Super Sexual Orgasm: Discover the Ultimate Pleasure Spot: The Cul-De-Sac (13 page)

You may still feel awkward touching yourself. In my practice, I see many women who have never touched their genitals without feeling embarrassed, “dirty,” or guilty. I can also say from my clinical experiences that few women explore their bodies as a whole enough to discover what turns them on. This lack of self-knowledge is often the only thing stopping them from becoming aroused enough to reach orgasmic Shangri-La.

If you can’t do a prolonged selftouching stretch, start with ten minutes. Do it for a few days and then go for fifteen minutes. Little by little, work your way up to a half hour. You will be surprised and delighted at what you gain when you do. Sensate focus selftouching will help you learn more about your body, become more comfortable with it, and realize its allure and sheer wonderfulness.

You may, through these exercises, discover the whole other country of touching that is a source of relaxation and of physical and mental well-being. Your comfort

148 / BARBARA KEESLING, PH.D.

level with desiring and being desired will also increase. Selftouching will also ease any subtle, subsurface anxieties and apprehensions that may have kept you from touching other people in a friendly, nonsexual setting.

As I mentioned to you earlier in the book, stop immediately if you become very agitated or unduly anxious. A little nervousness or unease is okay to work through, but something more means there may indeed be something more go-ing on. If you don’t settle down after a short while, do consider contacting a therapist to discuss what may be happening and what you can do to address the situation.

Zen and the Art of Sensate Focus

Anxiety-free touching liberates. A person or persons can revel in an experience of tenderness, caring, and gentleness without interference from concerns about performance or adequacy. When you are touching yourself, similarly unbur-den yourself of expectations about what you should be or want to be or thought you might be feeling and
just feel.

At all times stay in the here and now. This goes for selftouching and for touching with a partner. Concentrate on the part of the body you are touching at the moment, not the area you finished touching or the area coming up. If you start having thoughts like “I’m nervous about touching my own breasts,” or “My hips are so fat,” you are removing yourself from the sensate focus and getting into your head, causing distancing in the first case and

SUPER SEXUAL ORGASM / 149

being judgmental in the second. Consciously bring your attention back to the point of contact between your fingers and your body. Don’t get upset at yourself if your mind drifts. Just bring it back. Everybody gets distracted, even longtime practitioners of sensate focus. Your ability to bring yourself back and then to stay in touch with the moment, however, will certainly improve with practice.

Staying in the here and now also means that you are focusing on the touching encounter you are having right now, not the one you have had in the past or future.
Fully experiencing your sexuality as it happens to you is the key to pleasure.

As you totally inhabit your body, you can entirely experience the exquisite sensations of being touched in a loving way. This in itself may be a novel experience for many wo-men, including yourself. I told you the journey to SSO would change your life in many ways! After completing sensate focus exercises, most women experience a heightened awareness. Many feel better about themselves immediately. Others have expressed to me that they feel a kindness toward themselves they never felt before. I’ve worked with clients for whom this caressing, especially in the genital area, prompts tearfulness and sadness. This is part of the healing process, essential to self-integration.

Letting Go

To experience deep pleasure, you must be deeply relaxed. It doesn’t matter how well you learn the exer—

150 / BARBARA KEESLING, PH.D.

cises in this book. If you are keyed up, overwrought, or anxious when you make love, utilizing the exercises won’t get the SSO you have inside of you. Sure, you’ll eke out something, but only a fraction of what you really have to offer yourself.

If it has been a long time since you’ve felt really relaxed, let me remind you what it feels like. You breathe deeply, your muscles relax, and your heart slows to a gentler pace. You may find you have few thoughts at all or that they just drift by randomly without taking hold.

You can take yourself to a place of deep relaxation through the sensate focus touching exercises you just experienced. I have seen with my therapeutic clients time and again how making these touching experiences a part of lovemaking sends both partners to a place of relaxation, which in turn increases their enjoyment of all that follows. The understanding by both partners that sensate focus touching is not some mandatory foreplay to do in order to get the “real stuff” is key. For these sexually fulfilled couples, sensate focus touching is an integral, eagerly anticipated, and enjoyed experience in and of itself.

To successfully complete the exercises in this book, you need to come from a relaxed state of being. You are reading this book
for
your enjoyment and to
heighten
your enjoyment. You are in the realm of experiencing as opposed to mastering. No one is going to the head of the class here. You have your own seat, and you’ll finish in your own seat. All I hope is that it becomes an increasingly pleasurable seat for you. That is my only expectation and it should be your only expectation as well.

SUPER SEXUAL ORGASM / 151

Every Breath you Take

Good breathing technique and relaxation go hand in hand. To say that breath is the essence of life is seemingly to say the obvious. But if that is so, I must tell you most of the people I meet in my work really need a refresher course on the obvious. They come into my office taking short or shallow breaths or breathing erratically. It’s no wonder that they are encountering sexual difficulties! Proper breathing is the basis of life—and of feeling alive. So it stands to reason that when we are choked up, tense, or choppy in our breathing, our sex life is choked up, tense, and choppy. Try getting aroused when you can barely take in a decent breath of air!

Earlier in this book you learned belly breathing. Right now, I want you to learn caress breathing. Belly breathing and caress breathing have a myriad of uses. Don’t just save them for SSO, make them a part of your daily life. They will release the benevolent natural energies in your body. Both techniques help you take more oxygen into your body. In addition to an enhanced sexual response, you will also find that these breathing techniques will lower your heart rate and blood pressure. You may like one more than the other or you may like them both. You decide.

For this exercise, be sure to choose a quiet location with minimal distractions. Wear loose-fitting clothing. Take your phone off the hook or turn the ringer down.

Begin with a few minutes of belly breathing. Now try this: Blow all the air out of your lungs through your nose rapidly.

152 / BARBARA KEESLING, PH.D.

Now slowly take all the air you can back in through your nose. Imagine you are caressing the inside of your lungs with air. Remember to relax your stomach muscles. As soon as the air has filled your lungs, start breathing out again slowly. Don’t hold your breath. Do this caress breathing five or six times in succession. You can almost feel your heart rate decrease and your blood pressure fall. This breathing technique is so simple and yet is a powerful means of regulating the rhythms and responses of your body.

Don’t Muscle in on Yourself

You can be relaxed, you can be breathing easily, and yet if some of your muscles are tensed up, you will still be doing yourself in. How can that be, you ask? Surely if your muscles were tense you would notice. You would notice if this tensing of muscles was something out of the ordinary. But, unfortunately, many of us have become acclimated to this unnatural body state. We only notice how uncomfortable and restrictive it is when we take action to release the muscles.

We spoke earlier in this section about how the healthy energy, body stamina, and physical tone that come from fitness increase your pleasure during lovemaking. Deeply relaxed muscles also heighten the amorous capacity of a sexual encounter. As you become aware of how your muscles feel when they are not tense, you will consciously be able to relax them when necessary so muscle tension will not interfere with your life in general and lovemaking in particular.

SUPER SEXUAL ORGASM / 153

Lie down on your back in a comfortable position on your bed. Starting with the muscles in your right foot, tighten these muscles as much as you can for a few seconds and then release them, the entire time maintaining a pattern of easy, calm breathing. Go to your left foot and repeat the tensing and releasing. In this manner, work your way up your entire body, inch by inch, muscle by muscle. Slowly explore your calves, thighs, entire legs, buttocks, abdomen, stomach, chest, hands, lower and upper arms, shoulders, neck, and face. You’ll probably find some muscles you never knew about—and never realized held so much tension.

While it is ideal to lie on your bed to do the exercise, and I would suggest that you learn to do it this way, once you are familiar with your body’s musculature you can do this tension releaser any time, any place. It is extremely helpful to relax the body before working on your SSO techniques, but the uses and benefits of this exercise are endless. Think of it as your quickie spa vacation. Restful and rejuvenating. And you did it all yourself.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

This concludes the exercises for body comfort. Over time, you will integrate their benefits into all aspects of your lovemaking. This integration will yield magic in many places, and also bring you to the SSO experience you seek.

Your body is the finest present you have. Very few people are fully aware of its luxurious bounty, its selfless giving, its daily full support. Move from the ranks of those

154 / BARBARA KEESLING, PH.D.

who don’t value their body fully to those who appreciate its gifts. Your body craves recognition and attention to its capacity for touch, closeness, connection, sexuality, and sensuality. And when you give back to yourself, you will find you have so much more to share with others in your life as well.

In the course of this section, I hope you have also begun to see how deriving joy and pleasure from a sexual experience means you must trust and value yourself—your body and your feelings. Sex is not about self—sacrifice. Sex is not about placing greater emphasis on another’s pleasure. Sex is about two human beings experiencing pleasure in equal measure, on equal ground.

And SSO is only as fulfilling as the context in which you experience it. The best are experienced in an atmosphere of kindness, love, and caring.

Dedicate yourself to finding such a place in your life.

APPENDIX B
‌

TOYS

Good Vibrations
San Francisco, CA 1–415–974–8990

(call for catalogue)

156

SUPER SEXUAL ORGASM / 157

Intimate Treasures
San Francisco, CA 1–415–863–5002

(call for catalogue)
Xandria Collection
Department C 1096

P.O. Box 31039

San Francisco, CA 94131–9988 (write for catalogue)

Lady Calston

908 Niagara Falls Blvd., Suite 519 North Tonawanda, NY 14120–2060 1–800–690–5239

Adam and Eve

P.O. Box 900 Department CS 357 Carrboro, NC 27510 1–800–274–0333

Barbara Keesling, Ph.D., is the author of
Super Sexual Orgasm
(published by HarperPerennial as
Discover Your Sensual Potential
) and
How to Make Love All Night (And Drive a Woman Wild)
—both titles are available from PerfectBound e-books. Dr. Keesling is also the author of, among other works,
The Good Girl’s Guide to Bad Girl’s Sex; Rx Sex: Making Love Is the Best Medicine; How to Talk Sexy to the One You Love (And Drive Each Other Wild in Bed);
and
Sexual Pleasure: Reaching New Heights of Sexual Arousal & Intimacy.
She has taught human sexuality and psychopathology at several southern California universities.

CREDITS
‌

Cover image © Barnaby Hall / Photonica

158

The Good Girl’s Guide to Bad Girl’s Sex

How to Make Love All Night (And Drive a Woman Wild)

How to Talk Sexy to the One You Love (And Drive Each Other Wild in Bed)

Rx Sex: Making Love Is the Best Medicine

Sexual Pleasure: Reaching New Heights of Sexual Arousal & Intimacy

Super Sexual Orgasm: A Woman’s Guide to Guaranteed Satisfaction*

*Published by HarperPerennial as Discover Your Sensual Potential

Publishing history: Titled
Super Sexual Orgasm
(HarperCollins, 1997); titled
Discover Your Sensual Potential
(HarperPerennial, 1999); titled
Super Sexual Orgasm
(PerfectBound, 2003). This title has otherwise not been updated since its original publication.
‌

SUPER SEXUAL ORGASM
: A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO GUARANTEED

SATISFACTION. Copyright © 1997, 1999 by Barbara Keesling, Ph.D. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive,

non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.