Or would you stand, like me, rooted to the spot in fear thinking, ‘What am I afraid of?’
Am I afraid that the sensation will be too good? Am I afraid of surrender consciously or unconsciously? If we have unconscious fear of surrender, how are we supposed to become conscious of it? Ha ha.
Justine has arranged for me to OM with Ken – the man they call ‘The Master Stroker’. He is the most-experienced man and the top trainer. Of course I’m terrified.
‘Why would a woman be afraid of pleasure?’ I ask a woman as she walks past me in the OM house.
‘Fear of being out of control,’ she says, without a moment’s hesitation. Hmm, that’s the same as surrender again, I guess.
If you’re afraid to try any of this – why are you afraid?
I’m still thinking about all this when The Master Stroker himself arrives. He is very short, quiet and full of gentle humility.
‘So?’ he asks.
I take a deep breath.
‘I would love to OM with you, Ken,’ I say nervously.
We sit and chat and he tells me that he used to be in computers and had no idea how to connect with women.
‘When I learnt this practice,’ he says, ‘I knew I wanted to make this my life’s work.’
So that’s what he does. He teaches men how to give women pleasure and he teaches women how to teach the men. I followed him nervously across the building but I’d have followed him nervously across San Francisco or across America if it had been necessary.
• • •
He leads me to a spacious bedroom where a ‘nest’ is already laid out on the floor. I lie down and he puts on the famous gloves that are so fine that you don’t feel them and then applies a little lube to his stroking finger. He puts his finger at the base of my introitus and moves it up slowly till he touches the exact spot on my clitoris that I have been learning is the most sensitive. So easy.
Then, with absolute grace and ease, he simply asks questions. And he asks them in a way that makes it easy for me to answer. He is genuinely demonstrating a goal-less practice – he’s just exploring, in the subtlest detail, what pleases me – and so teaching himself.
‘Does this feel like a good spot to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does this stroke feel good?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you like me to try a little firmer stroke?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you like me to back off a little now?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like a firmer stroke?’
‘Yes.’
All the time he’s connecting with my energy. He’s feeling his way. Suddenly a flash of deep heat starts to rise up through the core of my body. It feels like someone switching on a gas heater that ignites to very hot in just a second.
‘And I felt that in my body,’ he says gently at the exact moment after my body had gone up 50 degrees. Wow. So this is the ‘limbic connection’ they talk about. I hadn’t moved or made a sound. He really can feel what I’m feeling. Meanwhile he’s talking perfectly calmly – just as a masseur might while exploring your shoulders.
‘This is a more unusual stroke that is working for you.
It’s not one we teach at beginner’s level because it would be bad if done clumsily.’
My understanding is that more women, when being stroked, prefer a lighter stroke. A firmer stroke only works if the energetic connection, which can be quite hard to sense, is ignited. If it is not established and the man is not feeling the woman, then a firmer or faster stroke can be frustrating or uncomfortable. Many women know this as they have experienced low or zero sensation from penis thrusting.
But I feel like a radiator on maximum heat and a deep earthy pleasure is still rising.
‘Would you like me to back off now?’
‘No.’
Sheesh. I’m not feeling any lack of sensation.
‘You certainly have sensation.’ He smiles.
‘Yes.’
‘And juice. Everything is working.’
I’m pleased to hear that my body’s responding correctly to instructions from my unconscious about which I know nothing.
I feel amazing. And not the least compulsion to push for climax. I feel no need to reach for anything. The whole centre of my body feels as if someone had turned the heat and the bliss level up to about 90%. There’s nothing I want or need.
Then the timer goes to tell us that two minutes remain.
‘Now I’m going to bring you down with a different stroke.’ I’ve no idea what he’s doing but it feels a bit like being lowered gently and placed on a descending cloud. We finish the OM formally. The practice requires that I say, ‘There was a moment when …’ and describe a sensation. I say, ‘There was a moment when the whole inner core of my body heated up.’
