Yoni Massage: Happy Endings

[part 4 in a series that starts here]

All good things come to an end ... and hopefully end with a come. As you continue to massage her yoni, inside and out, mixing up your technique as much as possible, try to coordinate with her on a) keeping the build-up phase going as long as she wants it to, so that she can work on her meditation and visualization and spread the arousal area as broadly as she can, and b) getting her to as intense an orgasm as possible when she is ready.

There’s a certain basic conflict between these two things, but one of them will usually be harder than the other. Which one is harder is going to depend a lot on your partner, how comfortable and relaxed she is, and her previous experience with orgasms. The problem is that women, more than men, vary so much in the amount of time and stimulation they require. This puts a special burden on you in terms of reading your partner’s wants and needs.

It may sound obvious, but it really helps if you know something about her orgasmic history. You already know, or should know, something about her current sex drive, orgasmic threshold, and orgasmic intensity, but if you don’t already know about her early history, ask her.

High Drive, Low Threshold

Some girls start masturbating in grade school or even earlier, reach climax easily, and masturbate almost daily while growing up. They generally have high drive and low to moderate thresholds. Even if they aren’t reliably orgasmic in vaginal sex, they will usually be very quick to respond to yoni massage. If not, the problem will almost always be shyness or body image problems, so do your best to reassure your partner and put her at ease.

In most cases, however, if your partner is like this, you will need to work on moderating the level of stimulation and stretching things out almost from the start, and you may find that some of the tips in the earlier posts about lingam massage are helpful. 

In particular, once you have established that she is able to have multiple orgasms, you should discuss whether she would prefer to have one or more orgasms early in the massage. Often this helps a highly orgasmic woman relax into a extended valley of arousal between the two sets of orgasms. My friend Georgie has an ultra-low threshold and always has to have several orgasms in the first five minutes before starting to meditate. She and several others of the women I talked to don't even try to start their attention control until after that first peak or set of peaks.

Lower Drive, Higher Threshold

At the other extreme are women who may have started self-exploration much later, who perhaps never had an orgasm just from vaginal sex, and who generally take a long time to reach orgasm via oral sex or masturbation. If your partner fits this category, you will need to sustain a much higher baseline level of stimulation, and you may want to have a good vibrator within easy reach just in case. (More on this below.)

In a case like this, your biggest problem when the two of you are first learning Tantra is likely to be that she is so conditioned to expect disappointment that she will shut down and lose interest if you pause or shift your attention away from her genitals. You would think that having a partner with a high threshold would make it easier to prolong yoni massage, but it can actually make it harder for you to sustain her arousal for extended periods if she always needs to stay on an upward slope and can’t tolerate any dips or extended level stretches.

Fortunately, most women become much less anxious about not getting to orgasm once they have experienced yoni massage, and they soon become more tolerant of your effort to slow things down. Just knowing that the goal is to stretch out the arousal phase, not rush it, can paradoxically help a woman relax and actually reach orgasm more easily.

In Between

Most women, of course, lie somewhere between these extremes, but nearer the second one than the first. Research fairly consistently tells us that around 75% of women in the US seldom or never reach orgasm during vaginal sex. Of the women I interviewed, it was around 60% before learning Tantra, a little better than average, but most of us were still woefully inexperienced at having orgasms with a partner!

If possible, ask your partner to describe the circumstances under which she has usually experienced the most intense orgasms and those under which she has usually reached orgasm most quickly and easily. Best of all is if she is willing to demonstrate her preferred solo method, but many women feel uncomfortable about being this open, and some can’t really tell you much about their past because they have walled off their experiences, which may have been quite frustrating. Still, encourage her gently to tell you (and show you) whatever she can. Knowing where your partner is coming from and what has worked well for her will help enormously as you judge how to make this experience as successful as possible.

Endings Can Be Tricky

I’ve taken this long digression to make it clear why discussing the ending is tricky. If you know your partner has a fairly high threshold and little or no history of orgasms other than from oral sex or a vibrator, be prepared to finish with one of those two. If you’ve helped her reach orgasm before with just oral sex, your decision is easy. If not, I recommend having a good vibrator available where you can reach it, just in case.

I say this with some trepidation, because the overwhelming attitude among Tantra gurus is that vibrators are evil. They supposedly teach women’s bodies to expect or even demand super-strong stimulation and super-fast orgasms, the exact opposite of what Tantra is about.

That may be true if a women regularly rushes through quick masturbation sessions with a vibrator, as many single women do. But I don’t personally think that the same argument applies if you are just putting the finishing touches on a long, loving Tantric massage. In this context, using a vibrator for what may be as little as a minute or two at the very end of a 30-60 minute massage is unlikely to do any harm. If you have helped her “climb the mountain” and she is stuck just below the peak, will it really matter if you give her a little extra “power push”?

If you think this is going to be a possibility, discuss it with her in advance. (And, ladies, if you think this is going to be a possibility, tell him in no uncertain terms to have the vibrator handy!)

It’s obviously better if you can help her reach the summit with fingers or tongue, or both. But if you leave her just short of it, she may be reluctant to try again, and the experience may influence how tense she is next time, making it even harder to have success. It can be intensely frustrating to be left hanging right at the brink!

