The Everything Orgasm Book (12 page)

Begin by spending a fair amount of time warming yourself up before starting in on your vulva. Caress and tease your whole body before you zero in on your genitals. When you are ready, begin by making sure your vulva is nicely lubed up. Depending on your body and the time of month, you may already have enough natural lubrication to play with. If you feel a little dry (which is normal), that is easily remedied. Your own saliva is readily available and has a great consistency for sliding and gliding your fingers around your vulva. However, if you prefer, try some oil or commercial personal lubricants. There are many options; Chapter 12 discusses sexual lubricants in more detail.

Caressing and Massaging the Vulva

Begin by putting your own saliva, some oil, or personal lube onto the fingertips of the hand you will be using to stimulate your vulva. Apply the lubrication in gentle strokes, starting at your vaginal opening and moving upward, dragging your fingers slowly across and on either side of your inner labia, ending with the tip of your middle finger on your clitoris. Repeat this, moving your fingers slightly until your entire vulva is well lubricated, or as long as it continues to feel pleasurable. Allow your fingers and your whole hand to remain relaxed. Pause briefly between each stroke.

Once your vulva is nicely lubed, you may be ready to try some new strokes. Continue exploring the different parts of your vulva with varying amounts of pressure and speed. Focus on the pleasurable sensations and let them guide you. What increases the pleasure at any given moment: A lighter touch or firmer pressure? Try speeding the strokes up or slowing them down — alternate between fast and slow. Do you like little circles or long strokes? Try letting your fingers engage in a dance of chaos. See if you can surprise yourself. Play with intermittingly pinching, squeezing, and pulling your clitoris and labia. Keep applying lubrication as needed to keep it juicy.

Stimulating the Clitoris

Your clitoris may or may not want direct stimulation. The clitoris has more nerve endings per square inch than any other part of your body, making it extremely sensitive to touch. You may only want to touch your clitoris over the clitoral hood or possibly stay away from it altogether. Or you may find that your clitoris may enjoy vigorous touch. The clitoris will still receive some stimulation regardless of whether or not you touch it directly. When you become aroused and the blood starts to flow into the erectile tissue, your clitoris will also become engorged and stimulated.

If you like the sensation of touching your clitoris, try pinching it between two fingers, and gliding the hood back and forth over it. You can also try pulling the hood back, up toward the pubis mons, with two fingers of one hand. Then use the tip of a finger on the other hand to gently stimulate the head of your clitoris directly. Try a lateral stroke, side-to-side, crossing over the clitoris, while applying varying degrees of pressure. Circles and figure eights over the clitoris can also feel incredibly good. Notice if one side of your clitoris is more sensitive than another. A gentle upward stroke with a fingertip on the more sensitive side may be very pleasurable.

Involving Your Erogenous Zones

Your other hand has many options for getting in on the action. It can continue to caress and stroke different parts of your body and erogenous zones. Your lips, mouth, face, ears, and neck may want some attention. Or perhaps your breasts and nipples are yearning to be caressed, squeezed, or pinched. Try lightly stroking your inner thighs. Or maybe it's all hands on deck, i.e. both hands focusing on the genitals. Your second hand can help by pressing on your mons pubis, pulling back the hood of your clitoris, separating your labia, or penetrating your vagina or anus. Allow your second hand to roam and continue to freely explore the options.

Use That PC Muscle

Self-pleasuring is the perfect time to practice squeezing your love muscle (see the pelvic floor exercise in Chapter 2). Your heightened awareness of your vulva at this time may also help you differentiate your PC muscle from the other pelvic floor muscles. Try spending a considerable amount of time just squeezing and relaxing your PC muscle. This should stimulate your vulva and help direct more blood into the tissues there. See if that increases your pleasure or arousal. Try combining this with some fantasy and see how close you can come to climax without ever touching yourself.

Move Your Body

Let your whole body be involved in self-pleasuring. There's no reason you should stay in one position or remain still the whole time. Try different positions. Get up on all fours — doggie-style — and see how you like that. Try standing up, or leaning against a wall. Try bending over a desk or table. Get creative with positioning your body and see how the different positions stimulate your fantasies. Alternatively, let your fantasies inspire different body positions. You may want to move your body while self-pleasuring. Your pelvis may want to rock. Try pushing with your legs to gently rock your entire body. See how different movements contribute to your arousal.

Make Noise

Making noise and continuing to breathe deeply into your belly can really increase pleasure in your whole body. Let yourself sigh and moan and groan or squeal and scream in whatever way you are moved. Making noises can instigate a positive feedback loop. You make a noise that expresses your arousal level and the noise itself may arouse you even more. Breathing deeply into your belly will keep your attention on your body and keep your blood well-oxygenated.

Try a Sex Toy

If you would like to give your hand a break or if you find you need more stimulation than your hand can provide, you can try using a vibrator. Many women experience their first orgasm with the aid of a vibrator. The sensations can be very intense at first. Be sure to start the vibrator on a low setting and avoid putting it directly on your clitoris. You can either stimulate the tissue around your clitoris, your groin and/or your labia, or you can put a towel or some heavy material between the vibrator and your vulva.

If you would like to play more with penetration of your vagina or anus during your self-pleasuring, you can enlist the aid of dildos or butt plugs. In a pinch, many women have experimented with various fruits and vegetables (bananas and cucumbers work well) or household objects such as hairbrush handles or pencils. This is up to you and your imagination. More information on using vibrators, dildos, and other sex toys is available in Chapter 12.

Most men have some, if not a lot, of familiarity with masturbation. Self-pleasuring in a more global sense, however, may be a new idea. To experiment, take some time, deliberately not touching your penis at first. Instead, let your hands caress your whole body, the same way a lover's hands would caress you if you were with a partner. In fact, imagine yourself as your own lover. Touch yourself with the same sense of erotic mystique you would touch someone you desired. Find your erogenous zones and give them the attention they deserve, releasing the pleasure they have to offer.

Once you have spent a good amount of time stimulating and awakening your whole body through self-touch and caressing, you can move on to touching, squeezing, caressing, and stroking your penis.

Begin by placing some lube on the tips of your middle and index fingers and thumb of the hand you will be using on your penis. Start out with very gentle strokes from the head of the penis down to the base. When you get to the base of your penis, remove your hand and begin the stroke again from the head of your penis on down rather than stroking back upward. Continue in this manner, moving your fingers slightly with each stroke, until your whole penis is covered with lube, or as long as this keeps feeling good.

When you are ready for more stimulation, you may add more lube to your hand and begin to use your whole hand. Try continuing to stroke your penis only in downward movements, lifting your hand each time you reach the base. Pause between each stroke and bring your awareness to the pleasurable sensations there. Breathe deeply. Anticipate the next stroke before you put your hand on your penis to continue stroking. Enjoy the pleasurable sensations of the anticipation. This will let the energy continue to build slowly and help you bring more of your focus onto the pleasure, rather than the task at hand. It can also help you increase your ability to contain more of an erotic charge in your body without automatically amplifying or releasing it.

Once you have explored slow, deliberate stroking to your satisfaction, let go and follow the flow of sexual energy you feel. Allow your hand to move up and down your penis in whatever way it is called to do. Tap into the pleasure of your body and let it guide you. Allow yourself to continue to use fantasy or visual stimulation freely, especially if it helps you heighten your arousal.