1001 ways to orgasm: How the wisdom of disability expands pleasure for everyone
When I recently told a stranger at my girlfriend’s work party that I’m a sex coach who specializes in working with people with disabilities, he pulled me aside and said, “I’m basically disabled—sexually speaking. Tell me everything.” His comment was meant to be poking fun at himself—attractive, married, seemingly able-bodied—but it was also wise. We’re all disabled, sexually speaking. Most of us have such a narrow idea of what constitutes hot sex that we limit ourselves sexually even more than a physical disability would. This is particularly clear when it comes to our definitions of orgasm.
Traditionally, the scientific—and societal—definition of an orgasm was simply a muscle spasm in the genitals. And our cultural understanding of sex has itself largely been built around this momentary release of tension. The sex researchers Masters and Johnson famously summarized sex in the 1960s as “excitement, plateau, climax, resolution.” This is still the way many of us understand sex today. “It just really looks like a hydraulic reflex in the literature,” says Dr. Mitchell Tepper, a leading expert in sexuality and spinal cord injuries (SCIs). “Looks like a pretty boring activity.” Hey baby, how ‘bout we get naked and experience excitement, plateau, climax, and resolution together? Just like the baseball metaphor that most of us used to categorize our hookups in high school, the language speaks to a goal-oriented model of sex rather than a pleasure-oriented one.
Redefining orgasm
As Mark Hay wrote for Feeld, people with disabilities have rewritten this script in ways that able-bodied people can learn a lot from. One example of this is the rejection of reductive ideas about what constitutes a “real” orgasm. Until the late 1990s, doctors didn’t believe paraplegics and quadriplegics who said they could have orgasms; the traditional view was that orgasm was dependent on a brain-genital connection and therefore impossible in anyone with a complete spinal cord injury (meaning, an inability to move or feel below the level of injury). But then researchers proved in a lab that women with complete SCIs were, indeed, coming just as hard as able-bodied women. Dr. Tepper, who was involved in that research, says the study showed that “orgasm is largely a brain-mediated event that may or may not involve the genitals.”
More recent research has confirmed and strengthened that understanding: orgasm is a state of mind that can affect the whole self, not just some muscle spasms between the legs. People can orgasm through fantasy alone. Some people have spontaneous orgasms while meditating. People with amputated body parts have reported feeling orgasms in their phantom limbs.
Broadening the definition of orgasm benefits not only those who can’t come the traditional way for any number of reasons, which might include SCIs or other mobility issues, taking antidepressants or blood pressure medications, or reduced clit sensitivity caused by diabetes. It’s also helpful for the many able-bodied people who are interested in experiencing sex (and dating) differently. As embodiment educator and artist Hana van der Kolk told me, “In my [prior] sex work with cis men, I met a lot of men who just weren’t having the ‘get hard, rub penis, come, done’ experience and really thinking that they were freaks. It was actually the majority that were having a divergent experience of one kind or another.” For women, van der Kolk said, there are so many ways to experience orgasm that can be overlooked when the goal is to get off and be done with it. “A lot of times, people don’t even get to discover the range of what gives them pleasure because of that expectation and focus.”
Let me be clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with standard genital orgasms. I certainly don’t plan to give mine up anytime soon. But my work with people who have, by necessity, found alternative ways to feel orgasmic has shown me that so much is possible, for my body and for all bodies. “Any time you step away from traditional markers of sex, of gender, of pleasure, of orgasm,” sex educator and filmmaker Oran Julius told me, “it can just be so much more expansive in general. Pleasure is the thing we’re focused on, whether an orgasm happens or not. An orgasm is just supposed to be another form of pleasure. Why should we only have that one? Why can’t we get as many forms of pleasure as possible?”
Unlocking new opportunities for pleasure
If you’re interested in exploring a new orientation to orgasm, either out of curiosity or physical necessity, here are a few tips that apply to people of all abilities.
1) Focus completely on one (non-genital) sensation
People love being deeply immersed in an activity for the same reasons they love to have orgasms. In both instances, we express the kind of flow state we can enter by saying things like, “I got totally carried away. I forgot myself completely. I lost all sense of time and place.” That kind of euphoria comes through focus, and you can access it in a sexual context by paying attention to any part of the body.
Dr. Tepper urges people to “focus on what you are feeling, not what you’re not feeling.” This advice applies just as readily to able-bodied people as it does to others, such as people adapting to a changed body post-illness or injury. Rather than going straight for familiar sensations in familiar ways, and becoming anxious when those sensations are not readily available, try bringing sustained focus to any sight, sound, smell, or touch—maybe even an unfamiliar one. You might be surprised by what you find. Exploring one part of the body can lead to more comfort in vulnerability, which can develop into further exploration and deeper sexual experiences.