When it Just Isn't Happening

Occasionally a couple will start learning tantric sex before a woman has ever had an orgasm, or before she has ever had an orgasm with a partner. And most women at least occasionally have a day when we realize that an orgasm is just not going to happen. In either case, you need to be prepared for the possibility.

Keep in mind that most women enjoy "normal" sex even though most of them rarely or never experience orgasms in the process. Orgasms are wonderful, they're like the cherry on top of the sundae, but they aren't the primary purpose of sex. Our most important goal in tantra is to share love, intimacy, and pleasure and to bond with our partners. And one of key points about a yoni or lingam massage is that there is a tremendous amount of love, intimacy, pleasure, and bonding to be had from the journey, the sensual process itself.

Yes it's wonderful if it's capped by an earth-shattering full-body orgasm, but the journey can be thoroughly enjoyable even if it doesn't reach a great climax, provided you don't spoil it by pushing too hard. Once it seems clear that your partner has hit a permanent plateau, watch for her signal to step up the pace, switch to using a vibrator ... or back off. 

If she indicates that you should wind it down, do it very gradually. An orgasm is the abrupt discharge of a lot of accumulated sexual tension. If it can't be discharged all at once, it will take quite a while to let that tension seep away.

The first step is to stop providing direct stimulation of her clit or the inside of her vagina.  Switch to massage of the outer labia.   Many women prefer a lot of broad pressure on the whole vulva during the wind down phase, using firm, full-hand massage technique, so give that a try.

Gradually begin to intersperse more contact with the rest of her body, stroking her thighs, abdomen, sides, breasts, and face.  Try to adjust your position as you go, so that after five minutes or so you can ease into a position lying beside her, holding her and rubbing your hands along her back. Often the best ending in these cases is a long, quiet cuddle.

Be especially gentle and careful not to give any suggestion of disappointment. A lot of men have a tendency to be goal-oriented and competitive. Being goal-oriented is okay as long as you remember what your goal actually is, which is creating a long, wonderful, sensual, erotic, and loving experience for your partner. Orgasms are nice, but strictly optional, and pursuing them too aggressively can actually take you further from your goal.

When is an Ending Another Beginning?

If your partner is moderately orgasmic and you know her body's reactions pretty well before learning tantra, the "wind-down" scenario may never happen to you. Even if it does happen at the beginning of the learning process, with luck and patience the whole idea of 30-45 minutes of yoni massage not leading to an orgasm will soon seem absurd to both of you, and you won’t have to worry about any of this.

Once you can count on getting her to at least one orgasm every time, your main concern will be helping her with the pacing necessary to build up to a true Tantric orgasm: one or more longer, more intense orgasms that seem to come from an extended area, ranging from the whole pelvic region to the whole body. Only time, practice, and good communication with your partner will teach you what you need to know to reach that level consistently.

One of the intermediate steps in that learning process is discovering when an orgasm is an ending and when it is just a beginning. Although this will probably not come up the first time you do a yoni massage, it might. And it is very likely to come up at some point during the first few months, since most of the women I interviewed experienced their first ever multiple orgasm during yoni massage in the first few months or so of practicing Tantra.

If a woman has had multiple orgasms before, she is very likely to have them during yoni massage, so if you know she has been there before, assume she is going to want continued stimulation after (and possibly during) her first one. Just keep on with the motion and rhythm you are in unless she indicates she needs you to pause or change.

One key point on which women differ is whether they want you to pause briefly while they hit a peak. Some women need a stop/start/stop/start pattern. When they come, stop everything until the maximum intensity of the orgasm has passed, and then start again, and continue until the next orgasm reaches its peak, and so on. Other women want you to continue your massage right through without stopping, although she may ask you to increase the intensity just before each peak and then avoid the clit during climax and perhaps for a little bit immediately after.

(I’m somewhere in between: during each peak, I like my partner to completely stop whatever he is doing with his upper hand, but to press hard with his fingers inside me in rhythm with my own contractions, which makes my climaxes feel stronger. Then I want him to go back to gentle stimulation around, but not on, the clit as soon as I have passed the peak. And then ten or fifteen seconds after that, I’m ready to go full speed again.)

If this is unknown territory for her, she can’t tell you what she needs, so you will need to try different things. If you keep going while she comes and she grabs your hand or head, just hold still until she relaxes her grip, then see how she responds when you start up again. In fact, if you watch closely, you may see the head of the clitoris pull back and disappear under the clitoral hood right at the start of the orgasm, only to reappear again when she passes the peak. This can be a good timing guide for you to follow.

Unfortunately, even if your partner has had multiple orgasms on her own with a vibrator, she won’t necessarily be able to guide you on what she wants you to do until you try it in different ways. The problem is that a vibrator is usually so intense that a woman will almost always move it away from her clit at the moment of climax, and then move it back when she’s ready to go on. However, that may not be a good guide to what you should do. She may discover, for example, that she actually prefers for you to just avoid the tip of the clit, as you keep stroking the vagina and the clitoral shaft while she peaks.

As always, careful experimentation and good communication are the keys to great sex. You should expect it to be less than perfect at first, and then to improve as you try new things and compare notes, so don’t get discouraged by early disappointments.