The five senses - touch, smell, sound, taste, and sight - are our connection to the world. With their help, we collect information from our environment and use it daily to interact in our lives.
We use them constantly, but we don’t pay too much attention to them when having sex. During sexual activities, we subconsciously use them when we observe and smell our partners, love their touches, or listen to their whispers and screams.
Our senses play an essential role in creating sensual pleasure and arousal. If we focus and please them, we can enjoy sex even more. But many people never exploit and explore the full potential of all five senses because they focus on orgasms and sexual intercourse.
People who practice a tantric lifestyle know that sex can be much more than just penetration with climax as the final destination. They see it as a spiritual journey where they connect deeply with their partners and enjoy the moment.
If we want to experience different stimulation and greater satisfaction, we need to focus on our five senses. With sensation play, we can discover the new sensual world and stimulate our senses to increase sexual pleasure.
If we want to experience different stimulation and greater satisfaction, we need to focus on our five senses. With sensual play, we can stimulate our five senses to increase our sexual pleasure and discover a new erotic world.
What is sensation play?
Sensation play is an activity where we stimulate and engage our senses in various ways to increase our pleasure. This is a great way to experience different and more intense types of sexual satisfaction and to discover our bodies and their reactions.
Experimenting with sensation play can involve painful, pleasurable, or painfully-pleasurable stimulation of all five senses together or individually. It can include playing with handcuffs & restraints, sex toys, temperature, pressure, pain, force, smell, taste, sight, and sound.
With this kinky and sensual play, we can evoke and discover a world of sexual stimulation, pleasure, and intimacy that we didn’t know before. When we focus on just one sense, we can get aroused and stimulated in different and exotic ways.
Even if you think you haven’t experimented with sensual play yet, you may have accidentally experienced it during sexual activities. Mirrors, blindfolds, handcuffs, paddles, and sex toys are great tools to explore and please your senses. Next time, you can use them for intimate sensual play and testing your body’s responses.
Establishing boundaries and safewords
Sensation play covers a wide range of soft interactions such as massage, feeding, tickling, and temperature play to intense BDSM practices that involve experimenting with hot wax, inflicting pain, or power play.
And because it includes everything from soft, mild, or intense interactions, it is an ideal choice for beginners in BDSM. Even light sensation play with food, aromas, or music often requires elements of BDSM, such as handcuffs, restraints, and role-playing.
Before any BDSM practice, you need to talk to the partner about your boundaries first and make sure you both agree with the chosen activity. You need to set your limits and express what you don’t want to do during the sensation play. Discuss the desired scenario and your expectations.
You should also choose the safe words or signals that you can use during the session to end or slow it down. If you or your lover say a safe word, the play or action should stop immediately. This will make you calmer and eager for kinky experiments.
Sensation play tips
Beginners in sensation play can first try to awaken their senses and slowly include them into their foreplay.
Experiment with smell
Use perfumes, essential oils, and scented candles to explore the sense of smell.
Your partner can blindfold you with cute blindfolds so you can focus on scent only. Get comfortable, cover your eyes and smell different aromas.
Experiment with taste
Ice cream, cake, whipped cream, chocolate, and fruit are great foods that please your taste buds. Your partner can use handcuffs and restrains to intensify sensual play and feed you with erotic food. Those who like taking things to the extreme might even use a hot sauce - but please, tread carefully should you decide to do so.
Experiment with sound
Discover your sense of sound with the help of a partner, erotica, music, or ASMR sounds. Your lover can whisper in your ears, moan, breathe heavily, or talk dirty to spoil your ears. You can listen to erotica, sexy, sensual, or ASMR audio and music that turns you on. Use blindfolds and restraints to sharpen your hearing and make the whole play more exciting.
Experiment with sight
Your partner can masturbate in front of you and make a private show just for your eyes, or you can watch porn and erotic videos together without the sound. You can also use a mirror and satisfy yourself with a sexy reflection.
Experiment with touch
The sense of touch can be explored through pressure, impact, pain, temperature, and light contact. You can help yourself with various sex toys such as vibrators, glass dildos, paddles, nipple clamps, etc.
Related reading:
How to use a glass dildo in order to get the most pleasure from it
Sensation play ideas to try
Blindfolded play
Using blindfolds during intercourse can be an exciting and sensual experience.
Because you don’t know what will happen, you need to trust your partner and rely on other senses.
Cover your eyes, and try foreplay, fingering, oral sex, penetration, or anal sex to experience new sensations.
You can also use blindfolds to experiment with other senses - your partner can feed you, whisper and moan in your ears, or seduce you with dirty talk.
Related reading:
27 fingering techniques: How to finger vagina, anus & prostate
Temperature play
Experiment with hot and cold temperatures is a perfect way to heighten your senses, experience new sensations, and enjoy different sexual pleasures.
Glass or stainless steel dildos are ideal sex toys for temperature play because they can be heated and cooled or even placed in the fridge.
You can also use ice cubes to tease your partner or cover their body with ice cream and enjoy a sexy dessert.
You can also try massaging your partner with massage oil or if you want to take it a step further, you can drip hot wax on their body.
Related reading;
How to use a glass dildo in order to get the most pleasure from it
Ways to play with the nipples & achieve nipple orgasm
Power play
Exploring different power dynamics and submissive & dominant roles can help you awaken and excite your senses.
Use handcuffs and restraints and allow your partner to control, stimulate and tease you.
Getting tied up in the bedroom gives you a sense of submission and vulnerability, which can enhance your body’s responses and sensations.
Pain play
Bringing pain to the bedroom can be extremely enjoyable and stimulating. It can help you explore your sexual boundaries and sense of touch and intensify your sexual experience.
Nipple clamps and paddles for spanking are great sex toys for discovering a world of pleasurable pain.
You can also cause pain by pinching, biting, or slapping your hand and enjoy new body responses.
Related reading:
Textural play
Skin - the largest organ of the human body - can be stimulated with unique textures.
This type of sensation play will evoke your senses and bring you new sexual pleasures.
You can tease your body with velvet and silk or tickler with faux fur or feathers. If you want to experiment with pain, you can try the Wartenberg pinwheel with sharp pins that cause painful sensations.
Final words
Sensation play can awaken your senses and make you more aware of your body and its responses. It’s a great way to pamper and excite yourself and discover new and amazing sexual pleasures.
If you focus only on your senses and stimulate them with different approaches, you can get aroused on a whole new level.
Sensation play is also a BDSM beginner-friendly practice that you can enjoy with easy interactions.
If you’re looking for new ways to heighten your sexual pleasure and discover new sensations, start experimenting with your five senses.
