Ejaculation and orgasm are not the same thing.
To many men this may sound incomprehensible, but I’ve been amazed to discover that not only is it true, it’s also easier than I expected to separate them from each other.
For solid evidence that coming does not entail spurting, a little human anatomy comes to our aid: whereas ejaculation is a function of the sympathetic nervous system (which also manages the instinctive ‘fight-or-flight’ response), sexual arousal is a function of the parasympathetic system (the automatic stuff that happens when the body is at rest). A sexual act that includes ejaculation, therefore, is a combination of bodily responses activated by different physiological pathways. More than one thing is happening here, which means there’s scope for turning one of them off, or changing the relationship between them.
Daoism and Tantra are two esoteric traditions that offer views on why it’s a good idea to not spurt when you come. Both seem broadly in agreement that there are health benefits, and opportunities for enhancing sexual pleasure. Semen and sperm contain all sorts of beneficial substances, which are lost upon ejaculation and must then be produced by the body all over again. If, instead, the ejaculate is conserved, it is simply broken down and its virtues recycled. Ridding the body of semen is not the urgent prerequisite for health and sanity that it may seem.
Ejaculation consumes so much energy and blood-flow that it’s basically ‘game over’ for male sexual arousal once it has occurred. A man must take a period of recovery (which may be quite a while, unless you’re a pro porno actor or a Viagra fiend) before erection and inclination returns. Refraining from ejaculation, however, opens the door to the male multiple orgasm. Yes, there really is such a thing. Gentlemen, it really is possible to come over and over again, each time as satisfactorily as if you’d had a fulsome spurt. (Those of you out there who have already been practising this stuff – just when were you planning to clue the rest of us in?)
The ability to maintain sexual arousal through multiple orgasms, especially for those of us with female partners, provides more scope to harmonise with our partner. But never mind this personal, ‘relationship’ stuff. Each of us is our own best judge of the applicability of these techniques to our relationships. Overall, the principle of retaining semen means that sexual arousal is not killed off in a climax to the sexual act, yet most of us have been conditioned to regard the expulsion of sexual energy as precisely the aim of sex. This has certain psychological and spiritual side-effects, but the consequences of the opposite strategy – keeping the sexual energy in – seem far more benign. For instance: learning the art of taking pleasure from what is ordinarily experienced as tension has the potential to increase our capacity for love, tolerance and enjoyment, beginning in the sphere of sexual experience and expanding outward.
Some of this may seem familiar, because most men have developed techniques for delaying their ejaculation – such as thinking of their granny, or imagining their partner as Margaret Thatcher. Unless you’re a member of the Conservative Party, the psychological drawbacks of these tactics should be obvious. Yet once you’ve established to your own satisfaction that ejaculation plays only a minor role in the sensations we label ‘orgasm’, there seems little point in merely delaying it, when it could be eliminated altogether.
This is not the place to go into the details of the specific techniques that will enable you to come without spurting. There is plenty of material on the web. There are pitfalls, however, and it’s these I’m keen to share. First off, a lot of this material is devised and presented by women. I’m sure they have the best intentions, but they don’t have the body parts to describe accurately the kinds of sensations to look out for. Secondly, there are lots of scrawny, long-haired weirdy-beardies out there, who may indeed have a penis, but will promise to make you a Sex God only in return for lots of cash. Personally, I wouldn’t bother. Not when you can learn this stuff virtually for free. And it’s probably more helpful to forget the ‘Sex God’ bit. Like all esoteric practices, this stuff actually turns out to be about rediscovering what is already very ordinary and familiar.

A weirdy beardy.
