Holiday Musings on Indian Culture and Gratitude

This isn’t the usual holiday greeting though I wish you a Very Happy and Healthy and Loving Holiday Season! This email is more about reminding all of us of the blessings and full life we are privileged to have.
I’ve just come back from five and a half weeks in India. I have taken up saying that India is the land of EVERYTHING. Beauty, pollution, smiling faces, dirty, grimacing children, extreme wealth, ultra-extreme poverty, giant cities, 85% rural villages, birth, death, temples, more temples, lots of people everywhere and not a lot of anything that even looked like enlightened sex. The concepts brought to life by the Kama Sutra, and the more esoteric Tantric practices, seemed long forgotten in the India that I observed.
Of particular interest to me were the temples at Khajuraho. This out of the way small city once consisted of eighty-five temples built, within 200 years, by one dynasty. Most were built in the tenth and eleventh centuries and are covered in erotic sculptures, animals of the day, gods, goddesses and celebratory multitudes. The deity, to whom the individual temple is in honor, might be carved out of marble as well as limestone. They are exquisitely delicate yet powerfully present and alive. Today only twenty-one temples still stand. They encompass many branches of Hinduism yet they all have heavenly, voluptuous bodies adorning their architecture. At least the relics of the past point to the erotic under-structure of the culture.
And, as in Western countries, it seems that sex sells in India. It sells Indian ‘Bollywood’ movies. It sells its own history in the form of old and new paintings that depict the sensuous knowledge the people seemed to once have. It sells jewelry, cars and clothing, too. India is distinctly adulterated with Western thinking and lifestyle desires and this all left me wondering what India was like in the pre-colonization period before the British came. Is that when they lost their sensual nature?
As I wandered about and moved my way through Northern India I created a perpetual practice of trying to stay out of my own way. I had to constantly remind myself to not think like a Westerner. It was a difficult, but worthy, practice for a Tantrica.
The most difficult realization I had while there was that women are mostly less than chattel. Chattel – an item of personal property. They are not Goddesses with a capital ‘G’. They are slaves to be hidden, they are considered un-clean, women are rarely seen outside the home compound, they mostly live in villages, are uneducated and go to live with their husband’s family when they marry. This means that their own family puts very little energy into raising a girl though she is useful to her mother to help with all of the boy children the family will have. Girls aren’t educated because they will leave the family upon marriage. They often aren’t fed well, from birth. They are the last to get a pair of shoes. They are often in rags while the boys have jackets and shoes and socks. They are neglected.
And, worse, in all of my travels and in all of the villages, small towns and even big cities that I visited I only saw two families with more than one girl child in them. Both of these families were in cities waiting for the train’s upper class seating, so they obviously weren’t poor. In family after family, in village after village, I only ever saw one girl child per family of four or five children. She was often the oldest or close to one of the oldest. If you stop to think about this it doesn’t take long to understand that if a mother has four or five children and only one of them is a girl she has done something with the other girls she gave birth to.
In fact, this is born out in current population statistics in India. While there I read several alarming newspaper articles about how there are about seven women to every ten men and that the statistics are getting worse rather than better. It is a matter of life that female babies are either left to die or they are actively poisoned upon birth. This isn’t the place to get into why this is occurring. India, as I stated, is about everything under the universe. It is a complicated society that is emerging onto the modern economic scene with a driving desire and longing to be a leader in the world.
So, I am left with the realization that it is maybe the West’s longing to see woman as a symbol of the Goddess and man as a symbol of the God. One of the problems plaguing India is that women are taught to see their husbands as Gods but it isn’t a two-way street. Women seem worthless in India yet, in so many ways, they run the economy, the family, the household and the religious rituals. Are we at the end of a worldly cycle or at the beginning? Has India left behind what we need and desire to make us whole?
The Dalai Lama has said that the West is where Buddhism is the most alive and changing. He applauds this change. It is working for people. The same is true, I believe, for the West’s fascination with some of the concepts of Hinduism – the Goddesses and Gods, the ceremony and universal connection with the sacred, Tantric and Kama Sutra practices that increase awareness and loving presence, yoga and meditation practices, and, of course, our interest in the profound sensual/sexual healing aspects of intimacy.
So, we are actively changing portions of a much older philosophy that suit our changing lives and we are making them our own. I say “Thank you” to that ancient culture that cultivated these practices and I say to them “Watch us, see how we are transforming and find ways to embrace what we do here, in the West, because the ‘times’ are changing and women deserve to be equal and appreciated for their contributions to the world and our future.
Thank you for letting me rave on. May the very best of the season be yours. May happiness and blessings grace your New Year. May you know and embody your rightful place in the Universe. May pleasure and love find you everyday of your life.
Happy Holidays,
Suzie

Tantra.com's New Site

Tantra.com’s new site is delayed. We are hoping to unveil it on Monday November 26 just a few days before I arrive back home from India. It was originally scheduled to go up several months ago but we have had trouble with our Flash video players so things have been delayed. We’ll have a lot more free videos and much more in the Premium Content Area too. Please come on by when you can and take a look. We heartily invite feedback so please don’t hesitate. We really like the design and the functionality of the site, in all areas, should be vastly improved.
There are many things we had to put on the ‘after we unveil the new site’ list including some kind of social networking so please visit often to see what’s new. I think you’ll enjoy the videos that are conversations I had with Patricia and Mark from TantraPM. They are of a more advanced nature and these are very articulate Tantrikas so do take time to watch them once the new site is up.
Love,
Suzie

