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Once you have come to accept your sensual self and how your body feels, the next step is to become familiar with sensations and to learn how to touch in order to get sexual pleasure so that later you can share this with your partner.
Some women [more than men] have been brought up with “don’t look/touch/ feel down there”, and need to gain comfort without feeling shame or embarrassment to enjoy the pleasure of feeling aroused. Self stimulation/pleasuring enables you to discover what types of stimulation are most pleasurable and arousing, and gain confidence in your ability to be aroused without feeling awkward or being distracted by your partner’s needs or pressure to ‘achieve’.
Self pleasuring exercises:
Set aside at least half to one hour in a comfortable, warm, private room, 2 to 3 times a week.
Sensations: Luxuriate in a bath or shower, concentrating on sensations of the water on your skin, the difference in force of spray of the shower, and different temperatures and the feelings of various parts of your body. Concentrate on all your sensations of applying soap, powder or body lotion. Pleasurable sensations should be prolonged, and unpleasant sensations avoided.
Awareness: Lie comfortably on the bed, breathing quietly, relax, focus on sounds in the room and your breathing. Consider feelings in different parts of your body and reactions to these feelings, both of pleasure and anxiety.
Exploration: Slowly start to massage or stroke your limbs, neck, head, face, trunk, concentrating on obtaining pleasurable sensations and avoiding unpleasant or indifferent feelings. Experiment using different parts of your hands and fingers, with and without oil or body lotion, and other types of touch (using for example velvet or a feather) while altering speed and pressure. Extend exploration to your genitals, recognising the difference in sensations and your reaction (good, bad, anxiety or disgust). As this exercise is repeated it becomes less awkward and easier to focus on areas that provide pleasure. Become aware of ‘spectatoring’ (watching yourself anxiously) refocus your thoughts onto feelings, and recognise the variation in responses from time to time.
Increase pleasure: Having identified the areas of your genitals and breast that are pleasurable, discover what increases the intensity of pleasure by using different stimuli and movements. Increase the duration and intensity of stimulation until you feel that you may have an orgasm. Poor response may be due to fatigue, distraction, inhibitions or inadequate stimulation. If erotic sensations cause anxiety, then instead of suppressing your feelings as in the past, recognise the tension it creates, stay with that feeling until it passes, or stop and then proceed in a different way. In this way you will learn to accept and tolerate your negative feelings and overcome them. The tension that normally blocks you can be distracted with erotic fantasy or intense stimulation.
Role Playing: Some women who reach the point of orgasm and stop, may do so for fear of losing control. By role-playing orgasm (heavy breathing, moaning, calling out, moving restlessly on the bed and contracting your vaginal muscles in a rhythmical fashion) you can learn to tolerate being “out of control” and become less self-conscious. The film “When Harry Met Sally” gives a good example of this role play.
Vibrator: The powerful stimulant effect of the vibrator makes achieving orgasm relatively easy for many women. Achieving an orgasm in this way can be a breakthrough, and makes it easier to guide your partner and learn to have orgasms with him/her. Provided your relationship is good, no difficulties should be encountered in transferring the self-pleasuring exercises to sensate focus, mutual genital stimulation and intercourse.
