Within the vast tapestry of human experience, from birth to death, it is love which moves us most, to the highest, the deepest, the most earthly and the most spiritual parts of our being. With all of life's ups and downs, love remains a constant source of renewal and inspiration. Sexual love provides us with a particularly powerful experience of the divine and of our blissful higher nature. Thousands of years ago, there flourished in India and parts of Asia, a spiritual tradition we now call Tantra. Unlike many of the religions that we know today, Tantra embraced sexuality as a vital part of our spiritual nature. In these sex-positive cultures, sexual ecstasy was viewed as a taste of the divine. By extending and expanding the peak of sexual ecstasy, erotic explorers of the past discovered a new freedom. They found that as lover and beloved merged, the act of love became a natural vehicle for exploring altered states, unveiling hidden beauty that deepened intimacy and revealed inner truths. Tantra teaches us how to create, enjoy and share unlimited pleasure, the conscious kind of pleasure that deepens intimacy and liberates as it loves. Today, in a world where sex can cause death as well as create new life, when relationships disintegrate as often as they hold together, it is time for the ancient secrets to be revealed. The Tantric tradition, which has Hindu, Buddhist as well as Taoist and Jain lineages, can be traced back at least 20,000 years to the Paleolithic cave drawings that match some of the symbols still used by practicing Tantricas today. In recent years, teachers and scholars such as Nick Douglas and Penny Slinger have been bringing the teachings of these ancient traditions to the West with new translations of the ancient writings. For the first time, making this information available to the modern world. In this program, we will meet Nick and Penny, as well as David and Ellen Ramsdale, who wrote the bestselling Sexual Energy Ecstasy, Margo Anand, who wrote The Art of Sexual Ecstasy and Charles and Caroline Muir, who wrote Tantra, The Art of Conscious Loving. In addition to their literary contributions, several of these teachers offer workshops and seminars in modern Tantra and sacred sexuality. The couples who appear in this program are not models or actors, but real Tantric lovers who have for many years practiced and mastered the techniques you are about to learn. Margo Anand, one of the foremost teachers of sacred sexuality in the West, is part of the modern movement to reclaim the spiritual aspect of our sexuality. I think that we've forgotten a great secret, and this is that we have to honor sexuality as the expression of a spiritual force. That it expresses our desire for union, not only with our partner, but through our partner with ourselves. And that the more we understand this, the more we respect the life force and we can go to the ultimate union with this life force within ourselves. That's what sex is all about, uniting us with the ultimate life force, the ultimate creativity within us. One of the first and most important steps towards expanding your sexual experience is to overcome the shame that our culture has conditioned into us about our sexuality and our bodies. Because of this cultural conditioning, many people don't allow themselves to feel pleasure and to feel prolonged sexual experience and ecstasy, which is really our human birthright. To a large degree, it is we who determine how much pleasure we allow ourselves to feel. The wisdom of the East teaches us that the body is the temple of the soul, something to be worshiped, honored, and taken care of. We're born through bodies. We're born through the body of a woman. How the body can be seen as dirty or obscene, to me, is just beyond belief. I mean, the body is totally natural. Nature is beautiful and divine. So to see the body as anything other than that, to me, is an aberration. And in Oriental cultures in general, certainly in the ancient times, this is what the Orient has to offer the West, in that they did, even not in just Tantra, but in the secular world as well, they saw the art of love as one of the 64 arts and as a celebration of the divine identity, the sport of the gods. I remember when I was in India, and I'm a typical American tourist, touring the temples. And I would repeatedly see some kind of a bowl that was obviously a sacred bowl, like a baptismal bowl or a holy water bowl of some kind, and a phallic structure associated with it. And I learned that here I was in the sacred holy of holies looking at a holy object, the lingam and the yoni. These vessels represented the vagina and the penis. And these things were up there on a holy altar. And here I was in India seeing these people actually celebrating, worshipping these organs of fertility, but not just fertility, organs of generativity. They're not just talking about reproduction and babies and sperm and ova and things like that. It's about the generative spirit that is sex. In the tantric worldview, every man is a manifestation of the male divine principle embodied in Shiva. And every woman is a manifestation of the eternal female principle, as represented by Shakti, the creative force of the universe. But you don't have to embrace the entire tantric pantheon to enjoy your relationship at a new higher level. One of the first steps leading to a transformation of our sexual experience involves seeing our partner just a little bit differently. We all remember that special way we saw our first true love. It wouldn't be too much to say that they truly became a god or goddess in our love struck eyes. This is the image that guided the ancient tantrikas as they turned the act of love into a form of spiritual worship. After being together for a while, most couples tend to lose touch with that magic attitude that comes from falling head over heels in love. Researchers have even identified chemical changes that occur in