Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (30 page)

A last tip: there is a powerful Tantric principle: “three strokes for thirty.” It is better to make three delicious strokes precisely at the Resilient Edge of Resistance than thirty strokes that are sloppy and unconscious.

Remember: Three strokes for thirty
.

Keep in mind all you have learned about the totality of possibility of orgasm. Your Tantric fucking will likely lead to a physical orgasm or some other orgasmic climax. However, orgasm is not the goal. In Tantra, there is no goal. In this realm, sexual positions and techniques become important not for their ability to produce orgasm, but for their ability to produce prolonged, ever increasing levels of physical delight and consciousness-altering bliss. The climax of this may be huge and thunderingly loud. Or it may be a prolonged ecstatic state accompanied by the sensation of champagne bubbles dancing under your skin. Go totally into the experience of whatever happens. Make no judgments, make no comparisons, and delete your need to understand.

The afterglow is a magical, mystical, fulfilling part of sex that can last longer and be more varied than you might imagine. During the afterglow, some people see colors or visions; some hear music or a universal hum; others feel waves of emotion. Some people feel a deeper intimacy with their partner; others may feel an intimacy with all of creation.

You’ll want to stay connected to your partner, but you’ll also want to be free to travel on your own postorgasmic journey. These postures will help you make the most of this precious time.

Toes to Third Eye

Lie on your right side. Place your partner’s toes at your third eye and hold their feet with your hands. Your partner places your feet on their third eye. Visualize a circuit of energy moving from your third eye to your partner’s feet, up their body, through their third eye, into your feet, and up your body. If you like, you can lightly stroke your partner’s body with your upper hand.

Toes to Third Eye

This is my favorite position for resting after orgasm. I usually do the visualization for the first few breaths, and then I let it go and just meditate. I also love a few minutes of the light stroking. It keeps me aware of my body, allowing me to meditate without drifting off to sleep.

Heart-Foot-Hand

Lie on your backs next to each other with your heads in opposite directions. Your partner should be on your right side. Bend your right leg and place your right foot on your partner’s heart chakra. Stretch your left leg out along your partner’s right side. Place your right hand on your partner’s left foot. Your genitals will be touching. Breathe together. Feel the heart/genital energy circuit and allow your energies to melt and circulate.

Heart-Foot-Hand

Don’t worry if your foot doesn’t reach exactly to your partner’s heart. It can rest anyplace on the body that feels comfortable. You can even rest it just off your partner’s body to the right. The most important thing is that your genitals touch.

This is a peaceful resting posture that you can use at the end of your ritual or between periods of intense sexual activity.

Grounding Hug

The same grounding hug you used in your preparation with your partner is an ideal closing posture as well. It is also a particularly effective technique to use as part of the aftercare in a BDSM scene. It helps bring the submissive partner back to earth without jarring them out of the altered consciousness they’ve been enjoying. Once again, here’s how to give a grounding hug:

Stand with your feet hip-distance apart and your knees slightly bent. Breathe using the Bottom Breath (see
chapter 4
), bringing your awareness to your root chakra. Imagine that your legs are huge, strong tree roots anchoring you deep into the earth.

Embrace your partner. Place one hand on their lower back, and the other on their upper or middle back. Breathe your belly into their belly. As you hug, imagine that you are grounding your partner in the earth, rooting them the way you are rooted.

Continue breathing together. Feel your partner let go and relax, their center of gravity moving down into their pelvis and legs.

The afterglow does not end when you sit or stand up from your last position. The afterglow from some Tantric rituals can be felt for days. Treat yourself gently. Ease back into your normal life. Pay particular attention to any feelings or inspirations that may arise in the next couple of days. These rituals are powerful energetic events and can provide you with important insights and direction.

You can create an infinite number of rituals using not only these positions and their variations but also a variety of other erotic activities. As you read the following chapters, you’ll see the same structure—set the stage, chill out and warm up, come together, rock and roll, and afterglow—applied to other rituals. One of the most remarkable, consciousness-altering uses of this structure is in an erotic massage ritual I call the Erotic Awakening Massage.

