The Evidence
Orgasmic Learning Research
The evidence supporting the six pathways of Orgasmic Learning.
Orgasmic Learning brings together more than 70 years of published research showing that women experiencing orgasm difficulty have gained orgasmic access, learned to orgasm, or improved orgasmic response through multiple pathways.
The evidence spans sexual medicine, psychology, hypnosis, pelvic-floor research, psychophysiology, pharmacology, sexual neuroscience, altered-state research, and embodied practices.
This page organizes representative research according to the six evidence-supported Orgasmic Learning pathways and highlights the developing scientific frameworks that bring these findings together.
More Than 70 Years of Research Across Six Pathways
The six Orgasmic Learning pathways are grounded in published evidence spanning historical clinical research, physiological studies, observational studies, clinical interventions, randomized research, and systematic reviews.
The pathways include:
- Cannabis-Assisted Orgasmic Learning
- Fantasy & Imagery
- Hypnotic Induction
- Pelvic Floor & Somatic-Motor Activation
- Tantra & Breath-Based Altered States
- LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy
Together, these bodies of evidence provide the research foundation for the developing Orgasmic Learning professional framework.
Cannabis-Assisted Orgasmic Learning
Published research examining cannabis and female sexual function spans more than five decades.
The literature includes early reports of women gaining orgasmic access while using cannabis, contemporary observational research, intervention studies, randomized research, and systematic review evidence.
Within Orgasmic Learning, cannabis is examined as a potential state facilitator that may influence inhibition, attention, sensory salience, bodily awareness, affective regulation, and other conditions relevant to orgasmic accessibility.
Selected Research
Research involving women with orgasm difficulty found that cannabis use before partnered sex was associated with significantly greater ease of orgasm and improvements in aspects of orgasmic experience.
This systematic review brought together 16 studies published between 1974 and 2024, representing 15,028 participants, including 8,849 females, and examined the relationship between cannabis use and female orgasmic function.
A clinical intervention study involving women following gynecological cancer treatment found improvements in sexual-function outcomes, including orgasm, in association with cannabis suppositories combined with online mindful compassion.
Historical reports are also important to the Orgasmic Learning framework because some described women first gaining orgasmic access while using cannabis and later becoming able to orgasm without cannabis, suggesting learning and generalization of orgasmic response.
Fantasy & Imagery
Fantasy- and imagery-based research demonstrates that internally generated attention, imagination, and erotic imagery can influence sexual and orgasmic response without requiring identical forms of external physical stimulation.
Historical behavioral approaches incorporated fantasy training and guided imagery, while more recent research has examined imagery-induced orgasm and structured imagery interventions.
Selected Research
The researchers studied women who reported the ability to experience orgasm through imagery alone and documented physiological changes associated with imagery-induced orgasm.
Contemporary randomized research has also reported improvements in orgasm-related sexual-function outcomes following guided imagery interventions.
Hypnotic Induction
Published literature involving hypnosis and female orgasm difficulty extends back decades, including clinical reports from the late 1960s and 1970s and later treatment reviews.
Hypnotic induction is relevant to Orgasmic Learning because it provides a top-down pathway involving focused attention, absorption, altered awareness, imagery, and reduced ordinary cognitive monitoring.
Selected Research
Andersen’s review of primary orgasmic dysfunction identified hypnosis as one of the major treatment models reviewed for women with primary orgasmic dysfunction.
Contemporary physiological research demonstrated hypnotically induced orgasm in fully clothed women without direct genital stimulation. The study documented post-orgasm prolactin increases and characteristic pelvic-floor and abdominal contractions.
Albert Nerenberg, who is developing the Association’s first specialty pathway in hypnotic induction with Suzanne Mulvehill, PhD, performed the hypnotic induction used in this study.
Pelvic Floor & Somatic-Motor Activation
Research connecting pelvic-floor function with women’s sexual and orgasmic response extends back more than 70 years.
Within Orgasmic Learning, this pathway is examined as a trainable form of orgasmic access involving muscular awareness, activation, coordination, relaxation, sensory input, and learned voluntary control.
Selected Research
In women with secondary anorgasmia, supervised pelvic-floor muscle training was associated with significant improvements in pelvic-floor contractility, sexual function, orgasmic function, and orgasmic capacity.
Contemporary research described a woman who learned to induce non-genitally stimulated orgasm through a systematic pelvic-floor movement technique, with physiological measures supporting the orgasmic response.
Tantra & Breath-Based Altered States
Research involving breath, focused attention, yoga, embodied practices, and tantric training provides evidence relevant to orgasmic access through altered or highly absorbed states.
This pathway is especially relevant to Orgasmic Learning because it demonstrates the potential for orgasmic access to develop through repeated training involving breath, attention, pelvic-floor control, bodily awareness, and state regulation.
Selected Research
Pfaus and Tsarski described a woman who developed the ability to enter and sustain non-genitally stimulated orgasmic states following extensive yoga and tantric training. Objective hormonal findings supported the physiological validity of the orgasmic response.
LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy
Historical clinical research examining LSD-assisted psychotherapy in relation to women’s sexual and orgasmic difficulties dates to the 1960s.
Within Orgasmic Learning, this literature is important because it provides historical evidence that altered-state psychotherapy was associated with changes in sexual inhibition and previously difficult orgasmic response.
Selected Research
Ling and Buckman reported clinical work involving LSD- and Ritalin-assisted psychotherapy in women experiencing sexual difficulties, including cases involving changes in orgasmic response. This is presented as historical clinical evidence reflecting the terminology, methods, and research standards of its era.
The Framework
Orgasmic Learning Research
The pathway literature developed across different disciplines and historical periods.
Orgasmic Learning brings these bodies of evidence together into a unified framework focused on the states and conditions through which orgasmic response may become accessible, learnable, strengthened, and generalized.
Forthcoming Peer-Reviewed Article
Orgasmic Learning as a Treatment Framework for Female Orgasmic Disorder/Difficulty: A Review Using Perelman’s Sexual Tipping Point® Model
Accepted for publication in Current Sexual Health Reports. Publication forthcoming.
The review organizes decades of research involving genital, non-genital, somatic, pelvic-floor, imagery-based, hypnotic, cannabis-associated, breath-based, and altered-state pathways. Across the evidence, state transition emerges as a unifying feature, with different pathways potentially reducing inhibition, increasing sensory salience, facilitating absorption, and increasing orgasmic accessibility.
The manuscript proposes that the shared therapeutic target across Orgasmic Learning pathways is access to an altered, absorbed, or otherwise orgasm-supportive state in which orgasmic response becomes accessible.
Current Scholarship
Research in Development
Manuscript currently in peer review
This manuscript conceptualizes female orgasm as a state-dependent neurophysiological process in which multiple genital, non-genital, and centrally mediated pathways converge on shared regulatory conditions.
Research Informing Professional Standards
The International Association of Orgasmologists uses the developing evidence base to inform professional competencies, education standards, specialty pathway requirements, ethical standards, continuing education, and professional credentialing within Orgasmic Learning.
As research develops, the Association’s professional standards and educational framework will continue to evolve alongside the evidence.
Research provides the foundation. Professional standards translate that evidence into responsible practice.