A relaxation technique known as autogenic training may help increase women’s sexual response by affecting their heart-rate variability, according to research published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.
The study of 33 female undergraduate students found listening to a 14-minute autogenic training recording led to significant increases in both physiological and subjective measures of sexual arousal when watching an adult film. This increase was moderated by heart-rate variability.
PsyPost interviewed the study’s corresponding author, Amelia Stanton of the University of Texas at Austin. Read her responses below.
PsyPost: Why were you interested in this topic?
Stanton: We recently found that low heart rate variability was associated with sexual arousal problems and overall sexual problems in women. Heart rate variability (HRV) is the degree of variation in the lengths of time between successive heart beats, and low HRV has been linked to depression, anxiety, and other psychological health problems.
But that study left a major question unanswered: if we experimentally increase HRV, will we see a subsequent increase in sexual arousal? That question brought us to the current study. We chose autogenic training, a relaxation technique that focuses on conjuring sensations of warmth and heaviness in the body, as our manipulation because research has shown that autogenic training leads to increased HRV.
What should the average person take away from your study?
Based on our results, it seems that autogenic training may lead to short term increases in both physiological sexual arousal (i.e., genital arousal) and psychological sexual arousal (i.e., feeling mentally “turned on”) in sexually healthy women. Autogenic training recordings are easy to access (you can find them on YouTube) and low-cost (if not free), so, with a little initial guidance, women may be able to do the treatment from home.
Are there any major caveats? What questions still need to be addressed?
Yes, a few. We only observed short-term increases in arousal in this study, so we will need to test for long-term increases in future studies. Also, we don’t know if increasing HRV will lead to increases in sexual arousal among women with sexual arousal problems. We are currently testing the same protocol (one session of autogenic training) in a group of women with low sexual arousal, and preliminary results look promising.
The study, “A Single Session of Autogenic Training Increases Acute Subjective and Physiological Sexual Arousal in Sexually Functional Women” was co-authored by Cindy Meston.