Erotic massage can be a Tantric ritual in itself, and elements of erotic massage can be incorporated into the come together, rock and roll, and afterglow portions of a ritual. Massage is more than foreplay. In fact, I don’t even like the word “foreplay.” It implies that the only “real” sex is fucking and that everything else is just a warmup to intercourse. In Tantra, virtually everything can be sex. Tantric sex is like a twenty-page menu you’d find in a great diner—with all the dishes available as a main course at any time of day. On the Tantric menu, massage—especially erotic massage—is as emotionally, physically, and spiritually satisfying as any great main course fuck.

Choosing the name “Erotic Awakening” for the erotic massage ritual I am about to show you was easy and obvious. In my first experience of receiving this massage, I felt as though I’d awakened from a long sleep. I had found a way to use my sexuality to awaken me to possibilities I had never dreamed of. My subsequent experiences in receiving and giving this massage changed my work; my direction in life; and the way I looked at sex, death, relationships, intimacy, and touch. Not bad for a single technique.

Here are a few of the most meaningful principles I learned:

I learned how to give to someone else without exhausting myself or getting bored. In life as well as sex, I am an overachiever. I would often expend so much energy at the beginning of a lovemaking session that I’d wear myself out just as my partner was warming up. Erotic Awakening Massage provided me with an endless variety of erotic delights to give my partner, which energized me as well. I learned that my partner’s body is a wonderfully expressive musical instrument that plays an infinite variety of
rhythms. How could I be bored? The effects of this lesson went way beyond sex in that I no longer give so much to other people that I have nothing left for myself.

I learned how to receive while staying conscious and present. It used to be that my mind frequently wandered away during sex. All too often, I would let petty, everyday worries take over my mind; or I would tune out completely and just let someone do me. In order to practice the conscious breath technique that is so much a part of the Erotic Awakening Massage, I had to stay focused on the present.

I learned to ask for what I wanted without feeling guilty. I used to assume that asking for what I liked (especially if I asked for what I really liked) would make my partner unhappy or mad or grossed out. I was afraid that out of love and a desire to please me, my partner would do things they hated. I knew how unhappy and sore and stiff and bored I could get doing something I didn’t really want to do, and I sure didn’t want to do that to someone I loved! The kind of asking I learned to do during Erotic Awakening Massage gave my partner an opportunity to give me exactly what I like, which in turn made them happy. It also gave them the opportunity to say, “Gee, I’d love to, but my bad back won’t let me give you that. What else might you like?” This way I didn’t have to feel responsible for their happiness and comfort. Everyone ended up feeling empowered.

I learned how to surrender. Before I practiced Erotic Awakening Massage, I thought of surrender as something I had to do when someone had won some sort of victory over me. On a spiritual level, I thought surrender meant letting go of all control to a higher power—an abstract goal that I had little hope of attaining. On any level, surrender seemed frightening. On the massage table, I learned that surrender is simply a state of vulnerability. I learned not only that vulnerability is safe but also that a vulnerable space is more conducive to maximum growth and pleasure than a well-protected one.

I learned how to give and receive feedback without feeling guilty or taking it personally. When asked to do a simple thing like stroke my lover harder and faster, I used to think “Oh god, I should have known that—I’m such a lousy lover.” Nowadays I think, “Oh, I’d love to. Thank you for asking. Is there anything else you’d like?” Talk about a major relief!

I learned that I was capable of sustained heights of pleasure I never knew were possible. We all have our limits. By that I don’t just mean how much pain or pleasure we can take. I mean limits on how much we can imagine. If I try to imagine the temperature in the center of the sun or the distance to the farthest star or—in sex—the greatest amount of pleasure I can receive and for how long I can receive it, I will only be able to imagine a portion of what is possible. Anything beyond that point will
simply be an abstract mental concept—and a limiting concept at that. Erotic Awakening Massage expanded my awareness of what was possible; it prepared my body to accept levels and stages and lengths of pleasure I could not have imagined.