Pleasure, Orgasm + Ecstasy
So when you think about sex, are you chasing pleasure… or orgasm… or ecstasy?
And do you know what the difference is?
Most people lump all of these together. But actually they’re not the same. So let’s dive in and try to separate some of these constructs just a little bit.
Pleasure
Pleasure exists within your physiological nervous system.
And we’ve been speaking about pleasure for the last couple of months, in the terms of sensation that is tactile.
Pleasure is here. You can experience it. And you can normally put a word to it: buzzing, humming, tingling, flowing, heavy, light… this and many others. Pleasure is something our body inherently knows.
And part of our practice in sexuality is learning how to listen to the body, to allow the body to feel good, to follow the pleasure. Pleasure is the foundation of all of this work. Not simply an outcome.
Orgasm
When we think about orgasm and let’s use the framework of the medical model, orgasm is still largely misunderstood.
One way it’s described:
a state of heightened sexual excitement and gratification, followed by relaxing of tension and muscles.
Pretty dry, right? It’s a subjective experience. And it all happens in the brain. Yeah. Orgasm happens in the brain.
It’s simply stimulated by the genitals, which then release a whole bunch of hormones into your body: dopamine, oxytocin, prolactin, endorphin, serotonin.
Hormones for pleasure. Reward. Love. Bonding. Satisfaction. Relaxation.
And so when this happens, the logical part of your brain actually shuts down, decreasing your sense of fear and anxiety. Your parasympathetic nervous system downregulates even more, calming the body.
Now, if we look at orgasm as an event:
Penis owners on average, orgasms last between 3 to 10 seconds, with a refractory period of minutes to hours.
Vulva owners can average orgasms of 20 seconds or more, with no refractory period.
(Refractory period = the time it takes for the body to be ready for stimulation again.)
There are many models of orgasm: Masters & Johnson (1966), Kaplan (1983), Bancroft & Janssen (2000).
And when we look at orgasm through the Western medical perspective… it sounds a bit limiting, doesn’t it?
It doesn’t even seem that fun, to be honest.
Ecstasy
So now, holding that thought let’s move into ecstasy.
Many people think of ecstasy as a peak experience. If you’ve taken party drugs, you know there’s a “peak” you reach.
But ecstasy and ecstatic bliss, is different.
It’s special because it opens us to possibility. It allows us to reach higher. To receive more.
Some sharings from Osho, a spiritual teacher on what ecstatic, blissful moments in sex include:
Timelessness. In ecstatic sex, you transcend time. You are in the eternal moment. In fact, there is no time. It completely ceases for you, and there is only the present.
Egolessness. Boundaries dissolve where a new reality exists and the old is lost. You are not here and neither is the other. You are both lost in something else.
You are natural. You're as natural as the trees and the stars. Any sense of a facade? A mask of society of culture is completely lost and you are in something greater. You could call it the cosmos, the universe, the Tao floating on the current of the world.
Ecstasy can occur in the afterglow of orgasm, where boundaries dissolve, you are deep inside yourself and outside yourself, part of all that is.
A paragraph from the book Urban Tantra describes this beautifully:
The sensations of pain and pleasure are created in the body and belong to the body. Ecstasy is bodiless. It is experienced as overwhelming delights and/or inspiration. It can be a rapturous, passionate feeling, or a mental transport to a place of wellbeing, peace, or visions. It is a sense of supreme happiness felt in and by the soul.
Ecstatic bliss is the joy experienced by the soul when it reconnects to sacred unity, to the God/Goddess, to all that is. In its purest tantric definition, it is not a feeling or a sensation. It is a metaphysical experience, where all feelings, thoughts, and sensations are eclipsed by a boundaryless beingness in a vast ocean of energy, where everything is connected to everything else.
You can have a whole lot of extraordinary pleasure without ecstasy.
And it’s possible to have ecstasy without physical pleasure.
But more often than not, pleasure and ecstasy have a close relationship.
Sexual pleasure is one of the most universally available routes to ecstasy.
Reflection
So now that we’ve gone over the differences between pleasure, orgasm, and ecstasy, my question to you is:
What is it that you are seeking in a sexual encounter?
Is it pleasure?
Is it orgasm?
Is it ecstasy?
Neither is better. Neither is higher. They are simply different journeys.
And it’s about awareness, noticing:
What has my experience been?
Do I tend toward one or the other?
Have I even considered ecstasy before?
I’m here to give you choice. And awareness.
And one of the most overlooked keys to deepening your pleasure to potentially having bigger, better, longer orgasms, which might tip you into ecstasy is actually pelvic floor coordination.
Learning to coordinate your pelvic floor with your breath, your sound, your movement, and your orgasm can shift you into a completely different experience.
And this is where we’ll be diving deeper in this month’s paid post.
I’ll see you there.