All right, OK.
(Laughter)
My subject is a little bit more challenging to introduce.
I've been doing radio interviews lately
and noticing the interviewer will spend the first 40% of the interview
preparing the listening audience for me to come on.
They'll say things like, "Ladies and gentlemen,
the author of 'Slow sex,' the art and practice of..."
- hmm -
Nicole Daedone.
So I figured we're TED people.
We're fast, we're savvy, we're smart,
so I'm just going to break the ice first:
my topic is female orgasm.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
So that said,
I want to thank the people of TEDx for having me on this stage.
This has been a dream of mine that I thought was absolutely impossible;
that we could have
a relevant, intelligent conversation about female orgasm
was just a distant dream for me.
I just fell in love with this practice.
That's what happened for me.
I gave nearly 10,000 hours to this practice.
That's a lot of hours.
(Laughter)
A lot!
But I learned some key things in that time that I am bringing to you.
The first is that female orgasm is vital for every single woman on the planet.
The second is: is not so bad for the guys either.
(Laughter)
The third, and on a much more serious note,
is that it roots our fundamental capacity for connection.
It's for this reason that I believe
that at some point, you will hear
yoga, meditation, and orgasm.
And you won't hear it
yoga, meditation, and (whispering) orgasm.
In 2004, I founded "One Taste" urban retreat centers with this in mind.
"One taste" comes from the Buddhist expression,
"Just as the ocean has one taste, the taste of salt,
so does the taste of liberation, the taste of truth."
I felt like I had tasted a truth that was so undeniable
I had to bring it to the world.
I was absolutely clear on this.
Mind you, not everyone was.
We had lectures, we had courses, we had what every orgasm study needs;
we had a residence.
It was insane by pretty much anyone's standards,
and we had the lack of clientele to prove it.
My business partner has journal entries that say things
like, "Two people showed up to the business this week.
The first was the postman, the second was a wrong address."
Crickets.
So I began to question whether or not
this brilliant, life-altering notion that I had was actually right.
And I began to give up.
Until all of a sudden, in some odd storm, the New York Times discovered us.
And when that happened, people began to flood into our doors;
person after person after person.
Fundamentally, each person was saying the same thing.
They were saying some version of "I'm hungry.
There's this annoying sense of hunger that I can't quite reach.
I don't know how to touch it."
So I was very clear, and I would say to them,
"Oh! Orgasm."
And they would say, "What?"
And I would say, "Orgasm."
And they would say, "Huh?"
Because at the time, what happened
was they were hearing the toxic mimic of what I was talking about;
because that was the only thing that had ever been given to us.
They were hearing this exaggerated version
where you imagine sex toys and boas,
or, the other version, where you have to call your genitals weird things,
and use different spiritual names and stuff,
but nobody was actually just imagining playing good, clean, everyday orgasm
as I was talking about it.
And it was for this reason
that people were coming to me saying things
like, "I've been married to my partner for 28 years,
and we haven't touched for 18."
Or women were coming to me saying, "I just roll over at night,
and I hope he doesn't touch me because I don't want to fake it again."
Or men were saying,
"I want to do everything to please her,
and I cannot figure it out."
Or, more commonly, woman after woman was coming through my office,
and they were chanting what I call, "The Western woman's mantra,"
"I work too hard, I eat too much, I diet too much, I drink too much,
I shop too much, I give too much.
And still, there's this sense of hunger that I can't touch."
So, when I first discovered this thing,
this thing that's called orgasmic meditation, this practice,
I was fairly smart, I was fairly savvy, it wasn't like I grew up in a convent,
I had a great sex life, I had all the climax I could ever want;
and still, I had never experienced anything like this.
It happened like this: I went to a party
(Laughter)
- orgasm is compelling enough for me to unveil myself -
I went to this party, and I met this guy; which sounds typical.
This wasn't a typical guy.
He said, "I'd like to introduce you ..."
- Oh! You could use this line if you want! -
(Laughter)
"I'd like to introduce you to this sexuality practice."
I said, "Huh?"
He said, "I'd like to introduce you to this sexuality practice."
And then he said,
"OK, you are going to take off your pants,
and I am going to leave my clothes on.
And then, you're going to lie down,
and I am going to put all of my attention on you for 15 minutes."
"OK."
"And then, at the end of it, you're free to go."
(Laughter)
I am a good woman, and I have the defenses of every woman.
I know how to say no, but somehow, I found myself lying there,
with my legs butterflied-open.
So that you can know what the practice is,
so that you can go home tonight and try it.
I'll describe what he did.
I was lying there, my legs were butterflied-open,
and he did what you would always expect in a sexual act;
he took a light and shown it down there.
And then, he began to describe what he saw.
