- Use breathing patterns in more complicated ways.
- Generate more intense energy.
- Coordinate more steps.
- Clear deeper emotions.
- Direct energy in more diverse ways.
Here are the five steps:
1. Ritual Start your lovemaking session by telling each other what you love most about each other at this moment. This creates a feeling of safety and trust.
2. Communication Agree to try something different. Tell each other how you feel about it and what you are afraid of.
3. The experience Do whatever you enjoy to get aroused. Once you are inside each other and have made love for some time, slow down. Resist the temptation to have an orgasm. Melt into each other and move your pelvis ever so slightly toward your partner’s pelvis (in micro movements) while looking into each other’s eyes. When you both feel ready to do something different, contract your pelvic floor muscles a few times. Do this at the same time or alternately. Focus on these small movements, allowing the awareness to increase sensitivity in your genitals.
Play with the speed and frequency. Tell each other what it feels like. After a while, come to stillness. With open eyes let your breathing and the contractions of your pelvic floor muscles carry you into timelessness.
Include the micro movements, stillness, and contractions in your lovemaking. Move faster, and then return to the stillness. This creates a slow wave of ecstasy.
4. Sharing After you have made love like this, share your feelings:
- Did you feel relaxed?
- Were you able to feel your ecstasy in the relaxation?
- Did you feel connected to each other?
- Is this something you would like to try again?
The maithuna
The maithuna is the most elaborate of these rituals and includes many steps. At one of Bodhi Avinasha’s teacher-training courses for Tantrika International, we observed Seattle tantra teachers Kirby Jacobson and his co-teacher Radhika demonstrate this ritual. “It is to be done with reverence,” instructs Jacobson. “The power of the Maithuna is revealed when the couple believes that each movement is a dedication to themselves, each other, and the universe.”
The sequence of the ceremony includes these steps:
1. Prepare the lovemaking space in the shape of a yantra (magical geometric design).
2. Purify and seal off the space with blessings in each direction (including the corners of the room, ceiling, and floor).
3. Prepare special powders, light lamps with special igniting substances (called “ghee butter”),
make offerings to chosen deities, and massage each other’s chakras (energy centers).
4. Use hand movements and mantra chants to invoke and connect energy between the partners.
This ritual could go on for days!
Kundalini
When you really follow your intense energy, it can feel like a snake coming up your spine. Kundalini is the name of the famous serpent power that lies coiled up at the base of the spine. Once awakened (through your practices), this energy travels up the spine. Its journey can take you into new intense sensations, if you go with its flow! Intense power surges of this hot kundalini energy rushing up the spine can literally make you shake—with fear, fury, enthusiasm, or ecstasy. Lack of preparation can lead to a panic called a spiritual emergency, but with responsible practice you can follow the inner snake to where it takes you, ending up dancing primitively, seeing visions, feeling outside your body, or experiencing inner knowing.
Tantra Twosome
Physical practices (yogic poses to move energy) complement your sexual practices, as I discussed in Chapters 5, “Prep Your Body Temple of Love,” and 14, “Getting Fit Together for Tantric Sex.” As you progress, these poses can become more advanced. Here are two exceptional advanced poses, developed by New York City tantrika Carla Tarantola:
Earth to sky salute
Stand facing your partner with enough space between youso you can bend down without bumping into one another. Take a few breaths to center and connect, reach behind you and clasp your own hands behind yourback with index fingers pointed out. Bend over slowly (one vertebrae at a time), dropping your head down as far as you can go comfortably and touching the back of your head. Lift your arms behind you as straight as possible with index finger pointingup to the sky. Breathe and feel the energy of the two of you creating a
channel connecting earth with sky (Shakti with Shiva). Lower your arms and come up slowly taking care with your spine, and do a backward bend to balance. Repeat three
times, then do the following pose. Tantric twosome trestle Sit in front of each other with your legs outstretched and slightly bent, with the soles of your feet pressed together. Reach forward to clasp your partner’s hands and interlock your fingers. Keeping your body straight, raise your
legs at the same time, keeping them between your straightened arms (or outside your arms if that’s easier). Do five full synchronized breaths together while looking in each other’s eyes. Notice how you maintain your balance in this position and how that is reflected in your relationship.
