Why a “Black Belt” in the Bedroom?

I'm about to launch seminars for men called Black Belt in the Bedroom. Obviously the title is catchy (what man wouldn’t want to be a black belt in the bedroom?) and that’s why I’m using it, but commercial cynicism aside, there are very good reasons why I’m chosen the term “black belt”.

For a start, I am a black belt in aikido, a second level black belt in fact (about to go third level when I decided to have babies instead). I’ve also studied judo and various kung-fu styles plus done workshops on many other styles of martial arts. It’s effectively where I got my energetic training, which I now apply to sexual relations and which has the same basis as the Tantric and Taoist approaches to sexuality.

To some people the concept of a martial artist is of an aggressive violent fighter. However, it’s completely the opposite. A true warrior is not some psychomaniac, think more of the American Indian brave, the knight of old, the samurai, Mel Gibson in Braveheart… A top martial artist is completely in control, centred and flowing with the energy of the encounter. Just what sex should be. He’s not in his head thinking about what’s going on, he’s completely connected to his opponent, completely absorbed in what’s going on. He’s not following set routines or patterns, he’s creatively moving with the energy of the encounter. He’s still when he needs to be, he’s active when he needs to be, he moves how and when he needs to, completely in the moment. This is how sex should be.

Unfortunately too many men are well down among the coloured belts. Since I’ve spent countless hours talking to men about their sex lives, and to their partners, and I'm the Men’s Health Magazine sex columnist, and I’ve done so much research into sex, from the scientific to the Tantric to kink, I’ve got a pretty good idea about what makes a man a Black Belt in the Bedroom. That is a man who embodies the Four ‘C’s: he’s connected, confident, creative and in control. To get to that level, he needs to master the Five ‘S’s:

1. Self
2. Study of Woman
3. Seduction
4. Skills
5. Spice

Those are in order of importance, and also in order of difficulty. Our society tends to focus on the last couple, techniques and props, but those are actually the least important. The most important is the knowledge of self, and the ability to be centred and able to take a step back to hold the space for the woman. The next is knowledge of woman, particularly his partner, understanding her not just physically, but also psychologically and energetically. Then there is the art of seduction, which is not just for new lovers, but is an on-going never-ending part of relationship. Then the sex skills come in, manual, oral and penile, and finally ways to spice up and expand your sexual repertoire.

Now that’s not all going to happen from one three-hour seminar! But it will help you along the way. It does take application. The master of any art, whether it’s a martial art or other sport, painting, cooking, woodwork, whatever, is completely dedicated. It’s the same with mastering the Art of Sex.

Learn the Art of Sexual Mastery with my online course for men Black Belt in Bedroom! Click on the image to find out more.

It’s interesting to observe the participants of a retreat. 

As the days pass there’s an observable change in them, and they all report a significant change within themselves.

This is a great example of neuroplasticity - the brain changing its circuitry.

Given the opportunity for stillness and guided activities and reflection, the circuits of these people change quite rapidly.

This change in the brain allows for definite and continued positive change from that moment on.

I love the fact that brain researchers have proven this plasticity. Many years ago, as an undergraduate biochemistry student studying neuroscience, I was dismayed by the thinking of the day that the brain was simply a computer and the job of the scientist was to figure out what the bits were and how they interacted. I remember being scoffed at for suggesting it might be otherwise. So I didn’t pursue that line of study.


Now we know that the brain is a wonderful organic system that constantly changes and adapts to the inputs coming into it, throughout the whole life. So if your life is stressful and you input negative thoughts, your brain circuitry will reinforce and reflect that reality. That will become the filter through which you experience the world - as negative and stressful. If you have positive thoughts and experiences then your brain will reinforce and reflect that reality - you’ll look at the world through a rose-colored brain!



You have two choices for your feedback loop - either increasingly negative or increasingly positive.

The exciting thing is that you can change your circuitry. Working on your personal growth is essentially about rewiring your brain.


Which brings me to sex.

