Sex

I Tried Orgasmic Yoga And I Swear Rainbows Shot Out Of Me

Photo: De Visu / Shutterstock
woman performing yoga

I never thought it would happen to me, but I lost my sexual mojo. I’ve always been blessed with a high libido, a lot of confidence, and a healthy appetite for all things sexy—but for the past several months, the thought of sex has me going "meh."

This past year marked the longest that I’ve been single. I haven't gone 12 months without a significant other since I started dating at age 14. Learning to be happy on my own was a good thing and it allowed me to focus on my career more.

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But a funny thing happens when you don’t have as much sex as you used to—you stop wanting to have sex.

As cliché as it is, “if you don’t use it, you lose it” rang true for me. The longer I went without having sex, the more I just didn’t care. And—no I haven’t been celibate for a year—but even casual flings have lost their luster lately.

It didn’t help that—like so many of us—working long hours causes my healthy eating habits to fall by the wayside.

I’ve taken a page out of Olivia Pope’s diet and spent many having wine and popcorn for dinner and other nights rationalizing to myself that it’s okay to eat pizza three nights a week if it’s gluten-free and vegetarian! It’s not—at least for me—and my waistline is proof.

This brings me to the most anti-feminist statement I’ll ever make—I just don’t feel sexy when I feel pudgy. There—I said it.

So I figured it was high time to get my sexy back.

Enter Psalm Isadora.

I heard Psalm speak at the Sexual Health Expo in Los Angeles where she was giving a workshop on “Awakening Your Erotic Senses Through Tantra.”

She’s a Los Angeles-based sex coach who specializes in tantra, Kama Sutra, and her own creation, OYoga. The “O” in Yoga is for orgasm—of course. Her OYoga classes are geared toward helping women unleash their inner sex goddess through a unique mix of yoga, belly dance, and burlesque.

She also does OYoga classes for couples, such as “Yoga For Better Sex” and “Yoga For Foreplay.”

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To the skeptics, Orgasmic Yoga might just sound like a gimmick, but it actually stems from one of the oldest forms of yoga—Shakti yoga. Shakti refers to feminine energy and the Hindu goddess. OYoga was created from the nine years Psalm spent studying the authentic roots of Shakti tantra in the jungles of South India with a teacher who gave her initiation to share the teachings that are 5,000 years old. 

“The goal is to help women heal and empower their Shakti sexual energy,” says Isadora, who's currently starring in Playboy TV’s new Cougar Club L.A.

“The micro-movements and squeezes we do in OYoga are actually the modern adaptation of these ancient and authentic practices, which had to be kept secret even in India for thousands of years because of the religious taboos against sexual energy. OYoga and tantra celebrate sensuality and view sex as holistic and a path to meditation and see sex as the goddess energy embodied in us,” she continues.

Time to get my goddess on. I took a 90-minute private OYoga class at Psalm’s studio. When I told her my predicament, she customized the class for me. It was one part yoga workout, one part sex-ed, and one part motivational girl talk.

“Rule number one of OYoga—no judgment,” Psalm told me at the start of our session. It was a much-needed rule as I found myself grimacing every time I looked at what those “healthy” pizzas did to my mid-riff in the full-length mirror in her yoga studio.

As with any form of yoga, connecting breath with movement is an essential part of OYoga so we began with a lesson on the breathing techniques that help move sexual energy through your body.

There’s Bliss Breath, which Psalm accurately describes as a “Sexy Darth Vader” sound, and the Breath of Arousal, which stems from your belly button. “Focusing on your breathing helps you be present in your body and when you're more present, you feel more and when you feel more, sex is more intense,” she explained.

As we practiced the deep, slow inhale/exhales from the back of our throat for our Sexy Darth Vader breath, she explained how we were building a fire in our bodies.

I could feel my body heat up. She added Kegel exercises to our breath work. Just standing there, breathing and paying attention to all sensations going on in my body, and squeezing my ‘cookie’ as she instructed, I did start to feel more sensual.

“And,” she revealed, “when you breathe fire into your vagina, you can even get wet.”

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Wait, what?!

“Yeah, I can get wet just by doing this type of breathing.”

Really?!

“Yeah. You’re heating up your body, heating up your sexual energy—your Shakti,” she said. 

As we stood there breathing, squeezing, and at least one of us possibly getting a little moist, we added a feather-like touch, sexy hair-play, and micro-movements of hip tilts and little circles to the mix.

After running our fingertips up and down our bodies in a non-sexual, but pretty darn sensual way and tilting our heads back to let our long hair tickle the skin of our backs, and swiveling our hips in sexy little circles, I started feeling a little juicy for sure.

“You can take this to the bedroom. When you do your hip tilt, inhale back, exhale forward and squeeze your cookie while he’s inside you,” she advised. This is not the type of warm-up or instruction you’ll get in a Kundalini Yoga class. But many of the 22 yoga poses are based on traditional yoga—just with a sexy twist.

She added hip thrusts and pumps to Bridge, Kegels to Standing Goddess, a feather-like caress to our legs and booty as we came up from a Forward Bend and had me stirring my honey pot with my tail bone and we made tiny circles within Bridge pose. 

In Mermaid pose—as we squeezed our cookies and trusted our pelvic bones out first while engaging our booty muscles—Psalm instructed me to “visualize pulling a string from our cookie to our hearts to throw the orgasmic Shakti energy over the top of our heads.” As I’m throwing my orgasmic energy out, I blurt out, “I FEEL LIKE I’M SHOOTING RAINBOWS OUT OF ME!”

But in all seriousness, I felt powerful. I felt strong. I felt sexy. I stopped judging the little belly bulge staring back at me in the mirror and started simply feeling sexier.

I might not be able to breathe my way to wetness as Psalm can—nor will I probably ever look at a cookie the same ever again—but in one 90-minute class, I got my sexy back.

Mission accomplished!

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This article was originally published at SELF. Reprinted with permission from the author.