How to Feel Pleasure & Re-awaken the Erotic Self

Pleasure and desire naturally fluctuate through different phases of life. But it is also possible to build a real, consistent relationship with pleasure as something you have access to on a regular basis.

I believe the thing that determines how much pleasure you're actually able to feel is the state of your mind and emotions, and more than anything, how safe you feel. Pleasure requires openness, and openness requires safety.

In this article, I'm going to share some of the best ways to genuinely increase how you experience pleasure and start re-awakening your erotic self.

The Foundation of Feeling Pleasure & Sexual Arousal

Over the years, I've come to find that my ability to feel pleasure depends on five things:

1. A feeling of safety and security within my life

2. A loving view and relationship with my own body, regardless of its shape or size

3. The ability to get my mind to leave responsibilities and stress behind and be fully present in the moment

4. A feeling of connection with my own sexuality

5. A body that feels relaxed, with a nervous system that is at ease

Relaxation Before Arousal

Your body cannot open to pleasure if it doesn't feel safe. It's that simple.

Your nervous system is always running in the background, scanning your environment and your life for signs of threat. And when it picks up on instability, like financial stress, a relationship that feels unpredictable, a living situation that doesn't feel secure, or an overwhelming amount of responsibility with no relief in sight, it shifts your entire body into a protective state. Everything contracts, and in that state, pleasure doesn't stand a chance.

Pleasure and arousal are parasympathetic responses, meaning they belong to the branch of your nervous system that only comes online when your body registers safety. This is why you can be in a seemingly perfect setting and still feel absolutely nothing. Because your nervous system isn't responding to the scene, it's responding to the state of your life.

This is also why stress is such a reliable killer of desire, because it causes your system to prioritize survival over sensation. And it will keep doing that until it gets a clear signal that it's okay to stand down.

The path to more pleasure starts with creating genuine safety in your life and in your body. That could mean addressing the source of stress that's been running in the background for months. It could mean leaving a relationship that keeps your nervous system on high alert. It could also mean building more rest and predictability into your daily routine. Relaxation is the doorway. Without it, you can try every technique in the world and still feel like you're reaching for something that keeps slipping away.

Read: Lack of Intimacy: Signs You're Drifting and What to Do About It

Learning What You Want Through Self-Pleasure

I've always had a good relationship with self-pleasure. It's something I never felt shame around, and over time, it's become one of the most important ways I've come into a deep, honest relationship with my own sexuality.

Because of that, I know what I want. I know what I like. I know what works for my body and what doesn't. And I have no reservations telling my partner when something isn't feeling good to me in a way that's clear and direct, because I know myself well enough to communicate it.

Self-pleasure has been so important for my experience of pleasure with a partner. Because when you know your own body that well, you can actually share what you know makes you come alive. You can guide. You can show. You can say "do this, not that."

This is what I think gets missed in the conversation around self-pleasure. It is really a practice of paying attention to your own body and learning its rhythms, what it responds to, what opens it up, and what shuts it down. And the more familiar you become with that on your own, the more you're able to bring that knowledge into a shared experience with someone else.

Slow Self-Pleasure & Self Exploration

If you really want to feel more sexual pleasure, slow self-pleasure is probably one of the most mind-blowing experiences you will ever have.

To me, it's kind of like a very powerful tease. It trains your body and your mind to become fully present with sensation, rather than rushing past it to get to the finish line.

When you're racing toward an orgasm, you might feel a few minutes of pleasure at most. It builds, it peaks, it's done. But when you slow down, almost painfully slow, that pleasure gets extended far beyond what you thought was possible. You start to feel yourself unfolding through completely different layers of sensation that only reveal themselves when you're not rushing. Things you never felt before start to surface. The body opens in stages, and each one takes you somewhere deeper the slower you go.

I've experienced levels of arousal and pleasure that are genuinely out of this world by doing nothing more than slowing down and really relishing the sensation and allowing my body to show me what it's capable of when it's given the time and space to get there.

Read: How to Increase Sexual Energy & Reawaken Desire

Tools for Experiencing Female Orgasm

Yoni Eggs

I've found that a regular yoni egg practice helps keep my vagina engaged and juicy. I think one of the biggest problems many women face is that they become highly unaware of their pelvic space and their vagina over time. There's no attention going there, and this causes a decline in engagement, and when that happens, the area essentially shuts down. This causes pleasure to become harder and harder to access.

When you use a yoni egg, you're engaging and releasing around the egg, similar to kegels. That consistent engagement increases blood flow to the entire pelvic area, builds awareness, and keeps everything active and alive. Over time, this directly leads to stronger feelings of pleasure because you've woken that part of your body back up and given it the ability to feel more arousal.

Crystal Wands

Crystal wands are, in my experience, the best tools for slow self-pleasure and are golden for letting me feel more pleasure over a longer period. Where other tools can encourage speed and intensity, a crystal wand naturally invites you to slow down into the sensation. It allows you to extend your pleasure time far beyond what you'd normally experience, and in that extended space, multiple layers of sensation start to be felt and unfolded which are layers that simply don't have the chance to surface when you're rushing.

Healing Blocks to Pleasure

Sometimes, despite wanting to feel more, something just isn't landing. The desire is there, the intention is there, but the body isn't responding, or the mind keeps pulling you out of the experience. When this happens, it's a block. And these blocks tend to fall into three categories.

