There is much more to kissing than meets the lips! You know that magic feeling as lips meet, eyes close and the world simply fades away while you bliss out together, the stuff of songs, poems and movies? Totally hypnotic. First kisses are remembered vividly whether sublime or simply spitty, and can move a relationship wordlessly from tentative beginnings onto firmer footing or indeed, swiftly end it. Either way you can learn a lot about someone from a kiss and whether or not the chemistry is there to begin with.
Why do we do it?
Traditional views have held that kissing is a sort of bird feeding technique to pass chewed food to babies. Now scientists are interested in the vaccination aspect…during a kiss bacteria in saliva is exchanged and each partner can boost immunity levels.
What happens when you kiss?
Lips are the most exposed and accessible erogenous zone, packed full of sensitive nerves that transmit data to the brain. Close proximity required for kissing gives a chance to pick up other valuable mate-choosing smell cues: is your intended fed, watered, clean and healthy? Conditions like diabetes, constipation, starvation & dehydration have detectible odours on the breath. What about teeth or lack of them? Chemicals, colognes, make up? Skin colour, breathing rate and heart rate are letting you know all about fitness and cardiac function as you get ready to savour an intimate moment. A whole cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters flood the brain and body when the kissing really starts…
The Chemistry
There’s Serotonin, a heady mood elevator, and Dopamine making you happy and feeling good while Oxytocin brings that love feeling of closeness, craving more of this kissing magic. Testosterone brings feelings of excitement and aliveness, the precursor to moving things to an even more intimate level, just like your mother warned you! Kissing can ramp up your hormones getting you revved up for sex … and conception.
Kissing and Making Up
A kiss is a valuable way to reaffirm closeness and trust, following arguments and resolution, it can draw a line under an disagreement and let you get on with being a couple, enjoying each other and remembering why you choose to be together in the first place. The non-verbal bit is really useful and can shift the mood quickly.
What Happens When the Kissing Stops?
Relationships change and settle over time and the sweetness of kissing is often overlooked as youthful appetizer rather than a course in itself.
In my practice, I find that for couples who are trying to conceive, suffering infertility or doing IVF, spontaneity and fun go and kissing becomes a thing of the past.
A kiss a day, a real proper leg-popping one, is worth a lot in reducing stress hormones, improving mood levels, balancing fertility hormones and getting closeness and sex back on track.
Now, ready for some fun? Listen to a hilarious chat about Kissing on the link below…with the inimitable Gerry Kelly of LMFM Radio, and then tell me all about your first kiss or your worst kiss!:
Helena Tubridy – Effective Change For Life, read morehere.
Check out Helena’s website, here.
