A journey doesn’t need to have a destination for it to be worth the ride.
Did you know what your favorite song was before you heard it? Your favorite fruit before you ate it? The answer is probably no. You don’t know what you don’t know. The same thing applies to masturbation, pleasure, and sensuality.
Approaching masturbation with a curiosity-focused mindset like you do when trying new foods or checking out new music, as opposed to focusing on orgasm or other similar goals, can help you learn more about yourself and what you like. Keeping an open and curious mind can also potentially unlock aspects of pleasure you didn’t even know were possible. If letting a curiosity mindset lead your masturbation is something that sounds foreign or unfamiliar, let me remind you of many people’s first experiences around masturbation: Many infants and children touch themselves out of comfort or because it feels good. In those early stages of life, you may not have known what you were doing or what you were feeling. Curiosity-led masturbation is not something you have to learn from scratch, but rather engaging with masturbation in a way that is already intuitive to you, even if you don’t remember!
Masturbation is a safe way for people to be able to explore themselves and what feels good. Becoming familiar with masturbation in any capacity is a process that is unique to everyone. There is no right or wrong way to masturbate as long as it feels good to you. We all have different wants, needs, and desires, so one person’s way of masturbating may be completely different from someone else’s. If you are a beginner, the only way to know what you like is to experiment: Curiosity is the basis of all knowledge about our bodies and ourselves!
Although many people might think of pleasure as a purely physical experience, pleasure, and specifically sexual pleasure, can often have more to do with our brain than our genitals. The things we are thinking and feeling directly relate to whether we are experiencing pleasure. This is important to keep in mind to understand curiosity-led masturbation, because your mindset can change a lot about your experience of masturbation.
Exploring new feelings about masturbation may also lead to an overall increased understanding of your own sexual identity. Sometimes we may not even be aware of all the ways in which feelings like shame or fear can permeate our own experiences around sexuality that can truly hinder our ability to know ourselves sexually, and being able to embrace your own sexual curiosity in masturbation can be an important way to combat this. Giving ourselves space (both mentally and physically) to investigate areas of our sexuality that we don’t know as well, don’t know at all, or that don’t necessarily lead to orgasm, is infinitely valuable to gain an increased understanding of ourselves as a whole.
Before you get going
You may have heard of the idea of “staying present” when masturbating, meaning being engaged and aware of the current moment. Think of staying present as if you were a driver on a road trip. There may be a list of directions ahead, but at any given time you are focused on the now: the cars around you, how fast you’re going, the weather and travel conditions, and other factors that keep you able to drive safely. In the same way, staying present when masturbating is about being grounded in the moment and letting your pleasurable feelings be the vehicle that guides you. Being attentive to yourself helps you lean into which things are making you feel good and which aren’t. If you begin to masturbate and you start noticing some distracting thoughts or feelings come up, though, that’s ok!
Reducing outside distractions and maximizing your comfort using tools that are in your control can help your curiosity come first. For some, finding a comfortable space such as your bedroom during a period of time when you know you have privacy is a good place to start, and you may want to pick a moment when you have less external stress (for example, maybe not immediately after a challenging day). Masturbating with no TV in the background, minimal noise, calming music, and a phone on do not disturb can help put you in the right headspace.
Doing things to aid relaxation is a key part of staying present as well. This could look like giving yourself ample time to get in the mood by taking some deep breaths and engaging all your senses by noticing what you see, feel, hear, smell, and taste before you start masturbating at all. Sometimes, taking a quick pause, a deep breath, and readjusting yourself can allow you to go back into the moment.
Give yourself permission to imagine!
Some people might feel like there is a particular way that you should be masturbating, when in reality the beauty of it is that it’s completely individual and specific to you! It can take time, practice, and confidence to let your imagination run free and guide your masturbation. However, a useful starting point can be approaching solo sex with an open mind about what you might and might not like. By going into masturbation with a judgment-free mindset towards yourself, you can broaden your ability to see all the possibilities of pleasure and it can be a helpful first step in the journey of self-discovery. Prioritizing imagination and curiosity can be an intensely powerful tool that helps you cultivate an awareness of your own preferences and also give you heightened levels of sensuality and feeling.
Not sure where to start? Because you are in control, how you masturbate is ultimately up to you, but one entry point to masturbation is using your hands and fingers to touch different parts of your body to see what feels good. You can also warm up your mind by getting in the mood to masturbate by thinking of a fantasy, reading a sexy story, or listening to a relaxing playlist.
You can also explore touching different parts of your body, not just your genitals, specifically areas called erogenous zones. Erogenous zones are places on the body most rich with sensory nerve endings (think areas like thighs, neck, chest, and scalp). Although many people associate masturbation with touching genitals, exploring touch in all areas of your body can help you become familiar with all sorts of pleasure centers. Moving your body in different positions can also aid in discovering new areas to touch that you might not often think about. For some people, laying down or sitting up in different ways can allow them to reach other body parts and learn what does and does not feel good.
Take your time
Time and patience are your best friends when you are allowing curiosity to lead your solo sex. Once you have ditched what you think you might know about masturbation and what you like, move slowly and without an assumption of where you are going next. It’s important to let yourself feel the full range of sensations that come with slow movement with no end goal in mind so you can start to decipher what feels good and what doesn’t. Refocusing your mindset by moving away from an orgasm-centered approach and moving back to an exploratory state opens yourself up to so much discovery.
Focus on sensation
It’s important to know that orgasm isn’t always the only metric for valuable and pleasurable masturbation! Often, when we approach masturbation with the goal of orgasm, we have blinders on, and we miss out on so much unexplored pleasure. Moving away from the strict objective of orgasm and back to an inquisitive and more open mindset can be a building block to learning more about yourself. Giving yourself space to feel any and all emotions or sensations that might come up is a crucial part of being able to prioritize curiosity in masturbation. Hone in on what you are feeling and use that as your guide. Putting pressure on yourself to orgasm every time you masturbate can often have the exact opposite effect. Solo sex can be extremely enjoyable and fulfilling without orgasm.
Switch it up
If you are touching yourself, try experimenting with the speed of your movement. One way to do this is to align how slowly or quickly you are moving to the speed of your breath. You can also try doing the opposite as well to see how it feels. For example, if you notice your breath getting faster, intentionally trying to slow your movement can be a way to see what speed of touching yourself can lead to more pleasure.
Additionally, trying out different amounts of pressure on whatever body parts you are touching can also aid in curiosity-led masturbation. Some ways to do this could be by starting off with a very light touch on yourself and building up to a more intense pressure, or alternating between a softer and harder touch.
Bringing in other outside elements can also allow curiosity to lead solo sex. For example, some people like to use sex toys or different types of lubrication, such as lube with a cooling or warming effect. Another part of experimenting with external stimuli in your own masturbation could include exploring different kinds of sexual media that are available to you. This could include erotica or audio sexual media.
You can also try changing your surroundings. Sometimes something as simple as more or less light, watching yourself in a mirror, or changing the time of day can completely alter a masturbation experience.
All in all, everybody has a different relationship to masturbation, but one thing remains true: approaching masturbation through a curiosity-focused lens can open up opportunities, both literally and metaphorically, that allow you to learn more about yourself. The beauty of masturbation is that it’s all up to you and using masturbation as a tool for self-discovery can tell you so much about what you like, what you don’t like, and who you are.
So the next time you set aside time for yourself, take the detour and see where you end up!