If you have negative views, expectations and experiences around sex you can change them to positive ones:

• You don’t have to be stuck in your ‘story’ (brain circuitry) that says that sex is scary/disgusting/sinful/odd/boring/painful/unnecessary/addictive. 
• You don’t have to be stuck in your story about not being into sex because: you’re a mother/disabled/old/from a repressed background/a victim of abuse/too busy/too tired/too whatever; or, 
• Your story that you’re entitled to sex because you’re a man/married/a helpless addict/a victim of abuse/stressed/whatever.

Any story can be changed.

One of the wonderful things about sex, is that you can change your neural wiring to more positive circuits while actually having sex - assuming that it’s intimate sex.

Just as the participants on a retreat can make huge changes in a short amount of time - through quietness and concentrated reflection - so you too can make major sexual changes through a more sensual, subtle approach to sex and intimacy.



Making love in a beautiful environment, calm, soft and inviting is a good start.

Then progressing slowly with loving touch - melting hugs, feeling each others' presence as much as your bodies, gazing into each others eyes - gives your brain the time and space to rewire in positive ways. Over time, the wiring in your brain will respond to the thought of sex in a positive way, knowing that it is an enjoyable, positive experience. It will send messages throughout your body to prepare it for pleasure through the release of hormones, muscle relaxation, slowing your heartbeat and other benefits.

When two people’s brains are wired sex-positively, they come together in openness, not anxiety/resignation/annoyance/fear of rejection or other negative energies.

The more you come together in this way, the stronger the wiring becomes and the easier it is to enjoy love-making.

This applies to solo sex too. The more you send positive messages to your brain, the more you experience enjoyable solo sex, the better the brain rewires to reinforce the view that solo sex, and the genitals involved, are good.

It’s important that you reinforce this rewiring in the whole of your life. Surround yourself with things and experiences that heighten your senses and your enjoyment of life. Avoid people with a sex-negative view of the world and reach out and interact with people with a positive view.

Remember it’s a positive feedback loop. The more positivity you put in your life, the more positive it becomes, and due to neuroplasticity, it becomes increasingly easier and easier to be more positive - until you get to the point where it’s your natural state of being and you can’t help but be joyful!

Who’s brain are we talking about? Yours. So it’s up to you to take control of your brain, make the choice to feed it positively. Honour your life and your role in creating it whichever way you choose. Your brain will back you up on that.

Remember, you’re the creator.

Believe it or not, I’m sitting at an outdoor bar, mocktail at hand, overlooking a beach fringed with palm trees in Vietnam. It’s pretty special.  Last week I attended a Spiritual Retreat here. While it wasn’t specifically sexual in nature, you can’t separate sex and spirituality.

A key element of spiritual work, and of the Retreat, is raising your energy. You do this through meditation and mindfulness. But it’s not what we often consider meditation, which is a slowing of energy, a deep relaxation. That’s wonderful and good, but it’s different to raising the energy. When you go into meditation with the intent to raise your energy, you go places. You feel lighter, spin faster. You get messages and have visions. It is an altered consciousness.

This is why conscious sex is so good for spiritual development, because sex raises your energy. Even if you have the most basic, unconnected sex, sparks of light will still fly. So if you approach sex with presence, intent and release of self, you really do get taken to extraordinary places of exceptional ecstatic pleasure.

In these realms the genitals barely matter, they’re just a means to feel with the whole of your body and beyond your body. 

This applies to partnered sex, to solo sex, and to your relationship with life. Because life is is sex. As Paulo Coelho says “…the language of the soul is sex.” Life energy is sexual energy. We try and compartmentalise it in our society, but it’s part of everything. Living mindfully, consciously, with presence, is about raising your energy. That in itself is having a sexual relationship with life, with the universe. 

Then in the microcosm of your sexual union with another, or with yourself, you hone and enhance your ability to raise the energy, to go to ecstatic places. Then that energy is taken back into the rest of your life, you emanate it, and life itself becomes ecstatic.

Easy to say perhaps, sitting on a tropical beach with mocktail in hand! But how do you think I got here…?

Raise your energies: live mindfully, love consciously.

