Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (12 page)

Practice for no longer than one to two minutes
.

The Breath of Fire is a Kundalini yoga technique. It is a powerfully energizing breath that gets the little neurons in your brain humming as it clears your lungs and cleanses your blood. The Breath of Fire is aptly named. I usually feel a lot of heat spreading out from the center of my body when I do this breath. This rapid, continuous breath is done entirely through the nose. It can be done in any position, but it’s best learned standing or sitting up with a straight spine. The emphasis of this breath is on the exhale.

1. Exhale. As you exhale, push the air out by rapidly pulling your navel to your spine.
   
2. To inhale, simply release your navel outward. The breath fills your lungs automatically.
   
3. Put your hand on your diaphragm to focus your attention there and to feel the power of this breath.
   
4. Begin with one breath every two seconds; work up to one or two breaths per second.
   

I use the Breath of Fire whenever I want to build energy. This could be at any time before or during sex. It also wakes me up and brings my attention back if I’ve started to space out. A couple of minutes of this breath is also a great substitute for the caffeine and sugar we start to crave at around 4 p.m. A writer friend of mine uses the Breath of Fire to focus on a particularly difficult passage she might be working on.

The Heart Breath

Practice for five to ten minutes
.

If you never learn or practice any other kind of breathing (which would be a shame, but I know some people are minimalists), you could have a perfectly lovely time with this one alone. You can speed it up or slow it way down. You can take in a lot of air with a minimum amount of effort and tension. It’s a great all-around breath for all erotic purposes. This is the breath we used at the beginning of this chapter, when we first explored how changing our breathing could change our consciousness.

1. Yawn. Feel how the yawn opens the back of your throat and stretches out your whole mouth and face? That’s the feeling of openness you want when you do the Heart Breath.
   
2. Breathe. Let your mouth fall open slightly. Relax your jaw and face, open the back of your throat, and breathe in through your mouth, gently but fully.
   
3. Exhale. Don’t push the breath out; just let it fall out with a gentle little sigh,
   ahh
   .
   
4. Take in a much air as you can, as effortlessly as you can, then let it go.
   
5. Keep breathing.
   

After you’ve become familiar with these four conscious breaths and how they make you feel, add sex. Try the breaths while you masturbate. Alternate them. Notice the different effects each one has on the ebb and flow of your erotic energy. You may notice that it will take you longer to reach orgasm while you are doing any or all these conscious breaths. This is good! It means that your breath is moving your sexual energy all over your body. When we masturbate by holding our breath and bearing down (the classic quickie), we limit our sexual energy to the area around our genitals. When we breathe fully and consciously, it’s like filling a five-gallon jug instead of a coffee cup. It takes longer, but the payoff is a bigger, deeper, longer orgasm and a more delicious afterglow.

Breathing consciously simply means being mindful, aware, and attentive to your breath. Remember, we can only focus on one thought at a time. If we keep our mind full with our breathing, we don’t have the space to think things like “I’ll never come,” “I wonder if they really love me,” or “Did I mail that bill?” Now, I’m not suggesting that you only think about your breath when you have sex. But if you focus on your breath as you might in meditation—that is, using breath as the technique that allows you to actually arrive at the place of meditation—you’ll find you’re well on your way to conscious sex.

Meditation

When we think of meditation, we usually imagine someone sitting quietly, focusing on their breathing, perhaps chanting
om
or gazing into the flame of a candle. They are blissfully unaware of anything except an exquisite silence punctuated by flashes of inspiring spiritual insight. But, as anyone who has ever meditated knows, the process of meditation is more commonly an exercise in
trying
to meditate. That is, trying to gently pry the mind away from the dozens of thoughts that demand its attention and direct it back to the breath, the chant, or the flame.

The spiritual teacher and modern mystic Osho observed that the Westerners who came to his ashram in India in the 1970s to learn meditation could not begin by just sitting. Their minds were too busy. Trying to sit in meditation made them frustrated, depressed, and kind of crazy. So Osho decided to use that craziness of the mind in preparation for meditation. He created active meditations (although called meditations, they were really
preparations
for meditation) that allowed the natural crazy ego busyness of the mind to speak and scream and worry and natter away, until finally the body and mind could come to a place of relaxation and energized awareness. This relaxed, energized awareness is precisely the state we would like to be in when we want to enjoy conscious sex.

I have created two moving meditations inspired by Osho’s meditations—the Exhilaration Meditation and the Cathartic Meditation. Both of these meditations are very active. If a total stranger walked in on you while you were doing them, you would appear, if not crazy, then at least very silly. This is a great gift and a wonderful feeling.

The Power of Silliness

Some of my favorite memories of early childhood are of the spells of uncontrollable, screaming giggles that left me rolling on the ground and gasping for breath. Invariably, these gigglegasms were brought on by silliness—either mine or someone else’s. Silliness had power when we were children. Not only could it make us feel terrific, it was often contagious and had the potential to reduce even the most dour of adults to occasional spells of ridiculousness themselves. It was divine. Then came junior high and the “No Silliness” rule. Silliness is cute in little kids, but in hormone-stoked adolescents, it apparently takes on a dangerous edge. Adults who once cooed, “Isn’t that cute” were now screaming, “That’s enough. Sit down, shut up, and stop behaving like an idiot.” Stifling as that was, the adult-generated “No Silliness” rule paled in importance to the peer-generated “No Silliness” rule, which was: “Thou shalt never, ever, under any circumstances, do anything that might possibly make you look like a jerk,
especially
in front of a potential mate.”

