3 Easy Steps to Recharging for Two with Tantra

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Thank You Darwin: Phallus Evolution

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Why Does Surprising Your Partner Trigger So Much Excitement and Pleasure?

Novelty increases the amount of dopamine, a neurotransmitter, available to the blood stream and brain. Dopamine is associated with the parts of the brain that involve pleasure and rewards. When we meet a new person and fall in love serotonin levels are suppressed and Dopamine levels are increased. Love is new. It’s exciting. It’s intense and it propels the lovers to do things to win their new, potential lover/partner. It’s a feedback system.

This same feedback system can be employed to re-create intensity in a longer-term partnership. It can be used consciously to up the ante. But, caution is required too because the unconscious drive to keep upping the ante can cause problems. Dopamine is kind of addictive (think Cocaine). There is the possibility that trying to hold on to the intensity will drive one or both of the couple to seek adventures that are outside the boundaries of the other.

We’re an intensity driven society. This may be why we are seeing an increase in things like threesomes, cheating, swinging, polyamory, BDSM and other behaviors. The desire for creating new, hot, and deeper connections may also lead the other direction to the recent interest in Tantric sex and the arts of the Kama Sutra.

Exciting new behaviors, practices, positions and other creative bedroom endeavors take very little thought and can add a lot to a long-term relationship. Some of the things you can try are making love in some place other than the bedroom, changing your bedroom to seem like another place, using blindfolds, restraints and pleasure-inducing items (think velvet, makeup brushes, silk, satin, rose petals, feathers) to treat your erotic skin with new sensations. Dress-up in something you usually wouldn’t, undress your partner to a slow, sexy favorite piece of music, learn a new sexual trick and try it out, wear a wig or high heals or both, have sex with your sexy underwear on, play with each other, under your napkins, during a dinner at a sexy restaurant or do a strip-tease for your lover. Get wild.

Or…sign-up for the Tantra.com Premium Member’s area and create a lifetime of pleasure, enlightenment, hot sex, subtle nuances and far deeper intimacy. It’ll fuel your craving for novelty and will increase your dopamine levels in the ‘good’ sense of addiction!

Blessings,
Suzie Heumann

The Best Sex Positions for Female Orgasms

This blog will be a little mini-series of three blogs because this is a big conversation. Surveys and sexuality reports tell us that roughly only 20% of sexually active women have orgasms during intercourse. Assumptions will need to be made about that number because we don’t know if that includes manual stimulation of the clitoris during intercourse or not and several other issues that might skew the statistics. Let’s work with that number, however.

Orgasms are important to women no matter how convincing the idea of being in the pleasure without being goal oriented. Some of the time you can do this and some of the time you want an orgasm, pure and simple. Cultural constraints, modern media, lovers and friends can all influence how you might feel about your body, emotions and your ability to orgasm. You want what she’s having and you want it soon. If that’s the case with you then you’re going to have to know a whole lot more about your body and how it works in order to journey to the fertile fields of G-spot and vaginal orgasms. The positions come after you have the knowledge of your interior topography down and know your hot-spots from your not-spots. Self-pleasuring is the necessary evil! Set aside the time to spend with yourself soon. An hour three days a week should do it.

So here is a quickie lesson. You can find more out at Tantra.com, too. Most women’s clitorises don’t come near to getting the attention that is needed to stimulate that part of the anatomy during intercourse. If any position is going to do this then it is the C.A.T. (Coital Alignment Technique) position (this is a modified Missionary position where the man is on top and he has shifted his body up a bit towards his partner’s head so that his pubic bone rubs on her clitoris in an up and down (head to toe) motion. The other is the Woman on Top where the woman is leaning down, not sitting up, and she is doing the same motions as the man does in the C.A.T. position. That is, she is moving in a head to toe, up and down rubbing motion so that her clitoris is getting stimulated. Both of these positions do not, however, involve much G-spot or deeper A-spot (a spot above the cervix, deeper in the vagina, A is for Anterior Fornex) stimulation.

The first step, in discovering your vaginal, or yoni, hot spots, is to find your G-spot and begin to arouse, investigate and find orgasms through manual or digital (finger, G-spot wand or vibrator) stimulation. You can stimulate your clitoris first as it’s important to be very turned on when investigating your G-spot. Both are very connected with one on the inside and one on the outside, kind of back-to-back. They share nerves, blood flow and vibrational energy with each other! While I personally don’t feel that G-spots like much vibration yours may be different, but I wouldn’t start with a vibrator, I’d start with fingers (yours or a partner’s) or a Lucite wand. I have an earlier blog about the analogy of the upper palate in the mouth and the G-spot location so read it if you want to here. It may help.

