by Elizabeth Kamara
When I discovered OM in my forties, I was still figuring things out about my sexuality, my marriage, my attractions, and my aversions. I was an actress and a yoga teacher—and a mother and a wife—living in New York City.
I was at a place in my life where I had fallen in love, although I was married, and was in a relationship with a woman for two and a half years. After dealing with so much guilt and shame and frustration, and feeling torn inside, I decided to end that relationship to save my marriage.
The problem was that, physically, I was repulsed by my husband. And not only by him but by every man. I could look at a man from afar and say, he’s hot. But when they came close and I smelled that testosterone, I literally wanted to vomit. I thought, well, I must be a lesbian.
After my affair, I renounced sexuality and went deep into my training in yoga and meditation. I told my friends, “I don’t need sex. My Kundalini is rising, and she goes to the upper centers. I’m complete, and I don’t need it. I have become an angel.” I was floating. But my lower chakras were not activated. They were dormant, and I let them sleep.
I had heard about Orgasmic Meditation (OM) through a friend. She came to a party at my place, and she looked so full and juicy and gorgeous. I thought, either she has a really great lover, or she had a facelift. I asked her about it, and she said she got her glow from OMing. I couldn’t believe it. I was disgusted.
Yet, around the same time, I went to a talk about OM, and I was mesmerized. I met women who were totally plugged into their power. I thought, I want that. I had planned to go to a silent retreat the next day—it was going to be very pure and renunciative—but instead, I decided to learn more about OM. I thought I need to find out what this is, as disgusted as I am.
My first OM was coincidentally with a meditation teacher. I asked him, “Would you like to OM?” And he said, “I’m so glad you asked me because I was too shy to ask you.” At first, I thought, how am I going to get my pants off? I don’t know if I can do this. But once we started, it wasn’t a problem. My desire overrode my societal ideas of what was appropriate.
It felt good to be in the nest and to have the timer set for 15 minutes. I had nothing to lose and nothing to prove—no need to climax and no need to fake it. And in the very first moment when his finger touched my clitoris, I felt a jolt go through my whole body. It felt like I was plugged into an electric current that radiated everywhere. I was hooked.
I started OMing at least once a week. At first, my goal was to climax, but someone gave me the advice not to try. That let me relax more and stop pulling for it. When you’re not trying to climax, but it happens anyway, the orgasm goes into every cell of your body. It feels like you’re sinking into a warm Epsom salt bath.
For those first few months, as I was discovering OM, my husband was in London. I didn’t talk about it. But when I visited him, I told him what I’d been doing. And he was shocked, crestfallen. He said, “I can’t believe that you would let a stranger touch you, but I can’t touch you.” And I said, “I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s not sex.”
When I returned to New York, I suggested he try OM for himself. I found him an OM partner in London. And right away, from our first conversation after he OMed, I could tell that something in him had changed. He had gone from being closed up to being turned on. He said, “I get it now. It’s not sex. It's a practice, and it makes you feel alive.”
After he came home, we immediately started an OM practice together. What amazed me was that we didn’t have so many arguments anymore. There was no more giving each other the cold shoulder or shutting down. It opened up our communication.
It’s not like everything was suddenly easy—we still had to work at our relationship. I still had to face the problem of my physical aversion to him and to men. Practicing OM helped give me insights. I think this is because, during the practice, the limbic systems of the two practitioners start to align with each other. A deep, healing intimacy comes into being.
One night, when my husband was asleep, snoring, I felt this pull at my heart. I realized that I was afraid, because my husband is so much older than me, that he would leave first, and I would be alone. I was afraid of him dying. I realized that I had closed myself off before so that his leaving one day wouldn’t hurt so much.
I think that happens for a lot of people who are afraid a partner will leave them. They choose not to invest too much, so if the person leaves, they won’t get as hurt. But that doesn’t work because then, you’re not really living. You’re always on the sidelines instead of in it.
Once I had this realization, I was fully in our relationship. It was a painful realization, but it allowed me to see that the aversion I had felt didn’t really have to do with sexuality—it had to do with intimacy. I had been resisting intimacy, and OM helped open me to it.
Interestingly, some of my most powerful OMs, where I really felt my whole being on fire, happened with people who were not my husband. Maybe that’s because there’s no history to hold us back.
The most intense orgasm I ever had in an OM was actually with an overweight man that I found physically repugnant. I was trying to understand my aversion, and we had an OM that was so groundbreaking and so deep that it shocked us both.
It was as if the “third” took over. There’s the one and the two, and together they create the third. Lovers do that all the time. Even when we speak to somebody, we create a third. But this third was powerful. We were in this bubble. Afterward, I saw him in a totally different light. I could see his essence and the goodness in him—this man who could hold an exquisite space for something like that to happen.
OM creates a sacred space. If the stroker is pristine with the practice, honoring all the steps, then the woman can let her vigilance down, go into the depths of who she is, and be open enough to share that. A healing takes place. It is a generous act for a woman to share that depth of intimacy with somebody, and a good stroker will feel blessed that they were able to receive that.
