After almost 20 years of training martial arts I quit with a heavy heart. During the very last training session these 15 parallels between sexuality and martial arts popped into my head. It felt like both my education in sexuality and in the martial arts finally found a way to show me that they are basically the same.

1. Safety and Trust

First things first.

Without feeling safe there is no surrender – not during sex and not during martial arts. When you don’t feel safe with your partner you will always stay alert and expect something bad to happen.

How to do it: Create a container of trust with setting clear boundaries and sticking to the agreements.

2. Solo and partnered

Most likely you expect sex and martial arts training as a partnered experience. And while this can be the case, both practices benefit from solo experiences. In martial arts you do your kata or shadow boxing with clearly defined, repetitive and even ritualized movements. However, self pleasuring opens up the space for anything you feel like doing. Even more so, it invites you to get creative and experiment with yourself.

How to do it: Make time and space for an intimate experience with yourself and dive into the experience.

3. Focus

What’s the point of doing either martial arts or sex without focus? I’m not saying that you leave out the spontaneity or fun, quite on the contrary! However, focus brings everything you do alive. Actually, I am convinced that you will not be able to have the sex of your dreams or become even close to the good martial artist you could be without focus.

How to do it: Bring your awareness to your body, feel the sensations that are present in your body. Stay curious about the movements, sensations and impulses of your body.

4. Basics

Even though for a beginner the basics soon feel boring, the master will often return to the basics because they know that it is in the basics where the keys of the art are hidden – often in plain sight.

How to do it: Love the basics and assume that you have only scratched their surface when you move on to more advanced techniques. For my sexuality coaching one of the basics is the body meditation.

5. Presence

Presence is the only space where your experience exists. Presence adds depth to your practice that cannot be achieved any other way. Some wonderful byproducts of presence are stillness, flow, awareness, gratitude, and lack of worries.

How to do it: Be. Activate your senses. Feel what you feel. See as if you saw for the very first time. Cherish the moment and trust that after this moment there will be another moment and another. Each moment will offer you something, be it learning, pleasure, surrender etc.

6. Repetition

Learn the basics really well and you will reach mastery.

How to do it: Save yourself the waste of time to mindlessly repeat. Instead slow down and focus.

7. DO it to learn it

You can’t Kamasutra-read your way to sexual ecstasy just like watching all Bruce Lee movies on repeat doesn’t teach you how to do a powerful punch.

How to do it: Practice! Decide and follow through.

8. Sweaty

Oh yes. Sometimes you’ll have cuddle sex and a calm, feely martial arts training and sometimes you will sweat all over yourself and your partner.

How to do it: Relax. This happens to the best of us

9. There’s always something to learn

This means that you cannot reach perfect mastery of a skill. Humbling and true. The more you learn about something, the more questions you usually have and the deeper you’ll want to go with it.

How to do it: When you feel like you have almost mastered something, keep going and be prepared to be humbled.

10. Teachers

If you want to dive into the skill of sex or martial arts you will want to choose a teacher that vibes with you. And yes, sex is also a skill you can get better in and will benefit from your whole life.

How to do it: You will feel when you are ready to learn from someone. Trust your body wisdom and choose your teacher from this place.

11. It’s different with everyone

It is beautiful to notice the differences in one and the same movement when practiced with another person, another body, another personality.

How to do it: Be courageous and say yes to the new and you will be rewarded with a vastly wider range of experiences and new possibilities of learning the skill.

12. Everyone can be a teacher

As everyone is and acts differently you can learn something from every partner.

How to do it: Lessen the thought that you are doing it right and the other person is doing it wrong. Instead try “What can I learn here?”

13. Good foundations

The foundations include the basics of the skill, the boundaries and your inner center. In martial arts you want to keep learning how to strengthen your footing with the force that wants to throw you out of balance. In sexuality you want to get very clear on your desires, your consent and your communication. Also self-love plays a role here alongside sexual health and healing.

How to do it: Be aware and continue working on these skills.

14. Boundaries

Boundaries create a safer space of trust, which is the foundation of surrender and real learning. In martial arts the school should have a set of rules everyone agrees upon in order to create a safer space for the students. In sexuality the boundary setting is up to you and your partner(s).

How to do it: Get clear about your boundaries first. Then bring them to a calm conversation with everyone involved and keep talking until everyone consents.

15. Free expression

That’s where we finally want to go. Here we combine spontaneity with the basic skills, invite curiosity and an open mind to the experience and let the magic happen.

How to do it: Apply the foundations and then let them go as you are caught by flow.

I have the faint idea that these similarities don’t only exist between sexuality and martial arts, but really are true for every skill in life. The foundations change, yet the focus, sweat, boundaries and so on stay.