Physical Blocks

A lot of women carry physical tension they're not even aware of, particularly in the pelvic floor muscles, the hips, and the inner thighs. When the pelvic floor is chronically tight, sensation becomes muted. The nerve endings that are designed to register pleasure stop communicating the way they should, and the whole body starts to feel less. Shallow breathing compounds this, as when you're only breathing into your chest, you're cutting off the lower half of your body from the energy and blood flow it needs to become fully aroused. Hormonal shifts can also play a role, affecting sexual function, natural lubrication, and how the body responds to stimulation.

Emotional Blocks

Many women are carrying emotional weight around their sexuality that they've never fully unpacked or processed. There can also be beliefs that are inherited and passed down through culture, religion, family dynamics, and past sexual relationships where it wasn't safe to be fully expressed. And they sit in the body and create a closed door. You can stimulate all the right erogenous zones, try different techniques, explore every sex toy on the market, but if there's an emotional block running underneath, sexual satisfaction stays just out of reach.

Healing this looks like honest self-exploration and getting curious about where these beliefs came from and slowly giving yourself permission to experience pleasure on your own terms. This is some of the most important work a woman can do for her sex life, because once the emotional armour starts to soften, the physical sensations that were always there start to finally come through.

Somatic Blocks

Somatic blocks are held in the body itself, particularly in the perineum, the hips, and the womb space. This is where unprocessed experiences live. The path through somatic blocks is through slow, conscious touch that re-teaches the body to trust. Gentle self-pleasure practices also allow the body to release at its own pace. Over time, areas that felt numb begin to feel different sensations and areas that felt guarded begin to soften. The body learns, through repeated safe experience, that it's okay to open again. A beautiful resource that can help take you through this process is The Empowered Woman's Healing Vaginal Pain course, which includes many practices to help release stored emotion in the body.

Practices for Reawakening Sensation

• Slow body scanning with touch

• Temperature play (warm cloths / cool air awareness)

• Skin brushing (very light, intentional strokes)

• Weight-shifting and grounding through the feet

• Sensory awakening through stretching

• Rocking or swaying the spine

• Hand-to-heart / hand-to-womb breathing

• Coherent breathing (slow, rhythmic nasal breath)

• Sighing breath to release tension

• Sound-led breathing (humming, toning)

• Expansive rib-cage breathing

• Visualized breath flowing through the pelvis

• Blindfolded self-touch exploration

• Exploring touch with different textures (silk, cotton, feathers)

• Scent-based arousal awareness (essential oils, incense)

• Music-guided pleasure movement

• Letting pleasure rise and fall without chasing it

• Cultivating pleasure without genital focus

• Orgasm-free pleasure sessions

• Pelvic floor relaxation awareness (not contraction)

Read: How to Get Sensation Back as a Woman: A Guide to Rebuilding Pleasure

Bringing Pleasure Into Partnered Sex

Self-pleasure teaches you your own timing. It shows you where you rush, where you numb out, and where you soften when you feel safe. When you've met yourself there, guiding a partner becomes natural. Your body already knows how to receive and how to respond.

For many couples, self-pleasure can bring up discomfort. Some partners feel threatened or betrayed by it, as if solo pleasure means rejection or replacement. Often this is about fear of not being enough or fear of losing connection. But avoiding self-pleasure can create more distance and more unspoken tension.

A healthy relationship with self-pleasure actually supports intimacy and it also takes pressure off your partner to "do it all." When you're already connected to your own arousal, sex becomes more about being together in what's already alive.

Relational pleasure works best when it grows out of what you've cultivated within yourself.

Main Types of Sexual Pleasure and Orgasm You Can Feel

Pleasure and orgasm can arise in different ways, move through different parts of the body, and feel completely different depending on relaxation, safety, and how much built up sexual tension is allowed. Understanding these differences can deepen your sexual experience and expand your relationship with female pleasure.

Clitoral Orgasm

(via clitoral stimulation)

Clitoral orgasms are the most commonly recognized form of orgasm, often arising through direct or indirect clitoral stimulation. These orgasms may feel focused, rhythmic, and intense, sometimes building quickly and releasing in waves.

For many women, this type of orgasm brings sharp clarity, strong sensation, and a clear peak. When the body is relaxed and arousal is allowed to build slowly, clitoral orgasms can feel more whole-body rather than localized.

Vaginal Orgasms

(via vaginal stimulation)

Vaginal orgasms often feel deeper, slower, and more internal. They arise through vaginal stimulation and are commonly accompanied by subtle or strong vaginal contractions that move in waves rather than pulses.

These orgasms tend to involve more of the pelvis, abdomen, and spine, and may feel emotionally rich or expansive. For some women, they unfold gradually and last longer, especially when there is time to stay with sensation rather than rush toward release.

Cervical Orgasm

(via cervical stimulation)

Cervical orgasm is a deeper and less talked-about form of female orgasm. It is often described as slow-building, spacious, and profoundly internal. Rather than sharp intensity, it may feel like a spreading fullness or deep opening that moves through the entire body.

These orgasms are frequently linked to emotional release, altered states, or what some describe as intense orgasms that don't follow a linear rise-and-fall pattern. Cervical pleasure tends to require high levels of relaxation, trust, and presence.

Conclusion

Feeling pleasure is really about how willing you are to leave behind what makes you tighten, in all ways. When you can become present, relaxed, and aware in your body, pleasure naturally reveals itself.

I believe a woman who is in touch with her vagina and her pleasure invites love, divine order, and beauty wherever she goes. Her presence alone shifts the space around her. Pleasure reconnects her to herself, and from that place, she moves through life with more softness and truth. The more orgasmic a woman is, the happiness there is around her. 💗

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