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Authors: Diana Richardson

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When you find such space, be with it and rest. Give it some light or color; vizualize making it bigger. Get a sense of it as a location in the body where you can root yourself and find some peace. It may be the belly, the heart, genitals, lower back, anywhere, but not the head! Wherever it is, hold it in your awareness, and grow into the feeling of it. Remember, you can
return home any time
you find you have suddenly walked out of the front door, and you will find this happens often! We have to continually step back to our inside space, leaving the outside space outside. It is as if we literally have to step inside our bodies, create the inside space and keep expanding it. The outside space is usually much bigger in people than the inside space, so we have to "force" the boundaries of the inside space open, to expand.

At the outset of lovemaking, when each person gives the time and attention to his or her own body
first,
by expanding their inside space, it is as if the air between the bodies that normally separates them actually comes alive, like a magnetic field. You become aware of the life in your own body which radiates outward to communicate with the body and presence of your lover right through the space between you.

The perception or inner awareness of the body is a far more delicate phenomenon than the thinking process. When our attention is caught up with thought, it is difficult to reach down into the vastness of the body to experience what is specifically happening there. It is difficult to "be" in the body. One contributing factor is that at the outset of making love, we are much too fast in bringing our bodies into physical contact. We compress what could otherwise be a prolonged and wonderful exchange into a few seconds flat, trying to create something enjoyable for the other. This has the effect of pulling each person out of awareness, off center, and away from home. Rather than feeling ourselves by dropping inward and absorbing the other, being sweet and simple, we put more effort into doing something to them, a rub, a touch, a caress. We have become human "doings" and forgotten how to be human beings.

Let your body be your guide

To experiment with this slow approach, try this exercise:

Before you make love, lie in bed on your sides and face each other, your bodies slightly apart and without any physical contact. Pull your focus away from your partner into your own body. Close your eyes for a few moments and feel yourself withdrawing your awareness from the outer to the inner. You can imagine you are sliding down your own spine vertebra by vertebra, into the back, down into the pelvis, and so connecting with the energy in the base of your body and legs. Hold yourself in there for a while, and give yourself time. This brings vitality to your own body before you bring your bodies together. After several minutes, open your eyes and look at each other. As this happens you keep your awareness in your own body. Breathe. Relax your jaw. After a few minutes, slowly, slowly inch forward toward your lover keeping your focus inside. Move into an embrace, the slower the better, starting with a meeting of the fingertips, and let it be more of a "happening" than a "doing." Be acutely aware of each body part, the skin, the warmth, as it meets and wraps itself around the other. If you wait long enough just "being," you will find the bodies are eventually pulled or sucked together, attracted like magnets. Remove any intention, and be with the experience of moving closer to the one you love. When we move into love with this slow sensitivity, awareness of ourselves and of our partner is greatly expanded. The body energies too respond vibrantly to this languid lazy approach.

You can also try this when you are greeting each other after a separation. Before you hug, stop, stand still and take several seconds to draw your awareness inward, ground yourself in your body, your legs and feet. Then step forward as slowly as possible and move into a gradual hug with your lover. Stay relaxed, drop your shoulders, don't make any undue physical effort, breathe. With awareness stay in the body, let the
bodies
do the greeting, and allow it to be a melting together.

Pulling the awareness inward in this way, instead of projecting it out, creates a more sensitive environment within the body. You become aware of places that you didn't know had feeling or sensitivity, because your attention was placed elsewhere. And while making love our attention is frequently preoccupied by thoughts of orgasm. When you can be present in your body, you begin to experience your dimensionality, an exquisite interior between your front and back that explodes into sensitivity like an inner display of fireworks.

Switch off your mind

We are diverting the focus from our periphery to our core, from an outward expression to an inward impression, and thereby enhancing sensitivity in the body. Tantra returns us from sexuality to sex. Today we experience our sexuality rather than the true force of sex, because the mind has become an integral part of the sex act. To return to the innocent and natural state of sex we have to start by switching off or disassociating from the thinking part within.

Perhaps the biggest distraction in sex today is the incredible ability of the mind to fantasize. Indeed, sexual fantasy has become the driving force of many people's sex lives. Often in lovemaking we get involved in sexual fantasy, not conscious of what is happening in the present. Our attention is not on this partner here and now, but on creating an imagined one or an imaginary situation. Thus we are not really experiencing the truth of the body. Instead the mind is using fantasy to drive or motivate the body. Sexual fantasy can be habitual, as if we are repeating the same program again and again.

