Slow Sex: The Path to Fulfilling and Sustainable Sexuality (18 page)

At the end of some preceding chapters there are specific exercises designed to support you, as individuals and as a couple. Some are exercises to practice alone (although you can do them in the company of your partner, both perhaps doing the same thing simultaneously), while other exercises are shared experiences. Practicing any of these will direct you to the delights of your inner world and help you be more present in your body and present in the situation. That basic shift back to yourself is all you need to begin your slow sex practice. For convenience, the exercises are also described below (in somewhat less detail), which means that some repetition of suggestions is unavoidable.

Making the Inner Connection

The very first step is to make contact with yourself, within your own body. Sex happens between two bodies, so this initial step is more significant than having immediate contact with your partner. To get closer to another person you must first get closer to yourself—and literally closer to your very own body. Enter into the world of your inner body where the source of cellular sensitivity and aliveness lies. The awareness rises in your body before you begin thinking about, or turning toward, your partner. What follows with your partner flows and evolves from your initial inner connection. In fact, your inner rootedness makes it very simple to establish contact with the other person. You feel more confident and you trust yourself. The essential inner connection can be made by practicing the following exercise.

Exercise: Finding Home in Your Body

You can either practice this exercise alone before you meet with your partner or you and your partner can do the exercise together as a way to begin your slow sex date.

1. If you and your partner are doing the exercise together, sit, stand, or lie opposite each other and a little apart, without physical contact.
   
2. Close your eyes gently and take two or three easy, full breaths through the diaphragm and into your belly. Scan your body and relax any part that’s holding tension.
   
3. Then each of you should take your attention inward and downward into your own body and look for a place that feels like a “home” in the body. It might be the heart, solar plexus, low back, belly, feet, genitals, or wherever—anywhere below the head—that will internally connect you to the realms of your flesh, blood, and bones.
   

An inner home acts as a resting place, a connection point, working like an anchor that holds your attention within the body. When you have made this inner connection you’ll be more ready to open your eyes and meet the eyes of your partner.

Making Eye Contact with Your Partner

In slow sex, learning to keep soft, receptive eye contact with your partner becomes an important tool for deepening your connection to each other, while at the same time staying centered in your own body. The following exercise will give you some pointers on how to develop this skill.

Exercise: Practicing Soft Vision with Your Partner

1. When you feel rooted within your body, you can begin to open your eyes fraction by fraction (without losing contact with your inner body—if you do lose this connection, please close your eyes again until you inwardly reconnect).

2. When your eyes are fully open, gently meet your partner’s eyes. Allow your partner into you through the eyes. Let your eyes be gentle, soft, receptive, and inviting. It will be easier to gaze receptively at just one of your partner’s eyes at a time.

3. Take a deep breath into your belly and let your eyes receive what is there in front of them, rather than looking outward in an objective or judgmental fashion.

4. Continue to breathe deeply, relaxing the belly, and softening the muscles surrounding the genitals. Be present in your body, simple and innocent.

5. Remain in receptive eye sharing mode for as long as it feels comfortable, and close the eyes whenever it feels necessary, either to reconnect inwardly or to sense yourself even more deeply on the inside. Keep coming back to open eyes and being available to yourself on the inside as you receive your partner’s soft gaze into you. Avoid keeping the eyes closed for extended periods.

This special soft and receptive way of using the eyes has the advantage of enabling you to connect with your partner and, at the same time, keep your attention on the inside of yourself. Your attention within your own body can be seen as your priority. You embrace, kiss, and make love with the body, so there has to be some sort of process to enter into it. If and when the inner connection is lost (which can easily happen at first), simply close your eyes again and relax back into your body, retreating into the suggested “home.” Open your eyes again when you feel more rooted in yourself.

The First Physical Contact with Your Partner

When you get the feeling of being able to stay with yourself on the inside, and at the same time be open to your partner on the outside (and this may require practice), then you can move consciously across the space separating you and generously extend your arms or your hand or your lips, moving into whatever contact feels right in the moment—an embrace, touching and caressing with sensitive hands, or a kiss that is sustained by keeping the lips soft, relaxed, and sealed together.

