Ritual and Ceremony: Innate Longing for a Revival of Tribal Intimacy

We are tribal. It doesn’t look this way today but only 100 years ago most of us were living close to relatives and in small communities were we knew many of the people. Because there was no television, Internet, video games and PDD’s (personal digital devices) we all actually talked to each other. We organized events that brought us together in many ways. In Westernized nations most of this has been lost today.

All kinds of things can unite us and bring us together with ‘tribe’. The music festival season has just passed here in Northern California. The offerings are infinite and, yes, it’s about music but it’s more than just the music; it’s about seeing and being with tribe. Your tribe, even if you actually don’t know anyone at the event!

Music unites us. It is proven in brain science that two different brains sync and move together in every detail when they listen to or play music together. Our brain waves actually fall into sync and create a similar pattern. This is why drumming during ritual ceremonies, both ancient and modern, is used. It unifies the brain, body and soul of the individuals participating in the ritual.

We go to places where we will find our ‘tribe’ because we want to be surrounded by the same values, actions and activities that stimulate us. This is a process of activation of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons help us to assimilate with the others of our family, culture, society and tribe. The same areas of our brain that fire when we see someone else doing an action, fire when we do the action ourselves. This is part of what makes us social human beings.

I’ll be dancing at a festival and see another person, usually a woman, do some great dance move and then I will effortlessly and simple do the move, too. There is usually very little problem in copying the move. Why would that be? It is because we have the innate ability to copycat everything. This makes us a part of our tribe, our culture, our family of biological kin and friends.

We are copycats. This is how babies learn and how we all are life-long learners. This is also why we need other people in our presence. We are learning all the time, even when being passive about it. That’s one of the reasons we go to where our tribe will be. We go to festivals, school events, soccer games, the hairdressers (you know, the gossip tribe is there), church, the skateboard park, bingo and on and on. We are hungry for our tribe. Being with like-minded people is a necessity of life.

But all of these modern things are sometimes poor substitutes for the real thing. Deep, ceremonial tribal experiences fulfill our longing for belonging and entrain our brains and souls with an infusion of intimacy. Rituals and celebrations are needed in life and it’s time we brought them back into our lives. Creating a ceremony or ritual is easy. It requires a bit of imagination and an intuitive freedom to begin. Here are some examples of simple ceremonies and rituals you can create:
- A prayer of gratitude at every meal
- A conscious recall when you feel thankful that is acknowledged with a…
- Sitting in morning meditation each day
- Picking flowers for your home out of the garden each week
- Creating a bathing ritual with your lover
- Sharing massages every Friday night with your partner
- Reading a book to your toddler each night before bed
- Creating a coming-of-age ceremony for your daughter or son
- Holding a blessing way for your new born grandchild
- Creating a community dining experience in your neighborhood on a regular, weekly basis
- Manifesting a community garden where everyone meets on Saturday morning to grow flowers and vegetables
- Joining or creating a woman’s group or a man’s group in your area so that you have a resource by which to go deeply into life’s issues
- Making love more often, with conscious intention

Ceremony creates lasting memories by increasing the neural chemicals that result from emotional involvement in the ritual. Social well-being is far more than the Facebook lives we lead today. We need to be in each others presence so that our mirror neurons can work and our music sense can sync us and we can look into each others eyes and flood ourselves with the bonding neurohormone oxytocin. We need tribe to survive. Create a ceremony or ritual for yourself that involves the people in one of your ‘tribes’. Everyone will be happy and more connected if you do!

Orgasm, Neurotransmitters & Valentine's Day

It’s a good time to be alive and in love. Scientists and researchers are finally beginning to study some of the things that cause us to fall head over heels in, or out for that matter, of love. And one of the great things that I am personally thrilled about is many of these new ‘discoveries’ corroborate the ideas and theories developed over the millennium by ancient societies that loved sex!

What better time to give you a few new insights into what makes love thrive than at that Valentine’s Day time of year. I’m hoping that this gives some of you new hope, new solutions to old problems, a new perspective, insights into your own love-machine or just some fun ideas to jump-start your romantic month ahead. There is a lot to cover so this will be an over-view but I can promise you that we’ll visit these subjects again, in more depth.

Desire: Finally research is being done with women, not just men, and the finds are pretty interesting. You knew of course, that almost 95% of women link sex with love, connectedness and that their partner likes them as a ‘person’. Many women report that they have a hard time getting excited about sex when they feel unattractive. And about 25% of women use sex to pull themselves out of a ‘depressed mood’. This activity has everything to do with brain chemicals.

