Beginner’s Guide To Self Pleasure: Start Exploring Your Sexuality

This is your beginner’s guide to self-pleasure! In this article, we’ll not only be discussing why self-pleasure is so important and what the benefits are to self-pleasure, but we will also be giving you a few expert tips on how you can get the most out of touching yourself!

What is Self Pleasure?

Self-pleasure is widely understood to mean masturbation. However, it is important to note that self-pleasure can take many forms: everyone is unique and takes pleasure from different things, both sexually and in other aspects of their lives. 

Therefore, there’s no singular definition of self-pleasure since it’s different for everyone! Some people may even consider doing non-sexual things a form of self-pleasure since they receive pleasure from doing something for themselves!

The beauty of all of this is that you can explore and define what self-pleasure truly means to you! However, for the sake of this article, we’re going to keep it as simple as possible so you can start off slow and then explore what you like more specifically in the future, in your own time! 

Why Is Self-Pleasure Important?

Self-pleasure is beneficial for a number of reasons - some of which we’re going to share with you below! However, the main reason why self-pleasure is so important is that it’s about you giving yourself joy and creating a deeper relationship with yourself.

When you realise that you can create joy within yourself physically and completely independently, you fall a little more in love with yourself! Not only that, but knowing you can provide yourself with the benefits associated with self-pleasure whilst also exploring what lights you up sensually is pretty amazing!

It Pays To Touch Yourself: 5 Benefits of Self-Pleasure!

There’s a myriad of benefits associated with self-pleasure, but let’s take a look at just 5 of the most commonly experienced and most powerful benefits that touching yourself can bring you!

Self-pleasure reduces stress and anxiety levels due to the fact that it promotes the release of dopamine and oxytocin within the body. Dopamine is a chemical that boosts mood and promotes feelings of calmness, and oxytocin is a hormone that is linked with the feeling of love.

When dopamine and oxytocin are released, cortisol levels (the stress hormone) drop and the central nervous system is supported, therefore reducing stress and anxiety!

Amazingly, self-pleasure can provide pain relief, especially to those who are menstruating. Self-pleasure, especially when a climax occurs, has been proven to reduce period pain and uterine cramps - this is due to the relaxation of the area and the fact that both dopamine and serotonin are released.

Self-pleasure promotes deeper levels of relaxation that promote sleep and can actually improve the quality of sleep that you experience too. Even studies have shown that 65% of people who masturbate before bed sleep better than those that don’t! This applies regardless of whether orgasm is achieved.

Self-pleasure can lead to better solo sex and partnered sex since it allows you to explore yourself and find out what you like and don’t like, what positions work well for you, and may even lead you to understand any kinks or fetishes you have.

Self-pleasure is a wonderful way to boost your mood since, as mentioned above, it releases an array of feel-good hormones and chemicals within your body such as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Self-pleasure really can turn your day around!

How To Start Exploring Your Sexuality With Self-Pleasure: 10 Steps

If you’re ready to start exploring your own body and enjoying everything that comes with that, here is your beginner’s guide to self-pleasure: 10 tips to get you started!

The last thing you want when you’re trying to get into a sexy headspace is someone knocking at your door, or worse yet, walking in on you. So, the very first thing you need to do is make sure you’re fully alone. This isn’t just important to retain your privacy, but it will put you at ease and make it easier for you to properly enjoy your body without any interruptive thoughts or worries. 

If you’ve never properly looked at yourself, this is the perfect time to do so! For vulva owners, it’s not just great to have a good look and appreciate your vulva in all her beauty, but it can be useful to understand the ins and outs of what’s going on down there and how you can touch yourself in different areas - e.g, it can be useful to locate your clitoris!

You should always aim to create the best possible self-pleasure experience for yourself, and the environment that you get busy in is just as important as what it’s like to touch yourself! Create an environment that makes you feel comfortable and puts you in a more sensual mood - light some candles, put a sexy playlist on, wear cute lingerie. Do what makes you feel good!

You definitely do not have to go straight into penetration self-pleasure, unless that’s what you’re into. Instead, take things slow, ease into it, and enjoy the entirety of your body rather than trying to rush to make yourself orgasm. This is a process, and a fun one at that, so make it last and go easy on yourself!

Massage can be an incredibly erotic act, even when you’re doing it alone. It’s also a great way to connect more deeply with the entirety of your physical body. So, why not take some time to fully connect with your body by massaging yourself all over? Then, once you’ve worked through any tensions and you’re feeling connected to yourself, head down south!

An important thing to understand about self-pleasure is that it’s not a race to orgasm! In fact, it doesn’t even have to involve reaching any kind of climax. So, slow down, tease yourself, and enjoy building up the sensation that ripples through you. However, if you are looking to climax, teasing yourself can actually be incredibly effective at bringing you longer and more powerful orgasms when you get there. 

Whilst you may want to watch porn (if so, please do consume ethical porn), sometimes one of the best things you can do is use your mind to turn yourself on. Is there a specific situation you fantasize about, or maybe even a certain person? Well, now is the perfect time to think about it and let your thoughts drift off to somewhere a little naughtier!

If you are a vulva owner, you’re going to want to prioritise the clitoris! The clitoris is the most sensitive part of the vulva since it contains so many nerves. Therefore, obviously, it can provide you with a lot of sensation. If you are aiming to climax, it’s also important to note that most women need the clitoris to be stimulated for orgasm to occur. So, you may want to prioritise it!

Ringing true in both partnered and solo sex, orgasm should never be an “end goal” and you certainly shouldn’t rush to get there. Whilst orgasms are delightful, they’re also the icing on the cake, and you can take pleasure in every aspect of self-pleasure before that point. So, don’t put too much pressure on yourself to achieve the big O and enjoy all of the sensations happening to your body!

Whilst you may want to skip out on using a sex toy for the first time you experience self-pleasure, sex toys are always out there and there’s absolutely no harm in getting yourself some goodies to play with within the bedroom! Sex toys can certainly help you explore self-pleasure further and provide new experiences. So, if you fancy giving them a go, do it!

Exploring Your Sexuality Is A Never-Ending Journey, Are You Ready To Embark On It?

Self-pleasure is a beautiful, wonderful, and eye-opening thing to do - it connects your mind and body through your sensuality, allowing you to explore yourself both physically and mentally.  

If you’re ready to start exploring your body, please do so with love, with care, and without any sense of rush, pressure, or urgency. Just have fun, and we promise, you won’t regret showing yourself a little bit of love!