Although we’re pretty sure that the chocolate, greeting card, and flower industries collectively invented Saint Valentine, you have to admit that an excuse to express love without inhibitions once a year is not that awful of an idea.

And what better way to express your love than through…sex? Or yoga? Or, maybe the two are not completely unrelated. After all, both may involve self-awareness, pleasure, and connection with something beyond our selves. To test this hypothesis, we asked three New York City yogis to dish on how yoga has affected their bedroom behavior. Their thoughts on being sexy and centered:

Sadie Nardini

Sadie Nardini, Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga

This might sound selfish (I prefer the term “Self-centered”), but just as yoga teaches us not to over-give in life or in our poses, when it comes to the bedroom, the same lesson applies. Yoga has taught me that I don’t have to make sex a performance, showing only my best angles and being concerned with how I’m coming across to my partner, but can simply receive what’s being offered with open, um, arms.

At first, I was concerned that backing off, feeling more, and staying in contact with my core rhythms would bore my husband—but he says it’s highly fulfilling for him when he can tell that I’m accepting his intimate gifts, and not just trying to do what I think would please him. Funny thing is, when I make it more about me, it organically becomes more about him, because I’m in tune with myself, and therefore, with him (and us!) more completely.

Kate Artibee

Kate Artibee, Sanctuary Pilates and Wellness

Yoga has taught me to be present and to bring a sense of play and freedom into everything I do. These concepts apply not only to sex, but also to cooking, walking, or anything, really.

Of course, yogic mula bandha awareness is always nice to increase sexual experience…

Sharon Gannon, Jivamukti Yoga

Sharon Gannon

The word sex means separation. Etymologically, the word sex is derived from the Latin roots seco and secare, which mean to divide, cut, or separate. Actually the experience of orgasm is a resolve of sex or separation, where the person loses themselves and feels the heightened experience of oneness, if for only a moment….

Yoga is the antithesis of sex, because yoga means “union” or “to yoke or bring together.” The state of Yoga is the state of Love, unconditional. To see yourself in others, to see so deeply into others that otherness disappears, and only the Self, only God, only Love remains, is the yogic magical quest. —Lisa Elaine Held