He said, "You're outer labia are coral.
I'm noticing that the your inner labia have this red tone to them,
and they're swelling as I look at them."
And I couldn't hear anything after that because the tears just started flooding;
something began to thone me.
I have never been looked at or felt that kind of compassion
in that area before.
So then, he sat next to me,
and he put his right thumb at the base of my introitus,
which is the area that you would enter were you to have intercourse.
And he took his finger and stuck it in lubrication.
And then he pulled his finger up,
and he put it on the upper left hand quadrant of my clitoris.
The upper left hand quadrant of my clitoris would be,
where I'm facing you, the one o'clock position with my clitoris, a clock.
He stroked up down,
up down, up down, up down
no firmer than you would stroke your eye lid, that tender tissue there.
So, it was great!
Because nothing happened.
Absolutely nothing.
I was where I always am or was when I was in any kind of sexuality act.
I was in my head.
I was thinking about whether or not I looked good,
I was thinking about whether or not I was doing this thing right,
I was thinking whether or not this guy was kind of creepy,
whether or not I was marry him;
I was thinking about whether or not my stomach looked a little poochy,
and then, all of a sudden,
the traffic jam that was in my mind broke open.
It was like I was on the open road,
and there was not a thought in sight, and there was only pure feeling.
For the first time in my life I felt like I had access to that hunger
that was underneath all of my other hungers,
which is a fundamental hunger to connect with another human being.
It was enough, and in that moment, I thought,
"Oh, my God! This is what it's supposed to be like."
Then I had a moment of thinking,
"I want to know how to live here in this place."
And then I thought, in my philanthropic way,
that I want everyone else to know how to live here.
Then that window closed.
Then I sat about learning how to live there,
and I began studying in weird behind-the-scenes places,
and then I cobbled together this practice
that could in a repeatable way get thousands of people
who have come through our doors back to this place.
The amazing thing isn't just that you can hit that place,
is that you can hit it with another human being.
I don't like anything, I really, really don't like anything woo woo
so I'm going to describe it in the simplest way I can possibly think.
Both people are putting their attention on the same point;
- it's a fairly intense point, mind you -
they are putting their attention on this intense point,
and then, just like a master chess player would get absorbed in a chess game,
or perhaps an Olympic athlete would get absorbed in his practice,
or a breathing mediator would get absorbed,
you get absorbed into that place.
The only difference is that you get to be absorbed there with your partner,
you get to have this most profound and deep experience
with another human being.
So, mind you, I've met with some skepticism;
people have called my life's practice diddling.
(Laughter)
They've called it mutual masturbation,
but the challenge is that I can't get mad at them
because I too am a skeptic;
I was an academic,
I prided myself on my ability to say no,
I prided myself on my critical thinking.
There is no way you ever, ever, ever could have convinced me to try this thing.
What happened was I tried it, and that convinced me
so that's what I say to people when they come into my office.
I say,"'Just try it.
Really, the worst thing you have to lose is 15 minutes of your life.
The best thing you have to lose is that sense of hopelessness
that you will ever be reached deep inside."
I sat about this journey,
and I can tell you that there was a moment
when I received a stroke that could never be taken back.
It was a stroke where I knew I had been returned to my birth right
of my capacity to perceive and receive pleasure.
This is often a complete shock to women when they come in,
when I say, "Just try orgasm."
Mind you, that's not that much of a shock to the pharmaceutical companies;
they've been spending the past 10 years creating the next female Viagra.
For the DSM-5, they've proposed
hypoactive sexual desire disorder.
I don't think that it is hypoactive sexual desire disorder,
but I do think we have a pleasure deficit disorder in this country,
and I don't think that is medical.
I think it's a cultural issue.
I do think though that there is a cure,
and that cure is orgasm,
but it's going to be a very different definition of orgasm than we know.
It is not going to be that fleeting moment of climax
that seems to take the whole rest of the act hostage,
it's going to be a definition of orgasm that actually works with the woman's body
so that rather than trying to stuff a woman's body
into an ill-fitting definition,
we have the definition work with what the woman's body does.
And the amazing thing is that when you have this,
this whole notion of frigidity or a woman being anorgasmic
flies out the window.
And what it's replaced with is an entire lifetime journey
of discovering who you are and how your particular orgasm works.
(Applause)
That said,
the Dalai Lama has said
that it will be a Western woman who changes the world.
And mind you, I don't know if you know about this,
but it's actually a fairly controversial statement
because it presumes that Western women are above other women
in terms of changing the world.
I actually have a totally different issue with it:
I think that it will be turned-on women around the world
who'll change the world,
it will be turned-on women and those who dare to stroke us
who'll actually change the world
by feeding this desire for connection that we all have.
Thank you.
(Applause)