If you've been hearing a lot about orgasmic meditation (OM) lately, you're not alone. OM is a controversial, but promising style of alternative meditation that incorporates clitoral stimulation. The practice, which is strictly limited to 15 minutes, boils down to a stroker stimulating the clitoris of the strokee. And in recent years, the technique has gone from taboo to more widely recognized as beneficial.
But what is it really? And what, if anything, can it do for you? We asked experts about the ins and outs of orgasmic meditation, and how to use this practice to enhance your life in more ways than one.
What is orgasmic meditation?
Orgasmic meditation is a 15-minute partnered practice wherein the strokee lies down somewhere comfortable, naked from the waist down, while someone else (i.e. the stroker) strokes the upper left quadrant of the clitoris up and down for before gently pressing down on the vagina to "ground" the strokee. It is not masturbation, which is defined as the erotic stimulation of one’s own genitals.
Climax may occur in orgasmic meditation, but master coach Aubrey Fuller—who has been practicing and teaching orgasmic meditation for 14 years—says it probably won't. Getting off is neither the focus nor something to be actively avoided during this kind of meditation. The beauty of OM lies partly in the goalless nature of it. Instead of racing toward a finish line or fixating on a certain outcome, Fuller says, "You get to actually release that entire agenda and just be with each sensation as it arises."
Think of OM as a tool for tapping into a heightened state of human connection and consciousness. Over time, OM teaches you how to harness the power of the erotic self to enter (and exit) this mystical state at will. And the restorative effects are thought to linger long after an OM session ends.
“We're kind of taking that erotic impulse and extracting it from the realm of sex,” Fuller says. “That's usually the only place where you can access it.”
Like traditional meditation and wellness practices, Fuller says OM is an attention-training practice. “Similar to sitting meditation, where you would bring your attention to the breath and you'd bring your attention to the body or you bring your attention to a visualisation, the stroker and the strokee bring their attention repeatedly to the point of contact,” the expert adds. "It's actually letting your attention stretch out into every single stroke that occurs in that 15 minutes.”What is orgasmic meditation?
Orgasmic meditation is a 15-minute partnered practice wherein the strokee lies down somewhere comfortable, naked from the waist down, while someone else (i.e. the stroker) strokes the upper left quadrant of the clitoris up and down for before gently pressing down on the vagina to "ground" the strokee. It is not masturbation, which is defined as the erotic stimulation of one’s own genitals.
Climax may occur in orgasmic meditation, but master coach Aubrey Fuller—who has been practicing and teaching orgasmic meditation for 14 years—says it probably won't. Getting off is neither the focus nor something to be actively avoided during this kind of meditation. The beauty of OM lies partly in the goalless nature of it. Instead of racing toward a finish line or fixating on a certain outcome, Fuller says, "You get to actually release that entire agenda and just be with each sensation as it arises."
Think of OM as a tool for tapping into a heightened state of human connection and consciousness. Over time, OM teaches you how to harness the power of the erotic self to enter (and exit) this mystical state at will. And the restorative effects are thought to linger long after an OM session ends.
“We're kind of taking that erotic impulse and extracting it from the realm of sex,” Fuller says. “That's usually the only place where you can access it.”
Like traditional meditation and wellness practices, Fuller says OM is an attention-training practice. “Similar to sitting meditation, where you would bring your attention to the breath and you'd bring your attention to the body or you bring your attention to a visualisation, the stroker and the strokee bring their attention repeatedly to the point of contact,” the expert adds. "It's actually letting your attention stretch out into every single stroke that occurs in that 15 minutes.”
It might seem like the stroker is the primary benefactor of the practice, while the strokee is merely assisting. But OM's benefits extend to everyone involved.
“For the most part, gender doesn't really play into it other than that the strokee does have to have a clitoris,” Fuller says. “Besides that, it doesn't play into it as much as you might think. There's a stroker position, but that stroker position is also a receiving position in a sense. Both the stroker and the strokee are plugging into something. They're plugging into this mystical state, and they both get full access to it.” Orgasmic meditation research is scant, but a 2021 study seems to support the idea that both participants briefly experience the meditative state when OM is performed.
What are the benefits of orgasmic meditation?
According to actress and OM coach Nicole Ansari, people come to the practice for all sorts of reasons—some because they desire something they can’t name, others because they just feel blocked in their sexual relationship. And she would know: Ansari’s own experience with OM led her to break a four-year sex drought with her husband.
It can help you overcome the pressure to perform.
OM gives people the opportunity to tune into what they're really feeling instead of the pressure to perform sexually. Rather than putting on sexy lingerie, participating in dirty talk, or putting pressure on experiencing the female orgasm, all you have to do is sit back and feel. For some people that can really reduce anxiety and heighten enjoyment.
“I’m not expected to climax,” says Ansari. “I’m not expected to perform. I’m not even expected to be sexy. I’m just expected to feel. And that nourishment is something that nourishes your whole life. It is an ingredient that is completely missing in most relationships, and in most people’s lives because everything is always done for a reason. Here there is no other reason than to share the experience.”
It can help with an emotional block.
Says Ansari, “I introduced the practice with my husband, and it was very frightening for him at first. For him, the idea of doing it was just out of this world. But he wanted to save the marriage and save the relationship.”
