Meditation and Sexuality brought me Back Home

I grew up in Berkeley, California, brought up by Israeli immigrant parents – my father an astrophysicist, originally from Poland, and my mother a mathematician, herself also brought up by Polish parents. In fluent Hebrew we spoke about math, about science, about Israel where all our family was, and never about religion or God. While my grandparents on my mother’s side were quite religious – keeping strictly kosher, observing shabbat – my parents both felt distrustful of organized religion and preferred to focus on things they could clearly explain with the rational mind.

When my mother got sick and the doctors couldn’t find a cure, my dad turned even more resolutely against religion. Only science made sense to him; everything else was a threat. My mother ultimately killed herself out of desperation, stuck in pain she could not find any other way to escape. She was depressed, on heavy pain medication and lost hope she would ever get well. I was nine at the time and didn’t understand what had happened, why my mom had left, why there hadn’t been enough to keep her here with me.

Caryn as a child with her mother in their home in Berkeley

I spent the rest of my adolescence and early 20s searching for an answer. Looking for something to fill the void that my mother had left. Looking for something that she had likely been looking for too. A deeper meaning, a deeper reason for existence. I tried to find that in my classes, in my work, in finding a meaningful profession where I could help others in health and nutrition. I tried to find it in workout classes – trying everything from kickboxing to yoga to hip hop dancing. I tried to find it in men and relationships, thinking that would bring the fulfillment I craved.

The idea of God or religion still seemed foreign to me, almost like an aversion. Like many Jews I knew, there was a separation between the culture and the religion. I loved Israel, I loved celebrating holidays, speaking Hebrew…all those things felt like home, but when I heard the word “God” I would cringe.

Still, I searched and searched.

In 2017, fresh off a five-year relationship and deep into my work in the trendy health tech San Francisco data science scene, I stumbled across Orgasmic Meditation, or OM for short. The meditation practice from the onset sounded bizarre and fascinating. A fifteen-minute meditation where someone gently strokes (with gloves and a precise protocol) the upper left-hand quadrant of a woman’s clitoris with no goal other than to feel and connect.

I was intrigued. Little did I know that this meditation is what would change my relationship with God and religion.

I went to an introductory class and learned the practice. I tried it immediately. All the racing thoughts quieted. The anxiety that made up my day to day dissolved, if only for a moment. But that moment was enough to launch me on the path. I moved from my spinning mind – trying to do a good job, do the right thing, be a good daughter, sister, co-worker, friend – to my body. And in my body there was a wisdom and knowledge beyond anything I had ever previously known.

Slowly I started exploring more. I learned there was a whole philosophy behind the unconventional meditation practice. It was not, as I had initially thought, about reaching climax, but instead about harnessing the power of sexual energy and using it to reach the mystical state and associated healing. Growing up in a house with no talk of sexuality or spirituality, these felt like foreign concepts, but there was something deeper drawing me in, something I could feel without having the language to describe it.

I remember a moment when all of a sudden I felt it – a connection to something larger than myself. It was in an advanced OM course, it clicked into place and for the first time in my adult life, to my great disbelief, I felt a presence, a higher power, a God. Gradually I started to see the mystery and magic in the world beyond me and believe there was more.

Through OM, I started to explore more about spirituality, and found myself more curious about religion. I felt a new appreciation for the mystical Kabbalah, for the teachings in the Torah, for the wrestling and stories in the Talmud. I felt more myself than I had ever been before. The practice had me access new parts of myself and dissolve what wasn’t me.

I never thought sexual energy would be the thing that brought me into more connection with Judaism. The two feel almost at odds. But it turns out that getting in touch with my body was the inroads to spirituality that I needed. The practice gave me connection to myself, the world around me, and a higher power. And as a Jewish woman struggling with my conception of God, it gave me a way to reconcile those parts of myself and open to the beauty that my faith and religion offers.