Beyond Tantra: Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex (6 page)

This would explain why ‘relationship’ is so important to women! Later in the book I’ll show how to use this understanding in a practical way when learning how to generate Sexual Qi.

So how does this flow of Sexual Qi work? Well, thoughts are basically electrical signals. This means that each thought generates a very small amount of current. This current has an effect on the tissue of your brain. I saw an amazing picture recently of brain scans done on meditating Tibetan monks. These images show very clearly that meditating has a powerful, measurable effect on the brain.

It’s not a great leap to imagine that if, instead of meditating, you direct your awareness elsewhere, such as visualizing a circuit through your body, you actually create a circuit. It may be quite a weak circuit to start with but what happens is that over time, and with practice, it gets stronger and stronger. If this circuit then stimulates areas of the brain that are connected to sexual and ‘spiritual’

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pleasure, then you will experience exactly what the Taoists and Tantrikas describe.

It appears, therefore, that there is not only a large body of Eastern knowledge but also Western scientific research to confirm that the conscious direction of internal electrical energy can, and does, have a beneficial effect on our bio-elec-trical systems. My personal conclusion from my research is that I’d rather practice Sacred Sex than have an electrode inserted into my pre-optic nucleus! I did find it reassuring, however, to find that there is Western research to indicate that there is a scientific basis to Sacred Sex.

Putting It All Together

At the end of the day, I found that the Tantric tradition is very interesting for what it teaches about using Sexual Qi for ecstatic sexual experiences and spiritual development, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to say about health or grounding sexual energy on a day-to-day basis. The Taoist tradition, on the other hand, has a great deal to say about health and energy-grounding and therefore ended up as the cornerstone of our Sacred Sex work. However, the Neo-Tantrics do fill in an important gap. Many of the modern Tantra courses use skills and exercises from the Human Potential Movement that are very useful when learning how to deal with (and heal) some of the emotional and communication issues that inevitably arise when working with sex and relationship. Finally, Western healing science (both conventional and alternative) is making great strides in understanding how our bio-chemical systems work. This book is a practical synthesis from all four of the above traditions.

Why this book?

After Mieke healed, I soon found that our friends started to ask us about her recovery and how she had done it. They also wanted to know how we managed to keep our relationship together after so many years and after so many challenges and why we seemed to be so full of sexual energy. I soon noticed that their eyes would often start to glaze over as I launched into a complete rundown of Dual Cultivation and Taoist Sexual Energy Practices. All that detail about meridians, Qi, acupuncture points, breathing and Yin/Yang theory was a bit much for a short conversation! I discovered that people understood much better if I just explained the core concepts that we had distilled and used.

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Beyond Tantra – Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex One day I found myself explaining what we had discovered to yet another person. She stopped me and said, ‘That’s amazing; you two really should write a book about what you’ve done and discovered.’ I thought about that for a while and then thought, ‘OK – why not? If we can share what we’ve learned with other couples, that would be nice!’

So here it is. What Mieke and I have attempted to do is document, as clearly as we can, what the two of us have learned from our many years of exploration of Sacred Sex, and Taoist Dual Cultivation in particular. We have made no attempt to beat around the bush or avoid the difficult bits. The simple truth is that if you start working with the techniques of Sacred Sex, you will most likely have to make some pretty fundamental changes to yourself and your relationship.

Mieke and I have never met anyone who has not had this experience. The good news is that it can be done gently and at your own pace. Yes, there is stretching involved and, as with all stretching, it can be a bit painful at times. Our experience, which I hope you will have as well, is that the payback is well worth the investment. I hope you have as much fun with the journey of exploration as we have had. It’s not necessarily always easy and without challenges but we certainly found that it was worth the effort.

A Word on Authority

One of the most frustrating things I discovered when researching Sacred Sex, Taoist Dual Cultivation and Tantra, is that it is difficult to locate authoritative information. Sacred Sex is not a recognized science in the West and there are no peer-reviewed journals to fall back on. There are literally hundreds of books and even instructional videos on the market from self-styled experts but it’s not easy to know what is valid, authentic information. As I have already mentioned, there is a great deal of material available concerning Traditional Chinese Medicine, but there is not much information about Dual Cultivation in those books. There are odd allusions here and there to ‘controversial sexual techniques of dual cultivation’ but that’s about it.

When I have spoken directly to both Western and Chinese internal energy practitioners from the Taoist lineage, I have been met with either ignorance or reticence when it comes to awareness of this area of Taoist energy work. In particular, the Chinese I have spoken to often acknowledge its existence but say things like ‘we leave this area to couples as it quite a private matter in China’.

They then tend to change the subject hastily. So, despite our best efforts, we have not been able to locate any living Chinese teachers of Dual Cultivation. This does not mean that they don’t exist; it’s just that, if they do, they’re not easy to

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find. Maybe if I spoke Chinese it would help but I’m not so sure! We have also had both good and not-so-good experiences with Western teachers of Tantra and Dual Cultivation. We have consistently heard and read tales of mixed results from other people as well. It does seem that good Sacred Sex teachers are hard to find.

I would therefore like to make it very clear to our readers that Mieke and I do not claim to be Masters of Taoist Dual Cultivation. In fact, I was seriously considering writing a chapter called ‘How to act like a complete twit with no brain when it comes to sex’ to document some of the disasters I’ve had over the years! Any authority we have comes simply from the fact that we have used the techniques for many years and found, to our own satisfaction, that they work as described. I can also confirm that the energy-work system used is in great accordance with what I have learned through studying Acupuncture, Qi Gong, Tai Chi and Chinese Herbal medicine. We’re sharing what we have discovered in a spirit of humbleness and gratitude to the many thousands of men and women who have spent so much time over the centuries exploring and documenting the techniques of Sacred Sex. We are, literally, in their debt.

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