Discovering pleasure and joy beyond penetrative sex can help alleviate genital pain in men. In my conversation with Heather Edwards, we dive into redefining sex, strategies to ease pain in and out of the bedroom, and how clinicians can make their practice more gender inclusive and positive.

The mission in moving forward is to create space for the parts that hurt while also bringing your awareness to other parts of your body that aren’t in pain and want your attention (like your ear lobe!). There are parts of your brain that are trying to protect you, so focusing your attention on parts that hurt is normal, but we don’t want to get stuck in these parts, we want to move through them.

Does size matter? Thoughts are just an opinion. The size that does matter is the size of your sexual energy: your passion and desire to experience connection, vulnerability, and caring intimacy with yourself and a partner. Vulnerability is a strength that allows you to live an authentic life. Learn tantra and Daoist techniques with Dominique D'Vita to stimulate nerve endings in different ways and discover your own pleasure preferences.

If you’re looking for one physical cause to your pain, you’ll never find it. Pain is influenced by how you feel about it, as much as it’s influenced by biomechanical, physiological, or pathological factors. There’s a lot of research on the mechanisms of pain, on rating pain, and strategies for treating pain, but research has widely ignored the impacts of persistent pain on a person’s life. Why is this missing puzzle piece so important? Because Tom Astill’s QoL study on pelvic pain connects the dots between how pelvic pain impacts your life and where you can begin to explore your attitudes, beliefs, and values to start feeling better. We’re zooming out and taking a look at everything with a wide scope. It’s all connected.