THE ART OF SENSUALITY

What Good Food, Good Conversation, and Good Sex Have in Common.

When one hears the word “sensual” images of erotic closed-door memories often flash to mind. 

Bare Skin. Flushed Cheeks. Bitten Lips. 

But I’ve discovered that incorporating sensuality into your everyday — the way you get ready in the morning, how you undress at night, certainly the way you eat — can change life as you know it.

Suddenly, the peach tastes juicer, the kiss feels more urgent, and you have an innate knowing that the sun is feeding your vitality. Sensuality is being so connected to the moment you’re in that you can’t help but live in the most precious place there is — the present.

To be in tune with sensuality is to have a lifeline to the divine. 

You may be thinking, “This all sounds well and good, but how do we stay in touch with our sensuality amongst smartphone vibrating, Slack pings, and Bravo reunions?”

This week’s issue hopes to unveil some ideas for you, friend.

To embracing our muse in every moment,

Kayli

---

From Bonjour Tristesse // Hugo Grenville // Woman Writing // Jean Shrimpton for Harper’s Bazaar, 1964 // Audre Lorde in the Sun // Jia Li’s Summer Light, 2015

---

I’ve found five aspects to be important to stepping into sensuality:

1. Evocation of the Five Senses

Taking stock of how I feel, what I smell, what I’m seeing, the sounds I’m hearing, and if applicable, the taste of what I’m tasting.

2. Noticing

This often means noticing smaller things that may go overlooked. Seeing the whole picture.

3. Appreciating

Pausing to appreciate.

4. Meaning

Assigning meaning can be so helpful when embracing sensuality. “This food is nourishing my body so I can go for my evening run!” “I’m washing away unwanted energy in my afternoon shower.”

5. Intuitiveness

Tapping into my intuition + using it to take the right next step has been essential for my journey with my own sensuality.

Some ways you can incorporate sensuality into your day-to-day…

Okay, first things first! Self care can look so many different ways. Eating healthy meals can be self care, spooning into The Tonight Dough can be self care, calling your mom can be self care, choosing to say “no” to a friend when she asks about a late-night Tuesday dinner res can be self care, but for this particular point, we’re going to talk about our getting ready + winding down routine as self care.

- Lathering your lotion or body oil on slowly. Taking in the scents, the feel of it on your skin, thanking each body part as you massage it for all it does for you.

- Standing under the hot water in the shower, sensing the drops hit your body. Perhaps imagining any energy you no longer want to claim, any stressful events of the day, wash down the drain to be blessed, transmuted, and transformed for the greater good. No longer in your orbit.

- Taking the time to feel your clothing items + enjoy the variety of colors and styles in your closet in the morning. Choosing what you wear based on your intuition.

- Brushing your teeth for the full two minutes and not needing to distract yourself. No phone scrolling, no small chores around your bathroom, simply brushing + taking a moment of your morning to settle in.

- Not reaching for your phone first thing in the morning! Instead, opening your eyes, taking a deep breath along with a loooong cat-like stretch, and thinking of three things you’re grateful for.

- Brushing your hair and feeling how good the bristles feel against your scalp. Not rushing the mundane.

- Not avoiding mirrors in the morning, but instead gazing at yourself lovingly, expressing how much you love and appreciate the person looking back at you.

“Availability dulls us to what’s right in front of us — what’s ripe and in season and flavorful. It makes us disregard all of that…When you have been eating those second-rate tomatoes all year long, you’re not really interested in the real thing when it comes around. Maybe you aren’t even sure you actually like tomatoes, after eating all those flavorless, watery versions. Because you’re numb…You’re not appreciating where the food came from, who grew it… The amazing mystery and work of agriculture disappear from your life.” - We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto by Alice Waters

- Make a point to visit a farmers market on your next grocery day. Take stock of what’s on the tables, feel the fruits and vegetables, and choose the ones that feel good to you. Talk to the farmers about their crops, ask them questions, question how they most love to use their items, smell the aromas of fresh air and dirt. Bonus: Going without a list and letting your intuition guide you.

- Care for each item as if it were going directly inside of you. Because it is. Wash each item and dry it in a cloth towel, core tomatoes with your fingers feeling their juices, hold the tarragon up to your nose and enjoy its licorice scent.

- Create a colorful plate. Try to see how many colors you can add and take in the gorgeous sight of a freshly peeled orange alongside newly harvested snap peas.

- Set the ambiance. How can you create an even more sensual atmosphere? Could you light a candle? Get your colorful tablecloth out of storage? Take your meal outside to eat with a view of the trees? Meal time is a reason to slow down, savor, and enjoy.

- Before eating a meal, thank all of people and forces that had to come together so you could enjoy your bounty — the farmers who tend the soil, the truck driver who delivered your grains, Mother Earth/God for creating such wonderful produce. Take the bowl up to your nose and inhale the aromas. Then, bite in and really taste the flavors.

- Are you gearing up for your next bite before swallowing the last? Try to move even slower and savor what you’re eating. When we eat slowly, our bodies are more likely to get into a state of Rest & Digest, which means we’ll also digest our food easier.

