A year later and not sure of my progress

Posted by: @plugnduck

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God I wish I would get what I so desire. I wish I at least could get confidence that I am on the right path and not wasting my time. Or figure out what I am doing wrong and correct it. 

I am saddened to hear that you have not progressed as you had hoped. There can be many reasons for this and I invite you to re-read the thread Identifying Obstacles to Progress to help you sort through some obstacle you may not have thought about. Then take a look at the thread Identifying Facilitators to Progress to see if there iare some things in there to alter your current path forward.

Unfortunately, there are some men who just seem to have an inherently unresponsive prostate but it sounds like that is not your situation. This journey you are on can be complex in deciphering the combination to unlock your orgasmic potential. Be patient, be experimental, go outside your normal routine and try different approaches. You have felt some response from your prostate so the potential is there, it is a matter of attuning your focus to those subtle sensations to allow them to grow. Good luck moving forward.

Good Vibes to You!

@rumel Thanks.

I dont know what my problems are or what the obstacles are. It could be mind based or body based or both. Im certainly no zen master. I do get some mind chatter and cant concentrate and focus that easily for long periods of time without distractions. I sometimes have fear or anxiety, memories etc come up. I dont know how to get over these things tho. Its one thing to know your mind is not still and another thing entirely to get it to still.

I have changed my whole diet to as healthy as I can thinking the issue could be some bodily thing.

My main feeling to all the advice I see is that I dont know how to do it in such a way that it works. Every day I give at least attention to my prostate. I lay down and feel my body. I try to relax. But so far I cant say I am any more relaxed or better at it than a year ago.

I started my journey to learn this kind of trade almost the same time as you, a little over a year ago. I think I'm on the right track, as I have exprienced some wonderful things during this time. Here are the 3 key things which I attribute my success to, maybe you can find value in it. For context, I don't use THC, weed is illegal in my country.

* Deep, rhytmic breathing. I remember at first it was very exhausting for me to breath like this, so I had to practice this a lot. I practiced almost every day when I went to bed, before sleep. It still took at least a few months at first until I got it right (where I should direct the air) to produce peasure, and a few more months till it became effortless to breath like this. After that it became second nature for me to breath like this, I do it without noticing.

And why is it important to breath like this for me? Currently I like the "do nothing" method, and I treat my sessions as relaxations. I don't want to flex my PC or anal muscles during a session, and I don't need to. Deep rhytmic breathing (with some light reverse kegel at the peak of inhalation) provides enough stimulation to start the pleasure for me.

* Mindfulness, relaxation. While I practiced breathing, I also practiced mindfulnes, every night, to focus on my feelings. At first I couldn't focus for more than 1-2, at best a few minutes at the same time. After that my mind started to wander on random thoughts and I blamed myself for it. But as I practiced for more and more, I became forgiving with myself for wandering away, steered back my thoughts gently.

* Omega 3, fish oil, dark chocolate. I stumbled upon ZaneBlue's diet idea here in the forum just recently, by chance. I don't want to repeat her advices or cautionary notes here, you can find them too if you search for the words omega and fish oil in this forum, they are in posts dating back 15-20 years.

Long story short I've been taking fish oil supplements for 2 months now, and the effects are huge. I think I addressed a body based obstacle in me with it.

@marvelousweasel101 

Hi. I do practice deep breathing sometimes. It helps for keeping the mind alert. Maybe I should do it more.

I added omega 3 pills to my diet a few days ago. Made from the algae that fish get their omega 3 from.

Hey man,

Sorry to hear about your struggles. I can certainly relate to them. For me it's been 5 years and I still struggle with achieving orgasms. More than half of my sessions are duds. You can checkout my thread where I've been documenting my journey since achieving my first super O. https://community.aneros.com/forum/general-discussion/i-finally-had-full-blown-multiple-full-body-super-orgasms-but .As you can see, even after that, the journey is very non-linear. There are months of plateaus and struggling.

Here's the essentials I've found out by myself:

• Porn is the killer - if you watch porn, I recommend stopping because it poisons your mind from being able to recognise subtle feelings aneros gives you.
• It's all about your mind - no matter the techniques and positions you use, your mind remains the essential part for being able to achieve pleasure in this way. If your mind is occupied by other things, it's unlikely the pleasure will have the place to manifest. There are many ways to alleviate that, so you will have to find what works for you.
• You have to recognise when you are actually aroused for the session. In my opinion this is a very important feeling (especially for a beginner) that is related to everything I have mentioned above. Abstinence (at least at first) and reduction of porn lets you understand these subtle feelings. Arousal also kind of clears your mind - at least it pushes away everything else while you are aroused. Personally for me, relaxation and breathing techniques never really worked, but they don't really matter when I am actually in the mood for the session. I listen to the music and let my horny fantasies take me into sort of trance. The fantasies lets my mind comprehend the pleasure aneros is giving me. This is the state I try to achieve in every session, because only there I am able to achieve orgasm.