This rule remains important in junior high school to this day. It has such authority and control that it has transcended junior high and clawed its way to power in our high schools, colleges, and adult lives. We will do almost anything to avoid looking silly or ridiculous. And that’s not only tragic, it’s well, silly. Silliness still has the same power it did when we were kids. It can free us from our illusions of control and self-importance. It expands our minds, our spirituality, and our sex.

It is time to take back our power. It is time not only to allow ourselves to be silly, but also to embrace our silliness, worship it, and infect as many others with it as we can. The Exhilaration Meditation and Cathartic Meditation (as well as many of the exercises in the rest of this book) have huge silliness potential. They may make you feel silly or look silly. This is not a problem; it is a terrific gift. Feeling shy about trying a silly exercise? Try doing it like this: just close your eyes until the feelings produced by your silliness are more enjoyable than your embarrassment. Then open your eyes and see how delightful silliness looks on your partner. It looks just as good on you.

Witnessing

When you do these extended, active meditations, your mind will often explode with thoughts (not the least of which may be,
When will this damn meditation be over?
). That’s okay. You cannot shut off your mind. To notice just how busy and stubborn your mind can be, try practicing the technique of witnessing.

When you witness your thoughts, you notice them, but you do not engage them. It’s like lying on your back in a meadow on a breezy day and watching the clouds float by. You just notice that there
are
clouds (your thoughts) and what they look like. You don’t jump on them and let them take you away. For example, you might find yourself thinking about work. Instead of allowing your mind to spend twenty minutes worrying about what might happen at the office next week, you simply think,
Oh look, another fearful thought about losing my job
. Or you might notice,
Oops, I almost got swept away with that sexual fantasy about Tom
. When we witness, we do not search for the answer to our relationship with Tom. We do not judge our relationship with Tom. We simply observe that we are having a sexual fantasy about Tom. Witnessing is great practice for training the mind to focus at will.

Witnessing can also be useful for creating distance between yourself and your feelings. When I am extremely sad, angry, or fearful, I try to remember that I am not my emotions. I am me and I am safe in the situation no matter how painful it might be. (I love Louise L. Hay, the metaphysical teacher and author. She once taught me, “Whenever you can say ‘I am safe,’ you are!”) Witnessing helps me remember that my thoughts are fueling my emotions. When I can let my painful thoughts glide by without getting sucked into them, I can calm down and get some clarity on the situation. Then I may still choose to continue to cry or scream or run; but I have made the
conscious choice
to do these things, and that feels altogether lighter, easier, and safer.
I
am doing the feeling; the feeling is no longer doing me.

Conscious choices that produce desirable results—that’s Tantra. When we make the conscious choice to focus our attention on our breath, our movement, our speaking, our touch, our feelings, and our lover’s eyes, we have engaged our minds to help us connect, relax, and let go.

The Exhilaration and Cathartic Meditations

Both of these meditations can provide a powerful attitude adjustment in as little as twenty minutes, although I think you will find that the longer, fifty- to fifty-five-minute are versions even more effective. I suggest you begin with the twenty-minute versions and work your way up to the longer versions, if you feel so inclined.

The Exhilaration Meditation has three segments. The Cathartic Meditation has five. Doing these meditations to music makes them much more fun and focused; plus you don’t have to keep track of the time—the change in music signals the next part. Read over the meditations in advance. Once you know the nature of each part of the mediations, you can make your own soundtrack. I have made several versions of varying lengths. You can also use a timer.

Exhilaration Meditation

Wear comfortable, loose clothing, or no clothes at all. Although you can do the meditation with eyes open or closed, I recommend closing your eyes. If you live in a small space and fear that you’ll crash into things, simply plant your feet and shake or dance in place.

Part one
(five to fifteen minutes)
. Shake. Begin by making yourself shake. Shake your arms, hands, belly, thighs, legs, and face. Soon you will find that the shaking happens on its own—the shaking shakes you.

Add gibberish. As you continue shaking, make sounds. Start with one repeated syllable, such as
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
or
yak, yak, yak, yak, yak
. Let the syllables change and multiply until it seems you are speaking a make-believe language. Let the gibberish be fun. Enjoy the feeling of vibrating on the inside and on the outside at the same time.

Part two
(
five to fifteen minutes
). Dance. Dance any way you feel like. Move from your core. You are not at a club—do not be concerned about the way you look.

Add whirling. After you have been dancing for a while (and only if you have not eaten in the past couple of hours) whirl to your left or your right. Keep your eyes open slightly,
but let them be unfocused. Start slowly, then speed up. When you begin to feel dizzy, slow down and whirl in the opposite direction, or close your eyes and return to dancing. A little whirling produces a big effect. Whirl sparingly!