It’s always such a blessing to hold space for men that are committed to learning more about sex and pleasure. In my recent men’s workshops (I taught one workshop in May and one workshop in June) and in my individual coaching sessions, I’ve been really thinking about the most important things that men can learn in order to really change their experience of sex, and how they can become their best lover-selves for their partners. I’ll be writing a whole series on this (and launching an online class soon!) but today we’ll talk about one of my favorite sexual skills for men—edging.
Edging is a Foundational Skill for Men’s Sexuality
Finding your way to deeper pleasure and expanded sensation starts with edging. Edging is a practice to help you learn more about your body, explore pleasure in different ways, and learn to hold more arousal. You can practice edging by bringing yourself into highly aroused states, then backing off, again and again.
Everyone can practice edging, however, it’s especially helpful for people with penises to help you learn better awareness of and control over orgasm and ejaculation. Practicing edging when you’re masturbating is training your body, and if/when you move into partnered sex, can be a great way to last longer. Instead of trying to distract yourself with outside thoughts or zooming out mentally (which many men report doing in order to last longer), edging helps you pay better attention to your body and your orgasm and gives you control from within, rather than distracting yourself. This practice also helps increase sensation, allows you to access higher states of arousal, deepens your connection, and might even open up new pleasure possibilities like energetic orgasms (that is, orgasms without ejaculation)
Edging has the added benefit of helping all people unwind the idea that sex has to be goal-directed (ie: with orgasm as the outcome). Instead, you can explore pleasure and sensation along the journey itself, and not rush your way to ‘the end.’ As you get more experienced, you can explore sex without any goal or need for orgasm at all… just playing and vibing together until someone needs to drink some tea or take a nap or go pee. 😉
How to Practice Edging for Deeper Pleasure
I teach men to practice feeling their arousal using a 1-10 scale, with 1 being baseline/not turned on, and 10 being going over the edge into orgasm (which many educators refer to as ‘the point of orgasmic inevitability). Arouse yourself as you normally do and bring yourself only halfway (about a 5 or 6); then back off. To back off, you can slow down your stroke, change positions, change hands, or stop touching all together.
Resume pleasure, and arouse yourself up to a 7 or 8. Then relax, take some breaths, and drop back into pleasuring, bring yourself up to a 9. If you go over, that’s ok—this is PRACTICE. Don’t worry so much about being exact about your numbers, and don’t worry too much about going over into orgasm. Give yourself the space to learn more about your body and about this delicious practice.
And let me tell you, this is where the fun really starts. Open yourself up to pleasure for pleasure’s sake… explore, experiment, expand your vision for connection and play.