011 Examining the Effects of Mindfulness on Preferred and Non-Preferred Desires

Mindfulness illuminates how individuals observe, attend, and relate to their visceral experiences, including sexual desire. Mindfulness facilitates women’s sexual desire for the preferred sex(es), but it remains unclear whether mindfulness also augments desires toward the non-preferred sex(es). Although desires toward the non-preferred sex infrequently reach conscious awareness, heterosexual women have the capacity to experience such desires and show comparable bodily responses to preferred and non-preferred sexes. Because the subjective experience of desire depends on attention and awareness, becoming aware of bodily sensations without judgment should also enhance desires for the non-preferred sex. To examine this hypothesis, we examined the day-to-day association between present moment awareness and preferred and non-preferred desires and whether such associations were moderated by interoceptive awareness among predominantly heterosexual women. Predominantly heterosexual women (N=28) completed the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) and subscale scores were calculated. For 7 days during the follicular phase of their menstrual cycle, women rated their present moment awareness and the intensity of desires for men and women. We ran two multilevel models to examine how the MAIA subscales moderated the daily link between present moment awareness and (1) same-sex and (2) other-sex desires.