The most obvious improvement to sexual intercourse for most couples would be to find a way of helping the woman reach orgasm during intercourse. And another obvious improvement would be for a couple to achieve simultaneous orgasm during lovemaking.
Well, all this is possible – courtesy of the coital alignment technique or CAT, developed by Edward Eichel.
The coital alignment technique is a different way of making love specifically designed to allow women to achieve orgasm during intercourse.
The CAT depends on a couple using a variation of man on top sexual intercourse known as the “riding high” position. This changes the angle of the penis in the vagina. Also the way the man and woman thrust is different to conventional intercourse.
Instead of thrusting in and out, the man and woman enjoy a kind of pelvic centered rocking, which produces pressure and counter-pressure between the partners.
This pressure stimulates the man’s penis and the woman’s clitoris, gradually building up their sexual energy until they reach a powerful orgasm.
Although this sounds complicated, when a couple discover how to do it, the coital alignment technique has a massive effect on the satisfaction and pleasure of women during intercourse.
To be precise, women who use the coital alignment technique during lovemaking have many more orgasms during intercourse than women who do not use it.
How The Coital Alignment Technique Works
The position works because it provides stimulation to the woman’s clitoris during intercourse.
There’s a clear shift in position as you can see in the video. And you might wonder if the man’s penis will slip out of his partner.
But the couple should have no more difficulty in preventing the man’s penis slipping out of her vagina than they would during “conventional” intercourse.
Another benefit is that the woman experiences less discomfort around the vaginal opening or internally.
In fact there should be no discomfort at all. If there is, it is most likely caused by the man breaking the co-operative rhythm of movement as he approaches climax. It’s a man’s hard and fast thrusting which can cause a woman discomfort and prevent her moving towards her own climax.
A man may do this as his instinctive desire to thrust harder and faster takes over. Such thrusting may produce discomfort around the rectum and vagina in a significant number of women.
But the CAT is – or at least should be – different.
Using the correctly coordinated pace and pattern of sexual movement prevents discomfort for the woman. And it also gradually builds up her sexual energy until she reaches orgasm.
This applies through the entire duration of intercourse from start, through the buildup, to the eventual release of orgasm.
For the women, clitoral stimulation is produced by rhythmic stimulation of the area of her clitoris by the closeness and pressure of the man’s pubic bone and penile shaft.
The woman’s clitoris receives enough gradual stimulation for her to reach orgasm.
Interestingly enough, most of the couples who learn how to enjoy the coital alignment technique report significantly greater pleasure in orgasm.
They experience it as beginning in the penis or clitoris (in the man and woman respectively) and then radiating out through the entire pelvis, body and limbs. This kind of orgasm is often described as “complete and satisfying”.
Simultaneous orgasm, too!
There’s also a connection between the coital alignment technique and simultaneous orgasm.
We’ve become accustomed to the idea that simultaneous orgasm, desirable though it may be, is something rare and hard to achieve.
However the coital alignment technique offers the very real possibility of simultaneous orgasm as a realistic climax to intercourse.
The buildup of orgasmic energy, which continually increases during unbroken coital movements using this technique, appears to somehow synchronize the sexual responses of the man and woman. This may be because the partners have a mutually supportive and equally active role during intercourse.
Research recently done on the CAT has revealed there are subtle benefits that are not immediately obvious.
For one thing, it requires the cooperation of both partners, which means it not only produces greater sexual satisfaction, but also acts as a powerful way to reinforce intimacy and connection between the man and the woman.
How To Do The CAT
To start with, the man enters his partner as he normally would for man on top sexual intercourse. But he then assumes what’s known as the riding high position.
In other words, he shifts his body up along his partner’s, so that his pelvis is directly over the woman’s, the shaft of his penis pressing up against her pubic mound.
Interestingly, at this stage the man rests the full weight of his body on his partner, rather than propping his torso up on his elbows as most men would do when making love in the missionary position. (If he is too heavy for her to bear, he may take some weight on his arms.)
The woman’s legs are wrapped around the man’s thighs, with her ankles resting on his calves. And her thighs are bent at an angle which doesn’t exceed 45 degrees.
This is because the woman’s pelvis becomes difficult to move if she raises her knees at an angle greater than that.
There are some more simple principles governing the movement of the two partners during intercourse using the coital alignment technique.
A couple needs good pelvic mobility, achieved without using leverage from pushing or bracing in any way with the arms or legs. In other words, physical movement is basically located in the pelvis and the nearby spine.
The upper torso of both partners remains stationary, because movement in this part of the body takes energy away from the genital focus that is essential for achieving the satisfying orgasm expected during use of coital alignment.
And the movement of the man and woman has to be co-ordinated. In fact the pattern and pace of movement needs to be identical for the man and woman.
Eichel explained this in his original paper in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy.
What Happens Next?
The woman leads in the upward stroke, forcing the pelvis of the man backward. He allows his pelvis to move backward while providing some degree of counter pressure against the woman’s clitoris.
As the woman’s pelvis moves forward and upward, her vagina engulfs the man’s erect penis more deeply.
In the downward stroke of sexual movement, the process is reversed. The man’s movement forces his partner’s pelvis backward, and the woman provides a resistant counter pressure, in which she presses her clitoris against the external base of the man’s penis.
Using this motion, as the woman’s pelvis moves backwards and downwards, the penile shaft rocks forward against the female Mons, sliding to a shallow position in the vagina.
