: Present for feelings, expression, emotions, and desires. I am holding space. I am here for you, for us. Nothing more, nothing less.

• Be slow: Be slow with your touch, be slow with your kisses. Be slow with your entry into their body, be slow with thrusting. Learn to hold your energy, and see what opens up in your partner.

• Be giving: Give for their pleasure, keep no tally.

• Be receptive: Learn to receive fully and to express your needs and desires.

• Be skillful: Anatomy, physiology, sex skills, play practices, and more to build your list of tools.

---

Erotic Embodiment Sex Skill #1: Be Still

There are many kinds of stillness: mental stillness, body stillness, energetic stillness. If you practice yoga, martial arts, mediation, or chi gong, you may already have the felt sense of stillness. It’s the calm in body/mind/spirit after a yoga class; it's the deep softening after breathwork or meditation. It’s the moment between sleeping and waking, where the mind/body is connected and calm. For me, this feels like the still, center point within… like my core essence is grounded, calm, and unshakeable.

When you approach your partner from a sense of stillness, there is no rush, no expectation. This does not mean total stillness, lying there like a dead fish.

Stillness in sexual play might look like…

When you kiss them and still your lips against theirs, creating a tension that’s different than it was a moment ago.

When you breathe together, bodies attuned, allowing the energy and arousal to shift without having to do the next thing.

When you gently penetrate them and stop moving your own hands/body, you invite them into sensational awareness of being filled.

If you still yourself while making love, you make space for emotions to flow, for pleasure to shift, and for all of you to show up with no urgency.

In heterosexual partnerships, men can set the stage for stillness in many ways that are deeply impactful to their partner by removing their urgency from sexual connection. Taking sexual leadership in this way might look like creating dedicated physical space in the house, creating mental space (taking care of tasks that hold partners back from feeling relaxed). It might look like creating intentional erotic practices by initiating breath practices or eye-gazing to bring in shared stillness (I teach these foundational skills in my Tantra Mini Sessions). You can help bring her closer to stillness and calm by taming your own urgency and becoming a master of your own arousal.

And you can continue to create space for her to be still when she arrives into connection. By being still, a man allows his partner to show up as they are. Learning to hold his sexual energy as aliveness and turn-on as a life force (and not a frantic moving energy that needs to be expelled) can be healing for you and your partner. Trust me when I tell you, I can feel a HUGE difference between men that know how to truly hold their energy and those that feel rushed to get themselves to penetration and a quick orgasm.

And what does this feel like as a woman? My partner shows up as stillness so that I can be free. He is not shaken by my needs or desires or big feelings, nor is he shaken by my turnoff or need to stop. He is never rushed, never moving sex along toward a destination. He is patient, slow, and attentive. I know that he’s here in service of our connection and shared erotic expression—not just to get off. I know he’s not focused on his orgasm or mine; he’s here for the practice and the connection and the sensation. In fact, more often than not during our playtimes he chooses not to orgasm.

And when we can find stillness, we can move between still and active. Being still doesn’t mean not moving at all—it means using stillness as part of your movement. This also doesn’t mean you have to never have vigerous, rough, or playful sex… stillness is a practice to dance with during whatever type of sex you’re having, even with yourself.

All of this is true for queer couples, too, though your directive/receptive roles may shift depending on your dynamic and needs. And it’s true for solo play: how do you set the stage for yourself to arrive, slowly, into your body? How might you add stillness into your masturbation practice so that is feels new, interesting, and enhances your pleasure flow?

Tomorrow we’ll talk about the power of slowness, and how deeply these two practices alone can transform your sexual play.

xx

---

---

---

---

---

Pleasure is medicine. And midlife is your reclamation era.

I’m Andrea Devon Bertoli, a Pleasure Coach and Sex Educator devoted to the erotic lives of women in midlife. My work lives at the intersection of science, sacred sexuality, and the slow, gorgeous practice of coming home to your body.

Here on Substack you’ll find thoughtful essays, embodied practices, and the kind of honest, warm conversation about sex and intimacy you didn’t know you needed. I offer deep-dive resources on my website, coaching sessions for those ready to go further, and alongside my husband, I host wildly popular workshops online + in-person in the Bay Area. Ready to journey inward? Fill out my New Client Intake form and let’s find out what is possible.

Welcome to Love in Adulthood… where you’ll tap into perimenopausal pleasures, sexual sophistication, and midlife intimacies for all.