The Sleep Sex Stress Connection
“Sleep and sex is a very vulnerable state. In order to do either we need to be in our parasympathetic nervous system. We need to feel safe, in our environment but also in our own skin.”
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Ep 156
The Sleep - Sex - Stress connection
Not again! She’s talking about sleep again. Yes, I know we’ve had lots of podcasts on sleep. You’re probably really tired of hearing about it. But sleep or lack of it is probably the number one complaint people have and the number one thing that we need to improve any and all areas of our health. Everything we do during the day can affect how we sleep from what we eat and drink to when we eat and drink, when and how we exercise, whether or not we get outside to the temperature of the room and the state of our sex life. But today I want to talk about something different in relation to sleep, sex and stress. And that’s our perception of safety.
Let’s talk a bit about where stress comes from. Not the sources of it in our lives because that can be anything. I’m talking about in the body. How the nervous system evolved to keep us safe and help us survive. I think by now we all know about the fight or flight response. That’s the sympathetic nervous system and when we’re awake it is activated at some level. That’s how we get out of bed. When we say fight or flight we think that’s triggered by threat, like a lion or tiger. Evolutionarily stress (distress) is too much, too fast, too loud or anything new. It can and does trigger the same nervous system response in the body. It could also be triggered by not enough water, air, food, shelter, connection/help from other people. The nervous system doesn’t like any kind of uncertainty. It evolved to see all those things as threats and to react accordingly. It does that by taking all of the body's resources (in other words, blood) and sending it to the skeletal muscles, heart & lungs and the brain. Not to think but to keep you alert and get you what you need in any way possible. That’s all fine and good living out in the wild woods like naked and afraid not so great when you're in your own bed.
We know when we get stuck in patterns of hypervigilance that it can interfere with our sleep. And that a lack of sleep for too long can raise our stress response.
In this state, this sympathetic state the nervous system perceives threat. You are not safe. And because you’re not safe there’s no way you’re going to get a nap. It also makes it much harder to connect with other anyone else, to relax and let go in the presence of a loved one and that’s a requirement if we’re going to have any kind of physical intimacy or orgasm with another person.
Sleep and sex is a very vulnerable state. In order to do either we need to be in our parasympathetic nervous system. We need to feel safe, in our environment but also in our own skin.
Parasympathetic is the less well known side of the autonomic nervous system. Rest and repair just isn’t as sexy as fight or flight. But maybe we should start to think of it as our sexy side because it’s in this state that all the body’s resources (blood) get to go back to where they usually are. Like the reproductive system, the digestive system, the immune system and the empathy pathways that let us connect with other people. This is the state that lets us get close to and trust other people, physically and emotionally. This is the state that we need to be in, in order to get to sleep and stay asleep, relax and let go to be able to experience orgasm during sex.
By the end of a day we might be tired physically, mentally exhausted emotionally drained but we can also still be in a sympathetic state. So our mind is racing, maybe our heart is racing, maybe even our muscles are still tense as if they want to move or run or punch.
So what if we take what we know about the nervous system’s needs for safety and try to give it more evidence of that in a language that it can understand. Usually that’s not just thinking about it. Thoughts are circumstantial. The NS needs more evidence than that. Physical evidence. And the more evidence of safety that we can give to our nervous system the less pain we’ll have, the lower our blood pressure will be, the higher our HRV will be, the better we’ll digest our food, our reproductive hormones can balance out, and of course the better sleep and sex we’ll enjoy.
So what kind of evidence does the body and the nervous system need? How can we reassure ourselves from the inside out that we are safe enough to relax, let go and be vulnerable enough for great sex and better sleep?
Breath. Long slow breathing. Exhale emphasized breaths or breath retention techniques like the box breathing. But not just one or 2 breaths. Lab studies show more significant HRV improvements after several minutes of long slow breathing. 5 counts in 5 counts out.
Soothing touch. From yourself to yourself or from someone else whom you trust. There are several kinds of touch receptors in your skin. We often think only about the ones responsible for pain or heat but there are others for shapes, texture and pressure. But what touch tells the nervous system is that you are safe. Because you wouldn’t be touching like that if you weren’t.
Pub Med Our sense of touch enables us to perform numerous behaviors that rely on fine motor skills, including typing, feeding, and dressing ourselves. Touch is also important for social exchange, including pair bonding and child rearing (Tessier et al. 1998; Feldman et al. 2010). Infants deprived of touch stimuli display developmental and cognitive deficits (reviewed in Kaffman and Meaney 2007; Ardiel and Rankin 2010). For example, premature babies show delayed development and growth but this can be improved by 45 minutes of daily touch stimulation. Cognitive deficits in touch-deprived rodent pups persist through adulthood, highlighting the importance of touch during development.
There are also new wearable devices that emit low frequency vibrations that mimic the same response as touch and can soothe the nervous system. One is called Apollo neuro and another is called Sensate. I am not affiliated with either but they may be something that could help you.
3. Natural tremor. In nature mammals always shake after a stressful experience. We don’t because we think shaking of any kind indicates weakness or illness. What it actually does is tells the body that the danger has passed and we’re still alive. This is what trauma release exercise does at its most basic level. Our current society still views stress as a badge of honor and yet most of our chronic illnesses today both physical and mental can be traced to excessive stress and dysregulation.
All 3 of these act directly through the body to communicate a sense of physical safety that can help shift our nervous system out of fight or flight and into that sexy parasympathetic state of rest.
Today we sort of touched into category 3 and 4 and a little bit of 5 because there is so much overlap between sleep, sex and the nervous system. But I thought it was important to make this point about giving yourself evidence of safety for sleep.But of course we want to shift into the parasympathetic for sleep. It’s body logic when so much of the body seems illogical. I had not thought about it that way until I heard Dr. Dave Rabin interviewed on The Better podcast. When he made the point in that interview that 70% of women have never had an orgasm with another person and suggested there was a stress connection, I knew that was something I needed to share.
We are made up of a lot of complex systems and I think too often we try to treat them as all separate systems rather than the interconnected network that they are.
Next time we’ll connect some more dots and talk more about how to support the nervous system beyond sleep in Category 4 of our cat 5 challenge.
Thanks for listening and if you want to know more or join the challenge you can find links to this and all of our episodes at savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin. See you next time!
Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
Savage Grace Coaching is all about bringing resilience and burnout recovery. Especially for overwhelmed entrepreneurs, creators and coaches in the fitness industry.
Schedule a free consultation call to see if my brand of actionable accountability is right for you and your business.