India Journal - Speculation on the Erotic Temples Coming

At a future date, most likely when I get back, I want to write about the temples and carvings at Khajurahu. Most of what I will write may be pure speculation but that is the fun of it because the truth is no one really knows what to think of these temples. Scholars will say one thing and guides will tell another. I have some ideas, too. They’re a bit more on the intuitive side but I like that part. It gets me to thinking and it makes me think between the lines. Dawn, my daughter, has taken many pictures so I’ll have illustrations for what I speculate. Of course, there are many possibilities and scenarios so I’ll look forward to comments, ideas and out-right arguments. Stay tuned.
Love,
Suzie

India Journal - A Dream and an Idea

I get many questions about the most basic aspects of sex from Indians. I mean basic. Last week I found myself waking out of a dream that had me writing a sex manual, no a modern Kama Sutra, for Indians. I would get a grant from some of my wealthy friends who would support this kind of project. A big grant. I would write a great, witty yet brilliant book for every Indian whether they lived in a village at the edge of Pakistan or Bangla or in a big city like Delhi. It would be FREE TO ANYONE WHO WANTED IT. I wouldn’t put my name on it both out of an attitude of ‘give-away’ and in fear that there might be some kind of backlash against me! It would be printed and handed out through women’s unions, NGOs, handi-craft organizations and health care initiatives. Women would have to keep it secret but they would talk about it when the men were gone doing what ever it is they do during the day.
My daughter Dawn, whom I’m traveling with in India, laughed at me when I told her my idea. “What am I thinking, she asks?” “How can that possibly happen?”
I guess she is right, though I have to admit I like the idea a lot. How do we help when we see something that is in need of help? Someone said that ‘All the suffering in the world is caused by un-happy people’. If we can help people be happy, if we can supply a possibility to them, if we can provide a ‘vehicle’ by which to transport someone then why shouldn’t we try? I know that it would ‘gum up the works’ so to speak. Cause a mini-revolution in a way, but why not? I don’t much like the way the world is going, anyway. Why not supply knowledge and understanding and happiness. The paths are many but the destination is always the same – empowerment and happiness leads to compassion and LOVE. Then maybe war wouldn’t take hold of us so strongly. We would be happy people and that would lead to much less suffering.
Love,
Suzie

India Journal - I'm Having a Hard Time With...

It is very difficult for me to see how a Hindu in India could have ever, at one time, understood, embraced and practiced the Kama Sutra let alone the Tantric Arts. It is as though sexuality, regardless of any sacred aspect, is something so course here that it has been reduced to staring at women’s breasts, teasing and intimidating and generally playing for the fool any woman who might happen to simply walk by. It’s very hard to handle.
I have my tall, gorgeous, twenty-three year old daughter with me as I’m traveling through India. She is an intrepid traveler, going places on her own I could only dream of being brave enough to go to but she is often brought to her edge by Indian men. And women. The men won’t let her be. There is always some man, young or old, who is outright staring at her, bumping her or harassing her. It’s sad and alarming. It makes travel here uncomfortable a lot of the time. I even get some of it myself, at my age. It has put us in deep wonder about women’s lives here.
Women in the villages and small towns, which is most women, won’t come out of their dark, smoky, hidden little kitchens if the men are around. They won’t look at you, acknowledge you or stick around if we two women come near. If the men are gone to the fields or away sitting talking with other men, which is what they all seem to be doing all of the time in the cities, all breaks open with the women. They come out – really OUT. It’s like night and day.
So many times while traveling we have had this same thing happen. The women are chatty, curious and aggressive – to the point of being scary sometimes – but only if their men are far away. We have been pinched, poked, prodded and cajoled. We have been asked to give up our clothing, jewelry, scarves, pens and anything else that appealed and looked like something they could tell a good story about later. Luckily, we all have laughed together a lot, too, during these encounters. You have to be able to laugh – a lot – at yourself and at the situation. It is the best policy by far.
But what does this mean for their intimate lives? And how, as women, do we understand and accept the fact that in EVERY family, whether villagers or city folk, there is NEVER more than one girl among the children? There are always three to four or more boys of varying ages but never more than one girl. She is often the oldest or second to oldest, too.
What this tells us is that Indian women, whether Hindu or Muslim, must decide how to let their girls go. They get to keep one, only one. Older is better as she’ll be of valuable help to the mother, but after SHE is born there must be now only boys. Can you even imagine what that must feel like? I can’t even fathom it. I’m the mother of three girls and no boys. When I say that, which I do often, I get a sad, poor me kind of face from everyone. I am defective they think. How is this possible, they are wondering.
Imagine killing your daughters. You get just one, remember. Do you give that first one you don’t get to keep to your powerful mother-in-law, who had to do the same with her ‘extra’ girls? Do you be brave and leave her outside, under a bush, away from your home a bit, so you won’t think about it? How can you not think about it? Ever. What about the next and the next? How many times does an Indian woman have to do this in her life? She has to live through nine months of a pregnancy then, not knowing if it is a girl or that wanted boy, go through birth just to have a fifty-percent chance of starting all over again, very soon, to try again for that boy. If there are an average of four boys in a family and one girl then she might have had to do it maybe four or five times in her life. Just don’t attend the new baby girl - leave her, nature will do the rest. Does that make the one girl that does get to survive thankful – is she burdened at a very young age with that thought?
It is all too much for me sometimes. I can’t fathom it. It is because of money – the dowry. It is a burden on families to have to come up with a big pay-off for the girl to get married. Sometimes, even after that, the family is haunted by their new in-laws and their daughter’s husband to give more – the first wasn’t enough. It can drive women to suicide or worst, murder on the part of the husband or his family.
I know that balance is within me. I know that everything is perfect, just the way it is. The Universe is perfect. And yet, I can’t balance this. It doesn’t compute. Sorry for my rants. I know it isn’t very ‘sexy’ but it is THE WAY in the land of the Kama Sutra. I am wondering about sex now. What is that like for Indian men and women?
Love,
Suzie

I'm in India at the temples in the town of Khajuraho

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Alchemy – A powerful transformation that is a universal cure for the body, mind and spirit.

