A few years ago, if you'd asked me what sensate work was, I'd have said it was about sex and orgasms. It does come from sex therapy, where it's been used for decades. But thinking of it only as a sex tool kept me from noticing what it was actually asking.
For me, it was asking me to stop treating touch as something with a destination. I'd spent a long time, in my own body and in relationships, treating arousal, orgasm, "doing it right," and performing pleasure as the point. Every time I did, pressure crept in. Once touch became about getting somewhere, I'd already left the moment. I was watching myself, or my partner, and managing an outcome instead of feeling anything. I think of that now as performance pressure and anxiety.
Unlearning it has been slower than I expected. Trying less hard didn't help much. What's helped is practicing, a little at a time, not having any goals.
What Mattered More Than I Expected
Letting go of the destination meant noticing assumptions I didn't know I had: that touch had to lead somewhere, that my body was supposed to respond a certain way, and that anything short of arousal meant something was wrong with me or with the moment. What actually helped was smaller and quieter than I'd imagined:
Agreeing on what's okay before anything starts, instead of trying to figure it out in the middle.
Having a way to pause or stop that doesn't need an explanation and doesn't mean something went wrong.
Making room for whatever my body actually does, whether that is curiosity, distraction, arousal, discomfort, or nothing at all.
It also felt important to recognize that those previous assumptions weren’t really mine. I’d picked them up the way most of us do: from movies, porn, sex ed (or the lack of it), friends, partners, and a culture with a lot of opinions about what bodies should want and how they should respond.
Slowing down and getting curious again gave me room to notice. Without a goal, there was nothing to measure against, and what was left was what I actually felt, wanted, and did not want. That’s what being embodied has come to mean for me: not a calmer or more correct version of myself, but one that gets to decide. Sometimes what I find is desire. Sometimes it’s rest, or touch that has nothing to do with sex, or a clearer “yes,” “no,” or “not right now”.
Note: When I say embodiment, I mean being in your body and noticing what’s happening there, instead of watching yourself from the outside or running on autopilot. When I talk about pleasure in these ways, I have in mind pleasure liberation, drawing from adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, which frames pleasure as part of what it means to be free, not something extra or frivolous. To me, that means getting to decide what pleasure is for you, without someone else’s script for what it should look like. That might be warm sun on your skin, stretching after a long day, a good meal, a slow shower, or sex. None of it counts more than the rest.
Talking Came First (pun intended)
I assumed the hard part would be the exercises: the touch, the timers, the narrowed focus, the general awkwardness. For me, it came earlier than that. It was saying what I wanted, what I didn't, and what I was scared to say out loud.
The exercises didn't create that honesty for me. They worked better once some of it was already there, whether I was doing this on my own or with someone else. Most of what changed for me happened in those conversations, not in the touching.
A Note on Trauma, Dissociation, and Pain
Sensate work asks you to pay attention to your body. If your body has ever been unsafe, that can be a lot to ask. If touch, or even thinking about touch, brings up numbness, spacing out, panic, flashbacks, or a sense of not being there, nothing is wrong with you. Your body may be doing exactly what it learned to do to protect you. Leaving your body isn't always just performance anxiety—sometimes it is dissociation, and that deserves its own specific care.
Paying attention to your body is only helpful when it feels safe enough to do so. If you know or wonder whether trauma is part of your story, it may help to have a trauma-informed therapist with you in this, before or alongside anything like sensate work. You're always allowed to stop at any point, and choosing to stop is part of the work, too. It's completely okay to decide this isn't the right time, or that this work isn't for you. Additionally, if touch hurts, that’s real information, not something to push through or think your way out of. A pelvic floor physical therapist can help figure out what’s happening in your body.
This isn't work with an end point. You can go at your own pace, and it'll probably bring up something different each time. If any of this feels like something you’d like to explore further, we offer workshops on sensate focus work, or you're welcome to reach out about therapy with us at Here We Are Therapy.
Cat Bishop, LPC, is the founder of Here We Are Therapy, where we offer individual and systems therapy, sex and relationship counseling, and support for grief, depression, anxiety, trauma, neurodivergent experiences and more.
