Why Fascia Might Be Your Most Powerful Sexual Organ

The organ science overlooked — and why it might be the key to your health, your pleasure, and your intuition

If you have ever spent a very enjoyable time dreaming about a reunion with a romantic partner, feeling a little horny only by thinking of a passionate kiss, you know why experts say that the brain is our most powerful organ. What makes this even more extraordinary is that we need only our imagination — summoning the smell, the touch, the voice of the loved one  — to awaken the desire in us.

But the brain does not work alone. The desire building up in us is felt and expressed in the body. Conventionally, and quite reductively, most of us equate sex with intercourse, which, in turn, makes us think about sex as an action, something to do, not a communion, something to reach, something to be. 

Many of us dream of a relationship as bright and sweet as the honeymoon, even though we fear the passion will wear off over time. And when we look at the divorce rates around the world, we might fear the worst. 

Have you heard about The Coolidge Effect? 

The Coolidge Effect is a biological and psychological phenomenon where individuals experience renewed sexual interest and increased arousal upon the introduction of a new sexual partner, even if they were previously sexually satiated with a familiar partner. It is largely driven by surges of dopamine in the brain’s reward centres when exposed to novel stimuli. (source: Wikipedia).

The name of the phenomenon is attributed to an old joke about Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States:

President Coolidge and his wife were visiting a farm. Mrs Coolidge noticed a rooster mating repeatedly and asked how often that happened. “Dozens of times a day,” said the farmer. “Tell that to the President,” she said. When Coolidge was told, he asked: “Same hen every time?” “No, different hens.” “Tell that to Mrs Coolidge.”

Beauty fades. Attraction fades. Energy fades. And slowly, without noticing, our marriages become routines.

Do you know what never fades? Connection. Authentic connection. Authentic connection is the best antidote to the Coolidge Effect. 

We all feel moved, or at least intrigued, by stories about couples who stayed together for decades, radiating that inner light that says, “We are enjoying each other’s presence.”

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature. Beautiful old people are works of art.” Do you know what's even more impressive than an old man or woman who let life polish them in a work of art? A couple that transforms their relationship into a masterpiece, something to inspire a novel.

What makes a relationship a work of art? Communication. And what's the cornerstone of communication? Listening. 

If this makes you think, “my partner is bad at communication, he has no idea how to listen”, let me stop you right there:

The truth is, we all know how to listen. 

Forget the advice about nodding often, making eye contact, and repeating the last words of your interlocutor. We don’t consult a checklist when we’re genuinely absorbed in something.

The secret is, then, to make things more interesting. How do we do that?
By slowing down. We listen by being present, by showing that we care. 

And this is true both when talking and making love.
Making love is having a conversation with our bodies. And in this most intimate conversation, we listen with our touch, because our bodies speak through fascia. 

I discovered this gradually. As a massage therapist trained in both Swedish and Tantra massage, I was giving what I was yearning to receive — and I had no one to give it to me. So I started a daily self-massage practice. After a few months, something shifted. My body started speaking. And for the first time, I was listening.

I've started to feel intuitively how to better work with blockages, untangle the knots in my muscles, and use movements to bring fluidity where the blockage was. 

The best part? This exploratory journey was done at the end of the day, relaxing me into a sleep that got better and better each night until I reached the point where a night of uninterrupted sleep is now the rule, not a miraculous exception.

I introduced two particular factors in my exploratory practice: breath and music.

Breath. That breath influences everything we do is a fact beyond controversy. Paying attention to our breath is a meditation in itself. With my undiagnosed ADHD, this is the meditation that works for me because it can be done everywhere, at any time. 

Five minutes in a queue? That's enough time to focus on my breath, maybe even using a soft Humming Bee Breath. I can even add some light ankle exercises while humming, and that`s very satisfying for my activity-craving brain. 

More, combining my self-massage ritual with the humming bee breath brought me into an extended consciousness state where the boundary between doing and feeling dissolved — and that’s where fascia began to speak. 

Music: I have a long playlist with songs that help me achieve the desired state of mind.
For self-massage, the song I begin and end my sessions with is ”Te honro cuerpo hermoso” by @MúsicaExpansiva. I encourage you to give it a try. This is a soundtrack worth having. 

For intense workouts, especially for what I call “Punching Bill” Sessions, the starting point is always “Feed Us Your Girls” by Lydia the Bard. If this doesn't motivate a woman to get stronger, I do not know what does. 

I have a playlist for any feeling I want to work with, especially for the “bad” ones, the ones we constantly try to deny or hide from: fear, anger, sadness, frustration.
Very different states, very different music — the same body, learning to listen to itself.

But music taught me something beyond movement and mood — it taught me to pay attention to what my body was already saying. And once I started listening, I couldn’t unhear it.

Would you like to hear what I've learned? I've learned that bodies speak in a binary language of pain and pleasure, one manifested in our wide range of emotions and the freedom of our movements.
And, in the same way, your vocal apparatus is the biological infrastructure for your speech, your fascia is the seat of your body awareness.

Fascia is not just the tissue that wraps your muscles and organs. It is the biological foundation of intimacy itself — the organ through which we feel ourselves, feel others, and are felt in return.

Have you ever felt like your body was wearing a suit two sizes too small? Or that something deep inside was pulled tight, like rubber bands wrapped around your muscles? Maybe a persistent heavy ache that lives somewhere you can’t quite reach, or joints that feel compressed, with no room to breathe or expand? Most of us carry these sensations for so long that we stop noticing them. We call it stress, or age, or just the way things are. But what we’re feeling is fascia not flowing properly.
Those hard-to-describe symptoms are our body, crying out to be heard.

“To hear what?” you ask. The answer is your needs.
Do you cringe a little when hearing the word “needs”? Did your mind bring back labels like “needy” or “selfish”? If so, this is the signal you need to work harder to connect with your needs.

Marshall Rosenberg, whose work on Nonviolent Communication changed how millions of people understand human connection, tells us that there is nothing wrong with having needs :

"Needs, as I use the term, can be thought of as resources life requires to sustain itself. For example, our physical well-being depends on our needs for air, water,  rest, and food being fulfilled. Our psychological and spiritual well-being is enhanced when our needs for understanding, support, honesty, and meaning are fulfilled." (Marshall Rosenberg — Nonviolent Communication)

There is nothing wrong with having needs. Plants have needs: good soil, the right amount of water, sun, bees to pollinate them, animals to eat their fruits, prepare the seeds for germination and spread them to distant areas to find new homes for the next generation. 

Even the simplest elements have needs. Hydrogen and oxygen need each other and a spark of light to become water. And water, once born, needs gravity to find its way home. There is nothing in existence — no being, no molecule, no drop of rain — that is free of needs.

Now that we've learned that “A need is life seeking expression within us” — to quote Marshall Rosenberg again, let us have a look at how often we actually hear what our body is saying.

For example, let us consider how we eat:
Because the brain processes the signals for both thirst and hunger in the same region, it is very easy to confuse them. Experts estimate that many people mistake dehydration for a cue to eat, reaching for snacks when the body is, in reality, asking for fluids.

How unsettling is this? To fail to interpret something as vital as needing water?
To use one of my dearest quotes of Marshall Rosenberg: “If you’re not really in touch with your feelings and needs, you’re not in touch with life.”

Ready to start listening? To get in touch with Life itself? The next articles will show you how — through fascia, through touch, through the body’s own language.