It’s fairly gorgeous in Sonoma County this time of year and the days are getting warmer. This afternoon I rode in my car with my windows down and the radio blasting. The song was Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It.” It doesn’t matter as much what song it was as that it is a full-throated, lusty song, one that you have to open up your mouth to sing and open it big. And you have to open up your chest and throat, too.
When we open up to sing that fully, especially songs that have a deep, lower resonance to them, we are triggering and using our vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is a big one. It’s long and it branches a lot of times as it snakes throughout our body. It innervates the voicebox, the throat, the upper palate, the heart, the lungs and portions of the digestive system. You can look it up on any resource site to understand it better.
But what those research sites don’t often say is that not only does it innervate the throat and chest, it is directly connected to the cervix and uterus. What does this mean for women’s pleasure? Beverly Whipple and Barry Komisaruk have investigated the vagus nerve and deep vaginal orgasms in women who have spinal cord injuries. This spinal cord compromise causes them to lack feeling in their lower extremities, thus not allowing them the capacity to feel orgasms by other nerve structures (There are four major nerve pathways to orgasm for women and three for men). The vagus nerve doesn’t travel through the spinal cord, however. Deep, penetrative sexual activities that affect the cervix and stimulate the uterus trigger orgasm via this nerve. These women can have and feel the orgasms.
Here is what I am speculating: That opening up the mouth, chest cavity (through slow, deep breathing) and orgasmic capacities via the vagus nerve may lead to powerful orgasms and possibly multiples and female ejaculation. When women emit deep, low sounds from their abdomens and with their mouths wide open this can sometimes lead to longer lasting, powerful orgasms and even female ejaculation. This all makes sense if you consider that the vagus nerve connects all of these functions, throat, chest, cervix and uterus, and that when they are utilized to the fullest extent of the nerve, and all of its endings, the nerve becomes so activated that it produces out of body pleasure that is more than the sum of its parts, so to speak.
I had a direct transmission of this ‘action’ years ago from Caroline Muir, then of Source Tantra, but I have puzzled over it until I learned about this nerve. During some filming with the Muirs, that my husband and I did, I noticed some deep, moaning sounds she had made during her orgasms and ejaculation demonstration. Her mouth was wide open and the sounds were coming from down deep inside her abdomen. Making these kinds of sounds also causes a ‘pushing’ down or out, as in childbirth, of the pelvic floor and genitals, giving even better access to the depths of the yoni (Sanskrit for Vagina).
You can even feel this when you are simply singing full-throated songs. The diaphragm pushes downward on the pelvis. I tried copying her sounds, later that night in the privacy of our room, and had an immediate experience of multiple orgasms and female ejaculation that continued unabated for a long time. I was astonished at the simple yet powerful affect this had. I have had my experience corroborated since then by other women.
How and why would these conditions all work together to produce such extremes in orgasmic pleasure? Is the vagus nerve the ‘unusual’ suspect? Oh, by the way, activating the vagus nerve is being done to treat chronic depression so singing, conscious breathing and orgasms may be the antidote to those ‘down’ days.
So, any thoughts or similar experiences would be interesting. I don’t care how speculative they are, I would love to know other’s thoughts on this subject. Though no one is writing about this particular subject, there is a great book sourced above called The Science of Orgasm by Whipple, Komisaruk and Beyers-Flores.
| Suzie Heumann is the founder of the sacred sex site: Tantra.com. She studies, writes, has authored three books and makes films about conscious sex, Tantra and the Kama Sutra. Check out Tantra.com Premium for the most comprehensive tantra training available on the Internet! |
This is a response I got recently from a sexuality professional:
Robin M.,
Suzie, I wanted to comment to you about the vagus nerve/orgasm connection. I TOTALLY AGREE.
When I delivered my babies, I did so at home, naturally, with a midwife. Toward the end, the babies needed the “final pushes out,” and the midwife instructed me not to scream, but to growl/groan, deep from my belly. Not only did this promptly deliverthe babies, it resulted in ecstatic and orgasmic birth experiences.
What made this particularly cool was that I never had an orgasm with my husband during our entire marriage. After we split, I was still non-orgasmic (which led me to the study of Tantra, BTW), and in my somatosexual recovery, using my voice was integral.
The light bulb went on when I realized that I am a very vocal person, but my husband required silence to “concentrate” during sex, and I was quiet to accommodate him.
When I allowed my sexual voice to be heard again, I became orgasmic again as well. But, the first few times, my throat closed, like during allergic anaphylasis. This eventually passed, thankfully.
The more I experiment with voice and orgasm, the more I discover about voice producing different orgasms, even deep pulsating cervical orgasms.
As an aside, my friend Alexandre Quaranta, teaches male orgasmic control through voice and breathwork..it is extraordinary!!!
It is great to see your work!
I recently got this question from a viewer here and wanted to post my response. There have been some new very current discoveries about the vagus nerve involving health and the signals the brain gets from the micro-nutrients in our gut so I thought I’d post my response here.
Question: How deeply does this nerve impact G spot orgasmic reaction and does it play a role in copious female ejaculation?
This is difficult to say Andy because it’s not being studied. Many things are known about the vagus nerve but few in the arena of the cervix, g-spot/prostate gland areas that the vagus nerve reaches to. When you look at the fact that researchers have been able to show that orgasm activates the movement of the cervix and that that action may increase a woman’s ability to conceive by literally sucking sperm up you can see that it might be an important nerve. Our most ancient of nerves are in the cranial nerve group, of which the vagus is one of them, and so they are highly developed beyond the newer spine connections.
I believe that female ejaculation comes from the neural feedback loop of having an orgasm while the urethral opening is being touched in some way, via friction. If you think about the g-spot or urethral sponge, being engorged and the fact that the urethral tube goes right through it you can’t help but see that this area plus the urethra itself is being stimulated. G-spot stimulation engorges the urethral sponge area more than clitoral stimulation so once it’s pretty engorged the urethra is surrounded by fluid and is likely to lead to ejaculation if the woman is open enough to the experience.
The vagus nerve derives it’s name from vagabond or wandering. It enervates the throat (open mouth with sounds coming out vibrates it), the lungs (deep breathing vibrates and enhances the lungs), the heart (stimulates blood flow), the gut in several places (scientists are getting very excited about the vagus nerve and the gut because they have newly discovered that it is the main pathway of gut microbes to the brain and gut microbes turn out to be EVERYTHING to our health) and some of the colon and the prostate and g-spot. It has two main branches and many smaller off shoots. It is throughout the body in the main areas that the chakras run. Another interesting aspect that I can’t even begin to elaborate on.
Dear Sue,Tks for a very incisive writeup on a long neglected aspect of what I term as esoteric erotica. I am no MCP,but you have forgotten the male and his vagus nerve. Awaiting your comments. Much love, Suneel.