How Changing the Way You Masturbate Can Change Your Life

How changing the way you masturbate can change your life

Dr. Martha Tara Lee:  

It’s actually a suggestion of masturbating for 30 minutes, and for a recommended duration of 30 days. So it’s a practice. It doesn’t have to be limited to 30 days, but he does recommend a minimum of 30 minutes. And a lot of  people would immediately say, “I can’t do it for 30 minutes. Are you crazy? What if I ejaculate? I can have multiple orgasms. I don’t want to…” And it’s not really about the orgasm or the ejaculation. It’s about the erotic awakening of our sexual energy. It’s the activation of our sexual energy in our bodies. It’s less about orgasm and more about sensation and pleasure. And if you do anything for a long enough time, it becomes a meditation. So there is this line that it goes, when you do something for a long enough time, it becomes quite meditative—just like running and swimming. If you start doing it consciously, you get into the flow of it. And this is when the mind stops thinking and is much more in the flow of things. 

And in orgasmic yoga, I refer to it as a very deep practice of self-love. And if we take that time each day, to just see it as a place where we come to meet our bodies and love ourselves, then it’s a very different experience from people who just masturbate because they feel horny, because they need to get off, because they need to do something and go somewhere with that orgasmic energy. And it’s really very, very profound, because when you’re just by yourself and you have nowhere to go, but to keep going for 30 minutes, you really meet yourself in a very deep way. Your fears, your emotions, your anger, your resentment around masturbation, around sex around your sexuality really starts to come up. Even the problems, the emotional pains, the hurts and wounds from past relationships, your childhood traumas also all start to come up. So it’s a very, very profound practice that has really changed my life. And this is why I wrote the book, Orgasmic Yoga, because I’m so grateful to my teacher that I wanted to put everything that I’ve learned into that book.

August McLaughlin:  

Beautiful, I am going to have to read that. When you’re having these experiences and you are masturbating for 30 minutes, are you actually also doing yoga poses or is the yoga part the mindset?

Dr. Martha Tara Lee:  

So it is believed that yoga actually came from sex. That the word yoga, if you look into it, means practice. So orgasmic yoga means a practice. Although in orgasmic yoga we are recommended to warm our bodies. So we could you do the yoga poses, we could shake our bodies to awaken the sexual energy and to move our bodies, come into our bodies. And it is recommended that the last five minutes of the practice of 30 minutes is stillness. So you allow all the energies and emotions to integrate within yourself and to allow yourself to become whole again, to feel whatever you’re feeling. And orgasmic yoga really recommends you being in your body and not in your head. So it doesn’t encourage fantasy. And that’s another challenge, because we become, as a society, so used to being overstimulated, to watching porn, not fantasizing in our heads, so that we can have our pleasure quicker. And we even use big, strong, fat sex toys. And sometimes that can overstimulate are very sensitive genitals. I’m not against the use of sex toys. I’m just saying that they shouldn’t…limit our sexual potential and creativity.

August McLaughlin:

I hear you there. With toys, you may orgasm so so quickly, that if you’re an impatient person or kind of “go go go” and you aren’t great at slowing down, that can sort of limit your arousal or your ability to have the more sensitive feelings of pleasure throughout your body. That [orgasmic yoga] is meditative is beautiful. I love that you said it really profoundly changed your life. Would you speak to that a bit?

Dr. Martha Tara Lee:

When I was doing psychological bodywork and introduced to orgasmic yoga, we were told to do it for 30 days for the entire program. And if not 30 days, then seven days If not seven days, then three days. It hurt even then, because I am super sensitive in my body. I can have an orgasm in less than five minutes if I wanted to. So I was very resentful of yet another homework that I needed to do. So I didn’t take orgasmic yoga seriously. And it wasn’t until I broke up with my second husband and I really didn’t feel good. And a colleague actually reminded me, “Martha, you’re a sexologist. Do not shut down your sexuality. You are, you’re doing such important work. Don’t shut down your sexuality, because this is not just your work, but this is also a big part of who you are.” 

So I decided to commit to doing orgasmic yoga seriously everyday. She also had recommended that I use a vibrator to insert into my vagina and actually use the penetration to release the pain or trauma out of my vagina. So the times when I had sex when I didn’t want to the times when my partner was rough with me, and was unconscious with me, these are wounds that actually happens within us, because our erectile tissue is internal for women. And so we actually bear the very much the impact of it internally. 