Advanced Passion Positions
The Kama Sutra contains many positions and acts, many of which are shown on various videotapes, but tantra teachers and students often come up with new possibilities from their own practice; you can do this, too. The only prerequisites to be sure these fit the tantric
tradition is that they …
- Connect chakras (energy centers) to move energy.
- Include breathing patterns.
- Are part of a practice rather than an isolated act.
- Honor one another.
- Use the intense energy for a higher purpose.
Dragon Goddess
I love this position because it invokes the dragon, the Chinese symbol of heavenlypower conferred on man. The two steps allow the fulfillment of the ultimate purpose of positions: to connect with divine energy in yourself, your partnership, and all that is. “This position and practice just came through me, and I knew my advanced students would love it,” explained New York tantra teacher Carla Tarantola, who discovered this technique while making love with her soul mate and beloved John.Lie on the bed or floor on your back (head on a pillow for comfort and eye contact) with your feet to each other’s head, base chakra pressed against each other, and thighs interlocking. Carla explains, “In this position, John kisses my feet, an act that opens up my appreciation and energy so much that I want to do anything to please him. I hold his lingam in my hands, and guide it to make circles at the entrance of my yoni. Then we make small circles with our groins pressed together, to move the energy.” Carla continues, “We help each other up into the classical yab yum sitting position, with his lingam still in my yoni, so the penetration is deeper. We undulate while we do the fire breath and then draw the energy up into our hearts and the back of the brain. Then we hold the breath, press our heart centers together, and visualize spirals of energy and fire connecting us and lifting us higher, while our hearts expand and merge together. Exhaling, we make the sound ‘ahhh’ and allow the energy to come back into the genitals, visualizing a golden energy coming down from the universe, flushing and enlivening all the cells of our physical body. In this way, we experience a nonejaculatory body orgasm. Then we go into a meditative state and repeat the building-up process three times before John decides to go into an ejaculation.”
Kabazzah
It’s no wonder that the sexual skills of the Japanese geishas gained such mystique with American GIs during World War II. The women practiced an ancient sexual art that allowed the man to lie blissfully passive. The secret: the kabazzah, in which the woman mounted the man and only moved her internal muscles to bring him to climax.
The Full Stop
In the full stop technique, you freeze in a position in the middle of lovemaking (take turns giving the signal) for one minute—becoming aware of thoughts and sensations instead of ongoing compulsive activity. The Easterners believe that only with such valleys can the peaks be higher.
Two New Erogenous Zones
The advanced tantra man knows the full art of polishing the pearl (pleasuring the woman’s clitoris). One new and effective way to do this is the Kivin method, in which the man stimulates the woman orally on two erogenous points on her genitals to bring her to orgasm within three to eight minutes. The method requires pressing one point (between the vaginal and anal openings) while applying pressure with the tongue on other points located on each side of the clitoral shaft.
Tongue Fu
In a Taoist practice, a woman strengthens her tongue by first pushing against an orange or a
grapefruit. She also strengthens her vaginal muscles by attaching weights to hold. These practices are described by Mantak Chia in his book, Tao for
Women: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy. Similar routines are described in Chia’s corollary book for men, Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy.
Mudras
Mudras are positions of the arms, hands, and fingers that connect the energy centers. There are many combinations of these; they can be placed externally on many areas of the body, on outside points correlating with inner points, and even reached internally. Every finger that is used communicates a different energy, which you must learn to become skilled in sending energy patterns to your partner.
Advanced Visualization in Tantric Sex
Imagery sets pictures in the mind that the brain cannot distinguish from reality, so you are likely to act on these. Taking advantage of this, sexual visions can inspire physical actions that lead to blissful union when practiced in a meditative, disciplined way. Here are two examples:
The tantric triangle Visualize yourself as a male god-like being with a triangleof white light at your third eye that points downward (the symbol of the female yoni), with the lower angle pointing toward the back of the tongue. The angles become the three doors of liberation, opening to the wisdom of great bliss.
