Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (15 page)

In Tantra, sex is not an action. It is not one more thing humans
do
. Sex is an energy that exists on its own. All you have to do is notice it and it will start to move. But what exactly is sexual energy? Is it the feeling you get in your genitals when you’re aroused? Is it the sexual desire you feel for someone? Is it the warm, loving feeling you have for your beloved?

The first step toward getting in touch with your sexual energy is to actually feel that energy. Sexual energy is an actual physical energy, not just a desire, a thought, or an emotion. Let me show you what I mean. Try this: rub your hands together vigorously for about ten seconds. Stop and hold your hands together so that the palms are not quite touching. Feel that hot little force field running between your two hands? You’ve just created energy in your hands using movement—in this case, you used friction.

Now rub your hands together again. Feel the energy between your hands. Put your hands on your heart and send the energy into your heart. Breathe. Does your heart feel warmer? Are you more aware of it?

You have just used intention and movement to create energy in one part of your body and send it to another. This is the first step to making your whole body a sex organ.

But was the energy you just created
sexual
energy? Sure. There isn’t any difference between sexual energy and creative energy, or between sexual energy and going-to-work energy, or between sexual energy and taking-out-the-trash energy. It’s all life-force energy.

There is nothing mysterious about moving sexual energy around the body—yours or someone else’s. Anybody can do it. You don’t have to be psychic; you don’t need to attend any channeling workshops. You did it just now with movement, touch, and
thought. Tantra is filled with numerous ingenious ways to build, circulate, and use sexual energy. Let’s explore some of them now.

Kundalini, Chi, and the Inner Flute

In yogic—including Tantric—tradition, our sexual energy is called Kundalini. It is depicted as a coiled snake resting at the base of our spine. With conscious practice, we awaken this snake of energy sleeping at the first chakra, and it spirals up along the spine, flowing through two channels (called the Ida and Pingala), passing through each chakra, and finally activating the pineal gland at the seventh chakra. When the pineal gland is activated, a major change in consciousness is experienced. Yogis see Kundalini as the energy of human evolution and enlightenment and warn that if Kundalini is awakened too soon or too abruptly, it can cause serious difficulties. That’s how powerful a force it is.

In the Chinese Taoist tradition, life-force energy is called
chi
. Sexual energy is called
ching-chi
. Chi travels in a big electrical circuit called the Microcosmic Orbit. The Microcosmic Orbit is made up of two channels: the back (Governor Channel) and the front (Functional Channel). The back channel begins at the perineum and runs up the back of the body. It follows the spine and neck up over the top of the head and down the forehead, ending at the indentation between the bottom of your nose and your upper lip. The front channel runs from the tip of your tongue, down your throat, and along the midline of the front of your body to your perineum. In this tradition, letting energy flow down the front channel is equally important as raising it up the spine. This flow of energy acknowledges the peculiar nature of being human: we are both bodies rising toward spirit and spirits dropping into bodies.

Yet another Taoist-based tradition speaks of the Inner Flute, an energetic (nonphysical) tube that runs up through the core of the body connecting the major endocrine glands and the seven chakras. I like to picture the body as a bamboo flute—all the flesh, bones, and blood are part of the bamboo. The bamboo is hollow—inside is just empty space. Sexual energy runs up and down the body through this bamboo flute, as you’ll see for yourself when you use the Taoist-based breath and energy orgasm technique called the Clench and Hold (see
chapter 9
).

There are many other names for this energy of sex and life force. Each tradition has its own name and its own way of working with it. Many practices, across many cultures, are virtually indistinguishable. Differences in details make for subtle and fascinating variations on the themes. Here, we will work primarily with the terminology and traditions of Tantra and Tao. However, I encourage you to go beyond the exercises and suggestions in this book. Follow the lead of the energy you raise in your sexual explorations and create your own practices, traditions, and rituals.

“Seeing” Sexual Energy

Sexual energy is extraordinarily visible on the body. With a little practice, you’ll be able to read and interpret the signs and observe how it moves. For instance, earlier we were talking about moving energy up the chakras. Is there any way to see that energy move? Let’s say you are eagerly sucking and licking your partner’s clit. At the same time, you are using your hands to spread all that yummy sexual energy up to her breasts and down her arms. You’re curious about how and where that sexual energy is moving. Unless your partner is someone like me, who is fascinated by the physical
technology of sacred sex, it’s probably not appropriate to ask, “Honey, what chakra are we up to?” So how can you tell?

One way is to listen to the sounds she is making. Is the sound low pitched and sort of grunty/groany? If it is, the energy is concentrated in the lower chakras. If the sound is breathy, mid-pitched, and sounds like
ahh
, the sexual energy has moved up to the heart and throat chakras. If it is high pitched and sounds like
eee
, then the sexual energy is dancing around the third eye or crown chakra.

