Embodied Pleasure: 3 Ingredients to Orgasmic Pleasure (and How to have better Orgasms!)
Updated: 3 days ago
By Melinda Love, Coach | Embodied Magic with Melinda Podcast
What if learning how to have better orgasms and more satisfying sex isn't about trying harder, but learning how to experience pleasure differently?
If you've ever struggled to reach orgasm, felt like your body wasn't responding the way you wanted it to, or found yourself getting so close only to lose the sensation, you're certainly not alone.
And here's something I wish more women understood: Pleasure is something we can explore, practice, and become more familiar with.
We aren't born knowing everything about our sexual responses. And most of us certainly weren't given a particularly useful education about them!
Instead, we learned about sex through partners, pornography, cultural expectations, and a whole lot of misinformation about female pleasure.
We may have absorbed the idea that desire should happen spontaneously, that penetrative sex should automatically produce orgasms, or that we should somehow know exactly what to do without ever having been taught.
What if we could throw those assumptions out the window and start discovering what actually works for our own bodies?
In this episode of Embodied Magic with Melinda, I'm exploring three ingredients that can help us understand and cultivate orgasmic pleasure:
Sensation. Expansion. Surrender.
We'll also explore spontaneous versus responsive desire, different pathways to sexual arousal, and why learning to receive pleasure can be an empowering practice of self-discovery.
🎧 Listen to the episode: Embodied Pleasure: Three Ingredients to Orgasm
This is the second episode in my two-part series about embodied pleasure.
In [Part One: LISTEN HERE], we explore the relationship between nervous-system safety, relaxation, and sexual surrender.
1. Sensation: Understanding How Your Body Experiences Pleasure
Let's begin with something deceptively simple.
Pleasure isn't just a sensation. It's how we experience and interpret that sensation.
The same touch can feel wonderful to one person, unpleasant to another, and completely neutral to someone else.
And here's where it gets interesting: the same sensation can feel completely different to you depending on the circumstances.
A particular touch might feel incredible when you're highly aroused but irritating or even uncomfortable when you're not.
Your menstrual cycle, emotional state, stress levels, stage of life, and relationship dynamics can all influence how you experience sexual stimulation.
That's why I encourage women to approach pleasure with curiosity rather than a predetermined set of expectations.
Instead of asking, "Why isn't this working?"
Try asking:
What would feel good to me right now?
What research tells us about women's pleasure preferences
A 2017 study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy surveyed 1,055 American women between the ages of 18 and 94 about their experiences with genital touch, pleasure, and orgasm.
Researchers found that:
Only 18.4% reported that intercourse alone was sufficient for orgasm.
36.6% said clitoral stimulation was necessary for orgasm during intercourse.
Another 36% said clitoral stimulation made their orgasms feel better, even when it wasn't strictly necessary.
Women also reported a wide variety of preferences regarding pressure, location, and patterns of touch.
In other words, there's no single technique that works for every woman.
Your pleasure is worth exploring on its own terms.
And that exploration begins with understanding how you become aroused.
2. Spontaneous vs. Responsive Desire: Why You Might Not Feel Turned On Until You Get Started
One of the biggest misunderstandings about sexuality involves the relationship between desire and arousal.
We've been taught to expect a particular sequence:
First, you feel desire. Then you become aroused. Then sexual activity happens.
But human sexuality doesn't always follow that neat little progression.
What is spontaneous desire?
Spontaneous desire is the experience of wanting sexual activity before sexual stimulation has begun.
You might suddenly feel horny, think about sex, or want to initiate intimacy.
This is the kind of desire we see represented most often in movies and pornography.
And while spontaneous desire is a perfectly valid experience, it isn't the only way desire works.
What is responsive desire?
Responsive desire emerges in response to something.
Maybe your partner starts kissing you.
Maybe you begin reading something erotic.
Maybe you're enjoying a sensual massage, fantasizing, or simply allowing yourself to become present with pleasurable sensations.
You might not initially feel a strong desire for sex. But as you engage with an experience that feels enjoyable and welcome, desire begins to emerge.
This doesn't mean making yourself participate in sexual activity you don't want.
There's an important distinction between being open to exploring something pleasurable and overriding your own boundaries.
Responsive desire is an invitation to notice what awakens your interest—not an obligation to manufacture it.
The science of responsive desire
Sex researcher Rosemary Basson proposed an alternative model of female sexual response that challenged the assumption that desire must always precede arousal.
Her research emphasized how sexual motivation, emotional intimacy, context, and stimulation can interact dynamically rather than following one fixed sequence.
