by Stefania Brandner
I was raised in a small town in northern British Columbia. It was a remote community and a conservative one - not conservative in the ultra-religious sense but in the way that it put strict limits on what you were allowed to want.
For as long as I can remember, I had to justify and explain why I should want what I desire. For example, I saw the movie Legally Blonde when I was about seven. I had this instant affinity for Harvard Law School. I didn’t fully understand law school, but it seemed perfect for me. I announced to my family that I would be a Harvard-educated lawyer. My mother turned to me and asked, “Do you know how expensive Harvard is? Do you think you have the grades for it? You’ll need a lot of money to make this happen.” I was seven, but the takeaway was clear: I had to make a logical case for anything I wanted.
I learned to anticipate the doubts and questions. When I was 13, I wanted an iPod more than anything. So, I got a job first – just so I wouldn’t be asked, “Where are you going to get that money?” I became more and more rigid, thinking about how to control each and every scenario. It taught me to have a great work ethic, though.
My family had urged me to be practical and pursue a business degree to guarantee I’d make good money. I went off to university, and it was a disaster. I spent ten years working on my degree and couldn’t get through it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle the work – it was because it wasn’t right for me. I was so shut down to what was right for me, though, that I couldn’t see the real nature of the problem.
Then my grandfather died. He had been my most loyal advocate, someone in my life who had believed in me unconditionally. I was inconsolable for a while, and when the pain started to lift a little bit, I felt this urge to make a change. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew I needed to go away for a while. I picked L.A. almost randomly, which was utterly out of character for me.
I had a few friends in L.A. and one night, I went out to dinner with them – and they told me they had just started doing this practice called Orgasmic Meditation. They had some ambivalence about it and were talking it through. Just listening to them, I felt this deep curiosity to learn more. I didn’t want to process their opinions; I wanted to understand what Orgasmic Meditation was really about. Unfortunately, I had to return to Canada before trying my first OM (Orgasmic Meditation), but my interest only grew.
I eventually found some people who were practicing Orgasmic Meditation in Vancouver, and they told me about an upcoming opportunity to learn about the practice. The workshop facilitators walked in that morning, and I felt my whole body tremble as something filled up the room. Whatever these women have, I thought that’s what I want. Later, I had my first OM. I felt incredibly vulnerable, and it had very little to do with the fact that I’d taken my pants off.
All of me felt exposed. I would eventually realize there’s no faking in Orgasmic Meditation and no possibility of putting up a wall. You can’t pretend in this practice. You can fake an orgasm and pretend to climax in other contexts, but in OM, it’s something people can feel. The body will not lie for you. From the beginning, Orgasmic Meditation was a practice that revealed my heart.
The more I practice, the more I concentrate on it as meditation. It’s one thing to sit quietly alone on a mat and meditate; it’s very different when someone else is actively stimulating your body. This presents a great challenge. It’s easy to stay in my body when I’m in solitude. With the Orgasmic Meditation practice, I might have a partner who smells a certain way that throws me off, or I could get distracted by how he breathes. However, these challenges are ideal because they help you understand how to connect even when the environment is so clearly out of your control. Orgasmic Meditation equips you to stay attuned anywhere.
I used to feel I had to justify every desire I had. The Orgasmic Meditation practice released me from that trap. I can name what I want, and I don’t have to torture myself by explaining why this desire makes sense. Sometimes, it doesn’t make logical sense. I can want things and have things, and I don’t have to give grounds to anyone for why I want them. Sometimes, desire is just desire. It doesn’t need an explanation.
