Beyond Tantra: Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex (27 page)

When the time comes, start by preparing your Sacred Sex space and yourselves. Many people feel fresher and more present after a shower or a bath and this can be a good way to allow yourself to make a clear distinction between your normal life activities and your Sacred Sex time. Ensure as much as possible that you won’t be interrupted by telephones, children or any other distractions. Work together on creating your space so that you both ‘own’ it.

After your shower, or before you start, change into your light bathrobe or wrap and bless your space with the Greeting Ritual. If you want you can extend the ritual with a short meditation as described in the beginning of the Yoni Meditation.

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REVIEW YOUR PLAN

Now go over your plan and make sure you’re still both happy with what you’ve agreed to. We found that, in the first few sessions, it is really important to stick to your plan. Trust-building happens when you keep agreements and it is not at all helpful if, all of sudden, one or other of you starts to introduce elements that were not agreed in advance. This is especially important if you are trying new exercises; what may seem like ‘no big thing’ for the one partner may, for the other one, involve some serious stretching and risk-taking. Keeping to your plan is a good way to create safety for ‘stretching and growing’. Remember, there are always (hopefully!) more sessions where you can bring in new activities.

MOVE THROUGH YOUR PLAN USING FEEDBACK POINTS

It might sound like a real mood-killer but we found that ‘checking-in’ with each other before each step of the plan works well. This is especially true when you get really excited and just want to let go and enjoy yourselves. It takes discipline and a will of steel sometimes, but we discovered that if you don’t just hop over a step, you can build a delicious tension into your session. It’s really nice and tough at the same time to know that something lovely is coming up, but that you have to wait and stay focused on what is happening now. This is a great chance to learn to pace yourself in an era of instant gratification!

The feedback is also very important as it gives both partners a ‘safety valve’.

This means that if things need adjusting, you both know that there is a natural point at which to communicate this. This can be something as simple as, ‘please could I have a bit more massage on my left shoulder as I realize it’s really stiff?’.

It can also be something more complex like, ‘that Yoni massage really brought up some old stuff around how I feel about myself. Could I have a bit of a cuddle and some reassurance for a few minutes?’.

It’s OK to stop your session for any reason. Really. No reasons need be given; you can simply say, ‘I think I’ve done enough for this session’. There is absolutely no way that either of you can know what might (or might not) happen with your inner energy as you raise and refine your Sexual Qi. It’s completely normal for seemingly-unrelated things – such as a sudden cramp, unexpected emotions or complete loss of physical energy leading to sleep – to occur. Increasing the flow of Sexual Qi through the body can have profound healing effects and sometimes our mind, body and emotions just need time to process and deal with issues that may arise.

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Sacred Sex Session Exercise

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FINISHING OFF WITH APPRECIATION

No matter what happens, it’s good to finish off your session with a gentle round of appreciation.

Sample appreciations

‘That was a great back-massage.’

‘Did you notice how much Yoni loved that kiss of yours?’

‘I love the way you seemed to know before I did that we needed to
pull back so I wouldn’t ejaculate.’

‘That second-to-last orgasm actually made my toes curl!’

It’s great to be appreciated and it helps keep the energy between you loving and caring.

BEFORE YOUR NEXT SESSION

When planning your next session, you might find it useful to gently review your previous one. This is where you get to listen to each other’s suggestions and you can feel safe presenting them because you both know that it is perfectly OK

to say, ‘sounds great but I’m not sure that’s my cup of tea!’.

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the Spice of Life

The Understanding

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.

Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow.

Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

—Lao Tzu

When the same pathway is repeatedly used for Sexual Qi, the amount of flow required to achieve the same effect increases. As a result, sensitivity can be dulled over time. Variety counteracts this and keeps the Sexual Qi flow alive and sparkling.

The Background

A common issue that often arises with couples in long-term relationships is

‘sex is boring; we just do the same old thing’. There is a great deal of helpful

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Beyond Tantra – Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex advice available from many sources on how to ‘spice things up’ and, by all accounts, that is exactly what many people are trying. Twenty-five years ago, the idea that a woman would walk into a High Street shop and buy a vibrator would have been unthinkable for many people. Today, sales of the ‘Rampant Rabbit vibrator’ have gone through the roof and my daughters, when queried, tell me that ‘oh, everyone’s got one of those!’ How does all of this fit into the practice of Sacred Sex, though? The Tantrics and Taoists didn’t have sex toys, did they? Oh yes they did! In fact, historians and archaeologists have found a stunning array of dildos, aphrodisiacs, and illustrated sex guides from both cultures stretching back thousands of years. Just about the only things they didn’t have were batteries!

So what is the purpose of all of this sexual variety? Simply to create ever-new and interesting ways of stimulating sexual energy? In part, yes. But there is another, deeper, reason behind the variety of sexual activities displayed. I recently read a very interesting article by a sexologist in response to the question ‘can I become addicted to my vibrator?’ Her answer, in short, was ‘No, and yes.’ On the one hand, there is no clinical proof that you can become addicted to any particular method of sexual stimulation. On the other hand, it is very clear that you can train your body to become used to one particular method of stimulation which, if repeated regularly, creates a ‘groove’ or ‘channel’ that your Sexual Qi learns to flow through. As the groove deepens, you need more and more Sexual Qi to fill it up in order to create the same sensation. This process can also be explained in a biological way. When Sexual Qi flows through our body, it produces dopamine in our brain. Repeated stimulation in the same fashion can lead to dopamine-tolerance. This means, in less scientific terms, that you need more and more stimulation to create the same degree of sensation.

The sexologist’s advice was to put the vibrator away for a while and learn to use other methods to generate orgasmic energy in order to allow the body to

‘unlearn’. In our experience, this ‘groove creation’ happens whether you use a vibrator or simply use the same position or love-making pattern over time.

Sooner or later, your body needs more stimulation to create Sexual Qi if you use the same method all the time. Conversely, if you vary your practice and use different strokes, techniques and positions, your body never has a chance to get stuck into one groove or dopamine-production pathway. This means that you actually require less stimulation and that your Sexual Qi has a much greater chance to flow through your entire body. A final bonus is that being creative –

whether it be art, music, gardening or sex – is one of the best ways to keep one’s life energy alive and flowing. So variety is, indeed, good for you!

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