A basic guide to dilating

Go to the bathroom before dilating
- Your vaginal cavity is neighbours with your bladder and colon.
- This will make dilating easier and less uncomfortable.
Have everything in arms reach of where you’ll be
Put your towel down, get comfortable laying down or semi upright
Find a comfortable position to start dilating (I lay down with my legs semi spread, whatever is comfortable for you)
Smother your first dilator in lubricant and spread it evenly, with a bias towards the tip of the dilator
Put lube at the entrance of your vagina
Find your vagina, early on an exploratory finger can help.

Place the tip of your first dilator to your vagina and slowly apply gentle pressure
You need to relax your pelvic floor for dilating to work
- Breathe out slowly when you’re pushing
- Try not to pee yourself
- Visualise what’s going on, dilating without relaxing is the same as trying to pee without letting yourself relax your muscles
Continue to slowly push your dilator
- It will likely be uncomfortable but it shouldn’t be a sharp bad pain.
- For me it’s comparable to the feeling of the stretching when training to do the splits of something or of that nature.
Eventually you’ll reach the end of your first dilator, I hold it at this point for a few minutes.
Remove your first dilator, wipe it off and place it somewhere.
Prepare and use your next dilator in the same manner as the first.
Repeat this process until you’re at your last dilator, I hold my last dilator at its biggest point for a few minutes before removing it.
If you’ve been using small length silicone dilators this is the point where you’d use your longer dilator which can then stretch out and maintain your vaginal depth.
- If you’re using dilators that can do adequate depth and girth then you’re done now.

Wipe your vulval area gently to remove excess lubricant.
Hold a paper towel below your vaginal entrance and slowly sit up. Liquid should run out.
You can now pack up and clean your dilators.
- Try not to let them sit too long, it makes them harder to clean

Soak the dilators for a little bit by running under warm water to remove most of the goo
Apply a small amount of soap to your paper towel and agitate the surface of your dilator
Once you’re satisfied rinse the dilator thoroughly and let it sit to air dry, completely dry it with a clean cloth if you desire
You won’t be able to fully remove the smell from the dilators, this does not mean they’re still dirty. It is just part of it.

Do not use alcohol or excessively hot water to sanitise your dilators. This can damage them and create surface damage that can house microbes.

As always with SRS, go slowly. Stretch stuff slowly while dilating and make sure you are actively relaxing your muscles push when you breathe out
Dilating shouldn’t take hours upon hours. Work out what works for you
It will be uncomfortable but it shouldn’t be excruciating
Move around the dilator to find a comfortable angle, vaginas aren’t a straight line
You have one hand free usually so find something to entertain yourself

To size up your dilator you first need to be at least somewhat comfortable with your current dilator size
- “Comfortable” meaning getting close to the full girth/depth of the dilator without a significant amount of discomfort.
- You can also measure this by the amount of time/effort it takes to get through each dilator, I timed each session and kept a loose record of this.
Once you’re at this stage, start adding some time at the end of your dilation routine with the larger dilator.
- Increase the amount of time spent with this dilator over consecutive sessions until it is fully part of your routine
Eventually, your smallest currently in use dilator will become skippable, you can then phase this out of your routine.

This is a well written and incredibly informative guide to dilating and everything surrounding it.
I highly recommend reading through it. This guide taught me a lot when I was learning to dilate.