In the sexual calendar May is traditionally Masturbation Month.
I was thinking about this, and thinking about how for many of us masturbation is actually functional more than anything else.
The function of masturbation is orgasm.
And everything that goes with it, a few moments of release, relaxation, stress-release, tension-relieving, sleep-aid etc.
These are all fine.
And there’s more.
The more is when we expand our awareness and practice to self-pleasuring.
And when we add consciousness, Conscious Self-Pleasuring, we enter a world of such wide and deep possibility.
This is a world of healing, of connecting with ourselves, body, mind and heart, of sensation, of feeling, of emotion, of exploration, of learning, of eroticism, of kink, of energy, of spirituality, of presence, of pleasure…
We are sexual and sensual beings on our own, all the time. That doesn’t change when we’re in a relationship, although many of us only allow ourselves to be sexual when we’re with someone. This puts our sexuality outside of us, it’s there when it’s connected to someone else. Self-Pleasuring is about us, it’s ours. I think sometimes we put a higher value on pleasure with someone else. We think that there’s more intimacy, more connection, and more pleasure. They’re not necessarily better experiences, they’re different.
And when we deepen the relationship with ourselves, with our own bodies, our own genitals, our own pleasure, we have more, so much more to share with another.
If, when and how we choose.
So much of our sexuality begins with us exploring our own bodies, and so often we’re shamed for this.
I have memories of being ‘caught’ masturbating, and the embarrassment I felt at that.
In so many discussions with people they’ve shared similar experiences, and ones that went deeper, where they were shamed, belittled, judged, and how deep these wounds went.
This is where the relationship with our bodies, our genitals and our pleasure begins, and is set, where so many of our patterns become entrenched in our bodies, and minds.
And as that’s where it begins, that’s where it heals.
Orgasm and pleasure are not the same thing.
That’s not to say that orgasms are not pleasurable, they are. But the way we tend to have orgasms when we masturbate is that they’re contractive, short lived, 20, 30 seconds.
Pleasure is a deeper exploration, and one of the things that happens in conscious pleasure is our whole body, sensation, feeling and energy.
An example is when we learn Expanded Energy Orgasm, we can be in an orgasmic state for over 20 minutes or longer, and the whole body is filled with sexual energy.
There’s an intimacy with ourselves that develops in these experiences, a deep knowing of ourselves. And in this knowing of ourselves, so much healing, so much release, so much acceptance.
There’s a freedom in our own bodies, a freedom in our hearts.
Exploring ourselves with that freedom, without the fear of judgement or rejection opens us to amazing possibilities. It allows us to go into our bodies, into our minds without limitation.
It gives us a space to become aware of where our resistances are, where we hold back, where we won’t go.
There’s also the more spiritual aspect of self-pleasuring, a space where we create a ritual to connect with, to experience ourselves.
Sometimes in fire, sometimes in gentleness.
A space that becomes a meditation.
An experience, a practice that fills the body with vitality, opens creativity, connects us to the delicious sensuality of life, and also becomes a way to reach expanded states of awareness.
I started this piece talking about orgasms, lets come back to that for a moment, as it is the ending of many of these experiences for us, and orgasms are fantastic, and do so much within us.
Learning more about ourselves, freeing ourselves from the patterns, connecting with ourselves, and cultivating a self-pleasure practice, intensifies and expands our orgasms and pleasure.
I wrote a piece once where I said that many of us experience about 30% of the pleasure we’re able to feel. It was an arbitrary no, but over time I’ve come to see there’s a truth in it. Whether its 30, 40 50, doesn’t really matter.
What is important is that we can experience so much more pleasure.
As much as we might desire to share our sexuality with another, and as much as we do that, it’s important to remember, and to experience our own sexuality, our own sensuality, our own pleasure. And to allow ourselves the wonder-full inner journey of experience.
The deeper I go into self-pleasuring the more I see there, to the point of creating a programme for a self-pleasuring retreat.
In the meantime I am offering a Self-Pleasuring Journey for May.
The 1st session is free, Wed 10 May, 7:30 pm, SAST, on Zoom.
It will be recorded.
Email: jonti@eroslife.co.za, to register.
