How Slowing Down Deepens Our Connection With Our Bodies
- Mar 20
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 24
Anya is a Trauma-Informed Feminine Embodiment and Pleasure Coach and Project Manager for Tao Tantric Arts. Drawing on a decade of somatic, tantric, and nervous system practices, she guides women and men to reclaim safety, pleasure, vitality, and authentic self-expression through the body.
For years, I thought I knew my body, I thought I knew what turned me on. I had experienced pleasure, I knew what could bring me to climax, and I believed that meant I was connected to my sexuality. Yet whenever conversation around self-pleasure arose, my body contracted and wished for the conversation to steer in another direction.
Touching my labia, I felt discomfort. I felt ashamed. I had avoided this for years, using an external object, a vibrator, a wand, but not my hand. I escaped to fantasy in my head to become aroused. I overly stimulated my clitoris to override the discomfort.
When I committed to a self-pleasure practice of not finding my arousal through fantasy or high stimulation, my body would keep numbing, freezing, or dissociating. I cried for hours in the struggle to stay present with my vulva, as my body felt the layers of shame surfacing after years of suppression.
Sexuality in today’s age
We live in an age saturated with information about sexuality. Yet much of this information we have absorbed promotes performative sexuality, high-intensity, goal-seeking, exhilarating experiences. All of this takes us away from what is truly felt in the body in the moment.
For many people, there can still be a profound gap between knowing about pleasure and truly feeling connected to their body during pleasure.
There is a social taboo that frames masturbation as shameful, often associated with people who “can’t get any.” The word “masturbation” derives from Latin, often interpreted as “to defile oneself with one’s hand.” With the word carrying shame in itself, it is understandable that each time it is used, we may collectively feel some of that shame.
Yet masturbation, or self-pleasure, is a human need for self-understanding, self-love, and well-being. It is not masturbation that is damaging, but how we approach it that can become harmful.
The most pleasurable experiences often begin not with more stimulation, techniques, or knowledge, but with something much subtler, presence.
Yes, presence is the key to being the best lover, with yourself or your partner.
Only through being present can you discover the sensations in multiple areas of the body that bring subtle pleasures, as well as layers and waves of pleasure.
When pleasure exists but connection doesn’t
For years, I believed that because I could experience pleasure, I must already know my body. In my work guiding women and men in reconnecting with their bodies, I see this experience arise again and again.
Many people feel they understand their bodies, their likes and dislikes, because they have experienced pleasure. They may know what brings arousal, what leads to climax, and what works with partners. But connection is not the same as stimulation.
Many of us have learned to create arousal through stimulation or through fantasy in the mind. Most of us have not learned how to create arousal from slow, subtle sensations, yet this is where deep connection to full-body pleasure comes from.
Re-learning pleasure
When people begin their journey of reprogramming their relationship with pleasure, it can feel daunting. Emotions often arise that want to be seen and felt. It can feel much easier to steer away from them into familiar patterns, distracting ourselves with mental fantasies or stimulating the genitals to override the emotions that surface.
For many, self-pleasure carries layers of shame, discomfort, or avoidance. Stimulation can create pleasure, but presence and connection create true intimacy with our bodies.
The hidden layers of shame
As I slowed down my self-pleasure practice, layers of shame arose. Self-pleasure is a natural part of our human nature, we are sexual creatures, and being in pleasure in our bodies is a beautiful thing. Yet many people carry unspoken messages about self-pleasure from childhood or adolescence, even if they were not spoken to us directly, but absorbed implicitly through culture, religion, family attitudes, or silence surrounding sexuality.
“This is wrong.”
“This is dirty.”
“Good people don’t do this.”
So it is only natural that when sexuality or self-pleasure is thought about or spoken about, the nervous system may have learned to avoid it, perceiving it as an unsafe topic or activity. Strong stimulation can become a shortcut to pleasure because it bypasses the deeper emotional layers beneath sensation. But when high stimulation is removed, those layers can surface. And they may surface as pain, grief, confusion, shame, low self-worth, anger, loneliness, sadness, despair.
When touch carries old programming
Media, pornography, and past sexual experiences can unconsciously shape how people believe their bodies “should” respond. As I continued in my self-pleasure journey, I noticed that not only had my thoughts become conditioned, but the way I touched myself had also become conditioned. This conditioning can create touch that feels:
Goal-oriented
Aggressive
Demanding
Performance-driven
Instead of nurturing connection, touch may feel like it is taking rather than giving. When the body senses this dynamic, it may tighten, numb, or resist. Healing begins when touch becomes something different:
Gentle
Curious
Non-demanding
Attuned
The body begins to experience touch as care rather than pressure.
Meeting the body without a goal
A powerful shift happens when self-pleasure stops being about achieving orgasm and becomes about simply being present. When there is no need to get anywhere in particular, there is less pressure, and the focus becomes discovering ourselves, exploring what feels enjoyable, and being present with what arises. If you feel curious to explore this yourself, here is a gentle way to begin:
Touch yourself with curiosity.
Bring awareness to the sensation.
Breathe into the sensation.
Take long, deep, vocalised exhales.
If discomfort, challenging emotion, or a trauma response, such as dissociation, freezing, or numbness, arises, hold your hands still and repeat the process above with more slowness. Breathe into the emotion or sensation, even numbness is a sensation, and vocalise your exhale more. Our elongated, vocalised sigh signals to the nervous system that it is safe, and that it is okay to let go of what it is holding on to.
This may sound simple, but in the beginning, for many people, this is surprisingly difficult. Without distraction or intensity, the body can reveal emotions, memories, and sensations it has been holding on to for years. It can take immense patience simply to stay with the body without leaving it.
You may be thinking, "That sounds too difficult, I’ll stick with what I know." But if you seek revitalising pleasure and greater connection to yourself and/or your partner, then this is an essential process to uncover orgasmic magnitudes of full body pleasure waves. To find the delicious fruits hidden deep in the forest, you may first encounter mud, thorns, and brambles along the path.
Rebuilding trust with the body
Just like in any relationship, trust takes time. And our body may have lost a lot of trust in us if you have consciously or unconsciously spent years disconnecting from it. With patience and consistently showing up for yourself, the body learns that it can trust you again.
Reconditioning years of patterns, shame, fears, and beliefs takes time. It might feel like nothing is changing, yet beneath the surface, the body is slowly rewiring, and one day you may notice something has changed.
Emotions that once arose have softened or healed. Nervous system trauma responses slowly learn that it is safe. Sensations that once felt uncomfortable may begin to feel neutral. Then pleasant, then deeply enjoyable.
When we slow down enough to truly be present with our bodies, pleasure becomes an entirely different experience. It is no longer something we chase or perform. The pressure to create something that requires success drops away.
Pleasure becomes not just a physical experience, but a form of self-trust, self-love, and deep emotional, spiritual, and sensual intimacy with ourselves, a relationship built on presence, trust, and deep connection with our own bodies.
Read more from Anya Walsh
Anya Walsh, Feminine Embodiment & Pleasure Coach
Anya is a Trauma-Informed Feminine Embodiment and Pleasure Coach and Tao Tantric Arts Project Manager who guides women and men to reconnect with safety, pleasure, and power in their bodies. Drawing on a decade of study and practice in Somatic healing, Tao Tantric Arts, nervous system health, breathwork, yoga, and embodiment-based therapies, she weaves together a range of modalities to rebuild resilience, expanding their window of tolerance, reprogramming their approach to pleasure, and reclaiming a deeper sense of vitality, connection, and authentic self-expression.
