Pleasure Mechanics — Page 44 — Pleasure Mechanics

Recalibrate Towards Pleasure

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If you want to show up for more pleasure, love and connection in life, one of the skills to work on is recalibrating towards pleasure. This means noticing both what you desire AND noticing what you are enduring silently.

Do Not Endure. Enduring is all about suffering patiently, and often silently. You do not ever need to endure discomfort or pain to get to pleasure. We do not need to endure sexual attention to be polite. You do not need to endure minor discomforts out of fear of “breaking the mood” And yet so many of us endure discomforts, pain and abuses – because we haven’t had permission or the skills to recalibrate towards pleasure.

In this episode we talk about how to learn to recalibrate towards pleasure – choosing to move together towards more pleasure, more joy and more love – without shying away from the hard stuff in life. When we show up more fully for pleasure we can also show up more fully for the rest of what life throws at us.

Love the show? Click here for 3 easy ways to support our work & dive deeper.

Other Speaking Of Sex Episodes Mentioned:

The Dual Model Control of Arousal: Manage Your Turn Ons and Turn Offs

How To Give and Receive Pleasure & The Three Minute Game

Podcast Transcript:

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose: 00:00 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:04 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:05 We are the Pleasure Mechanics. And on this podcast we have explicit soulful conversations about sex, sexuality, bodies, pleasure, love, relationships, how we treat ourselves and one another and more. All to equip you with what you need to know to live and love in your world. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com and check out all of the resources we have awaiting you. Go to pleasuremechanics.com/free to get started right away with our free online course, the Erotic Essentials.

Chris Rose: 00:39 On this episode we are going to be talking about an attitude adjustment that can make a huge change in your experience of pleasure, sex, love, and it kind of spiders out to every part of your world, I have noticed. It’s a concept that once again we developed on the massage table. It was a gift from learning massage that then has changed the way we touch and love and live. Before we get started, I want to remind everyone that we are a community supported erotic education podcast.

Chris Rose: 01:16 Community supported meaning we have no corporate sponsors, we are funded entirely by you, our listening community. And we offer this podcast week after week for free and in the hopes that it gets out to many people who can benefit from it. We want it to spread far and wide. That’s why it’s free. And in turn, we trust that those of you who can will support our work and show your love and show up for deeper levels of engagement with us. You can find all the ways to do this at pleasuremechanics.com/love, where you can show your support for this show with a monthly pledge via Patreon at patreon.com/pleasure mechanics or dive deeper into your erotic journey and sign up for an online course with us or just show us some love by leaving a rating or a review on the podcast platform of your choice.

Chris Rose: 02:13 Always to show your support and love for the work we do at pleasure mechanics. Yeah? So let’s get on with our community supported erotic education, shall we? All right. So on last week’s episode we talked about giving and receiving pleasure, giving and receiving, touch, giving and receiving attention and all of the dynamics we can pay attention to when we drop a little deeper into the roles of giving and receiving within our sex lives, within our love lives, within our relationships.

Chris Rose: 02:49 How do we give and receive time, attention, touch, pleasure? And we invited you all into explore these things with a three minute practice, a three minute exercise of giving and receiving affection of touch. And we’ll drop a link in the show notes page, you can go to last week’s episode page and download also an audio guide to set you up at home for exchanging this experience, for experiencing a three minute exploration of giving and receiving affection of touch. And I kind of knew this would happen because I facilitated this game in enough workshops that immediately in my inbox were questions and testimonials about all of the stuff that comes up in the simple container of a three minute touch exercise.

Chris Rose: 03:44 And it doesn’t really matter for this episode. But just to say, for those of you who didn’t hear it, this exercise is as simple as asking, how can I offer you touch for three minutes? What would you like to receive for three minutes? And then you set a timer and you negotiate what you both can show up for. Stroking a hand, a foot massage, holding you in the lap while stroking the hair, all of that kind of stuff. And what we notice in trying to do something like that with full attention for three minutes is a ton of emotional stuff comes up about this experience of giving and receiving pleasure. It is not as simple as luxuriating in one another’s touch for three minutes.

Charlotte Rose: 04:29 And that’s the beauty of the exercise is you get to see in an uncharged way or as least amount of charge as possible. It’s not like you’re having full on sex and you’re both naked and there are all these other distractions and feelings and emotions that come up, but it’s a contained experience where you get to see what comes up for you and your partner and the space between you. It is an amazing experience to get to fine tune and pay attention to what is in the way, in other moments, but in a format where you can then talk about it or pay attention to it.

Chris Rose: 05:05 Right. Or at least notice, and this is the beauty of a one minute exploration or a three minute when we create this container on purpose and say we’re just going to do this for one or three minutes with our full attention. You can pay attention to all of this stuff that’s there all the time between you, that’s within you and your relationship to pleasure, and you see it. You’re like, “Why can’t I just receive a foot massage for three minutes without thinking, are they really into it?” Are they okay? Has it been three minutes yet? Am I taking too long? My feet must smell, the chain of thoughts that can go through your head.

Chris Rose: 05:48 What are they going to want next? All of the thoughts that can go through your head in the simple one or three minute time-span of trying to focus on pleasurable touch. One of the things that comes up again and again and what we want to talk about today. So we could talk about 25 different themes that emerge in the giving and receiving explorations because it’s on both sides. There’s distractions when you’re giving pleasure too, there’s emotional resentment and anger that can surface about old stuff that hasn’t been resolved.

Chris Rose: 06:23 There can be floods of desire that come up as soon as you have permission to focus on pleasure, you might be feeling waves of things underneath that touch. So much can emerge. What we want to talk about today, and this word I heard in several emails was the word endure. I was so surprised that it was only three minutes. It felt like it took forever. I was really enduring their touch or I was really enduring having to give this touch for three minutes, I wanted out.

Chris Rose: 07:02 So this word endure. When I saw this, it immediately reminded me of what I now call the pleasure precepts. These ideas that we learned through erotic massage. We refined on the massage table in our thousands and thousands of hours of giving massage. And these lessons that carry out with us and one of those primary lessons is do not endure. And the word endure means to suffer patiently and often silently. So this is what I want to talk about. And in doing so, I want to be very clear that we’re not talking about repressing negative feelings or emotions. It’s rather the opposite.

Chris Rose: 07:50 When we say do not endure, and let’s start at the massage table. One of the primary invitations when we were inviting people onto the massage table is do not endure any discomfort. If you are a little chilly, let me know and I’ll turn the heat up. If you’re a little hot, I can adjust the sheets. If pressure is feeling too hard, let me know and I’ll adjust. If you want something deeper, feel free to ask. When you’re on the massage table, it is so clear that this is your experience and I’m bringing all of my skills and attention to making it as good and healing as possible for you.

Chris Rose: 08:31 So let me know how that could be even better, right? The flip side to do not endure is how could it be even better. And the thing you notice on the massage table is when one person is in discomfort, both people feel it. Meaning if I am massaging someone’s shoulder and it’s not feeling quite right to them, I’m not quite on the spot they want touched or it’s too deep and too tender or not deep enough and they’re craving more, as the masseur, I will feel that in my hands.

Chris Rose: 09:07 I will start noticing this isn’t quite feeling as good as it normally does. And then if they can bring their attention to that, ask for what they need to make it even better. If they do not endure their discomfort, we adjust for comfort and we both sink in a little deeper and notice it. And you’re like, “That’s the spot.” And then they start melting. They’re like, “That’s the spot.” And you’re there together.

Chris Rose: 09:35 And this is one of those skills of how you build that capacity to learn what feels good in your hands as you’re massaging is that communication, verbal or otherwise, where you’re both adjusting for comfort. You’re both adjusting away from pain and discomfort and towards pleasure, comfort and calm. Okay, so that’s on the massage table. Do not endure. In bed it shows up in a million ways. You’re trying to focus on pleasure, you’re trying to have sex with one another. What are you enduring in order to try to get to the pleasure.

Charlotte Rose: 10:16 Or to try and be polite and not hurt your partner’s feelings. I feel like that’s a really big emotional piece that is often in the way. You are really trying to be compassionate and make sure they have a good experience of pleasuring you. This is so common.

Chris Rose: 10:33 I was going to baby step up to that. Like start with, you’re in bed and you have to pee and you feel like the moment is fragile and so you kind of try to hold in your pee because you don’t want to lose the opportunity to have sex. That’s enduring. And if you just say, “Baby, I’ll be right back. Do you need anything from the kitchen?” And you go pee and then you come back with a glass of water for you both and then you’re back in it. You are going to have a better time together.

Charlotte Rose: 10:59 Because there isn’t something that is taking your attention away from the pleasure and the experience of being together.

Chris Rose: 11:05 Exactly. And in the dual model control of arousal, there will be a link in the show notes page. In the dual model control of arousal this is the stuff that puts the brakes on. I’m a little too cold, I’m a little too hot. I have to pee, I’m thirsty. My partner has bad breath. All of these things that put the brakes on that if you can just deal with it first, it takes some pressure off the brakes and you have room for more gas. You have room for more pleasure because as Charlotte said, the distractions but also the things that are just causing you minor discomfort or minor displeasure, they matter in your erotic experience. And we are trained to endure them.

Charlotte Rose: 11:49 Think about how often in work places people need to pee and you tell your body like, “I’m just going to ignore you because I really need to finish this work thing.” And we are trained in every part of our life to endure all sorts of things and so it is a real intervention that we do in our own bodies and in our relationships to choose to turn towards pleasure. To choose to allow ourself to tend to our body in moments where our body is asking for that. We are trained not to speak honestly about what would feel good, what isn’t feeling good. There are ways to do that politely and compassionately because always our partner is actually wanting us to feel good and they may not know how to get there and it is a team sport. It’s a team effort to get to that pleasure.

Chris Rose: 12:42 Well this is the relational pleasure aspect of it. What I was saying on the massage table of, if the massage isn’t feeling quite right, both people will notice if they’re paying attention. In a relationship, in a sex act, if something is not feeling quite right, if both people are paying attention, you both notice it. And I have noticed when we get over this idea of politeness and get real with each other, there is a tremendous relief. If you can say to your partner like, “This all feels really good, but can I take your hand and adjust it a little bit? Right there, keep going honey.”

Chris Rose: 13:22 They know this then feels better. They watch your arousal open up and their worst fears were not confirmed. Because in the absence of an explanation, if you notice your partner is distracted or not feeling that into it or something isn’t feeling quite right, our imaginations can fill in that blank. And this is where a lot of performance anxiety comes up, a lot of just shame and social stuff in the bedroom where we’re like, “Why isn’t this feeling quite right to both of us?” Because we don’t have the opportunity often to have a really open, honest conversation, what would make this even better?

Chris Rose: 14:02 Where are the points of discomfort? What does your body need to feel more relaxed, more pleasured, more comfortable, safer? This is not the sex culture we have inherited. Notice how different all of these conversations feel from perhaps your experience of the bedroom where the expectation is once things start heating up, you don’t really talk about it, you make a ton of assumptions. You go through a script and you try to eke out as best an experience of that as possible. This idea of both people showing up with the skills to be like, “This is what I need, this is what I don’t want.”

Chris Rose: 14:42 I mean, it’s amazing how simple these things are and yet how foreign they are to our erotic experience and that’s why we practice them. That’s why we do it on purpose. So we build those skills together in less charged environments. You don’t jump into cunnilingus and then try to learn communication skills. That could be really hard for some people. For others, not, and this is the other thing to notice. How have you been socialized and trained to speak up for your own comfort versus how have you been trained to endure?

Chris Rose: 15:18 Not all of our bodies are trained at the same way in this culture. So notice what you endure. Notice how much you endure. Notice your patterns of enduring. And the other thing I want to really say here is enduring is not about repressing discomfort or shying away from it. It’s going really towards it. Noticing your own discomfort and with compassion and kindness being like, “What’s there? What do I need to feel more present? What do I need to feel more focused, more relaxed?”

Chris Rose: 15:55 Because we’ve been naming all these examples of like you need to pee, you need a pillow, you need more or less pressure, but there’s also really big things you might need in your relationship. And that is some of the stuff that might surface as you’re trying to pay attention to touching one another as you’re trying to have a better sex life. Sometimes it’s the relational stuff that needs small or really big adjustments.

Charlotte Rose: 16:23 You’re speaking about things like resent.

Chris Rose: 16:25 Power dynamics, money stuff, family stuff, all of those stuff, all of the relational stuff that you might have been enduring that you might not have been always calibrating back towards your own pleasure. The things we let slip over time for years and years that can accumulate and then show up in emotional barbs in the bedroom. But also I want to make clear in these re-calibrations. When we say do not endure, do not endure. The first thing is noticing your discomfort and the ability to notice your discomfort, to notice pain in your body and turn towards it and be like, “What are you trying to tell me? What adjustment do I need?”

Chris Rose: 17:09 The second thing there, and this for me is the most important step is externalizing. So when we say do not endure, it’s the part about suffering patiently and silently. If you’re going to suffer, let’s do it together, right? If you have a discomfort or pain, noticing it and then expressing it to a partner, to a loving friend, even just to yourself. Saying it out loud, acknowledging it, changes your relationship to it and it makes it something you’re not enduring.

Chris Rose: 17:44 This became really clear to me as we were preparing for this episode and I was thinking about, I developed all of this skill and this practice for years and years and then I got sick and I live in chronic pain. So there is pain we cannot change. There are things in our relationships we cannot change. That doesn’t mean we have to endure them. We can be with pain, we can be with discomfort, we can be with sorrow and sadness. All of these things. We can be with them with just as much love and attention as we are with the pleasure and joy and ecstasy. And in fact, we’re required to do both. That is part of the practice is showing up fully for both.

Charlotte Rose: 18:29 But then there’s pain and discomfort that can be altered and changed.

Chris Rose: 18:33 Right. And the wisdom to know the difference.

Charlotte Rose: 18:36 Exactly. Chronic pain is its own experience, but things like I am caring for a child and holding them in a certain way that is beginning to hurt my back. I have urgency and choice over readjusting them so that my body is comfortable again, but I can still offer the loving kindness that I want to to my child. Those sorts of experiences where you can reposition your body, you can go get a drink of water. As a massage therapist when you are giving touch and it starts to feel uncomfortable in your body, the first thing to do often is adjust your body.

Charlotte Rose: 19:15 Your body position is often off and beginning to cause discomfort and that’s something that can be brought directly into the bedroom easily, but it’s often not something that we would think of. If we’re ever watching porn there is no readjusting for comfort that we are seeing or getting used to as an idea. So bringing that idea into your bedroom that if you are ever uncomfortable and giving pleasure starts to feel off, consider readjusting your body’s position, right?

Chris Rose: 19:45 This is both partners, both and always. Adjusting for comfort, do not endure, recalibrating towards pleasure. You can see how these micro adjustments count over time and are constantly inviting and this is an attitude, right? This is an attitude we adopt and then practice over time and then start getting used to and start strengthening the skills of. And we’ve been talking a lot about the recalibrations, the little adjustments that can make a huge difference to allow you to show up.

Chris Rose: 20:18 There are also really big changes that need to happen sometimes. Renegotiations like midstream, like I consented to this, I thought it would feel good, I just need to stop right now. And the ability to stop something lovingly and stay connected is also one of those huge skills because you will not be enduring minutes or hours of a sex act that you no longer want. But we got to get back to the politeness thing because this is where… Like if in your body, the idea of stopping a sex act with your partner midstream sounds like, “That would be kind of scary.” It is. It is scary sometimes to say what you need to adjust for comfort, to speak your own needs and trust that your partner will be okay with that and stay connected to you.

Chris Rose: 21:11 And again, on the massage table, your massage therapist isn’t going to storm out of the room if you say, “Can you move on from my feet? That’s not feeling quite well.” And yet still a lot of people don’t say it. A lot of people will endure a foot massage they don’t want. Instead of retaking that five minutes back for their butt where it was feeling great. But in the bedroom, if your partner’s going down on you and you’re like, “I’m just not into this right now.” How many of us endure it until we can politely pivot? Instead of either making those little calibrations, telling them what would feel good or making the huge, “I don’t want you to go down on me.” I actually would much prefer you doing this, this, or this. Just notice the lack of these communication skills in our sex lives, in all of our sex lives.

Charlotte Rose: 22:05 And something you can remember is in those moments where something is not feeling good to you as a receiver and you would like to shift because you do not want to endure, but you’re not quite sure what to do, a good idea is to ask for stillness. You can ask your lover to just take a breath to hold still and just be quiet for a moment and just pause. And in that pause you can see does your body want anything else? Is there something else you’d rather? But you might not be able to jump to asking for that while you’re still in an act that isn’t feeling good. So just ask for a pause, a moment of stillness.

Chris Rose: 22:46 In mindfulness, we call this the mindful pause. The ability to slow down and pause so you have a moment to pay attention. And we should just say here, this opens up this whole other skillset, this skillset of interoception, the skillset of paying attention to what’s happening inside your body and then expressing it is a huge skillset that we’re all going to work on together in this world. Because as we say this, notice what your body wants and then ask for it. We shouldn’t pretend that that is easy or simple all the time.

Chris Rose: 23:24 Sometimes it can be, “I need to pee,” I’m aware of, “I need to pee,” let me go pee. Other times it’s very subtle, but as you practice this, you get better at noticing and you get better at trusting the results of your recalibrations because that’s the beautiful thing that happens here, is when you adjust for comfort, you hit the just right place more often. And those recalibrations, it’s kind of when they say a plane recalibrates hundreds of times towards its destination. When we take off into the pleasure zone, we don’t always know exactly the route that we will get to our pleasure.

Chris Rose: 24:09 And sometimes it’s like, “Well, what about a little of this?” Nope, this way, okay, this way we’re going to do more of this and this is interesting. I don’t know, we’re over here now and then we’re back. There’s a lot of recalibration in building mutual pleasure and we have to build that skill. And one of the best moments to recalibrate is when you notice you are enduring. So again, just to bring this back to this idea of enduring, the first thing about do not endure is to notice when you are enduring.

Chris Rose: 24:40 When you’re getting touched, when you’re having sex, out in life, in all of your social relationships, and this is not the first moment of discomfort. We can notice those first moments of discomfort, but then enduring is when discomfort becomes suffering, becomes suffering patiently. When will this be over? When will I be freed of this? Those are those moments to really snap to attention and be like, “How do I make this even better? How can I recalibrate away from the suffering and towards comfort, connection, pleasure, joy.”

Chris Rose: 25:20 Sometimes it’s as simple as moving a hand, one or two inches. Sometimes it’s changing your whole life, but all action within that spectrum is welcome because it brings you both closer to that moment of pleasure. It’s a gift to both of you. So when we say we’re trained to be polite and this is like we’re trained… Social politeness is like, “I’m so over it.” Because think about a dinner guest. Where do you want to go for dinner? I don’t know, wherever you’d like.

Chris Rose: 25:50 And then you take them to your favorite restaurant and they’re like, “I don’t like spicy food.” But I didn’t tell you that. And if I had known that I would have taken you a different place. Politeness often creates dissatisfaction. I don’t want you to be polite with me. I want you to be real and compassionate and kind. So fuck politeness in the bedroom. Start showing up with a lot more kindness and compassion and understanding and see what happens. But we’re back to do not endure.

Chris Rose: 26:21 So the first thing here is going to be noticing what you are enduring already and again, with that kindness and compassion, you got to be compassionate with yourself because you might have been enduring shit for 20 years and as you feel that, you’re going to be pissed, you might go into mourning, you might go into a certain grief cycle, you might get angry, but just know we’re all trained to endure. We’ve all been trained into this. It’s not you that is broken within this. It’s our sex culture and this is one of those keys that can help us all recalibrate how we do sex, how we think about sex, how we approach sex back to a more compassionate human place. Do not endure discomfort. My friends.