This perspective has been particularly influential in understanding sexuality within long-term relationships.
And I find it incredibly liberating.
Because when you recognize that desire can arise during a pleasurable experience, you no longer have to interpret the absence of spontaneous desire as evidence that something is wrong.
Why desire can change in long-term relationships
Think about the beginning of a romantic relationship.
You're fantasizing about each other, exchanging flirtatious messages, anticipating your next encounter.
You might believe you're experiencing spontaneous desire because you're already turned on when you see each other.
But consider how much mental and emotional stimulation has been happening beforehand!
In longer relationships, some of that anticipation and novelty may require more deliberate attention.
The experiences leading up to sex can be part of the erotic experience itself.
And this brings us to another useful area of exploration.
3. Discovering Your Personal Turn-On Style
I like to think of arousal as an art form.
We're creating an experience, not simply pressing a button and expecting a predictable result.
When you understand the different ways your body and mind respond to stimulation, you have more colors to paint with.
Some possible pathways to turn-on include:
Sensory turn-on: Soft fabrics, gentle touch, massage, warmth, scent, lighting, music, or the experience of being surrounded by beautiful things.
Physical connection: Hugging, skin-to-skin contact, deep pressure, kissing, or simply feeling your body resting against someone else's.
Mental stimulation: Erotic fantasy, imagination, anticipation, storytelling, and role play.
Emotional connection: Feeling cherished, desired, understood, connected, or deeply present with a partner.
Energetic exploration: Breathwork, visualization, and embodied practices that invite you to experience sensations of warmth, movement, or energy throughout your body.
These aren't scientifically established personality categories or fixed identities. They're simply useful ways to explore what awakens pleasure in you.
You might enjoy several different pathways—or discover that your preferences change throughout your life.
The point isn't to put yourself in another box.
It's to become curious about yourself.
And once you begin experiencing pleasure, you can explore what helps it grow.
4. Expansion: How Attention Can Intensify Sexual Pleasure
Here's one of my favorite principles to teach:
Where attention goes, energy flows.
When we're caught up in stressful thoughts during sex, those thoughts can become increasingly prominent.
Am I taking too long?
Does my body look okay?
Is my partner getting bored?
Why can't I orgasm?
Suddenly, we're paying more attention to evaluating our performance than experiencing pleasure.
But what happens when we begin directing our attention toward the sensations that are already present?
Maybe there's a little warmth.
A delicious tingling.
A sensation of fullness, movement, or anticipation.
What if, instead of trying to make something bigger happen, you simply became more absorbed in what's already happening?
The science of mindfulness and sexual pleasure
There's growing research supporting the relationship between body awareness, mindfulness, and women's sexual functioning.
A 2018 comprehensive review examined 29 studies involving body-awareness practices and female sexual health.
These included studies of mindfulness, sensate focus, and laboratory interventions designed to increase body awareness.
The researchers concluded that consciously increasing body awareness appeared to improve sexual response for some women, including women experiencing difficulties with desire, arousal, orgasm, and sexual pain.
Read the review: The Impact of Body Awareness on Women's Sexual Health. PubMed
Another randomized study, published in 2020, examined mindfulness-based and traditional cognitive behavioral approaches among 65 women experiencing orgasm difficulties.
Both approaches were associated with improvements in sexual functioning and reductions in sexual distress.
Read the study: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and Orgasm Difficulties. PubMed These findings don't mean that attention alone will produce an orgasm.
They do suggest that our relationship with our sensations, thoughts, and bodies can meaningfully influence sexual experiences.
Try the Pleasure Detective exercise
This is something I teach in my work because it helps shift attention away from performance and toward discovery.
The next time you're experiencing something pleasurable:
Notice one sensation that feels good, however subtle.
Become curious about where you experience it in your body.
Allow your attention to rest there without demanding that the sensation change.
Notice whether the sensation grows, shifts, spreads, or becomes more distinct.
Experiment with different types of touch, movement, or breathing while remaining connected to what feels pleasurable.
There's no particular result you're trying to achieve.
You're simply practicing becoming more intimately acquainted with your own experience.
This is where expanding pleasure becomes a beautiful practice of embodiment.
But there's another ingredient that deserves attention.
Because sometimes we can build an extraordinary amount of pleasure and still struggle to cross that final threshold into orgasm.
5. Surrender: Why Letting Go Can Be the Hardest Part of Orgasm
I like to imagine the journey toward orgasm as riding a roller coaster.
You're climbing toward the top.
The anticipation is growing.
