Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (16 page)

1. Breathe.
   
2. Massage your jaw.
   
3. While massaging, make sounds. Any sounds. Be silly.
   
4. Massage the joint where your jaw joins your head.
   
5. Holding your jaw in your hands, wiggle it from side to side.
   
6. Place your fingers on your lips and cheeks, and massage your teeth and gums.
   

Head Rolls

Our necks are Like huge railroad switching stations. All the messages traveling from our brains to our bodies (and vice versa) pass through this narrow, busy station on their way to their destination. When our neck muscles tense up like steel bands, the energy passes through the neck slowly. It’s painful and difficult. When our neck muscles are relaxed, the energy flows smoothly and regularly. You feel better and you feel more.

1. Breathe.
   
2. Allow your head to fall to the right only as far as it wants to go. Do not force it. Let your breath and gravity guide you.
   
3. Roll your head around in a circle from the right, down to your chest and around to your left shoulder.
   
4. Let your head fall backward (gently), and then roll it back to the right.
   
5. Repeat.
   
6. Circle in the opposite direction.
   
7. Repeat until your neck feels longer and softer.
   

Busy Belly

The prevailing cultural preference for flat-as-a-board abdomens encourages people to walk around with tightly sucked-in bellies. Sucking in your belly cuts off sexual feelings in the pelvis and prevents sexual energy from rising up through your body. This exercise will help you free up your belly and allow your natural juiciness to flow.

1. Begin on your hands and knees.
   
2. As you inhale, fill your belly with your breath. Make your belly as big as you can. Your spine will arch slightly, but don’t force it. (If it hurts or you feel a lot of tension, you’re forcing it.) Keep your focus on making your belly big, not on arching your spine.
   
3. As you exhale, draw your belly up into your ribs and spine as far as you can. Your spine will bow slightly. Again, keep your focus on sucking in your belly—not on curving your spine.
   
4. Repeat as many times as feels good.
   

Bouncing Pelvis

Our tendency to suck in our bellies also creates a strain on our lower backs. The lower back is also the repository for the tension we create when we worry about money and security. This exercise loosens up the lower back and wakes up that powerful, sexy Kundalini snake at the base of your spine.

This exercise should be done on a well-carpeted floor or on an exercise mat.

1. Lie on your back, with your arms by your sides and your palms facing downward.
   
2. Bend your knees and bring your feet comfortably close to your buttocks.
   
3. Lift your hips off the ground and bounce your buttocks on the floor. Begin gently and intensify the bouncing as your buttocks, lower spine, and genitals relax. Take care not to hurt your lower spine!
   

Floating Pelvis

Alternate the Bouncing Pelvis with the Floating Pelvis.

1. After some bouncing, lift your hips off the ground and “float” them in a figure eight.
   
2. Alternate bouncing and floating as long as it feels good.
   

As you work with these exercises, you’ll probably find a favorite, which will likely be focused on the chakra or body part where you hold most of your tension. My favorite is the bouncing/floating combination, as I tend to store all my tension in my lower back. That pelvic combination really loosens me up. When time is tight (and when isn’t it?), a couple of minutes of bouncing and floating, and I’m good to go again. So, find the one or two of these exercises you can rely on, and use them whenever you want to feel more alive and connected.

As you begin to notice which exercise appeals to you most, also notice the corresponding chakra. Then find out more about that chakra. Start by taking another look at the discussion of that chakra in
chapter 3
. Research that chakra in other books or on the Internet (see the resources section at the end of the book for suggestions). See if you can find other ways to nourish that chakra. As we go along, you’ll find specific ways you can use sex and sexual energy to stimulate and nurture any of the chakras and their corresponding body parts that need special healing.

Let’s Dance

Now that you’ve loosened up the places in your body most likely to accumulate tension, let’s start running some sexual energy. Everyone has a personal metaphor for sex. Some think of it as a sport, others as play, and others as a meditation. I think of sex as a dance. Sometimes it’s a solo piece, sometimes it’s a pas de deux, and sometimes it’s a whole ballet. Bodies are meant to be in motion. In fact, bodies are always in motion, if only on the inside. Your beating heart, your breathing lungs, and your digestion all happen to an internal beat.

I learned an especially valuable lesson on this rhythm of life when I studied with jazz dancer and dance teacher Luigi (his only name, like Cher). At the height of his career as a dancer in 1940s Hollywood, Luigi was paralyzed in a near-fatal car crash. He described looking out from inside his silent, frozen body and knowing with complete certainty that if he didn’t keep moving, he would die. So, deep inside his body, he found something he could move, and he kept it moving. He moved more and more parts of his body like this until eventually he could move enough to begin doing dance exercises. These movement exercises not only brought him back to health, but to dance as well. Three years later, he was dancing in films with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor.

Every move Luigi taught his students came from what he had learned in his rehabilitation. During these jazz dance classes, I could feel each move I’d make start deep within my abdomen and extend out infinitely. It was a feeling of extraordinary and ecstatic power. Ever since then, I have tried to move using that model. Paradoxically, I also learned from Luigi how to practice total stillness. The secret? Keep moving in place. Try it. You cannot stand perfectly still if you tense up and try not to move. After a few brief moments you’ll start to sway. But if you relax, breathe, and keep moving inside, you’ll be perfectly still on the outside. Bodies need to be in motion—to stand perfectly still involves countless little movements to keep the balance that is stillness.

So what does all this have to do with sex? Simple: you need to move in order to circulate erotic energy throughout your body. Movement in any part of your body focuses and releases energy from that part. Then the energy can be spread to any other part. Which movements work best? Just as in jazz dance, it’s those that come from the hips and pelvis. Let’s start with simple hip circles.

Hip Circles

1. Stand with your feet hip-distance apart.
   
2. Swing your hips to the right as far as you can without putting strain on your lower back.
   
3. Now push your pelvis forward.
   
4. Swing your hips to the left.
   
5. Now push your buttocks as far back as you can. Remember, be kind to your back.
   
6. Connect those four points in a smooth circle.
   
7. Repeat a few times, and then circle in the opposite direction.
   

Figure Eights

Now let’s try some figure eights. Close your eyes, imagine yourself a belly dancer in some exotic temple, and let go.

1. Move your hips in a figure-eight motion. (Swing your hips back-right-front on the right side, then back-left-front on the left side.)
   
2. Remember that this isn’t an aerobics class—this is sex. Let it be sexy. This is a perfect time to add some Kegels.
   

Kegels