The Shakti shine Visualize the goddess Shakti with blue lights radiating from her body that enter your body through your genitals and melt a blue radiance throughout your body.
Eight Steps in Deity Yoga
Deity yoga does this. In this exercise, you can use your favorite gods and goddesses from that chapter—the ones you most identify with—or experiment with others. Follow these eight steps to actualize a particular deity to achieve a certain state of being within you:
1. Set intention. Meditating on any deity should always be toward the goals of wisdom, compassion, and service to others.
2. Sit comfortably in front of a picture or statue and focus. Relax, close your eyes, and let the image appear in your mind’s eye. After a while, the image will become a radiant being of light. You will feel inspired and blessed; realizations will come to you.
3. Request the deity bestow blessings on you.
4. Picture the deity as light energy entering your head, allowing it to descend and then rise through your spine, dissolving into your heart. Feel the essence of the deity becoming one with you.
5. Focus on yantras, geometric forms that are associated with the deity and trigger desired energies.
6. Look at the geometrically shaped mandalas with the deity’s image that triggers certain imagery or emotions.
7. Listen to music invoking such energies. (See listings in Appendix C, “Tantric Tools,” for some ideas.) Choose CDs whose titles imply the energy, such as Ecstatica or Trance.
8. Perform mantras, prayers, and ceremonies associated with the deity and characteristics you desire. These can be simple or very elaborate.
Base Chakra Pleasuring
I will talk more about base chakra stimulation in the next chapter with regard to male sexual healing, but such exploration can also be a source of pleasure. Be aware that many partners will cringe at the thought, which can arouse shame, embarrassment, and fears (especially for heterosexual men, who may associate the act with being gay). Yet the presence of many nerve endings around the anal opening can lead to arousal. Always respect your partner’s
boundaries, go slowly, and follow your partner’s cues about when, where and how to touch.
the base chakra is associated with issues of safety and security; therefore
moving energy from the base center to the heart, throat, or sex centers brings more solidity to expression in that area. Bring the energy there by sweeping your hand in that direction, and then holding ahand on each of two areas to connect them.
Aids in Tantric Play
Just like toys are rated for use with age groups, sex aids are appropriate for different levels of lovers in their practices. Although there is no rating system, trust your intuition about which ones could be above your head (restraints, anal beads) for the time being. By all means surprise your partner with new sexual pleasures, but when it comes to some activities you know might be a stretch, discuss readiness together. One such aid is the Pearls of Delight, a long strand of washable pearls (costing about $12.95), that can be worn around the neck but also inserted inside the vaginal or anal canal and pulled out slowly. “Surprise your partner,” says Taylor Lamborne, a California tantrika who sells them. “Wear them when you go out for dinner as a signal of what’s in store for your love play when you come home that evening.”
Entering Space and Time
When you are really adept at tantric practice—specifically meditation—you canenter deep states of consciousness that take you across time and space. Some people can do this naturally, but most need a teacher as a guide. Attend a workshop on past lives or astral projection.
Past Lives Connected to God/Goddess
The idea of past lives might be alien to you, in which case some of these principles may be hard to accept. Put aside your skepticism for a moment and entertain possibilities of potential value for your personal transformation and exploration of sacred loving.
The principle of past lives is intrinsic, although not essential, to tantric loving because the gods and goddesses come from a tradition that is traced back to the beginnings of time. Becoming one with the lineage of all these deities helps you to unite with all that is, all that has come before, and all that will be. This merging of time helps you reach the state of bliss within yourself and the realization that you are complete without any partner.
Astral Projection
Advanced tantric sex partners can send their love and sensual connections through the airwaves, across space as well as time. This transmission is obviously useful for long-distance lovers, forced to be in different locations because of jobs, schooling, or other reasons. People who don’t think they have psychic powers can find themselves able to do such projected communication— by deep concentration and “sensing” the other
person.