You can feel yourself getting closer and closer.
And then comes that moment where the cart reaches the peak.
You have to allow yourself to go over the edge.
For some women, this is precisely where things become difficult.
Perhaps there's a fear of losing control.
Perhaps the experience of being fully absorbed in sensation feels unfamiliar or vulnerable.
Perhaps you're monitoring your performance so intensely that it's difficult to become immersed in pleasure.
And sometimes, previous experiences involving shame, trauma, or violated boundaries can influence how safe it feels to surrender.
Surrender doesn't mean giving up your agency. It means allowing yourself to receive an experience you've freely chosen.
You always retain the right to stop, change your mind, or explore something different.
What does research say about learning to orgasm?
An especially interesting new review published in October 2026 explores a concept called orgasmic learning.
The author proposes that orgasm difficulties may sometimes involve difficulty accessing the sensory, attentional, emotional, and physiological conditions that support orgasm.
Rather than viewing orgasm solely as the result of genital stimulation, this framework considers how practices involving attention, imagery, bodily awareness, and altered states of consciousness might influence orgasmic accessibility.
The paper also explores the potential relevance of hypnotic and breath-based practices.
Importantly, this is a newly proposed theoretical framework, not proof that every woman can train herself to orgasm through any particular technique.
And the author has disclosed professional and commercial interests related to orgasm-focused training and treatments, which are worth considering when interpreting the conclusions.
Nevertheless, the model offers an intriguing direction for future research.
Read the 2026 review: Orgasmic Learning as a Treatment Framework for Female Orgasmic Disorder/Difficulty. Springer Link
I find this especially fascinating because my work as a consulting hypnotist and sexuality coach explores the relationship between consciousness, attention, embodied experience, and pleasure.
What if the goal isn't simply to stimulate the body more intensely?
What if part of the exploration involves learning which internal conditions help us become absorbed in our own pleasure?
6. Relaxing Into Pleasure: Exploring the Role of Breath and the Pelvic Floor
One of the things I invite women to experiment with is their relationship with muscular tension during arousal.
Sometimes we tighten our muscles, clench our thighs, hold our breath, or bear down as pleasure builds.
For some people, muscular engagement helps intensify stimulation and contributes to orgasm.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that!
But if you're accustomed to concentrating pleasure through muscular tension, it might be interesting to discover what happens when you experiment with softening instead.
Can you allow your belly to relax?
Can you breathe comfortably without forcing a deep inhalation?
Can you notice whether your pelvic floor feels engaged, tense, relaxed, or somewhere in between?
And can you explore these sensations without creating another expectation about how your body should behave?
Does relaxing your pelvic floor help you orgasm?
The relationship between pelvic-floor activity and orgasm is complex.
Orgasm often involves involuntary muscular contractions, and pelvic-floor muscle function can play a role in sexual response.
However, that doesn't mean everyone should consciously contract their pelvic floor throughout sexual activity—or that relaxing those muscles automatically produces stronger orgasms.
Different bodies may benefit from different approaches.
For someone who habitually holds excessive tension, learning to release it may be useful.
For someone with pelvic-floor weakness or another medical concern, different strategies may be appropriate.
I encourage experimentation rather than prescribing one universal technique.
Try softening your belly, breathing comfortably, and allowing sensations to move through your body.
Imagine pleasure like warm honey, slowly spreading into all the spaces where you're willing to receive it.
And remember: the goal isn't to perform relaxation correctly.
It's to explore what actually feels good.
7. Why Reclaiming Orgasmic Pleasure Is an Act of Women's Empowerment
For me, this conversation reaches far beyond the bedroom.
When we consider how little education many women receive about their pleasure, how frequently our sexual experiences are interpreted through male-centered expectations, and how much shame can surround female desire, it's difficult to separate the subject of orgasm from the broader conversation about women's empowerment.
Learning what turns you on requires listening to yourself.
Recognizing your desire requires paying attention to what you want.
Exploring pleasure requires discovering what feels good—and what doesn't.
And surrendering to an experience you've freely chosen invites you to develop trust in your own ability to recognize and honor your boundaries.
These are skills that can have meaning far beyond sexuality.
When I talk about orgasmic pleasure as a doorway into empowerment, I'm talking about the relationship we develop with ourselves through these explorations.
Our willingness to listen.
Our curiosity.
Our creativity.
Our capacity to recognize and communicate desire.
I believe reclaiming pleasure can become a profound act of self-love.
Not because every woman needs to experience orgasm to be whole, empowered, or sexually fulfilled.
