33: I’ve learnt to really slow down in sex. I can choose to go for it, or to make love another way. There’s a choice about how to be. I spend hours making love, penetrating and then stopping to explore each other’s bodies and cuddling and talking. Sex is no longer a one-off thing where you go for it and stop when you ejaculate. Now I can choose whether to ejaculate or not, now it’s half and half. Tantric sex is more conscious. You’re more conscious of what you’re choosing to do, and conscious of exploring other things: exploring different feelings and physical sensations which you become aware of when you move away from bonking. For instance I hated being tickled, but now I love it.
John Hawken, Tantra teacher: In Tantric practice we learn to relax into excitement, especially with the pelvic floor muscle (love muscle or fire muscle) to allow the sexual excitement to spread, first of all from the genitals into the whole body, then beyond the limitations of the physical body into an expanded energy body, bringing us into connection and melting with our partner as the Other, and through them melting into the whole universe.
By consciously breathing the sexual energy into our higher energy centres, we can make love with our hearts and our spirits, celebrating sexual union as an all-embracing conscious experience of transcending aloneness into All-Oneness. On the level of pure energy, sexuality and spirituality become mutually completing aspects of our being.
Tantric practices involve a meeting on the sexual level. Sex is the beginning rather than the ultimate step in the journey you are taking together. Sexual practices are performed with consciousness of what you’re doing, and why. More important than what you’re doing is how you’re doing it, and the intention you have when you’re making love. Love-making with the intention of exploring real intimacy and connection with your beloved, and allowing yourself to see where that connection takes you, rather than limiting your focus to genital pleasure and orgasm, creates the right space.
Tantrics see sexual union as a means of achieving divine bliss. The pleasures of orgasm can be expanded into a whole body experience that links sex with your hearts and spirit. In developing the spiritual dimension of sex, you can enter the realm of divine ecstasy. You don’t need to believe in Tantric philosophy, or follow its precepts to the letter, all that is needed is the right intention.
Tantra is not just about sex, it’s about the free flow of energy within yourself, as well as with others. It’s more about this flow of energy than about sexual intercourse or fancy postures for love-making. The emphasis in Tantric love-making is on non-doing – relaxing into pleasurable experiences and the energy connection you have with your beloved, rather than trying to build excitement and make something specific happen (orgasm).
You can use tried and tested Tantric techniques to help you explore the connection between sex, heart and spirit. In ‘Tantric sex’, you focus on connecting genital sensations with the heart and the spirit, using breathing and meditation techniques, which connect up the energy centres in your body. Integrating the energy flow within yourself and with another expands your sexual experience. The exercises in the third and fourth part of this book lead to what SkyDancing teacher Margo Anand calls ‘riding the wave of bliss’ – divine sex.
The following is a list of key basic elements that Tantric techniques use to help transform sex into an experience of the divine, which will be developed in Part 3:
Foreplay starts before you even touch each other.
The creation of a ‘sacred space’ using subdued lighting, candles and essential oils in burners, and a tray of sensual foods and drinks to feed your partner.
The creation of a deep heart connection by spending a long time gazing at each other, feeling a sense of connection and harmony between you.
The sharing of exercises to ‘awaken the senses’: feeding your lover titbits, wafting perfumes or essential oils under their nose, and stroking their skin with feathers or fabrics like fur.
Tantra involves the whole body – so sex isn’t just focused on your genitals.
Focusing on the quality of sexual connection, not the quantity of sex.
Taking time. Sex lasts much longer – instead of a few minutes the whole process lasts hours.
Changing your orgasms from genital experiences to ‘whole body’ orgasms, where you feel energy rushing through your whole body.
Breathing work: slowing down your breathing and harmonizing your breathing by breathing in and out together.
Energizing the various energy centres in your body (see here), which is a practice of kundalini yoga, a type of Indian yoga.
Imagining your breath is going right down to your pelvis, activating your sexual energy and building sexual fire. This is especially good for those who habitually suppress their sexual energy.
Linking up the sexual energy in your pelvis, with your heart centre (over your heart) to get in touch with your loving feelings, and your third eye area (between brows) which is the energy centre (see here) related to your spiritual vision.
Transcending the ego-bound aspects of your relationship, by focusing on what is essentially beautiful about the other person.
Creating a convergence of breath and life-force through the subtle energy exchange taking place, in which the Shakti and Shiva principles unite within themselves and with each other.
According to Barry Long, on his Making Love tapes, the divine alchemy of sex cannot take place unless couples meet in deep love. If a man can open up to love and love his Shakti partner selflessly during love-making, he can express sufficient love in his body to reach the spiritual part of her.
This is how he can connect with the divine energies at her deepest centre. To be able to love woman this deeply is the masculinity man has lost. This is the conscious awareness, which Tantrics would call Shiva energy, that men have lost in this age of commitment phobia. To fully become an integrated man, a man has to be able to assimilate in his body the divine female energies a woman releases during love-making.
Woman cannot exchange her divine energies if neither she nor her lover is not yet integrated or fully aligned with love. The gap of unhappiness can only keep on growing.
Sex on the Tantric path is about exploring making love as the god and the goddess. You call them into your love-making and allow them to do with you as they will. It’s about getting out of the way and allowing yourself to be surprised at what emerges, rather than trying to make something happen. Here, the physical activity is directed by the energy between you, so that love-making becomes a natural flow that is entirely unselfconscious and innocent.
During ritual intercourse women are adored, the inner fire of kundalini is offered up, and the inner female and male principles are united.
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