Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (28 page)

Third stroke
. The second stroke is repeated.

Giving and Receiving

The giver then turns his or her attention inward and becomes the receiver, placing palms upward on thighs as his or her partner becomes the giver, stroking down the receiver’s body three times. Remember to go slowly—you cannot do this stroke too slowly. And breathe, both of you.

One purpose of this exercise is to learn to go totally into receiving when you are receiving, and totally into giving when you are giving. While doing this exercise, notice which role is more difficult for you—giving or receiving. Allow yourself the balance of being able to relate in both ways.

VARIATIONS ON GIVING AND RECEIVING

Once you’ve gotten used to doing this pose in the traditional manner, try experimenting with some variations.

Add a more intense touch
. Do the first stroke in the traditional manner. Use your fingertips and be as soft and delicate as you can. For the second and third strokes, use your fingernails, or ice, or even the tines of a fork. For these more intense strokes, you may have to change the path you follow. For instance, ice would be harmless if stroked over the face, neck, and inner arms, but if you wanted to use a fork (or something even sharper, such as a talon), you might start at the tops of the shoulders and stroke down the outsides of the arms, avoiding prominent veins, nerve centers, and tendons.

Do the strokes on the back
. This is safer and more appropriate for sharp items and many other intense sensations. Stroke down your partner’s arms or back, to their buttocks. Or, start with your fingers on their head and neck, and then switch to the sharp item when you reach their upper arms.

Have the receiver lie down
. This way you can stroke your partner from the top of their head to the tip of their toe. You can use light, delicate strokes on their front; then have them turn over, and use more intense strokes on their back.

Add bondage
. Here’s a little nugget of Taoist wisdom: sensory deprivation amplifies chi by conserving it. When you blindfold someone, chi cannot leak out their eyes. When you use earplugs, chi can’t leak out their ears. Having more chi means having more energy. This is how sensory deprivation intensifies sensation, making your strokes even more delectable.

Add food
. Feed your partner a morsel of chocolate or fruit between strokes. Run the morsel over their lips and tongue, but don’t let them bite it yet. Allow them to experience the aroma, the texture, and the temperature of the food, and only then let them have a small bite. Go slowly; don’t let them gobble it.

The Garden of Sensual Delights

This giving-and-receiving ritual focuses on opening the senses. It can be done as part of a longer Tantric ritual or on its own. It can be an inventive and intimate game to play with a new lover or with someone you’re not ready to have genital sex with. It’s also a great exercise for rekindling desire between lovers who’ve grown bored by repetitive, unconscious sex.

First, you will give to your partner, and then you’ll repeat the exercise receiving from your partner. The receiver is blindfolded. Placing the receiver in bondage can also be delightful. (This can be achieved by means of real physical restraints or simply a verbal command not to move a muscle.) Just make sure that the only sense completely blocked out for the entire exercise is sight. If you want to play with gags or earplugs, remove them for the taste or auditory portions of the exercise.

PREPARATION

Separately, you and your partner go through your respective homes and gather items that you can use to delight and stimulate each other’s senses. Do this separately so that neither of you knows what delights lie in store. Some suggestions for each of the senses follow:

*
Taste:
chocolate, fruit, mustard, whipped cream, salsa, a sparkling beverage, a few granules of salt, diluted lemon juice, sweet or sour pickles

*
Smell:
essential oils, a flower, mothballs, kitchen spices, motor oil, rich garden soil, your skin, a blown-out match, tuna fish

*
Touch:
a feather; a silk or satin scarf; a cold, smooth stone; sandpaper; leather; your fingernails; chain links; a warm (but not scalding) cup of tea

*
Sound:
bells, drums, wind chimes, the rattle of chains, whistles, pebbles dropped one by one into a glass of water, your whisper, a cat purring

This is meant to be a fun and pleasurable adventure. Avoid sensory cues that you know your partner dislikes, but do try to be creative in your choices. A warm (or cool) washcloth on the back of the neck is a wonderful sensation when you are blindfolded. So is the sound of singing through a vacuum cleaner hose. Don’t forget that some of your selections will have multiple sensual properties (for example, leather has a distinctive smell, feel, and taste).

THE EXERCISE

Blindfold your partner, and then sit in front of them. Make sure they are comfortable, and then stop speaking. During the course of the exercise, either or both of you may moan, vocalize
ooh
and
ahh
, or giggle. Occasionally an actual word or two may leak out. But this is not a speaking exercise. Talking about each sensation will take both you and your partner away from actually experiencing it.

