Published in Veritas Magazine, March/April 2012, pages 74 – 78
The past 60 years or so have brought about many changes… these years gave us the promise of personal independence, prosperity and also sexual sophistication. For many people many of these promises have been fulfilled, we know more about everything than our grandparents did in terms of the world, thanks to the media and travel. We know more about ourselves because of self-help books, seminars and therapists of various modalities; we know we have to take care of our bodies. Unfortunately though, we are less successful in making relationships last than previous generations.
Two people going into a relationship generally start with lust… the heat, the weakness at the knees, the heart racing, pulsing passion that is proven to make you eat less, sleep less and feel better. People in love shine…. Their arousal is fast and easy and each partner is continually charged to make love. So what happens to that passion over time? Let’s go back to the beginning to see.
In the western world most of the conversations we had around sex as teens were furtive and behind our parent’s backs. Despite popular beliefs, the movies and the sexy novels, we are not naturally good at sex or at relationships! We are largely conditioned by belief systems that were instilled in us as children, such as ‘Don’t touch yourself there’…. ‘That’s dirty’ etc. leaving residues of guilt and fear in the psyche of many. Thus most of us are not well educated in the celebration of our own sexuality let alone the art of sexual love with another. Where did you learn about sex? From a master? Probably not! Yet if you want to learn to be an expert at anything you apprentice yourself to someone who knows more than you do. Unfortunately we have no such training and so we stumble around in the dark (literally!) The result is that many couples fail to journey deep into the depths of their core to find the absolute ecstasy, bliss and joy that reside there.
The sexual urge is a natural one, yet what do you do with it? For both sexes as teenagers they have no idea what is happening to them, their bodies are changing and this strange energy is flooding through their bodies. If done at all, masturbation is carried out quietly and furtively so that no one hears or sees and the energy of guilt goes into the cells. You can all use your imaginations now to recreate early teenage explorations into your own sexuality. In my day, at the drive-in movies, there was more sex in the cars than on the screen! Teenage boys want it; girls think boys know all about it because they are always talking about it and so the myth about sex is perpetuated. You know the hypercritical statement of old that made it okay for boys to “sew their wild oats” whereas girls were supposed to remain virgins until marriage! I used to wonder who the boys were going to do it with! Illogical, but part of growing up in my day. In today’s world young teens don’t consider oral sex to be the same as intercourse and a couple of years ago in schools there were girls, as young as 13, doing the “rainbow technique” where each girl wears a different coloured lipstick and they perform oral sex on teenage boys. Something is seriously wrong when people of all ages have sex because they want to be loved and think the two are the same.
When you get into a relationship… suddenly all this pent up energy is supposed to flow easily and effortlessly. Well, that’s a little like having an old tap that hasn’t been turned on for 20 years… what happens when it does turn on? The water dribbles out, is probably brown and it takes a while before it flows properly! Media extols fireworks, stars and explosions when people make love yet having spoken to thousands of people, their first experience is rarely fantastic mainly for the girls but also many men have shared the same thing; (unless it is with someone who is experienced).
From a Tantric perspective a man’s heart is considered to be negative while his genitals are positive. A woman’s heart is positive while her genitals are negative. In relationships women like romance and want intimacy; sex follows once the first two criteria are met. With men the romance is there in the beginning but the starting button is sex and once in a relationship the romance often disappears. There are a million things that can go wrong in sex. The turn-on suddenly becomes a turn-off. The orgasm that was building like a volcano died somewhere along the way. The man is too hot and it’s too fast etc. The woman is too slow, and not ready enough. Often in orgasm men automatically hold their breath, tuck in their necks, generally don’t make much noise and more often than not, both people close their eyes as they experience the feelings inside. So sex becomes a single personal experience where we ‘go away’ from our beloved, at least while the orgasm is happening. And talking about orgasm, for many people that is often the purpose of lovemaking. We think that we have to have an orgasm or make our partner have one in order to be ‘okay’ in bed. (Stats on women who fake orgasm are horrendous).
