Orgasm, like crying, is a release system for the body. In order to be fully felt, orgasms require relaxation, presence, and body awareness.
Climax is not the main event
The familiar model for a sexual experience is arousal, genital stimulation, moving toward a peak and rest period. While this approach can deliver a short intense pleasure release, climax is not always the main event. When we move from a goal oriented focus to increased receptiveness to pleasure, the relationship with sex changes from something that peaks and ends, to something that grows and expands.
Edging for wellbeing
Picture a scale from one to ten, where ten is orgasm. As you reach a seven or an eight, you can feel it beginning to move toward release. Rather than shutting the feeling down, in order to stop the process, our approach is to get more attune to the body, connection, and sensation, as a way to develop interoceptive awareness: feeling from the inside of the body. Each time you surf the edge instead of going over it, you widen your capacity to feel. The energy has nowhere else to go than circulate through the whole body.
Your gear box for pleasure
Breath, hip movements, voice and the pelvic floor, and heart connection are your key instruments for sex and pleasure. By training these tools during self pleasure, you can train your body to respond differently when you are with a partner. This is also why sex can last for a long time, with different peaks, and valleys, as the genitals go through their natural cycles of relaxation, excitation, connection, pause, etc.. Coordinating, breath, voice, pushing and squeezing the pelvic floor, micro movements of the hips, and staying connected to touch, and the heart centre, create more ejaculatory choice to last longer, and expand sexual pleasure throughout the whole body.
Try this
As many of these practices require privacy, which might not be immediately available, I invite you to simply imagine the practice. Visualise, sensualise, how you would do this practice, and what it would feel like.
Containment: building without release
Arrive in your body with a few slow breaths to the lower belly. Connect to the muscles you use to increase, or stop the urinary stream. Put your attention on the perineum. which is the small bit of skin, and muscle that is between the anus and balls, or anus and entrance of the vagina.
Begin to feel your own skin, connecting to the sensations, slowly. As arousal builds, practice going towards your edge, and each time you feel yourself approaching a peak, slow down and gently push your pelvic floor, feeling the perineum expand outwards. As your system settles, begin again. Build, arrive at the edge, contain.
Do this three to five times, noticing how warmth and sensations start to spread beyond the genitals.
When you feel complete, either have the release, or simply rest and let the energy settle on its own until next time.
Science check
What about 'blue balls'? Also called epididymal hypertension, it is a temporary congestion in the genital tissues after prolonged arousal without release. It is mild, harmless, and resolves on its own whether or not orgasm follows. The blood that gathered during arousal simply returns to circulation as the body settles.
Chalett, J.M., & Nerenberg, L.T. (2000). 'Blue Balls': A Diagnostic Consideration in Testiculoscrotal Pain in Young Adults. Pediatrics, 106(4), 843.