How does one become an alchemist? In what ways have you transformed yourself? Have you moved through a restraint, a negative personal experience or a handicap that has informed you on a new level? Have you been an alchemist in your life?
Mother Gaia is moving once more through the seasons with the Equinox having just passed. For some of us the nights will grow shorter and the season will move to Spring and then Summer. For others of us the nights will be longer and we will move into the darkness of Fall and then Winter. This is a potent alchemical time whichever season you are moving into. Change is a-foot and the opportunity to create transformation is close. I’m sure you can feel its presence.
It is a potent practice to understand how you personally move through change. In this busy world you probably barely have time to get your bed made let alone take some time to be with change. It tends to happen to you instead of you guiding yourself to and through it. Being aware of the times, moments, situations that have the potential to transform us is a learned mastery but there are ways to facilitate the change so that it is transformational and expansive. Understanding your own nature – what feels good and right to you – is one of the highest accomplishments you can perform in your life.
Each breath you take is an alchemical process. You take in the life giving air and your body uses it in a myriad of ways to give your cells the nourishment they need to sustain you. Your out-breath, in turn, nourishes plant life and the processes that are outside of ‘you’. Yet these processes are you. You are tied to the bigger picture. You are an alchemist in nature.
When you pause during your day to just ‘be’ with all that is going on in your world you are being an alchemist. You are taking everything in and allowing a moment for integration to occur. Your yoga, meditation or even exercise practice is alchemical. Many different processes are going on in your body/mind/spirit during activities like these even if it is simply five minutes of presences and awareness of what ‘is’.
In your deepest relationships you are the alchemist when you choose compassion and love in the face of adversity and angst. Seeing through a lover’s complaint to the hurt is alchemy. Holding an aging parent’s hand through a difficult transition with patience rather than guilt or resentment is alchemy. Learning new things in the face of not really knowing why you must do it is alchemy. Every moment has the possibility of being the Alchemist’s tool for transformation.
Creating a practice of noticing more often when alchemy is happening and how to actually court it is the process of becoming the best ‘you’ you can be. Acknowledge it when you see it. Call it to you when you can’t see it. Create ritual to acknowledge alchemical transformation. Cultivate consciousness at your source – you are the source.

A Simple Practice to Expand Pleasure

The whole body, and every inch of skin, is the most complex erogenous zone there is. There are men and women who can orgasm just by touching a specific spot on their body without any genital touching. You can train yourself to activate your skin, or any other part of your body, to assist in orgasmic pleasure. Engaging the mind in this practice will help improve your ability to expand your experience, too.
When you are in sexual activity, and especially during genital stimulation, try adding a new erogenous spot to your repertoire so that your brain will connect that spot with pleasure in the future. Consciously focus on the touch you are receiving in that new area and spread the feeling throughout your body by visualizing the expansion. An example of this would be gently massaging and stroking the breasts, and area between the breasts where the heart chakra is, while pleasuring the yoni or lingam. By doing this you will be spreading the erotic energy to the chest and body cavity and you will be putting focus away from the genitals. This activates the heart area. When next the heart is stroked it is a good bet that the person will feel the expansion of energy in their genitals, too. By expanding these practices the concepts of what is erotic and pleasurable expand limitlessly to include that which wouldn't normally look or feel erotic. That is the realm of transformation to full embodiment of finding pleasure in places that you wouldn't normally look for it. It is everywhere all at once and in everything you do.

