4. Life Enhancing Holistic Ways to Help You Feel Stronger and Last Longer

Ross, has lots of qualifications in Veterinary Science, Teaching, Holistic Therapists and absolutely none regarding sexual health. Still hopefully you will find these blogs honest, amusing and informative.

In the previous chapter we delved deeply into the anatomy and physiology of ejaculation. Next we are going to use this new found knowledge to develop some general strategies to help give you total voluntary control of ejaculation.

The single most important trigger for ejaculation is a biochemical called norephnephine. It is released at times of stress or excitement and is very similar to adrenaline (Nall, 2018). Chronic stress sensitizes our bodies to these triggers thus we will start by discovering ways of moderate their release in every day life and especially our reaction to norephnephine during sex.

In the last chapter we also discovered serotonin has been found to be the key factor in modulating ejaculation and acting as a break on our loss of control.

In this chapter we are going to discover natural, holistic and proven ways of increasing serotonin levels and moderating norepherine. Later in the blog I discuss artificial or medical ways of increasing serotonin levels, but first you need to read this.

Mindfulness to increase and prolong your enjoyment of sex.

Mindfulness is a major piece in the puzzle of delaying ejaculation and increasing your confidence during sex. It also has a multitude of profound other benefits that will increase your enjoyment of life:

• Increased ability to cope with stressful events
• Reduction in heart rate and blood pressure
• Aids positive decision making with regard to exercise, diet and avoiding destructive unhealthy behaviors.
• Improved mental and physical health
• Attuned emotional intelligence leading to better interpersonal communication, empathy and likelihood of positive relationships

Learning to spot, analyse and alter unhealthy thoughts and behavior is what mindfulness is all about. Practicing mindfulness will make your life more enjoyable in ways you can’t even imagine.
Importantly for this blog, mindfulness will help you detect and cope with the release of norephnephine. Having an early warning system of its release will give you the space for norephnephine to naturally disappear, before ejaculation occurs.

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

(Mindful, 2020)

Mindfulness is very simple, none exotic and does not need any equipment or tools, yet mindfulness is profoundly trans-formative. When Mindfulness is applied to sex, then it becomes a wholly different experience, one most people will never experience. Through mindfulness you will discover sensations and enjoyment beyond boundaries. There will be more on this in the chapter about Tantric Sex, but for now lets concentrate on the basics of mindfulness. By practicing the following exercises regularly you will soon develop a deep appreciation of mindfulness, watch carefully and you will notice how it is changing your life for the better.

Body scan and body awareness
The body scan meditation teaches us to focus our attention entirely on an element of our physical body, then voluntarily moving the spotlight of attention to another part of our body. Brief instructions on the Body Scan.

• Find a comfortable place to lie on you back at a time you won’t be disturbed for 10 to 20 mins
• Initially concentrate on your breath. In and out noticing how it feels, becoming aware of you breath leaving through your nose
• Once you feel grounded in your body it’s time to start the scan.
• Choose a small part of your body (could start with you toes) and pay close attention to any sensations in your toes, can you feel each individual toe? Notice any sensations maybe of warmth or coolness maybe the feeling of the material your socks are made of, or the the blanket that might be covering your feet, maybe you can’t feel anything this is OK too.
• Now actively move your attention to your ankle and repeat the process of becoming aware of your ankle.
• Whenever you find your self being distracted, don’t worry just return to the exercise.
• Methodically continue this exercise, experiencing each and every part of your body in turn.

Chances are you will have become distracted many times. Don’t worry every time you notice being distracted and you return to the body scan meditation the stronger you mindfulness skills will become.

This practice can very helpful in day to day life, perhaps during a disagreement or another time. If you feel you emotions are getting away from you, become totally aware of your toes and notice how this will make the emotional turmoil settle.

You can use this exercise to calm the norepherine release during sexual foreplay or intercourse. Just more your attention, giving your toes 100% awareness and notice how calming it can be. In due course once you have overcome premature ejaculation and able to truly enjoy sex, you will be able to hold the sensations from your penis in awareness, taking sex to another level.

Deep Breathing
There are various deep or controlled breathing methods. Here is one that works well for me.
Breath in through your nose for the count of four seconds push your stomach out as you breath in.
Hold your breath for the count of four seconds.
Breath out of your mouth for the count of 8 seconds.

Deep diaphragmatic breathing has a multitude of benefits including:
Relaxes you reducing the effect of stress hormone cortisol
Aids as a mindful distraction for an emotionally stressful or highly exciting situation (such as initiating sexual penetration)
Reduces heart rate (this is a physiological fact by increasing intrathoracic pressure you increase vagal nerve tone and reduce heart rate)
Reducing blood pressure
Deep breathing during sexual intercourse will delay ejaculation, for all of the reasons above. However you need to practice during relaxed times first. During sexual intercourse you can add an ahh and moan sound to the out breath. These sounds act as an audible deceleration of deep enjoyment. These sounds will most likely encourage your partner to climax, whilst calming your own desire to ejaculation. Everyone wins . . . .

