Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (2 page)

USING SEX MAGIC TO RELAX AND RELIEVE STRESS

USING SEX MAGIC TO RELIEVE COLDS AND SINUS PAIN

USING SEX MAGIC TO RELIEVE PAIN AND FEAR

USING SEX MAGIC TO FACILITATE CHILDBIRTH

USING SEX MAGIC TO ALLEVIATE BACK PAIN

USING SEX MAGIC TO HEAL SEXUAL WOUNDS

SEX MAGIC AND COMPULSIVE SEX

SEX MAGIC IN THE WORKPLACE

SEX MAGIC FOR WORLD PEACE, PART 1

SEX MAGIC FOR WORLD PEACE, PART 2

SEX AND DEATH

References

Resources

About the Author

Acknowledgments

This book was first imagined several years ago in my warm and wild sex and spirituality workshops in Australia. It has taken the love and support of many people to take
Urban Tantra
off the massage table and put it on the page.

To my partner in love, art, and life, Kate Bornstein: Thank you for your unwavering belief in me and in the importance of this book. Thank you for the inspiration and encouragement to go far beyond the scope of my original idea. Thank you for reading every chapter of this book over and over again. Thank you for loving me.

To Chester Mainard: Thank you for giving me a language for bodies and pleasure. You are the finest teacher I have ever met, and teaching in partnership with you was one of the greatest thrills of my life. I have tried to capture the spirit of your teachings in
Urban Tantra
. I will love you forever.

To Louise L. Hay: Thank you for your unconditional love, for your continuing delight in my more extreme diversions, and for always being there when I need a good cry, a good laugh, or a good zing. Thank you especially for the intensity of your support during the final stages of this book.

Thanks to my sister-of-the heart, Annie Sprinkle, who held my hand as I dove into the deep end of sex and has been my dearest friend ever since. Thanks also to the other ladies of Club 90: Veronica Hart, Gloria Leonard, Candida Royalle, and Veronica Vera, who have encouraged me every step of the way. Special thanks to Linda Montano, who has provided me with spiritual guidance and art/life counseling for so many years.

I have learned so much from my friends and colleagues: Lily Burana, Kutira Decosterd, Betty Dodson, Raelyn Gallina, Lynda Gayle, Jwala, Robert Lawrence, Christiane Northrup, Carol Queen, Pat Sinatra, and especially Joseph Kramer. I am eternally grateful not only for what you have taught me, but also for allowing me to fold bits of your brilliance into this book.

It is much easier to explore sex in a country founded by convicts than one founded by puritans. My deepest thanks to my Australian national workshop coordinator and best mate, Hayley Caspers. Thanks to my brave and wise regional presenters, Margie Fischer, Sue Marley, Kirien Withers, Di Alexander, Alka, and Joanne Baker. The success of my workshops was in large part due to the physical, emotional, and psychic support of Catherine Carter, Steve Cairnduff, Heather Croall, Cyndi Darnell, Lianna
Gailand, Diana Haigh, Laura-Doe Harris, Debra Kaplan, Peter Masters, Jenny Navaro, Alison Partridge, Justine Watson, and norrie m
y welby, among others.

Thank you to my literary agent, Malaga Baldi, for your total devotion to and belief in this book. With your help, it has evolved into everything I imagined, and more.

Huge hugs of enthusiastic ecstasy to Colleen Coover, who created the perfect illustrations for
Urban Tantra
.

Gobs of gratitude to Celestial Arts, who helped heal the wounds of a past publishing nightmare with their respect, enthusiasm, and love, and particularly to my editor, Brie Mazurek. Brie, you are a star. Thanks also to Mark Rhysberger and Felice Newman for editorial help on an earlier version of the manuscript.

It’s true—there are no people like show people. Thanks to James M. Nederlander, Herschel Waxman, and Jim Boese of the Nederlander Organization, and to the crew and staff of the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, who not only tolerated my frequent author’s angst, but supported me with good humor and good cheer throughout the process. Most especially, my deepest thanks and love to Marilyn S. Miller, who covered countless performances for me so I could write. Bravo, all.

I am very grateful to Tristan Taormino for her ongoing support of my work as well as for her part in the creation of Dark Odyssey, a biannual sexual/spiritual retreat, where I have been inspired by so many erotic pioneers. Thanks especially to Anton, Susan Benner, Blair, Sir C, Colten Tognazzini, femcar, Bridgett Harrington, kate and David, Lolita, Major, and puppy for their wisdom and friendship. Extra special thanks to Tantric authors and teachers Mark Michaels and Patricia Johnson for their inspiration and camaraderie.

My gratitude to Mary Wallach and Rod DeJong, who cared for my emotional and physical bodies while I wrote, and to Osho, who continues to care for my soul.

Thanks to family members and friends: Matt Ainsworth, Lynn Birks and Judith Wit, Frances, Gizmo, Goose, Chele Graham, P. Kitty, Sara Miriam, Mollyanna, Patricia C. Lee, Patricia Neilson, Daniel Peralta, Beverly Petty, Kaylynn Raschke and Alexis Hurkman, and Ron Tillinghast, who gave me the space and opportunity to hide, scream, imagine, rage, howl, and giggle throughout the writing process.

To all the participants of my workshops for the past many years and to everyone at a play party, ritual, or erotic retreat who has ever blown me away with their honesty, passion, wisdom, courage, and creativity, thank you. You have inspired me and kept me on my path. This book is not only for you, it’s also partially by you.

