The Self Pleasure Principle, THE ART OF SELF PLEASURE

Category: Sex Education

Allow me to begin with a note. This will be a long article, so I will divide it into several shorter parts. I know few people have the time to read for half a morning, no matter how valuable or insightful the piece may be. In truth, it is less a question of willingness and more a question of time.

Self pleasure is a topic that makes many women uncomfortable. When the subject arises, most women blush, laugh nervously, and just as quickly avoid making eye contact with anyone in the conversation. I used to be the same, back then. I would never have admitted that I masturbated, let alone that I ever used a toy.

I am not sure whether my refusal to use toys at that time came from fear of pain, or from a general fear of putting anything DOWN THERE.

This art of self pleasure is especially dear to me because I once lived in a state of deep fear, ignorance, and pain. The same holds true for the great majority of women with whom I have managed to speak, at least those who did not start giggling, run away, or change the subject.

Our understanding of orgasm is often modeled on the male ejaculatory orgasm, which typically takes 2 to 7 minutes. That kind of male orgasm is focused on the genitals, which means that when he finishes, the experience is over. However, female orgasm can be very different from the male ejaculatory orgasm, provided we include all the sexual organs through which we can experience pleasure. Due to a culturally conditioned fear of anything vaginal, most women focus on the clitoral orgasm during masturbation. In doing so, they ignore not only the sensuous points within the vagina but also the many erogenous zones across the body.

The purpose of these texts, practices, and gentle explorations is to awaken our sexual potential, by healing the sexual and emotional pain stored in the vagina. I believe this hidden pain and trauma prevents many women from experiencing their full sexual potential, and even their broader human potential.

In matters of sexual healing and personal transformation, we can talk until our voices give out, yet nothing will change unless you begin to touch your vagina. Although clitoral stimulation is wonderful, I do not believe it is sufficient to fully free body and mind from culturally conditioned sexual repression.

A study from 2011 showed that different regions of the brain become active when different areas within the vagina are stimulated. This catalyzes distinct and complex emotional and chemical responses throughout the body.

It is also known that many subconscious sexual and emotional tensions and traumas are stored deep within vaginal tissue, and only through conscious touch and the deliberate offering of pleasure to the vagina can we release these stagnant energies.

The reason is that emotional and sexual trauma cannot be completely healed on the intellectual level alone. We must allow healing at the cellular level through touch, breath, and awareness. Our path to sexual empowerment lies in restoring pleasure to our vaginas, and in cultivating confidence and comfort with the process of touch.

Do you know what is a disheartening fact? Research suggests that 40 to 70 percent of women have never had a vaginal orgasm, while 10 to 15 percent have never experienced any orgasm at all. This is truly unfortunate because women can experience at least eleven distinct orgasms, including multiple full body orgasms. If that is our genuine potential, why have some of us not even scratched the surface of our orgasmic capacity?

Aha. There are three reasons for this:

1. Lack of education
2. Lack of awareness
3. Lack of sensation

Lack of education

Women have an extensive network of highly erogenous erectile tissue surrounding the vagina. This network forms an inner structure that connects our sexual parts and generates pleasure. Research confirms that women have a similar quantity of erectile tissue in the sexual organs as men do in the penis, except ours is located internally.

Because we possess this extensive network of erectile tissue, we require more time to become fully aroused, approximately 20 to 45 minutes. Meanwhile, the average duration of sexual penetration is 2 to 7 minutes, which does not give women enough time to get fully aroused.

Many of us are therefore unaware, or insufficiently educated, about how the female body is structured and how it functions. We are then unable to account for these fundamental sexual responses that are grounded in straightforward physiology. Or to put it simply, we have an instrument we do not know how to play.

If we do not understand how our sexual organs function, we lack the motivation to explore their potential. Instead, we tend to think that:

1. What we have experienced is the maximum of our ability
2. There is something wrong with us because we cannot reach the super orgasms shown in pornography or in the book Fifty Shades of Grey

The first step to reclaiming our sensual sovereignty is to educate ourselves about our bodies and our sexual potential.

