To deepen your access to love, massage your breasts

Breast massage is a simple yet powerful way to connect with ourselves, and process shame and fear.

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Imagine that as a child instead of hearing words like ‘tits’ and ‘boobs’ thrown around and objectified, you were told you possessed perfect ‘bells of love,’ which would mature over time and open gateways to love, pleasure and deep self-acceptance. Would that be different from your lived experience?

What if instead of being told you should examine your breasts for lumps, you were taught to access your breasts for self-care and pleasure, thus coming into relationship with them from a place of excitement and curiosity, instead of duty and fear?

What if instead of crafting our breasts into tight bras that show them just so to the outside world, we turned inward, putting their natural tendencies of shape, size and comfort above external appearances?

Many of us need a new way to enter into relationship with our breasts. A way that is not about ‘handling’ them, but about two-way connection with them.

Think about it. Is your relationship limited to how they look in a t-shirt, the tight sports bra you need to run, a means to feed your babe, a check-in at the gyno, or a short stop on the road to penetrative sex?

Often, new relationships benefit from structure & clear expectations. A first date with a time & location, a dinner party with a menu, a meeting with an agenda and so forth. For me, breast massage has given that structure — a starting place to build an entire relationship that like any long term relationship, will evolve and take a life of its own over time. It’s a relationship that once established, once trust is built holds unlimited potential.

While your relationship with your breasts may take many forms over time, here are three of my favorite reason to enter into relationship via breast massage:

1. Tangible self love & acceptance — for many, breasts are the first visible sign of womanhood and thus deeply connected to our image of self and sexuality. They come fast or slow, over a summer, or years, often with the outside world reflecting their arrival (or lack of) to us, versus a more internal marker. We might feel their arrival in the form of new attention, discomfort in gym class, or their absence as we glance around at our bosomed friends. Unlike our menarche, there is no bright red streak to delineate a before and after.

What was your relationship with your breasts like in those early days? Did you revel in their arrival? Did you feel their budding with pride? Or like many, did you feel they came too early or too late, brought too much attention or not enough? Did they add complications to playing a sport you loved, or bring up questions about your sexuality?

Whatever your story (which is definitely worth a moment of reflection), most of us did not learn to care and love for our breasts. Instead, we played them up with push-up bras, or down with sports bras and layers of clothing. We went along with words like ‘tits’ and ‘boobs’ that did nothing to acknowledge their majesty, their beauty, their power.

Many of us let boys get to ‘2nd base’ before we’d fully explored their range of sensations & doorways ourselves.

What I love about breast massage is it’s a place to feel ALL OF THAT. To let what was be OK, while simply being present with our breasts now. Through the attention of our hands and the intention of our hearts and minds we shower our breasts with love, and in doing so set a new standard for ourselves. This is what I deserve. This is what I attract. Our bodies hold so much and this is an opportunity to work with the physiology of them.

2. Rewrite the fear script. Breast cancer is the 2nd most common cancer for women in the United States. It’s the subject of an entire awareness month, has co-opted a certain shade of pink, and entered the culture in a million other ways from books and television to annual community events. While awareness and funding for research is fantastic, the down side is fear, and focus on a negative outcome — e.g. our energy follows our focus.

Have you ever gone to a health professional who asks if you do regular self-exams on your breasts? Maybe you have a history of breast cancer in your family or personally. Maybe you’re over a certain age, maybe you’ve expressed concerns or felt lumps in the past.

I know for me, the suggestion always caused a quickening of my heart beat and butterflies in my stomach. You see, my mom, granny, her mom and my paternal grandmother all had breast cancer. A part of me has always thought I’ll be next, and thus the idea of examining my breasts to look for a lump brings up fear. So much fear that for years I basically avoided them altogether. Despite actually loving their size & shape, they felt like a liability rather than a gift.

When we’re in a state of fear our heart beats faster, our sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) may be activated, and we flood our body with adrenaline and cortisol — stress hormones that if chronically activated, are harmful to daily metabolic functioning. When we touch our body from a place of calm, love, curiosity and pleasure we can heighten our parasympathetic nervous system. Breast massage has long been used to increase milk production in breastfeeding mamas and studies have shown it can increase production of oxytocin, the ‘love and stress reduction hormone.’

Thus, all touch is not the same. By coming into relation with our breasts via massage we can build a relationship based on joy, trust, curiosity and pleasure, rather than fear or vigilance. Like any good friend, we will know their baseline, and notice changes. Yet the purpose of our connection is not simply to monitor — we enjoy spending time together.

3. Less discomfort and more pleasure: many, myself included, have found regular breast massage can decrease premenstrual sensitivity while awakening breasts to increased pleasure.

There’s a lot involved to this, including our rhythmic hormone cycles, how hormones are released when stimulating the breasts, water balance and retention, and our lymphatic system. For example, some may benefit from specific lymphatic massage techniques.

Personally, I’ve kept it simple, finding that when I regularly massage my breasts leading up to menstruation, they are considerably less painful. In fact, just last week I was running on the treadmill when I realized my bleed had come 2 days early. While I actually don’t recommend this (I feel best when I wind down intense physical exercise and rest during the first couple days) — it certainly struck me as a change from prior cycles when the thought of exercising on day 1 would have been laughable.

On the flip side, it’s common to feel some numbness when first investigating your breasts. You might notice you feel less sensation in certain spots, little emotion or turn-on arises, or you even feel a little bored and checked-out.

Given many of us have spent years or even decades subtly neglecting our breasts, this isn’t surprising. It takes them time to wake-up, time for the circuits to rewire, time to tune in to ourselves in this way. Knowing this can be helpful as you build a practice. Approach them as a patient, loving partner. Go slow, be receptive, and build-trust.

Like any new relationship, untold reward may await.

Pro tip: while you need nothing but your hands and an open mind to approach your breasts, using massage oil adds a lovely a layer of sensuality and can offer additional benefits as well, depending on the herbs/other ingredients.