@pirontras 

I try to do both, with and without porn. I will almost always get drowsy and half asleep or literally fall asleep if I close my eyes. No success without porn. I will lose focus and fall asleep or get drowsy or in the rare cases where I dont I cant keep focus anyway and get bored after few minutes.

Posted by: @plugnduck

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@pirontras 

 

I try to do both, with and without porn. I will almost always get drowsy and half asleep or literally fall asleep if I close my eyes. No success without porn. I will lose focus and fall asleep or get drowsy or in the rare cases where I dont I cant keep focus anyway and get bored after few minutes.

 

Looks to me like you've got some work to do if you want to achieve some success in the near future. Porn feels like a swimming wheel for a drowning man, until you learn to swim on your own and realize it's a bag of bricks dragging you down.

I need to release some frustrations. At times I feel doubtful and sad over not having success. I do my best to keep a positive outlook but the mind can do only so much when the body feels. I dont know how to release these emotions. I want to cry. May we all find success.

@pirontras I have gone times without porn. I did one month no porn but I didnt notice any improvement.

I hope you find what works for you. Don't give up, but also don't let negative feelings be associated with this activity. If it causes you so much pain, maybe you need a break? I've been there myself, when every failed sessions feels worse and worse. The best way is to just appreciate what each sessions brings you, even if it is just feeling relaxed.

Posted by: @plugnduck

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I will almost always get drowsy and half asleep or literally fall asleep if I close my eyes. No success without porn. I will lose focus and fall asleep or get drowsy or in the rare cases where I dont I cant keep focus anyway and get bored after few minutes.

I understand this pretty well as it seems to be a problem for me too!  Now I don't use porn for a session unless you count audio porn.  But the whole thing about lying down doing nothing without sleeping is something that doesn't come easily to me...unless it's at night when I'm trying to sleep, ironically!  And I have a problem with my mind racing and I sometimes have a pretty hard time reining it in, though it has gotten easier with time. 

I can't tell you what the solution is because I'm not there yet, but I have made progress, sometimes tremendous progress!  If you think you've made none at all then I'd encourage you to keep a journal for each session you have and note what you're doing each time and if there are little differences that you try.  I've been at this since 2018 and while I wish there were just some formula that would get me there easier and quicker, sometimes it's not like that for some men.  But I do make progress, and there is pleasure to be had.  Sometimes great pleasure. 

Thanks guys

@faith-manages 

I am similar, I close my eyes and try to concentrate and my mind starts to fall asleep. At night I sometimes have the opposite problem like you. For me one big issue is the level of abstraction in advice given. I know that it comes with the territory, there is no other way to give advice. But its so vague. Like let go, relax. Simple ideas, but in reality how do you do something that you dont know what it is? Lets say you see a language written that you cant read, and someone gives you advice, oh, you cant read it because its written in the language of "Chacinguamarokia", just read it in "Chacinguamarokia" and it will make sense. This is what much advice (not just related to aneros, but general mental/emotional/life advice slogans and motivational sentences are to me). Its like a teacher telling a kid to just concentrate when the problem with the kid is that they dont know HOW to concentrate. There is much advice on what the issues are, what the solutions are, but very little advice on how to actually DO something that is clear and tangible. The things I can actually do are like I can generate a specific thought, I can physically move my body. I can visualize. I can stop a thought for a moment. I can relax my muscles to an extent. What I CANT do is control what I feel. I cant generate positive emotions or make unpleasant emotions vanish. And I feel so much advice assumes I can already do what I cant do. Or the advice assumes a very simplistic view of the human emotional and psychological complex. Or maybe it is that simple to other people and I am strange. But for example often advice assumes that things like frustration etc are abstract thoughts that you can just "let go" when its an actual bodily feeling that may not even be generated by your conscious thoughts.

@plugnduck What you need to do can't be adequately described.  If you look at all the different people offering advice they all try to quantify it from their perspective but there's no universal set of steps that everyone can successfully follow.  You say you're doing a lot of reading here, so I don't know of any specific bit of advice to point you to.  Unfortunately you'll have to make it up as you go along, as I have.  Just don't expect it to take only a few months, because you're already past that.  I've read testimonials though, from people who have kept trying for a decade and FINALLY are having Super-Os.  I hope it doesn't take that long for you! 

But I do believe that relaxing is important, in fact I even wrote a series of posts on it and have been meaning to update it.  The thing is, it's not necessarily full-body relaxation (you've got that already), but relaxing your anus and perhaps focusing tension farther forward (behind your penis, in your prostate...generally your PC muscle). 

.

@marvelousweasel101 speaking of The Orgasmic Diet, I have the book, and have been taking

fish oil/algae oil (2000mg EPA, 2000mg DHA)

dark chocolate (somewhere between 0.5-1 oz)

Centrum (recommended daily dose)

OJ (about 1c)

ZMA (recommended dose, but I don't take it every night)

things like that, but not necessarily following the food guidelines of the diet. 

What do you specifically do differently following the diet than you used to before? 

@faith-manages The difference I do compared to two months ago, are actually just 2 things. I take

* fish oil (1800mg EPA, 1200 mg DHA)

* dark chocolate, give or take the same amount like you

It's nothing new, but I also take Vitamin D3 3000 IU, and some kind of general multivitamin pill. I also try to eat healthy.

The changes I feel since I take fish oil, are actually exactly what the old posts desrcibed. It is not the source of dry-orgasms, but it is much easier to achive them for me:

* P-waves started to come much-much easier. And not just during session, but also when I sit at the desk. I haven't tried, but I bet I could achive chairgasm, if I would focus on the feelings.

* Two months ago I was at a stage where I could feel my pulse, the heartbeats, strongly in my groin, or in my abdomen during sessions, but they were more of an annoyance, than the source of pleasure. Since then the pulse started to facilitate involuntaries, and became the source of immense pleasure.

* Previously I was taking too much care how the p-tab is positioned, how deep the toy goes. Tempo and Aless sessions taught me with the aid of fish oil, that all that matters is that I focus on the feelings I have, however faint those feelings are. With the p-waves and involuntaries coming easier, it became much easier to focus on my feelings, and keep my mind from wandering. Simply there is always something happening, I don't get bored.

* Thanks to the other beneficial effects of fish oil, I sleep much-much better. Previously it was common that I woke up in the middle of the night, and just couldn't sleep back, because my mind started to come up with things from work, etc... Now I can sleep back almost every time. I'm well rested since then, and I feel much better because of this in general.

* I do my sessions during bedtime, and I always felt drowsy and fell asleep before, it was a problem for me too. This has improved a lot, because I get better sleep and I feel well rested as I mentioned above.

I have taken omega 3 oil for only a few days. I do notice that my prostate has been a bit more active than normal. I cant yet say if it is because of omega 3 oil. I started adding pure 100% chocolate powder to my porridge after @MarvelousWeasel101 mentioned it.

Few months ago I stopped eating heavily processed foods. Stopped eating foods with added oils after I noticed I would get mild umcomfortable sensations in my heart area after eating oily foods. Stopped eating milk, eggs, meats because I had the heart symptoms aftter those also. I have noticed small changes. I dont get nightmares anymore. I used to have them regularly. I have less anxiety. 

I'm glad that the Orgasmic Diet is working so well for you guys.  Adding 100% chocolate powder to something is actually an ingenious idea I hadn't ever considered.  @plugnduck you could get liquid fish oil from Zone Diet and just add your fish oil that way too instead of taking pills!  (to my knowledge it does not actually taste like fish)

@faith-manages Taking the pills is fairly easy to swallow. Its oil inside the pill anyway so its the same stuff as liguid form with the exception that its not fish oil but rather omega3 from hemp and flax and algae.

1. After more than a week taking the omega3 I dont notice any overall improvement. The first few days were just one of the better days. Its a cycle, I get one or two better days and think that things are starting to improve then I am back to baseline. And that seems to repeat.

Posted by: @plugnduck

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I wish I at least could get confidence that I am on the right path and not wasting my time. Or figure out what I am doing wrong and correct it. 

I think a large part of it is deciding that you have "arrived", and giving yourself permission to feel it. If you have your head filled with doubt, you might be waiting for something else to arrive, something more, something that will force you into a place that you won't visit voluntarily. It's a familiar trope from traditional masturbation, so it makes sense, but giving up on that wait, being content with the present moment, and just flowing with it, with no other thought... now that's a trick.

Ultimately you don't know how this thing will "hit", it might come on suddenly during a moment of peace and empty-minded contentedness with "what is". It can seem paradoxical compared to the training we all had with traditional masturbation, but exploring upside-down-world, going against your own presumptions can be surprising. Throw it all away, repeatedly.

@clenchy 

I do that also. Or not do but be. The issue I have with empty mindedness is that its not something I can maintain for long periods of time. Heck the act of trying to maintain it is itself noice. I can either try to keep my mind focused and empty which takes effort and isnt relaxing or I can try to relax and let go not trying to control my mind which takes my mind out of the prostate area and makes me forget what I am doing.

Most of the time I try to keep a balance between relaxation and focus so I dont get off track and fall asleep or start thinking about something else but also dont get into this tight focused straining effort to keep my attention unmoving and mind empty.

Falling asleep is a big problem for me. Before I fall asleep my mind will start mini dreaming, these are trains of thought that I fall into that are absurd and make no sense and the moment I snap out of them there is a realization that whatever the thought was made no sense but also it instantly slips through my fingers so I cant recall it. 

