Get It… OM

Once unlikely bedfellows, meditation and passion are the latest hot coupling. As a growing body of research suggests mindfulness has a Viagra-like effect on female sexual desire, WH reports on the trend you never saw coming

- Gemma Askham

A bead of sweat courses down your midsection before disappearing between your legs. You dig your fingernails into the sheets and arch your back as the pleasure builds, beginning beneath your pelvis and coming in waves. You’re close now – and your body knows it. This isn’t the start of bad clit-lit, but the beginning of a movement that’s set to change the way you have sex forever.

Sex is the latest activity to get a mindfulness makeover. Elevated from a bit-part role in your yoga class, the practice of training your mind to focus on the present is already informing eating, drinking and parenting techniques. But if the news that it’s infiltrated your bedroom arouses nothing but scepticism – isn’t it all about fantasy? – know that a growing body of research claims that mindfulness won’t just boost your sexual desire, it’s actually a vital precursor to it. To lay it bare, fail to take up mindful sex and you could be screwed.

Slump and grind

The stats on the current state of our collective sex lives make for depressing reading. According to a recent poll, the majority of our readers are getting jiggy just twice a month. And 45 percent are unhappy with their sex lives, with 52 percent saying that they want better sex as opposed to more sex, showing that quantity beats quality.