He says, ‘There was a moment when your clitoris got longer and firmer and I could tell at the point of contact that we were going in the right direction. But then I started to feel a warm velvety glow in the small of my back and I knew that we had entered a state of ignition.’
I feel a little woozy.
‘That was so simple. You just established a clear connection and then asked questions that it was easy for me to answer. You made it so easy. I’ve been having such trouble trying to feel the sensations clearly enough to give the adjustments. My strokers haven’t had a clear sense of what kind of stroke to give and I haven’t had a clear sense of how to guide them. It’s been like the blind leading the blind. But with you it was all suddenly beautifully easy.’
‘Let me stop you there.’ He smiles. ‘There are two dangers with you OMing with someone they call “The Master Stroker”. The first is that you make it about me and the second is that you try to re-create the experience. Now that you’ve felt what is possible it means that you have a responsibility to teach men how to do that for you.’
‘I know. It seems I’m a poor teacher.’
‘Also don’t try and re-create that OM because every OM is different.’
‘Yes,’ I sigh. ‘Most of them, in my case, with a lot less sensation.’
‘Just try giving a wider range of adjustments. Tell your
OMing partners, “I’m working on giving more adjustments,” and then try, “Could you try a firmer stroke?” Or, “Could you try a lighter stroke?” Or, “Could you try a faster or slower stroke?”’
All this time, I realize, and despite all this training, I have been making the same mistake so many women make of hoping the man will know what to do by some kind of intuition.
And even Ken. He hadn’t put his finger down and known what to do by magic or intuition – he had simply asked questions in a way that had made it easy for me to answer them. The master as a beginner… ‘Zen mind – beginner’s mind.’ Clear – without ego and trained. What a joy.
I am so glad to be in the present. I thank Ken for the OM and leave remembering that I had been fearful all day before an OM in which I’d had deeper sensation than ever before. I felt a hot sensation deep inside me for about an hour after this OM. He hadn’t touched me internally at all but it felt, as they say here, ‘like, totally awesome.’
And still I’m not sure why or what I’m learning. What had he said? ‘Now it’s just about training every other stroker’. So I can’t OM with Ken every day for the rest of my time in San Francisco? Damn.
• • •
Tonight, one of the other girls from London arrives in my room. The house is very full and Emma, who is one of the youngest of us and is learning all this at 24, had been sleeping on a floor somewhere. We compare experiences.
‘I had the most terrible OM yesterday.’ She laughs. ‘It was some guy who was new. I don’t know why I said, “Yes.”’
I laugh. I’m dreading what she’s going to say next.
‘He was actually stroking my outer labia. I mean, they did have diagrams up at the conference that showed clearly where the clitoris is. I just gave up. He was a lost cause.’
‘You’re so funny. That’s cruel. After all, the poor bloke was at least there to learn.’
‘Yes, but I’d had a hard day. If he hadn’t even worked out that the point he was supposed to be aiming at is at least somewhere central, it wasn’t my problem.’
I’m afraid we both laughed.
‘I decided it was the next girl’s problem. I mean, the women here have more patience than I do.’
‘So you just lay there for the entire 15 minutes?’
‘Yes. A kind of existential despair set in. I came to a greater and greater realization that he really was that far off. Maybe he fell asleep on the training day?’
‘Oh dear.’
‘And there was another man who I said “Yes” to who was about 60 and he was so fumbly. I wondered what he’d been doing all his life. I thought he’d have some experience but he had no idea how to please a woman.’
‘There are millions of men out there with no idea how to please a woman, Emma.’
‘And there was this one man… I’m sure he fell asleep.’
I laughed. ‘Yes, there’s a man in London who I think dozed off in an OM with me once. It’s not very flattering is it? I mean this is my clitoris after all. It’s been quite a journey to get myself to the place where I’m able to do this. You’d think the least he could do would be to stay awake. I mean, dozing off during a cross-legged meditation on the breath is one thing. But dozing off while he’s supposed to be focused on my clitoris is another.’
