The Staircase of Arousal: A Mindful Edging Practice

Slowing down, amplifying pleasure, and building capacity to hold more and more... then doing it all again. Edging is a physical practice that helps us become more masterful lovers.

Edging practices can take many forms: a gentle, self-exploration of your body, flowing into your organic arousal and opening up your whole body to sensation.

Or it could be more intense play, with orgasm denial or orgasm withholding in the most delicious way, until you’re literally exploding into orgasm.

However you choose to edge yourself or your partner, it’s a super valuable tool in the erotic toolkit. Edging is playful and helpful for most of us, and it is especially impactful for men. Whether you want to learn to last longer in bed, delay ejaculation, learn to have non-ejaculatory orgasms, or just show up differently in the bedroom, edging is a the gateway.

This practice helps you master your arousal, embrace the fullness of your desire, while being able to be still and present. These are the deeper tools of erotic embodiment that I’m sure your partners are craving.

Here we’ll explore one edging model that helps you surf the depth of your pleasure in new ways 💦

The Staircase Model of Arousal

One of the best, most impactful books on my shelves is Sheri Winston’s Women’s Anatomy of Arousal. It was published nearly 20 years ago, but its wisdom and practice are still relevant, and it’s a book I consistently recommend to clients.

There is a lot to explore in this book: the many different types of orgasms (including throat orgasms—I’m especially grateful for that one), wisdom about female ejaculation and squirting, and how to better understand our body as we age. But my favorite piece of wisdom from Sheri’s book is the staircase model of arousal.

Sheri asks us to think of arousal like a 10-step staircase.

The first step is being non-aroused, and all the steps on the staircase are your unique arousal process, with step ten being orgasm(s). Just like a real staircase, you simply can’t start at the top. You must start at the bottom and make your way to the top.

Most folks approach sex using this default mode, like a race to the end. We build, build, build, and then let it go. This goal-oriented version of sex is pretty good for some of us, and generally works well for most folks with a penis… but it means you’re leaving most of your pleasure untouched. And if you’re in a heterosexual pairing, this goal-oriented sex doesn’t usually work great for the female partner, who likely needs more time, more expansion, and fewer goals.

The staircase invites us to approach our arousal in a more mindful, present way by both slowing down our ascent, widening the stairs, and ‘surfing’ the higher states.

Widening the Staircase of Pleasure

Close your eyes and imagine that you’re walking up that imaginary set of stairs.

Stop on step two, then stop on step five, then come back down. Then make your way to step nine, and back to five. Maybe you walk up to the final step for a brief glimpse, but come back down.

It’s an inefficient way to actually move about through the world, but with pleasure that is EXACTLY what you can do to have more fun.

So let’s say you start to play with your partner. You start kissing, cuddling, maybe stroking each others’ skin. One of you starts to feel more aroused with the touch: give it a number. Don’t think too hard about it… you can always change it as you continue to explore.

“I feel turned on, and my arousal is at like a three,” you might say.

You can decide to keep moving up the stairs: more intense touching, maybe deeper kissing or some genital touch.

Now you might say: “That feels really good; my arousal is at like a six.”

Like a choose-your-own-adventure story, you can decide here which way to go: you can keep building arousal to seven, nine, and ten. Or you can stop here, and simmer. Feel the arousal in your body: the tingles, the turn-on, the urgency, the move towards that delicious goal.

You can take some deep breaths, move the energy from your genitals into the rest of your body. Let yourself practice holding higher states of arousal, and being calm within the high. Once, a workshop participant described this type of edging as ‘surfing the eight.’ Staying at those higher numbers of arousal feels very much like surfing a perfect wave, staying in the pocket, flowing with the energy, and enjoying the moment.

Sheri talks about this as ‘widening the staircase’ near the higher arousal states of seven, eight, and nine, so that you can expand the available sensations in these high arousal states. When we are more turned on, we can get more turned on in the moment, and build that capacity over time. Think of it as learning to spend more time at the places you normally rush through on your orgasm journey.