Lack of awareness

This point builds on the previous one, and I wish to emphasize the absence of presence in the moment.

One of the greatest obstacles to a fully realized orgasm is the inability to live in the present, in relaxation, with awareness and focus on what we are experiencing right now. We are accustomed to living in our heads, following conflicting streams of thought, which leaves us with little or no connection to the body. Our aim is to inhabit the body fully, so that we may access the magic and wisdom it offers.

This is why movement, meditation, and Ocean Breath are vital ingredients in the recipe for sensual sovereignty. They cultivate living in the present, in the body.

What does this have to do with orgasms? The more you practice awareness outside of sexual contexts, the easier it will be to access it during intimacy, and the reverse is also true. Self awareness and any insights you discover during sexual pleasure will translate into your everyday life.

Lack of sensation, and at times even pain

Most men and women feel only a small fraction of their potential in the genitals. The reasons include the points listed above and this key factor, which is emotion.

As I have said many times, the human body stores emotional imprints in cellular tissue, and every negative, painful, or uncomfortable sexual experience we have had, whether as children or adults, is stored within the tissues of the sexual organs. This stored trauma or stress can render this part of the body numb, or switch it off entirely.

It has long been known that mental or emotional stress can trigger a wide range of health issues, such as headaches, ulcers, rashes, tight shoulder muscles, and back pain.

We often overlook the emotional and psychological impact of a culture that demonizes human sexual desire, especially in women, while at the same time bombarding us with sexually explicit images of men and women wherever we look.

Those images can push women to dress provocatively, which stirs sexual arousal even when we are told that we should not simply want a sexual experience. Why is that. Because if we want it, we feel guilty and attach to ourselves the label of a bad girl, a message society plants in us from childhood.

Even if we have cultivated some level of sexual self acceptance and do not feel extreme guilt about our sexuality, we still live in a culture filled with people who suppress sexuality, including friends, family members, colleagues, religious figures, and films, who constantly send mixed messages or even direct messages that good girls do not have sex, do not want sex, and do not speak openly about it.

Consider the Twilight films. Despite the powerful sexual tension between Bella and Edward, Bella must remain a pure virgin until their marriage. Edward insists on this because he is an old fashioned guy. To make matters more pointed, Bella’s father even approves of the boyfriend’s behavior so that both of them hold to so called old fashioned family values.

The repeated social message is that good girls should dress in a sexy way, flirt, and seduce, while pretending to know nothing about sex and refusing a man for as long as possible. The explanation is that this makes us more desirable. Then when we finally give in, we whimper and moan for those 2 to 7 minutes to let HIM know that it was the best we have ever felt, and we keep our fingers crossed that he will not leave. We pray he will call the next day, even though we have given him everything he wanted. The fact that we wanted it as well must never be mentioned, because we are such good girls. This creates an enormous amount of mental and emotional clutter, which again disconnects us from the inner knowing and guidance we all possess. It also creates stress energy linked to sexuality, which then gets stored in the tissues of the sexual organs.

This is only one example among many.

Examples of sexual and emotional trauma include:

1. Religious guilt, fear, and shame
2. Being convinced in childhood that touching the genitals is wrong, bad, or dirty
3. Being called a slut or an easy woman for expressing sensuality through clothing, dance, conversation, or for being sexually active
4. Being homosexual in a strongly heteronormative community or culture
5. Being told that we have a bad odor, amplified by constant marketing of intimate hygiene products
6. Any negative message about our sexual self image, for example too fat, too ugly, or too thin
7. Messages about so called family virtues that undermine sexual exploration
8. A partner who withdraws emotionally after sex
9. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am encounters
10. A partner who finishes after the magical 2 to 7 minutes, leaving you sexually frustrated because you have not even warmed up
11. Feeling emotionally disconnected from your sexuality
12. Overly rough sex, rape, or any form of sexual abuse
13. Any form of inappropriate touching at any age, when someone touches you against your will

The next question is how to step out of a sexual prison and become sexually sovereign, in other words, the ruler of your own sexuality. How do we move from point A to point B. The methods that make this possible will be presented in the next article.

Until next time.