Erectile Disfunction and Neo-Tantric Techniques

I got this question the other day and I thought I'd share it with you:
My husband (age 62) has erectile dysfunction and is unable to have and/or sustain an erection for long. He has been able to have an orgasm with a fairly soft penis but not often. When we make love through vaginal intercourse his penis often loses it's sensitivity and rigidity. This is causing him a great deal of anxiety and depression and I am feeling inadequate and frustrated because I am not able to help in arousing or stimulating him. Can you help?
There are many questions to ask yourselves. Smoking, alcohol, inactive lifestyle, being over-weight, excessive meat eating and other lifestyle practices can contribute greatly to ED. So can age. About one half of all men your husband’s age (in western countries) cannot sustain an erection. That doesn't mean there aren't things you can do about it. The most important health items are the things I mentioned above.
Neo-Tantric practices could revolutionize your lovemaking because they teach us to slow down and re-learn, in many ways, the things we have taught ourselves that may not serve us. You might find that through the simplest of practices (like eye gazing or breathing together while eye gazing) that you find that your husband’s arousal builds slower but is more sustainable, that you are more present with each other and therefore get more enjoyment from the acts of love, find new ways to 'play' together that keep your erotic 'peak' up and so forth.
Breath is key to orgasm. Women need to breathe more and more steadily to achieve control over orgasm and to expand it into multiple orgasms. Men, on the other hand, tend to breathe too fast, sending themselves over-the-top too soon. In your husband’s case he might want to try breathing faster - a panting breath for say 15 to 20 counts and then a few deeper breathes and then repeat this pattern for say three times through. Don't hyperventilate. Start slower if I have given him too much here, but continue to build this practice. What this will do for him is to hyper focus his mind (he should visualize his lingam growing strong as he breathes) and the worry of whether or not he is going to sustain his erection will go away. Do you understand what I mean by this? Both of you need to turn your focus away from whether or not he will keep his erection. Get playful. Do the breathing sexercises, both alone when you aren't making love and even together when you are. It's OK for you to do them too because they will help you gain mastery also. Imagine on the exhale breath that you are showering each other with golden light.
I also suggest that he (or both of you) study some of the Taoist love manuals. We have some great modern ones by Mantak Chia. The one I'm thinking of is Male Multiple Orgasm in our catalog at http://www.tantra.com . The Taoist masters make love many times a day well onto their 90's. Ejaculation mastery, practices to strengthen his constitution and breathing exercises all can do simply amazing things.
Don't personalize this. Work (and Play!) together to find solutions and alternatives to penis/vagina sex. And sometimes it may be all right for your husband to take Cialis (talk with your doctor about this), once and awhile, to take the pressure off of yourselves.
The last thing I want to say is that the blood vessels that cause the penis to swell are on the outside of the penile tissue. Those little vessels have a lot of work to do to get the blood down there and keep it there. It's a long way from the heart! So - keep the heart in it and healthy - but consider using a soft cock-ring to help keep the blood in the penis so it won't flow out so fast. We carry a really good type and I think they are about $10 or $12 so they’re very reasonable. They help a lot.
I hope this all helps the two of you. It is difficult to advise when so little is known and I AM NOT A DOCTOR OR EVEN A NURSE so you may want to consult with an urologist too. I think that Tantric techniques would help you. You might consider joining our Premium Content area for a few months - it's very reasonable at $14.95/month. We're streaming lots of educational video and there are e-courses and audio instructions that will help your husband.
Good luck! I am thrilled that you are looking for solutions to continue your expressions of loving.
Namaste,
Suzie

From the Bedroom to the Boardroom

From the bedroom to the boardroom – life is the same. If a breakthrough is desired in your life, start with your sexual intimacy. Gently but mindfully start to break up the old patterns and add new dimensions to your life. Here are some suggestions on how you might do that:
-Take small risks,
-Tell the truth,
-Ask for what you want in bed,
-Learn a new technique every week,
-Trust and be trustworthy,
-Try vulnerability over defensiveness,
-Start with a compliment and then ask for a small change,
-Show your appreciation generously!

We commonly see sex as an end to itself. But ancient Tantricas developed sexuality to such an art that it could be used as a vehicle for life transformation. Some of the techniques can help you expand and develop your life to its fullest potential and what a way to do it!

Belly Breathing

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Pushing Your Edges - Gently

“Don’t reject anything you are experiencing. Meet it instead with a brief moment of non-judgmental awareness – touching it and letting it be.” From Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships by John Welwood
Tantric practice invites us to push our boundaries, just a bit, so that we experience something new and unique, not about the ‘thing’ we do but about the way in which we experience and then handle the situation. There is a profound practice that is essential for any Tantrica – nonjudgmental witnessing. It looks like this: “I’m noticing that I’m beginning to raise my voice.” or “I’m really feeling grateful and happy right now.” Period. Nothing more - nothing less. It isn’t: “I’m raising my voice and that’s going to get me in trouble.” That statement is judgmental and inflicts a little ‘ding’ on your psyche whenever you speak it to yourself. In the same respect, it isn’t this either: “I’m really feeling grateful and happy right now and I deserve it.” Yes, you deserve it but even adding that piece to the simple acknowledged presence of the ‘feeling’ contains elements of judgment.
This is a practice that helps you pay attention to how you are feeling, to what your gut is telling you. You already know, in your psyche, that that means you are becoming angry or that you are feeling proud of being deserving. You can go on to simply notice that fact. Don’t judge your self, don’t think about what you should-of, could-of done, don’t do anything to take yourself out of the ‘feeling’ mode of the witnessing.
When this ‘witnessing’ becomes second nature it will nurture your spirit and lead you to greater understanding of who you are. There is no higher goal in life than to find out the details of the real you. That is the beginning of a beautiful relationship – you loving you!

Foreskin, Thrusting Patterns and Slowing Down

Ever wonder why the penis has a head on it? Why isn't it just a smooth surface all the way to the body? Yes, the foreskin has to attach somewhere and foreskin does protect the sensitive tissue there but the Taoists have another idea about it. It’s there for more pleasure – a woman’s pleasure.
Notice that the top side of the penis, at the head, is a little thicker than the under side.
In sex positions where the two lovers are facing each other, it’s this top area that rubs against the woman’s G-spot on both the in and the out thrusts. Remember that the G-spot, or G-area, is only about 1 to 1 ½ inches inside of her yoni. On the out stroke, during intercourse, the man's foreskin is pulled slightly, back over towards the head, and bunches up against this thick ridge area thus creating more bulk. A very slow out-stroke is the connection point for G-spot orgasms.
With this in mind, adopt some new thrusting patterns that take this into account.
Shallow and sloooooow is the name of the game, here. So try this pattern based on nines: Start with 8 thrusts shallow and one thrust deep, then 7 shallow and 2 deep until you get to all deep thrusts. Then reverse the pattern: with 8 deep and 1 shallow until you get to all shallow thrusts.
Guys, this techniques will help you last longer, too, while focusing your attention on her pleasure. You’ll begin to be able to ‘read’ her reactions and arousal better and tune your lovemaking to bring her to ecstasy every time. Gals, this is the kind of detailed information that most men respond to. Share it with your guy, even if they are circumcised, there is big benefit to slowing down on the out-stroke!
Send me reports on how this works for you.

