“It is this full-body, head-to-toe orgasm that just doesn’t stop. Every touch from my partner during that time is amplified… It’s the ultimate feeling of being encompassed in tingly, warm, electric sensations while the climax continues and everything is surrounded in this glowing fog.”
This is how Edwina Caito of Bedbible.com describes her experience of having an expanded orgasm. An “expanded orgasm” is different from a “normal” orgasm in that it’s significantly longer in duration, lasting from fifteen minutes to two hours. They are said to be significantly more intense, with each consecutive orgasm growing in power. She may climax more than twenty to thirty times in a row.
With little to no refractory state (the time needed to rest between orgasms), she may even experience an altered state of consciousness, where her “space-time continuum may be altered deeply,” H. Umit Sayin, M.D. writes in his 2012 paper, Doors of Female Orgasmic Consciousness.
Dr. Patricia Taylor coined the term expanded orgasm in 2014. While the expanded orgasm certainly sounds mind-blowing and even mind-altering, women like Caito count themselves among the lucky few who’ve ever experienced one. Even the “regular” multiple orgasm experience (which doesn’t last as long as the expanded orgasm) is only experienced by about 15% of women in their lifetime notes Dr. Debra Laino, a board-certified clinical sexologist and certified sex educator, based in Wilmington, Delaware.
And yet, this isn’t to say the concept of the “expanded orgasm” is novel in any way. Caito describes an experience that was well-documented in ancient Eastern texts, centuries ago. Unfortunately, the female orgasm has been pathetically understudied in the Western world. Luckily, modern researchers are continuing to make breakthroughs on the subject.
With a better understanding of the complexities of female sexuality, we can now comprehend how expanded orgasms occur in scientific terms. And not only that, we now know how best to achieve one.
The Expanded Orgasm is like a “Blended Orgasm” But More Intense.
The concept of the “blended orgasm” was first introduced by Drs. Alice Khan Ladas, Beverly Whipple, and John D. Perry in their landmark book, The G-Spot, published in 1982. The researchers explained that vaginal orgasms are triggered by the stimulation of the G-spot, a patch of flesh on the anterior wall of the vaginal canal. When “blended” with a clitoral orgasm, this can lead to intense pleasure for women.
Three decades later, more research emerged to show that not only can women experience “blended orgasms,” but they can experience exceedingly prolonged ones. Like the blended orgasm, the expanded orgasm is felt in the clitoris and the vagina. However, the expanded orgasm is triggered by other nerve pathways as well.
Researchers like Taylor, Sayin, and renowned psychologist Dr. Barry Komisaruk introduced studies showing other erogenous zones in the female body that can bring about orgasm–and especially expanded orgasms. Deeper vaginal zones can be stimulated along with nerves in the anus, the pelvic floor, and the nipples to not only induce a prolonged orgasm for a woman but transport her into a mind-altered state.
Clearly, women have more orgasmic potential than we ever knew.
What Does It Take For A Woman To Teach Herself To Have Expanded Orgasms?
Though expanded orgasms are rare, with practice and the right mindset a woman can teach her body to experience one. According to Megan Harrison, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Tampa, Florida, and the creator of the Couples Candy blog, women who experience expanded orgasms have simply “trained their muscles to move in ways that cause pleasure more quickly than others.”
How does a woman begin to teach her muscles to experience an expanded orgasm? Masturbation is key. It should surprise no one that Dr. Sayin notes that women who experience expanded orgasms have a long history of masturbating.
They are also aware of all the different ways they can experience pleasure in their bodies, from stimulating the deepest areas of their vaginas (the A-spot and cervix), their anuses (the O-spot), their urethras (U-spot), or their nipples—and that doing this all simultaneously can send them to new orgasmic highs.
These women also have a rich fantasy life that they access to enhance their orgasms. “Psychology plays a bigger role than ever thought,” Dr. Sayin writes. That, and openness to sexual exploration, have a bearing on whether a woman will be able to have an expanded orgasm.
However, a woman first needs to feel safe before attempting to reach this new high of orgasmic bliss. Amanda Lambros, a Washington-based relationships coach, explains that a woman’s partner needs to make her feel “secure and comfortable” for an expanded orgasm to occur. The more relaxed she is, the higher chance she’ll achieve this kind of orgasm, Lambros says.