Have you been practicing eating a peach? Savouring its juicy lushness…?

Have you found within you the ability to lose yourself in that peach, to taste, suck, lick and devour it with full sensory awareness and heightened arousal?

Well, hold that space and let’s take that a step further. We’re going to add some technique and look at how to consume an ice-cream.

(If you haven’t read my post on how to eat a peach, go back and read that first, you want to be in that space before continuing.)

The thing about enjoying a peach in that way is that it is all about you receiving the pleasure and sensation of the peach. This is what making love with someone should be like. Rather than focusing on what you’re doing to them, simply allow yourself to lose yourself in the pleasure you are receiving from being with them.

It’s pretty easy to do with a peach. You feel no obligation to the peach, you don’t care how the peach feels about you consuming it. It’s trickier to do with a person, most of us are concerned about how the other person is feeling about what we’re doing to or with them.

Strangely enough though, they’d enjoy themselves more if you got of your head and stopped thinking about them and instead simply let yourself go into the pleasure of the moment.

That’s why we started with a peach. Now, let’s add some technique, and see if you can still lose yourself.

We’re going to focus on your tongue. This part of your body is both fantastic at giving pleasure to another as well as transmitting pleasure back to you.

When applied to the body of another, your tongue provides exquisite pleasure to them, and in the touch of your tongue on your lover it transmits exquisite pleasure back to you. It does this best if you lose yourself in your tongue and the two-way transmission of pleasure.

So let’s practice this with an ice-cream.

Choose one that’s covered in hard chocolate.

Hold the ice-cream; look at the ice-cream; approach the ice-cream. Breathe on it gently. Savour the anticipation of the first touch of your tongue on the ice-cream.

Now practice the first of three strokes. The first is The Slurp. Run your tongue up the side of the ice-cream. Then up and up again over all sides of the ice-cream. Do it slowly, do it rapidly, do it firmly, do it barely touching.

Then practice The Swirl. Run your tongue around and around the ice-cream. Do it with the ice-cream in your mouth, do it with the ice-cream outside your mouth.

Combine the Slurp with the Swirl. Lose yourself in it. If it feels good, moan. Don’t worry if you sound like a bad actor in a porn movie. If it feels good do it.

Then practice Kitty Licks, little lapping moments with your tongue. Run your tongue up and down the ice-cream, flicking lightly, making little circles. Keep going over the top, combining with Swirls and Slurps.

Then, in the centre at the top of the ice-cream, enjoy kitty licking in one spot until you break through the chocolate to the ice-cream below. Keep going as the chocolate breaks further and you can lick and suck up the ice-cream beneath. Lose yourself even further as slabs of chocolate come off and you can lick, suck and bite. Let the ice-cream melt and drip and lick the drips as they fall off the end and run over your fingers and hands…

This is not as easy as it might sound. I’ve given this exercise to many clients and workshop participants, and it’s evident how hard people find it to lose themselves in pleasure, completely unself-consciouslessly. If it’s that hard with just an ice-cream, how much harder with an actual person.

So practice with an ice-cream, or a peach or a mango or a lolly-pop, until you can lose yourself, completely and utterly. Because that is what you’re aiming for in sex. Way before you worry about technique.

Sensuality is without a doubt a key element to great sex. Sensuality, intimacy, surrender, eroticism – all essential elements that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the genitals.
 
 We have five senses which can constantly bring us delectable, luscious sensuous experiences. If we’re open to them.
 
 Once we are, we can bring that awareness into our love-making – and make magic.
 
 Let’s practice. Choose a peach, or any other other suitably juicy fruit such as a mango.

Pick up the fruit.-
 
 First, look at it….then listen to it…..then smell it….touch it against your skin, cheek, forearm…then bite into it and taste it.
 
 Really taste it.
 
 Then bite again:
 
 - feeling the peach flesh give as you bite down into it,
 
 - feeling the juices release into your mouth,
 
 - hearing the sound of the flesh give way,
 
 - smelling the scent of the peach beneath your nose,
 
 - tasting the sweet flavor of the peach consuming your mouth,
 
 - seeing the pinkish orange of the raw peach flesh….
 