Indeed, the main obstacle I found was my expectation that something unusual was supposed to happen. Most of the techniques involve stimulation up to the notorious ‘point of no return’ (PNR), the moment at which ejaculation becomes inevitable and involuntary. The trick is to cease or reduce stimulation before PNR and learn the knack of ‘relaxing down’, riding the familiar but dry orgasmic spasms that will develop in the genital area. (Please note that there’s more to it than I’ve stated here!) The texts describe the eventual results as ‘full-body orgasms’. From this, it’s tempting to conclude that something special is going to happen. But it’s not. It’s just an orgasm – same as usual (mostly) – except without the spurty bit. Yet if we’re conditioned to expect and aim for the spurt, then at first its absence feels a bit weak and incomplete. For a long time, I assumed I hadn’t got close enough to PNR, or I wasn’t correctly applying the technique, because nothing ‘different’ was happening. It really doesn’t need to. By trying to fly too close to PNR (or even trying to somehow get ‘beyond’ it, as I did a few times) all you end up with is a sticky patch and a sudden end to your practice session.
Basically, what we’re doing here is meditation. It’s just meditation, with sexual sensations as the object, rather than the breath or peace and loving-kindness. It’s vipassana with a hard-on. The best tactic is to observe the sensations without seeking to modify them, without looking for something that’s not already apparent. It’s helpful to notice how, when there is no ejaculation, although the continued arousal can feel irksome for a short while, a dry orgasm nevertheless yields an afterglow every bit as lovely and fuzzy as a spurty one.
As in more ordinary forms of meditation, you can’t really (in one sense) do anything ‘wrong’. It’s instructive to misjudge PNR and lapse into an unintended spurt, because this gives us the opportunity to compare the two types of orgasm. I was amazed to find myself disappointed at how the spurt killed my arousal, just as I’d felt disappointed at how arousal continued after a dry orgasm. Whew… It seems dissatisfaction is just everywhere! This also gave me the opportunity to observe how there really is no such thing as an ‘orgasm’ – it’s a dependently-arising amalgamation of sensations. We might assume that ejaculation is the ‘essence’ of male orgasm, but when we look at the experience directly, ejaculation is just a fairly mild, squirty feeling. There’s nothing more special about it than taking a piss. The really pleasurable components of the experience belong to other aspects entirely. When looked at, it’s difficult to localise these in either the body or the mind.
And yet, we must remember: we are but men. Evolution has hardwired us to ejaculate, and the man who seeks to side-step evolution can never quite relax and surrender to sexual pleasure in the way a woman might. But I’m not complaining. Only a few months ago, I’d have thought that multiple orgasms for men was probably a myth. Yet it remains inevitable that what was built to spurt is probably going to, occasionally. I’m interested to see how far this practice can be taken. There’s much debate over whether it’s healthier to ejaculate occasionally, or never. I imagine that if a partner is determined to part us from our semen, then she or he will probably succeed… And, of course, there’s a vast ethical dimension to these techniques, which I’ve not insulted my readers’ intelligence by even mentioning.
Further Reading
The book widely acknowledged as the best and most helpful for learning the techniques mentioned, is: The Multi-Orgasmic Man by Mantak Chia and Douglas Abrams Arava (London: Thorsons, 1996).
Good stuff, Duncan. I have found (from the female perspective) that around and after awakening a level of orgasm developed which is utterly non-genital, and even weirdly non-sexual (while still being intensely erotic, if that makes sense). This full-body experience occurs spontaneously sometimes, and also tends to occur in conjunction with (before, during and after) genital orgasm, as well as sometimes simply from being in close proximity to certain people (as if our energies interact?). At times it seems very easily triggered by (chaste) touch, such as the touching of hands. It also sometimes just independently, for no reason in particular, often when I am napping, falling asleep, or otherwise very relaxed and not distracted by the day’s work. It can also be triggered by the presence of certain spirits/entities. :D
Wow, great article Duncan. Good to read a critical approach to the topic of to come or not to come – most supposed ‘masters’ tend to dogma on this point
My thoughts:
Not-spurting definitely enables multiple male orgasm.
I’ve found the enormous energy of the ‘dry’ orgasm quite difficult to deal with sometimes.