the brains of new lovers and gradually disappear over time. Modern couples are discovering that the tantric view does much to maintain the chemistry of love in long term relationships. In modern tantra workshops, they're learning to see the spiritual essence in their partners and in every man and woman, to feel respect, reverence, adoration for others and for themselves. One of the fundamental elements of tantric love is the use of ritual. Whether formal or informal, rituals bring beauty and specialness to everyday activities. The giving of flowers, special music, a candlelight dinner, these things bring romance into our lives. In ancient times, tantra used ritual to enhance love making. One of the key aspects of ritual is that it focuses on process. In this way, it brings us into the moment. The purpose is not to reach a goal, but to create a feeling, a special spirit or energy. It is this focus on creating a mood that makes ritual love making so powerful. Anna and Ashil have been practicing tantric love making for seven years. For them, the act of love is a form of worship which they participate in as often as they can. They often begin their ritual by bathing together. In ancient times, the body would be anointed with exotic fragrances and blessed by a priestess in preparation for the ritual act of love. In the sacred sexual Maituna ritual of the tantric tradition, the couple would begin by bathing and completely cleansing the body temple. Bathing together also provides a practical ritual context for modern lovers. Not only are clean bodies much more sensuous and appealing, but the act of lovingly washing one another is an ideal opportunity to connect your energies and show your love for one another. Water has been recognized as a powerful symbol of sexuality since ancient times. Floating in warm water can bring back subconscious memories of the security of the womb as well as completely relaxing the body. In tantric love making, the couple honors the divine within each other using ritual and focused intent to fuse their energies and achieve a higher goal than the simple release of sexual tension. Once they have slowly and gently attuned themselves to each other, the couple often begins by breathing together while gazing into each other's souls through the windows of their soft and open eyes. Unlike our modern practice of turning off the lights to make love or closing the eyes to kiss, the tantric approach is to remain as visually connected to one's partner as possible. Betsy and Andy often begin their love making rituals with one of them giving the other a full body massage. This time Andy is relishing his role as a receiver. As Andy receives the massage, he lets go of the thoughts of the day by fully focusing on his physical feelings. His attention moves with the flow of Betsy's touch as she takes him deeper and deeper into his body. Imagine the feeling your partner is experiencing as you touch them. Feel their pleasure. Imagine that you are on the receiving end of your own touch as you lavish their body with luscious sensations. When you really let yourself feel your partner's pleasure, you tune into their energy, lifting you to new heights of loving connectedness. Human sexology looks at the human sexual experience in terms of simple response cycles, one for men and another for women. The tantric tradition, which is much older and more developed, recognizes dozens of orgasm variations, all of which are being enjoyed by experienced tantric lovers today. The basic pattern, as viewed by modern science, consists of an excitement phase in which sexual tension is aroused, a plateau phase prior to orgasmic release, a brief orgasm phase, and a resolution phase. The orgasm phase lasts only a few seconds for both men and women, and men are capable of having only one orgasm before they enter a refractory period where they are incapable of being aroused or having another orgasm. Since this is, in fact, the typical pattern in our experience, most people assume this to be the extent of our human sexual possibilities. In the tantric tradition, the response cycles of men and women are seen as interrelated. In the tantric model, shown here as a chart created by Nick Douglas and Penny Slinger, we see a completely different view of human sexual possibilities. In this more sophisticated view, sexual climaxes are built one upon the other, culminating in extended simultaneous orgasm, which can last for minutes or hours. Western sexologists have only recently begun to understand this orgasmic potential as part of our human birthright. Perhaps the most significant difference between Eastern and Western views of sexuality lies in the extremely goal-oriented approach that's so common in the West. In a male-dominated society, men set the tone for sexual experience, and we as men learned our patterns of sexuality in our adolescence. We had these furtive masturbation experiences in our bathrooms or under the covers, and then quickies with our girlfriends in the backseat of our father's car. It's no wonder that we have carried into our adult lovemaking patterns this sense of urgency and rush. So now we end up pushing and rushing through what could be a most wonderful lovemaking experience for us. One of the main differences between sex and tantric lovemaking, a big difference, would be the amount of connection between the partners, how present they are for one another. Their emotional body, their consciousness, joined to their physical body and their energy body. They're present. They're not closing their eyes and going to some safe place where it's okay to screw. They're bringing all that they are to the bedroom. They're changing what was sex into a meditation. There is nothing wrong with having a quickie every once in a while, but at least once a week you should make the time to really stretch out the lovemaking experience. Relish your partner's hair, eyes, mouth, body with your