These days, we’re not up to speed until we find the “hack”. You know - the trick, shortcut, or secret - that instantly elevates us from bumbler to pro. There are life hacks to optimize for mental flow state, better sleep, keto diets, and how to self-regulate while your toddler melts down. For relationships, there are the 5 love languages and regular date nights. But what about pleasure hacks?
Humanity has always chased pleasure in all its forms. Our favorite two? Sex and food, says Oxford University. We all know that putting delicious things in our mouth gives us pleasure - that’s easy. Sex is more complicated - there can be a lot of variation in frequency and pleasure. Our studies of how humans experience sex, intimacy, and pleasure has revealed a mind-blowing statistic: even if we are regularly getting it on with our partner, having “good” or even “great” sex, chances are we are still only experiencing 1/20th of our bodies’ capacity for pleasure. Yes, you heard that right, only 5%! But this is actually good news, because we’ve discovered a life-changing hack that can give you access to 100% of your pleasure capacity, while creating deeper, more satisfying levels of fulfillment and closeness in your intimacy.
Strap yourself in, as we explore three simple secrets to 20X your physical pleasure.
⭐ The first secret to a massive upgrade in physical pleasure is understanding how pleasure works and how to give and receive it. Pleasure is a sophisticated interplay of body, brain, and mind. Kind of like a 3 piece jazz band. When all 3 instruments are playing in sync, that’s when the real magic happens.
⭐ The second secret is that by focusing our intimacy primarily on sexual intercourse, we end up ignoring over 95% of our bodies’ capacity for physical pleasure. That’s because the largest pleasure organ on our body is not our genitals!
⭐ The third secret is that in order to feel more pleasure, we have to allow ourselves more time to feel pleasure. This sounds so simple, but without the right tools, it just doesn’t happen! We’ll discuss why time is so important and the secret hack to creating more time for pleasure.
The FIrst Secret: Understanding Physical Pleasure
How do we feel pleasure in our bodies? It begins with our skin. Our skin has millions of finely tuned nerve cells which specialize in interpreting different classes of sensations like texture, vibration, stretch, and gentle touch. That’s right, our skin is just aching to be touched.
One class, called C-tactile afferents, evolved specifically to respond to soft, pleasurable touch, like a caress. When our skin is caressed, these cells send electrical impulses to our brain, letting it know the touch just got good! Our brain is instantly stoked, and floods our body with a cocktail of pleasure neurotransmitters.
If the touch is relaxing and nurturing, our brain pumps out serotonin, which creates feelings of well-being and happiness. If it’s sweet and loving, we get a dopamine high, signaling pleasure and reward. As we start to feel closer our brain releases oxytocin (the "love hormone”) giving us warm, gooey feelings of bonding and trust. If the touch is arousing or thrilling, we get endorphins (natural painkillers), and a feeling of euphoria.
This chemical cocktail sends waves of pleasure throughout our body, creating not only bliss in the moment, but also a genuine feeling of well-being. Our nervous system regulates. Our breath deepens. We feel more relaxed, comfortable, and open to deeper pleasure. In this heightened state of yummy buzz, we naturally feel more present, connected, and close to our partner. This is the pleasure chemistry of deep, satisfying sensual intimacy.
The download: Our body experiences pleasure through all the different kinds of physical touch.
The Second Secret: The Biggest Pleasure Organ
When most people think about sex, they usually think about genitals, lips, and maybe nipples. But the biggest pleasure organ on the body in terms of size, weight, and number of pleasure-ready nerve cells is actually all of our skin!
The average total male body surface area is 20 square feet. The average surface area of the adult male penis is 0.2 square feet. This means a man’s penis only represents 1% of his total skin capacity for receiving pleasure through touch.
The average total female body surface area is 17 square feet. The average surface area of the female vagina, interior and exterior is estimated at 0.25 square feet. This means a woman’s vagina, labia, and full clitoris only represents 1.5% of her total skin capacity for receiving pleasure through touch.
And sure, different areas of the body have different nerve cell concentration or sensitivity, but the brain and nervous system have amazing plasticity - meaning the more we play with touch in different parts of our body, the more we expand our body awareness and sensitivity to receiving pleasure!
The download: The more we can engage our entire bodies in pleasurable physical touch, the more we expand our capacity for full-body pleasure.
The Third Secret: Allowing More Time to Feel Pleasure
For most women, and even many men, it takes time to relax into feeling pleasure. We know what you’re thinking - who has time?! But, as the Merovingian quipped over his French wine in the Matrix, “If we never take time, how can we ever have time?”
Our nervous systems evolved over millions of years for self-protection in the wild, and a huge portion of our energy goes to being ready to respond to threats. Vagal Nerve Theory describes three main nervous system states: Freeze (shut down in response to trauma), Fight or Flight (Adrenaline pumping, ready to fight or run from a threat), and Safe and Social (Feeling safe enough to casually chat). We propose that the spectrum is far more nuanced.
If we spend the day sitting in commuter gridlock and high pressure situations at work, our system may very well be stressed when we get home. This means that stress neurotransmitters like cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine may be spiked in our blood. We’re probably not in Fight or Flight, but our chest may be tight, our breath may be shallow, and our heart rate may be elevated. In this case, it’s going to take a certain amount of time, relaxation, and pleasurable touch to help us deepen our breath, balance our chemistry, and feel emotionally present and available.
If we feel emotionally disconnected from our partner (perhaps due to unresolved conflict or old wounds), we may feel basically “ok”, but not yet ready for truly authentic intimacy. We may even be engaging in orgasmic sex with our partner without feeling truly emotionally connected, seen, or safe.
In both cases of stress or disconnection, the answer is to make time for safe, soothing connection through pleasurable touch. Specifically sensual, but not yet sexual touch. Why non-sexual? Because touch that is specifically sexual usually hyper-focuses on the genitals and sets a fast track for intercourse, and our goal is to slowly relax and engage the entire body for as long as possible to create more nervous system regulation, full-body pleasure, and connection before making the leap to intercourse.
The fool-proof secret to creating more time for pleasurable touch is having the right tools in your hands to make sensual play so irresistibly delightful that you want to keep playing, exploring, and deepening your practice.
The download: Slowing down, making time, and having the right tools for extended, full body pleasurable touch is the way to give and receive more pleasure, deeper intimacy and connection.
Bringing the Party Home
The technique that captures all 3 secrets - understanding how pleasure works, tapping the pleasure potential of all of our skin, and slowing down and taking time to drop into our bodies - is full body sensual touch. So, how do you bring this epic party home?
🌶️ Get the tools. After practicing the art of touch for more than 25 years, our team at Lit has designed a luxurious full kit of 12 sensation play tools for full body sensual pleasure. These amazing sensation play toys provide luscious, exciting new sensations for caressing and stimulating the 95% of our body that goes mostly untouched. Get all 12 tools together in our Totally Lit Kit.
🌶️ Get to Playing. Every Lit sensation tool comes with a playful practice to get you started. And you’ll find lots more in our free SPARK PLAYBOOK. SPARK stands for Sensuality, Presence, Affirmation, & Reverence Kink - you can think of it as our softer, more connected version of BDSM. The playbook contains an Intimacy Map and more tips, tools, and practices to help guide you on your journey to new worlds of pleasure and closeness.
🌶️ Subscribe and Follow. We’ll soon be launching in-person intimacy workshops and immersive retreats so stay tuned for the chance to dive deeper with us and take your practice to the next level.