A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
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Dial up the heat of arousal using your fingers! Listen in to learn some new techniques including various kinds of pressure, rhythms and motions. Discover broadening, hinting, and different styles of finger touch for increased pleasure.
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Hello everyone, I'm Cindy Sharkey and this is Permission for Pleasure. You have been asking for more episodes about tips and techniques, and so here we go. This quickie is about using your fingers and hand. Specifically, you're going to learn about types of pressure, rhythms, a couple techniques, and especially about broadening and hinting. This is a great episode to help you jumpstart conversations with a partner about what you like or want to try, or listen to with a partner and then explore together. Before we jump in, if you are a regular listener of the show, please follow the podcast on your listening platform. Then you won't miss an episode. Now, first things first, if you're going to be using your fingers, make sure your nails are trimmed. There's nothing like a hangnail or a long nail that's really going to spoil the mood. Painful. The vulva and vagina are delicate tissues, so take care. Also, when using fingers, think go slow. Don't start in like a sprint. Think about pacing yourself and building up. And please don't forget the lube. Our delicate bits do not like too much friction. They need lubrication for your fingers or your hand to move, to slide, to touch. I love, love, love uber lube for finger play. It's my favorite silicone lube because it's silky smooth and long lasting. They are the sponsors of this episode, and you can find the link to get your own Uber lube in its pretty glass bottle with a metered pump at the link in the show notes. Don't forget to use my discount code. Let's first talk about types of pressure. And remember here, the same thing goes. Don't start at level 100. Build pressure step by step, dialing it up slowly, unless, of course, you're asked to do it differently. I'm going to reference a few studies and polls on OMG. Yes. This is a platform for all kinds of pleasure and intimacy techniques. And they did a study and talked about what women reported were their top three pressure preferences. Here they were. Number one, medium pressure. This is pressure that actually moves your genital skin. Two, being touched very lightly. Three, light pressure that glides over your genital skin. A small percentage reported liking all kinds of pressure, and an even smaller percentage preferred firm pressure, the kind that pushes deep into your genital skin. So I mentioned the technique broadening, and this is how this pressure information will come into play. Again, with a pull from OMG, yes, 87% of women say they find broad pressure pleasurable. That's the term broadening. This is when you spread the pressure out, using your whole hand instead of a finger, or three fingers instead of one or two. This could also be the shaft of the penis instead of the tip, or side note, your whole tongue rather than just the tip. Okay, I know this is a fingering quickie, but let's get in all the options here. So do you see you're going to cover more area? And also this makes it gentler. So think wider, not harder. For some vulvas, pressure might feel too hard or just all in one spot. Like when you're using a fingertip or the head of the penis or a tip of a toy. What broadening does is spreads the sensation over a larger area over more time. Right? Remember the whole structure of the clitoris and all those parts under the surface that you can't see from the outside? Well, this broadening technique allows for pressure and stimulation to those parts of the clitoris. If you don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about the whole structure of the clitoris, please link over in the show notes to my educational blog on that. Here's a last option for broadening. Use the palm of your hand over the top of the vulva, or the palm over just the glance clitoris while also stimulating the labia and vagina. So many different options. See what you find pleasurable for your unique body. Here are a few other options for ways to touch as we move past broadening and ideas for exploring. One way is what we say, well, finger painting, not really with paint, right? Just with your lube, the whole vulva finger painting with two fingers, with just an occasional sweep over the clitoral hood. Or you could try windshield wipers, meaning use two fingers and softly do a swishing motion at the same speed. Don't rush. Another option is a curling motion with two fingers inside the vagina. Sort of like that come here motion. Uh-huh. That one. That's often one that helps you find a G spot region. You can also put a lubed finger in the vagina during oral, or two or three fingers, depending on preference. Again, with your Uber lube, you could use a lubed finger to stimulate the anal area during oral. This is highly pleasurable for some. Just take care not to put the same finger into the vagina. Last you could try using a knuckle or more than one knuckle. That's a different sensation, a little firmer sensation than fingertips, right? And you could use them to tap, tap, tap, or drum vertically. So many ways to explore, friends. Now let's talk about building anticipation and arousal with the technique called hinting. Now I'm directing attention to the glands clitoris that you can see on the outside or the head of the clitoris. Hinting has a clitoris guessing, so to speak, meaning there's an anticipation factor because you don't know when the touch is coming. You could try it a few ways. One is hovering fingers near the clit, but not touching it directly. This works with a vibrator too, where you just have a sense of vibration, but not actually touching the vibrator to your clitoris. Another option is rushing past the clitoris head, not lingering. You can also try circling around. Slow, smooth circles. You'll hear more about circles coming up. Let's talk a little bit about rhythm, when to use irregular rhythm, and when to use consistency. This is important. Irregular rhythms in touch, especially to the glands clitoris or the hood of the clitoris, can create that anticipation, like we just mentioned. When you vary the different amount of times between touches or the motion, this can be a real turn on and an arousal key for some women. On the flip side, consistency or regular rhythm is absolutely key when a woman is right on the cusp of an approaching orgasm. At this stage of arousal, do not change what you are doing or the rhythm of what you're doing. Two-thirds of women will say that anything that changes on the brink of orgasm will cause them to lose their focus and lose the orgasm. So consistency near the peak, friends, is crucial. Another thing to try in relation to touch is directions. Remember I was talking about circular movements? Well, many women, over half of women, report pleasurable direction up and down. Half of women describe pleasurable circular movements, and then a third of women like side to side. Other styles of touch could be pulsating, rapid pushing in one spot, flicking or pushing and pressing one spot. There are a lot of ways to explore touch, using your fingers, using your hand. And one way to play with touch and show a partner what you like is to have a touching session where you guide your partner's hand or fingers with your own. Think of this as hands-on learning. You can either let your hands do the talking or you can narrate as you go. As you hear so often on the show, communicating what you like and what you want is shown to result in higher sexual satisfaction. Please, like I mentioned, use this episode to jumpstart the conversation. Try the hands-on learning. Find a way to communicate what you want, what you want to try, and what you like. And friends, I have some sex homework for you. Get curious about how you might incorporate one thing mentioned in this episode. Maybe it's pressure, maybe it's a different style of touch, maybe it's movements, maybe it's rhythms one of the techniques. You don't have to try everything, just pick one thing. Always use consent. For sure communicate, and certainly keep giving yourself permission for pleasure.
