How to Get the Station

For women, learning to tune into their sexual responses may be easier said than done. Even female rats have difficulty with focus during sex. In The Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Kinsey reports: "Cheese crumbs spread in front of a copulating pair of rats may distract the female, but not the male."

So how do you increase your focus? One approach is through mindfulness training. You can train yourself to tune out distractions and pay closer attention to physical sensations. Mary Roach reports on the results of a study with eighteen women who complained of arousal difficulties. After participating in mindfulness training, "...there was a significant jump in their ratings of how aroused they'd been feeling during sexual encounters."

Mindfulness is about being present in the moment - focusing on all the good feelings in your body instead of mentally ticking off items on your to-do list or worrying about your body being a turn-off to your partner. It's about stilling the mind - shutting down the chatter in the left hemisphere of the brain and learning to just be. It takes practice, but it's a skill that has payoffs both inside and outside the bedroom.