Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm (6 page)

Chapter Two

The Three Ingredients for Slow Sex

N
ow, about that technique…?”

Enough with the philosophy! If you’re like most of my students, you’re ready to hear the details of the practice by now. Which is only natural, after all. When we hear the term “sex practice,” we automatically assume we’re talking about an unusual position or outlandish technique. Not for nothing; we live in a “more is better” culture. When things need a lift in the bedroom, we’ve been taught that the answer is to add something to the experience—toys, sexy talk, lingerie, tantric postures, massage oils, you name it. When I put our little OM technique out there as something truly new and different, our minds head toward fireworks and cannonballs. What on earth could OM be all about? How crazy/strange/titillating/FUN is this practice going to be, given that she’s billing it as
better
than sex toys?

Alas, the first “ingredient” in OM practice—stripping down all our expectations—comes into play right at the beginning, before most students have even started the
practice. Because by comparison to what we
think
we’re going to be getting with a “sex practice,” the step-by-step instruction for OM can appear underwhelming. There will be no fireworks here, just one very light, very subtle stroke. And there is much less physical contact—and significantly less nudity—than students expect. In fact, I can summarize the entire practice in just one paragraph:

OM is most often practiced between a man and a woman. The woman removes her clothes from the waist down. She lies down on a bed or the floor and butterflies her legs open. Her partner places a pillow under each of her knees for support. He sits to her left, with his left leg over her belly and his right leg under her knees, where he can both see and access her genitals. Once in position, he looks at her genitals and describes in a few words what he sees. He then applies lube to his left forefinger and starts to stroke the sensitive left side of her clitoris using a very light touch. He continues to stroke for fifteen minutes, during which time both partners place their attention on the point of connection between them. The stroker may ask the receiver yes-or-no questions and adjust the pressure and direction of his stroke based on her feedback and the sensation he himself is feeling in his body. When the fifteen minutes is up, he grounds the sexual energy that has built up in her body by pressing the palm of one hand firmly against her clit for a few seconds. Then each partner shares a “frame,” or a description of one particularly memorable moment of sensation they felt while OMing. The practice can be done as often as you like, but I suggest a regular practice of three to five times per week.

“It sounds like OMing is more like meditation than it is like sex,” I often hear after revealing the details. To my students’ chagrin, I nod enthusiastically. Yes. That’s exactly it.

Some disappointment is natural. We’ve gotten so conditioned to be looking for
more
rather than less. We would never think that simplification is the key, that we’ll find more satisfaction when we
subtract
rather than add. So much for the sexiness of Slow Sex; subtraction never got anyone a first date. We are an acquisition culture, always wanting more and better and new and different. Cars, houses, wives—you name it, we add it. Subtraction is invited only when it makes room for us to add something else.

But as I mentioned earlier, Slow Sex is like Slow Food. The first step in Slow Sex is to strip down to the essentials. In Slow Food, this means starting with fresh, organic, local produce and sustainably raised meats. True flavor becomes the main event. In Slow Sex, the main event is sensation. There’s no involved interpretation, no accoutrements, just bare sensation. We strip away everything until all we have left is two people, their nerve endings, and a light but precise stroke. That’s where it all begins.

The most radical part of starting OM with sensation is that we have to let go of all the other baggage we’ve been carrying around. Since it doesn’t look anything like our normal idea of sex—it’s not intercourse, it’s not oral sex, and the guy doesn’t even take off his clothes—we are no longer confined to our expectations of what sex and orgasm should look like. And since the stroke is performed almost exclusively on the woman, we get to see a whole different version of orgasm than the one we’re used to.

A version that’s about the journey rather than the destination. A version that’s softer and more nuanced—slower
and more relaxing. A version that may or may not include a conventional climax.

A version that can last an hour. Or four hours. Or four
months
.

Slow Sex doesn’t look so boring anymore, does it?

It’s true: by the time you finish this book you’ll know everything you need to know to have a four-month orgasm. There are no tools required—just three simple ingredients. First, you’ll have to take it all off: be willing to strip sex down to the barest essentials, adding nothing extra. Second, you’ll have to learn how to pay attention to the sensations in your body, feeling them, naming them, and returning to them over and over. Finally, you have to be willing to communicate freely and openly with your partner—including and especially asking for what you really want every step of the way. (Which requires you to
know
what you really want—which, never fear, is a by-product of ingredients one and two.)

Three basic ingredients. Sounds simple enough in theory, I realize, but in practice it’s not always so.

That’s okay—that’s why I’m here. To walk you through, every step of the way. In OM we call this “safeporting.” Safeporting is the practice of telling your partner everything you are about to do before you actually do it. Safeporting means everyone can relax and feel the stroke without fear of what’s coming next. This is especially important for women. Studies have shown that during orgasm, a man’s brain lights up mainly in the pleasure centers. But when a woman enters an orgasmic state, several major areas of her brain go silent—particularly those involved with inhibition, appropriateness, and evaluating her environment for possible threats. Because of this phenomenon, a sense of safety
is an absolute prerequisite for a woman to lower her guard enough to really get off. So, safeport her. After all, the only surprises we want during OM are the orgasmic kind, and believe me, if I know anything about orgasm, there are a whole lot of surprises in store. (For instructions on safeporting during the OM, see chapter 3.)

Stripping Down

A couple of years ago, we needed to redesign the interior of our OneTaste retreat center in San Francisco. Over the course of time we had accumulated so much furniture, in so many different styles and colors, that the place was starting to look like a garage sale. Our classes were getting big enough that we were at the breaking point: the clutter had to go or we’d have to start seating people on the bookshelves.

I called in my friend Marta. Now, I knew from spending time in Marta’s home and office that she understood design. She is, in fact, an incredibly good interior designer. But when she started by telling everyone to carry all the furniture from inside the center out onto the sidewalk, I got panicky. First, we’re in the heart of San Francisco here, and in a big city like that furniture sitting on the street is fair game. Second, shouldn’t a designer have vision? Shouldn’t she be able to rearrange things in a space without having to clear it out completely?

So I parked myself on one of the couches outside, ready to slap the hand of anybody who even looked sideways at my furniture, and watched as Marta instructed the OneTaste staff to bring the furniture back inside, one piece at a time.

About an hour later, after they’d moved just two-thirds of the center’s contents back inside, Marta came out and announced they were done. Done? What about the couch I was sitting on? Where was that going to go?

Marta gently guided me away from the couch and ushered me into the center. Which had, in the span of one hour, become an entirely different space. It was like someone had come in and bathed the whole center in sparkly sunlight. Everything was the same, but the relationship between the furniture and the room—and the way the place
felt—
was completely different. It was as if every chair, table, and couch had grown organically, up from the very floor and presented itself in its perfect location. The negative space in between (and there was such spaciousness, so much warm and inviting space!) was as welcoming as the cozy nooks and intimate relationships she’d created between the pieces of furniture. It was as if this whole different world had been there all along, just waiting for us to uncover it.

OM is to sex what Marta was to the center: it clears out all the sexual furniture we’ve accumulated and then brings back only the pieces that are the most sensational. When we OM, we strip sex down far enough that it doesn’t even look like “sex” anymore—and then we feel our way back in. We let go of everything we’ve ever been taught about orgasm, male/female roles, and how sex is “supposed” to look, and replace it with what
feels
good and right and pleasurable.

OM is our get-out-of-jail-free card, cleaning the slate and letting us start over from scratch. What would sex look like if we had never been taught how to do it? What does orgasm look like if we let go of our previous definitions? If it doesn’t
have
to be this ultimate, mind-blowing
experience of “going over,” then what
might
it be? What deeper pleasure might we be able to find within it? With that much freedom, what infinite possibilities exist beyond our wildest imagination?

Taking It All Off

Slow Sex is about simplicity. It is about discovering just how much orgasmic sensation is available during sex—sensation we usually miss out on because we’re spending so much energy adding to the experience. If there’s one thing you take away from this book, I hope it’s the knowledge that orgasm doesn’t need your help! You don’t have to trust me on that—all you have to do is OM. When you strip away everything extra, the power of your own authentic orgasm will say it all. To that end, here are just a few things I recommend leaving behind while you start practicing Slow Sex:

Expectations. In Slow Sex, we make a conscious decision to experience our sex just as it is, every single time, without anything added—not even our expectations. No expectation for climax, for fireworks, even for a “good” experience versus a “bad” one. Nothing but a natural sense of curiosity.

The Harder-and-Faster Mentality. Porn-style thrashing is to sex what air guitar is to rock music—a whole lot of show and not much substance. The best sex is the kind where you don’t want to move an inch. In Slow Sex, we nix the habit of trying to increase sensation by increasing speed and pressure. Instead, when we feel sensation decrease, we apply more attention. Rather than trying to add something, we look more and more carefully at what is already there.

Vibrators. I always feel bad about mentioning this, because I know how fun and effective vibrators can be. But the unfortunate truth is that they are also hard on a woman’s tender parts. They give a lot of pressure to a very wide area, and the result is that they tend to numb sensation in the clit itself. If you are willing to set them aside, at least for a period, you will discover that the steady, subtle OM stroke can draw your clit back to life. As its eight thousand nerve endings begin to fire again, you won’t believe the amount of sensation you will be able to access. You may never need to pick up your vibrator again.

Fantasy. Many women I meet create elaborate fantasy worlds where they retreat during sex. Many men, for their part, spend a lot of time with porn. Role playing, sexy lingerie—there are hundreds of ways we bring fantasy into our sex. We’ve gotten so used to it that many of us don’t think we can get off without these additions. The problem is that fantasy is a way we step
out
of our experience of sex, rather than stepping further
into
it. When I say that Slow Sex is about letting go of everything extra, I am including the safety blanket of fantasy. Putting all our attention on sensation instead allows us to go as deeply as possible into the sex we’re actually having, right now.

Romance. I hate to even bring this up because it makes me feel like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. So let me say up front that there is
nothing wrong
with romance. I love romance. The problem is, however, that we’ve bought into the idea that romance is required for us to access the deepest levels of sexual nourishment. Sex must be with someone we love; the relationship has to be “going somewhere”; our partner has to prove their love for us by gazing, Hollywood-style, into our eyes. Unfortunately, when you set these storyline requirements for sex, you end up back at the top of this list: with a whole lot of expectations. Slow Sex calls us to connect with another person at a level even more essential than a romantic storyline—at the level of what is, right now. It may be romantic, and it may not. But at least it’s real.

Your Attention, Please

If stripping down is the first ingredient in Slow Sex, then the second is paying attention. Paying attention is essential to great art, great lovemaking, and great OM. Unfortunately, attention tends to be in short supply when it comes to sex. When it comes to life, for that matter. The reason is twofold: First, our on-the-go world doesn’t place much value on noticing, listening, and feeling. Paying attention isn’t going to get us anywhere, and going somewhere is what we’ve been told we’re supposed to be doing. All the time. Bored? Go
do
something! Feeling stuck, depressed, or just generally out of sorts? Go exercise, go have sex, go eat something, go shopping. These messages have entered our psyche deeply enough that many of us actually feel guilty when we’re
not
doing something. We are a society that
doesn’t let grass grow beneath our feet—even if watching the grass grow is exactly what we want to do on any given afternoon. There is very little support in our world for just taking the time to
be
. We have been conditioned against being the kind of person who just
is
.