How Your Pelvic Floor Impacts Your Orgasm

When it comes to achieving orgasm, it's really only boils down to two things: your mind and your body. As long as these both are on board, climaxing doesn't have to be difficult.

However, sometimes you're sufficiently turned on and have your technique down to a T and you still just cannot climax.

This is where your pelvic floor muscles come into play.

What are the pelvic floor muscles?

The pelvic floor muscles, often referred to as the PC muscles, are several muscles that stretch from the tailbone all the way to the pubic bone, making up a kind of a muscular hammock.

These muscles can be weakened by things such as pregnancy, child birth, constipation and non-activation. When strong, this hammock helps protect against urinary incontinence, pelvic floor prolapse - and helps with achieving orgasm.

Orgasms are about contractions

When you have an orgasm, lots of things happen in the body. One of these things is contracting pelvic floor muscles.

It's partly the contraction of these muscles that leads to the explosive feeling of an orgasm. But in order for them to contract, they need to be strong.

Just like our arms need to be to be muscular enough to carry things - our pelvic floor needs to trim enough for us to have an orgasm, or at least have one that's significantly pleasurable.

The stronger your pelvic floor muscles are - the faster they can contract. This makes it easier to orgasm and your climax can become both stronger and last longer as well.

In a research paper on orgasm and ejaculation in men and people with penises, researchers Alwaal et al state:

"It has been suggested that pelvic muscle exercises, particularly the bulbocavernosus and ischiocavernosus muscles, through contracting those muscles 60 times, 3 times daily for 6 weeks will enhance the pleasure associated with orgasm."

Just as the researchers suggest, pelvic floor exercises can be an important part of orgasm treatment. They are a common staple in treatment for those with vulvas/vaginas too.

While the jury may be out on just how much pelvic floor function plays a role in orgasms - numerous studies (Martinezi et al & Sacomori et al, to name a couple) suggest that it plays an important role - and not only in abilities climaxing.

Strong pelvic floor muscles also affect other sexual functions, such as sexual arousal.

A strong pelvic floor helps with sexual arousal

Sexual arousal is the physical embodiment of being turned on - if we're aroused we get an erection and lubricate.

This is due to the blood flow to our genitals. Without sufficient blood flow, we simply don't experience erection and lubrication. Therefore, the stronger your pelvic floor muscles are, the more reliable your arousal will be. This means more long-lasting erections and lubrication.

In turn, more arousal increases the chances of achieving orgasm. This isn't only because of the physical effects of arousal - it also contains a mental aspect too.

For a lot of men and people with penises, a strong erection is a subconscious turn-on. 

This means the harder and more reliable your erection is, the more desire you feel. And the more desire you experience, the easier it is to have an orgasm.

Getting off to being physically aroused isn't believed to be quite as common among women and people with vulvas/vaginas. However, more arousal can breed more desire simply because more arousal can make sex more pleasurable. The more physical pleasure we experience, the more desire we may feel, leading to orgasm.

Strengthen your pelvic floor muscles

Climaxing is about lots of things, but when stripped down to its core, it's about a combination of the mind and body working together.

To orgasm we need to feel sexual desire and arousal. And in order for us to be sufficiently aroused, we need to have strong pelvic floor muscles. 

If you want to make achieving orgasm easier - doing regular kegel exercises for your pelvic floor is an important part of the puzzle. Not only will it help ease the blood flow to your genitals, the muscles will be able to contract faster and for longer periods of time, meaning more of that explosive goodness.

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Leigh Norén is a sex therapist with a Master of Science in Sexology. She helps people reduce stress, shame, & anxiety surrounding sex-so they can get their sex drive back and enjoy their partner again. If you want to have better sex, download her free resource The Desire Test.

Originally published at Therapy by Leigh.