written by Isabel Schley

How to Sensualize Your Fall Evening

We have become very good at romanticizing our lives. We light candles on ordinary Tuesdays, buy flowers for the kitchen table, pour wine into the glass that makes it taste slightly more expensive, and put on music while we cook because dinner feels better when it has a soundtrack.

There is something lovely about giving ordinary life this kind of attention. But once you have made the moment beautiful, there is another question worth asking: Are you actually there to enjoy it?

Sensualizing your life is what happens when you aren’t only curating it, but you start feeling it.

It is the way your wine glass feels in your hand while you stir something on the stove, or the quiet pleasure of sitting in the morning and feeling your body slowly wake up with each sip of coffee. It is noticing the moment your shoulders relax beneath a warm shower, breathing in the smell of your soap, and realizing that for a few minutes there is nowhere else you need to be.

Romanticizing makes the moment feel special. Sensualizing lets you actually feel the moment you've romanticized.

And with cooler nights, softer clothes, earlier sunsets, and the sudden desire to be cozy all the time, fall gives us quite a lot to feel.

Looking good is only half the fun

We highly recommend making your life beautiful, but we recommend even more strongly that you do not stop there.

Romanticizing has become something of an antidote to moving through life on autopilot. It reminds us that the good plates do not need to wait for company and that an ordinary Wednesday can be worthy of a gorgeous ritual. When you treat your own life as something worth making beautiful, you begin to see it differently.

Sensualizing asks you to take that same attention out of the room and into your body.

Taking a candlelit bath filled with all your favorite soaps and salts is remarkably inviting, but the sensual part begins when you stop thinking about how lovely it all looks and slip beneath the water. It is the involuntary exhale when the heat reaches your shoulders, the steam against your face, and the moment you realize your jaw has been clenched all afternoon.

The candle may have gotten you there, but your body and how you feel with it is what makes the experience yours.

This is where romanticizing and sensualizing become different practices. One enhances your environment, while the other enhances your relationship to that environment.

Your body has been here the whole time

Most of us spend an impressive amount of our lives physically present and mentally elsewhere.

We eat while answering messages, shower while planning tomorrow, and lie beside someone we love while mentally working through something that happened six years ago. We can become so accustomed to living inside our thoughts that our bodies start to feel like vehicles carrying our brains from one obligation to the next. Meanwhile, the body keeps experiencing everything.

The body recognizes the low sun shining through a window, the first bite when you are properly hungry, tension between your shoulders, a familiar scent, or that warm feeling of someone else lying beside you in bed. Pleasure arrives all day in small physical signals, whether or not we are paying enough attention to receive them.

A sensual life is not necessarily a life with more pleasure in it. It is a life in which you become better at noticing the pleasure that is already there. And noticing is a muscle you can work on.

Come back to your body

Sensuality really comes down to attention, which means living more sensually begins with learning how to direct yours.

Start with your breath, not because there is anything particularly glamorous about breathing, but because it is always happening in the present tense. Take one slow breath through your nose and, for a moment (this is the important part) do not try to make yourself calmer or more relaxed. Simply notice what happens. Feel your ribs expand, your stomach soften, and the air leave your body a little warmer than it entered.

Then widen your attention. Notice where your body is making contact with the world around you. Maybe it is the weight of your body sinking into the couch, your barefeet against the floor, or someone's hand resting on your leg. Notice temperature, pressure, scent, sound, and whatever else your senses have been quietly collecting while your mind was somewhere else.

You do not have to notice everything. In fact, it can be more pleasurable to choose one sensation and stay curious about it. If you are drinking something, let yourself really taste it before taking another sip. If someone is touching you, bring your attention to the exact place their skin meets yours and notice what happens in your body when they move. If you are lying beneath warm water, feel where the heat lands and where your muscles begin to give way beneath it.

Your mind will always wander. You will remember an email, start planning the weekend, or suddenly wonder whether there is still laundry sitting in the washing machine. The practice is not to become perfectly present. It’s to notice when you have left the moment and gently bring your body back to what you feel.

Come back to your breath, then allow your attention to settle again on whatever your senses are experiencing. Each return gives you another opportunity to experience something you might otherwise have missed.

Over time, this kind of attention teaches you what feels good to you.

Pleasure is information

The more closely you pay attention to your body, the more specific pleasure becomes.

You begin to recognize what makes you soften and what wakes you up, which kinds of touch make you lean closer, when you want more, and when you have had enough.

We often talk about pleasure as though it should be instinctive, particularly when sex enters the conversation. We are supposed to know what we like, know how to ask for it, recognize what someone else wants, and somehow remain perfectly present while all of this is happening.

But being in your body is a skill, and like most skills, it becomes easier when you practice it somewhere other than the moment you most need it.

Learning to notice yourself during an ordinary activity gives you a language for noticing yourself during intimacy. When you know the difference between tension and anticipation in your own body, or between a touch you tolerate and a touch that excites you, it becomes much easier to communicate what you want.

It also changes the way you touch someone else. You become more interested in the subtle ways a body answers you, recognizing a partner's response in a deeper breath, a muscle relaxing beneath your hand, or the slight movement that asks you to stay exactly where you are.

Sensuality is attention and being truly paid attention to can feel remarkably sexy.

 

Fall gives you something to practice with

Perhaps this is why fall feels particularly suited to sensuality. The season asks us to notice our senses a little more and be intentional with how we tune our environment to invite pleasure into every moment. 

The flavors of fall make their way into our recipes, aromas, and color pallets warming our senses as we find comfort beneath a cozy environment of our own making. 

This season is a time for you to practice prioritizing sending pleasure to your senses and give your body the chance to feel just how sensual your life is.