What happens to the man when he thinks he hasn’t been a good enough lover to satisfy his partner? He feels frustrated and it can lesson his pleasure in the sexual act. (Even though orgasms are the responsibility of the individual and they happen when we let go of control). I once read an article by a woman who said, “I have been penetrated thousands of times physically but never energetically.” Sex without that energetic heart connection is not enough. Enough non-orgasms, enough unsatisfied partners and suddenly it all becomes too hard and suddenly women are too tired, have a headache or men feel so inadequate they don’t initiate sex anymore and that incredible passion that drew us together in the first place is a thing of the past or both people look elsewhere to fill the missing hole in their heart as the relationship deteriorates. With the high divorce rate in all western countries it is obvious that we need a significantly new way of relating to each other in all ways and particularly sexually. We need to find a way to sustain that love and passion over a lifetime. So what is the solution? For us, it was Tantra.
To use an analogy, Tantra is like school. We start off in kindergarten, then primary school. Most complete high school and a percentage go on to university, out of which a few get a PhD or a Masters. Tantra also offers many levels of study and requires lots of practice to get that PhD. It’s like being a practitioner of a modality, it takes years to become a Master at it. A survey found after 20 years, most couples were still making love the same way they did in the beginning. Nothing had changed. Sadly, many people say they don’t need to learn about sex. After all, they have been doing it for years, how hard can it be?
Many of us are afraid of surrender because we believe the latter means giving ourselves to someone else and thus losing part of ourselves. We need to understand that the surrender required in Tantra is about giving yourself to yourself and in that surrender we melt into our beloved and experience true ecstasy. If we can be in our bodies more and breathe deeper and fuller and feel our feelings, we can experience the joys of intimacy like never before.
Tantra is an ancient art form that transforms your sexual and spiritual life by uniting them and it turns the sexual into the sacred. It has been called the missing piece of the spiritual puzzle that many of us search for. The Tantric exchange is a Holy one where we bless each other physically, mentally, spiritually and energetically. It changes the nature of the sexual experience and brings the spiritual aspect of love into your daily life, turning lovemaking into a loving meditation. You can be too tired for sex, but never too tired for love!
Now there are many different forms of “Tantra” – the main two being the Tao method and the Hindu/Buddhist method. The Taoists of ancient China looked upon sex as a vehicle for enlightenment providing that the sexual urge was properly harnessed. In the 10th Century a Japanese physician compiled a bedroom monograph for Japanese sovereigns showing them how to regulate their sex lives harmoniously. He based his advocacies on the age old writing of Taoism. These texts were written on sexology long before the world even heard of the word. Taoist Tantra uses words like ‘Cranes with necks entwined’ and speaks of the specific ways of making love, e.g. Six soft strokes to the right, two hard strokes to the left! The Hindu method is more interested in how to utilise the power of the heart to create intimacy. It comes from a series of esoteric Hindu books that describe certain disciplines and meditations that are well over two thousand years old. Most people are familiar with the Kama Sutra but many don’t understand that what they are doing in those funny pictures is actually transferring and sharing energy in order to heal. Tantra refers to Shiva – the penetrating power of focused energy (male) and Shakti, the female creative force. Personally we practiced and teach the Hindu method.
Tantra is not about orgasm and it is not about sex, it is about intimacy, about energy, about connecting with your beloved on a level never experienced, even in really great sex. It has a beautiful language all of its own. In Tantra a penis is called a lingam which in Sanskrit means ‘wand of light’. A vagina is called a yoni which in Sanskrit means ‘sacred space’. I don’t know about you but I would far rather think of a wand of light in a sacred space than some of the slang terms for our genitals that we learned in the school playground! Ugh.
In the west sex begins, movement happens until the climax is reached and then it’s over. In Tantra it’s about the stillness and what you feel from the point of connection so you stop along the journey and feel the vibrations in your body as the energy moves up through your body. With the breath, we deliberately bring the energy from the genitals to the heart and then up through the crown of the head. It makes orgasm and lovemaking very different, more intense, more beautiful and somehow more allowing.