Great Video Conversations with a Teaching Couple

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Pompoir

From the early followers of the Kama Sutra to today’s sexologists in-the-know, the art of Pompoir is well-known for its benefits. Health, wellbeing and erotic pleasure are just some of the extras it offers.
Pompoir is the art of squeezing his parts with your parts. To learn this ancient art first learn to do Kegel exercises. Those are the sexercises that strengthen the PC or Pubococcygeal muscle – that muscle that starts and stops the flow of urine. The benefits are numerous: easier childbirth, bladder control, erotic self-stimulation without genital contact and, of course, more pleasure for you and your partner during intercourse.
Once you’ve got Kegel exercises down, surprise him during lovemaking with “The Squeeze.” Vary the sensations by exploring thrusting patterns that incorporate shallow and deep penetration along with the gripping and letting go. With some practice you'll be able to tell the different areas inside your Yoni and your orgasms will increase in strength too.
Some women can even learn to hold so tightly - they will have their lover begging for mercy!

A Little Powerful Breath Exercise

It’s 11:30am on Wednesday. You’ve got a 1:00pm lunch appointment, there’s that call you need to make and the report due before lunch, and YOU KNOW you’re at your best in the morning.
You take a deep breath into your belly and close your eyes as you feel your breath fall back away from your body. Imagine a moment in time when you melted under the touch of your lover. When every fiber of your being was focused and suspended in ecstasy.
Imagine that feeling now, noticing the warmth of your genitals. Begin slowly squeezing your vaginal muscles, pulsing and feeling your passion grow. Bring your mind to stillness, as you pump, and hold the vision of “I am perfection”.
Pump a little faster and breathe a little faster - 100 pulses.
A last, deep breath in, hold, hold – and as you slowly release the breath, feel your passion and gratitude for all you have wash over you like a Hawaiian waterfall.
11:35am – Wow – five minutes! Refreshed, turned-on, pumped-up and completely confident – you move powerfully into accomplishing your commitments!
-Work up to 200,
-Add 20 s-l-o-w- ones,
-Try this sequence on your lover,
-Do it anytime you need to access your sexual energy!
Try this sometime and let me know what happens. It's a good practice to wake you right up! Send me feedback please.

Tantra – weaving life, love, consciousness and sex – 24/7.

Oxytocin and the Interplay of Relating

Significant new studies are showing the complexity of the world of neurochemicals that make up our bodies, minds and souls. Fascinating studies on the neuropeptide oxytocin are showing its importance in pair-bonding between lovers, families and friends. It is also being singled out for its role in the more feminine trait of ‘tending and relating’ in the face of adversity. Fight or flight, in the face of stress, seems to be a more male trait and may have something to do with the interplay of testosterone levels and oxytocin levels. Estrogen, on the other hand, enhances the affects of oxytocin and helps to promote the brain’s use of oxytocin to create win-win scenarios.

Reactions to stress factors are smaller and pass faster in people under the influence of higher levels of oxytocin. Estrogen enhances oxytocin release and androgens like testosterone mitigate it. It may be that as women age (the degree of free testosterone in their bodies and brains increases as estrogen compounds decrease) they become less attached to their long-term love relationships, especially if they are strained. They seek friends, family and, sometimes, new mates so as to increase their levels of oxytocin. All of this is unconscious, of course, but helps us understand the movement of humans in the relationship love dance.

Oxytocin may be why men seek more sex partners than women tend to. Women produce more oxytocin, in more ways than men, and it helps them create bonding relationships of all kinds. It induces trust, intimacy, reaching to help others and reduces stress so it only seems natural that men would seek, unconsciously, of course, their own ways of increasing the supply of it to their brains. Because men have access to oxytocin during orgasmic pleasure and, in smaller amounts, through intimate relating like kissing and cuddling, they would seek these behaviors naturally. Women, on the other hand, have more opportunity to experience the oxytocin high through not only orgasm and cuddling but through nursing, childbirth and general friendship tending. They just are more ‘wired’ for the production of oxytocin because it is biologically necessary for bonding them to friends and family.

There are several companies experimenting with low-level oxytocin sprays that may be out on the market in a few years. What will that do to the world of love and bonding and connection? In a society that prides itself on innovation, where is this taking us and how will it benefit, detour or cause problems in the human striving to love and be loved? In the face of free-will corporate profits, I’m sure we’ll be finding out soon enough.

Small Study on Mood Benefits of Yoga

Finally, the scientific community is studying some of the strong, anecdotal evidence that Yoga produces calmer, happier people. A small, new study on Yoga and health benefits just announced that the amount of a substance in our bodies – GABA – goes up 27% in people who meditate versus reading a book. GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is a neurotransmitter that makes us feel better. Concentrations of this neurotransmitter were at significantly higher levels throughout the brain areas that respond to it in MRSI scans after the one hour Yoga period. Their findings suggest that yoga, and perhaps other forms of exercise, should be investigated as a complementary treatment for depression and anxiety disorders, which are commonly associated with low levels of GABA. This is definitive news on how Yoga, and probably exercise, orgasm and maybe even meditation, can benefit all of us.
Further studies will include a look at general exercise as a comparison to Yoga to see if any qualifications can be used to further define what exactly is happening to the brain and the presence of GABA. I’m hoping they look at meditation and visualization too. Other recent scientific studies have pointed to the fact that you can simply ‘think’ or ‘visualize’ to actual ‘optimize’ the benefits you get from your regular exercise. Imagine yourself pushing your own envelope and it will happen!