Charlotte Rose: 27:07 It’s so helpful to remember the piece that when one person is uncomfortable and enduring that it makes it less pleasurable for the other person as well. Even if they can’t articulate that or they don’t know why something feels off. It’s valuable to remember that you become an ecosystem of sorts and it is affecting both of you. So you’re doing yourself and your partner a favor to figure out the recalibration for both of your pleasure.

Chris Rose: 27:37 Yeah, and sometimes again, this can be quick and sometimes it’s going to be massive. Sometimes if you ask finally and speak up for what you want and your old scripts don’t work, that can cause fallout. And you both in that call to figure out what would work for you right now. What would make this even better? And I like these as kind of the flip sides of the coin. Do not endure. And then from that place, what would make this even better? It’s a kind question. It’s a question we can all be curious about. We hope this has been helpful to you as you explore touching one another with more reverence and paying attention to your pleasure more deeply. We are here for you. Be in touch with us. Again, come on over to pleasuremechanics.com/love to find out all the ways you can support this show and engage more deeply with us and be in touch with us. We love to hear from you. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 28:36 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 28:37 We are the Pleasure Mechanics.

Speaker 2: 28:38 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Anxiety

Is anxiety an unwelcome guest in your bedroom? For so many of us, arousal and anxiety are far too closely tied in our erotic experiences.

Here are some resources for managing anxiety as it shows up for different people. If you feel like anxiety is majorly disrupting your life, please give yourself the gift of talking to a mental health professional.

Performance Anxiety

Body Anxiety and Body Shame

Episode 333: Your Body Is Good Enough

Taking Turns In Bed : How To Practice The Skills of Giving and Receiving Pleasure

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Taking turns in bed is one of the most powerful reframes you can make to gain access to way more pleasure and connection.

Taking turns is yet another gift from our erotic massage lineage – on a massage table it is clear how we can take turns giving and receiving touch, centering the needs and desires of one body at a time so we can lavish it with as much presence and pleasure as possible.

Taking turns is not about “you do me and then I’ll do you” – it is about dropping into a shared erotic experience with focused attention. Listen in to find out how this simple idea of taking turns can emerge in sex, love and life.

To practice the skills of giving and receiving pleasure, we highly encourage you to explore the Three Minute Game. Get our recorded walkthrough by signing up for our newsletter below!

Resources

Betty Martin’s Wheel Of Consent : Free Training Videos, Courses and More

Podcast Transcript:

Chris Rose: 00:01 Welcome to Speaking of Sex With the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:05 I am Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:06 We are the Pleasure Mechanics and on this podcast we have explicit, soulful conversations. Some have called it passionate and compassionate conversations about everything you need to know about sex, love, relationships and surviving this world.

Chris Rose: 00:23 Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com where you will find all of our free resources waiting for you. Go to pleasure mechanics.com/free and enroll in our free online course, The Erotic Essentials so we can get started with you right away. Let us get started with you.

Chris Rose: 00:44 On today’s podcast. We’re talking about taking turns in bed. Yet another one of these gifts that comes to us through our erotic massage lineage. We’ve been talking a lot about these perspectives and strategies that we learned because Charlotte and I were both trained in erotic massage and how that perspective changed everything for us I think. How we think about sex and fucking and loving and living. We keep coming across these gifts as we explore our work and so we just want to articulate them and share them with you. Because sometimes when I get your emails and I start digging into your struggles, it becomes clear to me that shifts of perspectives and as I’m saying shifts a lot, it’s a hard word to say, changing your perspective can make dramatic changes in your lived experience.

Chris Rose: 01:46 In the academic world we have a word called “praxis,” and praxis is one of my favorite words that I geeked out on in college that I kind of want to get tattooed on my body. Because praxis talks about the relationship between theory, the ideas we have about something, action, the behaviors we take, and knowledge. And knowledge is another word for experience. Your erotic knowledge is a sum of your experiences. And so sometimes we want to intervene on the actions and sometimes we want to intervene on the theories.

Chris Rose: 02:20 So today is a theory intervention where we’re going to talk about taking turns in bed. Taking turns in bed, taking turns at pleasure, taking turns in the role of giver and receiver and what that means for your entire sex life and your perspective on sex itself.

Charlotte Rose: 02:42 I love this so much because when we’re having “regular sex,” whatever that looks like for you, there is sometimes so much going on. There’s so much to pay attention to. There’s your body, the other person’s body, how they’re connecting, how our thoughts are running wild perhaps. All of the feelings that we’re having. There is a lot going on. And slowing things way down and identifying that one of you is giving and one of you is receiving really allows each one of you to drop into that experience and just do that. And when we do that, we are able to slow down and really feel our feelings, feel our body, feel the sensations that we’re experiencing. It simplifies matters.

Chris Rose: 03:34 And taking turns doesn’t mean you do me and I’ll do you. It’s not waiting in line for a ride. It doesn’t mean checking out of the experience when it’s not your turn. As Charlotte says, it means going even more deep into the roles of giving and receiving so you both can be even more present, more aware and feel more.

Chris Rose: 03:54 This dynamic is so clear to us on the massage table. When you have a massage table set up, one person lies down and one person works at the table walking around at all angles, massaging and touching and being with the receiver’s body. And that entire session, from the first conversation about it, to the conversation afterwards and the drink of water as you’re sitting up and coming to after your hour session, is all for the benefit and experience of the receiver. The giver is there in service to that experience, which doesn’t mean you can check out. The giver goes deep into their role of giving, brings all of their skills, all of their presence, all of their attention to usher in the desired experience into the recipient’s body.

Charlotte Rose: 04:47 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Rose: 04:48 What a gift. What a gift. And that’s true for all massage when done well, because certainly you can go to a massage and the giver is not present and they’re just going through a routine. And you don’t feel that they are here for me in every way kind of feeling. But when you have that feeling it is special, you can feel it, it is palpable. And then when we go to a erotic massage we’re bringing that attention, that full presence and attention and skillfulness into the eroticism, into arousal. And then we take that skill off the massage table and bring it with us into bed.

Chris Rose: 05:30 And this is what I noticed. So just to take you back to our early twenties, Charlotte and I were both living in San Francisco and without having met one another yet, we’re both getting trained in massage. And I was being trained directly in the Body Electric lineage. Charlotte got another training and then entered the Body Electric lineage. But as I learned erotic massage, I’d come home on the weekends and have sex with my friends. I was living in an apartment with two gay men and we were in this play party community and so I was having lots of sex with lots of people. And as soon as I learned massage, everything about my sex changed. And I started bringing that focus of attention and that taking turns mentality into sex. And meanwhile I was in a kinky community, and we see this same dynamic in the kink community where often there is a top and a bottom, a giver and a receiver, and you orchestrate the scene around one person’s desires.

Chris Rose: 06:29 So this combination of educations for me allowed me to create these sex scenes with people where I was like, “Tell me what you want. What would feel best for you right now? I am totally at your service. Ask and you shall receive.”

Chris Rose: 06:45 And that was delightful for me. But then when those same people, my same lovers turned that attention on me and was like, “Well, what do you want?”

Chris Rose: 06:54 I was like, “Uh! I don’t know! I’m a survivor. I don’t know.” And that question is really scary.

Chris Rose: 06:59 And so this is part of the dynamic we want to talk about is, the fantasy of just giving and receiving with full attention and presence and one person can just lie back and luxuriate and receive. That’s a fantasy. How does the reality play out in your life when it comes to giving and receiving? Which one of these roles is easier for you? What emotions come up? And this is where the magic starts to happen within a relationship, where you can start working with this dynamic, giving one another deeper presence and attention, and going through all of the emotions and stuff that will come up during that process.

Chris Rose: 07:40 What was the transition like for you when you learned massage and then erotic massage skills? How did it change your sex life?

Charlotte Rose: 07:47 Hmm. I feel like I really got to see from the people I was giving massage to that there was a breadth of skillset to receiving. It was really interesting to guide people through a massage and then an erotic experience for eight hours a day and see people one after the other and see how… I was doing fairly similar things with each body, and different people could take that pleasure in to different extents. And that was really fascinating to observe and see the skill set of receiving. And also to be able to go deep into my role of giving, because the more that I meditated or danced beforehand to really get myself in my own body and in my own awareness, in my own presence, I was able to give from a deeper place, from a place where I could listen more with my hands. And then I was able to take people to higher levels of pleasure.

Chris Rose: 08:55 Right. So I just want to paint the training grounds of our erotic skills a little bit. Charlotte was doing erotic massage primarily on men for six to eight sessions a day, a few days a week. Meanwhile, I was doing all these sessions with survivors, with women, with couples and I’m teaching workshops where I got to see 20 people at a time, sometimes on massage tables. And when you see all of these bodies you get to see the patterns. And this piece of depth of role of giver and receiver was so apparent. And it’s one of these things that we can just bring right home to how we love one another. Because in each of these roles, giver and receiver, you can be distracted and barely there and going through the motions, or you can be so present that you feel the quiver of your lovers pleasure at the fingertips. It’s right there at every breath and you are riding that together.

Chris Rose: 09:56 And when you’re both dropped into your role, when you’re both dropped in, that’s where you meet, right? So it’s not this thing of we’re on separate experiences, you’re the giver, I’m the receiver, you’re doing something, I’m not. You’re meeting right there at the point of touch, at the point of breath where they arousal is growing and you’re right there sharing that experience. And I think if you think through your sex life, you’ve had these moments, whether you’ve done it purposefully or not, with skill or not. A lot of us have found these moments sometimes by accident and you find yourself right there and engaged with someone, and at that moment you’re like right in the pleasurable experience with full presence together and it feels fucking amazing. And we crave it and we try to recreate it and sometimes when it doesn’t happen, it can feel deeply frustrating or isolating or alienating. So this is a way of doing that on purpose by, as Charlotte said, splitting up these roles so you have one thing to focus on.

