Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (17 page)

Kegels are your own personal erotic energy pumps. A Kegel is a little squeeze of the pubococcygeus (or PC) muscle. To find that muscle, imagine that you are in the bathroom peeing and someone unexpectedly opens the bathroom door. What do you do? You stop peeing. Feel that? That little muscle that stopped the flow of urine? Squeezing that muscle constitutes a Kegel—named for Dr. Arnold Kegel (pronounced
kay
-gull), a gynecologist who developed a program for women who were experiencing incontinence after giving birth. But in reality, these little squeezes have been known by many names as integral parts of sexual fitness and pleasure for centuries. And they are just as important for men as they are for women. But let’s stop talking and let’s start Kegeling.

1. Gently squeeze the PC muscle for a couple of seconds. Release.
   
2. Again, squeeze, and release.
   
3. Repeat for a total of eight Kegels.
   
4. Do eight Kegels as fast as you can.
   

Remember to be gentle. If you’re doubling over with each squeeze, you’re working too hard!

Don’t worry if it feels as if you are also tightening your anus when you Kegel. This isn’t a problem. But as you strengthen your PC muscle, you’ll probably notice that you can isolate it more and more from the surrounding muscles of the pelvic floor.

The PC muscle is a critically important sexual muscle. For men, the squeezing and tightening in Kegels will help achieve stronger erections. For women, toning your sexual muscle will enhance your vagina’s sensitivity and responsiveness, as well as your ability to shoot your sexual energy out all over your body. If you enjoy vaginal penetration with a penis, you will eventually be able to keep a penis erect inside you just by squeezing your PC muscle.

Try to do one hundred to two hundred Kegels per day. You can do Kegels anywhere: standing in line at the bank, waiting for the traffic light to change, walking down the street, or working out at the gym. And they will certainly keep you from nodding off in those boring business meetings. No one but you will know you are doing your erotic exercises.

The Wave

You can add Kegels to the next exercise, called the Wave. I learned the Wave from my friend Kutira. Kutira is a Tantra teacher who lives in Hawaii and swims with dolphins. This exercise is an easy, erotic, and effective way to move sexual energy around. Try it.

1. Stand with your feet hip-distance apart.
   
2. Bend your knees slightly.
   
3. Imagine you are an ocean wave, or a dolphin.
   
4. Swing your pelvis forward and let the rest of your torso follow. As your breastbone moves forward and up, your back arches. This is the top of the wave.
   
5. Round your shoulders and your back; your pelvis swings back.
   
6. Swing your pelvis forward and let the rest of your torso follow.
   
7. Repeat.
   

Erotically urgent:
Did you remember to breathe during these sexercises?

Put It All Together

Over and over again in Tantra, we will be using a combination of breath, Kegels, movement, awareness, and imagination to build and circulate sexual energy. Let’s use the Wave to practice combining these elements. It’s easier than you might think.

1. Put on some music you’d like to move to. Make sure it’s something that makes you want to move your hips.
   
2. Stand with your feet hip-distance apart. Bend your knees slightly.
   
3. Breathe. Let your mouth fall open slightly. Relax your jaw and face, open the back of your throat. Inhale through your mouth, gently but fully. Exhale with a gentle little sigh … ahh.
   
4. Begin the Wave. Start gently, and let it build.
   
5. Add a Kegel to each wave. You decide where it goes in your wave. There is no right or wrong place to add it.
   
6. Put your awareness in your genitals. Each time you Kegel, imagine sexual energy being released from your genitals and carried up the front of your body by your breath. At the top of your wave, your sexual energy moves over the top of your head and down your back to your genitals again. Keep yourself wrapped in a cocoon of sexual energy. (Some people feel the wave of energy move up their back and down their front. That’s perfectly fine.)
   
7. Keep breathing, keep the Wave going, and keep the Kegels going. Let it be sexy.
   
8. Now, instead of “doing” the breath, the Wave, and the Kegels, let them all “do” you. Let the energy you’ve built move you in any way it wants to. Just go with it and have fun!
   

Now that you know the basic ways in which sexual energy moves in the body, let’s put this knowledge to good use. Let’s have some orgasms.

I was listening to my local National Public Radio station; an interview was in progress with a sociologist who had written a new book. The big problem in society today, she claimed, was that we had gotten sex all wrong. Sex was not about pleasure, it was about reproduction and producing children. What was the biggest single mistake we had all made? We were all putting too much emphasis on orgasm.

