Orienting to the Present Moment

Where are you now as you are reading this Editorial? Can you read these words and notice the positioning and posture of your body? Can you observe individual sensations in a particular part of your body at this moment? Take a moment now to close your eyes and guide your attention to the sensations within your body. When you return to this page, can you be aware of mental sensations that arise (many people refer to these as thoughts). Perhaps there are thoughts about the contents of the upcoming articles in this special issue. Maybe there is anticipation about a desire to learn something new. Or maybe there are mental events related to a variety of issues completely unrelated to this Editorial or this special issue. Can you notice those mental events like you might notice streams of water in a river? From a distance. Can you remain firmly planted on the bank while you observe the flow of water that is your thoughts? This is a difficult practice. This is an essential practice. This is mindfulness. And sexologists have caught on that mindfulness is central to the experience of sexuality. Although different practitioners define mindfulness somewhat differently, my own affinity is for the operational definition that resulted from a consensus meeting of mindfulness teachers, practitioners, and experts (Bishop et al., 2004). Here they define mindfulness as a two-component process that involves (1) the self-regulation of attention “so that it is maintained on immediate experience” (p. 232), and (2) orienting to the present experience with “curiosity, openness, and acceptance” (p. 232). The idea for this special issue on Mindfulness and Sexuality arose in June 2011 at an Editorial Board meeting for Sexual and Relationship Therapy. Meg Barker and I shared our own personal and professional interests in mindfulness meditation, and each remarked on the lack of literature specifically on mindfulness as it applied to sexuality. Yet, both of us had garnered considerable experience using mindfulness meditation with clients seeking sexual health or sexological care, and each of us had a strong conviction about its utility. We were each familiar with some academics and clinicians in the sexological and sex therapy spheres who were similarly convinced. Thus began the process of encouraging those individuals to capture their experiences applying mindfulness to sexuality with words. What resulted was an astounding response to our call for papers for this special issue. Unfortunately, due to an aggressive timeline, there were a handful of excellent papers on the application of mindfulness to sex that did not make it in time for this special issue. We are thus excited to see the ripple effect that this special issue will have on the larger field of sexology as additional publications arise in this and other journals. This special issue boasts an impressive 13 articles on topics related to the application of mindfulness meditation to sexual health, sexual dysfunction, relationships, and love. You will delight in the combination of empirical and review papers, and in authors’ descriptions of how mindfulness has applied to and transformed their own lives. Mindfulness teachers maintain that one cannot “teach” mindfulness without having their own regular practice. As you read this special issue, take notice of the writers’ own commitment to the practice of mindfulness in their lives.