 Now that's eating a peach!
 
 Try the exercise together. Have a peach each and take it in turns to watch your partner completely consume the peach. Then expose your own sensuality as you bite and lick and devour your peach.
 
 Or share the peach. Look into each other’s eyes as you suck, nibble, chew and swallow the peach flesh and juice. Taste it on each other’s lips, follow the dribble of juice down your partner’s body, suck it off their fingers.
 
 Why would you put up with lacklustre sex when you can really, and truly, eat a peach...? 

There’s a great article I wrote for Men’s Health Magazine on Sex for Busy People. 

I’m going to summarise it here, and if you want to read more download it here. Or buy my book "Sex Secrets for Busy People"  and get the whole low-down! 

Demands from the boss all day, pressures to achieve deadlines, squeeze in the gym, race home, deal with the kids, deal with the wife’s issues, check in on the internet, veg out for a TV show (if you’re lucky), help get the house ready for tomorrow, hope for a shag, into bed, roll over – and your wife’s asleep (or pretending).
 
 Not a pretty scenario, not one that will lead to fantastic sex. What to do?
 
 Follow these five steps to sex in the time of chaos: 

1. Forget spontaneity!
 
 This has got to be the biggest myth out there about sex, that it’s got to be spontaneous to be good. That’s like saying the best footy game or the best meal or the best party comes spontaneously! No. Everything good in life takes planning, focus and effort - health does, wealth does, so does sex.
 
2.  Sex starts way before the bedroom
 
 Planned or not, it’s not going to happen if you think that getting into bed, rolling over and saying “how about it love” maybe with a tweak or two of her nipple is enough. Oh no, sex needs to start way before the bedroom. In a way, it never stops. I call it living life as foreplay, so that you keep intimacy and erotic tension alive throughout the day.
 
3. Transition from boardroom to bedroom 
 
 A hugely important part of this is to allow yourself to transition from boardroom to bedroom. Even if you have such a pressing libido and feel you can transform from worker to stud in moments, chances are your lady love can’t. You have to transition from the busyness of everyday life, you have to chill.
 
4.  Let your environment turn you on 
 
 Humans are very sensory creatures, affected positively or negatively by our surroundings. So make sure your surroundings enhance your sexual desire. In particular, turn your bedroom into a boudoir, a sanctuary away from the stress of life, a place that when you enter, you leave the world behind.
 
5.  Sex is playtime for adults 
 
 (To misquote Oscar Wilde) Sex is far too important to be taken seriously - keep it light and playful!
 
 You see, it’s not the spontaneity or otherwise that makes sex good, it’s what happens when you have sex. So you have to use your imagination. Experiment with positions, places, procedures and props.
 
 So let’s take a look at that opening scene again, with this new knowledge…
 
 ...You come home, take the dog for a short walk to relax, return for a family dinner around the table, then after the kids are in bed you and wife forget the housework because you decided tonight’s the night. So you bring her a glass of wine while she’s having a bath, give her a foot massage then light the candles, by the time she arrives at the sensuously lit bedroom with you reclining on the bed she’s quite happy to have you ask her to drop her robe and move over to the bed….and the rest is up to your imagination.
 
 Perennial boredom or exquisite pleasure? Busyness is no excuse. It’s your choice. 

Why is our society so sexually screwed-up? 
 
 Basically, it’s because we’ve had two to three thousand years of sexual suppression.
 
 During these millennia two very damaging myths have been held as truths in western society: 

1. That sex is a base, animalistic activity, as opposed to spiritual and ‘higher’ human endeavors; and 
2. That men are innately more sexual than women. 

These myths have been so strong for so long, that they are still very much part of our communal psyche. It’s only in the last few decades that society has begun to shift on these myths, which is a relatively short time compared to how long those myths have been there, so progress on change is slow.
 
The first myth, that sex is a ‘low’, animalistic activity not a ‘high’ activity, has meant that sex has not been studied properly, has not been taught to our young people, has not been a topic of open discussion, and has not been considered a part of life that should be developed and enhanced.
 