‘Quite.’
‘I know I shouldn’t ask but … who was it?’ We started to laugh rather hysterically. And inevitably discovered it was the same stroker. Not many men take a doze during an OM.
Emma suddenly said, ‘Oh my God, I could never tell my mother these things.’
My worry was a little different, ‘I could never tell my daughter these things.’
’My mother would never believe this. She’d be horrified.’
‘My daughter would never believe this. She’d be horrified.’
• • •
My time at the 1080 OM house is drawing to a close. So, what have I learnt? I’m trying to draw it all together. For me and, hopefully, you too. The message – ‘You are 100% responsible for what happens in your life’ – may seem like an annoying and banal platitude from the American positive thinking movement. It certainly seemed that way to me. I remember how I battled against it when I first heard it. Gradually I understood. We are not 100% responsible for what happens. But we are obviously 100% responsible for how we respond to what happens. The more I took responsibility for my life and the more I saw myself as the creator of it the better I felt and the better my life became. Very annoying.
But I didn’t apply this to sexuality. Because it takes two, I went on thinking that I needed the right man to come along before I could sort all this out. What was I waiting for? A man who I imagined would be an intuitive of some kind? Who would understand my body even though I didn’t understand it myself?
‘Ah well, hello Mr Christian.’ – Fifty Shades of Grey – ‘I’m a virgin you see.’ The stuff of fiction?
This is one area where, while, in theory I’m aiming at 100% responsibility, I still somehow find myself imagining there is a man who knows what to do in an OM or in bed without me having to communicate clearly to him. I know some of my readers are laughing at me, ‘but Isabel, we knew this years ago.’ Most men and some women discover their pleasure and how to maintain it at a young age. Yes, my happy brothers and sexually turned on and happy sisters – you are out there – good for you. And if you are married and in this happy situation then I celebrate for you and hope that you successfully maintain your pleasure.
For the rest of us it still seems that many women are settling for second-rate sex. Women have to stop putting men’s pleasure before their own.
If we want to turn around the statistic that 60% would rather be cuddled than have sex, we have to do something different. It’s too easy to blame men for being clumsy, selfish or incompetent. We have to take 100% responsibility for our experience in life, in a bed or in an OM nest. Or at least I do.
• • •
There’s a man sitting in the common room sobbing. Someone told me that he is breaking his heart over a relationship. I know what that feels like. There is no chance to indulge in the illusion of ownership here. But I remember the sensation of a broken heart. An ache between the breastbones and feeling that life is unbearable if you can’t be with just that one person. You know that sensation, right? I remember how painful it is. When it goes quiet I speak to him.
‘Would you like to OM? I need a number one for morning practice tomorrow.’
‘OK,’ he says, and makes a note on his phone with marginally less enthusiasm than you’d make an appointment with your taxman.
OK, he’s busy with his broken heart and the guys that live at 1080 do this a lot. But all the same – I think it’s fair to expect just a glimmer of something if I’ve invited a man to stroke my clitoris. If he doesn’t feel like it that’s OK too. Hmmm. How to re-negotiate?
An hour later I look for him and find him. ‘About our OM …’ I speak up rather bravely, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ He just looks at me. ‘OK, then. As you wish.’ He doesn’t ask for an explanation. I launch into one anyway.
‘It’s just that, when I asked, you seemed so disinterested … I wondered whether you really want to … or whether you just said “yes” because you need two partners for the practice?’
Silence.
‘I mean this may happen every day for you, but for me this is still a big deal and if you don’t want to OM with me …’
‘Stop. I do. I do want to OM with you.’
‘I didn’t think it was personal. I didn’t think it was about me. I wasn’t sure, from your response, that you want to OM at all.’
‘Yes. I do. I do want to OM. And I’d like to OM with you. Please. I’m just not myself this week. There was a woman you see …’ his voice peters out.