I’ve found the Daoist circulation practice very useful – working on the energy flowing up your back, through the gate of the palate, encountering whatever image you have in your head (anima/goddess/partner recommended) and sweeping down the front of the body to get ‘sucked in’ to the loweer t’an tien.
@Ona: Interesting! Yet more ammunition for the argument that the criteria for ‘orgasm’ is very wide indeed. It reminded me of something I read a while ago. Sexologists were conducting brain imaging experiments on people undergoing orgasm. They discovered that some people, who claimed the ability to orgasm, actually weren’t having orgasms (in the usual sense) at all. But whatever they were having, they seemed outwardly quite delighted and satisfied by them. The only thing I’ve had that comes close to what you describe are sensations that seem to me focused in the throat chakra, but radiating out, when connecting ‘spiritually’ (whatever that means!) with people, teachers or entities. It feels like a kind of exquisitely vulnerable opening and melting into the other person. Like you said, kind of ‘erotic’, but not – which is what made me think of it. Feels definitely kind of nice, though. But it wouldn’t occur to me to call it an ‘orgasm’. So maybe not the same thing. But all of which begs the question – what do we call an orgasm, and why?
@Dave: So you’re one of the ones who have been keeping this stuff quiet! Outrageous! :-D I’m a bit concerned about the notion of forgoing ejaculation altogether because, usually, if you neglect a bodily function then it only tends to atrophy or become vulnerable to disease. (The ‘use it or lose it’ rule.) But is ejaculation a bodily function as such? My current understanding is that during dry orgasm, everything is operating as usual, but applying pressure on the PC muscle simply deprives the system of the blood-flow and energy it needs to fling out the semen. In other words, physiologically, all the bits and pieces are getting a workout as usual… So I think I’ll just press on down the path of non-ejac for a while, and see if anything deleterious begins to happen… ;-)
Thanks for this Duncan. Your perspective cleared up some things for me, especially this:
“For a long time, I assumed I hadn’t got close enough to PNR, or I wasn’t correctly applying the technique, because nothing ‘different’ was happening.”
I’ve been doing this stuff for years off and on too (sorry I’ve been part of the conspiracy of silence) after reading Chia’s books. Allowing the breath to be full also helps transition the sensations from localized in the nether regions to fully filling the body.
One thing that I almost never see mentioned is about how it’s possible to get through the PNR and return!! And I am talking out of my own experience, of course.
You see, just as you can use the muscle at the base of the penis to stop urination, you can also stop ejaculation, BUT it’s way harder and requires a greater muscle strength i.e. you have to train this muscle.
It took me a few weeks training before I accidentally discovered this “ability”. I can hold the ejaculation by contracting this muscle as much as I can, but (1) I cannot hold any cum that already passed through this muscle (that is in the uretra), (2) I cannot use this technique when the muscle is weak(too much/lack of training).
I don’t know what are the the limits of these, but I never trained seriously, so I only could stop the ejaculation if I stopped stimulating the penis.
It may seem useless at first, but if you are messing with the PNR it’s an As in your sleeve, and your penis gets slightly thicker and noticeably harder.
Hi John – check out retrograde ejaculation. It sounds like what might be happening here. Indeed, you can use your PC muscle to stop the ejaculate flowing through the penis, but in that case it takes the path of least resistance backwards, and drains into the bladder. The tell-tale signs are: (1) erection and arousal are lost or diminished; and (2) the next time there is urination it appears cloudy, because of the presence of semen.
My own level of experience at the moment indicates that PNR really is just that, a point of no return, beyond which it is no more possible to prevent ejaculation than it is to prevent oneself thinking or seeing! (If I ever manage it, no doubt I’ll inform the whole world…) ;-)
Hi Duncan – Thanks for the link, I will try to find more information with a specialist given the oportunity.
But for now I guess I’m normal.