Ok, let’s assume you’ll find it and have a good experience with noticing the pleasure, though maybe not an orgasm, in your early sexploration. You can up-the-ante by starting to strengthen your PC muscles by doing Kegel exercises. These will help tremendously; stronger orgasms, healthier pelvic floor, more orgasms, better (no much more) awareness of your body, great sex tricks by you for your lover and a bunch more reasons if you need them. The last and best thing about strong PC muscles is that when you move into more Tantric practices you will be able to move the sexual energy up, throughout your body more easily and effectively. That’s when it all gets really juicy!

So the stage is set for take-off. In a couple of days you’ll see installment two of this mini-series. You’ll discover a set of positions that you can try, modify, and try again to get the best out of them. I'll give you clues and tips for having the best intercourse sex ever.

Creating Intimacy

Doing ‘things’ together does not equal intimacy. Intimacy is the act of showing one’s self to another. It is about being vulnerable and about revealing personal information about one’s self. Intimacy doesn’t occur just between lovers, either. Friends, co-workers, family members and neighbors all require different levels of intimacy. Being intimate with another person heals you and it helps heal them, too. We all want to feel connected, valued and meaningful to others. Scientists understand that it is what keeps us young at heart, healthy and living longer lives.

We think about intimacy as something that is primarily with our significant ‘other’ most often. Having a deep, intimate connection during sex is just about the most fulfilling thing that can happen for lovers. It’s about trusting yourself and your partner. When you give yourself over to vulnerable, open, playful sexuality, sexuality that gently pushes your edges and keeps you taking gentle risks, you see how sweet and easy deepening intimacy can be.

Some things you can do to help create more intimacy with anyone:

• Softly eye gaze with another person for 5 minutes.
  
• Tell something vulnerable to another person. This can be an apology or an admission of something you feel guilty about or a personal learning situation that was difficult for you.
  
• Offer a helping hand to someone and then engage in conversation that is meaningful and stimulating and that revels something about you.
  
• Play a truth telling game of any sort. There are some that are perfect for friends, families and even lovers. Try Dr. Susan Campbell’s Getting Real Game. You can find it here: http://www.susancampbell.com/products/games/index.html
  
• With your lover, try setting up a time, say once a week, when you try something new out during lovemaking. It can be a new position, technique or place (like outside!). Talk about it later and each of you find at least one good thing and one not so good thing about it to revel.

Book recommends for those interested in the latest Sex Science

A while back I read May Roach’s Bonk. She’s a journalist who writes about interesting subjects with odd twists and a great sense of dry humor. Bonk is her third book and is about, well, bonking. In one of the chapters she discusses going to Europe with her husband and getting into an imaging machine that takes images of their interiors as they ‘bonk’. Yes, how the lingam meets and greets the yoni! There are a myriad of possibilities!

I want to volunteer! It would be so interesting, and of great importance, to explore subtle angle shifts related to G-spot, clitoral, and anterior fornix orgasms. Just what does it take to actualize vaginal orgasms for women? As I have always said, it’s all about discovering the right angles of penetration for each of us. We’re all different so even small, subtle changes in angle can make big differences.

Here’s a great over-view of the female sexual hot spots by none other than the famous Desmond Morris: . It’s the last line that is the most telling: “It has been claimed that two out of every three women fail to reach regular orgasms from simple penetrative sex. As mentioned above, most of them find that only digital or oral stimulation of the clitoris can be guaranteed to bring them to climax. This must mean that, for them, the two 'hot spots' inside the vagina are not living up to their name. The reason for this, it seems, is monotony in sexual positioning. A group of 27 couples were asked to vary their sexual positions experimentally, employing postures that would allow greater stimulation of the two vaginal 'hot spots', and it was found that three-quarters of the females involved were then able to achieve regular vaginal orgasms.”

I don’t know the origins of this study but I would love to know. If you know please let me know.

Here’s another book that looks good though I have not read it yet myself. I intend to. Sharon Moalem’s How Sex Works: Why We Look, Smell, Taste, Feel, and Act the Way We Do.

And a very good book, especially for those of you who are inclined to be a bit more scientific minded is: The Science of Sex by Beverly Whipple (the first G-spot book was co-written by her), Carlos Beyer-Flores & Barry Komisaruk.


Summer is coming. Time to make your reading lists.
I’ll take more suggestions if you have any…

Expanding Neural Networks Through Sex

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The Curious Association of The G-spot and The Upper Palate

I often teach that to find where the G-spot is, and how it might feel, you can simply put your thumb in your mouth and feel the rougher, ridged area just beyond your teeth, on the top part of your mouth. Beyond that ridged area is the upper palate and halfway between the upper palate and the ridges is the area that is analogous to the G-spot. There is actually a slightly raised area that is even kidney bean shaped, as is often reported of the G-spot. I find it fascinating that the upper palate seems so close in structure to the vagina and G-spot area.

