What does it take to live with pleasure as a priority? In this episode listen to Mary, a successful business owner and mother, who decided to have it all with pleasure at the center of her life. She discovers an expanded definition of female orgasm and the role it plays in living a life that is sensually driven rather than stress driven.
Wendy: How long have you considered taking this retreat?
Mary: Probably about four years. I have considered taking the retreat from the moment that I heard about it from a member of the Welcomed Consensus to a month ago or so when I just decided that I was ready.
Wendy: What was it when you originally heard about it that piqued your interest that you knew that someday you were probably going to take this?
Mary: I knew that I would probably take it when I heard that I could get what I wanted. That I could live the life I wanted to live and I could experience sensuality in a way unlike I had ever experienced it before. So that was the clue that this was the right course for me.
Wendy: Could you elaborate more about those things that you wanted…that you knew it was for you?
Mary: I knew that this course was for me because I knew I wanted to have everything that I wanted. I wanted to have pleasure as a priority, be in the center of my life. And at the time I heard about this course I knew that I wanted that but I wasn’t quite ready and I knew that one day I would be ready, I just didn’t know when. Eventually I was ready. I was ready to commit to making pleasure the center of my life.
I made a lot of changes in my life in the last 6 months. I decided to do work that I loved so that I could live a life in harmony with my family and with my passion and with my purpose in life. That created an opening for me to go further with that intention. So remembering what I knew about the Welcomed Consensus and what it represented it seemed very much in alignment with those goals. And I chose to make it a priority. I declared that I was ready.
Wendy: What was your experience of the Common Sensuality course?
Mary: My experience of the Common Sensuality course is still happening in this moment. You know, having done the OIC just now and before that the Common Sensuality course and I’m feeling really full right now. It was more than information, but a window to a possibility that I never really understood was available. So the experience I am having is a tremendous sense of gratitude and excitement and fun because it’s been really, really fun.
Wendy: I found myself wanting to hear more.
Mary: Yes. So this course was about connecting with people, too. It wasn’t just about having an individual experience but about an experience that I shared in a range of ways be it over a meal, a conversation, playing a game. You know, in our lives we are so distracted. We’re always, we’ve got especially now, we’ve got our technology which helps us and keeps us from connecting with one another. And this course was so grounded in genuine connection between people that I didn’t miss not checking my phone every 30 seconds. I didn’t miss some of the usual vice that occupy my time and I was able to slow down with the support of everyone here. To be connected to the sensual experience of pleasure and noticing how everyone was taking pleasure in everything. So again it wasn’t just the thing that I learned, although orgasm is very central to it I saw the experience of orgasm, experienced orgasm in so many different ways with everyone here.
Wendy: Would you tell me more about that? How did you experience orgasm through other people? What was your experience of what you just stated?
Mary: It was the experience of like really people being present to one another. Being present to me, not just because I was a guest but part of the system of relating and people taking care of each other. Just really focusing in on what someone else needed, this atmosphere of generosity and giving that as was shared in the course everyone, it felt like a winning environment. Joy. You know joy in the work. And just, I would stand there, I’d been observing the ways that everyone just kind of gets into the kitchen, it’s like music. There’s someone doing something that, you know, another person steps in and continues on and in doing in the task. And there’s joy not drudgery, not work, but a strong sense of purpose and giving-ness. So those are may sound mundane but it really came through powerfully in how people were living in this space. Living the curriculum.
Wendy: Do you feel like you got your goals? And do you have any particular one that stands out for you?
Mary: Yes I do. I think learning about tumescence has helped me to get clearer about how to meet the goal of creating more of the orgasmic, sensual experience in my life. Recognizing that that need has been so big. It’s been huge and now I have tools to detumesce and live a life that is sensually driven versus stress driven. For instance, one of the goals was about enjoying home life as a mother with my kids and thinking a lot about dinner time. So back to this kitchen narrative. I got a chance to see and experience a way of sharing a meal and the narrative of that meal coming together in a very different and fun way versus a stressful way. That’s also beautiful and just very pleasurable. So that was one goal that I had that I feel especially empowered around.
There are many viewpoints that stood out this weekend. In addition to tumescence and understanding that, which was huge, understanding the “fuck oriented culture” and how we can live in a “pleasure oriented culture”. So instead of a pain, fuck culture there’s pleasure. There’s subverting the dominant thought or re-orienting the dominant thought around pleasure as a priority. I think that was the hugest frame of understanding that I feel I can apply to everything.
Wendy: What did orgasm mean to you before you took this weekend retreat? What was your experience of orgasm?