Edging is also a good way for a woman to begin to train her body to experience expanded orgasms. Dr. Amir Marashi, a board-certified gynecologist and the founder of Cerē, suggests women try edging themselves while masturbating. “You want to get yourself almost to the point where you get an orgasm,” the doctor explains, “then slow it down and keep yourself at that point, or stop for a couple of seconds.” He says to then start the stimulation again, the purpose being to train the body to remain in states of high arousal for longer periods before going over the edge, so to speak.
But once a woman starts climaxing, how does she prolong it? Rev. Rucifer, an erotic energy worker and reiki instructor, explains that “with intentional breath that flows deep within the body, an individual can bypass the refractory period and move into a space of expanded sexual response.” By “intentional breathing,” Rev. Rucifer means taking “long, slow, deep breaths,” which help to keep erotic energy flowing through the body and enable a woman to prolong her climax.
The Four-Spot Method.
To achieve an expanded orgasm, Dr. Sayin came up with what he calls the “four-spot method.” This method helps ignite all the sexual neural pathways at once.
To carry out the four-spot method, a woman’s partner should use their left hand’s second and third fingers to stimulate her G-Spot while using their fourth finger to stimulate her anus. They should also be simultaneously performing cunnilingus for at least thirty to forty minutes. While they do this, their right hand should also be stimulating the woman’s left nipple. She should also have some kind of automated, rotating probe inside her that will reach the erogenous zones located deep inside her vagina.
Without a partner, a woman can employ a solo version of this erotic “Twister” method as well, using toys, fantasies, and watching porn.
Expanded Orgasms Can Cause An Altered State Of Consciousness.
In her 2013 book, Vagina, feminist author Naomi Wolf writes that the orgasm is an altered state in and of itself. However, Dr. Sayin explains that expanded orgasms can also open “another ‘orgasmic consciousness.’ ” When multiple nerve pathways are activated at the same time “physiological changes…are doubled or tripled.” This can lead the brain to a state of altered consciousness.
Dr. Sayin included in his paper, Five Cases with Expanded Sexual Response (ESR), the case study of a woman who experiences altered mental states when having expanded orgasms. When she stimulates her G-spot, A-spot, and clitoris at the same time, she is mentally transported to “another world, the paradise of pleasure and contractions.”
She loses herself in this world. “I only concentrate on my screams, contracting genitals and heating and contracting legs… The outer world closes and I become a different orgasming creature.”
She goes on to describe that after fifteen to twenty minutes of experiencing a continuous orgasm, “a creature or an animal comes out of mind and body. That animal lives only for pleasure and asks for more climaxes… I then become an orgasming machine and like an orgasming machine gun I come and come and come with greater intensities at each time.”
This particular woman’s experience with expanded orgasms demonstrates the power of stimulating various neural pathways at once. By doing so, the brain becomes flooded with neurotransmitters such as endogenous opiates, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, norepinephrine, glutamate, and prolactin. These neurotransmitters lead to acute behavioral changes that can make a woman feel like she’s having an out-of-body experience when they saturate her brain during an expanded orgasm.
Dr. Laino adds that a woman may also feel this way during a prolonged climax because when this happens, “parts of the brain shut down…such as the emotional center of the brain called the amygdala.” According to Dr. Laino, “When emotions are shut down, sex becomes more in the body which is how women can experience an altered state of consciousness.”
In short, with nothing but a long-lasting orgasm to focus on, a woman gets tunnel vision and this can give her the sense she’s on a drug…because she sort of is.
Women Suffer When This Information Isn’t Made Available.
A century and a half ago, female sexuality wasn’t studied at all. A woman couldn’t ask questions about her sexuality or talk about her orgasms. In many places, women were discouraged from being sexual at all. Luckily, in recent years, many breakthroughs have emerged that show that not only are women orgasmic but they can be multi-orgasmic. They can even have expanded orgasms.
The problem remains that much of this research will never reach the general public. Wolf writes in Vagina, “If women had easy—or at least easier—access to and could draw on new scientific discoveries about female sexuality, which have not been widely reported, they would have a much deeper understanding of their own sexual and emotional responses—and could feel far more sexually alive and connected.”
It’s not only important to disseminate information about expanded orgasms but to make general information about female sexuality more accessible, as 15% of American women struggle to attain orgasms, and 10% reportedly never experience an orgasm at all. The more women learn about their bodies and sexuality, the easier time they’ll have getting off.
Knowledge is power. With it, maybe women can embark on the journey of teaching themselves to have expanded orgasms, and even alter their state of consciousness along the way.