With life becoming so much busier, it has become increasingly important for people to find time to slow down and meditate. To answer the people’s need to de-stress and detoxify, new practices have come up and been invented like the use of quick and easy meditation apps, to pretty weird methods like wrapping yourself up in an artificial womb—and now, another company is claiming another way people can achieve Nirvana. Okay, the practice itself is not new (it’s old as time itself)—but the methodic way in which they presented it is pretty novel. Let me introduce you to “Orgasmic Meditation” also known as “OM” which Khloé Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow swear by.
According to Refinery29, “OM is a trademarked meditation technique from wellness company OneTaste that’s been making waves for a few years. It’s as much a form of meditation as it is a “body hack” innovation where your body is treated as a gateway to happiness (and not just because there’s orgasm involved).” Anjuli Ayer, CEO of OM’s founding company, further explains that “It’s a practice that combines the power of meditation with the experience of orgasm,” and that “It is a modern and innovative concept that has been shown to help people improve connections, increase empathy and generosity, and forge deeper connections with others.”
So how do you do it exactly? To achieve this, you need a partner—another consenting adult who’s at least 18 years of age. You then lie on your back, naked from the waist down, and then have your “clitoris gently stroked for 15 minutes in a non-sexual way” by your partner who’s fully clothed and “wearing a latex glove with lube.” I know, it sounds a lot like weird foreplay, but Ayer asserted that OM is “not for sexual gratification or any other purpose than to develop an individual’s personal well-being by improving connections between mind and body.” She adds, “OM puts the brain in an orgasm state without having to necessarily climax.” Furthermore, she claims that factors such as time, position, communication, sequence, and sanitation were duly taken into account for this ritual. For instance, 15 minutes is reportedly deliberate as it is determined as long enough “for the mind and body to relax into an orgasmic state while being short enough to practice on a regular basis.” OM, as opposed to sex or masturbation, is a goalless practice. In short, there’s no pressure whatsoever to achieve anything. “For some, OMing will mean increased arousal, while for others it’s more of a meditative state,” Refinery29 pointed out. The OM community apparently recognizes this orgasm state achieved through this kind of meditation as Orgasm 2.0, while the regular kind we’re all familiar with is Orgasm 1.0.
As someone who practices OM, intimacy coach Amina Peterson told Refinery29 that “I didn’t realize how much of a disconnect I had created while masturbating mostly with toys.” She added, “Sex is a lot of things, right? It’s fun, it’s healing, and it’s sacred. If you are able to bring meditation into your sexual space, you can bring new levels of trust, ease, and connection to your sex. Sex is like yoga—you get to connect with your own body in meditation, breath, and movement, and through conscious tantric meditation you get to come to a place of surrender, which changes that connection with your partner.”
She also stresses that although sacred sex education is inaccessible to most people, “that absolutely doesn’t mean that you are any less deserving of pleasure, or that you have any less access to it.” She recommended searching for information online, using hashtags such as #sacredsex and #tantricsex. Hey, If you’re all for trying this, no judgement here. Just make sure you get all the information you need, and make sure to read what other practitioners have say about it, especially if there are any negative or unhealthy effects. When you’ve done the necessary research and still want to push through, Amina offers this tip to get you started: “Establish a daily practice of self-pleasure and meditation. Connect with your body, and offer yourself pleasure before you offer it to anyone else. You don’t have to work towards a goal, in fact, I suggest that you don’t focus on orgasm at all. Let your goal be pleasure. Remind yourself pleasure is yours, that love, openness, sensuality, divinity, it’s all yours.”
Art by Marian Hukom
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