Chris Rose: 11:02 My favorite example of this is the ultimate distracting position is the 69 position, right? Where someone’s genitals are right in your face, your genitals are right in someone’s face. Sensation is really high. You’re trying to manage body positions, you’re trying to support your weight. You’re worried about, “Am I going to come too soon? Not soon enough?” All of those things streaming through you. And for most of us, most sex is that giving and receiving at the same time. Like pay attention to it all, a cacophony of sensations and feelings and emotions and distractions. It’s a lot to pay attention to. When we slow it down, when we say, “What do you want tonight? What can I give you tonight?” it allows you to focus on one thing at a time and therefore go deeper.

Chris Rose: 11:49 So there’s two ways to think about this giving and receiving. And when we paint the picture of the massage table, giving and receiving looks a lot like who is giving the touch and who is receiving the touch. Who is giving the touch and who is receiving the touch. And this was the basis of the Body Electric lineage. And out of that, this game that we’re going to share with you, the 3-Minute Game, came as an exercise of saying, “For three minutes, how do you want to be touched?”

Chris Rose: 12:23 And then you ask your partner that, they make a very specific request, “Please massage my arms with moderate to deep pressure. I have a sore elbow.” Right? So you lay out your request and then you spend three minutes just doing that touch. And we do this in massage classes, we do this as part of sex coaching. It’s a fabulous exercise because with three minutes on the timer, most people can focus on something for one to three minutes. And sometimes I even drop this to like one minute or 90 seconds.

Chris Rose: 12:55 But when you’re asked what do you want for three minutes, you then have to go into yourself and say, “I have a talented masseur asking me what I want for three minutes. What is my body craving?” So there’s that skill of articulating what you want and asking for it out loud.

Chris Rose: 13:14 A woman named Betty Martin, who was part of one of the very early sexological bodywork trainings that I was teaching with Joe Kramer, founder of Body Electric School, during that training started complicating this and saying, “Wait, wait, wait. Giver and receiver isn’t nuanced enough because you don’t always give for the receiver’s pleasure. Who is it for? Who is the touch serving? We have to start asking that question.” And thus she opened up kind of a new axis and what she now calls the Wheel of Consent. And for the past 13 years since I first met her, she’s been really developing this area and offers trainings on the Wheel of Consent.

Chris Rose: 13:57 And that asks both, in a 3-Minute Game, “How do you want to be touched, and how do you want to touch me?”

Chris Rose: 14:07 We start activating that access of, “Who is this for,” and, “What is it like to touch for my pleasure, to give touch for my own gratification?”

Chris Rose: 14:21 And I love this access. I love how she’s opened this up because it really opens up that conversation of, “Who is this for? Who’s pleasure are we centering?” And I think of this as whose desires are we centering for this erotic event? And I think this is what the kink community asks us, right? Because in the kink community there’s the top and the bottom, but whose desires are being centered is really important. Is the bottom, the submissive, on their knees because they like it, or because the top wants them on their knees? Or both, right? Because you can’t make that assumption, who is it for? So who’s doing what and who is it for, become the questions of giving and receiving.

Charlotte Rose: 15:05 And hearing that it’s possible to give touch so that you can take your own pleasure can be really challenging to hear because we live in a world where there is sexual violence and we’re really trying hard to not do that. And that’s why Betty Martin talks about the Wheel of Consent, that it’s so important to really have these explicit conversations and agreements made before you start any kind of touch so you both have agreed to whatever you’re doing and that there’s clarity around that. Because once you have clarity, then you can really say yes to something. Otherwise it can be really murky and not clear and it can start feeling a little crummy.

Chris Rose: 15:49 A classic example of this to me is when someone’s like, “Hey, do you want a shoulder rub?”

Chris Rose: 15:54 And you’re like, “Yeah, that sounds nice. I’ll take a shoulder rub.”

Chris Rose: 15:58 And you start getting the shoulder rub and then the hands start drifting to the breasts. They are changing the agreement and taking touch that they want for their hands, for their pleasure, without your agreement, right? And making that dynamic consensual turns out to be really important, and I think it’s so important we’re going to do a whole episode on it. Because this is that place of take, of “take and allow” is what Betty Martin calls it and so many of us want to be taken. The idea that someone finds our body so desirable that they want to touch it and eat it and fuck it for their own pleasure can feel really good if you want that person too. But being taken without consent and without mutual desire feels awful. So that’s a really important dynamic to get right, to do consensually for it to feel awesome.

Chris Rose: 16:57 Right now we’re focusing on this give and receive, where the touch is being done for and centering the pleasure of the person receiving. This dynamic is boundless in the pleasure it can bring you, because when we each start tuning in, “What does my body want right now? What would feel good to it right now?”

Chris Rose: 17:21 Given the current context, given where I’m just… As the right now appears moment to moment and we have a partner who has skilled hands and full presence and saying, “How can I serve you? What do you want?” the pleasure is endless.

Chris Rose: 17:37 Because you can start saying, “Oh, I just need to be held and listened to. Ooh, a shoulder massage would feel really good right now. I’ve had a long day at the office. My butt could use a lot of work. I want to be fucked really deeply and rough tonight. I just want tender, loving touch and maybe go down on me while I weep.”

Chris Rose: 17:56 Your vocabulary of once opens up because you’re invited into this experience in something as simple as the 3-Minute Game. And the 3-Minute Game, so we’ll set it up for you, and I think maybe we’ll record a practice of it and people can then try it on their own. And we’ll have that available in the show notes page of this episode. I’m just like, I throw these things in as we’re recording. Charlotte’s looking at me like, “Oh will we?” Yes we will. We will record a practice of this game because I think it’s a really important one.

Chris Rose: 18:29 And the 3-Minute Game often starts at the kitchen table. This is not in bed, this is just in a relaxed or on the couch. And you set a timer, which is an important tool. It’s not arbitrary. Having a timer allows you to focus and then allows that boundary of time. So you say, “For three minutes, how can I serve you? What do you want? What kind of touch would you like?”

Chris Rose: 18:54 And then the range of opportunity is there for the person to go inside and think about what would feel good and say it out loud, to ask for it. And then built into the exercise is a negotiation. So the person giving can have boundaries too. “Is that a touch you can show up for willingly? Are you available for that? Can you do that right now?”

Chris Rose: 19:18 And then you negotiate and you say, “Well I would love to stroke your hair. What position would feel good for us?” And you do it. You set the timer and you notice what three minutes can bring you. That is another gift of that is you notice in your body how three minutes of intentional, affectionate touch can completely shift your neurochemistry. And this is why, for example, in our couples massage course we have five minute follow-along guides because we’ve noticed over the years, five minutes can completely change how you feel in your body and open up whole new yeses.

Chris Rose: 19:55 So the 3-Minute Game, lest it sound clinical, right? Because some people can hear this and be like, “I don’t want to play a 3-Minute Game. I want to fuck,” right?

Chris Rose: 20:05 The 3-Minute Game as a practice to activate these skills, to show you the power of the giving and receiving role, then builds into things like, “Honey, what are you up for tonight? What are you into?” And that is such a different invitation than, “Can I get sex tonight?” This is a primary thing for so many couples and we’ve talked about it before so I won’t go on a huge rant, I promise. But for so many couples, any sort of affectionate touch is an assumption of intercourse. We’re going to start on this ride. It finishes with intercourse and if you’re not up for intercourse, you don’t get on the ride.

Chris Rose: 20:45 If instead, affectionate touch is just affectionate touch, which then may lead to more affectionate touch. It might lead to one of you getting off. It might lead to both of you getting off. It becomes just a starter. It becomes an invitation just to be in that moment together, just to touch for the pleasure and connection of that touch. It really changes everything. And it’s not clinical. You start this as a practice to build skills to become a more skillful lover.

Charlotte Rose: 21:15 Yeah. It’s such a wonderful opportunity to have this little game where you can practice and activate your communication. Asking for what you want, setting boundaries, making requests. They’re just such a wonderful skills that we can all use, developing. And it’s a short amount of time. It is powerful and it’s interesting just to see what comes up, to see what you discover about yourself, your partner and what feels good. No major sexual expectations, just an exploration. So I’m so excited for you guys to explore this.

Chris Rose: 21:51 And beyond the game. So as we build the skills through the game, through these experiments, through short little experiments, you then build these skills as lovers. And I want to paint the picture a little bit of what this looks like as lovers. Because the giving and receiving, it’s not just about the game for skills, it’s about a whole model of having sex together. Where it’s not, “We’re just going to fall together and collide and roll around and pay attention to everything at once,” and hope both people’s needs are being met.

Chris Rose: 22:24 Giving and receiving, when you break down the roles and you go into sex, and this can all be done very passionately, you’re kissing, you’re touching one another, and there opens this conversation of like, “What are you into right now? What do you want right now? Show me, guide me.”

Chris Rose: 22:42 And there’s this skill you develop where you trust one another, that taking turns is not waiting for your turn. I really want to say that again. It’s not like, “Let me get you off and then you get me off.” It’s not one for one. There’s no scoreboard. It’s just this open opportunity to be like, “I am here for you. Let me serve you right now.” And this can be… So session by session, you can devote a whole session, a whole evening, a whole weekend to centering one person’s desires and pleasure. What a gift that would be, where you arrange a whole arc of time centering and lavishing one person and your attention, getting their favorite takeout, making sure they feel loved and pampered and paid attention to, and then you arrange the whole sex around just pleasuring them. Whether or not you as a giver find pleasure in that, have an orgasm or not, all of those things are negotiable of where you fit into that, but you have centered their needs and desires.