But because every woman deserves access to accurate information about her own body and the freedom to discover what pleasure means to her.
And that is worth celebrating.
Ready to Explore Your Own Embodied Pleasure?
If this conversation has sparked your curiosity, I've created something to help you continue exploring.
Get the Free Embodied Pleasure Guidebook
My Embodied Pleasure Guidebook brings together education, reflection, and embodied practices to help you cultivate a pleasure-positive mindset and explore greater ease with receiving pleasure. You'll also receive a free hypnosis audio designed to support a sense of embodied safety and invite you to become more comfortable receiving pleasurable sensations.
And if you're ready for a deeper experience,
explore my upcoming Live Virtual Workshop: The Art of Surrender where we take these concepts further through education and experiential practices and group spot coaching opportunity.
Frequently Asked Questions About Female Orgasms and Sexual Pleasure
1. Why do I have trouble reaching orgasm even when sex feels good?
There are many possible reasons. Sometimes the stimulation you're receiving simply isn't the kind your body responds to most easily. Other times, distraction, performance anxiety, medication effects, stress, relationship dynamics, or physical health conditions can influence orgasm.
It's also possible to experience significant pleasure without reaching orgasm.
If orgasm difficulty is persistent or distressing, a qualified healthcare professional or certified sex therapist can help you explore potential contributing factors.
The important thing is not to assume that difficulty reaching orgasm means there's something fundamentally wrong with your body.
2. What is the difference between spontaneous and responsive desire?
Spontaneous desire arises before sexual stimulation begins. You might suddenly feel interested in sex or experience sexual fantasies that inspire you to initiate intimacy.
Responsive desire develops after encountering something you find pleasurable or arousing, such as affectionate touch, fantasy, flirting, or other welcome stimulation.
Many people experience both patterns depending on their circumstances.
Neither pattern is inherently better, healthier, or more authentic.
Understanding how your desire works can help you create experiences that feel more satisfying and aligned with your needs.
3. Can mindfulness really help women experience orgasms?
Mindfulness-based interventions have shown promising results for some women experiencing sexual difficulties, including problems with arousal and orgasm.
Practicing awareness of physical sensations may help reduce distraction and increase engagement with pleasurable experiences.
However, mindfulness isn't a guaranteed solution, and orgasm difficulties can involve multiple physical, psychological, and relational factors.
One useful starting point is simply noticing pleasurable sensations without judging yourself or trying to force a particular outcome.
4. Why do I get close to orgasm and then lose it?
There are several possibilities.
Changes in stimulation, attention, muscular tension, or emotional state can interrupt the buildup of arousal.
Some people also experience anxiety about losing control, concerns about their partner's experience, or increased self-monitoring as orgasm approaches.
Experimenting with consistent stimulation, comfortable breathing, and attention to pleasurable sensations may help you understand what supports your arousal.
If this is an ongoing concern, individualized sexual-health support may also be useful.
5. Do I need to relax my pelvic floor to have better orgasms?
Not necessarily.
Pelvic-floor muscles participate in sexual functioning, but muscular engagement and relaxation can both play different roles in sexual pleasure.
Some people may benefit from exploring greater muscular relaxation, particularly if they habitually hold excessive tension.
Others may benefit from improving pelvic-floor coordination or strength.
There's no single muscular strategy that guarantees orgasm.
If you experience pelvic pain, painful penetration, or persistent pelvic-floor difficulties, a qualified pelvic-floor physical therapist can help assess your individual needs.
6. Can you learn to have orgasms if you've never experienced one?
Many women who have never experienced orgasm can learn more about their bodies and explore approaches that improve their opportunities for orgasm.
Strategies may include pleasure education, guided self-exploration, identifying preferred stimulation, mindfulness, and support from qualified sexual-health professionals.
However, outcomes vary, and there is no universal technique that guarantees orgasm.
Medical conditions, medications, neurological differences, and psychological factors may also influence sexual response.
Learning about pleasure is valuable regardless of whether orgasm occurs.
7. How can I feel safer surrendering to pleasure after sexual trauma?
Start by recognizing that surrender should always be a choice, never a requirement.
You don't have to push through fear, discomfort, or unwanted sensations in pursuit of an orgasm.
For some survivors, exploring pleasure independently, establishing clear boundaries, and practicing body awareness in manageable ways can be helpful.
Other people may benefit from trauma-informed therapy or specialized sexual-health support.
You can approach pleasure gradually, remaining attentive to your own sense of safety and agency.
The goal isn't to make yourself let go.
It's to discover what makes receiving pleasure feel genuinely welcome.
