by Kevin Keleher
Along with my sister, I was raised to be a spiritual seeker and find my own path. But even though I didn’t grow up with religion, my parents did. My mom was raised as a Southern Baptist, and my dad, an Irish Catholic—and neither was served well by their religions. While they did not intentionally pass down their beliefs to me, in some ways, I absorbed the idea that I should suppress my natural impulses.
As a result, I didn’t know how to properly express my desires as a child. I would fill myself with thoughts that I never spoke or acted upon because I didn’t know how to express them in a healthy, safe way or how to be vulnerable.
I also felt like I had too much desire. Even though a close female friend told me later that almost every girl in school had a crush on me at one point, I didn’t know at the time if there would be mutual desire. I didn’t know how to find healthy connections with people.
When I was 13, I found out that the girl I thought I was exclusively dating was seeing someone else while I was away on vacation with my family. Even though, in retrospect, I realized that we never talked about our expectations, at the time, I felt betrayed.
It wasn’t until I discovered Orgasmic Meditation (OM) years later that I developed the body awareness to heal that feeling of betrayal on the level of mind, body, and spirit.
I found out about Orgasmic Meditation on social media and was interested in it right away. I’m a meditator and an orgasm-er, so putting the two together sounded like a cool idea. My first OM—Orgasmic Meditation was with a girl I was seeing at the time. Together, we watched some videos on how to OM, and then we tried it for ourselves when the time felt right.
Until then, we had canceled plans to do it twice before because she hadn’t felt ready, and I didn’t want to pressure her. When we finally OMed, it was empowering to feel a lot of energetic sensation in my body in connection with the stroking. I was able to hold that sensation and stay focused, and the experience was deeply connecting and beautiful. I liked taking space afterward to ground back into our bodies and have our own integration of the OM before continuing our evening.
Since then, I’ve OMed many times with many different partners. One of my favorite things about the practice is being energetically connected with someone and being able to ride the waves of orgasm up and down, following the upstrokes and downstrokes.
To be clear, when I say “orgasm,” I’m not referring to climax. Something that I learned through Orgasmic Meditation is that we misuse the word orgasm. It’s really about human lifeforce energy. It’s in us all the time: We’re constantly in a state of orgasm. It’s a matter of how tuned into that energetic flow we are, how sensational it is, and what part of the wave we’re in.
Through the stroking practice of Orgasmic Meditation, the metaphor of orgasm for all of life is very powerful. Doing upstrokes, you feel the excitement of the energy rise. It gets more sensational and builds in an activated, upward momentum. The downstrokes feel more nourishing and fulfilling and luxurious and restful. We need both upstrokes and downstrokes to feel balanced.
Tuning in to the waves of sensation in an OM has helped me relate to the energetic states of being that I’m in on a day-to-day basis. Whether I’m having an up moment or a down moment, I can feel how my body responds to my circumstances, experiences, and environments.
The Orgasmic Meditation practice has helped me to tune into my desires and become much more aligned with them. In turn, I am able to express my desires in a healthier way. In my current relationship, I express my desires more than ever. The Orgasmic Meditation practice has helped us because it offers a clean, clear, safe container.
My partner and I are now getting clear on our shared expectations in our relationship so we can clearly articulate boundaries about what is okay and what is not for us. That’s where the lesson of Orgasmic Meditation is coming full circle for me. I can take what I learned from my experience of betrayal at age 13 and from feeling it in my body as a sensation. And now, with my girlfriend, I can work together to create clearly articulated agreements and parameters that we both know how to play within so that we don’t hurt each other.
Just like with an OM—Orgasmic Meditation practice, surrender is key. It’s about surrendering to the process and surrendering to the connection itself.
