Sexual Deconditioning
Why we need to unlearn what we were taught about Sex
Maybe…
You find yourself pleasing again, too quick, too soon, too distracted.
Or trying so hard to make the other want you, seducing, teasing, asking, begging at times, yet nothing seems to happen as it is supposed to.
And then when it happens, you feel drained, focusing on pleasuring the other, and feel like it wasn’t good enough. What did you actually get out of this?
Even with years of practicing conscious sexuality, we can find ourselves trapped in rules around sexuality: performing according to how it is supposed to be done in our own scripts, a social (comparative) story, or in your partner’s expectations.
We believe our sexual blockages, insecurities or patterns are personal. Yet your doubts, boundaries and capacity for intimacy are not a problem to be solved, it is a programming to be aware of. As human beings we create shortcuts and pathways to not having to think about every little thing that we do. Yet as our sexual scripts narrow and our reality doesn’t match our expectations – we tend to lose energy.
It is time to decondition our sexuality.
What is sexual deconditioning?
Sexual deconditioning refers to a process of becoming aware, questioning and slowly releasing the beliefs, reflexes, and survival patterns we have learned around sexuality.
Conditioning is the process of programming our behavioural patterns. Conditioning usually follows rules: “if xyz happens, then…”, “If I do xyz, then…”. The classical example is that of researcher Pavlov’s dog, that created saliva anticipating a bell indicating food would be given after several responses (“if there is a bell, then I will be served food”).
Deconditioning refers to the process of unlocking these heuristics and short programming circuits of our brain. We break the patterns and consciously set ourselves free from responses, over time both physical, emotional and mental.
Sexual conditioning refers to the rules we have around sexual interactions with others, ourselves and as a collective.
Sexual deconditioning is breaking the habitual responses around our sexual energy.
How we become conditioned
Our conditioning is not something to fight against, as said, it is a natural human process that makes doing the dishes easier because your body knows this is the next thing after finishing your plate. Your body prepares, anticipates and organises itself for the next activity or most likely event. So where and when do we get conditioned?
This happens consciously and subconsciously. To start with the latter, think of how your caregivers treated your genitals when they changed your diapers. Think of the commercials you scroll past on social media. The stories and sayings rooted in your religion or culture. Think of how the adults around you talked about or referred to sexuality. And yes, think of your own sexual experiences. That first encounter with your own sexuality, the encounter with another body, the moments of great bliss, the moments of disappointment or possibly pain and rejection. Think of the compliments and judgements you have heard. Feel into how you have developed yourself as a sexual being.
Conditioning is something that happens constantly and often subconsciously, driven by experience, anticipation and expectation in mind, body or energetic imprint.
Why it matters
What I see in my private sessions is that current conditioning is fuelled by doing the right thing, or getting ‘it’. There is a mismatch between adaptation and automatic responses – and actual desires in that very moment. You don’t know what you really want, you dissociate, you seduce, you control or avoid. As we can make unconscious schemes conscious, we come back to actually having a choice on how we sincerely want to experience intimacy in that very moment.
From a Tantric perspective there is an added value of accessing life force that was once blocked. When we lock energy in our genitals, place this human contact situation in the bed, and get naked we often assume there is ‘sexuality’. Yet what happens when we decondition and our sexual energy starts to move independently of the primers that we have ascribed to sexuality (nudity, specific lighting, bed, touch, deeper breaths) and allow ourselves these experiences outside of the bedroom: we start to transmute sexual energy into life force energy.
As our sexual energy starts to move through our body and activate other chakras besides the sacral chakra, we use sexual energy as vital life force inside of ourselves. Our sexual conditioning, actually 1-1 resembles how we move through life and connect to our vital energy.
Over time we might actually learn that sexuality is a hard concept to grasp. When we imagine reproduction it makes sense, yet in the aspect of nervous system shifts and attunement to another body we can experience hundreds of different ways of sharing ‘aliveness’. Add a deep breath, relaxation and an orientation towards sensory pleasure to your Monday work meeting and you might start to feel kind of different overhearing the week’s project outline.
This does not mean that everything becomes sexual. It means that the same energy we often restrict to sexuality can become available as creativity, presence, courage and joy.
As we replace sexuality with the (for the reader probably more neutral word) vitality and embrace vitality into our everyday life, not only will our lives be more pleasurable, they will also be fuelled with purpose, passion and embodied presence. Well, doesn’t that sound exciting?
What it is not
What would your sexuality look like if you felt free of boundaries?
In this question we often encounter a fear of extreme hedonism and uncontrolled excessive indulgence in the pleasures of our human fleshy existence. At times in quality, or quantity or even supposedly Tantric experiences.
Let’s be clear about it: sexual deconditioning is not sexuality without boundaries. Deconditioning does not mean that you will be free of conditions, rules and norms. It just means that you have become aware of your patterns, habits, emotions and the edges of your sexual energy running through your body. It means that you have more energy accessible to you as you allow this vibrant and alive energy to fill you up in every cell. Deconditioning means that you give yourself permission to be a fully sexual being, alive, vital, and buzzing with excitement, in the present moment. Connected to more choice, sensations, honesty, safety and autonomy.
How we work with it at KABI·RA
I have been working with conscious sexuality for over a decade in private sessions, workshops and longer retreats. We work with awareness, seeing stories and automatic responses, attune to the actual sensations in the body, create safety and establish a choice in the interaction. As we speak our truth and connect from a vulnerable place, often slower than expected, we bring back integrity, connection and aliveness.
Let’s make it very practical. This year at the Tantric Joy Festival I taught a workshop on sexual deconditioning, starting by gaining clarity into our conditioning. Where did it come from? What were our examples? What were the very first imprints on sexuality?
We drew a sexual roadmap, a lifeline depicting our lowest depths and moments of contraction and highest, most blissful moments related to sexuality and sex. We explored what made it so good and became accustomed to reading our own values of sexuality, these key notes on our pleasure and hence, the blueprint for how we could live life.
In trios we shared the depths of our sexual journey until we agreed on several empowering statements for our moments of contraction: I may also be orgasmic. I am joy. I am alive. I am beautiful. I don’t need to perform, I am enough.
What followed in three waves, was a soft, subtle, yet sometimes explosive wave of vitality filling up the room. The person in the centre designed an imprint in which they were supported in desired touch and words of affirmation. In grounded support, and in gentle invitations to be. Even. More.
After a period of integration and nourished rest the participants shared they felt alive, vast, clear, awake, thankful, loving and embodied. Present.
Want to experience this yourself?
This is why sexual deconditioning is part of the deeper work we do. Not as a technique, performance or ideology, but as a doorway into truth, embodiment and freedom of life force.
In CORE, this often begins with seeing the stories and survival patterns that shape how we relate. In HEARTCORE, we bring this inquiry more directly into love, intimacy, sexuality and embodied connection.
In summary, the question might not be:
“How do I become sexually free (enough)?”
I believe, the question is:
“Can I feel what is actually true for me - and become even more alive there?”
