Slow Sex author Nicole Daedone says she first learned the technique she now calls “Orgasmic Meditation” (OM) from someone who’d learned if from someone else — but that she’s not sure who really started it, or when. She says it goes back a long time.
As she recounts in her recent TEDx talk, a man she met at a party in San Francisco asked her to let him introduce her to what he called a “sexuality practice.” For some reason, without knowing much more about it than that, she agreed.
She recalls that he instructed her to undress from the waist down, and to lie on her back with her legs butterflied open. Which she did. He sat down beside her, fully clothed. He spent some time describing her vulva. He then began to stroke her clitoris very gently and precisely – up and down — with his left index finger.
What happened then? At first, nothing.
As she recalls, “Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. I was where I always am, or was, when I was in any kind of sexuality act —
“I was in my head. I was thinking about whether or not I looked good. Whether I was doing this thing right. Whether this guy was kind of creepy. Whether I was going to marry him . . .
“And then, all of a sudden, the traffic jam that was my mind broke open. It was like I was on the open road. There was not a thought in sight. There was only pure feeling . . .
“And in that moment I thought, “Oh my god, this is what it’s supposed to be like.”
Daedone was to spend the next four years trying to recapture that experience. When she finally succeeded, after thousands of hours, in finding a way to go to that place of pure feeling consistently, she decided to devote her life to it, and to showing others how as well.
The following is an excerpt from our conversation this summer about her work:
Nicole, if I understand you right, you had one taste of something very powerful the first time you tried this practice. Then it took four years of trying before you could get it back?
I’d get glimpses of it. But just glimpses. Like a shadow walking through the room.
What kept you going?
I asked my teacher once whether she experienced it on a regular basis. And she said, “Yes, and you will too.”
And did you?
Yes. Sporadically, then periodically, then regularly, then consistently. And now it’s from beginning to end, first stroke to last, every time.
Was it the same as that first time four years earlier?
Yes and no. That first time had this quality of being outside of anything I’d ever imagined. And that’s one thing that’s consistent with the practice. Rather than delivering one particular experience again and again, OM continues to take me to new places that are beyond what I could have imagined.
Where does this practice come from? Who invented it?
I don’t know. I learned it from my teachers. It’s been around awhile – in small communities in various parts of the country. It’s an oral tradition.
Some of it seems to come from India – for instance, focusing on the upper left quadrant of the clitoris. But I don’t want any cultural overlay getting in the way of responding to the practice. I’ve taught groups of Christians. Orthodox Jews. I want it to be available to anyone. It’s about the human condition.
Next time, we’ll continue the conversation with Nicole — about sex, the human condition, and a lot else besides. Stay tuned...