The partner who is initiating the forward thrust pelvic movement, and the partner following the backward movement exert pressure and counter-pressure simultaneously in approximately a 60:40 ratio respectively.
And the movements are in fact only small movements – as Eichel described it, the two partners extended movement only for the distance prescribed by the natural pattern of motion established by the interplay of male and female genitals and pubic areas.
As Eichel pointed out, this is a contrast to the normal pattern of coital thrusting, which involves the man and woman moving independently of each other, and intermittently arching their spines and bending at the waist.
The significance of the alignment method is that with correct positioning and coordinated movement, the male penis shaft will pressing up against what you might describe as the “12 o’clock” position around the vaginal opening.
Then, the man’s erect penis is under pressure to bend backwards in the vagina towards the female rectum. If you can imagine the angle of the man’s penis as being near but not quite vertical, because of the angle of the couple’s bodies, you can see that the base of the front side of his erect shaft will be positioned near the woman’s clitoris.
The movements which the couple make during intercourse continue to hold the man’s penis in contact with the woman’s clitoris because of the nature of the pelvic rocking motion already described.
It’s almost as if the penile shaft is vibrating on the clitoral body, and this can produce a much more satisfying orgasm for the woman.
However, both the man and the woman must engage with equal energy in the movements needed for coitally aligned intercourse.
And the man must not give way to his urge to thrust harder and faster as he approaches climax. Indeed, both partners have to keep a steady pace of movement throughout the whole period of intercourse. That’s true even when the approach of climax is signalled by the pre-orgasmic sensations spreading through the body.
In fact, Eichel suggested that if the man and the woman have aligned their bodies correctly, then transition to an voluntary movement at the time of orgasm will occur naturally without any disruption to the pattern of movement.
Alignment Is More than A Sex Position
One of the important aspects of the coital alignment technique is that it’s not simply a new sex position or technique. It’s a way of enjoying orgasm more fully.
Yet much of the success you achieve using it (measured by orgasmic pleasure for both partners) is about the way in which you move while you’re making love.
By regarding the CAT as just a sex position, you risk staying locked in a mindset which is that somehow intercourse is about the man having an orgasm, but not the woman, because she is unable to do so for some reason.
So, to recap, the coital alignment technique is all about movement of the penis and vagina which is more up-and-down than “in-and-out and forwards and backwards”.
You start off in the basic missionary position with the woman lying on her back. Then the man’s going to penetrate her in the normal way for this position. After he’s entered her, he needs to adopt a very different position for the coital alignment technique to work successfully.
Importantly, the man is going to put his arms underneath the woman’s armpits and cup her shoulders.
This will help take some of his weight off her, although he should generally maintain as much body contact and pressure as is comfortable for her.
With his penis still inside her, he moves his body upwards along her body; this means he is moving upwards towards her head until his pelvis is directly aligned over hers.
His legs are together, and lie inside hers. She will rest her ankles on his calves with her knees not elevated more than 45°, otherwise it’s going to be difficult for her to move her pelvis in the way required later to maintain coital alignment.
Generally speaking, unless the partners are very different in height, his head will be alongside hers.
As far as penetration is concerned, at this stage much of his penis shaft may now be outside her vagina, with the bottom of it pressing up against top part of her labia, vulva and hopefully clitoris.
Next, with the man pushing upwards along the woman’s body, she’s going to tip her pelvis away from him. In other words that’s down into the bed, which will make his penis come almost all the way out of her vagina. As he does, she should feel the base of his penis and his pubic area pressing against her clitoris.
This is a comparatively small movement, not like the big thrusting movements involved in normal missionary-type intercourse in the man on top position – you don’t want his penis to fully come out of her vagina.
The next step is for the man to tilt his pelvis slightly downwards, which will cause his body to move lower down hers and his penis to enter her vagina more completely.
At the same time, she’s going to rock her pelvis upwards so as to help envelop his penis.
In the original instructions, Edward Eichel said that the partner who was pressing should exert force against the partner who was being pressed against, and who would resist, in a ratio of 60:40.
This resistance maintains contact between the man’s pubic bone and penile shaft and the woman’s clitoral area.
This kind of rocking rotates both partners’ pelvises through a small angle of about 4 inches. And this movement is repeated over and over – he moves up as she moves down, and he moves down as she moves up.
It’s a rhythmic, slow and consistent movement which will maintain the same pressure between his pubic area and lower penile shaft and her clitoral area throughout lovemaking.
What people who’ve tried the coital technique – as well asscientific research – say about the coital alignment technique is that an unusual kind of sexual energy builds up during lovemaking.
This can lead to a feeling of unification of both partners – a somewhat spiritual process! And orgasms with the CAT can be very powerful. This is why a focus on position alone can be a distraction.
You see, the coital alignment technique is about the way the partners move, the nature of the sexual energy, and the power of mutual orgasm as much as anything.
And a critical thing in achieving the correct movements is that both partners need to have good pelvic mobility.
When used correctly, the coital alignment technique does not have the two sexual partners thrusting as they would in the regular missionary position.
Rather, the more vertical angle of the penis in the vagina results in a series of small “collisions” between the man’s pelvic area and the woman’s clitoral area. As Eichel put it, the movement is subtle, co-ordinated, gentle, slow building, and must above all else maintain constant rhythm.
Bottom line: with correct movement, the Coital Alignment Technique is a position which can produce female orgasm, simultaneous orgasms, and great sex which verges on the spiritual.
