Last year, at a workshop titled “Introduction to OM,” I learned the practice of orgasmic meditation: Someone strokes the upper left quadrant of your clitoris for 13 minutes and then presses on your vulva to “ground” you for two minutes—all with no goal other than to be aware of your sensations in the present moment.

OM has an extremely loyal following of people who believe it sharpens their intuitions, improves their relationships, helps them overcome sexual shame, and more. In fact, its devotees are so passionate it’s sometimes accused of being cult-like. Some people actually live in “OM houses” where they OM regularly and follow the practice’s principles, like mindfulness and honoring your desire, in their everyday lives.

To be clear, I never got into OM to that extent, but I can sort of see why people do. At the first workshop I attended, we discussed everything from our sexual fantasies to our biggest fears without reservation. And after trying the practice itself, I didn’t by any means have the “15-minute orgasm” some say they get from OMing, but I did feel relaxed, energized, and immediately close to the stranger I was OMing with. The openness of my fellow attendees was really refreshing, in a way that made me feel like I could be uncharacteristically honest with a group of people I had never met before. It might sound weird, but every time I’ve dipped a toe in the OM pool it’s been a really freeing experience.

So when I found myself back in San Francisco (home of the biggest OM community, though they exist around the world) over a year later, I decided to see what other events were on offer. I was excited to see a listing for something called a “Turn-On”—a small gathering of OMers for communication games aimed at mimicking the effects of an OM, but fully-clothed. Since my favorite parts of OM were the emotional aspects instead of the physical, this sounded perfect for me.

I signed up for the event on Meetup, along with nine other “turned-on people,” and almost immediately, an organizer messaged me to ask if I’d been “officially OM-trained.” This is another reason OM is often criticized: They’re very proactive about selling their training, and it’s not cheap. The one-day Intro to OM workshop is $199, the weekend-long “healing course” is $499, and the six-weekend “OM coach” training program costs a whopping $12,000 when paid in full, or $14,000 when paid in multiple deposits. Signing up for the Intro to OM workshop last year required me to give the practice’s organization, OneTaste, my contact info, and I’ve gotten several voicemails and emails promoting their other classes since.

Ignoring the organizer’s Meetup message, I arrived at the OneTaste headquarters at 7:30 on a Wednesday and was greeted by several very enthusiastic facilitators and OMers. We chatted about our motivations for being there—the participants ranged from a newbie looking to spice up his sex life to two OM devotees who traveled from Europe for the coming weekend’s “power retreat”—and then the facilitators explained how a turn-on works.

Each of the night’s activities was modeled after part of an OM, they said: Easing into the practice, stroking, and grounding. For the first one, we went around and completed sentences like, “In this moment, I am feeling…,” and, “One taboo desire I have is…,” with the first word that came to our heads. It seemed like people were comfortable answering really honestly. I learned that the woman next to me wanted sex all the time, while a man to my right had trouble figuring out what he really wants in life.

Next, we took turns being in the “hot seat,” which is when things got intense. Each of us spent a few minutes in a chair, answering questions from the rest of the group. We were told to “stroke the place with the most sensation”—that is, ask people about topics they seemed to have a lot of feelings about. One woman explained her motivation for seeing a dominatrix. One man talked about his struggles to stay loyal to his girlfriend. When it was my turn, someone asked me what turned me on, and things escalated real fast.

“Porn,” I answered honestly.

“What kind of porn?” someone else said.

“Most recently, I guess, women masturbating,” I said through nervous giggles after a pause.

“What turns you on about that?” asked the next questioner.

I thought about it. “The femininity, I guess.”

“Is that something you don’t feel like you get to be?” asked an organizer.

“Yeah, actually.”

“Say more.”

“I feel like I have to be masculine to be good enough.”

Whoa. How did they do that? Within the span of two minutes, these people had psychoanalyzed my porn habits and actually taught me something about myself.

For the final activity, we went around and shared a feeling we had about someone else at the turn-on. One woman told me she felt “love” for me during my porn revelation and could relate to it herself.

Once that was over, we all stood around and talked, and I once again experienced that openness that keeps me coming back to the OM community. I felt comfortable looking into people’s eyes for longer than I usually do. One man and I had an extremely meta conversation about why talking to each other made us anxious. I hugged people goodbye afterward, feeling inexplicably close to them.

Afterward, as expected, a facilitator came up to me and told me about some upcoming classes and retreats that could help me get in touch with my “feminine,” connecting these events to what I’d talked about on the hot seat. I could see how people get sucked in.

But I didn’t. After all, you don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for a class to get the feeling I was feeling. All it takes is one of those rare environments where people have permission to be authentic. If anything, I left thinking about how I could make my favorite parts of the OM space more frequent in my everyday life.

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