 This means that society’s knowledge of sex is very limited, and we are nowhere near achieving anything like our sexual potentials, nor are we using sex in a positive way to enhance our lives as we could be.
 
The second myth, that men are more sexual than women, has meant that there has been an imbalance between the masculine and feminine principles in society. We’ve had a dysfunctional masculine, overly dominant and aggressive, and a dysfunctional feminine, overly weak and dependent. When the two principles are out of whack like this, there is no balance and harmony. Without a balance of equal masculine and feminine, the masculine goes out of control and the feminine is useless.
 
 Sexually, this means there has not been a focus on what men and women need sexually, how they function differently yet complementarily, and how their coming together creates magic. Instead we’ve had a servile feminine sexuality serving an overly dominant masculine sexuality. Women have been expected to 'service' their men’s 'needs': the 'good girls' served men's sexuality by providing children and the 'bad girls' served men's sexuality by providing pleasure.
 
 When you combine those two myths, you end up with a society that has no idea about the beauty and benefits of sex; and individuals within it who have no idea of their potential and what they can do with their sexuality.
 
 You have an overly-aggressive society that is full of dissatisfied people, both men and women.
 
 Sound familiar? 

Women and men have differences, sure, but we're not that different.

The most similar creature to Man is Woman, and the most similar creature to Woman is Man. We share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, we share 60% of our DNA with fruit flies for goodness sake!

I get tired of people saying “women are such and such” and “men are such and such”.

If we lined all the men and women of the world up in a line from most to least [insert adjective] you'd often find a predominance of one sex at either end, but there would be a big overlap in the middle. That applies to size, strength, emotions, interests, libido...

Yes, the strongest people in the world are probably male, but there are a lot of women who are stronger than a lot of men.

Yes, probably there are more men at the highest end of raging libido, but you'll find women up there too, and plenty of men with no interest whatsoever.



Can we ditch the stereotypes please!

Plenty of people are the opposite of what they typically “should” be according to gender stereotypes:

• There are women who are lousy communicators, and men who are brilliant at it;
• There are women who want to 'fix' things, and men who just want to be heard;
• There are women who have trouble controlling their anger and there are men who get weepy;
• There are women who just want fast sex with an orgasm at the end, and men who love hours of sensual touch.

So while the idea that men and women are so different as to be from different planets is a good marketing strategy, it's really far from the truth.

In fact thinking that way polarizes people and causes us to focus on the differences between the sexes, rather than the similarities - and it is mostly similarities. 



Of course there are differences!

When you do look at the differences between people, within a couple say, they are generally less to do with sex differences than individual differences anyway: how much do they like to sleep; what do they like to eat; what is their parenting style; how often do they want to visit the in-laws; etc?

Having said that, yes, of course there are gender differences. Our biology is different in many ways: women's biology is more complex than men's, neurologically, hormonally - but those differences are good! Vive la difference!

Just as we need to work with differences between individuals that are not sex-based so we need to work with differences that are. 



What’s the problem with difference anyway?

The hallmark strength of the human race is our ability to cooperate with each other, to work together utilising everyone's strengths to survive and thrive. If everyone was the same, humans would never have evolved to be the successful species that we are.

Diversity in the workplace is definitely considered a good thing these days. A whole profession exists of consultants doing DISC analyses and Myers-Briggs personality typing, to make sure there are good balances of personality types in a workplace. We need to take the same approach with couples and find the value in diversity.

So how about we celebrate our differences, see ourselves as complimentary not antagonistic? Let’s learn to appreciate how we operate differently and work with that, not fight it. 



If we average out the genders and say that men tend to have more drive for sex, well, women tend to have a greater capacity for sexual response. That sounds like a good match to me! If women tend to be better at nurturing and men tend to better at fixing, well, again, I can't see that that need cause problems. We need both. If women tend to be more intuitive and men tend to be more analytical, great stuff, using both approaches can lead to better solutions all round. These differences are all complementary. 



There really is no need for a battle of the sexes.



We're all from earth.

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