What Is Tantric Sex, Part TWO

Follow my last article about tantric sex <What is tantric sex>, here is the secound part of it.

Taki’h has an excellent and thorough program called Intimacy Journey. It consists of four parts: Emotional, Physical, Sexual and Soul Intimacy. We did the Emotional Journey in May, and now it was time for the Physical Journey. It was an interesting journey indeed, with deep depths and great heights, and Taki’h skillfully helped us to navigate through it all.

If you have read other articles from this blog, you probably have noticed that roughly there are two kinds of tantra: the traditional and original tantra, and then there’s the contemporary version of it, sometimes called neo-tantra. Tantric sex and sexuality mostly belong to the category of neo-tantra. I say mostly, because there are certain elements that conjoins these two worlds together.

Make sure you read the first part of the article first, to get an overview and understanding where all this is coming from.

Here are Taki’h’s practical instructions on how to bring the sacred into your relation. I’m sure you can feel her inspiration through these words!

So how do I start tantric sex?

What Tantric sex can look like in practice today is a blend and modification of different aspects of the various paths of Tantra described before. If you are not into feathers, incense, or red velvet, can you still practice Tantric Sex? Yes you can!

Here are some suggestions.

Traditionally before a Tantric ritual involving sexuality, there would be a purification of space, body, heart and mind. Set up your space the way it feels good to you. You can create an altar with what you consider sacred, dear to your heart and special, in a corner of the room. You can place pictures there, objects that have a special meaning to you.

For more tips on how to set up an altar read this blog post.

Remove clutter from the physical space. Prepare your body with a nice shower, long bath, or even a massage, whatever feels good to you. Treat your body as a temple! Sit in meditation if that is something that resonates with you, to support you to empty your mind of mundane preoccupations.

Begin and close your encounter, whether you are with yourself or with a partner, with a consecration: Invoke the energies you feel would support you. Traditionally it was specific deities, but you can call on Love, Playfulness, Joy, Presence, whatever energy you want to support you in your journey. Bow down to love and consciousness. By doing so, you are clearly stating that these two energies are what you will uphold, and you will put aside your ego for the duration of the encounter.

If you are with a partner, you are bowing down to these energies in the other as well. When your date is complete, close the space by bowing down again, offering up the experience to higher consciousness and letting it go, for the benefit of all.

Let go of any goal or recipe. Maybe there is a technique you want to practice, that is fine. But let go of any expectation of what will happen as a result of practicing this technique. Stay open to the mystery, stay open to the unknown, stay open to whatever needs to surface within you (and between you if you are with a partner), stay open to the infinite possibilities.

Stay present! A great way to focus on the present moment is to focus on your breath and the physical sensations in your body. Your body can only experience the present moment, it does not live in future or past, only in the now. So by staying connected to these two aspects of your body, breath and physical sensations, you can stay fully present in the here and now. This is a way to cultivate consciousness, awareness. The more you can stay present the more consciousness you will invite into your sexuality.

Stay with acceptance, compassion and love. Apply these qualities to whatever comes up, in you and if you are with a partner then to your partner as well. If you feel you need support to anchor in these qualities, place your hands over your heart center, in the middle of your chest. Feel your heart beat. Inhale deeply and allow your chest to rise, exhale fully and relax. Continue to focus on the heart center and the breath until you feel you have returned to a place of love within.

Maintaining consciousness and unconditional love takes a lot of discipline. It is easier to fall into the ego games and traps, because they are known and that makes them feel safer and more comfortable. These are qualities that usually need to be developed, and that need practice. Vipassana and mindfulness practices are supportive in developing the observer within.

Move your energy! This usually means having to move whatever is sitting on your energy first. This includes releasing stagnant energy in the form of pent-up emotions or physical contractions. To support yourself, use these 4 keys: breath, sound, movement and intention.

Energy follows intention, so set a clear intention for yourself.

Allow sounds that come naturally, you don’t have to fake or force anything. Rather, play with it! Explore and experiment. Allowing your sounds to come out, especially from deeper within, supports your energy to move and spread!

Allow your body to move, for example in undulating, circular and snake like movements, especially your hips, pelvis spine and neck. Another powerful movement practice, one that was used traditionally for Kundalini (sexual energy) awakening, is to allow your body to shake, while standing grounded with your feet on the floor. Let your body move as it wants to and as it needs to.

Breathe through an open and relaxed mouth. The jaw and mouth are directly related to the genitals, so the more relaxed your jaw and mouth are… the more relaxed your genitals are (and vise-versa)! Take deeeeeeep breaths; breath is life, so let life in!

These are the 4 keys to moving energy, use them! The more we release what is holding us back, the more our energy can flow. Think of it like this: a river flows freely and abundantly. But over time there are leaves, branches from trees, stones and other debris that pile up and clog the natural flow of our inner river. Once these obstacles are removed, the river, which has always been there, can flow again freely as it was meant to.

How to support the whole body to become more orgasmic?

The following are key practices in activating the whole body as an erogenous zone with the capacity for pleasure and orgasm.

The breath, sound, movement and intention are a huge part of it. Combine them and practice them regularly.

Build up your pleasure and before reaching climax drop into yin, relax and allow the energy to spread everywhere. Support the spreading of your energy by visualizing or sensing it spreading within you. Move your hands over your physical or energetic body from your pelvis up, and down, gesturing this spreading. Use long deep breaths and long deep sounds. Then do it again. As you repeat these cycles of yin and yang you are also building your capacity to contain more and more energy, more and more pleasure. Eventually you will reach a stage when you can direct your energy to different parts of your body.

Touch lightly! Ever so lightly! And slowly! Oh so so slowly! The lighter and slower you touch yourself (or your partner touches you), the more sensitive you will become. The more refined your perception of energy and sensitivity, the more your orgasmic potential.

Activate your energy body. About a hand width above your physical body is your energy body. Enjoy caressing this space. The more aroused you are, the more deeper you are breathing, the more refined your perception of energy, the more you are likely to feel waves of pleasure in your energy body which will also be felt in your physical body and eventually dissolve your sense of a physical body, allowing you to know yourself as energy, as light, as etheric.

Micro-Cosmic Orbit: Sitting or standing, visualize or sense your energy moving from your perineum up the back of your spine all the way to the top of your head, and then down the front of your body back down to your perineum. Go slow in the beginning. Eventually reach the stage where you inhale energy moving up the back of the body and exhale energy coming down the front of the body. Clenching your PC muscles as you inhale up can help you to get a more tangible sense of your energy and its movement.

If you are with a partner

Your partner is a mirror of yourself. Your external relating reflects your inner state of being, and your inner feminine and masculine relationship. Whatever you project externally, it is a reflection of your inner world. Sometimes we forget this and expect our partner to complete us. With Tantric sex your partner is like a consort, there to support you to become more whole, and vise-versa. Your outer union is there to reinforce your inner union. If you would like to read more about what it means to be in a Tantric relationship, click here.

Your partner is a mirror to you

Your partner also represents the divine, just as you do. Take some time to look at him or her as God/dess, this is called Transfiguration. This is God/dess manifesting in human form.

If you are into ritual, you can make offerings of devotion: a poem, a massage, a gift. Worship your partner, their body, their presence. Include the genitals: His lingam, Sanskrit for pillar of light, and her yoni, Sanskrit for sacred place. These are the source of life, portals to the divine, fountains of ecstasy. Revere them, God/dess lives here!

If you are having a solo practice, do the same with yourself, using a mirror! I remember hearing Margot Anand, a well renowned Tantra teacher, say: Until we find reverence for sex, we cannot find real reverence for life, because it is from sex that life is born!

Slow down! You think that is slow? Go half that speed! Slowing down supports us to feel more, as long as we stay present.

