Sensation

by Isabel Losada

  I look it up later. This ‘condition’ is defined as ‘the inability to attain or maintain sexual arousal’. It’s further defined as the ‘inability to maintain arousal until the completion of a sexual activity’. Hmmm. What do you suppose they mean by that? Is it possible that they are defining having a climax as the ‘completion of the sexual activity?’ And if women don’t ‘maintain arousal’, are they now sick? I wonder, does the doctor stop to ask any questions before this diagnosis? Does he know where your clitoris is? Do you know where your clitoris is? Do you like each other at all?

  It gets worse. We can also now be diagnosed with ‘hypoactive sexual desire disorder’. This one is characterized by a ‘lack or absence of sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity for some period of time.’ So, if we are not enjoying sexual fantasies, we now need medicating? Do you suppose that there is the least chance that this is because someone is expecting a woman’s mind to work like a man’s? And what do they mean by ‘fantasies’ exactly?

  So, all you celibate people or all you people that are not actively having fantasies – you are sick. Rush to the doctor and say, ‘I think I’m suffering from hypoactive sexual desire disorder.’ Or if your sexual desire drops off during your sexual activity, regardless of the reason, that makes you sick too. I don’t think so. Don’t people love to tell us that we need drugs?

  The reason that Nicole is also passionate about this is that with the OM practice – where the man is actually learning – in the greatest and most subtle detail – how to give a woman pleasure … what do we find? Well, with a little training of the man and patience, 100% of women who have a clitoris can learn to receive pleasure during an OM.

  Nicole believes that orgasm needs to be a practice – just as yoga is a practice for the body and meditation is a practice for the mind. We can learn to receive pleasure. Nicole is speaking to us in visionary terms of the possibility of a different status quo.

  ‘How would it be if we lived in a world where being appropriate is not considered better than being honest?’

  ‘How would it be if we simply let the small animal of our body love what it loves?’ she said, quoting the wonderful poem ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver.14

  ‘How would it be to live in an OM-based world where we all had as much experience of orgasmic energy as we wanted?’

  Nicole tells us about the pleasure that men find in learning this and of the pleasure that they learn to feel through the woman’s arousal. She uses the phrase ‘the honey blanket’. How glorious.

  Nicole has a vision of a world where this kind of connection is available to all – just as yoga and meditation is. She would like to see the three practices coming naturally together in people’s minds and diaries. There are no conditions for entry. You don’t need to be relatively fit as you do to enjoy yoga or even able to sit still as you need to if you want to enjoy meditation. With OM you just need willingness to learn.

  ‘I want to welcome all of each of you,’ she says.

  Then, for the newcomers that don’t understand what all this is about, Nicole and Justine do a demo with Justine OMing on a platform in front of 1,000 people. It should be remarkable and obviously, for those who are seeing this the first time, it is. But for me somehow putting it on such a huge stage makes it seem like a theatrical event.

  I’m confused, bewildered and grumpy so I take a cab back to 1080, the name of the OM house in San Fran that they name by the number of the street. The wonder of living in a community is that there is always someone that you can sit and have a chat with. Sure enough, one of the more elderly residents is sitting there so I make two cups of tea, sit with him and confide in him about my retching neighbour during the group OM and my inability to concentrate.

  ‘It’s just like meditation’ he says, ‘Whatever happens around you – you just bring your awareness back to sensation.’

  ‘Yes. I know the theory. I’m just really not good at it. But in breathing meditation, if I hear roadworks, I know to bring my attention back to the breath.’

  ‘It’s the same. Sensation. Not thought.’

  ‘So, I had the best teacher out of all the 500 couples right next to me?’

  ‘You did.’

  Pah. Humbug.

  ‘Did you enjoy today?’

  ‘Parts of it. But I compared myself with other women who, based on the sounds they were making, appeared to have greater sensation – and I found myself wanting.’

  ‘I see. We learn not to compare. Even one OM with the next. Even if you have a really resonant OM with one partner it may be flat the next day so we don’t compare.’

  ‘I’m not there yet. I’m still judging myself harshly.’

  ‘So did anything really reach you?’

  ‘Yes. There was something Nicole said: that “Oxytocin flows like the land of milk and honey.” I’ve felt that. It’s a feeling of milk and honey in the body that this OM practice gives easy access to. I want more of that, for me and for everyone I know. And if this practice is one way of leading people there … and I’m learning about it … that’s enough for me.’

  ‘Very good,’ he says. And I walk up to my bedroom, passing five or six attractive men who I suspect would be very happy to help me in this research. I’d only have to ask and each of them would say ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘maybe’. I’m glad I’m dating T and don’t have to think. I go to my room, and sleep like a happy child.

  • • •

  One of the most extraordinary claims that they are making in this practice is that the limbic areas of the brain, that is those parts that are responsible for attention and emotional connection, are actually trained by OMing.

  In the book The Brain that Changes Itself, that Nicole mentioned, Dr Norman Doidge writes that the brain has an ability to repair itself and form new neural pathways. This is what they call neuro-plasticity. Practise, in anything, makes perfect or makes progress and improvement. In the OM practice, you have a man who, as many times a week as possible, is focusing 100% of his attention on noticing the results in a woman, when his finger is stroking her clitoris. He is not thinking about his own sexual satisfaction but is encouraged to put all his attention, initially at least, on her. As you’ll remember now, he is encouraged not to be distracted by any sounds that she may make, but to observe, in the greatest detail, the movements in her ‘pussy’. (Sheesh, these OMers need a new word for the area between a woman’s legs.) By giving her body his primary attention he learns about ‘ignition’ and ‘arousal’ in a way that can totally bypass a man during sexual intercourse because he is too caught up in his own arousal and, because his sensation can be intense, it’s possible for him to have sex and be completely unaware that she may be feeling very little at all.

  In an OM a man focuses on her. He will also feel his own sensation but that is, initially, a secondary focus. Now, the man can develop this exquisite ability to focus on a woman’s pleasure, allowing his own to take a secondary role until eventually he becomes so attuned to her sensation that he can barely tell where one ends and the other begins.

  It’s not going to take him that long to notice that if he doesn’t have his finger in the correct location she simply isn’t going to respond. The clitoris moves; it’s elusive. It’s different depending on whether it is erect or not, it both extends and seems to retract, it appears to move from side to side and up and down. Now in case you are thinking ‘What? It doesn’t move.’ We are talking about a question of millimetres here – but a millimetre can make a lot of difference from him being on the clit or off it. When he has found the clit he then has to understand different sensations in different areas in order to arouse her and allow her to explore sensation fully. Remember, our fingers are uniquely sensitive.

  If he attempts to ‘play’ the clit, i.e. experiment with more or less pressure or a faster or slower stoke, before he is sure that he has ignition she may be lying there in her head, just wondering how to give him an ‘adjustment’ and feeling next to nothing. Just as much a
s a man would if you stroked the skin next to his penis. Nothing is wrong, for a man, in having the skin next to his penis stroked but, for prolonged periods of stroking, it just wouldn’t do it for him.

  And feeling this spot correctly is a skill that can be learnt. And, as the man practises, every day, giving his unique and undivided attention to watching his partner’s body (or his partners’ bodies depending on how many OM partners he has) the theory is that those parts of his brain – the limbic parts – actually grow stronger. Through observation, attention, patience and vigilance – he is developing sexual empathy. He is learning to recognize and relate to how she FEELS. And while he is doing that the woman’s main process is just to lie there, enjoy the ride, keep focusing on the pleasure and keep directing him back to the points of sensation that please her best.

  Now does all this sound like theory? This is what I’m here to find out. Some of the men here have been practising a long time. They know their instrument and their limbic capacity is developed. I am here to learn from these men and to take what I learn back to my practice with T.

  • • •

  Saturday morning begins better for me. I search the local streets around the conference centre for a coffee shop that isn’t part of a chain where I can have coffee in a cup without plastic, and manage to find one. And I overhear some conference organizers voicing one of my concerns. Which pleases me.

  I guess the concern about ‘selling’ – ‘hard selling’ and ‘soft selling’ – must come up in any organization. More so when people really love and care about the product. But you may imagine that where the product is related to a new form of access to the pleasures of human sexuality – feelings run very deep indeed.

  A woman in a ‘OneTaste’ T-shirt isn’t happy.

  ‘What is on offer here is no less than a path for women to their own orgasm and a path for men to access this most exquisite connection. We don’t need to sell any of our courses actively and it’s quite wrong to do so. The product sells itself to those who want it.’

  It seems she had heard another staff member selling the ‘Mastery’ course they offer in a way that had seemed inappropriate to her. She continues,

  ‘There is no need to be even 1% pushy. Anyone can sell this course because if anyone wants this they will ask. We don’t have to sell. We just have to offer.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the second staff member. ‘You don’t feel that – on this occasion – this was done?’

  ‘No.’

  I was reassured to overhear this conversation. This organization is definitely ‘monetized’ – to use the American word. This event is hyped and they are selling courses, using all the usual tricks, ‘And for the first 15 who sign up …’ blah blah. On the other hand, they have to pay trainers and coaches to fly around the world. They need wages and plane tickets. There is so much that is free – you can have all the whole practice for the price of Nicole’s book and who knows how many couples are quietly enjoying OMs without knowing that the community exists? Just as T and I did for months.

  The OM Circles are also free. Yoga isn’t free. Meditation sometimes is but sometimes meditation courses are expensive. So, just because these people are students of the female orgasm – should they work for free? I think not. Anyway – I was pleased I had heard the discussion. And that someone thought someone else had got it wrong. That’s a good sign I think. Healthy debate is good in a community. Also I agreed with her; there was far too much selling going on.

  • • •

  There is a lot of discussion of desire here. I go to a workshop and am no less clear. It’s a complex subject. What do you desire? We move from consideration of purely physical desire – like the force felt by my friend when she smells her boyfriend’s skin, to desire in the broadest sense.

  I have been reminded that desire, any kind of desire, produces energy. I know that I would walk 500 miles just to see the face of one particular person I know. That’s a lot of desire – a lot of energy.

  From the point of view of this book and considering what makes sex into the best possible sex, primarily in monogamous relationships, this is a subject worthy of pondering. Even if an animalistic desire exists initially in relationships – how is it to be maintained?

  This question brings us to ‘attraction’. Attraction is like magnetism. What makes you just want to be close to some people? A man or a woman can exude such good energy that you just want to be close to them. What creates this? Is it happiness with the self? Is it a loving attitude toward others or a rich sense of humour? A sense of someone challenging himself or herself that makes their relationship with life a joyful one? Is it that they have a love of life and an appreciation of all that is? These are the things that make someone attractive to me. The feeling of ‘I’d like to be more like this person’ is one of the drivers to be close to someone. Isn’t it?

  None of this is the same as desire. We can find a potential partner that delights us in terms of personality, they may be intelligent and funny and have a list of good qualities but we may have no desire at all to rip their clothes off and get horizontal with them. Someone may appal us but we still want to get naked with them.

  For a relationship to work in the long term we have to have both these, don’t we? Let’s consider attraction first. We have to be attracted to someone not just in the first months where the attraction may be based on projection, but for life. And is this possible? Yes, it is. We know that because we all know relationships where this happens. I have noticed over the years that it seems to happen most often when the couple don’t have children. Is this a terrible indictment on having a family? No. What happens, I believe, with couples that don’t have children is that they remain more interested in their careers and in their own passions.

  Often in a couple with children, one partner – or sometimes both partners – chooses to make their children the primary focus. And there is nothing wrong with that of course, unless they lose interest in their own desires and just become servants. They may be so tired doing a job that can often be tedious – ‘drive child to school … do shopping … clean house, etc.’ that in the evening they resort to watching TV that they’re not interested in. They cease to be interested in themselves in a good way. They cease to be excited by the great joy of being alive and become interested only in their children. It’s hard to be attracted and excited by someone who is not excited by life.

  It doesn’t have to be like this of course. It’s perfectly possible to have a family and remain passionate about life – as long as you don’t become a victim to the role of ‘mother’ or ‘father.’ You’re not defined by that role – you are yourself and that person is in love with life. That is attractive. Passion for life is attractive – to me anyway.

  Then there is physical desire – which is different. To be a person that is desired sexually, I would argue that you have to pay attention to the senses. At the most simple level, it’s hard to desire someone who has bad breath or BO. Then, to be a person that your partner would desire maybe requires a level of sexual confidence and is similar to attraction. If a man or a woman knows that they are good at giving and receiving pleasure and are confident of their sexuality, then it makes them desirable does it not?

  Desire is then activated in an animal part of our brains just by the sight of the object of our desire – or the sound of his/her voice or the smell of their skin. Because the body has been programmed to associate sexual pleasure with this person. We are really not so unlike Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the sound of a bell rather than the appearance of food. So, in my rather hard-earned opinion, the only way that we can understand pleasure and desire is by bypassing all the externals and getting right to hands-on experience of sexuality and, most often, women’s sexuality. That’s what we are studying here at the OMX conference. That’s why we’re here.

  • • •

  I go to another group OM. I have chosen this man because he doesn’t feel threatening to me. I don’t yet have the courage to let th
e men choose me. I just feel the energy and this man felt centred and good.

  Again it’s hard. I’m surrounded by women who appear to be multi-climactic in this non-goal-centred practice. That may not be so but it appears that way and the amount of noise that some of them make does nothing to ease my feelings of inadequacy. One woman actually said, ‘Oh my God!’ rather loudly.

  But I’m making some progress. I’m focusing on my sensation and there’s a moment when I feel a strange opening in my chest and, a wonderful warmth in my arms and legs. It’s a silky-smooth ride.

  He reports feeling a warmth in his chest too and a glowing feeling from his fingers all the way up his arm.

  After each OM you and your partner speak a sensation you had, then you simply say, ‘Thank you.’ And you move on.

  • • •

  In the evening Nicole is on the main stage. She is supposed to be giving a talk on OM-based sex but she’s on such a high that she just answers questions from the audience instead. They’ve had six group OM sessions here today. I’ve been to three and to some of the lectures. I’m guessing that some people skipped the lectures if there was a group OM happening. If a woman is multi-climactic and is having two climaxes per OM (although this is not the intention) and she’d been to all six Oms … then we can only hope that the men did the grounding properly. There is certainly a lot of oxytocin and dopamine in the air. Everyone is happy and high but the drugs are all internally produced. There isn’t a drop of alcohol anywhere.

  A woman asks Nicole, ‘How can I have sex that is as good as my OM?’

  Nicole says, ‘You are shifting your centre of gravity with OM to being able to genuinely receive as much pleasure as possible. Often women don’t do this in their usual sex lives. Intercourse is a high-level practice but people treat it as if it is a beginner’s level practice. So they get beginner’s level sex.’