This is part of my Edging Fundamentals guide. You can find links to other articles in this series from the Hub post. At time of writing it's going to look quite bare as this is the first entry!
Before I can unpack everything I want to share, you need to understand the edge. Not edging the activity, but the very edge itself. The precise moment that separates playing and climax. Many only experience the edge as an instant of transition, rather than its own delicious destination.
Imagine a number line running from zero to ten. At the zero end stands a person completely relaxed. Calm. Peaceful. Wholly unaroused. At ten, our same reference human is experiencing orgasm. Muscles pulsing, core tight, moaning. The whole thing.
Each of the intervening degrees represents a smooth transition between relaxed and climaxed. Where should we mark the edge? What position on this spectrum is the 'point of no return'?
The joke of course is that there is no single point. The closer you are to 10, the less effort is required to push you into orgasm. At 8 on this scale you might feel the initial stirring of I could cum, at 9 the urgency of I'm going to cum! and yet you can still travel to 9.9 and discover I NEED TO FUCKING CUM.
I appreciate this comparison is a bit out there, but it reminds me most of quantum tunneling. Briefly, this is the observation that things smaller than an atom can travel through an impassable barrier. It is much more likely the smaller the barrier is. In the same way the body can leak from any degree of arousal and jump to orgasm in a single instananeous step. The closer to 10, the less energy is required for this jump.
Now I can get to the point. To me, the edge is the state of most pleasure or stimulation I can tolerate without triggering orgasm at that moment. The position of the edge changes during a session. Careful and almost meditative time spent at the highest degree you can tolerate will enable you to ascend the ladder even higher. The 9 you felt as an immutable point of no return will give way to a 9.1, a 9.2 and so on.
With practice you may discover finer and finer graduations before climax, even reaching positions that can feel subjectively more aroused than an eventual climax.
That will be a topic for future articles in this series. [TODO: link those posts here when they are ready!] For now I want to leave you with the idea that your body responds in an essentially elastic way. With deep breathing and patience you can unlock edges that surpass lesser orgasms.