Ever noticed how months vanish but certain nights stretch forever?

Time speeds up not because life is busy, but because life becomes predictable. When every morning looks like the last, your brain stops recording distinct memories and the days blur together (Wittmann, 2013). This compression is actually a form of trance—not dissociation as pathology, just attention narrowing enough that sensation drops out. Highway hypnosis on your commute. The autopilot of your morning routine. The blur of scrolling. You’re already entering these states multiple times a day. The question is whether you’re choosing them.

The same thing happens during sex. We call it spectatoring.

You “wake up” afterward realizing you were somewhere else the whole time—monitoring your performance, running mental scripts, planning tomorrow. Your brain filed the encounter as background noise because you weren’t present enough to encode it as a distinct memory. Not because the sex was bad, but because you were in the wrong kind of trance.

Research shows that present-moment awareness alters temporal experience. When you’re fully engaged, subjective time expands. So what if we used this intentionally? What if erotic presence became a daily practice?

Three practical approaches:

1. Anchor the beginning and the end

Why: Clear boundaries help your brain encode distinct memories rather than generic background.

How: Notice the very first sensation when you touch your partner or yourself. Notice the last thing before orgasm.

2. Introduce deliberate pauses

Why: Five-second pauses interrupt autopilot and mark conscious transitions.

How: Pause between kissing and undressing, pause between positions, pause to make eye contact.

3. Change one small detail

Why: Novelty activates memory encoding—small pattern interrupts signal this moment deserves attention.

How: Different room, different time of day, changing who initiates touch.

A daily menu:

1. Morning: Notice the first sensation before reaching for your phone—the weight of the blanket, temperature of air, sounds outside.
2. Throughout the day: Brief transition pauses between tasks, rooms, conversations. Five seconds to mark that one thing has ended and another is beginning.
3. During intimacy: Start with a conscious breath together or intentional touch. Mark the beginning. Notice when your mind wanders and gently return. Notice transitions between sensations. Mark the ending.
4. Evening: Identify one thing that was different about today—a conversation that surprised you, a moment that didn’t follow the script.

I’ve been applying this myself. Different mug for morning coffee. Different route to my studio. Different tempo locking my door. My weeks genuinely feel longer now—not because I’m doing more, but because my brain is recording more. Each day has texture again.

This isn’t about adding tasks to your plate. It’s about interrupting the autopilot that makes time disappear. You’re already in narrow attentional states; this is about choosing which ones serve you.

When attention returns to present-moment experience, the week feels like it belongs to you again. The same applies to your intimate life. When presence returns, pleasure deepens. You stop performing and start experiencing.

You don’t need to be present every moment. But what if you practiced it deliberately, even sometimes? What if erotic presence became as regular as your morning coffee—a small ritual reminding you that you’re here, alive, choosing this moment instead of sleepwalking through it?

That’s mindfulness as devotion. And devotion, practiced consistently, changes everything.

If you want support cultivating presence in intimacy, we can help.

At Eros Coaching, we work with individuals and couples who want to move beyond autopilot in the bedroom. Our team offers personalized sexuality counseling and coaching. Contact us here.

References

Bowers, K. S. (1979). Time distortion and hypnotic ability: Underestimating the duration of hypnosis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88(4), 435-439.

Eagleman, D. M. (2008). Human time perception and its illusions. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18(2), 131-136.

Tulving, E. (2002). Episodic memory: From mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 1-25.

Wittmann, M. (2013). The inner sense of time: How the brain creates a representation of duration. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14(3), 217-223.

Wittmann, M., & Schmidt, S. (2014). Mindfulness meditation and the experience of time. In K. C. R. Fox & K. Christoff (Eds.), Meditation – Neuroscientific Approaches and Philosophical Implications (pp. 199-209). Springer.

About Dr. Martha Tara Lee