Self-pleasuring vs Masturbating

What's the difference?

Deeper orgasms, better sex and more relaxation

The way you masturbate is a template for your sexual experience with others. It can enhance or diminish your ability to stay present, relaxed and horny. Self-pleasuring is a form of mindful masturbation, that helps you deepen your connection to your body and your pleasure. Many of my clients speak to me about feelings of ‘numbness’ or ‘disconnection’ when it comes to genitals, or of frustration or shame around their relationship to masturbation and orgasm. Many are dissatisfied and disappointed that interactions with partners and lovers do not result in orgasm, or that orgasm happens too quickly. Many believe that masturbating is only something that ‘single people do’ and that being in a relationship means the end of your solo explorations. Changing the way you pleasure yourself can help to re-sensitise the genitals, release shame and guilt conditioning, and bring deeper relaxation to the body during intimacy. Masturbation is a healthy part of your general wellbeing but for most people there is a complete lack of understanding and guidance in how to do it well.

Give yourself a pleasure education

Somewhere along the line we ended up just sort of assuming that everyone just knows how to ‘do’ sex. When I was a teenager, sex education in school covered the biological basics, often from a strong slant of ‘sex is dangerous and will lead to pregnancy and disease if you do it‘. There really was absolutely zero input or indication on how to ENJOY sex or how to generate PLEASURE. Pleasure isn’t necessarily hard-wired into us when it comes to our sexual energy, we don’t have an in-built glossary of ‘how’, ‘where’, ‘why’. Pleasure is something we can practice, improve and expand; in the same way a pro tennis player will do specific exercises to build up the accuracy and power of her serve, or a pianist will practice her scales to be light and fluid in the fingers when playing Bach. We need to consciously practice building our body’s capacity and repertoire of pleasure and sensation. This is where self-pleasuring comes in; exploring and discovering what your body likes, how it feels, how it responds, where is nice to be touched, how hard, how soft, how quick, how slow? How can I expect someone else to know my body and be able to play it like a beautiful grand piano when I am only used to using 8 keys to play chopsticks on it?! This solo practice space of building connection with our own desires, and expanding our ‘sensation palette’, opens us up to a greater variety of orgasmic sensation and sets us up for a deeper level of connection with our partner(s).

Masturbation habits

For many people, contraction based orgasm became apparent long before we knew what sex or orgasm was. I personally remember experiencing my first ‘orgasm’ sensation when I was around 6 years old, and then I’d rub and hump my groin on a regular basis, hiding up in my bedroom, somehow knowing that I’d be told off if anyone found out. And so this pattern continued – clamp down, tense up, squeeze, hold breath, release – through my teens, through my early twenties, moving on from rubbing myself against a lumpy pillow, to using my fingers or the heel of my hand, to the exciting discovery of vibrators! Unfortunately this often caused me such disappointment with partners: they couldn’t replicate this orgasmic experience. They didn’t know how to use their fingers, tongues, or hands. They weren’t as effective as my vibrator. So I would retreat into this tight, clenched, secret little space of masturbation, using my vibrator, watching porn and endlessly chasing that 5-10 second ‘hit’ of ecstasy – the sexual equivalent of eating the same flavour of ice cream day in, day out, not knowing that there were SO MANY other flavours available to me!

Stepping into self-pleasuring

When I discovered tantra my habits and patterns slowly began to change. I began to understand this concept of ‘self pleasure’ or ‘self love’ as time spent giving myself a gift, opening my body up, letting go of frustrations and goals, meeting myself where I was at and being curious about how my body could respond. I’m going to share with you a daily practice that you can do to reconnect with your genitals, your sex and then build on to expand your ‘sensation palette’. Essentially this is a meditation, and for me that’s the first difference between masturbation and self pleasuring: with self pleasuring we consciously enter a meditative state rather than masturbation which can often be an unconscious, addictive activity driven by trying to achieve a goal or outcome. During this self pleasure practice you might think that the point is to reach orgasm… but it’s not. Use this practice as an exploration, the way you might enjoy listening to a piece of music: you don’t listen with the goal of reaching the end or learning the piece note-by-note, you listen because it moves you, because you enjoy it. ‘Orgasm’ is really neither here nor there; if you do it’s a lovely side effect but let go of the idea that it is the ‘successful outcome’ of the practice. Maybe even experiment with pausing or slowing down if you feel you’re close to that ‘peak’ orgasm feeling, so your exploring can last longer. In the long run this will broaden your sensation palette, will move focus away from the well-worn nervous system pathway of peak, clitoral orgasm, and will open you up to deeper and more longer lasting orgasmic sensations and energy in your body.

