Sleepgasms

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Sleepgasm
Illustration by Jo Ratcliffe

For her inaugural column, Betony Vernon discusses sleepgasms...

Welcome to the Pleasure Zone... Where any and all of the questions about sex that you didn’t dare ask can be broached.

I hope that this opportunity to communicate openly about deeply intimate and/or seemingly delicate topics will help everyone who partakes in The Pleasure Zone, to open new channels of communication, as well as the doors to unexplored sexual domains.

Soon after the launch of the Pleasure Zone, we realised that the AnOther audience prefer the privacy of e-mails to twitter. So, alongside our #PleasureZone hashtag, and with all due respect for the most sacred of our secret gardens, we decided to create a place where you can communicate openly, privately and anonymously, addressing your questions and topics of interest here.

Good communication has a positive impact on our sex lives. It puts lovers on the same wavelength, reinforces intimate bonds, avoids the negative effects of performance pressure, swerves sexual delusions, and reduces the risk of over-stepping the other’s limits.

About sleepgasms...

One of the rare occasions in which humans are not expected to be good communicators is when they are sleeping. This being said, it is not uncommon to talk whilst sleeping, and some people even carry out full-blown conversations. Sleeptalkers might not remember much of what they talked about, if they remember that they talked at all.

Those, on the other hand, who are awakened by, or in the midst of a sleepgasm, will have a hard time ignoring the wet facts, even though they may not necessarily be able to remember the details of the erotic dream that hurled them back to reality in ecstasy. At some point or another, most of us experience, or have experienced sleepgasms, or wet dreams.  While they are most commonly associated with the sexuality of pubescent males, females are not exempt from these spontaneous pleasures of the night. Research reveals that sleepgasms may occur in both sexes from the age of puberty on.

The #PleasureZone enticed a woman to share the fact that she actually enjoys her sleepgasms more than any other orgasm she has yet to experience.

Whether we are dreaming, or making love, the brain actually emits the same brain-wave frequencies – Alpha and Theta. The Alpha brain wave frequency is associated REM sleep, as well as with the pleasures that lead to orgasm. During orgasm, on the other hand, while the body writhes uncontrollably with pleasure the brain, for a few otherworldly seconds, benefits from the hypnotic, ultra-deep cerebral slumber that is associated with the emission of the Theta brainwave frequency.

The Alpha-Theta brain waves are associated with physical and mental relaxation – essential to the orgasmic experience – whether one is fast asleep, or wide awake (and able to fully take advantage of the moment!)

"Mae West sustains that if we are dreaming too much about sex, then we probably need to be having more sex"

In her book On Sex Heath and ESP (1975) Mae West sustains that if we are dreaming too much about sex then we probably need to be having more sex. Today we know that erotic dreams, including those that result in orgasm, are not necessarily synonymous with a need for more sex, lack of sexual satisfaction or other sources of anxiety. I am quite certain that if Mae West had experienced earthshattering sleepgasms herself, she would have been as obsessed with lucid dreaming as she was with ESP (Extra Sensorial Perception!)

Sleepgasms are just one of the many ways human beings experience sexual pleasure. They are totally normally, and I can’t actually think of a better alternative to alarm clocks and wake-up calls.

But… when we are conscious, and able to perceive and therefore enjoy the ecstatic exchange of energy that brings the unique pleasures of orgasm to manifest, the benefits we experience are threefold – body, mind and spirit are simultaneously engaged.

Learning to focus on and completely abandon ourselves to pleasure, whether we are making love with a partner, or to ourselves, is essential to experiencing enhanced sexual satisfaction.