But sound isn’t the only way to tell where sexual energy is concentrated. As energy moves up the body, the body moves with it. When you first start to suck your lover’s clit, she may begin by bumping and grinding her hips. Then she may do little back bend—like motions, raising her solar plexus, or heart chakra, into the air. She may end up shaking her head or throwing it backward as the energy reaches her upper chakras. As you shift your intention and attention away from “doing” sex and more toward dancing to the energy of sex, you’ll become more and more aware of how sexual energy moves and travels throughout the body.

Dropping into the Body

This is a probably a good time to dispel a common misconception. It often sounds as if the goal in “higher” sex practices is to raise the energy out of the genitals upward into the higher chakras until we shoot our consciousness out the tops of our heads—which somehow sounds like a “higher” kind of sexual experience than one that happens in the genitals. This is exactly the kind of body-negative thinking that we would like to change.

We
do
want to bring sexual energy up and out into the entire body. But we do
not
bring sexual energy up into the higher chakras in order to take it away from the lower chakras. There is nothing “better” about the higher chakras. Nor are the chakras a stepladder leading sexual energy out of the body into some special, more spiritual realm. We do not want to shoot ourselves out of our bodies; rather, we want to drop into our bodies more deeply and completely.

For hundreds of years, organized religions have regarded the body as something we must overcome with strict spiritual practices. Even today, some New Age spiritual practices use meditation as an attempt to leave the body for a “higher state” of consciousness.

The intention is not to leave the body
,
but to drop into the body more deeply and completely
.

We are at our healthiest when we are circulating energy both within ourselves and within our relationships. Energy is the basic building block of all human creativity and connection. Sexual energy flows through all our creative and social endeavors: work, sports, money, birth, death, friendships, and all family relationships, including parent/child. The connection we have to all other living beings through the erotic energy field is natural and healthy. When your sexual energy is flowing freely, you feel alive and connected. When it’s blocked, you feel dead and lifeless. Every movement is an effort. You may actually feel as though parts of yourself are missing. Connecting with someone else, perhaps even a simple phone conversation, is just too hard. Of course, that kind of lifelessness may be caused by a
lack
of energy, but it can just as likely be a product of some dense, tightly bound-up energy stuck somewhere in your body between your genitals and the top of your head.

Try this: Close your eyes (
after
you’ve finished reading this paragraph, naturally). Turn your attention inward. Notice which parts of your physical body you can feel. Can you feel your feet, legs, genitals, belly, spine, arms, hands, throat, head, eyes, and mouth? What parts aren’t there at all? Which are shadowy and vague?

This exercise may help you get some idea of where your energy might be stuck. Breath is a great tool to use to begin to get energy moving again. Breath is the source of the body’s oxygen. Oxygen helps each cell burn fuel at maximum efficiency, thereby producing more energy. The simple act of using your mind to direct your breath into the sleeping parts of your body will begin to wake them up.

But sometimes, breath alone just isn’t enough to shake loose a week’s worth of tension and bring you back to your cheerful, yummy self. I put together the following series of exercises to help me clear out old, stuck energy blocks and get my energy flowing again. Sometimes I do one or two of the exercises, sometimes the whole series. Sometimes I do each exercise only once, or maybe twice. Sometimes I’ll repeat an exercise over and over. Sometimes when I do these exercises I come to realize what in my body had become stuck, and why; most times I don’t need to know.

Doing these exercises will break up your energy blocks and improve your mood considerably.

Eye Circles

When your field of vision is wider and more relaxed, you can see more possibilities and opportunities for pleasure and growth. Eye circles help to relax your upper facial muscles and literally open up your eyes. (However, be careful not to force any of the following eye movements.)

1. Lie on your back with your eyes open, looking at the ceiling or sky. Breathe.
   
2. Moving only your eyes, not your head:
   

   a) Look to the right as far as you can.
   

   b) Look down toward your feet.
   

   c) Look to the left as far as you can.
   

   d) Look up and behind you as far as you can.
   

3. Notice how much you can see at each point.
   
4. Repeat, connecting the four points into a slow circle.
   
5. Repeat the circle.
   
6. Circle three times in the opposite direction.
   

Did your field of vision increase? Were you able to see more and further than when you started?

Jaw Massage

We all carry tension in our jaws. Many of us carry so much tension that we talk through clenched teeth or even grind our teeth. When our jaws are relaxed, all our creative expression flows more easily. Not only do we speak decisively and lovingly, we are also more able to express ourselves sexually.