As Julius puts it, “When your mind is open to the possibilities of actually it can feel really good when you suck on my collarbone or when you grind on the strap on my leg, you find that pleasure centers are in general broader and more diverse than we expect.” One woman who is very sensitive to smell told me she started coming after spending some time deeply and intentionally inhaling her partner’s neck. From then on, whenever her girlfriend’s scent wafted over to her unexpectedly, she experienced waves of ecstasy. If you’re alone, you can light scented candles, stimulate your skin with a feather or the prongs of a fork, moan as if you’re being observed and get turned on by your own sounds, or simply touch yourself anywhere that feels good.
People generally think of certain body parts as erogenous zones, but there really isn’t a comprehensive list: different areas will be erogenous for different people at different times. “You could actually have an orgasm through stimulation of any place in your body,” Dr. Tepper says. The first time I came through stimulation to my nipples, I was not feeling remotely sexual. I was just in a relaxed, meditative state, lying on my back, and I rested my hands on my chest. The contact with my nipples felt nice so I continued touching them—for a very long time, with no goal or fantasizing, just feeling the sensation—and a full-body orgasm arrived on its own. In his research, Tepper found that many wheelchair users who experienced orgasms post-injury were completely surprised by the experience: they were simply engaging in sensual activity, without expecting or striving to come. “The orgasm overtook them by surprise because they did not feel the traditional buildup in their genitals,” Tepper said. Instead, they “felt it all over.”
2) Focus completely on your partner(s)
I’m not talking here about impressing someone with your dexterous hands and tongue. I mean, by all means, do that—but I’m talking about surrendering the self and imagining your way into what your partner is feeling. You can start by staring into each other’s eyes and breathing together, until your breath naturally becomes synchronized. As things shift into sex, stay focused on your partner’s body—how their face or breath changes, where they are tensing or relaxing. You might find that you become so attuned to their experience that you can actually feel it in your own body. Many people who are no longer capable of traditional orgasm say that they can feel the same sense of euphoria and release when their partner comes as when they used to come themselves.
Until I had one myself, I was skeptical of the idea of vicarious orgasm, especially as it applied to straight women. Our culture almost exclusively eroticizes depictions of male orgasm, to the point that many women have been conditioned to be aroused by their male partner’s pleasure, and not by their own. But I’ve found that vicarious orgasm is not about being submissive or selfless, but rather about deep connection. It’s only possible with a partner who is willing and able to be fully present with you, rather than going into a private world of fantasy or gratification.
3) Use the breath
Taking deep breaths in through the mouth can induce ecstatic states. We often do this naturally while we’re having sex, but we don’t typically notice that part of why it feels so good is we’re taking in more oxygen than usual. It’s possible to achieve that same high—and even orgasm—through the breath alone. The process is simple but it does require commitment to pushing through some discomfort in the beginning. Try lying on your back and take deep, rhythmic breaths through the mouth. After ten to thirty minutes, some people find that they enter an altered state of consciousness which may feel orgasmic. Many people who practice this say they feel the kind of energetic release that is typically associated with orgasm. Researchers have even found that breath orgasms activate the same parts of the brain as genital orgasms.
If you’re never done this kind of breathwork before, it’s best to try it for the first time with a guide or therapist. Once you’re comfortable with this form of breathing, you can do it on your own or with a partner. In addition to many other uses, it can be an erotic activity in itself or it can be used as foreplay—you may find you are more susceptible to all forms of sensuality once your body is flooded with breath.
4) Soften instead of tensing
The tendency in most sexual activity is to work the body into a frenzy that eventually finds release. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, but it’s also possible—and sometimes necessary—to come through relaxation rather than through physical effort. To try this, turn your attention inward and consciously soften your whole body (and yes, this can apply to erections: allow them to come and go on their own). If movements or touch arise naturally, keep maintaining a relaxed, unhurried body and mind. If you’re used to coming the traditional way, this can feel uncomfortable or frustrating at first. But if you’re willing to take a risk, you might find a new kind of release that can make you feel restored for a long time afterward.
The tension of traditional orgasm is often not just physical, but mental. Many people feel pressure around orgasm—whether to postpone it or to ensure it happens at all. It can be freeing to allow the body to just melt into the bed, or into another body. There’s nothing to do. You become a receptacle for sensation and just take in what arises. This alone can be euphoric. “To be able to pause,” as van der Kolk puts it, “and feel the aliveness and the intimacy that’s already present just when we’re lying still by ourselves.”
This state of mind, whether experienced alone or with a partner, is ecstatic in itself. But you might also find that it leads to a calmer, more prolonged kind of orgasm. Your breath will get deeper, more like a series of sighs, rather than faster and shallower, as it typically does when we’re close to coming. The orgasm may come in gentle waves throughout the whole body. Or you may simply feel blissed out with what van der Kolk calls “the eros of aliveness. The eros of just: oh my god, I’m alive.”
This Disability Pride Month, we’re taking you inside the minds of writers exploring the complexities of sexual journeys that overlap with disability. Disabled, queer, hot—this community deserves the spotlight. Happy Pride!
Curious about exploring expansive opportunities for connection, intimacy, and self-discovery? New experiences are waiting for you on Feeld.
