How to get out of your head and into your body during sex

What fifteen years of this work looks like

MJ: Tell the audience what you do — the thing that really fills your heart.

Pauline: My name is Pauline Ryeland and my business is Intimacy Whisperer. I have been working as an intimacy, sex and libido educator for about fifteen years. I work with singles and couples — you do not have to be in a relationship to work with me.

I specialise as a libido coach: turning it back on, because for a variety of reasons we do turn off. I work with women who have internal pain and do not orgasm. I work with men on erection challenges, premature ejaculation, Peyronie's disease, prostate issues. And I work with sexual trauma.

I am also a mindset coach. I work with NLP — neuro-linguistic programming — which works with the subconscious to bring about change at the conscious level. Sexual issues are often a combination of the physical and the mental, so we look at both. I am a tantra teacher, a somatic sexological bodyworker, and I practise Havening, which is for trauma and anxiety.

Clients often say: I came because I had this particular issue, but I got so much more.

Why we are so disconnected

MJ: How much do you think we are living in a society where we do not want to feel — where we do not want to experience the journey between point A and point B?

Pauline: We are living in a very disconnected society on so many levels. We are on our phones, on our laptops, glued to them. I am just as guilty. But it is about knowing when to put the phone down and actually engage in conversation.

That connection has almost become a lost art, which is strange, because it is the normal way of living. So it is about peeling that back. Have conversations. Put the phone away. Talk to your partner.

A relationship will not fix it

MJ: People get into a relationship thinking it will solve their trauma.

Pauline: It does not. I will be happy when I am in a relationship is a classic one. You cannot rely on an outside source to make you happy. You have to learn that happiness within — find your inner joy, your passions, the things that make you want to get up and get into the day.

Otherwise someone coming along is not going to change the trajectory of what you are feeling. You will feel good for a while, but that unresolved unhappiness will still be there.

Why you cannot enjoy it from inside your head

Pauline: If you want a better sexual experience, the best place to be is in your body, not in your head wondering what is going to happen next. Am I going to have an orgasm? Am I going to maintain my erection? Am I going to last long enough?

All of that floating around in our heads does not help. It actually creates disconnection even while we are having sex — because we are in our heads. We need to learn to be in our bodies and trust that our bodies know what to do. Our bodies know. It is us that gets in the way.

Letting go of expectation

MJ: Do people have expectations based on pornography — which is performance, not intimacy?

Pauline: I teach letting go of expectation and demand, and coming to a place of allowance. And in allowance, if something is not working sexually, then we have to communicate. I love it when you do this. That one does not really work for me.

We can burp and fart in front of our partners, but we cannot actually say what we want or do not want. It does not make sense.

MJ: We can talk about which bills we have to pay this month, but not about how we are going to find pleasure together.

When both people are trying and neither feels loved

Pauline: Your requirements could be completely different from your partner's. If we look at love languages — one partner might be very kinesthetic, needing touch, and the other might need validation.

So you are touching your partner constantly, because that is your language. And he is thinking she does not love me, I need her to tell me. Then he is validating you, and it is not landing, because you want touch.

You have to step into your partner's shoes. See what they see, feel what they feel, and meet halfway — because you may not be a complete match.

The couple who could not hear each other

Pauline describes a couple where the husband had chronic PTSD from military service. He could not tolerate being touched, and would dissociate mid-conversation.

Pauline: In the session she was all over him, and he was saying I cannot handle being touched. I stopped them and asked her: are you not hearing what your husband is saying? I understand you are starved of touch and you have not had intimacy for years. But you are not hearing him.

It was a real wake-up call. She was not even aware she was touching him. So we built strategies — when he came back into his body, he could put his hands on his belly, take a breath and say I did not hear that, could you repeat it.

What sexual energy actually is

MJ: A lot of people think sexual energy is just sex.

Pauline: It is part of sex, but it can also be entirely separate. You can have sexual energy running without having sex at all. It is an energetic movement through the body — not genital-based. You feel amazing, and it is an orgasmic experience, but it is not genital at all.

And when you bring that energy into actually having sex, it transforms it to a completely different level.

Orgasm and ejaculation are not the same thing

Pauline: You can teach men to have an orgasm without ejaculation. Some people hear that and say what, that is not possible. It is true — orgasm and ejaculation are two separate physiological things that over time have become collapsed together.

Men can learn to separate them, through breathwork practice. Then they can have energetic orgasms, multiple full-body orgasms, without ejaculating. They choose when they want to. That is a phenomenal experience for men — and being with a man who can do that is another level again.

Why chasing the orgasm ends it early

Pauline: We are too attached to the end goal. A woman can be fixated — am I going to have an orgasm today? It takes me so long. Then she finally has it and thinks thank God, and switches off.

Well, why not keep going? There might be another one there. But they are fixated on reaching the goal. If they were in their bodies instead, allowing the body to dictate what happens, they might have more than one. They can start opening themselves to multiple orgasms.

Pauline: Everywhere else in life we have to be planned and detailed. In sex it is the opposite — put that aside. We do not need it.

The practice: a flexing body scan

MJ: What would you advise someone who feels too much in their head and not in their body?

Pauline: That gets you into your body quite quickly. The final breaths matter — they lock it into your system. It creates somatic learning, new cellular memory in the whole body. It imprints it rather than leaving it as an idea.

She developed it for a client with significant sexual trauma who could not tolerate visual body-scan work. Shaking and stillness gave her a way to feel her body again.