gaze. Savor the process of revealing your partner's hidden treasures. Something that I have found really freeing in tantra is just going from moment to moment. Just here we are and here we are and here we are. And each moment is so sweet without the idea of having to go any place or do anything. What happens so often in everyday all-American sex is the goal orientation. We've come into bed, we've taken off our clothes and we're going to pleasure each other until the other person is satisfied and then we're done. And we've done our job and we've done it well, hopefully. And in the tantric exchange it's just a dance that starts and has no beginning and no end. It continues to just dance. And it's the playing with that shakti that feels like it fuels both of us. There's no beginning and no end. There's no goal. Well, it's my turn to have mine now or it's your night to have yours. There are those times where we have pleasuring sessions for one another and the other just receives every wonderful thing they can imagine. But it comes out of a total loving heart and a desire to assist our partner in feeling valued to the core of their being. Here's how much I love you. I would pleasure you. It's an offering. You're giving this love as an offering and you're being equally good at receiving the offering back. As husband and wife in a tantric relationship, you have naturally the desire to assist each other to achieve total fulfillment. And sometimes we are so merged we can hardly tell whose pleasure it is you receive, whose orgasm it is. There are no boundaries. And for all this to happen it is of supreme importance to know each other's needs. And that comes about through very strong and precise communication. Apart from the power of love itself, there may be no more important tool for lovers than our ability to communicate with one another, to be able to express our needs and to be able to hear the needs of our partner without creating tension. Taboos that we are scarcely aware of prevent most of us from clear sexual communication. You might consider setting aside a night now and then to practice guiding one another, to occasionally put aside romance and dare to be beginners in love again. The couples here have spent years learning how to share their desires in ways that are non-blaming and pleasurable to hear. We can ask for what we want clearly and lovingly, but it takes practice. Make an agreement that your comments will be supportive, designed to help you be a better lover of your partner's body. Asking for something different doesn't make them wrong. The only way for your lover to know what's really going on inside of you, how this or that move feels, is for you to tell them. Otherwise, we are mind reading, basically just guessing. The key is to avoid blaming. Each of us is responsible for our own sexual fulfillment. When we clearly ask for what we really want, the truth is we are very likely to get it. Once these verbal communications are clear, lovemaking can quickly develop to the point where words are no longer necessary or even possible. The concept of voluntary ejaculation has long been an integral part of the Tantric and Taoist systems. No man can deny the loss of desire and the subtle decay of his passion that follows an ejaculation. Tantra has an answer. You can have your cake and eat it and have it all over again. How? Stay with the thrill without spilling over the top. It takes practice, but then so do most worthwhile skills. As you gain mastery of the art of ejaculation control, many benefits will become available to both of you. It is possible for a man to go from premature ejaculator to exquisite extension of sexual orgasms and multiple orgasms. For many people who want to expand their capacity to give and to receive pleasure for longer periods of time, we'll experiment with meditation techniques, with Tantric techniques, and there are a number of very good books and classes on extending the length of time that the man is on that plateau. And also giving a man an opportunity to have an orgasm without ejaculating. These are two totally separate functions, two totally separate nervous systems. And just because they so often happen at the same time doesn't mean that you have to get trapped into the happening at the same time. Generally on the average, the American male will make love for about 10, 15 minutes before he has an orgasm. And we in this country have for too long equated orgasm with ejaculation. And this is a mistake which the ancient secrets of the East didn't make. And they teach us that it is possible for men to be multi-orgasmic. Now up to now, we only thought that it was the advantage of women, that women could have one orgasm after another if naturally properly treated. But the fact is men have the same advantage. And they can enjoy sex for hours. The secret of how to do it is that you can have the experience of orgasm without ejaculating as a man. And this is one of the things which I teach in my book. And it is not difficult. So this is the thing that men have to come to. It's a more feminine approach to sexuality. It's what I call the implosive orgasm of expansion. In other words, you feel the excitement, you learn how to contain it, not to release your energy, not to throw it out. And you learn how to let this energy dance within your being for longer and longer periods of time. And in this way, the rhythmic timing of the woman and of the man correspond much better because usually, as most of us know, women take longer in their arousal period. They would take maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And a man takes maybe, at the most, 5, 10 minutes. And he's ready, you see. So when the man can ride this wave for a longer time without throwing his energy out, bliss knocks at the door. Most men in our society have been taught to be so goal-oriented and to override their inner sensitivity and to override their feelings. And