Mary: Before this weekend, my experience with orgasm had everything to do with a conclusion. It was the race you’re running toward, it’s a finish line and then it’s over. It often mechanically brought on by a vibrator. Kind of a necessary kind of release, you know, but not necessarily not something you stayed with. You got to the feeling and then it was over. Great feeling, but it was over. And then you just got up and then went about your usual activities.
It was a little stressful, too. It’s been stressful because with a partner who may genuinely want to please you I realized I wasn’t giving enough information about how that person could please me. And then I wasn’t getting satisfied because I wasn’t sharing the information about how to please me. So I would consider a partner lame because they couldn’t please me. So those were some of the big characteristics of orgasm.
Now, the way that I am thinking about orgasm is not this really big balloon pop but a building, a layering of experience that doesn’t have to look a certain way, doesn’t have to sound a certain way, doesn’t have to produce a certain amount of material. It doesn’t have to be the same way with the same person or with different people. So I feel like I have a lot of permission around what orgasm can look like. I feel free of a lot of the expectations and the chance to actually experience it in a much more expanded way.
Doing the exercise the other night in our homework gave me just a little window into how I can touch my clitoris and not be too sensitive, to really be able to stretch that feeling out without going over. But being able to pull back and bring myself down. Those are the ways that orgasm is now permanently shifted in my imagination and likely the application.
Wendy: What was your experience of the Observation of Intense Coming, one hour Deliberate Orgasm demonstration?
Mary: Wow. It was, I mean first of all, it an unusual experience to actually be present to a woman’s orgasm in this way. So I felt like I was a part of a very privileged experience first and foremost because there’s no other place where we see a woman have pleasure. It’s, you know, so pornographic often, that we just don’t know what’s going on and we make a lot of assumptions about what’s going on. And this was like I got a lot of validation.
There were things about my body that I didn’t want a lover to see, I didn’t feel comfortable about and to see her pleasure manifesting itself in that way was tremendously validating. I saw myself in her and so beyond the visual I began feeling her. Just the moment she would come up to a peak and RJ would bring her down. I, being in the room with her, would feel that wave. And like I said, I’ve never experienced anything like that. It was incredibly moving.
I really appreciated RJ. He would enter in the intensity with very pragmatic language and would bring me back. I appreciated how he talked about everything he was doing. I could really be there with every touch. Watching the way that her pussy changed in color, in size was again very validating.
I really felt like I can experience an orgasm in a way with a lover that doesn’t have the huge wall anymore. That I can invite someone in to share in not only how I’m feeling but how it looks, how it’s changing. And be able to talk about that so that my lover knows that they’re winning in a different kind of a way than just the way that I a moan or whatever. I just feel like it’s an invitation to experience so much more and I really appreciate that validation.
Wendy:Is this your first introduction to Deliberate Orgasm?
Mary: This is not my first introduction to Deliberate Orgasm. I did see a video and I did go to a BenchMark. But those were not, those didn’t give me the things that I got in this course. But they built upon what I already knew.
Wendy: What do you think about the concept, the technique, the philosophy of Deliberate Orgasm?
Mary: I want to do it! I want to do it. [Laughter] I want DO dates! That’s what I think. I think I want DO dates like immediately. Oh my, yes.
But in all seriousness, I think it is really revolutionary in the sense that it’s revolutionary in terms of my own thinking. It’s not fuck-centric, it’s not dick-centric. I think at first I believed DOing was a replacement and now I really understand how it adds to everything. It adds to life style, it adds to sex. So you can still have all the things you have had before. It is just going to make all those things better. RJ said it really well, he‘s like “You know it makes fucking or intercourse make more sense because you’re ready for it.” I am really appreciating what that means. So I think that’s what I’ve come away with wanting to do it and wanting to do it to make all the other sexual experiences even better.
Wendy: What would you want other people or other women to know about your experience of the course or the Welcomed Consensus?
Mary: Well, I think there’s so much to it about this course that I want other women to know. What I told my girlfriend this morning in town, I wrote her. I said you know this course is about getting what you want. You just need to do it because you deserve to get what you want. I think every woman wants to get everything, but may not know how, may not understand, may not have a pathway, may not have the tools. That would be the biggest theme and I would talk about sensuality as a big part of that.
But I really think that someone just needs to get here. Even with the little I knew I still didn’t know. I think people need to get here in this space and experience it for themselves. But I think what would be more powerful at least in my circle of influence is not what I say, but how I live. Should people remark on how I live or notice, then I think that is the more compelling opportunity to talk about this.
Wendy: Thank you.
Mary: Thank you.
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