Meditation on the Breath.
Regular meditation has numerous benefits, these tends to be very subtle yet life changing profound. There are also many different types of meditation practices each with their own styles benefits and challenges.
Here is one practice of meditation that I would urge you to try for between five and forty minutes.

Find a comfortable place to sit. Its not important to be on the floor with crossed legs, but you should be in a position that promotes concentration and alertness, sitting upright on a dining room chair would be perfect.
You can either close your eyes or gently stare at a blank wall.
Become aware of your breath, that just means notice it. There is no need for any special breathing just breath naturally.
Count your breath one through to ten. Then start at one again. Just keep going.
When you notice your mind wandering off, just come back to your breath.

Meditation is that simple, try it, when you mind wanders return to the breath. Meditation is the practice of trying, if your trying your meditating.

How can meditation help you delay involuntary ejaculation?

Meditation is a training exercise, with regular practice you will be better able to keep your awareness where you want it.
Meditation also helps us learn that our thoughts and emotions are distinct from our material self. We have thoughts and emotions like storm clouds forming in the sky, but they are just immaterial and pass quickly. By helping recognise thoughts and emotions that will trigger ejaculation and letting them pass will prevent or delay the release of norepherine.
Meditation practice will help you stay present during sex and prevent you from getting carried away into some pornographic imagined fantasy world designed to trigger rapid ejaculation.

Awareness Meditation on the Pulse.
This is the last meditation practice I am going to describe here, but there are hundreds of others. Meditation of your pulse is very similar technique to that describes above, apart from instead of focusing your awareness on your breath, see if you can sense you heart beat. Just sit and feel your heartbeat, become totally aware of it. See how long you can stray totally aware of your hear beating in you chest, maybe you can even feel the pulsation travelling through your body.
You will find this meditation training very useful during sex, monitoring your heart beat will give you invaluable information about the release of norepherine surging through your body, but also you should be able to notice your heart slowing again and blood pressure returning to normal and your bodies natural homeostatic systems relax again after this surge. Remember to take a couple of deep breaths, smile and very gently continue with intercourse.

Other ways of reducing you stress levels and potentially you blood pressure too. Remember chronic stress will excite those ejaculative reflexes and increase your tendency for premature ejaculation.
Get more exercise
Take a serious look at your work life balance
Reduce or completely cut out alcohol, you probably think it relaxes you, but really it as the opposite effect.

Reduce other other stimulants for example caffeine.
Stop smoking, it stinks and dramatically reduces the likelihood of anyone wanting to have sex with you, but it also elevates blood pressure and general anxiety.
If you suffer from stress, anxiety or depression seek counselling or help from your GP.

Take regular saunas, these help remove residual stress biochemicals from your skin through sweating. They can be really useful for chronic pain and stress relief.

Cold water baths, these have been pioneered by Wim Hof and have a plethora of positive effects on mental and physical well being. One important physiological effect is they appear to train out mind and body to cope with stress better. Remember essentially ejaculation is a stress reaction.

Serotonin
In the previous chapter we discussed the role of the biochemical serotonin and its role in moderating and delaying ejaculation.
It makes good sense to think about holistic ways to increase serotonin levels, as this will not only aid your voluntary control of ejaculation but also make you feel happier in every aspect. Yes seritonin is that important.

Here are a few ways that you can naturally increase serotonin levels or at least give your body the tools to produce more.
Diet. you can’t just eat foods with serotonin in them, but what you can do is to ensure your body has plenty of the amino acid that our body makes seritonin from, called tryptophan.
Foods that are high in tryptophan are the ones that have a high quality protein source of amino acids, such as nuts and seeds.

‌Raypole, 2019 suggests its important to eat something high in carbohydrate alongside the high quality protein to help the tryptophan be absorbed effectively. One of my favorite tricks is to put a small handful of cashew nuts and mixed seeds into my breakfast cereal or munch a banana with your nuts. Life hack – you can get broken cashew nuts in massive bags from Home Bargains at a fraction of the cost of the perfect ones in little bags from the supermarket.

Exercise, increases blood levels of tryptophan in your body. It is suggested that moderate aerobic exercise is the best for this such as swimming, cycling or jogging. (Raypole, 2019)

Sunshine and bright light
Taking time to get outside into the sunshine has been found to increase seritonin levels, (Sansone and Sansone, 2013) found it also appears that out skin can synthesize serotonin from sunshine.
We instinctively know what a difference a beautiful sunny day can make to our mood.

