Experiencing True Intimacy

"Find the sweetness in your own heart, then you may find the sweetness in every heart."

- Rumi

What is true intimacy?

From my perspective, true intimacy is letting down the guards around your heart and allowing yourself to be fully seen, and letting go of your preconceptions in order to fully see the truest essence of another.

Sex is a part of intimacy, but sex does not always lead to intimacy, as much as we might expect or hope it to.

As Margo Anand says in her book The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, “...in reality it is not sex that opens the door to intimacy, but intimacy that opens the door to good lovemaking”.

Intimacy is not an act but a set of skills that can be developed, and sexual practice is just one of the tools through which intimacy can be deepened.

Apart from sexual practices, Margo Ananda explains 4 skills of intimacy that we can practice and develop: sensual intimacy, seductive intimacy, playful intimacy, and soul-to-soul intimacy.

1. The Sensual Approach

In the sensual approach to deepening intimacy, you can learn to awaken and expand your sensory perceptions. Experimenting with touch, smell, taste, sight and sound one by one with deep presence will help you to be more aware of your subtle sensations.

Sensual awareness brings an expanded feeling of aliveness to more moments, and the benefits of this can permeate your whole life.

You may find yourself walking down the same street you’ve walked many times before, but now you are spontaneously enraptured by the sweet sensation of the sun on your skin, the beautiful sound of a distant child’s laughter, or the smell of fresh brewed coffee wafting from a cafe.

This sensory awareness guides you deeper into the small moments of life, where profound gratitude and appreciation are found.

2. The Seductive Approach

While the sensual approach is much more inward experience, the seductive approach is about experiencing your intimacy, your inner beauty and self-worth by expressing it to another.

This is about radiating your unique self-expression playfully and sincerely.

One way you can do this with your partner is to dance for each other, with the intention of embodying your inner goddess/god and expressing your divine essence through your movement.

If you do not have a partner, you can do this on your own in a mirror, and witness your own seductive radiance.

Practicing this seductive intimacy helps us to express our unique gifts in the world.

It helps us to imagine and create what we want in an aligned way, while becoming more fully ourselves.

3. The Playful Approach

Playfulness is a highly underrated tool for deepening intimacy.

Being playful has the potential to bring us out of our habitual ways of being and relating, and discover different parts of ourselves and each other.

Practicing playful intimacy gives us the ability to see humour in potentially tense situations, including sexual situations. Laughter instantly shifts the mood and breaks down barriers and resistance.

Margo Anand points out that “the sure sign of cosmic sex is ‘an orgasm accompanied by uncontrollable laughter’” - and I agree! When we fully let go of our defences, our self-perceptions, judgements, and other mental constructs; when we get out of the thinking mind and into the deeper, more primal parts of the nervous system, then spontaneous laughter feels like the most natural thing.

Practicing this skill can feel awkward at first. It can be uncomfortable to break out of the habitual ways of being and play around like a child, with no cares of how you’ll be perceived.

You can practice this by play-wrestling, pretending to be wild animals, laughing (start by a forced laugh until it catches and turns into a genuine laugh), and dancing wildly. There are no rules when it comes to playing, so have fun and explore!

Developing the skill of playful intimacy helps us to interact with life and in our relationships with a light-hearted approach.

We don’t take ourselves too seriously, and don’t get too shaken when things don’t go as expected.

Rather than slipping into moments of bickering with our partner, we slip into spontaneous playing and laughter instead.

We see the humour in life and we restore that precious child-like playfulness.

4. The Soul-to-Soul Approach

The soul-to-soul approach to intimacy is about recognizing the essential spirit of your partner, and of yourself.

Eye gazing, or soul gazing, is a great way to practice this form of intimacy.

In eye gazing, you sit with your partner and look into each other’s eyes. During this process, become aware of any resistance or other feelings that arise when you allow yourself to be fully seen, and allow them to be there just as they are.

Simply observe any resistance, breathe deeply, and you will likely notice that it gradually dissolves on its own.

As you look into your partner’s eyes, you may silently affirm your love for them and their love for you to help you relax into that love.

As you progress with this practice, you may find that you reach a sensation of oneness, a feeling that your individual personalities have melted away and you have merged into one consciousness.

There is nothing to do but enjoy this experience of being together beyond thought and form.

You can say aloud to your partner, “I recognize you and honour you as an aspect of myself”.

The soul-to-soul intimacy is a wonderful skill to use to connect deeply with your partner and to harmonize, whether that is before having sex, or when you feel there is friction between you, or before trying a new practice together.

Developing these skills of devotion and reverence has ripple effects into all areas of life.

This is the highest aim of Tantra and many other spiritual traditions - to recognize that you are one with everything, that beyond thought and form, everything is connected and everything is divine.

This practice will help you to understand others at a deeper level - to see past their personality quirks and into their deeper essence. It will help you to feel connected to source, to spirit, god, nature - to all that is.

All of these intimacy skills can be practiced individually, and they also work very well as a sequence of practice, in the order outlined above.

If you’re interested in deepening your intimacy and expanding your sex life, join our FREE 30 Day Intimacy Challenge for couples.

Each day you’ll receive an email with a focus for the day to bring to your lovemaking, and a question to ask each other. Take a leap together, have some fun, and see what happens!

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