Laid and Confused by Maria Yagoda

Author:Maria Yagoda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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As sex experts insist, masturbation is a platform for healing. When sex fails us, as it is wont to do, self-pleasure offers refuge, joy, and, most important, information about our sexual identities. OMGYes.com is just one of many relatively recent initiatives aimed at helping people enhance their regular masturbation practices, offering practical, educational tools.

We don’t ordinarily think of pleasure as a practice, but it is, and one with neurological implications: the more we strengthen our pleasure pathways, the easier it becomes for us to access them. (Neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to rewire itself, goes both ways; it not only wires our body’s response to trauma, but can also tweak neural networks to promote well-being, as it does with regular meditation.)4

“Mindful masturbation” is a trend that’s gaining steam as an antidote to the masturbation anxiety that plagues so many of us. If some tiny part of you still believes masturbation is embarrassing, or if it’s something you never felt comfortable enough to do, how can you fully relax into pleasure? If you struggle to experience pleasure alone, when the stakes are low, you’re likely struggling to feel pleasure with partners, when you might become preoccupied with performing or looking hot. The idea behind masturbating mindfully is to access the enormous range of pleasurable sensations our bodies are designed to feel, beyond just orgasm.

Sex therapist Pamela Joy encourages clients to explore their relationships with masturbation—often to troubleshoot issues with partnered sex, but more importantly to increase awareness of one’s own experience of pleasure. Joy, who says she acts as a “shame detector” during sessions, tells her patients to stay curious about any shame that comes up during masturbation.

After chatting with Joy, I tried mindful masturbation for myself, paying closer attention to my environment: the feeling of my unwashed bedsheets, the quality of the air, the sound of my white noise machine (blasting “summer night”), the smell of lavender oil rubbed on my wrists. I had set my room up like a spa, to the best of my abilities, lighting my favorite candles and cleaning away as much garbage as I could.

I slipped into my favorite robe, a plush, pink one. I lay in bed with a powerful wand vibrator, knowing I had just a few minutes before my Chihuahua would get wise to the fact that I had left our spot on the couch. I didn’t have any lube on hand, which is hugely beneficial to masturbation of any kind, but I did have some expired face oil. Could that work? I grabbed my phone out from under my butt and googled “marula oil lube work?” Inconclusive results. Trying to stay flexible and resist derailment, I took a few deep breaths. I checked Instagram quickly and then put my phone on the floor. I tried to center myself in the moment and in my body, laboring to notice the softness of my robe. That morning I’d shaved my entire body, having convinced myself that if I were slick as

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