Yoni Massage: Getting Her Warmed Up

[part 2 in a series that starts here]

The stereotype for women is that we take much longer to become aroused and to reach orgasm than men do. Although there is a lot of truth to this for the general population, it is much less true in the typical Tantric setting. My sample is anything but scientific, but every woman I interviewed says she warms up faster at the start of yoni massage than she ever did during normal sex before she started Tantra.

I’ve already mentioned the main reasons why women in general take longer to get aroused than men and are less orgasmic: tension and insecurity. In particular, women who have tight muscles in the lower back and pelvic area have much more trouble reaching orgasm than women who are more relaxed.


So, men, insofar as you are successful in getting your partner to anticipate a pleasant experience and become completely relaxed – via bathing, meditation, and massage, and by making sure she feels loved and cared for in a safe, pleasant environment – you will also enable her to become aroused more quickly and more completely. If your experience with normal sex has led you to think she takes forever to get warmed up and ready, that may still be true … or it may not. Or it may be true the first few times you do a yoni massage, but get steadily less true after that.

Another factor that influences warmup time, as women who learn Tantra soon discover, is that giving a good lingam massage is an intensely erotic experience for the giver as well as the recipient.

Partly this comes from experiencing the almost godlike (or goddess-like) power we have to control your arousal level and give you great pleasure. But another large part of our arousal comes from learning to share and experience your arousal and orgasms.

Both of these effects will increase a great deal with time and practice, but at the beginning, the concentration on learning what to do, and worries about doing it wrong, may diminish the erotic charge your partner gets from doing your massage. Or it may not, depending on the person and the situation.

So try not to have any expectations. This should be a voyage of exploration and discovery, without rigid preconceptions. If she is slow to warm up, you may find yourself providing as much stimulation as she can handle for an extended period, with your main focus on getting her to an orgasm without stalling out. Then, after a few weeks, you may find instead that she gets to that point quite rapidly, and that you need to provide much softer, more intermittent stimulation to help her stay highly aroused but pre-orgasmic long enough to actually practice her meditation, so she can experience a pelvic or full-body orgasm.

What this means is that you will need to pay really close attention to the little signals of what she likes, when she likes it, and how aroused she is. The sequence that follows is just one option, provided to give you a “plan of study” if you don’t have any other sequence in mind, but you should be prepared to change it as much as necessary to better fit your partner’s needs.

Beginning the Massage

Begin your apprenticeship by applying oil or lube liberally to her pubic mound, labia, and perineum. Then simply place your whole hand or both hands (depending on your position) over her pubic mound and labia, press moderately, and slide your hand(s) slowly up and down five to ten times. You want to do two things: provide the pleasurable sensation of your hands sliding over the outside of the vulva, while also moving the labia and mound as a whole up and down, which causes the labia to rub gently on the internal parts, particularly the clitoris and the entrance to the vagina.

Next, use your thumbs or fingertips to massage the perineum, stroking firmly from the bottom of the perineum and then up along the outer labia. Do that several times, then take each of her outer labia between thumb and fingers and massage them, pulling them gently outward and stroking lengthwise along them. You can also experiment with gently running the backs of your nails up or down her vulva and tapping lightly and rapidly on her mons and outer labia with all eight fingers, like the patter of rain. (Some women like this a lot, but others don’t get anything from it, so if you don’t get a nice affirmative “Mmmm!” the first time, go on to other things and ask her about it later.)

Repeat from the top, with variations in intensity, direction, and so on. Be creative, but not so creative that you startle her!

If you are standing beside the table, stand on the side that corresponds to your dominant hand. So if you are right handed, stand next to her right side. You will mostly be using one hand at a time on her yoni, and you will usually find that a position near her waist or lower ribs gives your better hand the best angle and access, while still allowing your other hand to roam freely over her stomach, breasts, face, and neck. But try not to let yourself get rooted in one spot. You can sidestep one way to steal some kisses or nibble her neck, or the other way to add oral touches to your manual caresses. Or you can stand nearer her knees so that you can use both thumbs to stroke upward from her perineum.

If you are kneeling on the mat, it’s not quite as easy to be mobile, but still try to do it. There are strokes that work best from below and others that work better from the side. It’s also harder for her to stay emotionally connected to you if you stay down between her legs all the time.

If you find that “knee walking” from a center to a side position is just too awkward or distracting, but your partner still wants you to maintain more contact with the rest of her body, try staying in the middle between her legs and interspersing yoni massage with “body slides”: slip your hands as far up her body as you can without losing your balance, then let them slide off to the sides to support your weight as you kiss or lick your way from her yoni to her breasts, ending with real kisses in a chest to chest position. Rub your lower body against her yoni while you kiss her, then reverse the process until you are back in a kneeling position.

Arousal

Your partner may have been only partly aroused, or not aroused at all, at the start of this phase. Do not move past this stage until you see that she is at least moderately aroused! As you massage the outer labia, you will see them get considerably thicker, often becoming two or three times as thick, or even more. Here’s a good illustration of the difference:

"In the left image female genitalia are in the resting state. In the right image the female is sexually aroused, the vulva is moist and the labia are slightly swollen." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulva#Excitement)

In the caption, the labia in the picture on the right are described as “slightly swollen”! I would have said “moderately swollen,” myself, but this is what you are looking for. Each person is different, but in general, this is a fairly good guide to what “arousal” looks like. Until there is at least this much increase in thickness, you should not even be thinking about going further.

(Reminder: genital anatomy differs widely from one woman to the next. The pictures show an "innie" – a woman whose inner labia are short and don’t protrude. If your partner is an “outie,” with wide inner labia, her vulva may look somewhat or very different.  There are some illustrations at the end to my Better Sex 101 guide, including a picture of a vulva that is more of an "outie," and a link to a comprehensive guide to the startlingly different appearances of different vulvas. There's no such thing as a "normal looking" pussy!)

If your partner is slow to warm up, this can be a good time to intersperse some oral attention. Some women love the warm, moist feeling of having their whole vulva kissed, licked, or gently sucked. Some love having you grasp and tug on each of the outer labia in turn with your lips. And some are turned on by a broad, flat, soft tongue, stroking very gently up between the labia and along the clitoral hood. Try and see.

But remember that her pleasure is more important than speed. You're not in a hurry, so be patient and gentle, not forceful. Trying to hurry things up can make her feel pressured and tense, which will have exactly the opposite effect!

Tomorrow we'll talk about things you can do when she's properly aroused and ready to go further.