Too much emphasis on orgasm? Orgasm a mistake? Orgasm a problem? In all my years of sex, I have heard orgasm called a lot of things—but a
problem?
Lack of orgasm—I have certainly heard that described as a problem, but could there really be such a thing as too much orgasm? Not at all! In fact, I think we should spend a whole lot more time focused on orgasm. Why? Because orgasm is a profoundly important physical and spiritual experience. Orgasm is the body’s best natural therapy for relieving stress and tension; it is a naturally revitalizing and healing experience. Orgasm is our own personal little taste of the Great Cosmic Orgasm that connects us to All That Is. How could this possibly be a problem?

As a society, we’ve barely begun to explore orgasm, much less to understand how spiritually profound orgasm can be, and how many magical ways we can use it for our healing and happiness, and the health and happiness of others.

What Is Orgasm?

Which of the following do you think is the most accurate definition of orgasm?

1. A sexual climax attained by stimulation of the genitals and other erogenous zones
   
2. A release of accumulated tension and energy
   
3. A release of tension and expansion of energy flowing through the body/mind and connecting us to spirit
   

Okay, it’s a trick question—the correct answer is all of the above. But which kind of orgasm would you like to experience on a regular basis?

The purely physical, most limited definition of orgasm—answer A—has been our social and medical model. Orgasm is seldom observed outside the realm of sex and sexual activity, and then generally only within the realm of partner sex. Ninety-nine percent of the mass-market magazine articles on how to have a better orgasm are working within this definition. The most commonly experienced orgasm could be called the Mount St. Helen’s orgasm. It’s got a quick buildup and a rapid release, followed by a cooling down. The physical sensation is centered in your genitals and lower abdomen. It feels really good, though it’s generally quite brief. After this kind of orgasm, you feel relaxed and possibly also sleepy. In all fairness to the misled sociologist on NPR, this may be the only kind of orgasm she has ever experienced. And that would be a problem.

Definition B, the kind of orgasm we experience when we suddenly release stored-up tension and energy, is in many ways similar to the Mount St. Helen’s orgasm, with a major exception—it does not feel as localized. It is still a genital orgasm, but afterward you feel as though the tension has been drained out of your arms and legs. Your hands and fingers may tingle. Your chest feels more open, and you can breathe more easily and deeply. The relaxation is profound and satisfying. You may drop off to sleep. Better than orgasm type A—but wait, there’s more!

The kind of orgasm that combines the release of tension and energy with the added plus of a spiritual connection to All That Is may (or may not) begin with the genitals. The orgasmic energy starts in the very center of your being, then flows out to the limits of your body and beyond. You may feel boundaryless, as if you can’t tell where you end and everything else begins. You may feel as if you are in a sort of alternate universe where everything is beautiful, quiet, and peacefully connected. Your orgasm is happening everywhere and nowhere, and it may go on and on. Afterward you may feel energized, or you may feel peaceful and blissed-out. Anyone who has ever experienced this kind of orgasm would never label it problematic!

This kind of orgasm is not limited to sex, and it’s certainly not limited to the genitals. When we expand our definition of orgasm, we are presented with a vast number of orgasmic experiences. Think about those unstoppable laugh attacks that take you over in waves of rolling silliness. They usually start with one funny line or sight gag, and roll on and on until everything and anything is funny and you’re laughing so hard that your diaphragm is spasming and you’re gasping for breath. It feels like you’ve lost all control of your laughter—the laugh is laughing you. How do you feel after one of these gigglegasms?

Now, remember a time you got angry—when you just lost it—a time when you let all your rage fly. The more anger you released, the more poured out. You screamed and swore and pounded and yelled so loudly that your throat was sore afterward. Remember how you felt after that angergasm?

How about tears? Can you remember a time when you started crying and couldn’t stop? You sobbed so deeply that you thought you were going to cry your guts out. Do you remember how that crygasm felt? Was it healing? Good, even? Was it similar to how you felt after a gigglegasm? An angergasm?

Gigglegasms, angergasms, and crygasms all leave us feeling cleansed and energized. Emotiongasms are “total” experiences; you allow your body to express its emotions without trying to stifle them. This is how we behaved when we were young children, before we were socialized to behave more “acceptably.” Emotiongasms are a liberation from tight bondage. In fact, as we try to “suck it up” and “tough our way through” life, our bodies produce bands of stress that leave us wrapped as tightly as a rubber band. In densely populated urban and suburban culture, we are especially prone to stuffing our emotions. There just isn’t enough physical and psychic space to allow big, intense emotions without trespassing all over the psychic space of others.