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 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!