Spiritual Seeker: I came across your website. I’m a 49 year old male. I am just getting into Tantra. I just purchased the book you recommended, “Divine Sexuality”. I had a few questions I was hoping you might be able to answer for me:

How often should I self-pleasure?
For how long should I self-pleasure?
How often should a man my age who is in good physical health ejaculate?

Sarita:  Hello Spiritual Seeker,

I receive many questions on the subject of male masturbation, and by answering you I am simultaneously answering much more around this subject. Thank you for having the courage to ask this question. Too many times, people who are on a spiritual path believe that sex and spirituality are not compatible, when in actual fact, sex and spirit are one. We only have one energy. Our sexual energy is the fuel which motivates us to seek many varied and refined aspects of our being. If we have not known the expansiveness of physical full body orgasm, how can we hope to experience the orgasm with the universe? They are simply two poles of one energy.

Self pleasuring is a very important way to cultivate and refine our  sexual energy. It is unfortunate that many people use self pleasuring and masturbation almost like having a sneeze, just a release of pent up energy and emotional stagnation. It can be much more than that. Through sexual exploration with ourselves, we can learn to circulate our life force energy in many creative ways, supporting us to be a dynamic and creative lover of life in its myriad forms.

It is interesting to note that it has been found using ultra sound imaging that babies in the womb touch their genitals. And from birth onwards, if babies are not conditioned around genital touching, then masturbation and self pleasuring is a natural part of every child’s life experience and exploration. It is important to understand that when a child is doing this, it is not sexual in the way adults think of sexuality. The hormones are not ready for sexuality as we know it till puberty or later. For the child, it is comforting and also awakening of an all over the body pleasure state.

As the scientist Candice Pert says, “Bliss is hardwired.” We are made to know and live in a blissful energetic flowing aliveness. If a child is made to think that masturbation and self pleasuring is bad or wrong, this will then bring confusion and stress to his or her being. It is like saying, “You are not allowed to feel at home in your body. You must feel unease and discomfort about the fact that you crave to feel pleasure.” This opens the door to a life of suffering. When the hormones become too overpowering to ignore, then a young adolescent will be propelled to take up masturbation, but because of the conditioning he or she has received, there will be a tendency to perform this act furtively, hurriedly and in a state of guilt.

When we masturbate, we are essentially training ourselves sexually. So the body picks up the way we masturbate as a program, “This is how sex must be experienced.” Then, later, when we get together with a lover, we will continue the same way we have self trained through  masturbation, during sex. This is one reason why so many people have all kinds of sexual dysfunction, including premature ejaculation, retarded ejaculation, impotence, frigidity, vaginismus, etc. The way we have trained ourselves to masturbate and self pleasure can be re-written and our sexuality can be reprogrammed. This takes time and patience. You are asking how often should you self pleasure and for how long? Just imagine the night of your dreams with a lover.

How long would you like to make love, if you could? How long would it take you to fuck  your lover to God? This answers your question how long to practice self pleasuring, because self pleasuring is the training ground for sexual union with another. Being a woman, and knowing how divine it is to ride waves of pleasure far into the night with a lover, I would say a minimum of two hours self pleasuring will be a wonderful place to begin. If you do not move into ejaculation with each self pleasuring experience, then you can self pleasure daily if you like. This will keep your body humming and alive with joy.

Allow your body to let you know how often quality self pleasuring is needed. The body is very wise. It is a mental based sexual urge that takes us into destructive sexual habits. You ask how often to ejaculate if you are a man of 49. This depends on your state of health among other factors. It also depends on how much you have ejaculated in the past. Because I don’t know these details about you, I can only speak generally.

A teenager may be able to ejaculate daily with no ill effect. A man in his 20s, perhaps 3 times a week. A man in his 30s, 2 times a week. A man in his 40s, 1 time per week. A man in his 50s, once every two weeks. A man in his 60s, once a month. And so on. A prescription for excellent sexual health is to make love often but only ejaculate sometimes when men do that, they can maintain a young man’s libido and erection in an older man’s body. The fact is that testosterone which fuels male libido gradually decreases as a man ages. A man carries a program in his body for a certain quantity of ejaculation over his life span. If he overdoes or wastes this precious substance, his life force energy will decrease more rapidly. This is one reason why conservation of semen practice is really important.

There are two main ways to achieve conservation of semen. one being to overpower the build up of sexual desire and control it. The other way is to relax below the orgasmic threshold, becoming so relaxed that sexual tension and build-up to ejaculation is not possible. Men who are masters of conservation walk a tightrope between control and relaxation as a way to conserve semen. Energy follows intent, and so when you are able to place your intention very clearly and powerfully on allowing your sexual energy to move in and up instead of down and out, you will automatically discover a tube of light opening through the central channel of your body, from your perineum to your crown chakra. Send your sexual build up through this tube of light, all the way to your crown. By doing this, you will be able eventually to experience full body orgasm without ejaculation. And as you master this method, you will even be able to experience multiple orgasms in this

way. When you do this through masturbation, you can experiment till you know your own body perfectly, like listening to a good engine of a car purring in just the right way. People speak about horse whispering. Every man needs to learn, ‘Lingam whispering!’ When you are adept at this and then experiment with it in sexual union with a lover, you may be amazed how you and your woman will become much more deeply satisfied with this style of sexuality rather than the stereotype sexual
experience. I hope this answer is of help to you. We go deeper into this subject in the Master Lover group and also in the couples Tantra Training. Perhaps one day you will be able to attend a group. In the meantime, blessings for a wonderful self pleasuring adventure!

Love,
Sarita