What Every Man Should Know About Sex

All right man, welcome back to the Mantalk show. Connor Beaton here and I wanted to start talking about how your arousal system as a man actually functions. You can learn very quickly how to deal with, you know, non medical erectile dysfunction, orgasming too quickly, performance anxiety. All of these things can be very quickly understood of how you can begin to move through them and prevent them and end them in your life for good by understanding how your sexual arous arousal system actually works. So let's start right there. So first and foremost, how does it work for you to get an erection? I asked this at a weekend that I recently led. I've asked this at events with, you know, hundreds of guys. And it's funny because most men will just respond with, well, just, you know, blood goes into my penis, I get hard and that's it. It's not that simple. The reality of what actually happens has much more to do with, with your autonomic nervous system. It actually has to do with that hinge between your sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. So just as a quick, brief reminder, and hopefully the scientific explanation supports because I found it to be very, very helpful. For a lot of men, your sympathetic nervous system is the gas pedal. That's what helps you get stuff done, that's your go button. But it's also the stress part of your nervous system. So when you're in that part, you're able to go and do things, you are able to execut on your task list and get things done around the house or at work. And the parasympathetic is that rest and digest nervous system. So you can think of this as like gas pedal for the sympathetic nervous system, brake pedal for the parasympathetic nervous system. So as you are more in that go mode, right, during the day, you're at the gym, you go to work, you're working on the task list, you're writing emails, all of that is putting you into this sympathetic nervous system response, which is not necessarily a bad thing, right? Some people think, oh, sympathetic, sympathetic is responsible for stress. And yes, in some ways it is. Because, you know, the more in your sympathetic you are oftentimes the more that you are releasing stress chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol. So that is true to some degree. And the more that you're in your parasympathetic, the more restful you are, the more relaxed you are, the more calm you are. So this is rest and digest because generally that's when your body, your, your heart rate slows down. Your breathing slows down as opposed to in your sympathetic. Your heart rate is elevated, your breathing is generally a little bit more shallow and quite a bit faster. And in your parasympathetic, that's when your body can start to really relax and soften. So what does this have to do with your erection and your sexual body as a man? Well, has to do everything with your sexual body. So here we go. When you get aroused as a man, when you get turned on, what actually happens is that your body moves into a more parasympathetic dominant response, a more rest and digest, a more relaxed response. And as you do that, it opens up the blood vessels in the body. It allows your heart rate to stabilize, but it also allows you to send blood to your genitals. And, and so the more relaxed you are, the easier that it is as you go through the act of whether it's masturbation or having sex or whatever it is, as you start to peak in your sexual arousal, you'll get closer and closer to that sympathetic nervous system response. So your breath will start to get more elevated, your heart rate will start to get more elevated, and your body will get closer and closer to that sympathetic system response. Now when you actually climax, when you orgasm, your body for a moment switches, the hinge goes, you know, a little heavier into that sympathetic nervous system response, into that gas pedal response. You climax, your whole body will constrict. So it's like having a stress response in, in many different ways. Your body will constrict, you'll climax, and then afterwards you relax, your body will release oxytocin, prolactin, a whole bunch of different bonding chemicals, relaxation chemicals, dopamine within the body, the reward chemical. And you'll feel a sense of relaxation for the most part. So what's important about how that system works, how that system of arousal works, is that the more relaxed you are, the deeper your breath is in the body, the slower your breath is, the easier that it is naturally to not only be aroused, but maintain an erection, a hard on. And the more stressed you are, which is what happens when you are experiencing performance anxiety. So what is performance anxiety? Well, performance anxiety is just self referencing. So your brain starts to go into this mode of am I okay? Am I performing okay? Am I going to stay hard long enough? Am I going to come too fast? Is she enjoying this? And it starts to self reference on your internal system. And when that happens, you start to move more into the sympathetic nervous system. So you start to move more into that stressed State naturally. So again, heart rate elevates, breath elevates all the things that would normally occur either at the moment of climax or right before or right after. So it puts your body into this response where it actually pulls blood away from your genitals and moves it more towards your brain, more towards your head. Because all of a sudden your brain is doing a whole bunch of gymnastics and questioning whether or not you are performing well or going to perform well or you know, whatever it is that you happen to be thinking about as you're going through this sexual encounter. So the more that you are thinking, the more that you're self referencing, the more that you're in that stress response, the more that your nervous system is in that sympathetic nervous system response, which can very much quickly as a performance. You know, if you've ever dealt with performance anxiety before, that can very quickly cause you to lose your erection or, or it can cause you to feel overly stressed or anxious or overly excited, which can cause you to ejaculate very quickly. So again, the more that you're close to that sympathetic nervous system response, the more likely you are to