So I started to do it for 30 days. And the resistance came up the most in the first week. And, you know, we say things like, we don’t have time for it. But I was committed, I did it. And within a few days, I would say the first two weeks of orgasmic yoga, everything shifted within me. My energy shifted. My mood lifted. I was basically giving myself the few good drugs of orgasmic pleasure, and not necessarily orgasm. And I started to look different. And for the first time, I think in a really long time, I got strangers staring me on the streets, because I was glowing and I could feel that I was glowing. After the first round of orgasmic yoga—I actually did it for one-and-a-half months—I was so sore, because I was doing it every day for 30 minutes with a vibrator. 

And at some point, I turned the vibrator off and just did the internal penetration, but it was painful. So my clients who say I can’t do this, you know, you can. I have done it when I’m having my period, when I’m bleeding all over the floor, when I have great pain in my vagina, I have done it. You just need to do it slowly. And it’s more about the subtle energies of pleasure rather than the need to do something and be somewhere. So it’s changed [my life] because I don’t just feel different or glow, I actually became more beautiful and I also have this deeper relationship with myself of loving myself. And actually, it was because of the deep love that I have for myself, I stopped some of the toxic behaviors that I was doing, needing to go into codependent relationships or needing to feel that I must be in a sexual relationship with someone, because that’s the only way I can get sex. Orgasmic yoga is deeply intimate, so that has really changed the quality of love that I have for myself.

August McLaughlin: 

Wow, that is so inspiring. I love the therapeutic nature that you talked about and that it radiates from you and that you glow and that you can find that source of love-energy within yourself. And then carry that on and inspire other people, help your clients and I’m sure so many people are benefiting greatly. So when you do this practice for—you said you did it for 30 days or or more at a time—do you then practice it occasionally? Or is it a program that you do in chunks?

Dr. Martha Tara Lee:

I do it in chunks, when I feel inspired or when I make a commitment. I’ve started to run workshops in a series of eight weeks or six weeks for men and women. And as part of that program, I teach them and I ask them, invite them to do orgasmic Yoga. And so I do it alongside them. Whenever I do one round of orgasmic yoga, I am putting it on the closed Facebook group that I started as part of my book, called Orgasmic Yoga, and I document my journey inside it. I have also done videos documenting my previous round of orgasmic yoga… I think I’m in my fourth or fifth round now. So I do do them in chunks and I’m going to do it again on starting from May 22 as part of masturbation month.

August McLaughlin:  

I love that. When do you say that you document it, do you practice it and then speak about it or are you actually like filming yourself doing this?

Dr. Martha Tara Lee:  

Yes. So in the previous run, I filmed it and it was a lot of work. I also had a lot of complexities with the editing, putting it together and stuff like that. So what I do instead is I write about it… In my posts, I don’t just write about how I did orgasmic yoga that day. I write about what I’m thinking, what happened that day and how my day is changing because of orgasmic yoga. So every time I’m doing orgasmic yoga now, I notice that I have a lot more energy. I have more creativity, more productivity, more positivity, more abundance flowing into my life. And it really is not sustainable, 30 minutes a day, for a lot of people. That’s why it’s for me, it has worked better to do it in chunks. Also it can be painful, if you are doing vaginal penetration all the time. And so doing it in different ways will get different results. That’s less stressful on the body, doing it in subtle ways like clitoral stimulation or playing with your nipples or giving your whole body an oil massage. So these are all different variations of how you can do orgasmic yoga.

August McLaughlin:  

I love that. I’m glad you brought up the nipple sensation, because one of the most popular masturbation tips that I’ve shared on the Girl Boner blog is about nipplegasms, basically having an orgasm through nipple stimulation, and there’s a lot of research that shows that when the nipples are being stimulated, that lights up the brain much like genital stimulation. And I participated in orgasm MRI research, where I masturbated in an MRI machine…and as you were speaking about orgasmic yoga, I was thinking so much about that and orgasm not being the goal. A lot of people have said to me, “How could you climax in a machine like that?” And it was really because I wasn’t feeling pressured to climax… I remember a scientist told me, “Whether you do or do not come, that’s helpful for us” and then relaxing. And they led me through these exercises withverbal prompts, where they’d show words on a screen. One was thinking about your nipples being stimulated and another was actually touching your nipples. And all genders were really, really stimulated by that. So I think that’s a great masturbation tip, whether you use it within the yoga practice or within your sexual activity with a partner or masturbating or whatnot. 