these men miss out on some tremendous wonderful things in terms of sex, in terms of the sexual experience. When a man learns to open his inner feminine, you know, to open to that other aspect of himself, to go into a sexual experience without an agenda, without a goal, you know, without just getting in there and getting the job done and being that stud and being that performer and getting his rocks off. He's able then to open to something else and learn, for example, the tantric skills of voluntary ejaculation where he doesn't have to ejaculate for a long period of time. He can raise the energy, you know, and have these orgasmic sort of ripples of energy through his body without ejaculating. He gets to experience himself. He gets a chance to experience what sex is really like for his whole being. It's wonderful. And in doing so, he's present for a lot longer period of time. He's more open. He's more available. He's not in his head. He's not in his goal-oriented things. His partner then begins to relax more and have more time for herself to unfold. So he gets to experience her in a whole new way over time. And some of her feminine opening and feminine orgasmic energy then begins to flood back into him and begins to be an exchange and a flow between them that can last for long, wonderful, juicy periods of time. And a man begins to experience sex in a whole different way, including periods of time that are very blissful, that are not action-oriented, but are very open and blissful. And we would call this a spiritual experience because the higher centers begin to open as this energy circulates. And they open to these blissful, timeless states that the yogis talk about, that the poets have talked about, that the masters have talked about, where one feels a connectedness with all of life. It has to do with one of the deepest secrets that were taught in the East. And this is it. It is the art of staying relaxed in high states of arousal so that you can experience the high charge of energy in your system, the excitement, the sexual excitement, the arousal. You can feel like champagne bubbles pricking under your skin. You can feel the air moving up and down all the way to your toes. And at the same time, you can relax into it, which means that you can allow more and more energy charge to fill your body. And at the same time, you don't have to be afraid of it. You don't have to release it. You don't have a goal. You're not running after the big O. You just relax into it like the surfer on the wave. Surfing is in fact an apt analogy for the extended orgasmic experience for men. It takes more than a surfer, his board, and the ocean for the thrill of surfing to occur. The essence of the surfing experience is to be able to catch a wave of energy and to stay right at the edge of the steepest part of the wave without going over the top or out the bottom. The technique involves skillful negotiation of the lip, the part of the wave where the energy is most intense. If the surfer goes too far away from the energy in either direction, his ride is over. In front of the wave, the water is calm. The momentum from the steeper part can carry a surfer out into this zone as long as he knows when to cut back in order to continue the ride. The backside of the wave is like the post-ejaculatory refractory phase for men. Once you've gone over the top, the ride is over. The long, slow build used in tantra allows for greater control at the height of ecstasy and is an important feature in male control of ejaculation during orgasm. I do like starting out slow and getting her aroused and turned on. I like it too. Yeah, and like when she's there, it's just really easy to get caught into that wave and just ride it with her. The important thing to remember is that the longer you linger in the process of building sexual energy, the higher you can go without ejaculating. Men report that when they resist the temptation to move toward ejaculation as soon as possible, they are rewarded with intense new levels and flavors of pleasure. This also benefits the woman, as she usually takes longer to build her sexual energy. The key to extending and expanding the male orgasm beyond the peak moment of ejaculation is becoming aware of and learning to control the ejaculation reflex. With some practice and attention to the process, men can learn to allow orgasmic energy and pleasure to build without letting the contractions of ejaculation begin. On a physiological level, this is done by totally relaxing during the emission phase just prior to and entering into the phase commonly known as the point of no return. One of the keys to controlling the ejaculation reflex lies in learning to control the sex muscles. The PC or pubococcygeal muscle, the anal and urethral sphincters, and the smooth muscles of the urethra. Sex therapists commonly prescribe exercises known as Kegels for this purpose. The basic exercise consists of clenching and then fully relaxing the muscles used to start and stop the flow of urine. With practice, these muscles can become quite developed and enhance orgasmic control for both men and women. There are two basic ways to make the male orgasm more voluntary. The Taoist method makes a good basic training, but eventually you will want to graduate to the second method, that of the valley orgasm, based solely on relaxation, awareness, and a strong PC muscle. After you've developed some PC muscle strength, then you may be ready for the more advanced and perhaps ultimate skill with regards to ejaculation control and also achieving the male multiple orgasm. And that is to learn how to control the smooth muscles of the urethra. Now smooth muscle is normally involuntary. The heart, for example, is smooth muscle. But just as some yogis have been able to control the heart in the laboratory, sexual yogis have learned how to control the smooth muscle of the urethra. The key is the total relaxation of all of