by Ian
In my mid-20s, I practiced somatic-focused meditation to get back into my body. Whenever anyone asked me about it, I’d say that my meditation was like I had a block of ice in my body and that somatic practice was chipping away at it to get to the middle. It was a slow process, but I believed that if I were patient, I would one day know what was underneath the numbness I felt in place of sensation.
In 2013, I went to a 30-day meditation retreat in the company of many hippie types in search of enlightenment. I’d just come out of a painful breakup and wasn’t searching for anything except space to go within for a longer period and heal. There, I encountered a woman I hired to coach me through to the next phase of my life. She and I worked together for about three months, during which time I learned that she also taught the practice of Orgasmic Meditation (OM). I saw OM as an opportunity to bring together the disparate parts of myself that I had ignored. It was an opportunity not to leave something God-given—pleasure—off the table. I wanted more connection with women, so I decided to lean into the practice as a way for me to heal the fear and baggage I carried around about my intimate life.
Over Memorial Day weekend in 2013, I went to Colorado and learned to OM there. I had my first OM and felt turned off by it; it felt so surgical and medical with those gloves and that timer. Even though I was able to locate my partner’s clitoris, I didn’t feel anything within my own body, and when it was over, I was underwhelmed and couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. I went for a walk and sat down on a bench, and out of nowhere, I heard a voice that I’d never heard before or since. It said, “No, no, no. There is more for you here. Stick with it.” Startled, I figured maybe I should listen. Maybe there was something to explore there, so I continued on the path and returned to Portland, dedicating myself to creating a regular Orgasmic Meditation practice.
After the phenomenon of my newfound enthusiasm calmed down a bit, I started to see how much energy I was wasting in trying to figure out, manage, and control my interactions with women. I was in an OM and noticed how connected I felt to my partner when I was just focused on the point of contact: where my finger met her clitoris. I saw how much energy and presence was lost in my attempts to control the structures of my encounters with women and that when I was willing to let all that go, the present moment held the most incredibly rich sensation. None of those feelings I was waking up in my body came from overthinking or overanalyzing.
That’s what I feel has made the most significant difference: slowing down and focusing on the present moment long enough to notice the strength of the signal moving between two people. Being in connection with another person is so simple, and doing this connection thing in practice is a simple way for me to move out of my head and into my body regularly —something all those years of somatic meditating only scratched the surface of.
Orgasmic Meditation became a way for me to dialogue with the frozen and locked parts of myself to warm them up and get things moving again. Once I started to practice Orgasmic Meditation regularly, it was as if some heat source turned on in the middle of the block of ice and was thawing it from the inside.
