By Freelance Writer

When it comes to feeling like a competent sexual being, it can be a rocky ride if you have a neurological disability (SCI, MS, MD, etc). Sensations, orgasms, the body’s sexual response…it’s all a learning curve (but not a lost cause) with a damaged nervous system.

And since the nervous system is still the veritable “flat earth” in the world of medicine, a world which offers not a single cure to fix damaged nerves, people suffering from these conditions have been forced to get mentally creative. And can you blame them? So a doctor says he can’t cure you; I don’t care how severe your disability IS, no human who still has a shred of hope left will completely give up on enjoying sex even if they can’t feel their genitals/body in the same way.

And this effort to still “feel”…it’s not BS. Even people with zero sensation can still “feel” something in the affected areas of their body…..a sensation….a buzzing noise…an energy. All you gotta do is listen. What do you feel when you imagine your body? How do you “feel?” What does “feeling” mean to you? When you expand the parameters of how you define the verb “to feel,” you too can discover that a sliced, scarred over spinal cord isn’t the only bridge you need cross the Mississippi.

There are other ways.
Mental orgasms are one of them. Many people rely on these awesome sensations to still find sex satisfying. And believe me when I say: They really do exist. I’ve written for many publications on these mysterious climaxes (including ThisAbled) and most people I’ve interviewed about this subject have described them as a sudden mental release that’s usually felt at the climax of sex (kind of like tantric sex.)

But I’m going to warn you: They’re not easy to make happen. You almost have to concentrate like a yogi master (no outside distractions) to really get into it, since it’s all about the brain. By combining sufficient enough mental, visual, olfactory, tactile, and audile sensations, most people can achieve them (male or female). What’s really important is knowing what you like and then creating the scene.

But I digress. This article isn’t simply about mental orgasms (although they’re a big part of enjoying sex with a neurological disability). It’s also about challenging the status quo and looking at how we feel in new ways. It’s reported that the hardest thing about having a neurological disability is the loss of sensation. And it’s numbing effects can be two-fold. Your emotions are also at risk. Sadly, many people find that the easiest way to cope is to stop thinking about sex. We get embarrassed that we can’t feel as much as our partners do, we don’t want to tell them…so instead, we withdraw from sex completely.

To prevent the asexual route, your first step is taking ownership in your sensations. No one can dictate if are/aren’t enjoying sex. As long as you’re feeling great, who cares what anyone says. As for “phantom feelings,” a term created by doctors to refer to feeling something that’s absolutely not there, like people who claim they can still feel their leg even though it’s been amputated, maybe that’s what we’re experiencing? But does it really matter? Call it whatever you want, the process of feeling one’s body is a mysterious, many routed, world. Even the amazing Vagus nerve, a large nerve that connects the brain to vital organs throughout the body (and enables some complete spinal cord injured women to achieve physical orgasm) may be in play.

The bummer about all of this though is that there’s still no hard evidence to prove that the Vagus nerve really is the route in which many of us are able to enjoy sex. My yoga teacher, Matt Sanford, a paraplegic who’s currently undergoing a series of MRI’s at Rutgers University to prove that the yoga he does in his lower extremities is successful because of the Vagus nerve, may hopefully bear the kind of proof we need to prove the naysayers wrong.

But in the meantime, let’s stick to what we know: The brain is the largest sex organ. Use it, use it, use it. It can be magical! I don’t care if you’re a incomplete SCI and feeling the “real” thing or if you’re a complete SCI and feeling phantom sensations, whatever YOU’RE feeling it‘s yours, and nobody can take that away from you. So go ahead, start redefining. After all, what have you got to lose?