Foreword
BY ANNIE SPRINKLE, PhD

Barbara Carrellas asked me to write the foreword to her book, she said, because “we walked so much of this path together.” This is true. We traveled thousands of miles, hand in hand (and hand elsewhere too), in search of the Holy Grail that was to become
Urban Tantra
. We followed our muses and used our sexualities to guide us toward wisdom and enlightenment.

Our adventure began in New York City in the mid-1980s, before
Sex in the City
, before Disney took over the delightfully sleazy Times Square, before there were Tantra workshops in every major city. Barbara was a mild-mannered Broadway theater manager, and I was an excruciatingly shy, insecure teenager who had faced her fears of men and sex and became Annie Sprinkle, proud prostitute and pioneering porn-star performance artist.

We met at a large support group called the New York Healing Circle during the “sex=death” years, when AIDS was out of control. Barbara was a recovering Catholic who was horribly squeamish about religion. I had been raised Unitarian/atheist, and I struggled with suddenly becoming interested in God/dess and spirituality. It took the deaths of our close friends and lovers to put us on what was to become a life-enhancing spiritual path.

Barbara and I hit it off immediately. We had a brief sexual relationship, which quickly evolved into a deep friendship. Barbara was already more sexually experienced and sex-positive than most folks. She taught me about my G-spot (thanks, Barb). But she was also inexperienced in some ways, and I thought she would just dip her toe into the “sex community” waters and then go back to a more straight-and-narrow path.

But instead, she got out there and started to learn everything she could about sexuality, gathering experience through excess. Together, we went to orgies, BDSM clubs, Times Square peep show palaces, and transsexual and hermaphrodite parties and tried it all with lots of people. Barbara even appeared in some innovative arty sex films, including two that I directed, and several HBO
Real Sex
segments. Barbara did it
all
, with class and great integrity.

At some point we started taking Tantra workshops from the small handful of Tantra teachers around back then. Originally, we were drawn to Tantra because it seemed
to embrace everything: sexuality, passion, BDSM, fetish, piercing, sacred prostitutes, fisting—you name it. But most of the workshops seemed a little bit silly and too woo-woo for our tastes. We didn’t jive with the all-white, middle-aged, strictly heterosexual couple-oriented, New Age Tantra thing, and we ran into some trouble, as we were always the only queer, edgy, freaky folks there. We were judged by what we were interested in and told, “That’s not Tantra.”

But the techniques we learned and the intentionality of Tantra resonated with us. When we learned about ecstasy breathing, we had some absolutely electrifying experiences with full-body energy orgasms, which were like chakra enemas, shamanic journeys, and religious experiences all rolled into one. Learning these relatively simple, ancient techniques changed the way we viewed and experienced sex and changed our lives forever.

We were so enthusiastic about what we were experiencing that we naturally wanted to share it with our friends and communities. We hit the road and started facilitating sexuality workshops together, learning more through teaching. Our “Sacred Sex,” “Fun with Breath and Energy Orgasms,” “Erotic Massage,” and “Sluts and Goddesses” workshops were completely Tantric in spirit but quite different from traditional Tantric workshops. They included not just chanting, energy work, and meditation, but also sometimes BDSM, gender play, corsets, fetishes, whore/slut/witch archetypes, and more. Many of the wonderful people who came gave us heartfelt, occasionally teary, feedback about how they were liberated or how their lives were changed for the better because of something they learned. Many workshop participants inadvertently gave us some new key piece of information or new experience, deepening our own personal exploration.

Tantra provided a way for us to continue on a sexual journey and get our spiritual needs met, while giving us ways to cope with all the death and disease around us. Barbara and I felt like we were reclaiming sex from a messed-up, sexually dysfunctional, judgmental, and ignorant culture. It became our public service, our labor of love, our mission in life, to use sexuality to generate healing, transcendental, enriching experiences.

After many years of learning, working, and traveling together, we came to a fork in the road. I moved out of Manhattan to California. We both started teaching new workshops on our own. Barbara taught in Australia, often with the extremely gifted and enlightened teacher Chester Mainard. Then, later, she taught with Kate Bornstein, the visionary author, performer, activist, and “transgender outlaw.” Being with Kate, Barbara learned a whole lot more about what it was to be truly queer, to not fit in, to be differently gendered. They taught workshops that reached a new, even more
diverse audience looking for transformative experiences that fit their personalities and lifestyles.

Barbara continued the journey, discovering and creating new things at every turn, gathering what would become her own unique creation: a fresh, new, inclusive, smart, hip, bold, and very fun version of Tantra. I’m absolutely thrilled that people everywhere will get to revel in Barbara’s wit and wisdom through this book’s pages.
Urban Tantra
gives me hope that the world will become a more sexually satisfied, ecstatic, enlightened, and inclusive place.

Fellow traveler, as you now begin your journey, know that you are welcome here, whether you and/or your partner are inexperienced or experienced, young or old, differently abled or differently bodied, pierced or tattooed, interested in kink or not. It doesn’t matter where you live, who you are, or what you do. You belong here. Barbara thinks you are perfect and sexy as you are, and she will teach you delightful, yummy new things to help you live your life ever more deliciously and meaningfully.

Now, I will leave you with this Urban Tantra mantra:

Om shanti panty
Ha hari hairy
Tit pat tooshie
Just say ya ya yaaaaaa
Taxi sat samosa
Va va voom voom
Jaya juicy ju ju
Thy cum be yum
Oh ma ma me-ah
Nookie nir-va-na
Yum yum yum
Om. Welcome home. Om
.