Anger and Power Tantric Style

AASECT again!
There is so much here but much of it just doesn’t fit the model of Sacred Sexuality and Tantric philosophy, as I see it. It is more about the systematic model of breaking down and reconstructing the issues that concern, confuse and cause us grief about our relationships and sex. The issues that, for what ever reasons, keep us separate from our lover and partner. But we must live in relationship to others and we must relate to the world we live in and function in. The higher our functioning the better our lives will be.
Marty Klein, famous and prolific sex therapist that he is, held a workshop on Anger and Power in relationships. Power and Anger manifest in many different ways in all relationships but I’ll focus here on one of the ways it comes up in relationship to Tantra.
These kinds of issues come up in couples where one wants to take a Tantra workshop and the other can’t understand why, or sometimes even listen to the reasons, their partner wants to go. Though the one lover may be trying to charge the relationship up a bit, and cause transformation to occur, the other partner sees it as a direct attack on his or her sexual techniques, lovability or any other of a myriad of assaults on their integrity as a love and partner.
Tantra has been affiliated with saying ‘Yes’ to your lover and to life. That doesn’t mean that any particular ‘Yes’ is forever but it means that you are willing to stretch a bit to experience something your partner wants to try. If one partner, in any relationship, is the one who is always suggesting a new strategy, this can get very one-sided and become a ‘power’ play. If this happens in your relationship, any relationship in your life for that matter, try stretching to be the one who suggests a new adventure or path of learning and expanding. See what happens. Start slowly and relatively safely at first if this is foreign to you. Witness how you feel doing it – even thinking about doing it. Are you being straight-forward and clear in your telling? Are you fully behind yourself and what you are asking for? How does it fell in your ‘body’ right before and right after you ask? Witness how you handle yourself and applies this to next time so that you can learn how to be more assertive and yet gently powerful on your life and your relationships.
Life is relatively short. There may come a time in your life when you say to yourself “Why didn’t I stretch a little more? What would it have cost me? And what would I have gained?” You might want to apply this sooner than later. At first you won’t be good at it but I bet over time and with a patience from you partner you will get it and the both of you will soar with your new-found equanimity.

At the AASECT Conference

I’m at the national, annual AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Education, Counseling & Therapy). For years my colleagues and co-tantra educators separated themselves from this world of sex therapists and researchers. I was told that these conferences wouldn’t inform me or infuse me with anything; that folks here were straight and focused in their own worlds and couldn’t and wouldn’t come into mine. How not true!
There is a transformation going on in the world of science. Quantum physics dabbles in the circle that includes spirit now. And the world of sexual science is going there too. Fully a third of the workshops and talks had major components of spiritual enlightenment. The first two plenary sessions included the latest in women’s sexual research along with open and honest confirmation that spirit, healing and deep pleasure are what is the most important in finding one’s way in a sexually healthy lifestyle. Beverly Whipple, the pre-eminent researcher of women’s sexual response and brain activity, speaks these days of energy systems right along with pain and pleasure receptors. Gina Ogden is teaching transformative workshops based on the first ever survey investigating emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of sexuality as well as physical aspects of a whole-life system of ecstatic living. Healing the wounds we both carry in our minds and carry in our bodies has become a guiding principle here.
Gina’s workshop is a Goddess workshop in many ways. She uses the acronym ISIS for integrated sexuality into every aspect of life. Using the Native American model of the wheel she segments our sexual lives into Mental, Physical, Emotional, Spiritual and ‘Center’ in the middle of the circle to hold and integrate the other four. Sex is a whole-life experience. It informs all the rest of our life systems.
Debra Halfner is a Jewess by birth but is a minister now, a theologian and a sex therapist. She gave a plenary that interpreted bible passages that embrace sex and she calls for a reformation in how we hold and see sex in our lives. Sexuality as the expression of the Divine is available to us in spirit and in religion. We are originally ‘blessed’ through our birth from the ecstasy of sex. She is reminding us to remember this and she is calling for a reclaiming of our rights to pleasure from the narrow interpretation given by the Christian conservative Right.
More to come…

Mainstream meets Tantricas

I’m excited about my trip next week to Charlotte, North Carolina for the annual AASECT conference. AASECT stands for American Association of Sexuality Educators, Councilors and Therapists. This will be my third annual meeting with them.
As a Tantra and Kama Sutra educator I find the intersection between more traditional sex educators and therapists and the knowledge I have to be a very expansive area to explore. Understanding the research coming from the scientific community on sexuality, biology and neuroscience and then examining the research and experiential evidence in mind/body research is great food for thought, for my brain! I can look at things like the Chakra system, with its energy centers as metaphors for psychological phenomena, and see the direct correlation between the body’s nervous system and neuronal pathways. Our gut has the second largest ‘bundle’ of nerves next to our brains. It is said to be our second brain. Some scientists now believe that our whole body is our brain. This has immense implications.
Is it then true that we are what we eat and drink? Is where we live and work and play a part of our overall make-up? How about how happy we are? How much pleasure we experience? Or pain? A growing set of the scientific community understands that we are basically a bundle of nerves sending elaborate signals out via chemical messengers that control everything we do, think, act upon and believe. Because those chemicals we pump throughout our bodies can be influenced by what we ingest (in the extreme, think opiates, psychedelics, simple herbs and even more oxygen) we have not only the capacity to see God/Goddess but to feel a part of the great mystery of the universe. We have the capacity to inhale pheromones from our lover, to breathe differently to create a change in attitude or experience, to calm ourselves, to excite ourselves and so much more.
It’s said that we each use about 10% of our brain capacity. I’m not necessarily thinking about ‘thinking’, I’m curious about the other things we do with our brains. The things that have become rote behavior like the way we breathe or the way we treat anger or mindless eating patterns. With training anything is possible because we have a huge brain that can take a lot more input and mastery of thought and action. Simply employing it to be happier and more fulfilled might be a wonderful way to start increasing your brain capacity!
Think about offering your lover a unique experience of touch, erotic pleasure and surrender this weekend. Design an experience for them to increase their capacity for ‘Kama’- pleasure. You’ll be increasing the amount of brain they use too, so they won’t be able to refuse your offering of deep pleasure. It is hard to receive sometimes but in doing so you will be expanding your ability to be a more whole and complete human being.