Avoid choosing a position that is your habitual cuddle position, because it’s already so familiar to you both that it won’t be easy for you to feel any difference or make any difference. For instance, a woman should keep her head straight when embracing a man, instead of turning it to the side and resting it cosily on his shoulder or chest. When the head, neck, and spine are in one line, it’s easier to turn the awareness inward. Physically you are further away from your partner, but you will feel yourself more present and more connected energetically. Likewise, a man should not collapse forward over his woman during an embrace, but keep an alignment through head, neck, and spine. If a man is much taller than his woman, he can stand with his legs wide astride so as to lower his height, rather than bend forward over the woman. Or the woman can stand on a stable cushion, or on a step to increase her height. Standing on tiptoes can work, but it is not easy to sustain for longer periods.

Another Way to Begin: Establish Polarity within Yourself

All human beings have an internal magnet within, with a positive pole at one end and a negative pole at the other. Woman’s positive pole is her breasts. Man’s positive pole is his penis. When each partner brings their own positive pole to life before the individual bodies move together, the meeting will be filled with a special circular energy.

Exercise: Establishing Personal Polarity before First Contact

1. Stand or lie down without physical contact, three or four feet apart.

2. Close your eyes and take up an inner connection with yourself. Take the time to drop within and establish yourself in your inner body.

3. Then, after some minutes, man places his attention on the perineum (the area at the root of the penis in front of the anus) and woman places her attention on her nipples. The idea is not to concentrate or focus on these parts, but to melt into them and bring them to life. Visualize the tissues filling with love, light, and vitality.

4. Take some time, and when you have the feeling of being connected with yourself, alive to yourself, turn gradually toward each other and, inch by conscious inch, close the space separating you, bringing the bodies into their first contact.

5. Don’t push your bodies into each other in a hard physical way; let there be some inches of space between you so that contact is porous and fluffy and ensures that the energy bodies remain vibrant and expanded.

6. In your own time move ever so slowly into an embrace or kiss (or whatever) with eyes closed or open, whatever feels right.

Some Alternative Approaches

Another approach is to lie (or stand) with your bodies several feet apart, and before you physically connect, allow your eyes to meet for several minutes in a receptive vision connection, as described earlier. Or man can gently lay his hands on woman’s breasts while she gently lays her cupped hand over his pubic mound and penis. Or the testicles can be gently lifted from beneath and held warmly and lovingly in the hand.

The orientation is toward aliveness and awareness rather than stimulation and excitement. You are looking for what helps to open and expand your partner’s energy field, rather than what turns them (or you) on and causes the energy field to contract.

This is a basic guideline for any type of foreplay, that it should lead toward sensitivity and
expansion
of energy rather than excitement and
contraction
of energy, which can easily give rise to restlessness and the desire to go after orgasm.

THE FIRST SLOW SEX PENETRATION

It is possible that your very first date or dates will not progress as far as actual sex, so it is important to keep pace with what unfolds and feels comfortable for you both, rather than feel compelled to get somewhere specific. A childlike, innocent approach is a great support. If and when you feel ready to get your bodies together, then you can do so in ways described below, or follow your intuition.

There are two basic scenarios that you are likely to be presented with: when man has an erection and when he does not. So man should not be overly concerned about his erection. If it’s there, you enter woman in one way; if it’s not there, you enter in another way.

At this stage or at any earlier point, you can both oil or lubricate your own genitals, or each other’s, bearing in mind the touch must not be a very stimulating one. Lubrication is covered in more detail in chapter 4; it is really helpful if you use lubrication every time you make love.

With Erection: Make the Initial Penetration Exceptionally Slow

The value of an exceptionally slow entry into woman’s body is described earlier in chapter 4, and is particularly significant for women if they are virgins, and also later in menopausal years. When man enters woman slowly (and with lubrication), she usually will not feel pain because man is being conscious and honoring her receptive feminine environment. The missionary position is perhaps the most suitable for slow penetration, but it can also be done in the side-scissors position and a number of other positions. In missionary position, woman can place a thick flat pillow under her buttocks to raise her pelvis and bring the vagina closer to the penis (see fig. 10.1).

Fig. 10.1. When lying on her back, woman can use a pillow support under the buttocks to raise the level of her pelvis. In the first image woman uses her legs to raise her pelvis and place the pillow in position. Its final position is shown in the second image. The third image shows a nice variation of the missionary position with woman’s feet resting on man’s shoulders.