Would you pay $200 to have a perfect stranger masturbate your vagina in a room full of other people? No? Then you are probably going to be shocked by the fact that in several places around the world, at this minute, women are doing that very thing.

Yes, women are paying “practitioners” to help them achieve le petit mort in a room full of other people as they watch, and the trend seems to be, well... catching steam.  

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How exactly this “free love” style sex routine actually came to seem like a good idea is a mystery, but the practice itself — known as “Orgasmic Meditation” — began in 2001. It was founded by Nicole Daedone, a woman out of San Francisco.

Yes, you are expected to be fully naked from the waist down, and they only perform this task on one person at a time, so if you’re shy, this probably isn’t for you, because the focus level is intense.

The masturbation classes make some big promises, like “a larger state of consciousness, improving intimacy in relationships, and generally increasing your orgasm skills.” That seems like a lot to make guarantees of, and, frankly, a little far-fetched.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that intimacy in relationships will improve by having a stranger masturbate you in a crowded room, but hey, maybe I’m just a prude. At the very least, I figure that women can save themselves nearly $200 and the embarrassment of flashing their lady bits to a group of people they either don’t know or have barely met. It kind of feels more like paying for public-ish humiliation (yes, it's supposed to be judgment-free), which I could honestly do without.   

So, how does it happen? The women strip, baring themselves to the others, and the practitioner (typically a man) then goes about describing their vagina in “great detail” to the crowd of onlookers, expressing the visual appearance of the vagina as well as its texture and shape — all while they are stroking the woman’s exposed clitoris for fifteen minutes in a practice apparently known as a “nest.”

The “nest” itself is really just some yoga mats covered in blankets and some pillows, and the organic lube is included in the nearly $200 fee, which is... nice? I suppose.  

While the founder of Orgasmic Meditation suggests that “The female orgasm is vital for every single woman on the planet,” I'm still having trouble connecting that with masturbating strangers in a “nest.” Do they dim the lights? Put a spotlight on the vagina they’re focusing on?

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It would seem that I'm in the growing minority, however, because in the nearly two decades that Orgasmic Meditation has been around, it’s grown quite a bit. There are now around 10,000 practitioners of this class, and there are about 2,000 of them in the United Kingdom alone. According to The Sun, many women paying for the practice are “(female) pensioners in their eighties.”

The masturbation is supposed to be “therapeutic” rather than sexual, but it’s hard to understand how a person stroking your clitoris is supposed to not arouse you. Given the founder’s opinion on female orgasm as well, it would seem that there’s a bit of confusion over what the “practice” actually is.

Either way, I imagine that most women are going to be walking out of those classes with a smile on their faces, so if you're into that sort of thing, it can be yours... for only about $200.