Full Episode Transcript
Embodied Pleasure: Three Ingredients to Orgasm
[00:00:00] Welcome to Embody Magic with Melinda. My name is Melinda, and
I'm a certified sex, love, and relationships coach specializing in women's empowerment
and embodied pleasure
This is the second episode in a two-part series
about embodied pleasure and having more ease in experiencing sexual surrender and orgasms. So if you have a challenging time coming to orgasm, this episode is for you
In this one, I'm going to break down the orgasmic experience and the ingredients that come together to create it So that you can understand how simple you can allow this to be for yourself. Because so much of this is a practice. It's a skill that we were never really taught.
We learned about orgasm through partners who may not have been the same sex as us. We learned about it through pornography and through a culture that has loads of negative messages and completely incorrect things to say about female pleasure.
We didn't learn the truth about our own bodies, what pleasure can feel like for us, [00:01:00] and how to explore it. So today, I wanna talk about the three ingredients. Sensation or pleasure, the expansion of pleasure, and surrendering to pleasure
And then we're gonna talk about two really important things to know about yourself, your style of desire and your style of turn on. Because understanding those things gives you more tools for receiving pleasure, expanding it, and allowing yourself to surrender to it. So if you haven't listened to episode one of this series, I would encourage you to do that.
That's where I explore the nervous system and safety. Safety is absolutely crucial for being able to surrender to orgasmic pleasure, to be able to expand it, to experience it in a really full-bodied way.
So before we really dive into pleasure I want you to understand that your particular body and your particular phase of life and whatever part of your menstrual [00:02:00] cycle that you're in, whatever emotions you're feeling, these things can all influence your experience on a day-to-day basis. It may take a different amount of time or a different amount or type of stimulation to generate pleasure and build pleasure in your body.
It could be different every single day, or even shifting inside of the same sexual experience. So if you're having a hard time and it's not working the same way it did yesterday, I don't want you to automatically think that there's something wrong with your body or that you can't find your way back to pleasure.
The great thing is that this calls for us to be creative.
It invites us to experiment with new ways of pleasuring ourselves. So what exactly is pleasure itself? We begin with sensation. Pleasure is the experience that we derive from the sensation, or it's the meaning that our brain and our nervous system give it. So a sensation [00:03:00] could register as pleasurable.
The same sensation could also register as painful, or it could register as nothing much at all. That same type of touch might feel pleasurable to one person and painful to another or neutral or numb to somebody else. Pleasure is in the eye of the beholder. It is subjective. Looking at it this way allows you to really own your pleasure instead of getting caught up in the idea that there's one right way to experience it.
Even when you begin to know yourself really well, it's great to have an open mind about what different types of sensations mean to you in that moment, because it can shift according to your mood, your cycle, your time of life. There are so many ways to experience pleasure. Sometimes something that is initially feeling neutral or even unpleasant can feel pleasurable in a different context, [00:04:00] and you should always be checking in with your consent boundaries.
What is feeling good to me right now? And not pushing ourselves past the point of this is what I'm interested in feeling right now. even if it doesn't register as pleasant right yet Sometimes your body simply needs to reach a greater state of arousal or stimulation before a particular sensation feels good.
That's where awareness of your arousal system and your turn-on style really come in handy. If you haven't already reached enough blood flow, enough mental interest, enough emotional engagement or connection to feel turned on, a sensation that might feel wonderful when you are aroused could feel like nothing or even uncomfortable when you're not.
So it's really useful to learn what turns you on, how long that generally takes for you, and what helps you to get there. And that brings us [00:05:00] to desire. We've been educated so very poorly in our society about female pleasure and desire, about how the body responds to stimulation and moves through a pleasurable experience towards orgasm.
So what I'd really invite you to do is take a lot of those assumptions that you've learned and just toss them out the window for a minute
If you want a deeper exploration of sexual desire and arousal, you can read Emily Nagoski's book Come as You Are. She walks you through the research that can help you understand these experiences. Two patterns of desire that you'll hear about are spontaneous and responsive, and these aren't just boxes that you have to put yourself into one or the other.
You might experience either one of them, a little bit of both, or different patterns in different situations, situational desire
You might experience desire one way with yourself and a different way with a partner. [00:06:00] Spontaneous desire is the kind that we tend to see in movies and pornography. Someone thinks about sex, someone initiates sex, and suddenly everyone is turned on, they're having sex, they're enjoying it, they're having orgasms, and it just feels like a big party.