The amount of time I have put into this in the last almost two years is pretty huge overall. All the advice I hear I try to follow and I try everything but I dont see results. How can it be and why that after more than 100 sessions I do not get better results than before? I do kegels almost every day. I try to learn to separate the spincher and pc muscle and I think I have but I get doubts because I dont get results. Surely after over hundreds of days of doing kegels and trying to separate the two I can do that sufficiently? I can hold and then release and get the muscles to flutter but that does not lead to anything. 

Posted by: @plugnduck

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The issue I have with empty mindedness is that its not something I can maintain for long periods of time.

I think the trick is to get the ball rolling. When you reach the right feedback state, and good feelings are flowing, it becomes easier to just be with the sensations and drift along with it. It won't take any effort, and you won't fall asleep. You can let some parts of yourself sleep, while the part that accepts sensation stays awake. That's how I'd describe my ideal state anyway. Not that I reach it much these days.

@clenchy  Yeah true. I suspect that people who vouch letting go and relaxing and meditation as the solution are people who get pleasure easily started. Because in my experience when I do get pleasure waves focusing is effortless. But when I dont get them, my mind can only focus for so long. I think relaxation is important to an extent but not to any superhuman levels. I dont think a buddha like meditation ability is needed.

A lot of advice to me sounds like this: how do I juggle 3 balls, when I try they always fall down? Answer: once you get them going and can keep them up its easier to maintain them in the air. 

@plugnduck Yeah I guess advice about a lot of different things can be like that. Honestly it took me years to get that mindset dialed in. I could lie down, insert the aneros, and be riding pleasure in 10-15 minutes, because I went straight into that mental state. I couldn't even describe it, but I had a memory of it and I could load it back into my brain. Once I had that going, I never had problems with focus again. Before that, I'd get bored and start day-dreaming, or get impatient and try to push things. But of course that doesn't help you much now, I'm just saying it can get easier eventually, and the focus problem kind of solves itself if some other things fall into place.

I suppose until you get something like that worked out, the goal might be to stop boredom/frustration creeping in. What helped me there was treating every session as an experiment. I used to read the forum here and find a new technique that sounded interesting. Then the next session would be all about doing that thing, even if it was something simple like remembering to push out a reverse-kegel, or paying extra attention to one sensation or another. As long as I had something "to do", I could always return to that, even if the session was otherwise boring. If nothing else, it could at least be "scientifically" interesting 😂. Adding nipple stimulation also helped to keep me anchored to what I was doing, even if it wasn't that pleasurable, it was still vaguely erotic and mentally on-task.

In recent years I've had my doubts about the value of advice at all. Especially when I discover some weird thing I'm doing that was holding me back, something so obscure nobody could have guessed about it in a million years. Which is why I think we need to take on the role of scientists and investigators within ourselves, and advice is just something to think about. I also agree there could be bodily factors involved too... we're a whole ecosystem.

You sound the same as me when I started and it took me a long time to "get it". I was totally unresponsive and I hesitant to say but quite a few years of on and off attempts. Even after all that time I have only just figured out what P-Waves are! The thing I would say is keep going it's really worth the effort 😀.

On a more practial note here are the things that made the difference to me (many have already been suggested above):

1. Controversal, but weed really helped as I struggled to let go without just falling asleep. If I have just a bit now my prostrate starts twitching on its own.

2. Nipple stimulation is critical for me and really focuses the pleasure. However, it did take some time to bed in but once it did, wow!

3. Counter to the relaxation was simulating hip bucking to porn particularly with vocalisations and the nipple stimulation. This helped the large muscle "shakes". These then became involuntary but did pose the opposite problem of trying not to buck to much later in the journay.

4. Contracting doesn't do much for me but lightly pushing the toy out whilst remaining still really hits the spot and you will know when that happens (I have found myself moaning without even thinking).

5. Thinking of trying to build to a cresendo is counter to the session. I ended up just with handfree wet orgasms (which are great but not a patch on what can be acheived).

In summary I initially got nowhere just relaxing and had force things to make progress then fall back to relaxing to improve the intensity.

I'm still learning but I have had what I can only decribe as out of body experiences (with and without the Aneros) so I'm glad I perceivered

Hope that helps but don't give up.

Weed could potentially help but its not something I have access to or want to take due to being addicted to it in the past. I do nipple stimulation and it does give a boost to the prostate. I can get involuntaries to happen but no idea how to let pleasure grow.

Posted by: @plugnduck

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Weed could potentially help but its not something I have access to or want to take due to being addicted to it in the past.

As an alternative to cannabis would you consider Microdosing & Aneros?. It is a very promising protocol. 

Good Vibes to You!

@rumel 

I would consider it if it werent illegal.