Chris Rose: 23:50 This spirit of giving and receiving can also happen within the arc of one night. It’s like, “Let me take care of you first. We’re going to pamper you. We’re going to lavish you with touch. You are going to be in your afterglow. And then from that place you’re going to turn to me with all of your hunger and take care of me.”

Chris Rose: 24:09 And this is a model that works really well for partners where one person has a vulva and one person has a penis, and if that vulva needs longer, warm up and turn on and really likes all of that play in the beginning of the session, she receives first. And this is the premise of Ian Kerner’s timeless bestselling book, She Comes First. Focus on her pleasure first, unroll that, and then from that place of the person with the vulva being fully aroused, fully turned on, fully activated, ready, then you turn the attention to the penis. It’s a really useful template. Like this is not a script. It’s just a suggestion of an arc of events that rely on this skill of giving and receiving. Because when you’re turning your attention to the person that goes first or the person who’s a focus of attention for the entire night, you’re dropping into that role of giver. And I just want to give a shout out for that because it’s not like this clinical “I’m doing you,” distracted, like, “Blah, I’m not a part of this. I’m feeling bad about that,” kind of nonsense.”

Chris Rose: 25:27 This is a deeply erotic role of turning all of your life force attention, all of your skills, all of your energy, all of your force, all of your power perhaps, onto the desires and needs of your beloved. Even if it’s casual, right? This person you are choosing to share this erotic experience with and you’re like, “I am here for it. I am here for this.” Can you tell I love giving, and receiving is a little harder for me? Giving for me is like the purest form of eroticism, where you’re bringing your entire humanity in the service of pleasure. And it’s through that place, endless pleasure can stream through your body and you can get incredibly aroused and feel so powerful. So when I say being of service, that’s not necessarily submissive, this can be an incredibly powerful role too.

Chris Rose: 26:24 And I hear from a lot of guys that they love to do this. They love to turn their attention onto a pussy, onto a vulva or onto a cock because gay men are just like this too. But a lot of us love to do this, turn all of our attention onto our lover. For a lot of people, the bottleneck in this is people’s ability to receive.

Chris Rose: 26:45 And so I just want to circle back to what you were saying about your massage table and what our capacities are. Because all of those guys were in the presence of one of the most skilled, erotic masseuses in the San Francisco Bay area, probably the world and other galaxies too. And how much pleasure they could receive was up to them. And this is true for so many of us at home where our partner is willing. And this is not true for everyone, like shout out to the people whose partners aren’t willing. There is a different set of things there. But so many people’s partners are willing and we cannot show up and receive. And I know this so intimately because for me when I entered this erotic massage world and I found myself not one erotic masseuse, but surrounded by a room full of them who loved me and were ready to give me any kind of touch.

Chris Rose: 27:36 And on my Friday night I was in a kinky community where I could ask to be strung from the ceiling, my nipples set on fire while I was fucked by three men if I wanted to. That was available for the taking. And all of a sudden I hit this point of like, “Uh, I don’t know how to receive.”

Chris Rose: 27:56 There’s so much to say here about survivors and trauma and if that is true for you, we will have a resource on the show notes page, our free survivor’s toolkit that addresses a ton of this. But it’s also just true for so many of us because we’ve never been asked by a passionate, generous lover with full presence. And we haven’t had the practice of centering our own needs and desires. How often in life do you get to say from this deep place of what’s inside you “This is what I want.” It’s a really advanced skill and so that’s why we start small in the 3-Minute Game, right?

Chris Rose: 28:35 We don’t say, “What do you want? All your sexual fantasies?” That is too big a question for most of us. If we roll it way back, and this is, “I learned this playing the 3-Minute Game in massage classes,” all of a sudden you can get specific. You’re like, “Yeah, my shoulders feel hella tight. Just rub them out.” And you trust them to stay boundaried and so within that boundary, all of this abundance is possible. Within that boundary you can get met fully because you don’t have to be guarded within yourself of what else might happen. What are they going to try? Because they’re not taking, they are giving.

Chris Rose: 29:11 And so if you can say to your lover, “Oh, all I need right now is a long back rub. And then I’m going to clamp my vibrator to my clitoris and have an orgasm and fall asleep. Is that okay?”

Chris Rose: 29:19 And they’re like, “Hell yeah baby. I’m here for it. Let me get the massage oil. Get your vibrator plugged in, let’s go!” You have a clear boundary and you can give yourself fully to that experience. And then tomorrow night there’s a new boundary and a new experience and you talk about it and you open it up and you play together. Woo!

Chris Rose: 29:43 So there’s more to say about giving and receiving. We’ll link to some relevant podcast episodes and resources on the show notes page. We’re going to record the 3-Minute Game practice for you so you have us guiding you. And we hope this conversation has been helpful to you as you integrate this, whether you play the 3-Minute Game or just try it in your bedroom and try to center your lover’s pleasure for a little while, you will notice emotions come up. Emotions about giving, emotions about receiving. And those can be really complicated to unpack. Resentment can rear its head, like, “Why would I give to him? What does he give to me?” And it will reveal shit about your relationship. And this is also why we do these practices, because they give us opportunities to pay attention to things, right?

Chris Rose: 30:32 This practice of centering one person’s desires at a time, of dropping into the role of giving and receiving will reveal stuff not only about yourself. Like I said, as a survivor, it was very hard for me to receive and say what I wanted and trust that I was safe in that. There’s also all of these emotional, relational issues that come up as you do this. And you’ll notice, giving and receiving happens not only in the bedroom but in the relationship, in the family home. What energy, what is being given and what is being received within the relationship, your life? What is your role to giving and receiving in your profession? If you’re a giver all day long, if you’re a social worker, you might want to come home and just be taken, right? And that’s, so many of us, we balance our social life with our sexual fantasies and desires.

Chris Rose: 31:34 But then there’s all these other questions that might come up. And as you are thinking through this, there’s some useful questions to ask about the touch, about the roles of giving and receiving. Questions like, “What is the intention of this touch? Do you want to be relaxed or do you want to be aroused?” Great question to ask.

Charlotte Rose: 31:55 While you’re receiving, a great question to ask yourself is, “What are you paying attention to? Are you paying attention to the sensations in your body? Are you paying attention to your lover’s hands on your body? Are you paying attention to your thoughts?” And you want to redirect your attention back to the sensations in your body or to where the fingertips are touching the contours of your skin.

Chris Rose: 32:21 And as a survivor, sometimes my intention going in was, “I’m just going to pay attention to my breath and stay calm while someone gives me a back massage.” And that was enough to pay attention to and I felt some vague sense of pleasure happening behind that. But my main job was just staying calm and present.

Chris Rose: 32:41 So if you find yourself often distracted during sex, checking out during sex, playing the 3-Minute Game and saying, “Stroke my hair and all I’m going to pay attention to as a receiver is staying calm and present,” that is enough. And that is a noble goal.

Chris Rose: 32:57 And then those things change and all of a sudden you be like, “I want your hands inside me and I want to pay attention to my cervix and what sensations we can find there.” And that takes us back to the erotic massage episode. And you can see how these skills layer upon themselves and start serving you.

Chris Rose: 33:15 When we learn how to pay attention to our lovers hands as they’re massaging our feet, and our foot massage tutorial by the way, is available for free in our Erotic Essentials course. When you can learn how to pay attention to your lover massaging your feet for three minutes, you are developing a really powerful skill that will serve you not only in sex but in your whole life. Because then, as they’re going down on you, if you’ve consented to that and they’re giving all of their attention with their mouth and their breath and their hands to your pussy, you can pay attention to that for three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, stay with it and notice how much pleasure is available to you.

Chris Rose: 33:57 Because this is the thing and this is that secret, back to the massage table and then we should sign off. But on our massage table, boundless pleasure was available to these bodies. And some were only available to a certain amount. They had a certain capacity. And then they hit their pleasure ceiling and they checked out or they ejaculated. They found a way to distract themselves. We often use distraction when we hit our pleasure capacity. Or we just ejaculate, we orgasm and we end it. We can learn to stretch that pleasure capacity and that is a full body act of paying attention and letting in more pleasure, learning how to build more arousal. And that is all a skill of paying attention to your body in increasing states of arousal and pleasure until you can hold more and more pleasure and ride more and more arousal and you build this skill. And you can build it alone with masturbation. You can build it relationally with your partner.

Chris Rose: 35:06 All right, so the 3-Minute Game, do not undersell it. Because it comes from a lineage that has explored the outer bounds of human erotic capacity and we’re reporting back. So this is not a little clinical exercise that should be taken lightly. It’s easy, it’s simple. You step into it wherever you’re at. With hands at the kitchen table, with feed on the couch, with stroking hair and back and shoulders, and then build up your trust and capacity with one another until you are taking one another on epic, erotic rides.

Chris Rose: 35:42 All right. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com, all of our resources are there; pleasuremechanics.com/love to support this show. Show your love for what we do in the world and help us keep going. And pleasuremechanics.com/free to get started with our free online course.

Charlotte Rose: 36:01 And all of our other courses are available at pleasuremechanics.com.

Chris Rose: 36:04 Yes, and you can use the code, “speaking of sex” for 20% off the online course of your choice. Get on our newsletter, all the things at pleasuremechanics.com. We are here for and with you. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 36:17 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 36:18 We are the Pleasure Mechanics-

Charlotte Rose: 36:20 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

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Start With Just One Stroke…

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Speaking Of Sex Podcast Series on Touch

Why Is Human Touch Important?

Here is a quick 3 minute listen from NPR about the full body response to affectionate human touch

Do you ever wonder in longing what other couples are doing to stay connected? Do you ever sense there is something better you could be doing with your free time together, but don’t know quite what to propose to shake things up?

We are obsessed with looking at the patterns and research that points the way towards more pleasure, joy and connection!

In the largest relationship survey ever conducted, researchers asked couples to rate their happiness and satisfaction in bed. Then they dug deep to find out what the happiest couples have in common. The research, released in the New York Times bestseller The Normal Bar, is a fantastic guide to what makes happy couples tick. We got to interview the author and learned so much about what the Happiest Couples have in common!

