Articles - Every Body Loves

Sex Therapy by Telephone

I do sex therapy work on the telephone in two distinct ways. The first is for people to whom working in person, or online, just seems too risky, but speaking by telephone, even as a start, is possible. The people whom I want to work with…

Coaching

Sex Therapy: Working with The Body

How do people like myself work with clients who have sexual issues? It’s an important point, because until it’s clarified, many people who would benefit from working with a sexuality professional are unlikely to seriously consider…

Coaching

Sex Therapy and Sex Counselling For Couples

Sex Therapy should start with a recognition that what we regard as sex is very restricted and almost guaranteed to make most people dissatisfied most of the time

Sexual challenges

Sex Therapy Online

Sex Therapy Online How can we work with sexual issues remotely? Surely it’s essential to at least have the option of working with the body? I certainly thought this, and had steadfastly set myself against working online or…

News

Sex Therapy: My Approach

My approach to sex therapy is unusual, and counter intuitive to our culture's usual assumptions about sexuality. I don't start with the assumption that there's something 'not working' with your body or your capacity for intimacy. My starting…

News, Sexual challenges

Sexual Inexperience

If one person feels something, that's a personal issue. If a lot of people feel the same thing, that isn't just personal; it says something about society too. The problem of sexual inexperience falls into this category. We live in a hyper…

Coaching

The Misunderstood Vagina

Vaginal massage (sometimes called yoni massage) is a really helpful antidote to oppressive and limiting notions of sexuality

Sexual challenges

Low Sexual Desire In Women

A remarkably high number of women claim to have low sexual desire. The figures vary, but it's anywhere between one third and two thirds. When a figure is this high, does the problem lie with the thing itself, or how we think about…

New Learning

Transactional Sex: You Owe Me

Twice a week, on my way to the zen dojo, I walk through Glasgow University and past a plaque commemorating Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, who was a professor there. Adam Smith had a theory about the origin of money. He said…

News

First ever 'cuddle party' comes to Glasgow

First ever 'cuddle party' comes to Glasgow By Rohese Devereux Taylor The Herald 1st February 2020 Physical contact is good for us. Studies have shown it can ease pain, lift depression and strengthen our immune systems. Conversely,…

Sexual challenges

Sexual Shame

Shame is endemic in our society, yet nobody talks about it. Which is strange, because it is the silent killer of sexual love. The heart isn’t cut to pieces in battle. It unknowingly dies, like a sleeping person in a room gradually filling…

Learning

Chronic Pelvic Pain

According to the NHS website, 1 in 6 women are affected by chronic pelvic pain. That’s an extraordinary statistic. A lot of the time, doctors can identify the cause. But that still leaves many many cases of unexplained, long term pain. And,…

Learning

Re-thinking Male Anatomy

It’s one of the truisms of sexuality that women’s sexuality is elusive, and men’s is obvious. It’s obvious, because -presumably - an erection is conspicuously obvious. It’s obvious, because the point of an erection - surely - is…

Learning

Genital Massage: It's Not About Technique

I talked to my Zen Group the other week about the language we use when we talk about the body. In that context, I noted that in ordinary language, we tend to use the word "body" to refer to the body below the neck, and the word "head" to refer…

New Learning

Benefits of Anal Massage

I saw a client the other day for a tantric massage, which included some anal massage work. When she had got dressed afterwards, she told me that when she was tightening her trouser belt, she realised that her belt tightened 2 notches more than…

Learning

Sexual Trauma

" The soul feels unsafe in a frightened body. The Bodywork is to breath courage into the frightened body, to feel pleasure in its own edges again. It is a way of preparing the body to be a home for the soul again" (Mehdi Darvish Yahya, with…

Learning, News

How To Touch Another

How should we touch another? When I was a kid in the late sixties, watching Man From Uncle on the telly, the bit I liked best was Napoleon Solo going into an innocent looking basement shop in New York. He would casually press a few…

News

Body Dysmorphia

My friend Minnie Iris is a very talented artist. I have one of her pictures in my practice space. She is a trustee of the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Trust. In the words of their website: "The term Body Dysmorphic Disorder [BDD] describes…

Events

How do I know what I want?

How do I know what I want when I always know what I ought to want? John's talk from the sex lectures series held in Manchester.

Sensuality

Good At Sex

In Nick Roeg’s film ‘Insignificance’, there’s a great scene where Albert Einstein and Marilyn Munro are in bed together. It’s striking, because we don’t expect people like Einstein (geniuses who live in their head) to be any good…

New Learning

Consent

I have a client who’s been coming to see me for about a year. When we started working together, he seemed to be carrying a lot of shock in his body. If I touched a particular part of him; his belly, for example, it seemed to set off quite…

Sensuality

Bad Sex

If you ask a heterosexual man what bad sex is, he’s likely to say it’s when sex is boring. He’s unlikely to say, for instance, that bad sex is painful sex, or unwanted sex, or humiliating sex. Yet, that is often women’s…

Sensuality

Porn for women

Ages ago, before the internet, I had an affair with a woman who liked porn. We’d have sex, and while I was recuperating, we’d watch some of her porn. The only one I remember was one involving a vacuum salesman and a housewife. You can imagine.…

Sexual challenges

Premature Ejaculation

When we talk about premature ejaculation, we’re really talking about several different issues, and it’s helpful to distinguish them. The first is a euphemism for unsatisfactory sex, particularly for the woman. The man just comes…

Sexual challenges

Sexual Confidence

One thing that affects sexual confidence for couples is that a surprising amount of people have only had sex with one person: their present or former partner. I sometimes get couples coming to me who have had a long relationship,…

Coaching

Asexuality

It's estimated that 1% of the population is asexual. 'Asexuality' is defined as the absence of sexual attraction to other people. How can a Somatic sex therapist help? Firstly, by recognising that asexuality…

Coaching, Sensuality

Sex and Disability

One of the clients I found most challenging when I started as a sex coach was a delightful young woman with cerebral palsy. Let's call her Rachel. The challenge was threefold. Firstly, there was a change in the normal…

Learning

Losing My Virginity

I lost my virginity to a nice woman at an office party when I was 25. I was working in a huge antiquated office, like the House Of Usher. I worked up in an eyrie. She worked down in the basement with people who rarely saw the sun (it was Glasgow;…

Sexual challenges

Vaginismus

According to the NHS website "it's not fully understood why the condition (vaginismus) happens. Factors can include: thinking the vagina is too small, negative sexual thoughts, previous sexual abuse or unwelcome telepathic interference from…

New Learning

Orgasms

In the Woody Allan film 'Manhattan', a female character says "I finally had an orgasm, and my doctor told me it was the wrong kind" The joke derives from Freud's dictum [as it were] that clitoral orgasms were immature and masculine,…

Sexual challenges

Fertility and Pleasure

I was recently reflecting on sexuality and fertility. One of my friends is an acupuncturist, and she told me that increasing numbers of women were coming to her with fertility issues. One way she treats them is to increase their receptivity…

Sexual challenges

Genital Numbness

Lots of people think that erotic touch needs to be high energy. If a lot of sexual energy isn't flowing, so goes the idea, then the touch isn't working. I don't think that's true, and actually I would argue it's positively harmful. I…

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