The upper palate area is filled with nerve endings. Try putting your little vibrator up there sometime and see how it feels! Obviously suckling and eating creates the evolutionary nerve aspects of the sensitivity of the mouth. The erotic feeling of sucking, whether it be some aspect of the anatomy like a nipple, penis or thumb, was developed during infancy to not only create a sensory experience while eating but to provide intimacy training for mother (or primary care giver) and child. The ‘bonding’ chemical oxytocin is produced during nursing and the accompanying eye gazing that occurs between mother and child trains the baby to seek the intimacy of faces, and specifically the eyes, as it grows older. Interestingly, oxytocin is also produced during orgasm.

The upper palate is also the area you place your tongue during advanced breath, energy and meditation work. The tip of the tongue points straight to the fontanel at the top of the head (the ‘soft’ spot) and opens up the nadis or energy channels. During Tantric sex certain positions have the ability to facilitate the movement of energy upwards, too. Positions that apply pressure from the head of the penis onto the G-spot area are particularly affective. Again, there seems to be the potential of a G-spot in the vagina and one in the mouth too.

I discovered this quite a few years back and have never heard anyone else refer to it before. I love oral sex and had wondered why that might be so. Yes, I love to eat, so that is a part of it, but I have noticed that during oral sex it's the slow out-stroke that always gets me. It's the same with intercourse. The long, slow out-stroke is the one that triggers orgasm for me. So what is it about these two very similar areas of the body? Why are they so similar in construction and what might that mean for our pleasure and our ability to build and expand erotic energy? I would love to have feedback from anyone who has experienced orgasm through mouth contact or who recognizes the connection of both G-spot orgasms and erotic stimuli in the mouth too.

Witnessing Spring

I’m reminded of Witness Consciousness today. Spring is busting out all over the place and this makes it relatively easy to be hyper conscious of the beauty and life that is all around us. Forget stress, the economy and my messy house – it’s bursting out there!
It takes many varying practices to become more conscious. Right now I’m paying attention to nature in all of its glory. Last night I was paying attention to breath, sensual sensations and my G-spot. Later today I will even pay good attention to finishing my taxes. It’s all the same. Really.
How does one promote Witness Consciousness? There are many, many ways but I like to use the breath as a starting point. Watching my breath and breathing into my belly – softly, fully – is the practice I like. Years ago I started this practice and would remember it maybe 20 times a day. I would pay attention to how I was breathing. This got me used to remembering multiple times a day to pay attention.
That started my practice of witnessing myself. Then I moved this practice more deliberately to sex. After years of practicing and learning all about my body, my lover’s body and all the myriad ways we could pleasure each other I could finally let go of the ‘thinking’ about those moves and begin to ‘witness’ my self during sexual encounters. This isn’t about judgment or critical thinking or even imagination or fantasy – it’s about the gentle practice of witnessing. To witness one simply watches with ease and wonder what is happening to them.
When we get good at this it becomes really useful. So we’re having some great sex and I notice “ Oh, that is an interesting sensation. I’m going to breathe into that touch and see what happens.” It’s just like that, simple and useful. The ‘witness’ helps us to add on to the experience. When you get really good at this you can really explore and up-the-ante on your experiences, what ever they are. It’s a playful practice that becomes an increasingly interesting sort of arousal stimulator. And I’m using it today because of the beauty all around me – nature is arousing me and I’m using this experience to make it even more exquisite so I can enjoy the taxes and enjoy the garden and enjoy the sex and enjoy the life!

Do You Want to Be Connected or Connected?

Are we really willing to go without touch, kissing, pheromones, orgasms, tender whispers and all of the exquisite accompaniments to Love this easily?

A study released this week from Germany on 19-29 year olds being willing to let go of their partner instead of their Internet connection and their cell phones is astonishing, to say the least. Maybe it is a generational thing. After all I’m in my mid fifties and have really only had a cell phone for maybe a tenth of my life (I was a late hold-out for no cell phone!). Two of my daughters have had cell phones for at least half of their lives, however, and they are in their 20’s. And they have had access to computers for almost all of their lives. So to them the use of these technology tools is ubiquitous. Yet I don’t think they would agree with this survey.

I’m not going to analyze it. I can’t because it is not ‘me’. What I’m addicted to is the deep connection that comes from love and sex and the ‘drugs’ that it produces in me. As humans we become kind of ‘addicted’ to oxytocin, the bonding chemical, dopamine, the desire chemical, pheromones, the attraction chemicals and on and on. These potent chemical messengers are what draw us to connect with another person. They become active when we get physically close to another person, not through cell phone connections.

I have always imagined and longed for a time when many people adopt Tantric practices. I believe the sexual part of Tantra is necessary for the consciousness part to evolve into an equilibrium of conscious love, compassion and a personal understanding of the depth within each of us. But this requires being physically close to others, whether they are lovers or not. It is pretty scary to think that the next generations, in some places, don't have this framework by which to live their lives. Tantric practices are now needed more than ever.

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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

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…