When we talk about health and self-care, it generally covers emotions, mind and body. Our self-care routines revolve around meditation, eating healthy, exercise and skincare, but one crucial category gets neglected often is sexual health.
Your sexual self is a major part of your overall wellness and deserves time to be pampered. Indulging in healthy sexual self-care activities can help reduce stress and support psychological and sexual health.
Self-care is undoubtedly one of the best forms of self-love. Including your sexual well-being with your emotional, mental and physical self-care routine can drastically enhance your overall health.
Know yourself Better
Before you expect someone else to satisfy your sexual well-being, you need to understand yourself better. This is true not just to explore the things you enjoy when it comes to your sexuality but goes beyond that as well.
Take yourself out on a date, understand your emotions, learn new things, and do things you enjoy. Understand that sex is experienced with intention and presence as it is a bodily experience. Connect with your body to learn what works for you.
The self-date can be anything you want, from exploring your body to stretching, taking yourself out for dinner, or dancing around in your pajamas.
Enjoy an Oil Self-Massage
An oil massage can be a sensual experience when done right. Giving yourself an oil massage can be an even more intimate experience since you are aware of what is working for you. Use a good quality organic oil, like coconut, jojoba and sesame, as these oils can help release internal toxins, soften your skin and calm your nerves.
Start by warming the oil and gently massaging your skin from the top of your head before gradually working your way to your feet. Use longer strokes on all the limbs and circular motions on the joints. Once you are done, soak in a warm bath or take a warm shower.
Discover your Sexuality
Sexuality is wide and deep. It will take practice and time, but you can discover great creativity, pleasure and power within yourself. When you decide to show up for sexual self-care consistently, it will result in sexual growth.
You can begin this by setting a reminder every few days a week to check in. Discovering your sexuality can include sexual education, breathing exercises, self-pleasure, meditation, journaling, enjoying intimacy with your partner or anything that enhances your sexual growth.
Add Sexual Intimacy to your Schedule
“That can’t be fun!” is something that might have crossed your mind. Scheduling sexual time might not seem romantic or fun but knowing that there is an exciting night on the calendar can be thrilling. We are made to believe that spontaneous sex is how sexual intimacy should be for everyone, but it is far from the truth.
Just like everything important in love, you should also prioritize your sex life by adding it to the calendar. It can either be with your partner or a solo play. Scheduling sexual intimacy prepares you physically, spiritually, and emotionally to be in the right mindset and get the most out of this experience.
Mix Things up
While muscle memory can serve you positively in many ways but in some cases, it can restrict you to the selected sexual likes and desires. One of the major elements of sexual self-care is to enjoy some curious sexual exploration.
Change things up with your partner or when you indulge in self-pleasuring. Explore your body with different types of pressure, texture and touch; slow down or speed up, play music or introduce sex toys in the mix. The more you explore, the better your sexual health will be.
Understand the Birth Control Options Available
One of the best tips to improve your sexual self-care is to ensure you are being safe. Make sure that you are aware of all the birth control options available for you to find the one that works best for you. While it can be overwhelming to decide with so many options, you can consult your healthcare specialist to narrow down the choices.
The most common and flexible birth control is hormonal birth control, which may include an intrauterine device, patch, shot or pill. These birth control options can be stopped easily and are short-term. Some other options include copper IUDs without hormones, barrier methods like condoms, and spermicidal birth control.
Condoms are effective and are always a good idea in all situations since they can also provide protection against STIs.
Get Tested
Being sexually active means you are always at risk of STIs and HIV. Since STIs occur with little to no symptoms, the risk is higher. Therefore, it is important to get tested since it is the only way to ensure you don’t have STI or HIV. Moreover, you can also decrease your risk of HIV or STIs by having protected sex. Avoid using any syringes or needs to protect yourself from HIV.
Discuss Safe Sex with your Partner
Taking birth control measures and getting tested is the best way to protect yourself and enjoy sexual intimacy, but you must also make sure that your partner is doing the same. It is important to talk openly with your partner about safe sex.
Make sure you and your partner are on the same page and share the same values so you can continue enjoying sexual intimacy with one another. A few things you should discuss include the following:
- Things you enjoy and things you don’t want to try
- Ways to lower the chances of an unintended pregnancy
- Using protective measures to lower the STIs risk
- Whether or not you wish to start a family
- The number of children you want
These are some of the crucial things you should discuss with your partner so that there are no unpleasant surprises for either of you.
Don’t be Afraid to Share your Experiences
With so much knowledge at the tip of our fingers, sexual education is still lacking. A large population is unaware of aspects safe sex, sexual intimacy, and ways to improve it. Therefore, talk about your experiences and your findings with others to spread awareness.
Normalizing discussions on sexual intimacy and care can greatly help not just others but you as well. You might learn things you weren’t aware of that could enhance your sexual self-care.
Wrapping Up
Sexual self-care is certainly an important factor in maintaining your overall wellness. These tips can help you explore yourself more and give you a chance to try out new things. It is important, however, to understand that sexual self-care isn’t a one-time thing. In order to enhance your sexual health, be sure to be consistent with sexual self-care.
Start small instead of trying to make big changes in your routine. Reward yourself when you make some progress. As you start your sexual self-care journey, you will find out what works for you and ways you can further improve. You will eventually have the right sexual self-care routine to follow.
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