And it also allows us to tap into countries around the world. An app was what we saw as the most accessible and the most affordable option for people to do that. So an app allows for a degree of privacy and a degree of going at your own tempo and your own rhythm in a way that's yours and yours alone. We know that not everybody is starting in the same place. If people are in relationships, their partners might not be supportive of it, or it might be kind of a tense topic for them. The other aspect to that was that not everybody is comfortable with the topic. When you're face-to-face, you're required to be there physically and that assumes that you've got financial freedom to get there, that you've got physical mobility to get there, and that you've got time to be able to get there. And another big aspect for us is accessibility. Why was an app the right choice for the platform?ĭr Anna Hushlak: Looking through the science around digital interventions and online therapy, there's quite a bit of research showing that online interventions are as effective as offline and face-to-face. And it's really about body awareness and bringing that into your sex life. It’s about saying: how do you actually feel about it? What's your mind-body connection? Have you taken the time to explore and discover your body? Have you taken the time to actually notice sensations in your body, to create awareness of your body? And it's much more focused on things like cultivating intimacy, on playing with sensation and touch and experience. Generally it's two people, generally it's penetrative, and generally it's considered successful if it results in an orgasm – typically that's male climax.įor us, mindfulness is about flipping the script. Most of our education, if we've even had an education around sex, has been focused on the ‘doing it’ and it's often come through a particular lens of heterosexual sex. It's about understanding how you feel about sex, not just how you have it. How would you explain the concept of mindful sex to people who haven’t heard the term before?ĭr Anna Hushlak: It's about really slowing down. And that led to Ferly because it's the support that we wish we had that wasn't there when we went through it.” “There was a feeling of having to rediscover ourselves and our sexual selves and our autonomy through sex. And neither of those experiences we really had support around,” Hushlak tells me. Both founders have experienced sexual violence personally and shared similar feelings of guilt, shame and stigma around it. Guiding their community on this journey towards sexual confidence and wellbeing is very close to Hushlak and Quinlan’s hearts – they’ve travelled down the same path as many of their community and they themselves are still discovering and navigating what works for them. It's one of those things that's just so fundamental to our health yet we haven't historically seen it that way.” “For us, having good sexual wellbeing is as important as getting regular exercise or getting a good night’s sleep. “In the UK, 51 per cent of women aged 16 to 64 have reported experiencing three or more sexual difficulties in the last year, everything from pain or anxiety during sex to low libido and issues with arousal,” Hushlak tells me from where she isolating in rural Canada. It’s like Headspace but with masturbation. Combining mindfulness and cognitive therapy with self-touch in immersive audio experiences, Ferly guides you through exercises involving body mapping, self-pleasure, fantasies, and nuturing desire so that you can get more sex-literate and have more positive, mindful sex. Part of a growing number of apps catering to female sexual wellbeing, Ferly focuses on the self-care aspect of sex with a particular interest in the mental and emotional side. That’s why she, along with co-founder Billie Quinlan, created Ferly, a safe space for women to help us get in touch with our bodies and learn about our sexuality, desires, and pleasures. For Dr Anna Hushlak it’s not about getting off, it’s about how you get there.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |