Female Ejaculation

Amrita, sacred nectar is the yoni [vagina]’s response to pleasure. Oddly many men claimed that this was not a ‘real’ experience. They said that women were really urinating. And anyway, how could there be female ejaculation if doctors’ did not know about it? Now, with further examination there is clear bio-chemical evidence about the different nature of female ejaculation from urine. But a new challenge now faces women.

 

With the porn industry over-emphasizing the most intense experiences as ‘gushing’ and ‘squirting’, women (and men) often feel under pressure to see women release large amounts of liquid to prove that their love-making has been ‘successful’. For some women this is natural and easy. For others it may not even feel right or necessary for their bodies. And many, many women are in between those two extremes.

 

The sensation of amrita

 

As so often with the female body, there are a wide range of subtle experiences that are not shouted about or even recognised. Women can enjoy deep satisfaction without a big display. Many have experienced amrita but do not  recognize it as it feels part of the general experience. Often the sensation of amrita starting to flow can be confused with the sensation of wanting to pee, even though it is coming from a different but close part of the anatomy. Sadly many women will have had negative experiences of being accused of peeing by their partners. They may stop the flow by tightening up against ‘peeing’.

 

So for women who are curious about experiencing their female ejaculation more deeply there is one very important rule. Go to the toilet before you start your love-making. And if you are anxious about ‘accidents’ have a good towel ready to place under yourself. Then the trick is to relax and let the sensations that may feel unusual really let go. In doing this you have the opportunity to allow more of you body’s marvelous system to show you what is possible when you trust and feel without expectations and demands.

If you’re interested in finding more about this, I’d suggest as a first step reading Deborah Sundahl’s book ‘Female Ejaculation and the G Spot’. I remember reading this on the train and a woman asking me if it was fiction. It isn’t.

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Benefits of Anal Massage

I saw a client the other day for a tantric massage, which included some anal massage work. When she had got dressed afterwards, she told me that when she was tightening her trouser belt, she realised that her belt tightened 2 notches more than it had that morning. She attributed this to the effect of our work. And speculated how much tension must have been holding in her pelvis and stomach, which had been released.

 

If you mention anal massage, you’re likely to be met with silence, or embarrassed humour, and I think the reasons for this, which are most probably unexamined are:

 

-the anus is dirty

-interest in the anus is perverted

-anal touch is painful

 

None of this is true.

 

One of the innovations of sexological bodywork is working with the anus. And there’s at least 2 very distinct benefits: regulation of the nervous system, and pleasure.

 

For sexological bodyworkers, direct touching of the anal sphincters is one of the few ways to get direct access to the nervous system. And it acts as a major down-regulator (relaxant). If someone is very stressed, relaxation of these sphincters has a major effect on the level of tension they feel in their bodies. Indeed, people very often fall into a deep sleep.

 

Landscape of different sensations

 

So far as pleasure is concerned, there are a phenomenal amount of nerve endings in the anus. More than almost any other area of the body. Because of this, the anus is an extraordinary landscape of different sensations. Move the finger a tiny amount, and the sensation is entirely different. And it very often comes with a huge and liberating emotional charge too.

So there’s an irony: delicate, thoughtful and minuscule touching around the entrance of the anus is exquisitely pleasurable, and also emotionally very moving. It takes us back to our youngest self. Yet when people think of anal pleasure, they tend to think of anal sex, which often is far from pleasurable, indeed often painful, due to people’s selfishness and ignorance. But I don’t think this is an accident: one of the curses of patriarchy is that it bifurcates our pleasure giving organs artificially into Male and Female. And because we all have anuses, our common humanity is kept at bay by thinking of the anus only in terms of penetration.

 

In the introduction to the 4th edition of his groundbreaking ‘Anal Pleasure & Health, the late Jack Morin noted:

 

“It was never one of my career goals to be known as ‘Dr Anal’, as I am in some circles.  Although I’ve accepted the nickname as a playful compliment, it’s only been during the last decade that my embarrassment has faded away completely. Like almost everyone else, my earliest attitudes toward the anal area were shaped -warped, more accurately – by the incredibly powerful anal taboo. Obediently, I thought about it as little as possible. The vast network of nerves that makes this area so sensitive was, for all practical purposes, out of commission. Once, when I was obviously upset, a perceptive therapist asked what I was feeling in my anus. The revealing answer was “Absolutely nothing”.

Please read his book. It clears up so many misconceptions.

So how would a session potentially including anal touch work? Well, firstly we would agree the boundaries for what I would do, which I would not go beyond. Second, we would start with a long, slow, relaxing and connecting whole body massage, accompanied by suitable music, which would enable you to completely attend, without worry, to what you were actually experiencing, to drop into a slightly trance like state, where you are very awake yet very relaxed, just attending to what you are feeling, and the outside world can drop away. When it comes to contact with the anus, it’s really important to be led by the body, and not to force anything, or proceed along a prearranged plan. What you want next should always be the result of what your body is feeling now, and where it wants to go next. And perhaps I should stop there, because there isn’t a standard way to experience this, only the unique way of each person, but if you want to know more, please get in touch.

If you’re interested but aren’t geographically able to work with me, please see my links page. This predominantly covers the U.K. only, so if you are further afield, you might want to try:

The Worldwide Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers

http://www.sexologicalbodyworkers.org

The World Association Of Sex Coaches

http://www.worldassociationofsexcoaches.org

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Orgasms

In the Woody Allan film ‘Manhattan’, a female character says “I finally had an orgasm, and my doctor told me it was the wrong kind”

 

The joke derives from Freud’s dictum [as it were] that clitoral orgasms were immature and masculine, and that the mature woman should confine herself to vaginal orgasms.

 

Why Freud felt entitled to pontificate about woman’s genitals without being the possessor of any is far from clear. But many since have felt a similar entitlement.

 

Strong similarities

 

Fortunately, we’ve moved on, specifically, we’re much clearer on the structure of the nervous system. And that clarity enables us to see strong similarities between male and female experiences of orgasm.

 

The clitoral orgasm is connected to the pudendal nerve. How can a man know what that’s like? Easy. The glands of the penis are connected to the same nerve.

 

The vaginal, or g spot orgasm is connected to the pelvic nerve. This is the same nerve that connects to the deep structure of the penis.

 

The cervix orgasm is connected to the hypogastric nerve. Both this nerve and the pudendal nerve are connected to the male prostate.

 

Lastly, the enigmatic Vagus nerve is connected to the uterus orgasm. In men, researchers aren’t yet sure, but I discovered it by accident during my sexological bodywork training when one of my colleagues located it as part of the pelvic floor, near the root of the penis. The sensation was felt in the head, like stimulation of the prostate, but at the side of the head. Corresponding with the vagus nerve’s upper positioning, rather than the middle of the head.

 

The similarity between male and female orgasmic experience has been overlooked, I think, for two reasons. One is the confusion between male ejaculation and male orgasm, which are actually distinct. But the main one is the insulting disinterest that the medical profession has historically had to women’s bodies and women’s pleasure.

 

Seeing these strong similarities will, I hope be a way of enabling all of us, women and men, to understand our common human inheritance of pleasure.

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Fertility and Arousal

I was recently reflecting on sexuality and fertility.  One of my friends is an acupuncturist, and she told me that increasing numbers of women were coming to her with fertility issues.  One way she treats them is to increase their receptivity and their heart connection.  She imagined that couples trying to conceive thought of intercourse as a means to an end, a necessity, rather than the theatre of glorious pleasure. She thought if I could work with these clients, they could re-learn to receive, to feel, to experience, and not be so caught up in the goal of conception. And that would help them conceive.

 

Another friend is a student midwife. She wants to write a dissertation about sexual arousal while giving birth, but finds that the literature is silent on it.

 

A third friend is a physiotherapist working in the NHS. Her speciality is working with women who have problems with their pelvic floor. She can touch the women, obviously, but is absolutely forbidden to talk about pleasure.

 

This division and ‘scientific’ approach is all very weird, because pleasure, anatomy, conception and birth are all intimately connected.

 

Why?

 

Because pleasure is the proof of our bodies – of ourselves – working properly. Pain, or numbness, is what happens when there’s something wrong. It’s simple.

 

The erectile tissue in the vagina that becomes engorged during sexual pleasure has a function. It protects the vagina during intercourse. It seems pretty obvious that the same erectile tissue is there to protect the vagina when the baby’s coming out, with the same pleasure response. And it doesn’t seem a big leap to suggest that pleasure, far from being a side effect is, thankfully, central.

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Genital Numbness

Lots of people think that erotic touch needs to be high energy. If a lot of sexual energy isn’t flowing, so goes the idea, then the touch isn’t working. I don’t think that’s true, and actually I would argue it’s positively harmful.

 

I say this because if you scratch beneath the surface of this idea, we find the further idea that our sexuality can be explained in a primarily energetic on/off kind of way. If I stroke your face, you might feel all sorts of things: energetic, emotional, connective. But somehow that doesn’t apply to the genitals, which are thought of in quite a functional way: are they “working” or not? We then think of our sexuality as something separate from us: our genitals are like a slave that we can order about. But sometimes, the slave will protest.

 

I have thought about this when working with clients who have reported feelings of genital numbness. This seems quite widespread, particularly amongst women, and I think it’s misunderstood.

 

I don’t think that numbness means that the body isn’t working properly and needs fixing. Through working with a number of women, I’ve come to the view that numbness is the body’s response to being touched in a way it doesn’t like. And the solution is to work with the client to uncover the feelings underneath the numbness, and allow those feelings to be expressed.

 

Learning to feel again

 

One client felt that she was quite constricted, and when she had attempted sex, it had been painful. She felt both numb, and anxious about sex.

 

We agreed to focus on very soft, gentle touch. We agreed where and how she would be touched, so there would be no surprises. And we agreed to stay in dialogue throughout: she would tell me what she was feeling from moment to moment. This was a very slow process, as you might imagine, but as we carried on, it became clear to the client that she did have sensation, that she wasn’t numb in the physical sense at all, but that she was emotionally indifferent to the sensation she was feeling, and telling herself she was “numb” closed off any enquiry. Realizing this, she remembered that she would always feel anxious at the prospect of being penetrated.

 

Another client, who also reported feeling numb, when we worked together, again in the same slow way, actually experienced physical discomfort, then irritation, then both gradually disappeared. Her body’s reaction to touch it didn’t like had been expressed, and so didn’t need to stay, covered over by “numbness”.

 

We all love to be touched. But when we’re touched in a way we don’t like, there’s a reaction, and that reaction can get stuck in our bodies. To return to the analogy of the slave, if she can express herself, and be heard, and discover what she loves, then everything changes.

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