So....just saw this old thread of yours Fluffbags and thought I should share. My wife and I have been 'OM' ing for about 18 months now. We don't do it very often, but it has become a useful key for us in reconnecting. My OH is your classic 'good girl' and really struggles with sexual expression. Our lovemaking is beautiful, natural, mutually satisfying and distinctly vanilla. We have talked for hours and hours about this, with me always pushing for us to be more adventurous, and it's about as complicated as arguing religion or politics at the dinner table! And then I heard about orgasmic meditation and we found that to be a sort of breakthrough.
I think that the wonderful thing about this practice is it strips away all the social hangups that many of us have around intimacy, replacing it instead with a clear procedure based on respect for the woman and honour for her genitals. As such, it allows the woman to be self focused, connecting only to her own experience, with her partner as the facilitator. I think that women who struggle with sexual emancipation can benefit hugely from this practice and I would recommend it to anyone. Fluffbags, you seem pretty comfortable with your sexuality, but you know how many many women are trapped in the conventions handed down to us and this is a great way for women to break out.
On that note, the insights I have gathered from this have blown my mind. Being a guy, I just wasn't consciously aware of the misogyny that surrounds our culture, and how much of it is targeted at the vagina. As I realised how there Isn't a comfortable term for the vagina that Isn't tinged with sleaze or downright hatred, or of how rape is about power, or of how girls are brought up being told to sit in a 'ladylike' way, I started to appreciate how so much of our conditioning is around keeping women down and suppressing their sexual potency. Naomi Wolff's book 'Vagina' is very interesting on this subject.
Is it diddling? Well, if it is, it's diddling without any associated guilt or furtiveness, making something that many people find shameful into something sacred and also shared between a couple. As such, it has begun to reshape the way my OH and I come together on an intimate level.
Beyond the protective, safe cocoon that Orgasmic Meditation creates for women to reconnect with the clitoris, there's also a strong emphasis on 'less is more'. Rather than the masculine pounding away that so many of us are used to, Orgasmic Meditation is all about touching a woman so softly that she is drawn out of herself, at a rate and intensity more suited to where many women are at sexually.
Orgasmic Meditation was developed by Nicole Daedone, a remarkably charismatic and together San Fransisco woman, who has distilled what she has learned from eastern sexuality and liberal San Fran culture to create this practice. I strongly recommend her book 'slow sex' which is all about this.
Hope that makes sense - oh and I wouldn't worry about gloves! That must be an American thing!