Our Top Secret Tip for Looking and Feeling Your Best This Festive Season

As the rest of the calendar year draws to a close, for a lot of us, it can only mean one thing – party season. You know the story: you congratulate yourself on making it through another year with fabulous social plans, drinks and food while simultaneously still working your job as well as organising feasts and presents for all your loved ones. It’s a helluva lot of fun but it’s also a lot.

During this most wonderful (and hedonistic) time of the year, life can start to feel like a race rather than a time that has anything to do with an actual holiday. In order to enjoy the festive season as best we can, a feel-good, self-care routine is just what the doctor ordered.

What should be number 1 on your self-care to-do list? You guessed it – self-loving.

The benefits of masturbation for our mind and body are slowly becoming a topic more researched and less taboo. From stress relief and skin well-being to helping our libido and confidence, self-loving is arguably the ultimate self-care practice and an important one to make a part of our lives, especially at the busiest times.

This isn’t just for the singletons either. Everyone can benefit from a bit of festive fapping or flicking. Here’s why.

Hormonal

Feeling stressed about getting everything done before the end of the year? Orgasms can help with that.

Masturbation – particularly when we orgasm – causes a rush of dopamine (A.K.A. the happiness hormone) and oxytocin (A.K.A. the love hormone) which in turn decreases cortisol (our stress hormone). This helps to relax the brain, improve your mood and can lead to sense of calm or even the euphoric feeling people often report feeling after great sex or masturbation. It’s a natural high that American sexologist, Dr Gloria Brame PhD says is “the biggest non-drug blast of dopamine available.”

These hormones also have a positive impact on our sleep patterns. A 2019 study on sexual activities and their effect on sleep in adults found that orgasms achieved through self-stimulation were associated with better sleep quality.

Strike “expensive skincare pack” off your wish list because the post-sex glow is real and so are the long-term skin perks.

A study conducted by the University of Michigan on premenopausal people showed an increase in oestrogen in response to sexual stimuli. This rise in estrogen as well as blood flow has been shown to help prevent aging skin through maintaining your collagen levels.

By regulating your cortisol and oxytocin – providing stress relief to your body and getting a better night sleep post-nut – your skin and hair also has time to repair itself while you rest. Plus, this natural glow is completely free so adding it to your party season skincare routine is a no-brainer.

As humans, when something makes us feel good, we tend to want to do it again and again. The combination of endorphins, dopamine and oxytocin we get from rocking around our own Christmas tree helps to increase our libido, adds natural lubrication and is sometimes used in treatment plans for vulva owners with sexual dysfunction.

Mental

Now we know how big of an impact masturbation can have on our hormones, let’s talk about what that means for our minds and how it can help us sleigh harder than Rudolph on the night before Christmas – mentally, that is.

Our brain is arguably our most important sexual organ and while we often think we can enjoy sex more when it is ‘switched off’, deepening our awareness of the sensations we are feeling is where the magic happens. Tuning into how we’re feeling physically, mentally and emotionally without judgement or shame during a dedicated self-pleasure sesh is a great way to foster a mind-body connection which allows us to explore our desires and sexuality more fully.

If this is all sounding like a lot for you and you’re more of a pants-around-the-ankles-whenever-the-moment-and-spare-time-strikes kind of person then that’s okay too. It doesn’t have to be a ritual which requires 10 scented candles, a sensual playlist and an hour-long bubble bath (although that’s always nice). Simply paying more attention to the speed, pressure, techniques and toys you use on yourself is often all we need to add a little more mindfulness into our menage a moi.

Developing self-awareness around your pleasure and what satisfies you is the best present you can give yourself as it helps with partnered sex too. If you’ve been taking a mental note of your turn-ons during your me-time and have found yourself under the mistletoe at the right moment, you’ll be able to let your lover know exactly how you like it.

During solo play, it’s all about you and your body. There’s no one else to worry about performing for or giving pleasure to which means all your energy can go into loving yourself which helps us build confidence and boosts our mood. It’s the main character energy we all need to get through this hectic time of the year.

Physical

With all the indulgence the festive season brings, health can fall to the wayside for some of us and multitasking is the best way forward. Good thing going solo is a mini workout as well.

When masturbating (and particularly during orgasm), the muscles in our pelvic floor naturally contract, making them stronger each time you have a regular rub. This can help with symptoms of incontinence, lower back and pelvic floor pain and pain during penetration. For penis owners, it’s been found that strengthening and building awareness of your pelvic floor muscles can be great for dealing with conditions like erectile dysfunction.

We’re not saying it’s going to give you wash board abs or anything but any excuse to have another serving of pudding, right?

Cleaning out the chimney for Santa on the regular is also recommended for prostate owners in order to flush out any potential built-up toxins through ejaculation, reducing the risk of prostate cancer.

On a similar vein, masturbation can help vulva owners to prevent cervical and urinary tract infections via the “tenting” process of the cervix which occurs during arousal.), encouraging fluid circulation and again, flushing out the built-up bacteria.

The gift that keeps on giving

The TLDR of it all is that masturbation is a powerhouse of the self-care world and one of the best things you can do to improve your life in and out of the bedroom. Besides, what better way to celebrate the end of the year than with a big self-lovin' session.