“We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest.”  -Orison Swett Marden

It is not uncommon for me to get a random text from my kids’ teenaged friends inquiring about sexual issues. They are important questions that even with as few characters as these mini communications provide, are laced with anxiety and edged with a bit of desperation. They don’t know the terms for problems like premature ejaculation or inability to orgasm, and they think they are the only ones that have these problems. These text conversations sometimes fall off as abruptly as they begin, so I always try to leave each message with a reassuring tone- of how normal it is to have these questions and how brave it is to want to look for answers. One text that made me laugh out loud recently asked, “Does fingering even work???”

So, for the sake of all the grown teens that never had the right person to text, let me just take a few minutes to talk about the true and lasting harvest of sexual delight that comes from learning the magic contained in our fingers. Our hands are a work of art. Our fingers have some of the densest areas of nerve endings in the body and provide the richest source of tactile feedback available to us. The sensations we can feel through our hands are not just physical either, they can both interpret and transmit energetically. Our hands are the perfect instruments for providing pleasure. Their combined capacity for strength and flexibility allows us to make feeling and touching each other both the fertilizer and the bounty of our intimate time.

Touch takes on heightened meaning when we give it our full attention. Arguably, we can say at least as much and maybe more, with our hands as we do with our words. Little is misunderstood because the body receives true communication from the hands. Yet, inattentive touch, the kind that makes a teenage boy wonder whether fingering does anything can also make a girl recoil.   To really touch, we have to bring our full presence to the tips of our fingers. Genital tissue is like none other in the body and there is maybe nothing more erotic than spreading oil into the folds and crevices that are as unique as our fingerprints but alight with nerve endings.

Taking our time in this discovery is everything. Mindful touching is practically prayer and it is, as I reminded my young friend, the crevasse that exists between hooking up and making love to someone. Bringing our full attention to the nerve endings meeting between our finger tips and genital tissue is a fireworks display. If you are not in a mindless hurry to get somewhere else, lingering in this energetically charged exchange for as long as possible, only makes the end better.

This is especially true for the grown teens among us who struggle with all forms of sexual dysfunction whether it is a premature ejaculation or inability to orgasm. Although seemingly opposing problems, the answer to both is slowing down, focusing on the other and the amazing dance that happens in the container between you. Thus, fingering, touching, and feeling the life of your love through your hands is where we begin to experience the harvest of sexual love.