Tantric Sex: Making love last. Cassandra Lorius

meaningful.

       Part 1: Introducing Tantra

      ‘Bliss is my very nature I need not do anything nor strive for anything to secure it.’

       A Rishi’s perspective translated by Deepak Chopra

       How to use this book

      The first half of this book describes traditional Tantra as it has been practised by different groups in India over thousands of years. It looks at how Tantric teachings have been interpreted and how contemporary Tantra trainings in the West use some of these teachings. Contemporary trainings, such as the SkyDancing training I did, developed by Margo Anand in the US, are more properly neo-Tantra. They don’t expect us to become familiar with the whole body of esoteric teachings of Tantra, but selectively take some of the practices and blend them with psychotherapeutic body work approaches to fit our current needs. In this sense, they can be considered a preparation for Tantra proper.

      The book goes on to explore how the new forms of Tantra apply Tantric principles to contemporary life. I’ve quoted people who are on Tantra trainings to give you the flavour of what it means to real people, and how it influences the way they feel about themselves and their relationships. I’ve tried to weave a path between traditional Indian forms of Tantra, explaining some of the deep-rooted philosophy out of which these ideas and practices spring, and the ways in which Tantra can be applied to your life today.

      The second half of the book provides you with meditations and exercises in the art of sexuality, which can enrich your relationship, and harmonize the energies between you and your partner. Use the structures and exercises suggested here to inspire you, change them to suit your own particular needs, and then let go of them. Otherwise the techniques themselves become just one more barrier to experiencing the flow of energy in all its power and simplicity.

      The exercises may seem at times simple and at other times too complex, but if you enter into them with a spirit of adventure, accepting that whether you find them easy or difficult you will learn about yourself and your relationship, you will gain a lot.

      If you get stuck, or find it difficult to create a safe space in which to do Tantric work, you may want to contact one of the many Tantra training courses available, which you can attend either as a single person, or in a couple. Check the resources section at the back of this book to find out about established trainings.

      This book will enable you to taste what Tantra has to offer for you and your relationships, and gives you tools you can work with effectively on your own. The basic exercises can be used by single people, as well as couples. Although the exercises are geared towards heterosexual couples, they can be used just as easily by homosexual couples, since all couples can experiment with playing with the different masculine and feminine energies described by Tantra.

      It doesn’t matter if you’re not interested in pursuing the philosophy behind Tantra, because these techniques will help you at whatever level you choose to take them on. If you just want to spice up your relationship, they will help you do that. If you want to follow Tantra as a spiritual path, this book will give you some insight into what that might involve, and encourage you to find your own personal teacher.

      This book is also a very practical how-to manual, and regardless of whether you believe in any of the philosophical points of Tantra, these exercises will help you enter the realm of divine sex.

       Why Choose Tantra?

      Tantra is a path of sensual celebration as a spiritual discipline, which uses the erotic charge of sex to help us to connect with the divine. It is this openness to sexuality as a means of spiritual development that has led to Tantra’s current popularity in the West – where we tend to focus on sex and self-development rather than the more radical message of transcendence.

      The essence of Tantra is a relishing of earthly experience for the experience of divine bliss it can bring us. Sexual pleasure is used as a gateway to divine bliss, and sexual relationship is considered one of the fastest ways of reaching enlightenment. It’s certainly the most enjoyable!

      If your passion for life has been stifled within a stagnating relationship, an over-focus on mundane necessities or too much work, Tantra can help you to regain your zest for life, as well as take your relationship to new levels of love and connection. Tantra is a potent means of transforming your relationship – although, if your relationship has cracks in it, putting more energy into it will only expose the weaknesses! Tantra can make your relationship more alive and vibrant, more fun and sensual, and move you out of stagnation by showing you where and how to put energy in. The starting point of this process is to reaffirm the place of spirit in your life, and embrace spirituality in your sexual relationship.

      Essentially, Tantra encourages you to honour your relationship as a mirror of the divine relationship between Shakti and Shiva, the primordial couple in Hinduism, and to honour your partner as a mirror of yourself. Both you and your partner are divine, and seeing each other in this light helps you move out of petty squabbles and power struggles into affirming the fundamental strength of your inter-connection.

      Tantra sees your connection as a meeting of divine energies, rather than of two ego-bound psyches destined to act out past patterns and ways of relating that stem from your family background. A psychotherapy-based way of looking at relationships can be of limited use, and Tantra replaces it with a more spiritual model. It teaches you how to unlock the energies within yourself and to use them to transform your experience of the world into one of bliss.

      This involves becoming more aware of how your attitudes determine the way you experience your own reality, and how your level of awareness affects the quality of your relationships with others.

      A strong sense of something missing is often what drives both women and men to explore other approaches to sexuality. The awareness of all the possibilities, all the different levels of experience we could have in love-making, and the knowledge that exquisite, divine sexual feelings are left untapped, are what brings us to Tantra. In orgasm we have a glimpse of eternity; letting go into something far bigger and more spacious than our orgasmic gratification. It’s this experience of something vaster that keeps us fixated on sex, striving to repeat the experience. Tantra is the practice that allows you to attain that state without immediately losing it again. It allows you to maintain and extend it.

      According to self-styled New Age guru, Barry Long, women and men are prevented from making love to our full potential, because we have not learnt how to make love with consciousness. Loving consciously involves Shiva (the man) receiving the divine energies of Shakti (the woman) in the act of love-making. Tantra teaches ways to make lovemaking more aware, and techniques for assimilating the energies of your partner in love-making.

      Tantra has become increasingly popular in the Western world in recent years as we seek to address this underlying dissatisfaction with our intimate relationships, in spite of the hype about how much more sexual satisfaction we experience post the 60s sexual revolution. Survey after survey shows that we are not happier with our sex lives, nor our relationships, and Tantra offers us methods to work on these problems in a positive way.

      Tantra workshops attract an equal number of men and women from a whole range of backgrounds. They tend to be in their thirties, forties and fifties, coming to Tantra as a result of the realization that the area of relationship, and sexual relating in