erotic breathwork: how to use your breath to unlock sexual fire, sensual energy + creative flow

What do you get when you cross a top aeronautical engineer at one of the leading global aircraft companies with an embodied pole dance instructor? One of the most energetically tapped in, brains-meets-body-meets-energy experts we know. Meet Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward, owner of Feminine Awakening, a sensual body movement practice that blends the technical aspects of pole with the energetic, sensual and creative flow we feel when we listen to our bodies, emotions and energy versus our mind chatter. Between teaching online and in-person pole/movement classes outside of Los Angeles, Mary Ann uses breathwork, brains and her senses to diagnose some of the most complicated, hard-to-solve engineering issues in order to keep planes in the air, not on the ground.

We tapped into Mary Ann's genius to help us tap into our bodies and ground them through erotic breathwork for better sex, more connected relationships, greater intimacy and stronger creative flow. In the meantime, book a workshop or class to feel her magic IRL.

xxx

What’s your experience using breathwork in your day to day life and career?

Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward:

I begin every day with breathwork. It grounds me to earth’s energy and opens up space in my energetic body to possibilities. It's a combination of feeling that quiet, calm state that makes me more in tune with my surroundings. I sense more around me including I feel, hear or see more creative ideas.

I also use breathwork to shield my energy when necessary. For instance, when I teach S classes I breathe my shield around me.  It has to be thin enough to feel the energy of my students without penetrating my energetic body.

The goal is to feel a boundary between me and another person or even another situation. I often ask students to think about a color or a texture of their boundary to help visualize it so when they’re in situations where they feel they need to create a boundary, it’s easier to feel protected and safe.

In sexual situations, you can use this boundary to tease and play energetically with your partner because you’re also feeling and sensing their energetic boundaries. One example might be, say you’re in the kitchen with your lover, you might walk closer than necessary to them to tap their energetic body and then walk away to play or flirt.

And you can see how this might work in a professional situation, you’re feeling more into how the spoken word lands into another body… that can be in a presentation, a coaching situation because it tells you what to do next: Should I repeat myself, say something in a different way, etc.

It can also alter the way you hold your body, for instance, if you feel that someone is being defensive, you can breathe more deeply. Finding more breath in your body can inspire someone else to feel more breath in theirs in turn making them feel more protected.

This ability to quickly breathe into a protected, grounded state has served me well during key points in my career and crisis times in my personal life.

The same way you can inspire calmness and protection in others, you can do for yourself. This is something you can do before or during a tough conversation, a meeting… and I find the calmer I am, the more creative I am.

How can doing erotic breathwork with our lovers help our relationship and sex life?

Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward:

Erotic breathwork with lovers requires paying close attention to each other. This focus and attention helps to sustain and augment the relationship and sex life.

It allows for more intimacy and also it tells you where they are in your sexual journey. You can tell how they’re feeling by listening to their breath. For instance, if someone is breathing shallowly, you might ask them “does this feel good?” or “are you okay?” or “do you need anything?”

How else can erotic breathwork techniques be used to deepen emotional + physical connection between partners?

Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward:

Breath is one way emotion is expressed through the body. Feeling your partner’s breath, i.e. temperature, intensity, on your skin connects you to your partner physically and emotionally. Feeling your partner’s breath means being in sync with it. If you’re breathing in the same rhythm, that puts you closer to what they’re feeling whether that’s calm or excited. There are also times I feel that I might’ve wandered off and this brings me back to the moment. Sometimes you’re distracted in life and this will get you back into this moment with pleasure. It’s like refueling and re-engaging. 
 

What are some specific erotic breathing techniques for lovers to try together and why?

Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward:

One technique is catch each other’s breath and mirror it. This brings into understanding the erotic emotion of your partner’s body.

You might also catch other emotions they might be feeling. For example, you might feel sad. That’s because energy leaves the body through breath, sound and movement. And those are all components of being erotic with yourself and/or your lovers. 

Have you ever taken a deep breath, which has then allowed tears to flow? Maybe those tears are in the background but the breath brings energy to that space and frees the emotion. And that’s true for all emotions you or your partner could be feeling from joy to sadness, whatever’s back there so to speak.

How can we set the stage for openness and communication with our partners before and after breathwork?

Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward:

It’s important to offer the idea and the why for trying it out. It's equally important to allow the other time to consider. Breathwork can only work if authentic consent is given.

This breathwork draws the boundary for both people together so it intensifies sexual satisfaction, tenderness, openness… what I say in my pole and body movement classes is to “inhale the body here into the space and exhale the outside world away.”

How can erotic breathwork be integrated into a regular intimacy practice, and how often and for how long should we practice to see an impact?

Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward:

The journey of the erotic body can’t be scheduled. Each body has their own schedule, which is very often different from the mind’s schedule. Practice will continue as long as there is pleasure — this is the impact.

After a while breathwork becomes integrated into people’s sex lives. Sometimes the outside world seeps in and the mind wanders off so it helps you to come back. Why would you think about something else when you’re supposed to be receiving and giving pleasure?

How can couples use breathwork during sex/intimacy? Say to prolong pleasure, foreplay, orgasm, etc.?

Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward:

One technique is to intentionally take your partner’s breath into your body. You’ll feel your partner’s heat and intensity from underneath your skin. This allows feeling the erotic charge of your partner differently, more deeply. At the same time your experience of pleasure changes.

The idea is to physically feel your lover’s breath, say, in your mouth or on your skin. By receiving it that way, you can feel whatever they’re feeling, hopefully their excitement and that augments there. In a non-sexual situation you see someone having a good time, so it makes you happy and feel good because you want to have a good time, too.

What sort of success stories or breakthroughs have you or your clients experienced doing erotic breathwork?

Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward:

As an embodied pole teacher, I have used the sensuality of breath to teach students how to awaken muscles in their erotic bodies and invite those muscles to lead the body into the pleasure of the desired movement. When they feel this pleasure, their erotic bodies do things they did not think was possible.

As a teacher mostly what I see the class is that when I can get someone to stop worrying about a pole trick and breathe and relax their body, they flow into the trick without consciously thinking about it. Their body has already learned it, but they’re worried. It’s almost like putting them into a calm state for them to feel what their body already knows.

I can give a very technical description of a pole trick and their brain is trying to figure it out, but if I breathe with them and stand beside them, I put a breath to the movement. You inhale and gather the muscles in your body to prepare them and exhale sends you to the destination. In this case, the pole trick. I’ve had many people say “I never believed I could’ve done that” and the breath takes them out of that head space. 
 

How can we use erotic breathwork techniques in other areas, say, to feel more creative, more powerful, more confident?

Mary Ann Forrest-Woodward:

Breathwork is used to ground one’s body and take in energy from the earth to move toward one’s desire. Breathwork can bring heightened awareness to the senses, so that one can hear/feel directions that come from the body.

One of the grounding techniques I do after deeper interactions is that 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…. I find 5 things I can see. I physically touch 4 things. I note in my brain 3 things I hear. I notice 2 things I smell. I focus on one thing I can taste. This is what I do when I feel I need to ground back into the earth’s energy. You can also do this before moving into a situation you’re nervous about.

How are you using breathwork to feel more erotic, dive deeper into your sensuality and ignite your body to become more orgasmically alive?