For the last three weeks, I have been describing my orgasms to a man in America.
He is not my boyfriend, and we are not ‘sexting’, or sending saucy messages on a dating app.
In fact, he is a former personal trainer turned orgasm guru named the O-Man, who claims he can teach women how to have the best orgasms of their lives – via daily exercises to ‘realign the body’.
I’ve always been satisfied by my orgasms, whether with a partner or by myself. They vary in intensity, but it’s a given that I’ll have one, and when it’s a ten out of ten, I’m left feeling stunned, as if I’ve been hit by a truck that’s sent me to seventh heaven.
However, when I heard that the LA-based orgasm sorcerer could apparently guide women to climaxing twenty times over in just four sessions online, I was intrigued as to whether there was more to be unlocked from my own climaxes.
Virtual sessions cost from £41 and rise up to a whopping £600 for more a longer, more personalised programme, and his identity remains a closely guarded secret while booking, so I have no idea whose hands I’ll be in until we actually meet on Zoom.
When he appears in the first session, I start to wonder whether actually I’ve logged on to some sort of hoax. This man charges hundreds of pounds for his ‘climax consultancy’ – but he looks and acts like the kind of character Seth Rogan might play in a movie.
I’m uneasy – am I being scammed? Is this Zoom call being secretly recorded? Will my efforts to orgasm under his guidance end up online somewhere?
My sense of unease subdues as we begin to chat. The O-Man spends the time explaining the role our muscles and body’s alignment play in our ability to orgasm well.
Two days later, a more physical session takes place and, steadying myself for the best orgasms of my life – as his website claims is the aim – I start to worry about the neighbours.
The flats I live in have the sound-proofing qualities of confetti – I can hear the man downstairs blowing his nose, so if I start screaming for Jesus during a bed-breaking orgasm, everyone’s going to know about it.
Other fears? The powerful wand vibrator required. I don’t use vibrators because I find them too intense but the O-Man insists they’re useful here and when I go to buy one, the woman leads me to what must be the wrong display, because surely these are microphones for giants who do karaoke? They are massive with a capital M.
The shop assistant reads my mind, kindly jumping in to reassure me that they’re only for external use. Thank God. I thought I was about to experience childbirth in reverse.
Alongside the wand vibrator, the O-Man asks me to get the following things: a yoga strap (Decathlon), a yoga block and a Theragun massage gun (Argos), and a Vyper 3, the fanciest foam roller I’ve ever seen (Hyperice). He’s also says I’ll need a light weight and access to a treadmill, which I have at the gym.
Before the first session, I’m sent video clips in which the O-Man demonstrates the exercises I’ll be doing. There are two daily exercises and four weekly exercises to do four times a week. He tells me I should also use the treadmill four times a week (and in unique fashion, more of that later).
Session one? Waist up, I’m dressed as I might be for any work chat, but off camera, I am in just my pants.
The O-Man starts the call by telling me to get ‘undressed’. He means, of course, my lower half – and he means completely. Given my dislike of intense vibrations, I leave on my knickers.
We start the session on the floor and later move to the bed. In both locations, the O-Man gives me specific instructions on how to position my legs and where to press the vibrator.
This varies between my clitoris (or ‘clit’ as he keeps calling it) and other parts of my body such as my back and my chest. There are, however, times when he doesn’t say anything, and early on in the session, I find this confusing.
I’m not sure if I’m meant to keep changing leg positions and switching between my intimate area and other parts of my body, or if I’m meant to keep the vibrator between my legs until I orgasm.
When I ask what the plan is, the O-Man sounds annoyed: ‘Nothing’s meant to be happening. This is all about feedback,’ he says, with the bedroom manner of Victor Meldrew.
I feel so awkward I almost end the session. However, I decide to see it through and at some point the O-Man checks whether I’ve taken my underwear off. I admit I haven’t.
Sounding irritated, he tells me to do it now: ‘Otherwise we’re just dancing around.’
By the end of the session, I have orgasmed twice. The first time is about an eight out of ten, in my range of normal, and the second time (after more time using the vibrator) it’s a milder one, at about a three out of ten.
The O-Man wants me to go again, and I initially agree to but don’t enjoy it. It feels like a pressure rather than a pleasure, and I’m conscious that I’m keeping the O-Man waiting.
When I explain that I feel as if I’m under a time pressure, the O-Man tells me there’s no rush, adding: ‘I have nothing else to do this morning except make you come.’