Here’s one fact we found fascinating: Of the “extremely happy couples” 74% had one thing in common. It has nothing to do with body shape or frequency of sex. It is actually a very easy thing to add to your relationship to improve your happiness, deepen your intimacy and improve your sex life. Ready for the big secret? Back massage!

That’s right, almost three quarters of the couples who reported themselves to be extremely happy share back massage with their partner!

Coincidence? We think not!

Here at PleasureMechanics, we focus as much on couples massage as we do on more traditional sexual skills. That is because we know how beneficial massage is to a relationship. We believe that if you are going to learn one skill to improve your relationship and have a better sex life, full body massage is the best skill to learn.

How can something as simple as a back rub make such a difference in your relationship?

First, massage is love in action. When your partner spends their time and attention focused on giving you the pure pleasure of massage, you feel loved and cared for. Nothing brings a couple closer than a regular practice of lavishing one another with skilled, pleasurable touch.

The second reason massage is so good for a relationship is that it helps slay stress. Stress is enemy #1 of your sex life. Stress kills your libido, drains your energy and ultimately makes you miserable. Sharing massage with your lover is an effective and efficient way to destress at the end of your day while spending quality time together. Less stress means more pleasure, higher sex drive and a better sex life.

Finally, back massage is one of the most luxurious and pleasurable experiences of full body touch. The skin on skin contact from back massage releases feel good hormones that contribute to your overall wellness and happiness.

Back massage is an infusion of health and joy into your daily life together. Imagine being able to afford going to the spa three times a week for a great massage. Do you think you’d be happier and healthier? Now imagine getting the same quality massage from your lover at home anytime you wish. What could be better?

Sharing massage with your lover doesn’t have to be hard or take lots of time. You don’t need to set aside an hour at a time or buy any expensive equipment. We believe so much in the power of couple’s massage that we designed an online video course just for you. We reveal the secrets of professional quality massage so you can give a great massage on your first try. We even show you how to give an amazing massage in as little as five minutes so you can get all the benefits of massage on even your busiest days.

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Like all of our courses, if you don’t love it, if sharing massage doesn’t make you happier, get in touch within 30 days and we’ll refund your purchase, no questions asked.

Now go grab some massage oil and get ready to join the prestigious club of “extremely happy couples!”

Are There Different Types of Orgasms? G-Spot, A-Spot, P-Spot Orgasms?

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How many types of orgasms are there? Are some orgasms more powerful than other orgasms? Do different types of orgasms feel different? How do I have all the different kinds of orgasms? What’s the deal with the g-spot? the a-spot? the p-spot? Do all people have all the spots? Help!

We get emails with these questions ALL the time, so we know there is still a lot of confusion about different types of orgasms, the elusive spots to create different kinds of orgasms, and what the best kind of orgasm is.

If you’ve been wondering about any of these questions, tune in to find out all you need to know about your sexual system to unlock the most pleasure, arousal, orgasmic release and ecstasy you want – on your own terms.

All of the strategies and skills discussed in this episode are part of our Erotic Touch Mastery online courses – click through here to explore the courses and get a pre-loaded discount!

Podcast Transcript:

Chris Rose: 00:00 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:05 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:06 We are the Pleasure Mechanics and on this podcast we have soulful, explicit conversations about sex, love, relationships, everything you need to know to have a more fulfilling, satisfying, erotic relationship with yourself and the world. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com where you will find our complete podcast archive and while you are there, go to pleasuremechanics.com/free and sign up for our free online course. The Erotic Essentials so we can get you started right away with some of our favorite strategies and techniques for more pleasure. On today’s episode we are going to be talking about orgasms, types of orgasms, kinds of orgasms, the orgasm hierarchy that seems to put a lot of pressure on people to kind of achieve different kinds of orgasms. Where did this idea come from? Is it true? Are there different kinds of orgasms? Are there different kinds of orgasms only for people with vulvas but penis owners only get one? What’s the dealio?

Charlotte Rose: 01:18 Yeah, in our culture we tend to think about people with penises having a simpler kind of experience of pleasure. That they have one kind of orgasm and people with vulvas have a more mysterious and complicated relationship to their pleasure, to orgasms, and we want to just talk about that and take some of the pressure off for everyone.

Chris Rose: 01:41 It’s so interesting because throughout history, female orgasm was never even a topic of conversation, the clitoris was removed from medical textbooks hundreds of years ago, and through the lens of reproductive intercourse being the only valid kind of sex, the only orgasm that was really discussed or researched was the male ejaculatory orgasm. The experience of someone with a penis reaching a certain level of arousal and then having an ejaculatory orgasm. Then along came Freud in the early 20th century and Freud started talking about female sexual neurosis, and invented this category of clitoral orgasms and vaginal orgasms. And vaginal orgasms were the much more sophisticated and mature type of orgasms. Enter the orgasm hierarchy.

Chris Rose: 02:38 Since then we have this proliferation of kinds of orgasms. The list has gotten longer, so now we have an idea of there’s clitoral orgasms, vaginal orgasms, blended orgasms, coregasms, then we get into the G-spot, the A-spot, the P-spot. Where did all of this from? What we want to say, first and foremost, is that pleasure, sexual pleasure and erotic pleasure, is a much more expansive category than orgasm. So here at Pleasure Mechanics and in your erotic life, we encourage you to focus on pleasure. Pleasure is the measure of how you are enjoying sex. Orgasm is a specific physiological event that can happen with or without physical stimulation. It can happen in your sleep, it can happen in a coma. And an orgasm is a particular up-leveling of the nervous system. It’s an excitation, an arousal, and that reaches a certain point that it then cascades into a pleasurable release of that tension usually marked by involuntary contractions of the pelvic muscles and the release of a pleasurable cascade of hormones, oxytocin being the main one.

Chris Rose: 04:08 Orgasm is a measurable event in the body, pleasure is not. Orgasm is a particular moment in time, and this moment can be achieved through all sorts of different stimulation. People who are paralyzed from the neck down can still achieve orgasm. It’s really important for us to remember this and not get caught up in this sense of,” Oh, there’s all different kinds of orgasms, and some are better than others, and some are more fulfilling. Some are more enlightened than others.” This is all generated by kind of a media hype around sexuality. And we can track this back to the invention of the G-spot.

Charlotte Rose: 04:56 The term the G-spot was coined in 1982. Dr. Beverly Whipple was part of the team that discovered this area in the body, and she really wanted to name it a region of the body, but the media at the time really wanted something a little bit more exciting. So they pressured her to call it a spot, so it is now been called the G-spot.

Chris Rose: 05:19 And Beverly Whipple named the G-spot after Dr. Grafenberg who was a German researcher who first recognized this region as an erotic region. And the region he was talking about, we now call the paraurethral sponge. It’s an area that surrounds the urethra, you access it through the vagina, and you put pressure on the top wall towards the belly. And within the vagina there is a region there that feels different. It feels different to touch and it feels different when it is touched, but when this book came out, The G-spot and Other Sexual Discoveries, I think it was called, the G-spot took a life of its own and all of a sudden in the media it was, “Does the G-spot exist?” And, “Where’s the G-spot?” And, “How to find the G-spot.” And, “G-spot, G-spot” and we still have that to this day.

Chris Rose: 06:12 People are obsessed with the idea of a spot. Then, other researchers, and as we have identified other erotic areas, other areas that respond to different kinds of touch, new terms were coined. The A-spot to talk about the anterior fornix area around the cervix. The P-spot, which sometimes refers to an area around the cervix and sometimes people are referring to the prostate as the P-spot. This obsession with spots and different orgasms triggered by different spots, for a lot of people is interpreted as the body has buttons and levers that you need to find, and seek out, and press in the right way-

Charlotte Rose: 06:56 And then your hair is going to stand up and it’ll be super exciting, but the body doesn’t really work that way. Each time we approach the body, it is different. Sometimes some kind of touch will feel really good in some moments and other moments it won’t feel good at all. For instance, if you’re exploring the cervical area, the days right before a period will not feel… Well, may not feel as good for some people because the uterus can sit lower in the body and so deep penetration might feel too intense, but other days of the month that might feel really wonderful. So the body is always changing, always different. So something that might feel really good for one person, one time, might not the next time.

Chris Rose: 07:40 Or even within the same event. Arousal changes our body and it changes how we perceive and experience stimulation. We all know this from different kinds of touch that would feel very weird or unpleasurable, if you’re totally not aroused. Someone’s scratching their nails down your back, for example, at the height of arousal can feel really great. The genitals are no different. When we start stimulating the genitals, and start bringing blood flow to the area, and bring our attention to the area, it’s an ever shifting landscape. And so we can think about spots to hunt out. We need to think about regions to bring our attention to, to bring touch to, to bring different kinds of technique to, in order to see what is there for you right now as is.

Chris Rose: 08:35 And I want to just say here, we’re talking a lot about the vulva and the cervix, but the penis, and the prostate, and the anus the, what we traditionally think of as the male sexual system, is no less complicated or nuanced. And the vulva, the clitoris, the vagina is no more mysterious. Our bodies are basically the same, we have different architecture of parts. In the fetus we are all… we all start from the same parts and then they differentiate, and they differentiate along a spectrum in response to different hormones in utero. And so the working theory is that we all kind of start female and then male parts are differentiated through sex hormones. And what we now know is that this is a spectrum. There’s all different presentations of genitals. There is not two sexes innies and outies. And so if we just embrace this idea that the human body is made of all of these different parts and they’re situated in slightly different ways, kind of like our faces. Right?

Charlotte Rose: 09:48 Exactly like our faces.