So, prepare for your self pleasure meditation:

~ Set aside 15 minutes (to begin with – you can take longer if you want) where you have no interruptions, no distractions, no other tasks or people to attend to: when you get home from work each night, or on a specific day of the week, or before you get in the shower in the morning – whatever works for you. Switch your phone to airplane mode, turn the TV off, leave the laptop in another room and create a space just for YOU.

~ It’s best to be naked, but you can be clothed if you wish. Lie down on your back, draw the soles of your feet together and up towards your sex, letting your knees fall open. Prop some cushions underneath your knees to support them if you need, make sure your thighs are relaxed and there is no tension in them.

~ Place one hand so it is cupping your sex, the heel of your hand on your pubic bone over your womb, the tips of your fingers gently resting on your vulva. The other rests over your heart.

~ Spend some time here, holding your genitals and heart, and BREATHE DEEPLY into your body. You can read more about good breathing in my previous blog here.

~ Let the inhale flow down into your sex, the exhale lift up through the spine.

~ FEEL your body, notice any tension and let those areas relax with each exhale. Imagine the body like an unwinding spring or ice melting into water.

~ BE with your body, notice the sensations and emotions that arise. Perhaps you just want to stay here like this for 15 minutes, breathing into the sex and heart, holding your womb, genitals and breasts.

~ Begin to gently bring some pressure through your fingers into your vulva, as if you’re slowly pushing a doorbell – press and hold, release, press and hold, release. Let the fingers move with the breath: press and hold with the inhale, release with the exhale.

~ Gently stroke or tickle over your vulva lips, from your perineum (the space between the entrance to your vaginaand your anus) up and over your pubic bone. Caress your genitals. Let the hand continue up over your belly, your ribs, your breasts your throat, and then return to your pelvis.

~ Take some oil or lube on your hands and come back to holding or cupping your vulva, then begin to massage slowly and gently in circles, from your pubic bone, down to your perineum and back up. Include your inner thighs and the soft, delicate skin on the inside of your buttocks.

~ Play around with squeezing and lightly pinching your outer and inner lips, running your fingers down through the ‘valley’ between them (this stimulates the long ‘legs’ of your clitoris).

~ Take your time and stay connected to a deep, full breath.

~ Gently press your thumb in and down at the entrance of your vagina, hold your thumb there gently applying pressure down towards your tailbone (this presses onto your perineal sponge, an area of erectile tissue that swells when you’re aroused).

~ Take one or two fingers about an inch inside your vagina and lift up towards your pubic bone, making a sort of ‘come here’ motion with your fingers. Explore this area slowly and gently – you are touching on your G Spot and urethral sponge (relaxing the vagina and stimulating this area can lead to G Spot orgasms and female ejaculation, or ‘squirting’).

~ Move your fingers a little deeper inside your vagina and you may be able to reach and touch on your cervix. Gently circle your finger around the tip of your cervix – it will feel a little like an olive with the stone removed. For some women this is very sensitive and even painful: if you feel pain just gently hold your finger still on that spot and breathe long and deep until the sensation begins to fade. Send love through your fingers to that area. However, it can also be intensely pleasurable: here we are stimulating sensation through the vagus nerve (read more about that in my previous blog here).

~ Continue to explore inside and outside your genitals with no goal or expectation, practising to send love, through your hands and breath, into your sex. Make sound (read more about that here), let your body move gently but as much as possible try to stay relaxed and let go of tension and tightness. If emotions arise just let them move, holding yourself with love.

~ When your timer ends, bring your hands and body to stillness, take some minutes to hold your body, notice any and all sensations that arise. As one of my friends so succinctly put it, ‘with masturbating you cum and then it’s ‘right let’s get on with my day‘, as if it never happened!‘…your self pleasuring should support you in connecting with your body, so take a little time to reflect on and honour the conscious self-love practice you’ve just done. Let go of any shame around touching yourself and bathe in the hum and buzz of your body.

If you want to know more about self pleasuring, or mindful masturbation, you can sign up to my 8 week online course or get in touch to book a session.

With Love,

Libby