- Eat as seasonally as you can + get food at its peak. Not sure what’s in season? You can easily look, here.

"Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.” - Gustave Flaubert

- Walk around your home without clothes when able + look lovingly at your body parts. Shimmy, dance, touch your body praising how beautiful they are + all of the times it has got you through.

- If it’s creating resistance, it isn’t right for you – in that moment, maybe ever. Take a deep breath and honor your body’s needs, desires, and messages.

- Ask for or give yourself what you desire. Tuning out or straight-up denying our desires is a surefire way to sever our divine connection to sensuality.

- Being present during sex and self-pleasure is a key to a heightened experience. Take some deep breaths before dropping in, touch, kiss, play, and allow yourself the pleasure of time.

- Making intentional eye contact has been a proven way to increase arousal.

- Create time for foreplay — both emotional and physical. Massage can be a wonderful, and erotic, way to start sinking into your senses.

“Sometimes the greatest adventure is simply a conversation.” - Amadeus Wolfe

- When having a conversation, make it a point to be fully there. Disconnect from screens and gaze at the person speaking.

- Remaining curious helps others to feel heard and allows for you to have a deeper understanding, making for a deeper connection. Ask questions, even a “how did that make you feel?” can go a long way.

- Listening to understand, not respond. When you listen to understand, you’re fully immersed in the conversation at play. When you’re listening to respond, your mind is firing away pondering what you’ll say next, points you want to bring up, or other things that mean you aren’t giving the speaker your undivided connection. A missed bid for both of you.

- Creating a relaxed, safe space where conversation can thrive. Can you offer tea? Invite a friend for a convo on the sofa with pillows abound?

- Being vulnerable, if one feels safe, is a great way to bring more presence and deeper meaning to a conversation.

- Honesty can lead to moments where you have increased feelings of understanding. Next time a friend asks how you are, challenge yourself to answer honestly + see how that feels in your body.

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." - Annie Dillard

- Time. Time is the ultimate gift isn’t it? Giving yourself the present of time to complete tasks means you’re able to clean your living room (and even get the fan blades!), run to the post office without finding yourself frenzied in line, and calling our mother without a set end-time, allowing ourselves to be in the moment, taking life in.

- Driving, hopping on the subway, riding the bus. If you’re driving, you can turn on music and take in the road ahead without worrying about what waits ahead. If you’re on public transport, resist the urge to pull out your phone. Take a deep breath, settle into your seat, and take inventory of your surroundings.

- Set a day each week to take a sensory walk. A meandering walk without earphones, without phone calls, without a buddy, and simply notice. Notice the color of the leaves on the trees, the smells as you pass your neighborhood bakery, take your sneakers off and ground into the Earth at a nearby park.

- Disable notifications + instead check what you feel called to X times a day, all together. When you do, take a few deep breaths and take stock of how these alerts make you feel. How can you tailor your relationship to them based on those messages?

- At the start of the day, or even the start of a task, visualize how you want it to go. See yourself rising out of bed and enjoying your cuppa. Envision yourself chopping the cucumber smelling its freshness. Imagine the people you’ll smile at in line at the grocery store. Fun Fact: Just imagining to move particular parts of our body trains the muscles almost as much as actual movement! The power of visualization.

---

---

Francine Van Hove’s “Quai des Brumes”

✨✨✨

- Coming to My Senses (Amazon, Bookshop)

- At the Pond (Amazon)

- The Memory of Lavender and Sage (Amazon, Bookshop)

- Provence 1970 (Amazon)

- A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (Amazon, Bookshop)

- Of Women and Salt (Amazon, Bookshop)

- Talking At Night (Amazon, Bookshop)

- Delicious! (Amazon)

- Kitchen Confidential (Amazon, Bookshop)

- Writers and Lovers (Amazon, Bookshop)

- You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty (Amazon, Bookshop)

- The Summer Job (Amazon)

- Save Me the Plums (Amazon)

- Seven Days in June (Amazon, Bookshop)

- Black Cake (Amazon, Bookshop)

- One Last Stop (Amazon, Bookshop)

- The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany (Amazon)

- Eight Hundred Grapes (Amazon, Bookshop)

- Picnic in Provence (Amazon, Bookshop)

- They’re Going to Love You (Amazon, Bookshop)

---

Still from Stealing Beauty

- Stealing Beauty (1996)

- Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

- The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

- La Piscine (1969)

- A Room with a View (1985)

- Adore (2013)

- The Taste of Things (2023)

- To Rome With Love (2012)

- Before Sunrise (1995)

- Eat, Pray, Love (2010)

- Maestro (2023)

- Saltburn (2023)

- Licorice Pizza (2021)

- Renoir (2012)

- Summertime (1955)

---

What makes touch on some parts of the body erotic but not others? Cutting-Edge biologists are arriving at new answers.

---

The Intentional Muse is a labor-intensive work of love. If you’re able, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, and as always, a share of the missives are so appreciated. 💖