Prior to this point though he’s already asked me several times: ‘Have you come yet?’ And at least twice he’s said something along the lines of: ‘We don’t want this session taking two hours.’
I call it a day. The session has not resulted in off-the-scale orgasms and the next day I feel physically uncomfortable, reminding me why I don’t like vibrators.
However, I’m still open to seeing if the O-Man’s method could have a bigger picture impact, his real work, he says, is done over a longer period of time as the realignment of the body takes place.
I love the idea of realigning my body. Despite doing yoga and carrying a rucksack to equally distribute weight, I feel like my shoulders are slightly imbalanced, so fixing that alone would be great – and if earth-shattering orgasms happen too, then fabulous!
Each week I receive a new set of exercises, and I also use the Theragun, on various muscles, as directed by the O-Man.
I’m familiar with some of the exercises, such as the ‘bear plank’ and various leg raises to work the glutes. However, there are some exercises I haven’t come across before, and overall I find them extremely challenging – as well as time consuming.
The O-Man has told me the programme is ‘structured for people who are on a time crunch’, but on the days when I do all six exercises, it can take me an hour and twenty minutes – and that’s not including the time on the treadmill, which is at least another 20 minutes.
How can six exercises take me so long? Well, each exercise involves multiple sets of a lot of repetitions. For example, two sets of 40 each side (left and right)…so one exercise can involve doing a particular movement a whopping 160 times.
The exercises the O-Man sends are filmed in a cluttered home with various body parts out of shot so I can’t see exactly what I’m meant to be doing.
The verbal instructions lack clear guidance on posture and positioning, and at one point, to add to the chaos, there’s even a doorbell ringing during a demo.
That said, I do feel the effects of the exercises in my glutes, calves and abs – but there’s one physical activity I no longer feel like doing: masturbation.
I am meant to be following a series of diagrams he’s sent me which show how I should position my body, and what I should do with a vibrator, in terms of using it on various non-genital body parts (eg leg and chest as we did on the Zoom call) prior to masturbating. I am then supposed to tell him how my orgasm was.
The trouble is, I don’t feel like doing it. I crowbar it in on the Monday of week one, and again on the Monday of week two – but nothing in between.
The fact is, I’m stressed to my eyeballs with work, and I’ve also felt kind of turned off since our Zoom session with the vibrator.
The joyless, pressurised pursuit of orgasm has killed my mojo, and his paint-by-numbers masturbation method is, frankly, giving me the ick. It is now the last thing I feel like doing.
I don’t know how to explain this, and I don’t feel comfortable trying to, so I just try to articulate the bit about work. In an email that I send to the O-Man on the Monday of week two, I tell him: ‘So last Monday I’d say my orgasm was 8 out of 10 within my normal range (obviously they vary). Today’s was probably 8.5. I hadn’t done it between last Monday and today because last week was just packed to the brim and while I could pack in everything else on my to-do list with gritted teeth, this wasn’t something I wanted to do when I’m under time pressure and stressed about everything else I need to do.’
He continues to ask me about my ‘bedroom activities’ but another week goes by before I do it again. This time I let him know that my orgasm is a 10-out-of-10. He is quick to take credit, emailing back:
‘And now you have empirical proof as to why that is! This is brand new to the world. You’re like a bedroom astronaut.’
I think perhaps he has misunderstood, so I reply to clarify, telling him I’ve experienced the 10-out-of-10 strength of orgasm lots of times.
The O-Man replies quickly to contradict me: ‘Nah, don’t think the wires are crossed. Your orgasm quality increased as the tension eased off your right hip.’
The O-Man is not only taking credit for the quality of my orgasm, he is actually invalidating my personal experience and attempting to mansplain my orgasm to me.
At this point, my trust in the O-Man takes a nosedive. I resolve to see the programme through, but the O-Man becomes insistent about me masturbating more frequently. He drops two of the treadmill sessions scheduled for week three, and tells me that, instead, I’m to have ‘fun’ orgasming.
Forced fun, of any sort, is never a winner, and I do it just once (it’s an eight out of ten). By the end of week three, I feel completely alienated by the O-Man’s communication style, and I do not respond to his last message in which he threatens to stop working with me unless I comply with his demands.
