article/Ellison_C_EnhanceOrgasms

How to Increase Erotic Pleasure and Enhance Your Orgasms

By Carol Ellison, PhD

flower So many women born between 1916 and 1974 wrote in additional information about how they reach orgasm that I can present you with a smorgasbord of suggestions for increasing erotic pleasure and enhancing your orgasmic potential. I have put the respondents’ comments into four categories: focus of attention, physical stimulation and techniques; the setting and other sensory enhancements; and communication and interaction with your partner.

(the "*" seen throughout this text is used to separate quotes by different women)

Focus of Attention

There are many places you can focus your attention during sex. A woman may facilitate orgasm by paying attention to her physical sensations and pleasure, focusing on her partner’s pleasure, feeling and thinking how much she loves her partner, engaging in a fantasy, detaching from thinking about anything, thinking or imagining that she might become pregnant, and more.

Paying attention to physical sensations. * I totally focused on the sensations and touched myself with my partner in me; * I focus on my physical pleasure; * I concentrate on how I feel stimulation-wise, not emotionally. I think it is psychological. If you know you can have one and don’t worry about it and just feel, it happens.
Focusing attention on a particular idea or image. * I remember that I have a limited amount of time left to live and that I want to live it fully; * I think about the act itself; * I focus on my breathing or my mantra; * I thought of and spiritually agreed to “give it up”, to meld, become one with the spirit. During sex I feel propelled into an “otherworldly” experience or state – alone and with him; * Sometimes I really watch what’s going on.
Focusing on orgasm itself. * I focus on the clock chiming, set a goal – orgasm before the clock strikes; * I told myself I was capable and deserving of an orgasm; * Sometimes I tell my body to start having an orgasm and it works.
Focusing attention on an image of your partner. * I engaged in fantasy about his pleasure; * I thought how much my partner loved me; * I noticed and appreciated how gorgeous and sensuous she is; * I manually stimulated my own clitoris during rear-entry position with my partner and I fantasized my partner saying erotic and/or loving things to me; * I touched and caressed my partner’s body, watched my partner’s body movement; I thought how intense or close my partner and I are.
Fantasized being with someone else. * I fantasized about another partner; * I thought of other people; * I fantasized about a more satisfying partner.
Fantasies and images with a variety of other themes. * I pretend I’m with someone else, e.g., a prostitute; * I fantasized that I was the male with another woman; * I fantasized we are married; * I remembered previously satisfying sex, used “sexy” language in my mind – not fantasies, but images – like the Amazon River; * I visualize male ejaculation; * I imagined my clitoris was a penis; * I speak to myself sometimes using swear words like “fucking”.

You and your partner might also think of your bodies as like musical instruments through which you can create erotic pleasure. When you are with an attentive lover who is sensitively playing your body, you might be playing his or hers, too, or just doing nothing but experiencing what is happening. The feelings are there, the sensations build, the intensity builds, you don’t have to do anything but experience them. And, at some point, some kind of energetic waves get going – or there is an intense release – or something else happens. Sometimes your partner may come into synchrony with you and therefore know what you are feeling because he or she is feeling it, too. Usually, this experience requires a partner with whom you feel open and safe.

Detaching from thinking about anything. * I don’t worry about having an orgasm; I just have fun; * I deliberately stop thinking about distracting things, like work, etc; * I let go and floated; * I lay still and close my eyes to close out other distractions; * I get into total quiet and rhythmic sensational movement.
Focusing on and accepting whatever feelings are taking place. Emotional responses – even anger and frustration – can facilitate orgasm: * I stimulate myself sometimes due to longing for male companionship, relationship and sex. Sometimes in my loneliness and frustration I feel angry and I notice that I’m more easily aroused when I’m angry. This happens when I’m with a sex partner, too; say he’s been stimulating my clitoris with his finger and he can’t seem to either find the right spot or stay in the right spot once he’s gotten to it, and I’ve almost reached orgasm once or twice; I become impatient and angry with him and/or myself and that sudden surge of anger produces a surge of increased stimulation, sometimes bringing me to the longed-for orgasm.
Imaging becoming pregnant. One very specific image is a woman’s thought or image that she might become pregnant. Although this image of fertility in-the-sexual-moment was the least marked facilitator of orgasm, it still was circled by women in age from nineteen to eighty-four, about one in ten of all the women who completed the Survey. A woman who had come to the end of her childbearing years wrote: “I used to imagine often that I might become pregnant,” and a younger woman said: “I thought of this a couple of times in the last two months.” This choice, on the other hand, definitely generated some strong reactions from those who did not facilitate orgasm by imaging that they might become pregnant. * Good grief No!; * That would end the fun! * Surest way to prevent orgasm!! Eek!

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