the muscles that are involved in the ejaculation. The anus, the PC muscle, and the smooth muscles of the urethra. As men, you have to be willing to give up the last ten seconds of the normal sexual climax cycle in order to experience the rest of it again and again with higher and higher peaks of pleasure. This may require a partnership effort, of course. And it's gotten to the point now where I can just stop without even verbally saying anything. She just also stops and then we'll do some deep breathing. Or we even do some big draws and things like that too. Just to try and move energy up and disperse it. Yeah, he does the darus big draw and we do the orgasmic up draw and we just pump our muscles together and we both kind of relax and blend our energy together at that point. And that's really nice. And just reconnecting with one another in the heart space, I think, just relaxes us again and reminds us that we don't have to go anywhere. That we're just perfect right here. Let's just make it last more and more, longer and longer. And just ride the wave of pleasure. The tantric and Taoist traditions of the East teach that mastery of the breath frees both the male and female orgasm. The ancient texts say that as the breath flows, so the semen flows. So for example, for men, the ability to breathe in control has a great influence on the way their sexual energy moves. If a man breathes rapidly, for example, he will move quickly towards higher levels of excitement and probably towards ejaculation sooner. However, if he slows down his breathing and extends it in long, deep, slow belly breaths, his energy will be extended outward into longer phases of deep relaxation and pleasure and enjoyment. Try changing the rate and depth of your breathing. Long slow exhalations, very soft, very smooth, usually from the nose, will help the man control, even transform the need for ejaculation, prolonging and deepening the pleasure for both of you. Emphasize pushing the breath out so that you exhale completely. The in-breath will then take care of itself. Breath in the body is like air to fire. Just as fanning flames will transform smoldering embers into roaring flames, so will rapid breathing move you more quickly toward the peak of orgasm. If you find that you want more arousal, try open mouth panting to build the energy. Or try continuous long, slow, deep breathing from the belly to sustain the plateau of orgasm. In our workshops at Celebrations of Love, we teach a number of different breathing techniques to help a person free up their orgasm and be able to bring sexual energy to all parts of their body. These can be practiced either individually or together with a partner. There are several different ways for freeing up the breathing. One of them includes practicing what we call orgasm reflex breathing, where you are lying down on your back, your knees bent, the soles of your feet on the ground, and where you inhale as your pelvis goes back and exhale as it goes forward. Inhale back, exhale forward, and you actually in a sense push off just a little bit from your feet so that what happens is you start using your psoas muscle to move your pelvis back and forth and you don't make your abdomen tight as you swing in your pelvis. A breath pattern that shows up in many different tantric traditions, both in Native America and in India and even in some other cultures, is the fire breath in which you take the energy, you take your sexual energy or visualize your sexual energy going up the center of your body in a small circle at first, going up through for a woman, up through the vagina and out through the head of her clitoris as she inhales and exhales, going up and out through the pubic bone and then up to the solar plexus and up to the heart, up to the throat, up to the third eye point, up to the top of the head, and even above into the aura. And you take your sexual energy as you're squeezing and relaxing your vaginal muscles and undulating your spine and breathing freely and taking it up to all these different chakras, using visualization to help direct the energy. Another breath that's very helpful is a breath I call the ecstasy breath. What you see here is the ecstasy breath. I'm beginning to raise my sexual energy by moving my pelvis back and forth, my breathing is free, my jaw is relaxed, my throat is open, and I'm beginning to move into a higher and higher state of sexual arousal. If I was being stimulated manually or orally at this time or with intercourse, I would be feeling fairly intense sexual energy moving through all parts of my body and in a somewhat generalized fashion as opposed to genitally focused. Now I'm starting to vibrate and if you notice, my breathing pattern has changed. My jaw is still open, my throat is open, and I'm breathing long, slow, and deep, inhaling very slowly, exhaling very slowly, making a little sound, vibrating. I'm in a state of peak arousal, vibrating, the energy is flooding through my body. I can maintain this state as long as I want to breathe in a long, slow fashion, and I want you to know that there's an urge that I am resisting at this time to breathe more quickly and to complete my orgasm. This is a natural part of our body that wants to complete an orgasm, but I am choosing instead to maintain this high level of ecstatic arousal. Practicing this very simple breathing exercise can help you maintain an orgasmic peak whether you're by yourself or with a partner. Breathing techniques are so simple, full, deep, complete breaths using the entire lungs. You can breathe with a partner as you inhale, they inhale, as you exhale, they exhale. You can, while you're in a coitus experience, visualize both partners maybe inhaling and exhaling alternately, and you can inhale as one partner inhales, the other exhales, moving the energy from that partner consciously up through the other partner, and then this partner would exhale as the other one