If you have two people who both experience that type of desire, spontaneous,
It can look like them both being ready to go at the drop of a hat. That can make the whole journey appear a lot quicker than it actually is in most of reality.
Some people find themselves in the mood more quickly, more readily, while others need something to respond to before that desire comes alive. So this other pattern that we're gonna talk about is called responsive desire. Responsive desire begins to come online and build in response to something.
It could be an inner stimulus, like a fantasy, or an outer stimulus, like your partner flirting with you, touching you, or seducing you in a [00:07:00] number of ways. This is the type that we haven't explored as often in our cultural understanding of desire. We haven't had enough representations of it to really understand it on a core level and to normalize it.
For many, many women, responsive desire is particularly familiar in a relationship with a partner they've been with for a long time. In the honeymoon phase, you might feel more spontaneous. You're thinking about the person all the time. You're already turned on when you see them. But even then, that turn-on may not have come out of nowhere.
You're fantasizing about them. You're sending flirtatious texts during the day. You're mentally and emotionally priming your responsive system. You might already be turned on before you even get together, and that's one reason why desire can seem to fade in older relationships. Some of that novelty, anticipation, and initial chemistry [00:08:00] may need more deliberate attention.
Bringing in newness or having enough distance and space to experience your partner freshly can be part of that, and that is a whole nother conversation, but it connects to this one. What happens before the sexual experience can be part of the sexual experience. So I want you to notice when desire becomes alive in you.
Where in the process do you feel, "Oh, I actually want this now"? For some people, myself included, that doesn't necessarily happen until we're already engaging in some type of sexual activity
sexual or sensual activity. That doesn't mean making yourself do something you don't wanna do. It means that you might feel willing and curious about some pleasurable touch or some pleasurable sensory experience before you feel an active desire for [00:09:00] sex or penetration. And I wanna add a caveat here, especially if you're receiving penetration.
I encourage you to give yourself time before moving towards penetration. Let your desire and your arousal have room to build. Notice whether you feel ready, whether you want it, and whether it feels comfortable. Natural lubrication can be one sign of arousal, but it isn't the only one, and it doesn't always match how much desire you feel.
What other signs might you notice that you're turned on? Maybe you feel more connected with your breath, your heart rate is picking up, you feel flushed, you notice lubrication, or you simply feel more interest in continuing
Those are things you can become curious about in your own body to build toward that point. We can explore other experiences that feel pleasurable on a sensory level too. In the previous episode, we talked about [00:10:00] relaxing the nervous system and getting out of fight or flight first doing that on your own is a really helpful place to begin.
Having a cup of tea, taking a nice bath, doing something that helps you feel relaxed and present in your body
Giving your own genitals attention on your own before your partner does. Then if you want to, you can begin engaging in a more sexual way. If you're on your own, that might mean beginning a different style of touch, moving into tickly touch or firmer touch or whatever feels good to you.
This is where experimentation is so important. What do you like? What do you like in this moment? That might be different from what you liked yesterday. It might change at different times of your cycle or different times of your life, or different times in your relationship. Be open to exploring the fact that you are a [00:11:00] cyclical creature.
You aren't exactly the same every single day. Your nervous system and your body's responses aren't exactly the same either. That variation is normal
Responsive desire can be a really fun invitation to yourself and your partner to explore who you are You're different today, so what might work to build your turn on? And that leads me to turn on types
There are lots of different ways people experience something as a turn-on at different levels of their being. This can be especially useful if you tend towards responsive desire because we're working with an art form here. The journey towards turn-on, towards expanding pleasure, is a whole experience.
It isn't always, "Okay, I feel turned on. I'm gonna have sex right now. Boom. Had an orgasm. Done." Right? It's an art. It's a masterpiece you're creating with yourself and with a partner if you are having partnered sex. [00:12:00] So think about what has turned you on in the past and what has turned you off. These are different ways of exploring your experience, and you might find pleasure in any of them
One way is through physical sensation and a sensory rich experience. You might love light tickly touch, feathers, candles that smell nice, twinkling of candlelight, beautiful fabrics, the sensory enchanting quality of the experience. For some people, simply setting the scene can be a cue of turn on to their brain other people don't care as much about that.
Another physical doorway might be deep pressure or massage. It might be the simple experience of being in physical contact with your partner, laying your hands on someone, laying your body against theirs, hugging. Sometimes that alone can begin to invite a response in the body. Breathing together can be a really [00:13:00] interesting tool here too.
