In college, I learned to put on the facade of a party girl plus a smart girl. My school was intensely competitive, and I valued intelligence as long as it was balanced by fun because I didn't want to be seen as a nerd. Instead of sleeping, I took tons of Adderall. At 21, when I went to clubs, I thought I would have this lifestyle forever. I didn't get why people stopped.
Eventually, doing yoga got me off the Adderall, but it left me relatively numb. A lot of the time, I felt like a zombie. My relationships with men were not nourishing, and my friendships with women were codependent. I hung out with a mixed crowd, and the girls would go along with whatever the guys decided to do. No one ever talked about how they were feeling. I had a yearning for more connection with the women. Spending time in an all-female group would have been great, but the other women weren't interested. I felt sad about it, and then I let it go.
When I decided to move across the country, I was vaguely aware that my life was not working. I needed a change, and the Bay Area proved to be a good place to teach yoga and find a community to feed me. One of my yoga students told me about Orgasmic Meditation (OM). I saw myself as an adventurous person who says yes to new things, so I dove in.
I didn't immediately fall in love with OMing, but I liked it enough to make it a daily practice. At first, I wasn't doing it for the enjoyment of it but as research. I was interested in how to get myself and my partner to the spot of highest sensation. Part of my numbness was an inability to have a climax, which made me feel broken, so seeking orgasm was also part of my drive to learn more about my body. At the end of the OM, the sharing frames consisted of observations like “I thought I felt a shiver in my foot” or “My hands fell asleep.” My frames had almost nothing to do with the OM. After a while, I started to describe feelings in my belly, my spine, and my genitals. It was a gradual process of noticing sensations and then being able to articulate them.
Adjustments were another way to practice putting feelings into words. As I became more in touch with my sensations, I started asking my Orgasmic Meditation (OM) partner to try different strokes to optimize the feelings in my clitoris. At first, I wanted more pressure, but at a certain point, I realized that I felt more when the stroker applied lighter pressure. Making adjustments was part of my research. Sometimes, I would adjust things to try them out.
One day, I had a breakthrough where every part of my body was alive and trembling. Afterward, the stroker said he had been barely touching me. That was really big because I had a whole story about being broken, and it turned out I was actually super sensitive. The ability to feel sensations in my body helped me navigate daily life. I'm always checking in with myself for indicators of when I'm tuned into my inner voice or when to accept an offer being made. For instance, if I decide to work on a project, it's because I've felt it in my body, usually a sense of opening and warmth. There's a life-giving energy to it versus a life-force draining quality. The physical sensations tell me in advance.
Nowadays, my friendships with women are rooted in truth. We talk openly about sex, relationships, and whatever's in our hearts. This ability to communicate freely is one of the things I'm most grateful for. I'm close to many women who OM, but now I can create the same kind of open communication with women who don’t OM. In my work life, I've become the decision-maker regarding how all the yoga at the studio I teach goes. Orgasmic Meditation has slowed down the speed at which I practice yoga. I receive more from it than I ever did before.
