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Many adults can confirm that they are able to have a toe-curling, mind-blowing orgasm while fast asleep.

We all learned about it around puberty, but the focus has mainly been on men and their wet dreams and not so much on women and their nocturnal pleasures.

As it turns out, the elusive sleep orgasm can happen to any of us while we are in the throes of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep.

The part that boggles scientists and sex experts is the fact that no physical touch needs to happen for this sort of climax to occur.

That’s because, more than physical touch, psychological factors play a massive role when it comes to the Big O.

Vanessa Marin, a sex therapist and creator of Finishing School, an online orgasm course for women, told HuffPost that “orgasm is actually a process that happens in the brain,” confirming that “we don’t need any physical stimulation for [an orgasm] to happen”.

Most fascinating is the work by Barry Komisaruk and Beverly Whipple who studied women capable of “thinking themselves off,” which is the ability to have an orgasm by thinking alone:

The researchers measured the changes in the women’s physiological responses — like heart rate, blood pressure, pupil dilation and pain tolerance — during a mental orgasm and during a physical orgasm from self-stimulation.

They found that the magnitude of the increases in these responses was about the same, whether it was a thought-induced or masturbation-induced climax.

Later, Komisaruk looked at functional MRIs of women’s brains in a separate study and found further insight:

“What we found, to my great surprise, is that when [the women] thought about stimulation of a body region, the corresponding region of the sensory cortex map was activated as if they were physically stimulating that body region,” Komisaruk told Fusion in 2015.

“But there was a much greater activation in the prefrontal cortex when the women thought about stimulating a particular body region than when they actually physically stimulated that body region.”

The imagination is wild. Never underestimate it.

In fact, some women have even reported that they can only orgasm while asleep:

“There is a major psychological component to orgasming,” said Jesse Kahn, a sex therapist and director of the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York.

“So, if the reasons someone is unable to have an orgasm during sex are connected to anxiety, depression, stress, shame, internal or external cultural or relational pressures, it’s likely having an orgasm during sleep means those reasons cannot interfere.”

“Basically, sleep is a wonderful environment that can facilitate orgasms,” he added.

Basically, an environment in which no distractions or self-conscious worries exist.

If you’re keen to try making a sleep orgasm happen for yourself, lie on your stomach, reading or watch something sexy before bed, and try having more orgasms in real life so that your body will crave more, and thus create more in your head.

Is it too soon to say goodnight?

[source:huffpost]