Pressure is one of the most challenging and vital aspects we work with in OM. We speak of three pressures—heavy, medium, and light. Heavy pressure is still no firmer than how we would stroke an eyelid, whereas a light stroke has the delicateness with which we might touch an eyeball. For the untrained attention, heavy pressure is the default, initial pressure used. Much of the world operates on heavy pressure, so our attention cannot initially perceive lighter pressure. One exception is when the person has tumescent trauma, which causes the senses to be overly sensitized rather than desensitized. Even the lightest pressure is uncomfortable.
In that case, the sense gates have “locked open” instead of being able to open and shut. The exposed nervous system then must remain in constant contact with the environment; consequently, it becomes raw from overstimulation. People in this overly sensitized state over-hear sounds and so the slightest sound sets them on edge. They over-feel sensations so that virtually any sensation occurs as an irritant. And, in this overly sensitized state, they also over-expose visuals.
Without the capacity to open and close the sense gates with ease, they lack the capacity both to stop the steady stream of stimuli—and the resulting activation of the nervous system—and are unable to process what they have perceived. Instead, stimuli continue to build and build, making the nervous system more rigid. What “hurts” in this case is actually the nervous system’s rigidity. The pain is the result of the incoming stimuli hitting up against an impermeable and impacted system that has been locked open and is unable to stop the stream.
People open in this way live in a permanent state of rigid hyperarousal. The normal intake and release of stimuli through a permeable membrane of perception is hindered, and they feel like they are living in a state of slight electrical shock. Given our cultural predisposition against down—taking time and space to allow oneself to step out of the onslaught of life and let go of control—and the few acceptable means of accessing the down, most women are stuck in a state that has altered the body’s normal and healthy relationship with heavy pressure.
Two exaggerated responses may occur. The first occurs in those who only respond to heavy pressure, whose sense gates are so impacted with undigested material that they cannot otherwise respond. The energetic request issuing from these individuals is for increased pressure and speed. The underlying aim of their request is to activate the hyperdrive of the climax impulse in order to bypass their rigidity so that a massive discharge can occur in one “dump.”
Their system is so rigid or inflexible that the dynamism necessary to sense nuanced sensation is all but impossible. It doesn’t register. For these nervous systems, we do in fact employ heavy pressure, but at a consistently slow or medium speed so as to milk out the excess material rather than blow it out in a climax. The reason we do this is because the activation of the impulse of habituated climax often overrides the mind’s capacity to track sensation.
It is virtually impossible for the untrained mind to track real-time sensation at the level of sensation that occurs after activation. The mind is unyoked from the harness of the body and races over the present stroke to get to its perceived goal. The aim of medium speed, then, is to remain under the radar of climax activation so the sense gates can relax and material can be released, but the mind can still track the stroke.
One thing for the stroker to keep in mind is that heavy pressure and increased speed may produce more dramatic expression, sound, or trembling from the strokee. This can be mesmerizing for an appearance-based stroker who doesn’t yet know how to sense deeper sensation and instead relies on what can be observed on the surface. In OM, we are not going for greater drama, but for greater depth of sensation, which will provide for greater connection, intimacy, and entry into the Erotic mind.
We don’t want to become stuck at the physical level; while it may appease the “quick fix” tumescent mind, which wants the fast reward of seeing an impact, this appeasement is fleeting and will never be gratifying in the long run. We will get a “hit” but that hit comes at a price; a hard come-up brings a hard come-down. Once we become habituated to heavy pressure on the physical level, we have to continue increasing pressure in order to provoke sensation, with diminishing results.
We also become a slave to appearances, robbing ourselves of the opportunity to learn to feel into the feeling states of other human beings. We will be doing the equivalent of playing air guitar when we could instead become a master musician. In order to fit into what titillates her stroker, the strokee learns to perform sensation—not as a means of activation, but as a means of concealing that she cannot feel.
The conditioning of the tumescent mind in a woman locks in with the conditioning of the stroker’s tumescent mind. Those who are prisoners of the world of appearances have overly used the perceptual gate of vision while the other gates remain closed, robbing the body of all its resources that would otherwise be distributed evenly throughout and activate the sixth center of the Erotic sense.
The sixth sense is an antenna of intimacy and involves intuitive or connected awareness. It is an either-or equation: if the senses are hijacked by visual displays, the exchange in an OM will be a visual performance of sensation that isn’t actually felt, performed for someone who in turn cannot sense there is no actual feeling beneath the performance.
The climax impulse in the untrained mind thus has a great potential for habituation. It is not that it makes us habituated; rather, it’s more that the flood of sensation is so strong the untrained mind gets washed away. We are left with an unconscious reflex for losing control that we are now reliant on as our only means of letting go.
In contrast, a mind anchored in the capacity to truly feel all speeds, pressures, and spots has other means of release and delight. Rather than needing to escape the present stroke, it grows to be strong and steady enough to withstand, and stay conscious for, climax. The second exaggerated response comes from a strokee who is overstimulated to the point that she is locked in hyperarousal and asks for only light pressure.
She may not even be able to take direct contact. The unintuitive stroke for her is steady, heavy pressure—to crack through the hardened layer of tumescence, and even more importantly, to allow the locked-open sense gates to close. The strokee may be sure, even demanding, that she can only take light pressure. This does absolutely nothing other than stroke the tumescence itself.
As with speed, gaining permission and ascertaining whether our partner’s intention is to enter the Erotic body or to have her tumescence stroked, is highly advisable. Setting a safe word is also wise. Should we proceed, know that when there is the demand for this type of light pressure, the tumescence itself is talking.
A woman in this condition requires regular, medium-to-heavy pressure strokes of medium speed to begin to enter the body she has been locked out of. There will likely be expressions of parasympathetic activation—from shaking to flushing and contractions—because a woman who is locked in hyperarousal has a locked introitus. Therefore, the normal fluttering that would happen with each stroke doesn’t occur.
She is either locked open or locked gripping down. We are instead aiming for fluttering waves throughout the OM that match the intensity of stroke and speed. This matching reaction is incontrovertible feedback that the strokee’s mind is connected to the body and that the body is driving. Until we reach this fluidity, we cannot start an actual OM—we are instead in the period of “playing scales.”
It may take years to open the response. Anything we do beyond scales will be of little use, although it may add visual stimulation. However, sensation cannot be truly perceived until the body is open; it will just add more undigested material into an already overly taxed system. It’s important to take the time to build the foundation on an open system.