‘Oh, yes. There was a woman … She’s just another woman, you know. There are lots of us. (I talk as if I’ve not broken my heart over a man.) We are each special in our own way.’
‘Yes. And I’d like to OM with you.’
That’s all I want. To know that he really is a ‘yes’.
‘OK, then. As you ask so nicely.’
• • •
He’s my number one at the practice this morning. I lie down and he does all the usual prep. He slides his finger with the lube on from the bottom to the top of my introitus and finds the most sensitive spot with a mixture of good training and the light in the room that means he can see.
Then he starts to play me. This rather broken-hearted man starts to play and somehow hits ‘ignite’. As he strokes I can feel my body start to heat up and that this pleasure is somehow shared by him. Then there is a loop; I get more aroused because he’s aroused, because I’m aroused. Mmmmm. His focus is 100% and he just seems to know how to play. He has what they call an ‘upstroke’ that takes me effortlessly upwards, a feeling of going up and still further up as the sensation becomes more and more intense – hotter and closer somehow, a focused sensation in my clitoris but one that creates heat through my body until I tingle and every part of every limb feels as though it’s singing.
Then just at the point where he seems to reach the very peak of possible sensation – he changes to a downstroke – like a rollercoaster, down I come. I breathe out heavily and groan as I come down, the heat drains away and instead there’s a kind of grounded earthy feeling. I’m holding onto his leg as if it’s the safety bar on the rollercoaster.
He changes the stroke again – heaven knows what he’s doing.
‘I’m supposed to be practising giving adjustments,’ I gasp.
‘I don’t want to discourage you from verbal adjustments,’ he says, ‘but I’m watching your pussy,’ and takes me up again. Somehow the electricity from my clitoris fires up my body with buzzy heat.
Then, effortlessly, he seemed to go on with some kind of upstroke. By this time, I’m unaware of the room or anyone else there or asking for anything – I just want him to keep doing what he’s doing.
He’s breathing heavily himself and rather satisfying sounds are coming out of him. I give up holding on even with my toes. Sure enough he’s able to keep on with his upstroke and keep on with his upstroke and keep on with his upstroke. Until there – as a treat in this goal-less practice – he obviously decides to do what they call here ‘take me over.’ I kick and groan as my body convulses with heat and electricity. I’m amazed that my body can produce such a simple and sassy climax in about eight minutes. I’m afraid I may have made a little bit of noise. I hope I haven’t disturbed any of the other strokers or strokees.
And even then my 15 minutes isn’t up. He switches to downstrokes and brings me flying down until he has gentle groans coming out of me from somewhere. Then he just takes me on a little glider ride for the remainder of the time. I sit up at the end. ‘Er – there was a moment when …’ I laugh, as I don’t have a sensation to describe. I can’t think of anything to say but my face is very red. He tells me his sensation, but my ears aren’t working.
‘You need to learn to breathe more fully and never hold your breath. It will increase your sensation considerably.’
‘Er – yes. Thank you. Er – what was your name again?’
He smiles. ‘It’s not about me.’
Back in my room I email Ken and tell him about this resonant OM.
‘I thought I was learning about giving adjustments? I didn’t give him any. So what am I supposed to be learning now?’
‘To enjoy.’
Ah, yes. To enjoy. Pleasure. That’s what we’re studying, isn’t it?
Unsurprisingly – if you can find a way to explore this, I recommend this practice.
Autumn in Shades of Red
Yoni Healing Anyone?
It’s autumn and I’m turning my attention to an even more difficult subject than the external part of the clitoris: the part of my body that contains the greater area of the clitoris – the vagina. Did you also know that there are heterosexual women all over Europe that meet together to massage inside each other? I am not making this up – this could be happening in a town near you. And more than this – that there is Yoni worship going on? I thought that some of the events I’ve been exploring this year were quite unusual. But you never know what people are getting up to.
Sensation Page 14