Chris Rose: 09:50 Most of us have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. And we all have different configurations of our facial anatomy. We all have different configuration of our genital anatomy. And there are patterns there that we can talk about, and yet, the only thing that really matters is your beautiful face, your beautiful genitals and how they are responding right now. And I cannot emphasize this enough, this idea of changeability, because some people go searching for their G-spot, and there’s a lot of pressure behind that search, and they’re like hunting for it and they don’t feel much of anything, or they feel like discomfort, or maybe even nausea. And they’re like, “Fuck that, the G-spot’s not for me.”

Chris Rose: 10:32 And then in a different context, and different circumstances, some touch lights up this area and they have a tremendous experience of quote, unquote, “G-spot touch.” Right? So what does this tell us? This tells us that the sexual anatomy, the pelvic anatomy, is a Wonderland to explore, with curiosity, with an open mind, with an inquiry of, “What can I stimulate right now? What feels good right now? What are you responding to right now?” And that changes everything.

Charlotte Rose: 11:08 Thinking of the area more as a map to explore with curiosity and interest, instead of something to get right, to tick off all the areas on the checklist, and like do it really well, right? There is no failure. If certain areas do not feel good to you right now, try it another time. Or if your body isn’t responding with fireworks immediately, that’s okay. As Chris was saying, some areas do have feelings of numbness, and after some gentle exploration, eventually over many sessions or times you can start to feel some feelings, and sometimes they might be really intense feelings, and then that will pass and you’ll feel something else. Then perhaps you’ll get to more pleasure. It is really an exploration and we just really want to encourage you to bring that spirit to your body and to a lover’s body instead of something to do right and well.

Chris Rose: 12:09 Let’s talk about the experience of orgasm. So if we think about orgasm and arousal as things that can be stimulated through all of these different kinds of touch on different parts of the body, why is it that some people report some orgasms are more powerful than other orgasms? What creates a powerful orgasm versus an orgasm that feels more like a sneeze? Is that about what buttons we’re pushing on different parts of the body, or is it about something else?

Charlotte Rose: 12:41 It’s about so many things. One of the main pieces is context. Your experience of the moment, how your mind is doing, the environment, the feelings you’re having about the being that you are with, how relaxed or tense your body is. I mean, there are so many factors that contribute to the amount of pleasure that you can feel in a particular moment.

Chris Rose: 13:04 And I think it’s important to say here, orgasm actually requires a fairly low level of arousal. It is not the climax, it is not the peak, it is not the ceiling of the pleasure you can feel, it is just a specific event. And there’s so much more beyond orgasm. And I think we should talk about that more in future episodes, but this idea that all sex leads up to this climax and that orgasm is the mountain top, I think also needs to fall away. Because as you said, the experience of sex, your experience of how fulfilling, exciting, enlivening a certain sex act will feel is not about the orgasm, it’s about the full context, the full experience. And how much you’re paying attention to that orgasm, how much you’re allowing within that moment. Because we know orgasms can happen in your sleep and sometimes we wake up in the middle of them, sometimes we sleep right through them.

Chris Rose: 14:08 So if we can sleep through an orgasm, we can also be awake through an orgasm and not feel much of anything. And for some people an orgasm feels kind of like a sneeze or a hiccup, and it’s just kind of like, “beh.” And it’s over. Other orgasms are these world shaking, earth trembling, full body experiences that seem to open your heart and they can be these huge, life changing events. But that’s not really about the orgasm. It’s about everything else that is happening in that moment and the experience of that climax. You know? And, and the experience of the orgasm is also partly felt through how much of your body is being activated, and touched, and stimulated. And the more we know about our full body anatomy really, but about the genital anatomy and the pelvic anatomy, it gives us clues about how to make things feel bigger, how to make things feel more intense, how to allow sensation to travel through your entire body and be experienced through your entire body.

Chris Rose: 15:29 And this is the gift that all of these spots reveal. If we let go of them as a checklist, if we let go of them as a hierarchy of orgasms, if we let go of the pressure to achieve and perform different kinds of orgasms, instead we can look at these spots as regions to be explored. Because the truth is, most of us explore a very superficial level of our sexual anatomy. We stroke the penis, maybe we put the penis in the vagina, and if you’re lucky, you discover the clitoris and how to stimulate it. That is just scratching the surface of what is possible for our bodies and the ways we can touch our sexual anatomy.

Charlotte Rose: 16:17 We know that stimulating the penis or the clitoris feels good because we’re stimulating nerve endings, but the whole pelvis is rich with nerve endings. There are different nerve pathways that attach the brain to the prostate, to the cervix, to the uterus. So there is so much sensation available through different nerve pathways and that’s partly why you may want to explore stimulating the cervical area as well as the clitoris, because you’re lighting up new and different pathways that can, for some people in some moments, create more intense, deeper sensations.

Chris Rose: 16:54 Right, because you’re literally lighting up more of the network. The nerves look a lot like branches of the trees, and I want to get this tattooed all over my body because it’s beautiful, right? Nerve fibers travel from the brain down into the body and then branch out in these ever expanding webs of feeling. And different nerve endings are specialized to feel different things. And many of us have become very accustomed to stimulating a very limited number of these nerve endings in order to experience sexual pleasure, arousal, orgasm, and ejaculation. We have learned to hot wire our sexual response system by touching ourselves in the same way again and again.

Chris Rose: 17:42 Most of us masturbate in the same way we learned to as a child and we get stuck in that pattern or we use specific toy in a specific way and then kind of get stuck in that pattern of stimulating certain nerve endings to create the sexual response we’re looking for. Some people even have one side of their clitoris is more sensitive to the other, and there is a question there. Is one side of the clitoris better enervated, or has it just been touched more because that’s how your hand falls when you’re masturbating? The nerve endings in the penis, for example, are there whether or not a penis is soft or hard, erection pushes the nerve endings closer to the skin, and touch on a hard penis stimulates them in a certain way. These nerve endings are still available to you when your penis is soft, you just might not be familiar with how it feels when you touch them.

Chris Rose: 18:40 So a lot of this is giving yourself permission, and space, and time and having the techniques to discover your entire pelvis as a sexual system. To light up all of these different areas and see what is there. Because most of us don’t know what is there because it has never been touched, and it is certainly never been touched with repetition, and with the right arousal in place to start wiring this as sexually relevant stimuli.

Charlotte Rose: 19:11 I do want to add that if you are interested in exploring deep in the body, I really want to encourage you to be at high states of arousal first. That it’s really important to feel turned on, to feel arousal, before you start entering into the body to start exploring certain areas. Because those areas, especially if they’re new to you, will not feel that great if you are not already aroused. So that goes for anal touch, that goes for in the G-spot region, that goes for cervical touch. Just start with high levels of arousal before you explore.

Chris Rose: 19:47 Well, yes, this is true for internal touch, but it’s also true when we want to explore things like our labia. For a lot of people, they think the labia are just like curtains to be pulled back. The labia have a lot of nerve endings and can be stimulated in a lot of great ways to promote blood flow to the area, to wake up the nerve endings, and just to see what’s there. They shouldn’t be ignored. The entire sexual system can be touched, and stimulated, and explored, but as Charlotte was saying, if you just go cold to new nerve endings, it probably won’t register as very sexually relevant. If you start with the things that arouse you already, you start with that hot wiring you have down, bring up the arousal a little bit and then start exploring and adding new things, the sensation will already be more sexually relevant.

Chris Rose: 20:45 Think about your nipples, they’re a world away from your genitals in a lot of ways, but if you just touch your nipples on a Tuesday, they probably won’t feel super arousing. If you are already aroused and then graze your nipples, for a lot of people that send sparks, that creates arousal, it is wired into your sexual response. So adding new sensations to what already works for you is one really great way to start exploring what more is possible. And then, as Charlotte was saying, especially the internal terrain changes with arousal, the external terrain does too. Watch a vulva be aroused and you will see female erection in motion. And just like penises, there are growers and showers, some vulvas and clitoris get really engorged, and the clitoris is really prominent, and others, it’s a more subtle change.

Chris Rose: 21:43 But watch your own genitals change with arousal sometime. Look at yourself with a mirror before arousal, look at yourself mid arousal, and then after and notice how much the tissues change. They’re changing because they’re getting engorged with blood. They’re changing because the sweat response is kicking in, and the lubrication response, but internally the muscles are firing, blood flow is coming to the area, and in people with vulvas, there’s a phenomenon called vaginal tenting where the vaginal canal blossoms, it opens up and creates a lot more space. And one of the great things of exploring with your hands is you can feel all of this in motion. And so when we’re looking at these regions, we’re looking at the region of the paraurethral sponge, which is the homolog to the prostate.

Chris Rose: 22:42 If we’re looking at their region of the anal area or of the cervical area, deep inside the vagina the difference of sensation is like the difference between getting a pap smear cold at the doctor’s office, versus somebody touching you just right at high states of arousal. The whole spectrum is available to us when we touch the same nerve endings, and that is context dependent arousal. Context is everything. It’s like the sexiest word we know now. Context is everything. And so if you’re exploring this with a partner, and you’re feeling a lot of pressure, and you’re like, “Oh, I’m trying to have a G-spot orgasm. Where’s my G spot? I should be feeling more now.” Like if that is the thought going through your head, you’re probably not going to feel much pleasure. Let alone arousal, let alone enough arousal to bring you to orgasm.

Chris Rose: 23:41 If instead your attitude is like, “Oh, I have all time in the world to luxuriate in this touch, my partner’s in no rush, everything feels so good. Ooh, what’s that spot right there?” And then you have the skills to communicate, both verbally and non-verbally, and you have the skills in your hands to feel what feels good as you are doing it. Then these regions start talking to us. And you have your fingers in the vagina, you’re stimulating the clitoris, her whole body is turned on, and you start feeling these regions asking for different kinds of touch. And the different kinds of touch we offer these regions have a lot to do with the anatomy. Again, how do we use anatomy as a map to pleasure?

