Sex isn’t something that everyone feels comfortable talking about Nekia Walker is helping change that.She offers counselling on marriage, sex and relationship issues and life coaching through the practice she established a year ago.What she’s found is that when it comes to sex, a lot of people only know the basics.“Many people aren’t educated beyond ‘this is your sexual organ’ and ‘this is where babies come from’,” she said.“Anything outside of that people don’t have any clue about. Your parents don’t really teach you anything about it and there often isn’t anyone around to give you pointers on how and why certain things happen.”With Valentine’s Day celebrated on Thursday, Ms Walker told The Royal Gazette one of the biggest lessons she tries to teach her clients is how to keep their romantic connection alive every day of the year.“The way you view Valentine’s Day, you should view your connection with your partner for the rest of the year.“You may not financially be able to go out and spend money and take them to dinner, but you should always offer them little sacrifices, like ‘Today I am going to give you a listening ear’ and ‘Today I am going to vacuum the house’.”Another practice she recommends is that people to carve out time for intimacy.“Everyone is always busy. We have so much on our plates nowadays, but it’s so important to create that time of intimacy, whether it’s taking a shower together or offering your spouse a foot rub.”What she finds works for couples trying to balance children, work and other obligations is to factor in 15 minutes, early in the morning, before others in the house wake up and everything gets rolling for the day.Another tip, particularly for women, is to refrain from being overcritical of yourself while being intimate with your partner.“We need to stop thinking about every imperfection like our extra roll in our tummy. Stop trying to do things to hide it your husband or partner has already seen it.“And he is probably not seeing it in the same light because he is looking at the total package while you are focused on the one flaw, so just let it go because you are hindering the experience for yourself and for your partner.”She said men can also feel insecure, faced with the need to be strong both mentally and physically all the time.Such feelings can cause them to shy away from deep intimacy or result in them not being able to sexually perform as well as intended, Ms Walker said.Women have different fears.“What I find is it’s a fear of rejection and fear of being hurt from the man,” she said. “What I am also finding is in the back of their mind their expectation is men want them to be this hard-core porn star, instead of being who they want to be so they act out which is a barrier to intimacy.”The 33-year-old, who is single herself, explained that sex was very much a mental activity, so if someone is feeling that they can’t express themselves sexually, perhaps because of a religious upbringing or feelings of guilt, then the solution is more talk therapy.But with someone who is actually afraid of physical intimacy, Ms Walker will encourage them to work through the issue using hands-on therapy.“I would give homework assignments like encouraging the couple to hold hands for five minutes,” she said.Ms Walker studied oriental medicine after she got her undergraduate degree in neuropsychology.She said: “I was looking for a way to incorporate the two because secular psychology involves a lot of prescriptions of medicine which isn’t what I care for.“I like psychotherapy where you talk to people and as I went through the different courses of interest I found therapy having to do with intimacy was particularly an area that people were afraid to teach and talk about, but it was an area that needed more therapists.”The intimacy therapist said there were cases where people might suffer from gender identity crisis or have been molested or sexually assaulted and needed somewhere to turn.She decided to branch out to dealing with intimacy issues and found there were still many people who were not educated about sex.She said it was challenging working on a small Island, because a lot of people don’t want to admit they have a problem or fess up to what they don’t know.“Bermuda is opening up sexually when it comes to different toys but when it comes to sex education they are still very close-minded about that,” she said.“One thing that I have found is there is a barrier between myself and what I do, and maybe the religious community.“I am not promoting [negative behaviours] or free-for-all sex. It’s just educating people about the human body and mind and spirit and all of these components how they interact with each other during sex because it’s ultimately an expression of love even if you are not in love with the person.“My job is to teach them about healthy ways to engage in intimacy,” she said.