Sensate focus

Sensate focus is a set of structured touch exercises that develop awareness, comfort, and communication around physical sensation, often in sexual relationships.

Mindfulness: Mindfulness is sustained, nonjudgmental attention to present-moment experience. Participants attend to immediate sensations rather than evaluating performance or anticipating outcomes.
William H. Masters: William H. Masters was an American gynecologist and sex researcher who studied human sexual response. Masters developed sensate focus with Virginia Johnson as part of their clinical approach.
Sexual dysfunction: Sexual dysfunction is persistent difficulty in sexual response or experience that causes distress or interpersonal difficulty. Sensate focus is used as one component of treatment for some sexual concerns.
Cognitive behavioral therapy: Cognitive behavioral therapy is psychotherapy that changes patterns of thought and behavior linked to distress. It may accompany sensate focus, but targets thoughts and behavior more broadly than structured touch does.
Body awareness: Body awareness is the perception and interpretation of sensations arising within and across the body. Noticing subtle bodily responses is a central aim of each exercise.
Virginia E. Johnson: Virginia E. Johnson was an American sex researcher who collaborated with William H. Masters on sexual behavior and therapy. Johnson helped devise and teach the exercises in the Masters and Johnson method.
Erectile dysfunction: Erectile dysfunction is persistent difficulty achieving or maintaining an erection sufficient for sexual activity. Exercises can reduce pressure to achieve an erection while partners reconnect through touch.
Sexual mindfulness: Sexual mindfulness is present-focused, nonjudgmental awareness during sexual experience. It shares an attentional emphasis, while sensate focus adds prescribed exercises and partner roles.
Graded exposure: Graded exposure is a therapeutic method that approaches feared or difficult situations in manageable steps. Exercises can progress from non-genital touch toward more challenging forms of intimacy.
Human Sexual Response: Human Sexual Response is a 1966 book by William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson reporting laboratory research on sexual physiology. The book established the research program and clinical framework from which their therapy developed.

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