As a result, there are no exercises for me in the folder for week four. The programme has come to an end.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND ORGASMS: KINGSTON UNIVERSITY EXPERTS REVEAL WHY THE BRAIN IS THE BIGGEST SEXUAL ORGAN…
Although it has not improved my orgasms, I am curious to know whether it’s improved my alignment. The O-Man has been collecting pictures of me (fully clothed), sideways on, left and right, every week. He tells me that he runs the pictures through his software, then he sends them back to me with coloured lines and numbers on them. Apparently this shows my improving alignment.
To measure this independently, I have turned to biomechanists Dr. James Brouner and Dr. Simon Augustus. Both senior lecturers at Kingston University’s Applied and Human Sciences department, they put me through various tests to measure my alignment, before I start the O-Man’s programme, and again after it comes to an end.
Dr. Brouner tells me that I have: ‘Very good alignment to begin with,’ and while some of the tests don’t show any change, others indicate that I am now leaning less towards my right side.
‘Foot scan data measures the pressure distribution under your feet,’ explains Dr. Augustus, who tells me that in the first test, I put 44.6% of my weight on my left foot and 55.4% of my weight on my right foot. In the second test, after three weeks of doing the O-Man’s exercises, I put 49.7% of my weight on my left foot and 50.3% on my right foot.
Talking me through this, Dr. Augustus says: ‘In the first session, you were more inclined to put a little bit more weight under your right leg, in a static position. When we did that same test today, it was a lot more evenly balanced with the weight distribution.’
Dr. Brouner points out that my hips are now in better horizontal alignment, having changed from 93.4 degrees, to 90 degrees, which he tells me is the ‘ideal’ alignment.
Expanding on this, Dr. Brouner explains that in the first session: ‘Your pelvis was unlevel, with the left higher than the right. On the follow up, your pelvis was in line, meaning a more neutral position.’ He adds that this change would be linked to the more even weight distribution on my feet.
But it’s not all good news, as my flexibility has reduced dramatically. I usually do four or five hours of yoga each week, but the O-Man is anti-yoga and says that to get the best results from his programme, I shouldn’t do yoga (or running, which I usually do once a week). After three weeks without doing yoga (or running), my forward flexion is reduced by twelve degrees and my back extension is reduced by 18 degrees.
That’s not the only downside, as even a fortnight after my last interaction with the O-Man, I still feel ill-disposed towards the prospect of any ‘personal DIY’ whereas usually this is something I enjoy.
Speaking to leading trauma psychologist Hope Bastine, I ask her what she makes of this. She says that if a fun activity is forced: ‘You’ll have a resistance to it, because you’re being told what to do. That will not bring pleasure, joy, or bliss because those are purely spontaneous emotions. Instead, you will create a negative association with that activity.’
Professor Jonathan Sackier, a doctor and co-host of the podcast Join the Docs, echoes Bastine when he describes the scheduled masturbation sessions as ‘counterproductive’, adding: ‘Sex should come naturally and have a degree of spontaneity about it.’
And my current aversion to anything sexual? ‘That’s your brain being conditioned in a negative way,’ says Professor Sackier.
For the O-Man, orgasms are simply ‘an involuntary muscle contraction’, as he says in his ‘Solo Webinar’, in which he also dismisses the role of the brain in achieving orgasm.
Based on my own experience, I think the brain is very much involved because I won’t be in the right frame of mind to relax and enjoy any form of sexual activity (whether by myself or with a partner) if I’m stressed out, or distracted.
Hope Bastine confirms that, certainly for women, orgasms are indeed psychological, and Professor Sackier elaborates on this when he says: ‘The brain is the biggest sexual organ. It’s also the most important sexual organ.’
Professor Sackier states clearly that orgasms are ‘not just a muscular response,’ and asks rhetorically: ‘Can you achieve orgasm whilst your brain is thinking about paying your taxes?’
I am glad that the experts are able to share some insight into why I felt averse to masturbating on demand like a performing monkey.
I am also glad that there’s a rational explanation for why the prospect of any sort of ‘bedroom fun’ now makes me feel queasy.
It’s great to know that, by incorporating different exercises, I can improve my alignment, but losing my mojo has been too big a price to pay.
None of the experts I have spoken to are aware of any evidence that links alignment to orgasm quality, and the fact is, I was having great orgasms to start with.
So it’s ironic that by setting out in search of even better orgasms, I have ended up with an antipathy towards any sexual activity at all.
I just hope that the new year brings me back my va-va voom and that perhaps watching the fireworks display on new year’s eve will make me feel like experiencing some fireworks of my own…