struggle to maintain an erection or ejaculate too quickly. So in order to combat this, in order to actually deal with any form of performance anxiety, erectile dysfunction, right, not being able to maintain an erection, which in some cases there are very real medical things here. So know that, you know, if you have some challenges happening in your heart, that can also be a cause or low, low testosterone. But for the most part, what most guys are experiencing is that they're just in a very stressed state. Right? And when I say stressed state, excitement can also be a very stressed state. So if you're engaging with a partner that you find really attractive and you're super turned on and you're like really aroused, that excitement produces a very similar response in your nervous system as anxiety, right. There's basically no difference neurochemically, physiologically and in your nervous system between anxiety and excitement. It's much to do with the frame. So the more aroused you are, the more close you are to that sympathetic nervous system response. So what do we do? How do you deal with this? Well, the best thing to know about your sexual arousal as a man is that you are breath acts as the hinge between your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic. So between that stress response and that relaxation response. So you kind of need to take a hold of the wheel of your breath and begin to deepen your breath on the inhale and extend Your breath on the exhale, deepen the breath on the inhale and extend the breath on the exhale. And as you do that, you can move some of that consciousness from constantly thinking and thinking about whether things are going well down into the body, down into sensation, down into how things actually feel, and begin to slow down the experience. Now, if you're with a partner that you've been with for a while, you can actually practice doing this and say, hey, I want to just practice going a little slower for right now and slowing down my breath. Will you breathe with me or I'm going to follow your breath and we're going to breathe together. And actually consciously allowing yourself to connect deeper to your breath, which is going to allow you to move your body into a more relaxed, parasympathetic response. And that will actually allow you to, over time, again, this is going to take some practice, but over time, maintain your erection for longer and also is going to allow you to have a little bit more dominion or control over your ejaculation. Now, this doesn't mean that you're going to be able to, you know, go for days or anything like that, but it will mean that, you know, if you're somebody that struggles with this and generally only lasts for, you know, a few, a few minutes, you're going to be able to prolong that for quite a bit longer. And what you do is that you allow yourself to start to acclimatize to some of the sensation. Now, one of the biggest challenges that I see a lot of men dealing with is that many, many, many men are just very stressed out. All. And there's no difference really between stress and anxiety, right? How we feel stress in the body and how we feel anxiety is very, very similar. So a lot of guys have a lot going on. They're busy at work, they're, you know, busy at home. They got task list to do, you know, they got bills, the whole thing. And then to let all of that go and have a sexual encounter where they're very relaxed is very challenging because their body has been, for the most part, all day long stuck in this, you know, go mode, right? The gas pedal is down, the sympathetic nervous system's on, they're getting shit done. They're, you know, you're getting your to do list done, you're firing off emails, you're planning strategies, et cetera. And then you come home and you want to engage with your partner and have a sexual encounter, but your body and your nervous system are still stuck in that overdrive Right. So you're firing at like 8000rpm and you can't get your body to slow down. So you can practice using some different breathwork practices before having sex, which is going to actually allow you to slow down, feel more grounded in the body. And the other practice that I walked you through before is being able to deepen the inhale. And what I mean by deepen the inhale is actually allowing the breath to go lower in the body. So for most men, and you can practice this, if you're listening to this, you can just take a nice inhale in and you can point to the part of your body on your torso, right on your chest or your abdomen where you felt the breath stop dropping in. So for most guys at the end of the day, their breath is like right at the very top of their chest, right near their collarbone. So it's very high in the chest. That's a very clear indication that your body is in a more sympathetic oriented response. It's in a more stress oriented response. So if you're able to deepen the breath and have the breath, actually feel it in the lower part of your belly, feel it dropping down with each inhale and extending the exhale and letting that breath drop down into the pelvic floor where there's actually another diaphragm, right? Your torso has two diaphragms. The diaphragm underneath your lungs and sort of above your stomach. And you have another diaphragm in your pelvic bowl, which is essentially your hips, right? Your hips are sort of shaped like a bowl. And in that bowl is another diaphragm that your, your PC muscles are connected to and those are essentially responsible for helping you to ejaculate. So the more that you can breathe all the way down into the base of your pelvic floor, the more you're going to feel relaxed. You're going to be connected to your body, you're going to be connected to the sensations of the, of your body. And the more you're going to be able to regulate your experience as you go through a sexual encounter. Hopefully this was beneficial and educational and I hope that you enjoyed share this with somebody that you know, has maybe dealt with a little bit of challenges with maybe their erections or orgasming too quickly or wants to be more present sexually in the bedroom or somebody that wants to have a little bit more mastery, sexual mastery and connection to their own sexual body and arousal. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.