inhales, bringing the energy through the partners. And full, complete breaths are wonderful ways during the lovemaking experience to get in touch with energy flows. In the yogic and tantric traditions, the energy in the air, known as prana, is believed to carry vital life force energy. This prana can be a carrier for sexual energy. The art of developing mastery of this universal energy is called pranayama. You don't have to be a yogi. You don't have to master pranayama breathing. You don't have to know all the language and esoterica in order to incorporate your breath and your sexuality and the very life force itself. Sex therapy teaches simple breathing techniques, which are just the same as the highly disciplined mystical traditions, but in a language that ordinary, everyday Americans can understand. The man will need to learn how to use the breath to monitor his ejaculation, to have voluntary ejaculation when he wants to and to control ejaculation when he doesn't. So that when he gets very close to an ejaculation, generally the practice is to take a very deep breath and hold it and draw awareness away from the genitals and with it the excitement and draw that awareness upward and bring it up into the spiritual centers, which then opens the spiritual centers. And then he'll have a period of time where he can relax and go into the great spiritual feminine energy and slow down with deep, slow breaths. And then he'll want to start exciting himself again, so he'll start breathing faster and moving faster. So the man needs to know how to use the breath. The woman also needs to know how to coordinate with him to do that, because for a woman to keep breathing very fast and moving fast while the man is trying to slow things down is not going to help him circulate that energy. Chances are he'll go over the edge and that's not going to allow him to be there with her for another cycle of time. The ancient sexual wisdom teaches that the woman's potential for ecstasy through sex is naturally nine times greater than that of a man. As a woman frees her orgasm, she also frees her soul. Almost effortlessly, the waves of ecstasy carry her back to her inner power source. Gradually, she heals her body in the pains of the past. The orgasmic potential of woman is limitless. At least this was the understanding of the ancient huntrick initiates. And modern sexual explorers seem to be discovering the same truth. Contrary to what many women believe, the key to orgasmic bliss is not their partner, but their own ability to access their own orgasmic energy. In order to free her orgasm, a woman must first feel really okay about receiving pleasure on a very deep level and be willing to go the distance to get through the blocks, both emotional and physical, that may be in her way. Some of these can include blocks to communication, to really asking for what she wants, to asking in ways that really support her partner and support her truly getting what she wants. Other things include being able to free up her body so that her pelvis can move easily and fully, her breath can be free, and can help her bring sexual energy through all parts of her body. One of the most important methods for a woman to free up her orgasm and to be able to have truly a full body orgasm is to learn how to focus, how to really be present when she's receiving sexual stimulation, either from herself or from a partner. What this means is she needs to really be present when having a distracting thought, take a breath, let go of it, and return back to the sensation. Another part of being able to have greater focus in the sexual situation involves letting go of old shame or old fear or guilt regarding sex and sexual feelings. Your most important erogenous zone is between your ears, not your legs. One can be quickly short-circuited by wayward thoughts like, are my thighs wobbling? How do I smell? Is the soup going to burn? Focus is perhaps the most essential ingredient in the recipe for sexual ecstasy and orgasmic empowerment. Psychologists have found that easily orgasmic women are able to exclude mental distractions. Focus, along with conscious breath and other tantric skills, are the keys to going beyond the ordinary in sex. The G-spot, originally named after a male sexologist, is now becoming known as the goddess spot. Considered by modern tantrics to be the inner pole of the second or sex chakra, the G-spot is a small area located on the inside upper wall of the vagina. It often becomes identifiable only during sexual arousal. Many women find that stimulation of this goddess spot while in the state of sexual excitement leads to longer and deeper orgasms than are possible with clitoral stimulation alone. It's important for men to know that for many women, G-spot stimulation becomes pleasurable only after they have been pleasured externally for a while, or even after they have actually had a clitoral orgasm. The many benefits of sound making became obvious to the ancient tantric lovers, and they set out to harness this force to further realize their erotic potential. But they discovered that sound making, the louder the better usually, enhances experience by freeing emotional energy. The impact of the sounds you make draws your partner into your pleasure. Your sounds also provide feedback for each other, amplifying the delightful feelings you are sharing and guiding you to fine tune your technique. At an energetic level, erotic sound making opens the throat chakra, which is where we hold our emotions. Many of the sexual practices of the East focus on awakening the mystical Kundalini energy, which resides in the lower sexual centers, also called chakras by the Hindus. When this Kundalini energy is awakened, it rises up the central channel of the body, and it awakens the energy in the heart, and in the throat, and in the brow, and finally in the crown chakra, the thousand-petaled lotus. In the tantric tradition, the body is seen as