Gut health
As the majority of seritonin is made in the gut, it makes perfect sense to look after our gut health, one important way of doing this is by eating a large variety off different foods. (Burrell, S. 2020) suggests we try and eat 30 different types of food each week. Eating a large number of different things on a regular basis ensures good diversity supporting a wide range of gut bacteria. This range of bacteria keeps our gut in good condition.‌

Gives enough diversity to support a wide range of gut bacteria to help keep out gut in tip top condition.

Massage also helps increase serotonin levels

‌In a study of cortisol and serotonin levels in pregnant women Field et al., 2004 found that regular massage had a very positive effect of reducing the former and increasing the latter.

Their study indicated massage is most effective if done regularly, but I would suggest a monthly visit to a massage therapist is enough to make a noticeable improvement to you mental and physical well being.

With regards to premature ejaculation, a slow massage both giving and receiving as part of your love making foreplay is certainly going to help relax both partners Getting used to being touched and allowing time for the initial norepherine surge to pass, it may well also help increase serotonin levels even after a short time. The study suggested 20 mins, however if you are going to incorporate massage into a long luxurious evening of love making why not increase this to an hour or so?

Being happy can actually increase serotonin levels too. Learning to visualize yourself being calm and in control could actually increase your serotonin levels. This is another meditation technique, and there are some excellent transcendental guided meditations by Glenn Harrold available.

Chapter homework – A visualization meditation.

Try visualizing yourself and your partner gently making love, with your self relaxed and in control of your ejaculation reflexes. With your eyes closed visualize intercourse try to imagine the sensations on your penis as it eases effortlessly through her labia, vaginal entrance and deep inside. Notice you heart rate and anxiety levels, are they rising, remember this is only a visualization exercise you are in total control, relax and enjoy the imagined scene feel the anxiety dissolve away and your feelings of delightful pleasure as you allow yourself to deeply penetrate her vagina safe in the knowledge that you are 100 percent in control of your reflexes and in the knowledge that you can enjoy these sensations and delightful love making as long as you both wish.
As you begin to relax more deeply imagine your partners breath begin to become more hoarse as she feels increasingly pleasured by your newfound longevity. Maybe you will visualize other sexual positions that you have never yet experienced due to your premature ejaculation.
Now imagine the involuntary tightening of her vagina around your penis as she starts to orgasm and your feeling of completeness knowing that you can be in control of when you ejaculate and that a new beautiful world of sexual pleasure opens up before you.

Now open your eyes and relax, a lot of this chapter has been about healthy living, eating, mental attituds and exercise. These tend not to be very glamorous in our society, but believe me they are worth pracicing and can transform your whole life not just sex.

The next blog is about sex and drugs. This will be an honest and amusing personal account of my experiences. I guess it will be a short chapter interesting but with no magic bullet or pharmacological solution to premature ejaculation. It should be published before the end of the summer so be sure to join my mailing list and be notified once its published.

Future blogs in the pipe line – still requiring a fair bit of writing.

• Initiating sex, relaxing positions and easy riding for long lasting sex
• Dates, honesty and non egocentric love making
• Tantra, more than just sex

Cheers Ross

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Reference List

Burrell, S. (2020). Why you should eat 30 different foods a week (and how to do it). [online] Good Food. Available at: https://www.goodfood.com.au/good-health/why-you-should-eat-30-different-foods-a-week-and-how-to-do-it-20200813-h1pzn7 [Accessed 3 Jun. 2021].

Field, T., Diego, M., Hernandez-Reif, M., Schanberg, S. and Kuhn, C. (2004). Massage therapy effects on depressed pregnant women. Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, [online] 25(2), pp.115–122. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15715034/ [Accessed 5 Jun. 2021].

Mindful. (2020). What is Mindfulness? – Mindful. [online] Available at: https://www.mindful.org/what-is-mindfulness/ [Accessed 31 May 2021].

Nall, R. (2018). What’s the Difference Between Epinephrine and Norepinephrine? [online] Healthline. Available at: https://www.healthline.com/health/epinephrine-vs-norepinephrine#excess [Accessed 11 Jun. 2021].

Raypole, C. (2019). 6 Ways to Boost Serotonin Without Medication. [online] Healthline. Available at: https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-increase-serotonin#diet [Accessed 3 Jun. 2021].

Sansone, R.A. and Sansone, L.A. (2013). Sunshine, serotonin, and skin: a partial explanation for seasonal patterns in psychopathology? Innovations in clinical neuroscience, [online] 10(7-8), pp.20–4. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779905/ [Accessed 3 Jun. 2021].

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