An ex-boyfriend brought me to OM in hopes of salvaging our relationship. It didn’t save us as a couple, but it changed me and my life in ways I could not have imagined.
I’ve been a professional musician since I was in my teens, traveling the country and the world. My boyfriend and I had been in this band for a long time, and our relationship had been “crunchy” for a long time. (That’s my word for when things get exhausting and difficult.) I had wanted to break through to the next level with him for so long, and it hadn’t happened. We came off tour, and I told him I needed a break. I told him I wanted no contact for a month, and then we could regroup and see if there was something we could salvage.
We’d been apart for less than two weeks before I heard from him. He sent me all this information about Orgasmic Meditation. I texted him before I read any of what he’d sent, angry that he wasn’t honoring our break. “I know,” he said, “but this is urgent. I’ve just started doing this practice, and it’s changing everything for me, and I know it will resonate with you.”
I was irritated with him, but I read what he sent anyway. And he was right – it did resonate instantly. I signed up, and from the moment I went to my first introductory class, I knew I’d found something I needed. What had been missing with my boyfriend and so many people before him was the kind of radical honesty central to Orgasmic Meditation. I’d always felt like I was holding part of myself in check to be in a relationship, always felt like I’d had to pretend I wasn’t who I really was, always had to pretend I wasn’t attracted to other people, always had to make compromises that shut a vital part of myself down. OM was confronting me in exactly the right way: it showed me that I didn’t have to live that way anymore.
I didn’t get back together with that ex, but I’m always grateful to him for knowing me well enough to sense that OM was just what I needed.
One of my struggles in past relationships was the feeling that I needed to dial back my intensity to avoid upsetting my partners. One of my favorite things about an OM is that I didn’t have to apologize if I wanted a finger to move just a little to the left. No, I’m not saying you’re a horrible person – I want you to shift how you’re touching me.
This was a revelation because I’d always been with these men who took any corrections or suggestions so personally that it had become easier not to ask for what I wanted. This inability to be honest about what I needed went back to my childhood; it had become the crux of what I contended with in my relationships. So, should we be in a space where it was normal to make an adjustment and be with partners who could make those corrections without getting hurt or peevish? That was so healing and so liberating.
I’m in a relationship right now, and it will soon end. It’s been too crunchy and challenging, and it’s run its course. At the same time, I’ve been able to tell this man what I want and need without fear of hurting his feelings, and to his credit, he’s been able to hear that. The tools of OM don’t guarantee that you’ll have an honest relationship that lasts forever, but they help you remove many toxic layers of ego. I’ve never felt safer in a relationship than in this one.
Beyond this newfound honesty, Orgasmic Meditation has changed me as a singer. I was in an OM once, and it hit me that all the sounds I was making were so different, yet all were trailheads into something profound. It was like a symphony of different instruments, sometimes all playing the same tune, other times wonderfully discordant. It hit me, listening to the noises, that there’s no wrong way to do any of this. My body knows what I need, just as every other woman’s body knows what it needs, and we’re all opening these different blockages together. It gave me, and still gives me, this incredible respect for our natural intelligence.
Something else I’ve been thinking about this past year is how we create unnecessary separation. When I started in OM, I realized I had made all of these snap decisions about the people I met, presuming that I might connect with some and rule out that possibility with others. I’d make these judgments based on how old they were, what they looked like, or how they talked.
It was this rapid sorting we all do, and what Orgasmic Meditation showed me was that we’re all so bad at this. I kept getting surprised that I’d have this deep connection with someone I’d initially ruled out and then feel nothing with someone who seemed just perfect for me. More often than not, I’d experience these profound sensations with someone unexpected.
I now realize that our judgments are both so deep-seated and so unhelpful. All over the planet, we’ve been through this huge and overdue reckoning in the past year, and I don’t pretend to have any great answers on the subject. What I can say is that in Orgasmic Meditation, I’ve learned that my own “isms” have kept me cut off from so many good experiences. I’ve learned to emphasize connection that transcends the superficial and the exterior. Orgasmic Meditation helps me see myself and others as they are. I think that’s something the world needs right now.
