Masturbation is the new meditation
We’ve all heard of the benefits of meditating – it helps you relax and clears your mind. But what if masturbating could do the same, and help you get to sleep? Charlie Elizabeth Culverhouse explores the benefits of masturbating before bed, and unpacks why no one is talking about it
We all do it. No matter what genitals your body boasts, or what sexual orientation you identify with, masturbation is a staple part of life. Is that overselling it a bit? Well, imagine your life without it.
When we really think about how much we’re masturbating, whether it’s a quickie in the shower to hype yourself up before work, or a drawn-out evening ritual carried out when your housemate has finally gone out for the first time that week, we all love a bit of self pleasure and would undoubtedly miss it if it were taken out of our routines.
But that love is so often unconscious, unrealised, or at least unvoiced. Still, Smile Makers, a sexual wellness brand, knew at some level why everyone loves getting themselves off. They just had to prove it.
Masturbating before bed
“We've always talked about masturbation and linked it to sexual wellness, the benefits that come with pleasure,” head of Smile Makers, Samantha Marshall, told me when I asked why the brand had decided to delve into the habits of us masturbators with their latest research.
For Samantha, there was one benefit linked to one specific habit that she was keen to document: using masturbation to get a better night’s sleep. “It’s always been a known fact in general conversations - friends say offhand, ‘Oh yeah, I always masturbate before bed’, or ‘I always have a little quickie to wind down,’” Samantha explains.
Read more: Women need more sleep than men — here’s why
Her hunch was right. Their research shows, unmistakably, that everyone, people of all genders, are relying on masturbation to help them nod off. The brand found that, out of the 780 people surveyed, a whopping nine in 10 people masturbate before going to sleep, experiencing better sleep because of it, and nearly eight in 10 rely on it to fall asleep faster.
A further six in 10 get into bed knowing they’ll masturbate to wind down and half get themselves off three or more times a week in order to do so. “Once you hear the stats, you're like, ‘Oh yeah, actually I do do that!’ But it's never talked about,” Samantha says of the research.
Does masturbating help you relax?
But it should be. There’s a reason people are masturbating to get to sleep – there’s a direct link between them, no coincidence in sight. Simply, Samantha told me, it's all thanks to hormones. A lot of feel-good hormones (oxytocin, beta-endorphin, dopamine, serotonin) are released when experiencing pleasure, all working to relax the body.
In the case of sleep specifically, the post-orgasm hormone prolactin is what makes us feel sleepy and relaxed, which helps the brain wind down. This, Samantha says, is what leaves you “feeling relaxed and gives you a better, deeper sleep”.
And it’s not just the physical pleasure and resulting chemicals flooding the body that are helping people to wind down. There’s a mental self-care aspect working in tandem to relax the brain and switch into sleep mode, which many research participants likened to meditation for the way it reduces stress levels, improves mood, and even heightens feelings of self-confidence and empowerment. In fact, most of them agreed that masturbation actually puts them in a better mood to sleep than meditation does.
“When experiencing pleasure, mentally, you're giving yourself time away,” Samantha explains. “Especially now, we're all guilty of scrolling through phones before bed but masturbating gives you something else to do, it brings you back to yourself and grounds you a bit more. So there's that element of direct pleasure when you orgasm, but you've also got the benefits of just spending time by yourself, spending time with yourself.”
What’s more, whereas meditation seems to take forever and can be difficult for many to master, pleasure (especially for people who have clitorises) can be felt pretty much instantaneously. Even better, masturbating for a short time brings all the same benefits as doing so for longer, which is practical as well as pleasurable in those moments before bed - though Samantha would love it if everyone had the time to pleasure themselves for as long as they liked every evening.
Masturbating for better sleep
Abby, 26, makes sure to make the time for elaborate masturbation rituals, “perhaps once a week,” she told me. “Though that’s a conservative guess!,” she quickly added. It’s an important act of self care for her, usually carried out after a steaming hot shower in the evening when her body has been relaxed by the water and her skin softened with moisturiser or body oil. “It’s part of that routine,” she says of masturbation. “I’m caring for my body, helping my muscles to relax and my brain to reset after a day of hard work.”
But even those with more practical bedtime routines have time carved out for pleasure. “You can never rush masturbation,” says Matthew, 28. “I used to get stressed about falling asleep on time so I could have a full, healthy nine hours, but rushing puts on pressure; you get stressed and the whole thing is counterproductive.
“So now, instead of thinking ‘I've got to get to sleep’ and getting flustered, I approach it more like, ‘Ok, I want to get to sleep and this will help,’ to get into a more relaxed mindset that will actually help me fall asleep.”
Both Abby and Matthew are taking the approach Samantha recommends. For her, the most important part of any bedtime routine, whether it incorporates masturbation or not, is all about winding down and setting yourself up to be calm. As well as the classic, “avoid your phone”, Samatha recommends setting a relaxing scene before getting off – turning on a bedside lamp for less harsh light, and lighting a candle for a calming scent.
Sound, while often neglected during self-pleasure sessions, is an equally important sense when it comes to winding down and turning yourself on, the Smile Makers research showed. Many people say they block out noise with earplugs or listen to audio erotica, which has “the additional benefit of cutting down your screen time”, Samantha added.
It feels so strange to worry about screen time when masturbating, but the research suggests masturbation is now being approached by many as being increasingly about wellbeing and self care. “People are valuing masturbation more from a view of how it impacts their wellbeing, seeing it as a bigger picture as opposed to it simply being there for pleasure, solely at the time they masturbate,” explains Samantha.
Masturbation as self-care
When we focus on the long-term wellness benefits of masturbation, of course we’re going to see connections between these seemingly disconnected aspects of life. One day, Samantha envisions a bedroom where ‘beautiful’ pleasure tools are displayed proudly on bedside tables, beside our moisturisers and retainers as talismans of the self-pleasure we all take part in.
We all do it, even though it’s often hidden. Some people like it that way – and that’s fine! Pleasure is an intimate and personal thing. But being pleasure positive – speaking about pleasure and the benefits of it – is vital, says Samantha. When we can speak about the very real wellness benefits of masturbation, we can better understand it, better use it to our advantage.
“Being pleasure positive doesn't mean you have to be going out and shouting about pleasure,” Samantha reminds us. “It’s so easy to normalise masturbating with light-hearted comments like ‘Oh my god, I'm stressed, I might just have to go home and masturbate’. You’ll find that once one person says something, other people say they feel like that too, that they didn't know anyone else did that.”
“It just takes one person to spark a conversation,” she says. And you know what else takes one?