a temple, and in fact all the various parts of the body, even as seen as different temples. So you have a chakra system going up from the base through to the head, and in each of the chakras or centers, subtle centers of the body, there is a seat considered to be a seat, a center, and at that center, a deity or a higher energy resides. The chakra locations correspond to where we tend to feel emotions in our bodies. For example, sexual energy above the genitals, feelings of anger or butterflies in our gut, warmth in our heart, and that familiar emotional lump in the throat. The value of chakras in tantra is straightforward. They are the conductors of the higher voltages of the life force. As they gain in size and power, we increase our capacity to experience and absorb higher and higher intensities of liberating love, pleasure, and power. Some of the most important techniques in both tantric and Taoist lovemaking involve ways to coax the fiery Kundalini energy up away from the genitals and into the whole body. By doing so, we are able to take the experience much further than the conventional genitally focused sexual release. Both the man and the woman in tantric loving use their whole body, all chakras firing, and their whole body to love the other. It's not just a genital exchange, and that really takes it out of the realm of sex, which is more of a genital exchange, and great and hot and fabulous for many people. But to play with all the chakras and to dance with that energy with one another is my choice. In the orgasmic experience, the main component of it is the experience of vibrations or streamings of energy which happen through the pelvic musculature. I call this the streaming reflex, and I teach that it is possible to expand and magnify this reflex so that it can allow you to stream, to feel the streamings of energy through the whole body. This way, you develop the capacity to experience orgasm at an energy level independently of the sexual context before you even make love with someone. When you have developed this capacity to allow the energy to stream through your body and to expand around you and to feel it better, when you come with another person who also knows how to do that, it is sometimes enough to just enter into a wonderful hug or to lie in a very relaxed embrace together for 20, 30 minutes, and then the energies start dancing by themselves. And then you come to a very deep orgasmic experience because your whole being is involved. In the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism, nature always has two sides, the yin or feminine and the yang or masculine. Just as the Taoist symbol of wholeness has both qualities in it, so do each of us. One of the main tenets of Tantra is that all love comes from self-love. In the final analysis, it is we who must love ourselves first. This is possible because each man has an inner woman and each woman an inner man. Contrary to some popular myths in the West about sexual prowess, a man maximizes his erotic potential through total surrender, not big muscles or a dominant ego. Slowly men are coming to understand that women actually love them more when they are soft and open or yin as they develop their inner woman, their yin or soul self. Men have been educated, have been raised believing that to be a man you have not to show your feelings, you have to be strong, you have to be like the captain of the boat, and you don't talk about emotions, you know, your objective. And women, that's their department, you know, they're in charge of the emotional side, they're the nurturers, they're the caretakers. And so in a way we have been raised with stereotype roles like the woman, you know, the ultimate cliché of this in France is we'd say, tais-toi et ouvre tes jambes, you know, shut up and open your legs. So it's like you don't say anything, you just in a way do it, you know, you don't talk, you don't give your opinion, you simply surrender. You're the one that has to surrender. And the man, you know, he comes in there, he leads the show, he's supposed to know everything and, you know, he walks in there like the cowboy, you know. I call it cowboy sex, you know, with the big boots. Now I know that everything's changing. I'm aware that we are liberating ourselves as women and, you know, that it's not so easy for the men. But my theory is that even though we're acting liberated, our subconscious is still very much marked by these attitudes. And that it is only when we will understand the ancient Tantric teaching that a man is also woman and a woman is also man that we will be able to totally transform this whole relationship between man and woman and bring a lot of juice to our sexual interaction, you know. And the way that we understand this is like this, that the woman has also male hormones in her and that this existence of the male hormones is what give her the possibility of exploring in herself the dynamics of being active, leading, knowing what she wants, taking initiatives, directing the show, asking for what she needs. That's the male side in her. And that the female, the existence of female hormones in the man is what gives him the possibility of understanding his more feminine nature, where he can express his sadness, where he can allow his vulnerability to show, where he can let his tears roll, where he can be gentle and soft, where he can also honor the little boy in himself and be respected for that. And that when the man allows this feminine dimension to open up and to flow, he will be loved by women. You wouldn't believe it, you know, because that's all what women are waiting for. They're waiting for a man who has the capacity to be strong and to enjoy his maleness and who has the capacity to be soft and gentle and to express also his feminine side. Women on the other hand have traditionally been raised to take a passive role to the man. In the tantric tradition, the female energy is seen to