It seems a good time to address this touchy subject.

The other day I attended a workshop where part of an exercise that we did involved a challenge to describe to the group the most pleasurable sexual experience we’d ever had. Before we went into the exercise, the facilitator went around the group asking everyone whether they were willing to participate in the exercise. There was about a half and half ratio of willing and unwilling people. I think the willing ones were just quicker to catch on to the idea that there was more to this than it seemed. The unwilling ones were horrified by the challenge and became quite anxious at being confronted in this manner. We were told we would need to describe our experience in as much detail as possible as well as to describe all our feelings at the time. As it turned out, we didn’t have to go through with that – the point was to illustrate how uneasy we are at the idea of talking openly about something so personal, even though it would be about a good experience. We were in training for trauma counselling of rape victims and the point was to illustrate how much worse it is for someone to describe a traumatic sexual experience. It brought home to me the reality of how little we ever talk to others about our sexual experiences, particularly in a positive way. We can joke and be crude even, but we aren’t at ease praising the virtues of what we enjoy. And I think this holds true even for couples. I would love to survey people and find out if they ever reflect together with their lover, on what they enjoy about sex.

For most people, the most obvious reason why anyone would have sex would be to have an orgasm. We might speak of sex being about love and intimacy, but I think that for the most part we aren’t sure how to be deeply loving and intimate. We become used to the idea that the wordless touching leading up to the act of sex, is the semi-loving part. The way I hear about it though, is that most of the “foreplay” (a word I really dislike) is all about exciting the woman to get her ready for penetration or else giving her an orgasm prior to penetration, or similar themes. Tantra shifts this completely. Tantra brings deep, slow, soft loving into the foreground and restores a sense of awe to the way one touches the lover. The orgasm is no longer a goal to achieve and an orgasmic state becomes the norm.

My experience working with people and discussing thoughts around a typical orgasm, is that the process goes hand in hand with a fair amount of tension. There is stress around whether one’s partner will be in the mood or not. For some people just the idea of approaching someone for sex, is stressful. A lot of strategy goes into this and along with that is a degree of disappointment. This is very true for most men, but women also feel the stress of feeling too tired and yet feeling obligated to meet their partners “needs.” Once you get going, there’s stress around getting it right, staying aroused, time factors, maintaining concentration (!!) and then ultimately timing things so that everyone is happy by the end of the experience. Wow, it’s exhausting just writing about it! I wonder how many of you are nodding in agreement? Please let me know if what I describe, is true for you or not. Yes, there are phases when sex is spontaneous and both parties are passionately interested. But are we able to sustain those phases?

When it comes to an actual orgasm, we generally think of it as being a peak moment when the body reaches a heightened state of arousal followed by a sudden release of sexual energy. If you think about how the body feels and reacts just prior to orgasm, you’ll maybe have noticed that there’s a state of contraction going on. Muscles tighten, the breath gets shallow, there’s intense focus and concentration, and quite a lot of friction and stimulation of the body is fairly normal. When you think about what I’ve just described, you can hear how hard this is on the body-mind. It seems to take much effort and strain, for a few brief moments of sudden release – if you’re lucky :)

Tantra presents a way of opening and softening the body and slowing the mind and breath to the point were you can feel much more sensation than usual and you experience a deep relaxation that pervades every moment. You learn to step into a pool of bliss and you became very attuned to the spontaneous flow of sexual energy moving in the body from moment to moment. A dance begins to happen within your body and with the subtle energy moving between yourself and your partner. You’re not really going anywhere, and you ride wave upon wave of soft, undulating pleasure, without any contraction or friction or tension required. There are many elements involved in getting to this place which I won’t go into now, but I wanted to give you an idea of why I’m so passionate about what I do. I believe that this way of being holds the answer to the chronic states of unhappiness many people suffer from. I welcome you to make contact if you’d like to find out more.