Feeling the other person's body respond against your breath, breathing in sync. Another doorway is what I think of as energetic turn-on. That feeling of being present with yourself or someone else and noticing an energetic quality to the experience. You might use breath and visualization or practices in tantra to help you experience the movement of the energy in your body to create a sense of circulation and movement towards turn-on Then there's the mental doorway, fantasy, imagination, even role play.
This can be such a rich experience when we get into fantasy, I invite you to notice how you're using it and be really aware and conscious of it. Does it help you connect with your experience in the present moment, help you connect with your partner? Or do you feel like you're using it to escape the experience some?
Either [00:14:00] way, there's nothing wrong with it. I just invite you to really use that mental play as a way of getting even more present with your experience. Imagining things privately on your own in your own head isn't necessarily a bad thing. But if you're imagining another person, a different partner, or imagining that your partner is someone else, notice whether that helps you feel engaged and connected, or if it takes you out of connection with that person who's actually there.
You don't have to judge yourself for any of this. Just notice what it does for you. Some levels of fantasy, even bringing in role play, can be a doorway to turn on
And when we explore and we learn these things about ourselves, we have more tools in our toolbox. We have more colors to paint with on our canvas. When we understand our desire style as responsive, spontaneous, mixed, or situational, [00:15:00] we understand what helps us to feel turned on
And when we understand the types of touch or stimulation that helped us feel turned on, we can use these understandings to create a journey towards a pleasurable orgasmic experience. Now, once there's some pleasure there, how do you expand it? Expanding pleasure begins with focusing your awareness on the pleasure you feel alive in your body When we give those sensations our attention, we give ourselves a chance to experience more of them.
Where attention goes, energy flows. When we give something our attention, more of our experience gathers around that thing. It amplifies If we're focusing on stressful thoughts during sex, those stressful thoughts amplify. They become more prominent in our awareness. If we consciously move our focus of our attention towards the pleasure we're feeling, no matter how small, [00:16:00] we may begin to notice the sensation of pleasure expanding we become engrossed in it and it intensifies.
We become so absorbed in it, and we multiply and expand it as a result. If you haven't listened to my previous episode on expanding orgasm, make sure you do that because I take you through the pleasure detective exercise that will help you learn to do this inside your body.
Your attention amplifies the experience. It doesn't mean you force yourself to feel pleasure, but you can give the pleasure that's already there more room to grow. And there's a certain level of engagement and activation involved in the pleasure building phase. You're participating, you're noticing, you're exploring the stimulation that helps pleasure grow.
But receiving and surrendering are parts of this process, too. There's a give and take, a push and a pull. [00:17:00] You give it some gas through the stimulation that helps pleasure expand, and then you receive it. You allow it to register in the nervous system. feel it in the cells of your body. You let your brain and nervous system take it in. This is pleasure
Pleasure is safe. I'm allowing myself to experience it and expand it. Which brings us to our last ingredient of orgasm, surrender. And I imagine this whole process as like a rollercoaster. You're riding up towards the top of that peak and you know there's gonna be this ride down to the other side. The building phase is like the cart ratcheting up the rollercoaster, pulling up, up, up, and you feel yourself getting closer.
And this is where some people feel stuck
They stay in that building phase because they don't trust that it's going to happen. They don't trust that there's enough pleasure. They don't trust that their [00:18:00] body can surrender to it, or they don't trust what will happen if they let go. Sometimes this is where someone turns away from pleasure right before it might become an orgasm, because letting go feels too frightening.
There can be a fear of being out of control in this moment. And surrender here doesn't mean having to give up your choices or your ability to stop. I mean allowing yourself to receive the experience
if and when that feels right. That's why checking in with your sense of safety before sex or masturbation can be so helpful. Before you begin, look around. Does your space feel physically secure? Does it feel mentally and emotionally secure? If you're having sex or doing pleasure activities with a partner, have you established an exchange in which you feel emotionally and mentally safe?
Do you have safe words? If you've had an [00:19:00] argument, notice how you actually feel with them If you don't feel seen, heard, loved, and cherished, it may be much more difficult to let go into pleasure
When you're working alone, some of that can be easier because it's just you with yourself. There are less factors involved. But if you've received negative messages about letting go of control, or if you have a difficult time letting go of control in other parts of your life, you may find that reflected here too
if you carry residual trauma around sexuality or pleasure, it can show up at this moment of surrender. So have a lot of compassion for yourself. Move slowly. Allow yourself to take as much time as you need. You don't have to make yourself surrender on command. From a physical perspective, this is also a point where some people notice themselves clenching or bearing down or trying very hard to make the orgasm happen.
