As we read through the newly-released sexual survey by Indiana University’s Center for Sexual Health Promotion, we are finding many statistics that make us even more committed to sharing our techniques of sexual pleasure. It is clear from the data that while Americans are enjoying a more varied sex life than we were just 20 years ago, there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to sexual pleasure and fulfillment.

Here is one data set that we have a lot to say about: “in all age cohorts, the largest proportion of men and women reported having engaged solely in PVI [Penis-Vaginal Intercourse] (32.9% men, 39.0% women). Contrast that with only about 6% of participants reporting that they combined “partnered masturbation” (what we affectionately refer to as Handjobs and Fingering) with intercourse. To add insult to injury, the study reports that “for women and men, the presence or absence of partnered masturbation was not associated with orgasm.”

We are dismayed that nearly 40% of women reported intercourse alone with no warm-up or foreplay activities. Solo masturbation, oral sex or stimulation with fingers is an essential part of lovemaking. Intercourse without warm-up can lead to pain during intercourse, lack of lubrication, lack of arousal and inability for the woman to experience an orgasm during intercourse. Most women want and crave more foreplay – so why are all of these couples having intercourse alone with no other arousing activities?

We know that, with skill and confidence, stimulation with hands is one of the most reliable ways to bring a woman to orgasm. With your hands, you can stimulate every part of a woman’s sexual anatomy, fine-tune your stimulation to match her arousal, create a wide range of sensations and bring women to powerful and multiple orgasms. The hands are the most dexterous and sensitive tools we have to stimulate our lover. Skipping ahead to intercourse without warming up with pleasurable touch is a wasted opportunity – women are much more likely to have orgasms during intercourse if they have already climaxed, or brought very close to climax, before being penetrated. Oral sex is great – but it is even better when it is combined with touch and penetration with skilled fingers.

So why does this massive study of 5,865 men and women not reflect the pleasurable potential of the hands? Why are men and women skipping stimulation with their hands all together? How is it that being touched by your lover is not a predictor of orgasm during a sexual encounter? Perhaps it is because our culture has lost the sexual skills of erotic touch. We do not learn how to use our hands to touch our lover, how to bring our lover to multiple orgasms with our hands and fingers. Unless you dedicate thousands of dollars and months of your life to go to massage school, there are few options to learn how to touch with skill. Our video guides are dedicated to sharing what we learned in professional massage training and our somatic sexology certification with men and women all around the world.

We believe hands can be powerful tools of pleasure, opening up new realms of arousal and orgasm, if we learn how to use them. We hope that as our erotic techniques spread across the country, more men and women will include erotic touch as part of foreplay and lovemaking – and perhaps the next national survey will have new data to report on the orgasmic potential of Americans.