Studies are also beginning to look at the details of the old Masters and Johnson cycle of desire, arousal, excitement, climax and resolution. They are finding that for women, arousal may occur before desire. This is subtle and pre-cognitive and it represents new thinking. Any one of her senses might be aroused. A woman might see, hear, remember, or feel a brush across her arm and within split seconds begin to be aroused. She may not notice cognitively that she is aroused, though, until a bit later when she is feeling desire. She might then go back to seek a bit more arousal to increase her desire levels before she moves on to the excitement phase, which is when more heavy petting, touching and genital contact would occur.

Brain imaging is helping to illuminate many different attributes of our body, mind and sexuality. This in turn can lead to education and practices to help us understand better what is happening in our bodes and to stay tuned-in to the more subtle signals from our brains. Tantric practices help develop presence and focus so that we can better pay attention to what we like, need, what turns us on and when it turns us on. Slow, loving build-ups with plenty of touch, kissing, breathing, eye gazing, teasing and playfulness strengthen and extend the build of energy. This physical build through sensual touch may be the better answer to female arousal and desire issues. We can better be the masters and mistresses of our own universe when we stay in the moment and pay attention to detail.

Neurotransmitters: During arousal, and the eventual sexual act, levels of the neurotransmitter Dopamine are increased to very high levels in the brain and body. This is a feel-good chemical. Upon orgasm (more precisely for men; ejaculation) the levels plummet to lower than their base-line levels, sometimes for up to a week or more. This can lead to many states of consciousness that are not the most desirable, for a person or their relationship, because of the loss of Dopamine. These can include anxiety, depression, and irritability. Men have a steeper decline than women. The Taoists prescribe male orgasm without ejaculation and I believe that this is the reason why, though they never had the science to identify Dopamine or the other neurotransmitters and hormones that course throughout our bodies. Along with the drop in Dopamine will go testosterone levels, one of the hormones that fuels passion and energy.

There’s an addictive quality to the Dopamine highs and lows that surround orgasm and ejaculation. On one hand the desire for the increased amount of Dopamine for that feel-good affect moves a person to seek sex but immediately after sex the low levels can cause a grouchy, irritable person/s to appear. These events may be separated far enough in time to not allow the mind to connect with what is happening to either the person or the ‘couple’.

While the Taoists had a good solution in non-ejaculation for men, and one that is important for Tantric practices as well, I believe that there is another practice that can help alleviate and mitigate the low part of the cycle. Not only does this practice keep the low part of the cycle at bay, it, in theory, would increase the levels of Dopamine and Oxytocin and keep them at elevated levels for as long as the practice is kept up. From personal experience, I can corroborate this.

First I’d like to explain Oxytocin and its importance in relationship before I describe the practice. Doctors considered Oxytocin to be the Love hormone. It is present in our bodies, in large amounts, when we give birth, nurse our babies and during orgasm (one out of three isn’t too bad men!). Scientists have recently discovered that it comes in smaller volumes at other times like when we smile, are friendly, crack a joke, laugh and so on. In other words it’s the social chemical, the bonding chemical, the glue that holds people together in friendship and in love.

Scientists have also recently discovered that Oxytocin improves our ability to interpret social cues, specifically through looking into the eyes of another. That means that the person ‘on’ Oxytocin can ‘read’ another person more accurately. Oxytocin is surely produced during lovemaking, eye gazing, laughing and being playful, breathing together while looking into the eyes of the beloved, touching and more. It bonds you to your lover/partner. You understand them better and can be more empathetic and caring.

Back to the practice I was mentioning. The practice to keep Oxytocin and Dopamine at high levels all the time is to make love three, or at least, two times a day. But only for just ten minutes, except for maybe in the evening. This is like going to the gym or reading the morning paper except that the benefits will be much greater for your relationship. The rules are that you end on time, that the man doesn’t ejaculate, that you have intercourse during this time with eyes wide open and that you breathe together. That’s it. So if you choose to ejaculate in the evening men then this practice will bring your Dopamine levels back up for the day. Women, if you orgasm fine, but because only about 15% of all women orgasm through intercourse alone, orgasm may not be a big worry for most of you. Regardless, I’m of the school that the more orgasms a woman has the better, so go for it. I think this out-ways the dip in Dopamine and actually connects you more to your partner. This is primarily because of the attention and loving attitude that surrounds this practice – the Oxytocin release! It’s the kind of thing women thrive on.

So, how does this inform our love-play? Do more of all these suggestions above. It’s about to be Valentine’s Day. How about designing a day around creating more Oxytocin? A deep talk over coffee in the morning with a lot of eye contact and laughing (this is of course after you make love but don’t ejaculate men). Make sure you find a topic that nudges you in this direction. Then go to a matinee and see a great movie that’s a comedy with a message. Then cook a simple, lovely light dinner together with both of you participating. Create an evening celebration of massage, erotic touch, Champaign and dessert and of course Tantric Sex!

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.

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.