Chris Rose: 24:27 The vaginal wall has almost no sensory nerve endings. It doesn’t feel much of anything. It has a lot of pressure receptors and you can push through the vaginal wall, apply pressure on the vaginal wall, to access the clitoral body from the inside. And then you can start massaging all of these beautiful muscles and attachments and rocking all of these nerve endings around the bony structures of the pelvis, and this is when you get that fully activated sexual system where you feel like all of your parts are engaged. You feel like your whole sexual system is onboard and responding, and every movement, and this doesn’t have to be with your hands, hands are the best way to explore it, that’s how we teach all of these techniques because you can feel so much more with your fingers than you can with a penis or a toy.

Chris Rose: 25:21 But once you have the map, once you understand your body, putting a toy in and rocking it in a specific way, you will know like, “Oh, if I rock my toy in that specific way around my cervix as I’m really excited, it adds this whole other layer of sensation.” And this is how a lot of people experience it. It’s layers of sensation, so touching your clitoris feels good, it’s like a muffin, a good muffin. But then you add in some external vulva touch and it’s like, “Ooh, I have a muffin with icing.” And now you add anal touch and it’s like, “Oh, a layer cake.” And then when you go really deep inside, it’s like a birthday cake with fucking candles. I don’t know, I just made that up.

Charlotte Rose: 26:10 You get the idea.

Chris Rose: 26:11 Insert your own metaphor here, but the layers of sensation. It’s not like clitoral touch on it’s own was bad, it’s still a muffin, but it’s not the whole layer cake. All right, I’m sorry. I’ll never use that muffin again. And you talk a lot about this, because you can get off just with clitoral touch, but often when we add light, external, anal touch, if we add deep internal pressure, you talk about a sense of expansion and a sense of it deepens, it has more layers, it’s more nuanced. And more parts of you are being touched and stimulated, so of course that makes sense.

Charlotte Rose: 26:53 Yeah, it’s just more intense and I love that feeling of it feeling like it’s deep in the body as well as on the outside of the body. It’s like you’re really feeling all of your body from the inside out.

Chris Rose: 27:04 So we hope that we have reframed this idea of different types of orgasms. Different parts of our body can create arousal. When we touch different regions it lights up different nerve pathways. When we touch different regions it moves all of the musculature and nerve endings around in different ways, and therefore it will lights up different kinds of stimulation, sensations, awareness. And so much of this goes back to awareness. Like when you touch someone somewhere, part of that touch is saying “Here, pay attention to this.” Good, skillful, generous, loving touch draws the person you’re touching into awareness of that part of the body. And with awareness, we then experience that part of the body as awake, as part of us, as available for pleasure.

Chris Rose: 28:04 So if you’re just diddling the clitoris or just stroking off the penis, you are lighting up and bringing awareness to one part of the sexual system. How do we use touch, how do we use erotic stimulation, to light up our entire sexual systems, to become aware of our entire sexual systems, to become aware of what it feels like when someone is touching you deep inside around your cervix? With the whole awareness of your clitoris, and your pelvic muscles, and they have all of that in your hands, and they’re saying “Here, pay attention here.” That awareness, and that attention, is the experience in and of itself.

Chris Rose: 28:48 And then what you make of that experience, how much arousal you build, how much joy you allow yourself to feel, how much freedom, how much emotional release, how much emotional connection you have with your partner or yourself in that moment, that’s kind of up to you. But all of these regions, what they allow us is access to different parts of our body and access to different kinds of awareness. And exploring those regions with a spirit of curiosity, and delight, and just this question of like, “How can we play with one another? How can we pleasure one another?” That is a really different starting point than a checklist of orgasms to achieve.

Charlotte Rose: 29:30 Yeah, absolutely. And we take this approach because of our love and training of massage, using our hands to explore and light up all of the different parts of the body, all of the different systems, and bringing our awareness, and our presence, and reverence to the body pots and allowing yourself or your partner to really feel their own body through our care and touch.

Chris Rose: 29:57 It’s a totally different approach to touching the genitals than most people have been taught, which is really just like a surface level kind of gratifying friction model. The erotic massage lineage that we come from teaches us that the sexual system is this beautiful, nuanced system of nerve endings, muscles, blood flow, bones, glands and fluid. And we can touch that entire sexual system with knowledge, and skill, and confidence.

Chris Rose: 30:35 And sometimes techniques get a bad name. People think like, “Oh, great sex isn’t about technique.” It’s certainly not about technique that just tells you that this stroke will always feel good, because that is never true, our approach to techniques, to skillfulness, to becoming a skilled lover, is about learning the strategies and learning the techniques that train you to pay attention and activate the entire erotic system.

Charlotte Rose: 31:06 And learning the skills of how to be responsive to what you feel, because each time you approached the body, it will be different as we were talking about. So how do you know that? Our fingers are designed to read braille, they can be that sensitive. And so when you gain the skills of how to really feel, you can be so responsive with your fingers, with your touch, with your presence.

Chris Rose: 31:28 And massage the entire erotic system inside and out, that is the invitation. And then from there, you learn how to build all sorts of other activities onto that. With that deep understanding that you’ve gained through this kind of touch, you know how to fuck different, you know how to use toys differently. You know how to change your position to make certain anatomical structures more available to your partner. If you discover that, “Oh, I really love deep cervix pounding, thumping penetration at this specific time of my cycle.” You can discover the sex positions that get his penis closer, right? This gives you a map to your body and it opens up that terrain, and so it’s not just this one kind of stroke to bring you to this one kind of orgasm, right? You’re unfolding that roadmap and discovering all of the terrain that’s possible to you, and learning how to approach it, learning how to activate it, learning how to embody it, and be aware of it. And then your whole sexual system lights up and you have access to more parts of yourself and to more kinds of erotic experiences.

Chris Rose: 32:46 Your experience of your sexuality, your experience of sexual touch, and your experience of your arousal system of your response cycle starts getting way bigger. You start understanding what you’re capable of, and then you can explore within that. You still might have orgasms that feel like sneezes sometimes, but you have more access to the whole range of experiences, and certainly more access to the whole sexual system that we are all sitting on. We are designed for this and we have not been given the tools to access it. We have not been given the tools to access it, nor the strategies to pay attention to it. This is a primary part of our offering to you. We, as Charlotte said, learned all of these skills through our erotic massage training, and lineage, and thousands of hours touching bodies on the massage table as erotic masseuses, and 13 years ago we realized that these peak experiences people were experiencing under our hands, these transformative, mind blowing, arousing experiences that we were offering people as professional, erotic touchers, had to be available to people at home.

Chris Rose: 34:07 We were getting really frustrated with this idea that a professional erotic massage is like an amusement park ride, and you go and you have this thrilling experience, but then you’re kicked out of the amusement park. Your body is the amusement park and you have access to it on your own terms. And so we translated all of the skills we had learned and all of the strategies of paying attention that massage has taught us. We translated that all into our erotic touch education, into online courses that are available for you in the privacy of your own home. You can go at your own pace and see what is possible here. Discover new ways of touching yourself and your lover, and activate the power of your hands as discovery engines, as tools of curiosity, and as one of the best ways of stimulating the sexual system. We know your hands are like the best sex toys ever designed, and they never need a replacement of batteries.

Chris Rose: 35:09 They’re amazing. Hands are amazing. They can unlock so much sensation when we learn how to touch with the skills of massage. It’s like a super power we activate and we want to bring that to the entire sexual system. You can find all of our online courses and erotic touch education at pleasuremechanics.com, the show notes page for this podcast episode will link directly to our bestselling courses on erotic touch. And we’ll throw in a discount code right into that link because we want these tools accessible to everyone. This should not be gated knowledge for the erotic elite. This is available to all of us and we all have so much more to discover about what our sexual systems are capable of, if they are touched with knowledge, and reverence, and confidence. Yeah, we want you to experience this, so come on over to pleasuremechanics.com, check the show notes page for a link to the courses.

Chris Rose: 36:13 We want them to be available and accessible to you. We are really working on a model here of community supported erotic education. I was just on a consulting call the other day and he kind of asked me about our pricing structure, and why aren’t we charging thousands of dollars for our courses like other people in our field are, especially when we have been around the longest, we have trained some of the people that are charging 10X our price. And my only response is that this knowledge is for everyone. We want this available and accessible for everyone. That’s why we do free podcasts every week. That’s why we have such a huge, robust website, a free online course, and we keep our prices low, and accessible, and available to everyone who wants them. And if they’re not accessible to you at our current low price point, let me know and we’ll make it work.

Charlotte Rose: 37:13 We get so excited about the idea of beautiful orgasms and pleasure happening in bedrooms around the globe and then what is possible from that state? What are we all doing in this world when we are lit up with pleasure, and joy, and connection with one another and ourselves? There is such a beautiful future that we can create from that place together. And this value, and this hope, and this dream is so much of how we… so much of why we’ve created our business and that we’ve made the choices that we have around pricing, around creating free content, like it is about sharing these messages and getting this into your bedroom.

Chris Rose: 37:53 Yes, we are living a life of devotion. We are here for you and with you as you explore what is possible for you when we get rid of the shame, when we get rid of the myths, what is possible for us as sexual beings. I don’t even feel like we’ve begun to explore that as humanity yet. So join us, join us, come over to pleasuremechanics.com. At pleasuremechanics.com/free you will find our free online course. You will find all of our other erotic education available to you. And if you love this show, and you believe in our work, and you want to support us, go to pleasuremechanics.com/love and get on board with a monthly sustaining donation and show your love for this work.

Charlotte Rose: 38:44 We really appreciate your support. It is what allows us to continue to create this robust, free sex education for the globe, that we hope is really making a difference for people, so thank you for your support.

Chris Rose: 38:57 And if we have made a difference in your life already, show us some love, pleasuremechanics.com/love, or enroll in one of our online courses so we can guide you stroke by stroke, step-by-step, along the path of your erotic freedom.

Charlotte Rose: 39:14 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Rose: 39:14 Fuck yeah. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 39:16 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 39:16 We are the Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 39:18 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Chris Rose: 39:21 Cheers.