A [00:20:00] lot of us have learned that squeezing our muscles creates a sharpening of the pleasure. It can feel like it concentrates the sensation, and sometimes it works. It helps to create an orgasmic experience. Muscle engagement isn't automatically the problem, but if you're clenching your whole body or bearing down with a lot of efforts, I invite you to explore another option.
Energetically, if we're squeezing our muscles while we're trying to build the pleasure, we're actually pushing the pleasure out of the body rather than inviting it more deeply and fully inside to expand
instead of only reaching for that pinpointed intensity, what would it feel like to make more room for pleasure? The next time you're having a pleasurable experience, try consciously softening the muscles
let your butt relax. Let your lower belly relax. Breathe comfortably into your lower belly and [00:21:00] notice what happens. So often women are holding their bellies in because of how they think they look during sex. They want to look thin. They don't want their bellies hanging out.
Now this is not the time for that I'm inviting you into languid, loose, delicious, and slow pleasure. A soft belly, a breath that has room to move down into the low belly, into the pelvis, with a sense of space all the way down into the pelvic floor and the vagina. let your pelvic floor soften without pushing down. Imagine inviting pleasure to expand through more of your body.
I picture it like warm honey that is swirling around. It moves around wherever you're giving it the room to. When everything feels tightly clamped, it can seem as though the pleasure is confined into one small area of the body, and that concentrated experience [00:22:00] might produce an orgasm, but When we allow more space around the pleasure through relaxation of the muscles, we feel that experience grow wider and bigger and fuller so that you can receive more of that nourishing pleasure throughout the whole body.
If you're used to clamping down to experience an orgasm and you start trying to relax the muscles during pleasure building, you may initially feel less sensation when you're trying to soften. So give yourself a few opportunities to explore this and allow pleasure to be there. Focus your awareness on it. Begin consciously relaxing the body
Breathing in a luxurious manner. Slow the breath down, let it become rhythmic and comfortably deep without forcing it. If you're with a partner, you might try syncing the breath. One person can lead a slow, steady rhythm while you focus on relaxing [00:23:00] the body, the mind, and the heart.
And remember, this isn't a new test you have to pass. It's not something you have to do perfectly. You're exploring, you're experimenting, you're having fun and discovering what helps you receive pleasure, what helps it expand, and what makes letting go and surrendering feel possible.
So when you put all of this together and you have sensation and pleasure, you have the expansion of the pleasure through attention and engagement, and you have the invitation to receive and surrender. You also have a better understanding of how desire comes alive in you and the things that actually turn you on.
If you've been having trouble, one possibility is that you experience responsive desire but grew up with the expectation that you should be spontaneous. Just knowing that can change how you understand your pleasure. It can be life-changing, mind-altering, and it can demystify the [00:24:00] orgasmic experience There are things you can explore step by step to support an orgasmic experience in your body.
That doesn't make orgasm a guaranteed formula, but it gives you somewhere to begin. And difficulty orgasming doesn't mean that there is something wrong with you. So often we've lacked real education about our pleasure, and to me, that lack of education belongs in a bigger conversation about the oppression of women, about whose pleasure has mattered, whose bodies have been understood and studied, and whose desires have been taken seriously.
Because I experience orgasmic pleasure as a doorway into personal empowerment, a connection with creativity, a connection with our true desires and our ability to express them, and our greater willingness to go out into the world and get what we want
That's what I mean when I talk about what orgasm can unlock for you. Reclaiming this part of yourself can be a powerful [00:25:00] experience of self-love and empowerment. And when I think about how women's pleasure has been left out of our education, I feel that connection.
They never wanted us to have all this power
Reclaiming pleasure is absolutely a pathway to women's empowerment, and more women deserve access to this information. So thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe, and share with a friend who's ready to receive this information. Go out and experiment with your pleasure, and let me know how it goes
If you've enjoyed this series I've created the Embodied Pleasure guidebook for you, cultivating a pleasure positive mindset and surrendering to orgasm. You can hit the link in the show notes and it will take you over to my website where you can download this free PDF which gathers all of these resources together and gives you
a free hypnosis audio to help you cultivate embodied safety
and expand your pleasure, creating that inner ecosystem that [00:26:00] is ready to receive the orgasmic experience
Research sources
Herbenick et al. — Women's Experiences With Genital Touching, Sexual Pleasure, and Orgasm (2018)
Basson — The Female Sexual Response: A Different Model (2000)
The Impact of Body Awareness on Women's Sexual Health: A Comprehensive Review (2018)
Adam et al. — Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Women Struggling to Achieve Orgasm (2020)
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