Tantra is the fuel of relationships that allows women to access the deep well of their feminine essence, their Shakti power – and allows men to recognise and access the healer within all men, creating for every couple a union of sexual wholeness woven into a tapestry of intimacy and heart connection. It opens the way for a new level of communication and allows for deep healing.
Men learn that a woman’s sexual energy can only be opened through the muscles of the heart and therefore teaches that heart connection is the starting point of any lovemaking session. It also disputes another common belief system, that in order to have sex, a man must have an erection. Not true.
This person you are making love with is someone you love, therefore why wouldn’t you want to look at them? One of the first keys of Tantra is to keep your eyes open and gaze softly into the eyes of your partner. Once the woman’s heart is open then the energy flows to her yoni. Tantra is a dance of love, it is sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes gentle, sometimes strong; always heart connected.
Tantra teaches men that they can be their beloved’s healer and it teaches women that her sexual energy is beautiful, energising, something to be proud of; a gift and should be honoured as such. For a man to recognise that within his hands and his lingam is the power to heal the deep hurts of the past in his woman is very humbling and empowering for men. Coming from this perspective it changes the very nature of the relationship.
The breathing is another important key; if you breathe together you will harmonise yourselves, feel closer and melt into each other. When the energy diminishes, you breathe alternately and the energy rises again. Even kissing is considered an art form and there are lots of tricks of the trade to kissing which is considered an important part of tantric love making. Tantra shows men how to have multiple orgasms and no ejaculation unless they choose to. Imagine that women… a man who can journey with you to heights of pleasure never before experienced with no fear that he will orgasm and you will be left in the lurch. In the beginning men think that is a strange thing to do, why would you stop something that feels so good? Let’s liken it to money in the bank, if you leave it there it builds interest, otherwise if you keep spending, you will be destitute in later life. Ejaculate is like that, as men get older it takes longer for sperm to build up whereas young men can make love many times a night. By saving and not spending (injaculating instead of ejaculating) men of all ages can still enjoy the benefits of Tantric lovemaking well into older age. Also on the health benefit side, injaculating is incredible for strengthening the prostate and all the glands of the body.
Men really do enjoy being the healers for their beloved, it fulfills them in a way that sex never could.
Tantra heals the intimacy muscles of the heart. Consider music for a moment. It is not the notes that make the music but the spaces in between the notes and in Tantra it’s the spaces in between that create the magic of Tantric love. In between the passion, the fast and hard, the slow and gentle. It is in fact, in the non-doing of Tantra that the ecstasy and the intimacy occurs.
Tantra is something best studied by couples who are committed to growing in their relationship together. After all, if sex is sacred then you can’t achieve that sacredness and trust with a passing stranger or on your own. It is tough enough to create intimacy between people who love each other and it requires a lot of trust in yourself and your Beloved to allow the surrender in your own body to the ecstasy that Tantra brings.
Tantra can create relationships that speak of heaven on earth, definitely something we need on the planet right now. Tantra heals relationships…. when couples think there is nothing left in their marriage, or they have lost the connection, they learn this art, rediscover each other and feel the love that was there in the first place. For Tantric practitioners love is actually about the exchange of energy and their relationship goes to new levels of pleasure which affects not only the well-being of the one, but the harmony of the two and this expands to the family and in ever increasing circles of precession it flows out into the world. Tantra is for people who know that there is ‘more’ and who want to discover how to combine sexuality and spirituality, who want to be more in love daily, who want to transform their lovemaking abilities into those of a master. Or those who have a fabulous relationship and want to keep the passion alive until the end. The goal of men is to awaken to Goddess energy in their beloved and the goal of women is to awaken the intimate heart energy of their man so together they can become conscious lovers, thus making a difference on this planet.
Diane McCann is the facilitator of The Goddess Within and Tantra for Couples.
