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The Impact of Body Awareness on Women's Sexual Health: A Comprehensive Review
Brooke N Seal1, Cindy M Meston2
1Department of Psychology, University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, BC, Canada.
Introduction:
Body awareness has been linked to female sexual response in laboratory manipulation studies and is used in clinical settings to ameliorate sexual difficulties.
Aim:
To evaluate and review the literature on body awareness and female sexual function.
Methods:
A literature review was conducted through PsycInfo, PsycARTICLES, and PubMed using terms such as body awareness and sexual function. A manual search also was conducted using reference lists.
Main Outcome Measures:
Studies were included if manipulated body awareness was a main variable of interest and if outcome variables included female sexual functioning or sexual response.
Results:
29 studies were included in this review and grouped into 3 categories: sensate focus (n = 7), mindfulness (n = 13), and laboratory manipulations of body awareness (n = 9). Body awareness is identified as an area of importance for female sexuality. Explicit instructions aimed at increasing body awareness, including those used in the clinical techniques of sensate focus and mindfulness, appear to enhance sexual response for many women, including women with low sexual arousal, hypoactive desire, anorgasmia, and sexual pain and in non-clinical samples. Induction of implicit body awareness also resulted in increased arousal in 1 study.
Conclusion:
Body awareness appears to enhance sexual well-being for some women. This is supported by laboratory manipulation studies conducted on women with and without sexual difficulties and by intervention studies using sensate focus and mindfulness for women with a range of sexual problems. The extent to which enhanced body awareness accounts for results in intervention studies is often unclear because of other features of the interventions and/or study design. This review provides the field with a summary of intervention and laboratory studies on body awareness, with results pointing toward body awareness as an integral component of treatment for sexual dysfunction. Seal BN, Meston CM. The Impact of Body Awareness on Women's Sexual Health: A Comprehensive Review. Sex Med Rev 2020;8:242-255.