by Jody
The first thing I got from Orgasmic Meditation was the lifting of a lifelong depression. Long ago, a therapist told me, “Your normal is low-level depression.” I had been in super deep depressions in my life, and even had a suicide attempt. I’d taken myself out with depression on a number of occasions. Then, I would come back up to low-level depression and be like, “Okay, I can do life at this level.” But that low-level depression has been my normal.
Everything had to be calculated so I could make it through the day. It was a whole head game. I have $10 in energy for this day. If I spend $1 there, and it costs $3 to deal with that person, I won’t have enough dollars to take care of the kids. Constantly budgeting my energy to stay at that low-level baseline.
Emotionally, nothing was vivid. My daughter described it, “Everything about mom felt gray. Now, mom feels like golden light.”
Before I tried Orgasmic Meditation, I stalked it for years. I didn’t think I could have it because my husband wouldn’t go for it. Finally, I felt desperate enough to tell my husband, “We have to do this.” We learned to OM in December 2016 and tried it once. He said it was not for him, and I felt really stuck. This was a last-ditch option for me. In the spring of 2017, I asked for a divorce, and I decided I was no longer going to ask permission. I was going to do this practice.
Simply preparing for an OM practice lifted the gray film of depression off me. I can pinpoint the moment; I felt it viscerally. I hopped in my car to go to the drugstore, and while driving, I said, “This is a whole other experience of life.” I realized I could want something, hop in my car, and get it. It could be that simple.
A year later, I have a regular practice with five local strokers, including one in my house. It’s my husband! Now, he OMs! He was reluctant to try OM again, but after he talked to a few men who OM, he agreed. After our third OM, he turned to me and said, “My God, I can feel you.” What I had wanted most of all was for him to feel me. It took the language of OM for him to be able to, and it was miraculous.
We are still getting divorced, and we still live in the same house. We OM, we’re having fun, and we are playful together. We had never had that playful feeling between us before, and we were married almost 21 years.
In the past, I would tense up when I felt depression coming on. I have a fundamentally different experience now. My first dip came about four months into the practice, when the daily energetic fuel I was getting from the practice suddenly disappeared. My OMing relationships ended with two of my OM partners, and I thought that my power source was leaving with them. I felt myself, once again, free-falling into depression. Then, almost immediately, I went into a kind of inner stillness instead.
It took me a while to understand that I had been the one generating the power in my body all along. Not them. I was generating all of it. They were like the ignition switch. That realization was really powerful, and felt nothing like depression. It was an experience inside my body, an actual vibration that I had never felt before but now was feeling all day long.
I feared if I opened up my sexuality and my creativity, I would have to leave my marriage. So, I had shut down my genitals and shut down my whole body. I didn’t exercise. Any creative impulse, I would clamp it down. My sex life was terrible, all kinds of shut down, perfunctory, and I was never able to climax during sex. I feared if I opened up, I would be this unleashed woman who was too dangerous. I’d be out of control on all levels. So I wouldn’t let myself climax. I wouldn’t let myself move my body. I wouldn’t let myself write.
With OM, I have been able to channel that energy in a way that serves me and my family. It’s woken up my sexuality. It’s woken up my creativity. My husband says he will give up our marriage for this version of me, this woken-up me, this woman who feels, this woman who’s unleashed, if that is what is needed for her to be alive. What I thought I was protecting everyone from is actually the thing that frees all of us. His desire to keep it going gives him the impetus to OM.
I no longer have to do energy-accounting throughout the day. I feel plugged into something bigger, like an energy source. It’s no longer about the numbing of depression. I have access to the full spectrum of emotions. I feel my body and emotions for the first time, and it doesn’t feel dangerous. I feel things in a purer way, as pure sensation. Sometimes, I’ll cry because I feel a wave coming up the front of my body, and the tears are how it’s cresting. I don’t need to label it “good” or “bad.”
I don’t know where the divorce is going. We’ll see. But we’re rocking divorce more than we ever rocked marriage. OM has changed everything about our relationship. OM has taught us to accept life as it’s occurring and just be in relationship.
I am allowing myself to be who I am because of my OM practice. I have three teenage daughters, and who I am today is the woman I want to model for my girls—this level of freedom and self-expression. For my girls to see what’s possible as a woman. When my daughter says, “you were gray, and now you’re this golden glowing light,” that’s why I practice.