The initial result was unexpected: OM brought up unspoken issues between them. “It comes up in the practice because everything that you withhold—and everything that you’re hiding and keeping in the cells of your body—comes out,” she says. “It’s like the stroking of the clitoris becomes like a cajoling of trauma and unspoken desires, fears, hopes and dreams.”
It can put the intimacy back in your relationship.
These days, Ansari and her husband turn to the practice after time apart to help rebuild their connection: “My husband is an actor, and he’s gone a lot of the time. Sometimes when he comes back, it’s very hard to find that immediate rapport. So [I'll say], 'Let’s have an OM. Let’s just get down to it, have the 15 minutes where we can find that connection on the physical level without any expectation.' And that then opens the floodgates—and opens up the pussy, opens up the heart, opens up the desire for more connection, for more nourishment.”
It can help you push past insecurities.
Fuller's OM practice began as a way for her to quiet her mind and feel more grounded in her body. Gradually, the mental health benefits of OM helped her learn to push aside “all the thoughts and the anxieties and the self-analysis and obsession with am I skinny enough, and all the appearance things.” But Fuller continued the practice because it helped her feel more herself around other people, and more at ease with connection in general.
“I spent a lot of time in my head, and I just wanted to feel my body more and feel more connected,” she says. “And then after a very short time of doing it, it started to boost my confidence quite a bit… Over the years, it's just deepened into this experience where it's a guaranteed 15 minutes that I can basically enter the mystical state.”
It can improve sex.
The same principles that guide OM—like slowing down, focusing on the connection, and forgetting about goals—can also improve sex. For example, while the impulse during sex may be to go harder and faster to produce more sensation, pausing in the middle, a practice taught in OM workshops, can produce the same enhanced sensitivity and make you feel more connected to your partner. Even if you're not ready to OM, you can still apply some of its basic guiding principles to your sex and love life. Connected slow sex can be even more powerful than going harder and faster.
It can enhance other areas of your life, too.
The benefits of OM “deepen and expand" over time beyond your sex life, according to Fuller. “It affects how they approach their job,” Fuller says of the impact she's seen orgasmic meditation have on clients. “It has you start to consider, 'What's my calling? What's my purpose? What do I want to do with my life?' It totally transforms your relationships, and it changes how you relate with touch and sexuality and all forms of connection with people. We've had parents say that it totally transforms how they parent their children and their communication. Because it goes to the very root of the root of who we are and restores us from there, it has this ability to impact every single aspect of life.”
How to try orgasmic meditation
Learn your way around. You don't need to be an expert to partake in the practice of orgasmic meditation, of course, but there are some crucial guidelines to familiarise yourself with before trying this kind of meditation for the first time. “There's a really specific container, and there's kind of nothing extra that happens outside of that container,” Fuller says.
One such parameter is how the stroker and strokee should communicate during the OM. “It's not totally silent, but it is a really specific container," Fuller says. ”There are points where you might make a request for the stroker to go a little bit to the left or to stroke more lightly or something like that. Or the stroker may ask the strokee, ‘Would you like me to stroke with a little more pressure?’ Whatever. So there is communication that's occurring in the OM. And the strokee may be making sounds. She may be moving the energy through her voice, through the sound in a natural way. But there are no mantras or anything like that."
Fuller recommends downloading the Institute of OM app so that you and a partner can start to learn the ropes in private. You could also sign up for coaching or take a day-long introductory class if seeing a live demonstration would be helpful.
Choose a partner.
If you're partnered, this will be a no-brainer. But if you're single, no worries! You probably already know someone (or multiple someones) who'd be interested in OMing with you.
“It's a practice involving genitals,” says Fuller. “So the automatic thought is, ‘Oh, it should be done with an intimate partner.’ But it can actually be done with a friend or even an acquaintance that you feel comfortable with, someone that you know, like, and trust. You could even find a new friend and ask, ‘Would you like to try this practice with me?’ Over the years, anyone I've ever met who really wanted to start an OM practice found a way and found a partner—or a few partners—to practice it with. You could do it with one person. You could do it with a number of people if you wanted to. People design their practice however they're comfortable with it. Some couples do it monogamously. Some people have multiple people that they do it with.”
She continues, “If you're in any kind of city area, there might even be people there OMing already. And even if you're not in a city, it would be an interesting conversation to have with a friend. I've seen thousands of people do it, where they think about who's in their life and have this feeling that a friend might actually be into something like that. And then they go to them and say, ‘Crazy idea. Want to try this thing with me?’ They oftentimes say yes. It's not as daunting as you might think it is, but it can feel that way at first."
Trust your instincts.
Fuller says her students and clients often ask themselves, “Am I doing it right?” Or they question whether or not they're feeling enough or even the right thing. “Strokers are often very concerned with the technique," she adds. "They're like, ‘Is this the right length, and is my positioning correct?’”
Meanwhile, Fuller says, the strokees she coaches often wonder, “Do I just lay there, or do I do something?” Her advice: “Yeah, you do lay there. And you're doing something with your attention.”
“I think it's a revelation sometimes for strokees to discover that by putting their full attention on their clitoris and on the point of contact, how much that impacts the OM,” she says.
This article originally appeared on Glamour US.