Almost every one of us I am sure has used a sexual image, either real or imagined, to help us get excited and maintain an interest in the sex act. Mostly we use sexual fantasy to urge us toward orgasm because the imagination helps us to reach the peak. It works incredibly well! The mind must be proclaimed as a powerful tool to produce such effective, even immediate results. But sexual fantasy is, nonetheless, a great diversion as it pulls us away from reality and the person we are making love with right now.

Tantra, in its wisdom, embraces this imaginative power of the mind. It encourages it to be re-directed into the body. The imagination can be harnessed to actually stimulate valuable movements of energy within the body instead. And this happens because sooner or later the energy will follow the imagination. We have all tried it, and we know it works. Imagination can thus be used as a positive tool in sex rather than a distraction. For example, if we begin to imagine light and circles of energy within the body, or energetic connections between the positive and negative poles (inside and outside yourself), or energy streaming from a man into a woman, or a woman absorbing this golden light, or energy radiating from the heart and breasts or leaping from the penis, sooner or later we will begin to have the feeling of this actually happening. The energy can be imagined as a streaming golden flow or even a jumping, leaping of light, even lightning. Men may find this works easier for them.

A return to innocence

It might be indistinct at first, but your awareness will help to fan it, and this makes energy grow and expand. Some people "feel energy" more easily than others do. If it is not easy for you, please use your imagination; it is a tremendous support to the body. Where you do have the sensation of energy moving within, the imagination can help to intensify the experience. In these ways the mind is used to pave the pathways for the inner energy circuits, which become more and more dynamic as time passes.

In the transition of sexuality to sex, the returning of sex to the innocence of the body, we must remind ourselves that the first step is to be aware of the inner music of the body, and the second step is to be aware of the thoughts. Even if we are not using fantasy in the sex act, we are often thinking all kinds of thoughts, and these thoughts are potentially destructive. When we become aware of our thoughts, estimated at about 50,000 per day, it is a surprise to find out what else is going on inside of us. In my early sexual life, when the kind of lovemaking I had been longing for was actually happening, I noticed with horror that I would find myself drifting off and thinking about something else. I was astounded that it could be something as banal as where to go for dinner! I found it difficult to be utterly involved in sex. Since then I have discovered that sexual energy is so subtle and sensitive, even one sudden and simple thought is enough to disturb its natural magnetic flow.

A gradual process

When we are bringing awareness to our thought process, it is not as if we must stop thinking. We can't! We do think and that is the problem! There is nothing we can do directly about thinking, however, we can approach it indirectly. The significant thing is to notice that you are thinking, caught up in a stream of thoughts, and in that very noticing you are thrown back into the present, you sever the thread to the thoughts. By simply acknowledging that you were thinking, you disassociate or "cur with the mind." This is enough, and you return to the present. Do not begin an inner dialogue giving yourself a hard time because you were absent and not present, simply and quickly slip back into the present. Stay immersed in the present, in the physicality and sensuality of consciousness in the body, until you find yourself caught up in thinking again! Notice, and slip back into your body immediately.

It is a process, and the miracle of the phenomenon of awareness is that you need not do anything except to become aware. The simple act of watching your thoughts, becoming aware of the physical patterns associated with them, will bring about a change. The mind becomes more relaxed, content and attuned to the body as if a bridge is created.

As couples embark on the Tantrie journey, it is important to bear in mind that it is a gradual process. It is a shift in consciousness, neither a sudden change nor a technique. You can't do it, you have to
be
it. It is an ongoing refining process of creating stillness, which requires time. It is helpful if you do not seek big changes or immediate results. It does not happen like that every time. Real change is made up of numerous, sometimes invisible, small changes which take root in the body. Notice the smaller, less obvious things that happen to you, what you feel, where you feel it, and the joy of it. This consciousness brought to the body and the sexual act begins to transform it, becoming a fountainhead of love, enriching to body, mind, and spirit.

 I 
N CONVENTIONAL SEX, we can liken our bodies to an open blossom with petals extending outward, reaching out into the world. The energy is primarily projected away from the center, we are each focused on the other.

Learning to live through the body

In Tantra the blossom is consciously inverted, the petals are pulled back toward the center and inverted toward the core as if returning to a bud again. The energy is primarily projected toward our own center. The Love Keys knock us back inside to be focused on ourselves, our inside space, which we consciously have to create and expand. The Love Keys help to draw our attention in from the periphery to the core enabling us to focus the awareness within the body. By rooting the consciousness in the body, and using the body as a constant reference point, we are able to stay increasingly in the present moment. Indeed the body is the only thing that exists in the present moment, and learning to live through the body increases our chances of overall happiness. We forsake the entangled, tortured, drifting mind in favor of the simple god-given pleasure of the flesh.

BOOK: Heart of Tantric Sex
12.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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