Eye contact is another key. It supports staying present (to yourself, to your partner, to the situation), and also increases intimacy (scientifically proven!)

Breathing together. Sitting opposite each other or laying down, maintaining eye contact:

As one inhales the other exhales, keep going like this for at least 10 minutes, becoming two parts of a whole.

Synchronized breath: both of you are breathing in and out together, as one. Keep going like this for at least 10 minutes.

The circle of light. The woman (or in same sex relating then either one of you) exhales from her heart and the man (in same sex relating then the other partner) inhales into his heart. He then brings the breath and attention and energy down to his genitals and exhales from there. She receives, inhaling into her genitals, moves the breath and attention and energy up to her heart and exhales from there again. Keep going like this, establishing this circuit of energy, for at least 10 minutes. Then reverse the direction. This way, you are both sharing and receiving gifts with each other, from and into the heart space and the sex center.

Once you get the hang of these, experiment with them during love-making!

Exercises to do in nature

Circle of light with a tree. Create the circuit of energy explained earlier, giving from your heart to a tree and receiving into your sex. After some time, reverse the circuit’s direction.

Sitting in nature, in a forest or in front of the sea for example, connect to your senses one by one and allow yourself to be penetrated by nature through each one of your senses. For example, the sound of the sea’s waves crashing, you are not simply hearing this sound but you are allowing it to penetrate you. The smell of the earth, the feel of the grass on your skin, the taste of the sea salt in the air, the colors around. Allow yourself to be penetrated as deeply as possible by nature. Breathing it in.

Let the beauty of nature penetrate you

While standing, inhale energy up from the earth into the soles of your feet (better to be barefoot for this standing on earth or grass) to your heart center, exhale energy from the heart center up and out the Crown at the top of the head. Then inhale energy from the sky into your Crown, down to your heart center, exhaling from the heart center down your legs and out your feet into the earth. Keep going like this for at least 10 minutes.

It’s ok if you “don’t feel anything”, you can visualize it and use your hands to support you, letting them indicate the movement of energy as it travels up and down. This practice will help you to remember and know yourself as an antenna of these polarity energies, and as bridge, a meeting point where the two can blend and become one bridging the earth-spirit divide.

Some common questions

Do I need to have penetrative sex in order to walk the Tantric Path?

No, not at all. You need to learn how to stimulate and awaken your sexual energy, move it throughout your body and being, and be able to contain this energy within your system so that it can be used for healing, transformation and expansion. And all of this is possible with or without penetrative sex.

Can I practice Tantric sex if I’m in a same sex relationship?

Absolutely. Since Tantra works with polarity as an entry point, you would need to simply activate different polarities between you. We all have feminine and masculine polarities within us, so this is not an obstacle or a problem what so ever.

Do I need to have physical sex with a guru, teacher, advanced initiate, master, in order for real healing to occur, or to receive a special transmission or initiation?

Nope! Not at all. What I have learned and confirmed is that whatever healing or transmission I need, I can get without engaging with someone sexually at the physical level. A lot can be done energetically and the physical union is not necessary for transmissions and healings. Also, if some one proclaims to be that powerful to be able to heal you or give you some transmission, then they can do it without needing to be inside you physically and can probably do it from half across the globe away if they wanted to.

And to conclude…

Ultimately, all of this is preparing the initiate for the death of the body! The ultimate Tantric sex and potentially the greatest orgasm of one’s life! Each orgasm is a small death, “un petit mort” as orgasm is referred to in French. Our ego dies a little, our sense of “I” dies a little, we surrender, we let go, we merge, for a moment (or more) we don’t exist, there is pure consciousness, pure love, a state of no-mind. Through these orgasms we know we are something beyond the body-mind.

And so Tantric sex is a practice for that last exhalation, to send energy to travel up our Chakra system and out through the Crown and to truly dissolve, merge, transcend, dissolve into one-ness. So it’s good to practice while we can, practice makes perfect no?

Enjoy Lovers!