Female Ejaculation - Do you do it?

In the early 1980's co-eds reported that about 10% of them ejaculated during sexual orgasm. A more current response has that number at more than 40%. This percentage even went up when the women were queried anonymously. I wonder if just knowing it is possible or once you've heard that other women do it is permission given to go for it yourself? Why has this number increased so rapidly?
Many women are still embarrassed by it and don't understand what they are experiencing. Female ejaculation happens in small quantities and larger quantities. It happens through G-spot stimulation and clitoral stimulation. It has been confirmed that strong PC muscles (do your Kegels gals!) strengthen the connection between stronger orgasms and ejaculation in both men and women.
I became an official ejaculator when it was mentored to me by Caroline Muir. We were filming with her and Charles many years ago a sequence for a film on female ejaculation. That night I tried imitating her sounds while in orgasm - deep, resonate tones from the belly - when all of a sudden I was gushing. I haven't stopped since. I just had to know it was possible and mentoring is a great way to learn, especially for such a topic!
Do you ejaculate? If you do, do you have any tips, suggestions, concerns or ideas for helping others or just commenting on what it is like for you and how you feel about it? I'd love to hear from you about any of these topics. email me!

Kissing Lessons

How do you kiss? How does your lover do it? Is there something you can learn about kissing? Many men and women complain that their lover doesn’t know how to kiss very well, and that their kissing actually turns them off. Kissing is one of the most sensuous, erotic and thrilling things couples can do together. It can be done just about anywhere. So, what’s to keep you from being a great kisser?

Our mouths, lips and tongues are alive with nerve endings. Voluptuous lips are one of the sexual stimuli that turn on both men and women. We wouldn’t love eating nearly as much if we didn’t like the texture of things in our mouths. Kissing has an erotic power over us and the better you are at it the more you’ll get kissed. The pleasure you can deliver and derive from kissing can be expanded to take on an importance of its own.

Lesson One: Wet your lips generously right now. Use your tongue and moisten them well. Put your lips together in an exaggerated pout. As you pout, rub the insides around on each other and feel the silkiness of your own inner lips. Imagine kissing that part of your mouth. Now, again exaggerating the pout, part your lips slightly so you can just suck a little air in through the opening. That is how your lips should feel when you are about to kiss someone: moist, juicy, voluptuous, open, and inviting.

Lesson Two: Kiss the back of your own hand as practice. You should leave a wet mark and make a small, seductive smack as you finish it. Slight suction can be felt when a full set of lips meets the skin. Attitude plays a big part in kissing, too. Are you being seductive and coy or lustful and aggressive? Practice different attitudes while sucking and kissing various exotic fruits, such as a mango, a peach or nectarine, or maybe papaya. Peel the skin away and practice different styles of kissing while you’re eating it. Nobody is going to see you, so go for it!

Lesson Three: Try recreating your first kissing experiences. Tell your partner that you want to practice with them. Pretend you know nothing. Ask for pointers. You want to be a great kisser! Surrender some of the time. Be aggressive at other times. Dance back and forth with soft, slightly open, moist full lips.

Lesson Four: Don’t introduce your tongue until after you’ve been kissing for a while. Wait until you and your lover yearn for it. When you do start tongue play, do be playful. Tickle and tease. Run the tip of your tongue around the inside of your lover’s lips. Give them a little tongue, then pull back and nibble at one lip. Run a finger erotically across their inner lips and then leave it in the corner of your mouths while kissing. This gives a sense of urgency to the deeper kisses and adds extra sensuousness to the act.

Sensuously introduce warm chocolate, juice, or a liqueur into your lover’s mouth before kissing. Share it back and forth. Lick the drips off of their lips in the most luscious way you can. Use your soft lips to kiss your lover’s body all over. Ears are highly erogenous, so kiss, lick, nibble, suck and bite an ear lobe and breathe softly into the ear. You can create even more sensual pleasure if you slip down and kiss and bite the neck. In Tantric practice the lower lip on the man provides a direct channel to his sexual organ’s excitement, so gently suck and kiss this exquisite area, too. Get creative and have fun!

How do you instruct a new lover in kissing? What do you like and what don't you like in a good kisser? Let me know!
Tantra.com

What's Oxygen Got To Do With It?

My current fascination involves a deeper understanding of the workings of our bodies related to orgasm, pleasure and the possible ways of increasing both of those. You’ll hear more in the future about the relationship between pain and pleasure, oxytocin, love and bonding and brain functioning and orgasm in this column. This one is about oxygen and blood flow for optimum sexual functioning.