Dr. Martha Tara Lee: 

Yes. About 10% of the population can have a nipplegasm. And it is also believe in tau that if you massage your breasts and your nipples, you’re essentially allowing your body to have hormonal balance. It is highly recommended for menopausal women. And there is a direct link between your breasts and your womb. 

August McLaughlin:

Interesting. That is so fascinating. So aside from orgasmic yoga, which I think is just fascinating, I hope that everybody out there considers it at some point… What are other ways that we can celebrate masturbation in our lives? 

Dr. Martha Tara Lee:  

Just doing in different ways. I think we are habitual masturbators. We feel horny and then we do it, often when the mood strikes or when there’s actually a real reason to do it. And we do it the same way because it works. Why would we want to change something if it works. And we become habitual masturbators and we get stuck in patterns and if we shake things up, we’re actually lighting up all our brain and developing new neural pathways. What this means is we actually become a lot more adaptable and flexible. And when we are more sexual by ourselves, we can actually become a lot more creative and adaptable with our partners in turn. So by helping ourselves, we’re literally helping ourselves, then we can actually have better sex lives when partnered. 

So if you always do it lying down, do it standing. If you stand, do it sitting. You can do it in front of a mirror. You can use your left hand instead of your right hand. You can use a fabric, feather on your parts. You can use a vibrator throughout your whole body, as a form of massager. You could do some yoga poses before masturbation. You could put on some music. And if you are a quiet masturbator, you could give yourself permission to make a sound and gradually work towards giving yourself permission to make more noises. 

7 ways to experience stronger, more consistent orgasms

Because these are the seven ways in which we can have stronger longer, more consistent and bigger orgasms. First one is kegels—our pelvic floor squeezes. Then there’s breath. The way we breathe can actually move energy in our bodies. Then the sound. There’s movement, then touch and intention. So even the intention of moving energy from your genitals to your heart helps, just like in law of attraction. And then there’s fantasy… However, as I mentioned, in orgasmic yoga, we don’t recommend fantasy, because we really want people to be fully in their bodies. So these are the seven tools in which people can change the way they masturbate. And Joseph Kramer was the one who actually said it. And I truly believe it because I really brought orgasmic yoga onboard to change my life, and it did. So this is his quote: “Change the way you masturbate and you change your life.”

August McLaughlin:  

That’s so powerful. I definitely believe that. How important is it, do you think, to not focus on orgasm? I think that it is so common and a natural tendency because we want that release. 

Dr. Martha Tara Lee:  

I think it’s great, because we get so caught up with goals. And if we are a very goal-oriented person…sometimes just giving ourselves permission not to do this can really reframe in our heads that actually slow and subtle is also beautiful. And that can really directly change our lives and our outlook. For the Chinese, we have this saying: “we rest so that we can continue in our long journey.” And we sometimes forget the subtleness of that is available to us. So for people who who are focused on orgasms, I would say it’s not that you cannot. It’s not saying it’s bad. We’re just saying that if you can have an orgasm every single time, then why not have experiences in which you choose not to? And that is about choice, really.

August McLaughlin:  

Yes… I think that if you get caught up in that mindset, it can put a lot of pressure on you during sexual activity, whether it’s alone or with a partner. So you’ll have a lot more pleasure and also feeling the pleasure through your whole body. You know that it isn’t only about one explosive release, it’s about feeling and, like you said, sending the energy to your heart. That’s really beautiful. 

Dr. Martha Tara Lee:  

And people who are looking for the explosive release the quick fix, what happens is when you actually warmup your whole body, you actually are more likely to have a full-body orgasm and that orgasm is going to be bigger. So what you’re essentially doing is you’re expanding your container. Your body is like this container of orgasmic energy. If you take more time to warm it up, it’s just better. It’s just like eating fast food and gourmet food. Both food will fuel you up, but the essence is different. And once you’ve done it, you realize that you have a choice and you can choose to continue going for what you usually do. But you can choose to have a different experience for that session.

*****

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Listen to the full Girl Boner Radio episode up above or on your favorite podcast app! If you have a question you’d like considered for an upcoming episode, drop me a note or comment below.