be all powerful. The ultimate manifestation of this powerful female image is seen in the great Hindu goddess Kali. In tantric lovemaking, a variety of sexual positions are used to balance the energies of the man and the woman. Many of the positions seen in the sacred erotic texts such as the Kama Sutra and the Anangaranga are derived from the postures of Hatha Yoga. The Tibetan Yabya position is the tantric posture par excellence. Ladies are face to face and heart to heart, able to keep eye contact, kiss and caress the Kundalini lovingly up the spine and over the crown of the head. Sitting up is an awake position versus the association of sleep with lying down. The man's lingam, the whole energy is vertical. The couple is set for takeoff to the outer reaches of ecstasy, yet the man can easily control his urge to ejaculate. It's easy to be intimidated by the vast array of positions or asanas displayed in the eastern erotic picture books. Actually, this wild kingdom of sexual acrobatics reduces to a very manageable number of basic yet very stirring poses. The more elaborate postures given in the books as much for their visual impact as for any practical benefit are simply variations on a theme. One key to look for is the pattern of energy flow between the partners at the various points of thrilling electromagnetic contact, the eyes, hands, tongues, breasts, soles of the feet and yoni lingam. For example, because of the natural come hither curve of the lingam, goddess dominant positions tend to stimulate her g-spot more. Painting patterns are the subject of much discussion in ancient texts. Men tend to think that deeper is better because they see her shiver and moan when they thrust hard but it's not that simple. As in art, so in life, variety is the spice. However, some sources go too far the other way, pandering to the male craving for a technical sex repair manual. In practice, it is enough to keep in mind three things. Tease her clitoris with your lingam before you enter. When you enter, stay just inside, just the head of the lingam or a little more. The nature-oriented Taoists likened the strategy to a turtle that sticks his head just a little out of his shell. Turtle resting. Once you begin to move, don't just vary by going side to side or in circles. Try three or six or nine shallow thrusts followed by one deep. When you do go all the way, thrusting to the north star as the Taoists would say, tighten the anal muscles. It will make the head of your lingam swell. However you do it, this pattern will set up a tough and tender rhythm of shallow, shallow, shallow, deep. Shallow, shallow, shallow, deep. After all, how can there be music without rhythm? She will be looking forward to your deep move and may greet you with a vigorous thrust from her own pelvis. Carezza, cabazza and imsac are three proven styles of tantric love. In carezza, the couple move only enough for him to keep the erection. Deep affection and eye contact and intent to transmit loving, healing forces through the hands as you caress your beloved are the focus. Carezza is Italian for caress. Women who are cabazza have mastered their PC muscles. Keeping the man erect and both of you stimulated is accomplished through her squeezes alone. When these muscles are strong, a half hour is not difficult and in that half hour an amazing energy orgasm may overcome both of you. Imsac relies on the man's discipline. He must pull out before ejaculating. This is done up to nine times. While inside he moves a little, she squeezes a little. Simplicity itself. The power of this style should not be underrated. Most couples find getting to the ninth union an impossible dream. By the fifth merger, you will feel so saturated with pleasure that your kisses seem to move the earth. Don't be misled by all this emphasis on techniques. The techniques make room for something new. The ability to hang out together in an ecstatic space so awesome, so fulfilling that you have the direct experience of being the divine, the god and the goddess. Sharing this beautiful realm transforms your lovemaking and your relationship into a wonderful, intoxicating madness. You may fall into an amazing graceful fusion beyond anything you could have pictured or thought, beyond words, beyond even dreams. Tantra is a way of life. It's not a little cult. It's not a little clique. It's not a fad. It's not something that's going to be, it's not a fashion or something like this. Tantra is a way of life. It's something once you have experienced the tantric tradition, once one has made a connection with it, once one has started to perform the practices, one notices changes in one's life. And tantra is wonderful in that everything one does can be done in a tantric way and make every activity a magical act. Yes, tantra is magic, but it takes time and patience to overcome early conditioning. Relax, breathe, focus, go slowly. Stay in touch with your body, make sounds and stay in contact with your partner. In other words, come to your senses and stay in love. In this program we've shared with you a number of methods and techniques drawn from a variety of traditions. We encourage you to take with you what fits and experiment with it. We want you to keep it simple if that's important and have fun. For example, if you find that you're getting distracted or you're not feeling present in your lovemaking, just remember to breathe and to look into your partner's eyes. The point is to be easy with yourself about all of this. The couples that we've shared with you have been practicing for years, so it's not going to help to compare yourself to them. But who knows, over time as you practice you may find that you really master some of these skills as well, even ones that you might be initially skeptical about. So we hope that you will learn to enjoy these practices and that they will help you expand your life so that you bring in more love and more pleasure. Enjoy. .