Alternatively, when you get to that seven, eight, nine, you can bring it back down the stairs. Back off from intense, direct stimulation and try something else. Take a tea break; bring it back to kissing, stroking your bodies, or focusing on the other person. This is helpful in a different way: it helps build your capacity for pleasure, and it can make it more of a full-body experience instead of just a genital experience.

Getting Higher: Deeper Arousal States

How does this work? Neurobiology research shows us that these high arousal states allow the amygdala—the part of the human brain that controls fight or flight responses—to turn down or turn off. In higher states of arousal, fear recedes and the more open, curious, and playful you can be in the moment.

Being in this state is a bit like being drugged (Sheri calls it a trance state), so consent agreements are a must. Within a consensual container, you might find yourself more open to new experiences and practices to deepen your pleasure. As practice feeling more pleasure, you may be open to even more pleasure; the places on your body that might not feel much while neutral might be highly sensitive during this heightened state.

To stay on the ride of pleasure, there are two important benchmarks to come back to again and again: breath and sensation.

As I wrote above, breath is the key to moving that arousal into the rest of the body, but also slowing down or ramping up pleasure. Breathing in through the nose is more calming; breathing in through the mouth is more activating. You choose how intense a moment can be with your breath. Use your imagination and the breath of your choice to pull the energy from your genitals into your lower belly, your heart, your throat, your limbs, and more. Notice what awakens in your fully aroused whole body.

Secondly, focus on sensation. Tingles, goosebumps, warm/cool, soft/prickly… these are some of the many sensations you might experience in your body, and this is likely to expand as your arousal deepens. The skin is a super important (and often underutilized) sex organ, full of sensitive receptors, all of which allow for a delicious range of sensations. Breathe deep to bring yourself back into the moment, tune into those sensations on our body, and add fuel to the fire. If you want to layer, try sensation tools and sensation mapping to find hidden treasures.

So now that you have the basics of the staircase model and the tools of breath and sensation, you can practice like this:

“My arousal feels like it’s dipped to a three. Can we try some deep kissing and genital touch so that I can climb back up the staircase?”

Yes, absolutely!

Or maybe: “Oh, I feel really close, I’m at like a nine! Will you take a few deep breaths with me so I don’t go over yet? Breathe, breathe, breathe…mmm that feels so good! Will you stroke my back, too?”

And then… maybe the arousal stays at a nine in a new way, maybe the extra breath pushes you over—that’s ok, too! It’s all practice, and there’s no penalty for going over into orgasm. One of the potential results of this practice is holding so much arousal that your body learns to move the energy without the ejaculation, leading to non-ejaculatory orgasms and multiple orgasms for men.

This was how my lovely man and I practiced this in his body: slow down, stop moving, okay let’s move again. This helped him become multi-orgasmic, add non-ejaculatory orgasms to his capabilities, and deeply expand pleasure. It’s pretty fun to be on the receiving end of this!

This is also the practice I guide my clients into as they learn new ways of becoming masterful lovers for themselves and others; it is the foundation of our erotic embodiment work.

If you want to learn this with us, join us for our Multi-Orgasmic Journeys workshop on September 12, 2026, where we explore pathways to multi-orgasmic pleasure for all bodies. It’s a deep dive, five-hour workshop that combines our years of clinical practice, shame-free sex education, tantric wisdom, and embodied sexual experience into a juicy AF workshop for all. ❤️‍🔥

This will be our sexiest workshop yet! Learn more & register here.

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Pleasure is medicine. And midlife is your reclamation era.

I’m Andrea Devon Bertoli, a Pleasure Coach and Sex Educator devoted to the erotic lives of women in midlife. My work lives at the intersection of science, sacred sexuality, and the slow, gorgeous practice of coming home to your body.

Here on Substack you’ll find thoughtful essays, embodied practices, and the kind of honest, warm conversation about sex and intimacy you didn’t know you needed. I offer deep-dive resources on my website, coaching sessions for those ready to go further, and alongside my husband, I host wildly popular workshops online + in-person in the Bay Area. Ready to journey inward? Send me a note to find out what is possible.

Welcome to Love in Adulthood… where you’ll tap into perimenopausal pleasures, sexual sophistication, and midlife intimacies for all.

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