Hi there!

First of all, welcome. You've definitely come to the right place to ask this question, and I hope you will stick around and contribute your own knowledge to the community.

My husband and I read that same blog, you know the author is a mod here, right? If not, surprise!

I'm no expert, we've only been practicing for a few months now, but here's my novice's advice. With regard to how to bring this up with your girlfriend, I would frame it more as something fun to learn to bring you closer rather than a tincture to cure an ailment. It's not about your dissatisfaction of the way things are now, it's that hey there's this fun new thing to explore.

Anyway, so I'd broach it by mentioning the blog and how you had read about yoni massage, hopefully she'll go "yeah? what's that?" and you can slowly introduce her to that. I don't know that you need to go into the full detail of the tantric ritual, but you should probably touch on the basics.

And then I would ask her if she'd be up for that, an erotic massage (with or without the full on tantric sex) to help her relieve some tension. As one who's on the receiving end of these, I think they're FANTASTIC to relieve stress, and I would lead with that in your offer and lay off the "stoking her desire" aspect.

You say she is very conscious about herself, I'm assuming you mean she's self conscious about her body? In that case I'd advise a few things:

• lighting: you don't want harsh lighting where she feels like she's in an exam room, so no overheads. Bring out some candles, or put in some low luminosity bulbs in the bedside lamps.

• a small towel: for covering, like they have in spas, so she doesn't feel TOTALLY exposed right from the get-go.

• music: I like to have soothing nonlyrical music playing (stuff labeled for meditation works) to relax my mind, as it will race to fill the silence in the room if there is nothing else going on. It makes it really hard to "let go" in that case.

Also, maybe the first couple of times it doesn't even have to be a full on yoni massage, as in, the point isn't to get her to orgasm (though if it happens, wonderful!) but rather for both of you to practice: you on your massage technique and her on her breathing. It takes a while for your hands to learn something new, so taking that pressure of her orgasm off the table could help you both ease into it.

Finally, my husband made this contribution to last week's Sex Report Sunday, wherein he went into incredible detail on what it is he's doing, what he's concentrating on, what he's looking for, during our yoni massage sessions. Maybe it'll be useful to you?