Thinking Off: The Pleasure of Controlling Your Thoughts

Want to know the anti-dote for overdosing on television politics? How about internet-infused-with-bad-news depression?  Orgasm. 

Want to know what heals you from mid-summer, August induced humidity doldrums?  Orgasm.

The best cure for a migraine?  Orgasmic bliss.  And what should you do to heal a rift between you and your partner?  You guessed it…sexual release through a good, old fashioned Big-O.

The hormones and chemicals released in your brain when you orgasm change your mood; they actually change your mind.  Chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin, the feel good hormones, will greatly affect your state of consciousness.  When you change your mind through orgasming, you also relieve symptoms of pain, depression, anxiety and fear.  Chemicals like oxytocin and dopamine make you want to turn off the news and cuddle with your partner.  They decrease aggression and increase feelings of attachment. Plus, you just feel good after an orgasm.  But you don’t need me to tell you that. You have probably noticed this yourself.  An orgasm is the most pleasurable experience that the human body can experience. 

 Because of this positive pleasure response, anything that we do to reach an orgasm we usually want to do again.  Orgasm creates a neural pathway in our brain, like a deer path in the woods.  We want to repeat the behaviors that led to that pleasure explosion, over and over, as often as we can, following that path to what feels good.

This can explain why, for some of us, we can get hung up on behaviors, actions, or even people we may not consciously choose to interact with anywhere but in bed. If they lead to a pleasure reward, we may go down that path repeatedly looking for the big O.   However, we shouldn’t use this as an excuse to repeat self-destructive behaviors, after all, we are adults, and we can be discerning about what we do to reach our orgasmic highs. 

In fact, researchers have shown that some of us don’t need to to a thing – not touch another person or even ourselves - in order to reach orgasm.   We only need to control our thoughts.  This technique is called “thinking off.” 

Subjects who can “think off” have been measured orgasming by having their brain and body functions observed by scientists who watch them ‘think’ themselves into orgasm and then measure their physical response and compare it to an orgasm that is achieved through more conventional ways.

Gina Ogden, author of Women Who Love Sex , researched women who could orgasm on their imagination alone, and found that 64 percent could do it without any outside help.  Dr. Ogden then worked with Dr. Barry Komisaruk, a biologist at Rutgers, who specialized in orgasm research. Together they studied 10 women who could “think off” by using erotic imagery alone. 

 In both of these orgasmic controls, fantasy stimulation as well as direct clitoral stimulation, the women subjects had the same physical responses.  They had an increase in blood pressure, faster heart rates and a higher pain threshold. 

When put into fMRI brain scans, the pleasure centers of their brains lit up identically, both in women who were stimulating themselves and the women who were just “thinking” themselves to orgasm.

Today, Dr. Nan Wise is continuing this fascinating sexual research at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ.   She piloted a study where she mapped the responses in the female body and in the areas of the brain that respond to touch during orgasm.  She calls it “fine tuning the representation of the genitals in the somatosensory cortex.”    Working with Dr. Barry Komisaruk,  she asked participants to bring themselves to orgasm while in the fMRI machine, using a vibrator or other physical intervention, while she scanned their brain.   The participants also used purely imagined stimuli, or fantasy, and the researchers watched to see how the brain reacted to each type of orgasmic response.  The participants are also asked to have an orgasm through self-stimulation and one with their partner. 

When I asked a friend about whether she could “think off” she told me “Oh yea, I do it all the time.”  I was stunned. I asked her how she managed to pull off such a stunt. She said it was a function of “breath work” and that she tuned into her “more intense sexual memories”  to “turn herself on.”  I asked her to describe the process for me in detail. 

She said,

“I lie on the floor or in my bed. I have to be alone, and I like to take a hot bath first.  I put on music and sexy clothes. It’s like I have a date with myself.   Then I lie on my back and bend my knees.  I tilt my pelvis back and forth and breath all the way down into my genitals, and while I am breathing deep, I imagine a sexual encounter that I have had in the past, and I let it rip!  That usually does it for me. I can feel everything get engorged and then it just goes. It’s literally like someone is touching me.  It gets easier with practice.”

I am amazed at her talent.

Slightly shy now, she goes on to say,

“I think it is from years of hiding my sexuality. I never could masturbate as a young person, I had lots of sisters, we shared a room, and my parents were very strict.  So I guess I just used fantasy and developed this, well, this skill.”

And it certainly is a skill, I thought.  I asked her if she used it often and what motivated her.

“I find it helps me with my headaches, and frankly, it relieves my depression,” she reported.

 For those women who are not as lucky as my friend, and cannot bring themselves to orgasm by thinking about it or by simply breathing, some experts say orgasm is not necessarily the key to happiness. Some say that being in an intimate relationship might actually be the key to bliss.

Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz, Sex Therapist and researcher in Canada, says in her study done  at the University of Ottawa that sexual fullfilment has less to do with orgasm and more to do with connection and intimacy with a partner.

Dr. Kleinplatz is on the faculty of medicine and her research was focused on discovering what makes sex “exceptional, rather than merely functional.”  What she found was that for people in relationships, orgasm is not necessarily the thing that makes sex great.  She reported,

“…when participants were asked about the role that orgasm played in great sex, more said it was not terribly important.”

In fact, she says, you can have good sex without having any orgasms at all.  In her study she found that,

“You could have terrible sex with orgasms and despite orgasms,” says Kleinplatz, “but you could have optimal sexuality without orgasm.”

For those who may still be searching for what might feel like an elusive orgasmic experience, or for those trying to imagine it, focusing on intimacy and connection might be the next best thing.   But try to avoid being intimate and connected on the couch together in front of the television - it just might ruin both of your moods.

 For more info on how to have better sex, or to find out more about how to think about it, go to www.drtammynelson.com