I was raised in a really open and beautiful family. In high school I started reading books on comparative religions and studied the common thread amongst them all. Different cultures and their religions have always interested me, as well as different cultural norms. 

As an artist, I traveled a lot, eventually moving to Sydney, Australia. There I explored different practices, different meditations and more conscious relating. That's when I came to the practice of Orgasmic Meditation.

I found it really exciting. To me it’s about connection. OM is a beautiful way to connect with people on quite an intimate level. Frankly, I was just overjoyed with the practice. I loved that it was done in a certain way and had structure. It was great learning to say yes and no, expressing my needs and desires without having to explain myself.

My first OM I remember feeling very relaxed and I kept having the sensation of a lot of buzzing between my shoulder blades. I started feeling expansion in various parts of my body and felt quite connected to the stroker, who was kind of nervous, trying to remember all the steps.

I was already starting to open before I came to OM, and the practice continued to open me further. I would feel a lot of energy running through my body—a lot of tingling sensations—and I would sometimes have involuntary movements, especially in my belly area. I think the strangest energetic thing that happened to me was feeling that I was part of another person's body. I was in an OM, and my left foot and the stroker’s right foot were connected in the nest. Afterwards, we talked about it and he said, “That was so strange. It felt like I had an extra foot. And it was your foot.” Another time I felt the stroker’s finger as part of my own body, like a new body part. 

After about six months I tried being the stroker as well because I was curious about what the other side was like. I remember my first few times were so uncomfortable. And then I got used to how to sit. Eventually I relaxed into it and found it quite meditative. Eventually I started feeling like some parts of my body expanded during an OM session, and I began to feel some heat and tingling in my stroking finger.

It’s hard to say what I love most about OMing. I love the grounding part of the OM and find it very calming. Just lying down and straightening the pillow under my head and asking for pillows under my leg and getting grounded, it's like opening the door. I think some of my favorite OMs are when I make a few adjustments, but then let go and allow everything to become very intuitive between me and my partner. It's really very magical to have the stroker make some offers and me suggest adjustments and then we move into the intuitive dance where we might not speak so much. At that point an OM is more like listening.

It's really lovely to have a regular practice that is so very calming and open. There's no goal with OM. You can feel anything you want to feel and ask for what you need. You can cry during an OM because sometimes you’re releasing deep feelings and emotions that are coming up. Or you end up laughing in sheer delight because it's such a beautiful practice for deep feeling. 

It's a beautiful freedom that helps me be more open to everything that I'm feeling—an extraordinary meditation that just keeps on building acceptance, teaching me to experience my feelings in value neutral terms so that I am completely accepting of myself and others.