It’s been said that the clitoris has 8,000 nerve ends. I read that fact in Natalie Angier’s Woman; An Intimate Geography. She’s a great writer, by the way. These nerve endings, or neurons more precisely, use oxygen when they are excited. The more ‘excited’ they are the more oxygen is required to keep that excitement up. This is a feedback loop that suggests that the more oxygen you can give the blood to genital delivery system the more bang you might get for your effort. What happens to the blood supply as it is coursing through the body during sexual arousal is that it gets depleted of oxygen as the blood supplies the genital region with more and more oxygen. Certain factors work to relax the walls of the blood vessels, in the genital region, as arousal builds. This relaxation also helps increase the supply of blood and, therefore, oxygen. One of those ‘factors’ is probably nitric oxide, which the supplement L-arginine helps produce in the body.

Back to the subject: How does one supply an increasingly large amount of oxygen to the clitoris, labia and G-spot area? This is the connection that deep belly breathing has to pleasure and orgasmic response. Many women actually stop breathing when they get really turned on. On a scale of 1 to 10 at about the 7 or 8 level a woman will often simply stop breathing. They hold their breath and tighten their bodies. That puts an immediate stop to any new oxygen that is needed for the pelvis and yoni (Sanskrit for Vagina) neurons. Many women report that they get to a certain stage of arousal and then, for reasons they just can’t figure out, they slow down and often fall back down the building curve to orgasm. Their bodies will relax and they will naturally start breathing again only to have the same thing happen, again. It’s a frustrating situation that isn’t easily discovered naturally.

What she really needs to do is breathe faster and harder to supply the critical oxygen needed to sustain and build her turn on such that she brings herself to orgasm. This is where practicing breathing every day, until you have mastered it, will really pay off. There are benefits far beyond orgasm but let’s stick with the big ‘O’ for now. Practice deep breathing every morning before you get up and every night before you go to sleep. Five minutes will do. By placing a hand on your belly and softly forcing your hand up on the in breath you’ll know you are doing it right. Have your lover remind you to breathe when you are making love. If you are self-loving make a little sign to remind yourself to breathe. Practice breathing faster, too. Pant for about 15 breaths and then let it out slowly through pursed lips. Use this faster breath when you are at that 6, 7 or 8 level to consciously ‘drive’ your arousal. Play with these techniques and you’ll notice that the science is working to bring you closer to your goals!


Side note: The two books I am currently reading are How to Know Go(o)d by Candace Pert and The Science of Orgasm by Beverly Whipple, Barry Komisaruk and Carlos Beyer-Flores. Beverly Whipple brought us the first book on the G-spot along with John Perry almost thirty years ago. She has been researching orgasm (and primarily women) at Rutgers University for many years. Candace Pert is the eminent researcher on the molecules that drive our emotions.

Locate Your G-spot!

Here's an easy clue to understanding where, in your yoni (vagina), the G-spot is. Take your clean thumb of your dominant hand and place it in your mouth as if you were going to suck your thumb. Feel for the ridge area just behind your upper teeth. This will feel bumpy. Just beyond this area your thumb will go deeply towards your upper palate area. Back up just a tiny bit to the wall between the two areas. Press very firmly here and notice a sort of bump right in the middle of the wall. That spot is analogous to where your G-spot is in your yoni. It is amazing that the structures are so very similar from mouth to yoni and (pet theory) I believe that this area may have some very erotic functions of its own. It may be connected by nerves to the upper lip in women and the ancient Taoists say that sucking the upper lip of a woman, while kissing, will turn her on. The soft palate is also the place where meditators and Tantrikas place the tips of their tongues to transmit and circulate energy.

Tantra

Tantra is a way of being in and of the world. In the Tantric view all life and every aspect of creation including sexuality is celebrated and held as sacred. Loosely, Tantra means to 'weave', to weave the world together. The supreme goal of Tantric philosophy is to come to the realization and understanding that everything is everything. That there isn't any dualistic aspect to life. That we are all 'one', The One - you, me, rocks, dogs, trees, children, water, spirit, air, cancer, love, sex, men, women, emotions - you name it, it's all One.

That's what is happening right now in our modern world. We are beginning to see that we have affected and infected out planet, that same place that supports us IS us. Saddus, Tantricas and Shaman are all beginning to speak of the Hindu concept of Time - the 4 Yugas or periods of universal time. We are in the Kali Yuga, the last, bad time period before the earth, and its beings, come around to the Beginning time again.

Things are quickening. Many discoveries are being made and with the speculation about the advent of 2012 in the atmosphere one begins to wonder if the Hindus are on to something. Not to scare you but "We are the ones we've been waiting for!" is beginning to look pretty appropriate.

What to do about it? Open your eyes and look around you. What can you do to rock your world? What conscious transformations might occur if you went out of your way to help others more? What if you began to see your lover as a Goddess or God all of the time, not just when they are doing something you want them to do for you? What if you decided to donate more of your salary? Or volunteer at your local food bank? Or...practice consciously witnessing yourself more so that you might transform your speech patterns, or anger or the narrow way you need to be pleasured or... You get the picture.

Open yourself up and say "Yes" more to the things that might seem like a stretch to you. Expand yourself to receive more pleasure or give more time to your children or your lover or even at work. Try it and see if the Universe supports you. Watch and witness what happens and with that feedback shift and do it again so that you are honing the new skill set you want to have.

Your life is magical if you want it to be. We use a tiny amount of our brains and bodies and souls. You have much more capacity than you know. I'm not talking about adding stress to your life. I'm talking about finding ways to transform it. It's an on-going project that is your life. The Hindus say that the very most important thing you can do with your precious life is to find out what purpose you were put here for and DO IT! Give yourself away in a way that is satisfying to you. You will blossom and grow in exponential ways!