by Kimberley Young
I was raised in a religious family that taught me that as a female, I was a second-class citizen. Thus, I had to overachieve in order to achieve at all. Mine was a “no pain, no gain” world. I was always sensitive, vulnerable, and--under the right circumstances--joyful. But I shoved down that part of myself to focus on success and achievement, running as fast as possible to prove my value.
I trained to be a teacher and gravitated to a charter school. I was good with students and parents, and an open communicator with peers. Eventually, I was promoted to vice-principal and ended up teaching teachers to teach. The problem was that I took on too much—thinking that’s what a successful woman does. 14-to-18-hour days stacked one on top of the other is soul-murder, although I didn’t see it that way. I was simply doing what I thought was expected of me. What I expected of me. It reached the point where I’d come home from work, eat dinner, crawl into bed, and sleep until the alarm went off. Then I’d get up and do it all over again. For eight years, I was in a loving relationship, and when we found the space for it, our sex was great, but work was always the priority. Time for intimacy became harder and harder to find.
After years of workaholism, my health finally broke down. I simply couldn’t summon the energy to fulfill my responsibilities. In October of 2012, I had a killer cold which deteriorated into pneumonia; then came appendicitis. It seemed my body went on strike. The doctor told me my thyroid exceeded acceptable levels, which meant I was hypo-thyroid and my system was over-run with cortisol. My adrenalins were depleted, and I wasn’t getting the endorphins I needed. Increasingly desperate, I finally discovered the research of Dr. Susan Gottfried, which provided this remarkable fact: the safest, fastest way for a woman to lower her cortisol levels involved a program called Orgasmic Meditation or OM.
It was over Thanksgiving vacation in 2015 that I started researching Orgasmic Meditation. Immediately upon beginning an OM practice, I started taking my body back. And that meant—lo and behold—taking my life back.
Previous to practicing OM, I’d never dedicated a time and place for myself where I actually placed my needs first. As the weeks and months flew by, I experienced this growing sense of returning to myself. Returning to those places of joy I’d once known—or my body had known—but an obedient young woman had given up on. Through the practice, I was slowly coming to reclaim those. Before OM, life was me vs. the world. I always had my strategies and protocols in place to be the best in a competitive field. The constant state of battle-readiness was exhausting. OM showed me that most of that hyper-vigilance was a script I’d bought into and that it didn’t have to be that way.
It took time for the changes to occur. I wasn’t looking for it to be a certain way, but I did start to notice changes gradually. My relationship ended as my inner-knowing got louder, and my boyfriend “didn’t have time for that.” I finally realized that my body was, indeed, my teacher. This body of mine would no longer tolerate me ignoring its teachings. It became clear that I wasn’t supposed to return to my charter school job. I finally took some time off work and went to a retreat center where I slowed down and simply restored my body. During that time, I realized that it was time to quit my job, which I did.
I followed my passion and became the CEO of a company that empowers women to embrace their power and remain women in a predominantly male-controlled world. During this whole time, I kept to my practice of OM. It deeply kept me grounded and nourished.