I said that any cum that didn’t pass to the urethra can be stopped by squeezing the PC muscle, perhaps that was an exaggeration of mine, that’s just the impression I get sometimes. Truth is, there is still a PNR, but it’s like there is the normal PNR, where I would ejaculate even stopping stimulation and the other PNR, where it’s slightly later, until which I can still stop squeezing the PC muscle, where I couldn’t otherwise. But to me it seems to make all the difference.
(1) Normally I have no problem ejaculating, and when I stop the orgasm I don’t lose the erection and the penis is really sensitive like in an orgasm.
(2) I don’t remember ever seeing my urination become cloudy(I can be wrong though), but I do remember seeing my cum slightly darker under some circunstances.
I have found a link that talks about an approach to multi-orgasm that is based in squeezing the PC muscle: http://www.whitelotuseast.com/MultipleOrgasm.htm .
In my experience it might take a few weeks until the muscle is strong enough.
I will try to look about retrograde ejaculation though, your theory seems to make a lot of sense.
Duncan – Yes, I’ve been keeping all this to myself… Actually did go into it a bit in Chaotopia!, all those years ago…
I find if I resist ejaculating for really prolonged periods I feel uncomfortable in the prostate area. I think it’s a case of finding a balance between one’s discomfort and the pleasant effects of no-spurting.
Another thing that’s useful for handling the energy of the dry-come: tongue against roof of mouth, as recommended in some energy yogas. It really makes everything feel smoother.
I’ll step forward and add my 2p.
‘My current understanding is that during dry orgasm, everything is operating as usual, but applying pressure on the PC muscle simply deprives the system of the blood-flow and energy it needs to fling out the semen.’
My experience started off along these lines and included using the PC muscle control john mentioned to simply prevent the ejaculation, But deliberate muscle contractions and preventing blood flow at all now seems unnecessary.
I’ve found dry orgasms occur in the context of both masturbation and sex with all engines go. That is, without slowing down, stopping or backing off. The knack I’ve found is in observing the different sensations and guiding them towards a dry orgasm rather than a wet one. It’s a gentle feeling, soft but assured. It’s also very present-moment focussed rather than future-goal focussed. Taking on full conscious/manual control buggers up the flow though, like cruising through traffic on a push bike and then suddenly thinking about everything your doing. Result = crash. I have to allow things to proceed…give the body its head. I suppose half a mind is paying attention to it. But no more.
Being relaxed I’ve found to be key. And there’s no rushing this. Attention is kept on the act rather than the goal and each sensation is enjoyed.
As for the PNR I find the feeling tends to arise and then pass as the dry orgasm occurs. Libido isn’t lost and nor is the erection. If you continue through a few cycles of dry orgasm though and THEN have a wet one, it’s game over for awhile but with a spectacular finish. Cycling dry orgasms, just like appraoching the PNR then backing off, then approaching it again and eventually going past it, seems to increase the volume and power of the resulting spurt.
Like Dave I find parts of me get uncomfortable when I resist spurting for awhile. Generally dry orgasms seem to keep my mind very content and body pretty relaxed. Like being mildly stoned. But there is a deeper more animal part of me which demands the rush and feeling of ejaculating. Guess thats the balance of wearing a meat suit.
Interesting discussion. I haven’t actually tried this method but seems like it’s worth experimenting with.
If one wants to delay orgasm then don’t keep obsessing/concentrating on the phallus, as you’re directing attention there and so are making orgasm more likely to happen. You’re setting up a phallus-non-phallus (rest of body) conflict. Solution: Make your ENTIRE body/mind a giant single phallus. Then all of your resources are greatly increased (because you’ve removed yourself who is the problem), giving ‘you’ (who is not you but a giant phallus) more control. You’re no longer a man trying to control his phallus, but a giant phallus itself.
@ORBE As long as you’re not meaning ‘phallus’ in the Lacanian sense, I can see what you’re saying! :-)
@Duncan No, not in a Lacanian sense! That could get a bit too freaky. This practice (or something like it) is supposedly part of the OTO XIth degree, where one identifies oneself with an “ejaculating penis”. More here: http://www.parareligion.ch/spermo.htm