Recently the spiritual sex technique of karezza has been bouncing around the World Wide Web, touted as a way to bolster intimacy between struggling couples. I know when you hear “spiritual sex” you probably imagine lots of sweating and chanting, so let me preface that karezza isn’t extreme in action, but rather extreme in idea: sex with no orgasm. You shouldn’t even come close to the brink of orgasm. No orgasms allowed.
If “what’s the point of that?!” just crossed your mind, then perhaps you’re exactly the type of person who should be considering karezza-esque tactics. Now don’t you give me the stink-eye. I’m not telling you to give up on your O’s. I’m on a pretty strict Orgasms For Breakfast diet myself. Just hear me out.
I originally stumbled upon this idea on Huff Post, and the writer stated “When it comes to sex, reaching orgasm should be any couple’s ultimate goal.” Hate to disagree with you, Huffy, but I find that statement to be completely false. I can have an orgasm alone. When I’m playing with a friend, the focus should be on the shared experience, and that is why I believe karezza is helping couples with their intimacy. On top of its meditative properties, karezza is retraining the way we look at sex.
Most people, even those who love their partners deeply, have sex to feel pleasure—ideally, through orgasm. But an orgasm turns sexual activity into an act with a final goal. Sometimes, a final goal can be stimulating and exciting. Other times, it can feel like a deadline—something you HAVE to reach. Straining for an orgasm puts a serious damper on emotional connection.
In that light, I understand the idea of karezza.
Karezza emphasizes affection between partners, and while ideally you would like to think traditional intercourse does the same, it often does not. While physically, sex brings you as close to another as humanly possible—you’re literally penetrating or being penetrated—think about the many ways (and positions!) you can have sex with little or no affection at all.
So what exactly IS karezza? Karezza means “caress” in Italian, and techniques involve a lot of kissing, a lot of staring deep into one another’s eyes, and often not too much moving. It’s a very still practice—no rise in heart rate, no shortness of breath. Similar to meditation, it is grounding. I can see this appeal, completely. Additionally, in focusing on everything but the orgasm, pressure to perform is removed, and connection is improved.
Obviously, karezza needs to be something decided on mutually. I often like to pull surprises on my guy in bed. I think intense eye contact while lying extremely still would get old after 15 minutes (seconds) if it wasn’t discussed previously. Basically, I don’t think it works if you’re not both doing it.
Zucchini and I practice karezza. Just kidding! Don't call PETA!
But what I want to know is, can’t I have my orgasm and eat it too?
If the point of karezza is to improve intimacy between partners, can we incorporate karezza techniques into our normal sex routine? Instead of focusing on what’s to come (double entendre alert!) can we use foreplay to focus on connecting with one another? Lots of non-genital touching, kissing, nuzzling and heavy eye contact?
Eye contact is really huge—so many people have sex with the lights off and eyes closed, which visually and emotionally shuts out your partner and puts your focus solely on what you’re feeling. It turns your sexual experience into a solo session. By keeping your eyes open you are exploring a shared intimate experience—which should be the real goal of sex, dammit!
Can we incorporate more karezza techniques into both foreplay and actual coreplay? Perhaps it would help blend the two together, streamlining the experience as opposed to segmenting it into “before” and “during” sex. Oh, now I’m excited!
Am I being too new agey for all of you? Do you want me to shut up so you can keep having sex with the lights off and your eyes closed? I wanna know!
The Lusty Vegan is a lifestyle and sex column focusing on living and loving as a twenty-something year old vegan. More rants from Zoe Eisenberg can be found at www.sexytofu.com. Follow her on Twitter @Sexytofublog
I really liked the idea of this initially because I’m of a similar outlook on the subject but something happened to me as I was reading; when the lights being off or lack of eye contact was described as a connection breaker, it occurred to me that this wasn’t the only point of the mindset I saw as a fixation, similar to that of attempting orgasm as a goal it’s self. Receiving your primary sense of someone through touch alone can be very connective and intimate, just as doing so through eye contact can be. Having seen a statement to the contrary, having occurred within the excitement from prospects of intimacy superior to that of seeking orgasm, I was reminded of my reason for identifying with the intention behind the practice of karezza in the first place: presupposition and expectation can interfere with the organic process of intimacy. Lights off is lights on; trying to achieve anything can interfere with the process of intimacy … having an orgasm and focusing on things that won’t lead to orgasm can both be targets for this potentially disconnective fixation.
