Blog The Orgasm Loop

In the classic Woody Allen film Annie Hall there’s a scene where Alvie’s wife just misses having an orgasm. She was distracted by a police siren. The night before, he reminds her, it was a car horn.

“What are you gonna do, have them shut down the airport, too?” he says, “No more flights so we can have sex?”

It’s funny but also telling: loss of focus can screw up sexy time and author Susan Crain Bakos says it’s easier for women to get distracted than men. That’s one of the reasons she invented  The Orgasm Loop, a way get to orgasm during intercourse - or at any other time. The impetus for the idea came to her in the  80’s during a workshop with famed sexologist Dr. Annie Sprinkle offering “no-hands orgasms” women could manage through fantasy and fire-breathing. It was fun, but it wasn’t quite taking Susan where she wanted to go. 

Susan, herself a famed sex expert and author of numerous books on technique, tinkered for awhile and eventually several pieces fell into place and she came up with the Orgasm Loop. There’s a book, Orgasm Loop: The No-Fail Technique for Reaching Orgasm During Sex, but a condensed version appears in Susan’s  The Sex Bible For Women: The Complete Guide to Understanding Your Body, Being a Great Lover and Getting the Pleasure You Want, which is the one I’ve been working with.  

The first step is mental arousal and to help achieve that you’ll need an arousal image: something that’s the equation of a man’s erection that helps you visualize your arousal. Visualizing your own genitalia swelling and responding, a color you associate with arousal, works of art you can equate that feeling with - it should be, she says, like “a mental erotic mantra” 

Next is energy focus: imagine concentrations of sexual energy in different parts of your body and move them towards your genitalia with your breath. 

Next come the physical moves, including fire-breathing (“imagine you are breathing fire in a circle, inhaling it up from your genitals throughout your body and exhaling out your mouth,” working your PC muscles - the ones you use for kegels - tightening when you breathe in, letting go on the exhale - and finally clitoral stimulation.

The book gives far more detail that’s helpful in really getting the hang of it, but that’s a good outline of what to expect to learn. 

My experience has been that it’s a full-body turn on: the energy focus and breathing lead to a more intense, faster arousal and the arousal image is a curiously big help  (I’m not telling you what mine is, unless we’re having lots of drinks).

I haven’t gotten it exactly yet, but Susan says it can take a number of tries…but since I’m having lots of orgasms while I practice I’m not in any big hurry. How many things can you say that last bit about? It’s definitely a technique to try.