Unlocking Bliss: My Journey with Orgasmic Meditation — A Personal Tale of Awakening and Understanding Pleasure

I have been a practitioner of Orgasmic Meditation (OM) for 7 years.

In 2017, when I stumbled across the partnered practice in conversation with a friend, I hadn’t believed that OM was real and only pursued more information out of curiosity and for a bit of a laugh.

I didn’t expect the entire trajectory of my life to change from that one conversation.

A Somewhat Ordinary Life

I was a 39-year old mother of 3 in her second marriage. In many ways, there was nothing unusual about how my life was unfolding.

I hadn’t quite done the human female checklist in order — having the kids before marrying their father, and both of those, before going to university and pursuing a career. But I had done all of the things and I felt a certain sense of accomplishment in that.

Although my first marriage ended after 11 years together and the divorce was drawn out, messy and unkind — I knew many people who had experienced something similar — and wore being second time married as a badge of honour.

I did harbour secret insecurities about maintaining a long-term relationship and never reaching the pinnacles of career success because of the rigorous demands of motherhood, but doesn’t everyone and aren’t we all in the same boat seeking the answers?

Orgasmic Meditation

I only remember my first OM because of what happened afterwards.

By the time we got into the “nest” — a floor installation of a yoga mat, blankets, cushions and zafu — I could barely contain my anticipation. I had met women who attributed OM with a long overdue sensual awakening and new levels of confidence and energy. I couldn’t wait!

I didn’t feel much that first time. In fact, it was less sensational than having my genitals stroked during physical intimacy! It would be fair to say that I was somewhat underwhelmed by the experience.

But after sharing frames — snapshots of sensations we felt in our bodies at some point during the 15-minute meditation — and putting away the nest, my husband cracked a joke.

I started to chuckle and felt a laugh begin to rise from way lower. Before I could track what was happening I was in a full-on belly laugh, something I hadn’t had with such abandon and pleasure since childhood. It was like I was somehow lighter and able to connect more easily with joy.

It was exactly the kind of uncanny side effect I needed as motivation to keep going!

A Daily Practice

I had been told not to expect fireworks on the first occasion and that in fact, I might feel nothing at all.

The introductory training likened OM to yoga, in that the benefits would accrue over time but only with practice.

I wasn’t the only one in the class who was banking on higher peaks of mindful pleasure and more connection in my marriage through the practice — it was so common a desire that I believed that this was what Orgasmic Meditation was all about.

And at first, this was exactly what I got. I hadn’t known that I wasn’t in my body and that there was so much I wasn’t feeling. Connecting with my partner at the level of sensation opened a doorway to a deeper level of communication and to intuitively understanding each other. But these things were like the skin that forms on the top of a milky cup of tea or coffee.

Orgasmic Meditation began to reframe the questions that I had been asking myself. My only focus had been on the roles that I had been given to find definition in. I had only ever asked about how to stay a wife forever or how to be a career-woman and a good mother to avoid judgement and regret. But who was Aneka without these roles and what did she want?

It turns out that these are the questions that begin to arise when you do the work to befriend desire at the level of a soft subtle stroke.

I had no definition of me outside the roles I play and beyond the constructs I had been given by my education, society and cultural conditioning. I thought I knew myself, but I knew nothing at all, and OM only brought that into sharper and sharper relief, highlighting too just how heavy the bag of conditions was that I was carrying.

A Blissful Journey of Self Discovery

Orgasmic Meditation became for me a blissful journey of self discovery.

Pleasure took on a new meaning — the ability to stay present for any and all sensation.

Experientially reframing pleasure this way has been a boon, especially because the work of peeling backs the layers of conditioning and constructs to find what is essential, is a very mixed bag of highs and lows.

I get to be present as I walk the path towards freedom. This is nothing to take lightly. So much of my early adulthood is missing in a blur of dishes, diapers, and marital disappointment. Now I taste butter as it melts on my tongue and feel eternity in a chilly gust of wind against my cheek. Birds singing in trees outside my window is an intermittent soundtrack accompanying the rest of my life.

There is this way that stroke by stroke, Orgasmic Meditation restored my relationship with reality. There are so many veils between us and what is so. But the truth of each stroke is undeniable though. The stories we construct around feeling can’t hold out for long when we bring such microscopic attention to experience.

Orgasmic Meditation for me became the tool for taking down the master’s house. There is both freedom in the deconstruction and in cultivating the power to be the one who rebuilds according to my own blueprint.

No one will ever tell you that it could be this good simply because you inhabit your life and it belongs to you.