Any … even method … can be harmful to connection. I’ve found that methods or the conscious manipulation of physically connective states are less likely to interfere with intimacy when they are inductive as opposed to deductive … that is to say, understood and experienced as they occur of their own course in expression, rather than investigated and implemented. While the push for orgasm has a primal physical momentum behind it, most of what occurs to make that into something interfering with connection does so not from the fluctuations during sex of the natural urge to feel this peak happen, but from the conscious attempt to attain it, as goal. This can bring forward the isolation of intent, crowding out the sharing of that momentum or fluctuation … and in that way, it can be fueled by fears, by pain, by a sense of general inadequacy or failure (or essentially that, negative in connotation, which is contrast to the deep and favorable feelings of achieving an orgasm with someone). “The sense of the tragic increases and diminishes with sensuality.” Those feelings or subconscious cues aren’t wrong or harmful of themselves and can fuel some of the momentum behind a push for orgasm even organically, but the deductive manipulation of sex can increase disconnection because those negative feelings or subconscious cues aren’t as likely to be shared, intuitively in the experience of sex, with one’s partner when the conscious mind is motivated by them to achieve something good in contrast. It’s escapism, really; both working to achieve orgasm and working to avoid working to achieve orgasm … can allow this dynamic to occur. It is the contrivance of an intimate experience, it’s self, that presents the sort of disconnection that karezza seems to attempt the avoidance of, but I get the sense that it is simply another version of the same … although with a caring and possibly more connective intention behind it’s implementation.
It makes me angry though that people are moved to further fixation in the backlash, as response, to the abundance of fixation already coming between our intimacy … because it isn’t fair that beings with such potential for connection are thrust into sometimes identical solutions to the lack thereof. Orgasms are like a lot else in life. Need is a relation through which one may further love another, but it can also be the end of it. There are levels of predation inherent in sharing something with another being … they won’t be eradicated but getting them on our side (and out of connection’s way) is something that, I’ve found, occurs most when it is simply allowed to. The heights of that allowance manifest when it is not attainment of even intimacy that is the goal. But that sounds definitive too doesn’t it? Our goals of intimacy/connection or self-oriented pleasure can both become arbitrary when we care about another person in the act of sex. Caring also, can become a goal (with sense of the tragic at hand and throughout life) and therein an obstacle to it’s self or the sharing of it with another. I think on karezza as I do on Zen; it can be useful as a means to learn, as most things can, but it tells it’s most useful secret when fully experienced and then abandoned in favor of simply existing. The intimacy of experiencing something with another being cannot long be guided sufficiently to create it’s self … it occurs between two and is customized for every moment and every variation of their identities. Intimacy of this kind, means that. It means it.
Anyway I just Oed so WHATEVARR
I hope you felt it too.
Ahh such an insightful response. I agree that any expectation can interrupt connection. Like your take on eyes open/closed , too
Thanks Zoe … insightful posts should provoke insightful responses (I had my eyes closed when I wrote it).
That sounded like a dig. It wasn’t; I was being cute. I like this place I just discovered it.
Your cat’s name is rad!!
keep on
No worries! I completely agree that intimacy and intimate experiences are unique between two people thus hard to guide or define.
“Receiving your primary sense of someone through touch alone can be very connective and intimate, just as doing so through eye contact can be. ”
I really dig that. I do think eyes closed can heighten the sensation of touch and connect you but in general feel most eyes closed scenarios tend to dampen, not heighten , connection.
Staring into someone’s eyes during sex can be extremely intense and emotional – sadly some people find this awkward .
Do you have any experience with karezza? I’d love a take on it from someone who has tried it
Zo-
This is actually one of my favorite articles you have written. I think the anticipation of practicing would be great foreplay. Also, we do get a bit self-centered (not selfish) but self-centered during that moment that should be shared.
Kerraza is a new vocabulary word in my list. We need more intimate spiritual techniques included in the physical relationship. And for those of us that are trying to grow spiritually, how much fun to sit and gaze into each others eyes in order to connect?. Isn’t that what we do when we first fall head-over -heels-giddy in love ?!
I wonder if that is major bonding moment from deep within? Great article and super insightful.
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