Concentrate on one sense at a time. I prefer to start with taste because food has taste and texture, as well as temperature and smell—it quickly opens up many senses. Plus, feeding someone is intimate and sweet and generally produces just the right amount of silliness to make the rest of the exercise even more fun. Here’s how it works:

Taste
. Feed your partner. Actually, don’t feed them—tempt them silly. Tease, tease, and tease some more. Run a tasty morsel over their lips and tongue, but don’t let them bite it. Allow them to experience the aroma, texture, and temperature of the food, and only then let them have a small bite. Go slowly; don’t let them gobble it. This will invite your partner to become the taste of the food or the drink.

Smell
. First, smell the item yourself. How strong or subtle is the scent? This will tell you how close to their nose you’ll want to put it. Some smells can be overwhelming. Waft the scent by them; don’t just shove it under their nose and hold it there. Wait a few seconds between each scent—it gives your partner time to process each one. If your partner prefers, you can offer a sniff of roasted coffee beans between smells to clear the sense memory of the previous smell.

Sound
. You can tease with sound, just as you did with taste. Start with subtle, soft little sounds. Use variety. A sound can be near or far, soft or loud, high-pitched or low. Don’t forget the infinite variety of the human voice. Whisper a loving word or two into your partner’s ear, keeping in mind that this is a sensual delight, not a conversation.

Touch
. Touch can be hard or soft, rough or smooth, fast or slow, wet or dry. Whatever you choose, go very slowly and offer only one type of sensation at a time. Remember, you want your partner to experience the sensation so completely that they become the touch.

When you are done, sit silently for a few moments. Then remove your partner’s blindfold. Ask your partner to tell you what he or she experienced. Which sensations were particularly nice? Was he or she unable to identify any of the delights? Did any of the sensual delights surprise him or her? How does your partner feel now?

Now switch places; it’s your turn to receive.

This exercise can be repeated over and over to refine the quality of the sensations that you and your partner enjoy. If your partner particularly enjoyed some of the softer touches, you can add additional ones, like faux fur or satin sheets. Maybe you discovered that your lover has always been turned on by the smell of urine, semen, or menstrual blood. And who would have guessed that the slow beating of a deep bass drum would drive your partner crazy with desire? When I do this exercise, I am almost always surprised and amazed at how much more there is to experience in a single sensation, particularly in the senses that I do not rely upon primarily. The practice of becoming the taste, touch, sound, and smell of each sensation has taught me how to be more present in each erotic moment. It has also taught me how to make each moment more erotic.

Take what you’ve discovered in these giving-and-receiving exercises and apply it to all your sexual adventures. Above all, know that you are responsible for your own pleasure. What you ask for, how you receive it, how much you allow, and what you do with it are completely up to you. Your partners are similarly responsible for their own pleasure. When you accept responsibility for your own erotic power and pleasure, here’s what happens:

* You stop expecting your partner(s) to be the source of your orgasms.

* You stop pressuring them to give you things you haven’t yet learned to accept.

* You stop blaming them for not knowing what you want.

* You learn to articulate to your partner what it is you really want.

Think of yourself as a facilitator of your lover’s pleasure, not the source of that pleasure. When two (or more) powerful, responsible, knowledgeable, erotically charged beings come together to share their power in erotic love, there are no limits to where they can go and what they can achieve.

Repeat often: I am the source of my own sexual pleasure
.

Now it’s time to build up some serious orgasmic energy and get it flowing, first within you and then between you and your partner. Commit your full awareness, breath, and body to this portion of your ritual, and you may feel like Shakti and Shiva: pure energy merging with pure consciousness, giving birth to new worlds.

The Heart Connection

Place your right hand over your partner’s heart. Your partner places their right hand over your heart. Place your left hand over your partner’s right hand (which is on your heart). Your partner places their left hand over your right hand (which is on their heart). See the illustration on the following page.

Breathe together and look into each other’s left (or nondominant) eye. Allow a sigh or
ahh
to come out every four or five breaths. Continue for thirty or forty breaths, or until you feel your that your hearts are open and connected.

Now, remove your hand from each other’s heart and allow your hands to come together in a prayer position, joining all four hands between you both. Slowly let your hands come apart. Place your hands over your own heart and close your eyes for a few moments. Be aware of where your sexual energy is “hottest” and how it is moving within your body.

VARIATIONS ON THE HEART CONNECTION

You can bring more energy into your heart connection by experimenting with sound and movement.

Do a chakra chant
. There are many varieties of chakra chants. One of my favorites is this: