Transform your love life with Tantra
by Oceana & Icarus
Most of us desire to have a satisfying and fulfilling sexual relationship. However, a great sex life is an elusive pursuit. For one thing, it depends on having an intimate partnership at all levels of our being. Sustaining a great relationship is the highest mountain to climb on this planet. It is not unusual that most people settle for far less than their ideal, but still claim to have a great sex life. What accounts for this paradox? Virtually everyone in our society, to a greater or lesser degree, has shame surrounding the subject of sex.
No wonder that we are fearful and shamed. Although society has a great interest in sexuality (just look at the covers of magazines), actually being present with the topic is met with jokes or giggles or, even worse, just silence. It seems to be too frightening or challenging of a topic to be let out of the cage or dark closet. We expect ourselves to know everything there is to know about sex, despite the fact that we have had no training whatsoever (other than on-the-job experience)! It is hard to have a healthy attitude when much of that experience is awkward, intolerant, inadequate, and provides little in the way of interpersonal communication or accurate feedback. It allows no possibility of taking advantage of the accumulated wisdom of the ages.
Our work is to bring this important part of our beings out into the light. To surround it with love, worshiping the divine aspect of our partner and seeing them as a mirror of ourselves. Thus, Tantra invokes spirituality. Tantric consciousness requires being totally present in the moment. This is a discipline that requires techniques and practice in order to be successful. Tantra is a science, in the sense that these practices can be repeated with consistent results. If you do A, B, C… etc., you will get to X, Y, and Z. The breath is the bridge or “key” to this realm, so breathing practices are essential in all systems of Yoga and meditation, and especially in Tantric Kriya Yoga.
Another essential ingredient of Tantra is opening of the heart. Women’s single biggest complaint about men in relationships and sex is that their hearts are not open. In fact, all of the energy centers (chakras) in the body must be open in order for the maximum amount of sexual (kundalini or life force) energy to flow throughout the body. Once again, this requires techniques, practice and discipline for maximum effectiveness and is rarely a spontaneous happening – as we prefer to imagine.
The benefits of these practices are pervasive and multi-dimensional. Tantra is accurately credited with being a means of rejuvenation. A fabulous sex/love life is tremendously healing for the mind, body and soul. It radiates love to your entire family. It is healing for society in helping to prevent aggression, crime, war, and the breakdown of the nuclear family. It is healing for the world in the realization that we are all one, and must care for each other and the entire planet.
Most Western sexual experiences are episodes of building tension and releasing it, hopefully for both partners, in as short a time period as possible. One of the “secrets” of Tantra is the practice of alternating stimulation with relaxation in extended periods of lovemaking. The organization of our workshops gives a model of this principle by example. Much more energy can flow in the body when we are relaxed. This is one of the reasons that a committed long-term relationship is desirable in a Tantric context. This kind of lovemaking brings one to an incredible intimacy through a relationship of trust and commitment.
A central part of our Tantric lineage is instruction of the Cosmic Cobra Breath, an ancient technique that, for safety and responsibility, has never been written and is conveyed only by personal initiation. It is a powerful tool used for transmuting the sexual energy into a loving spiritual meditation. It has the important side effect of preventing premature ejaculation easily comfortably, and surely. This allows the energy to build to higher and higher levels. Tantric love is about raising the energies in the bodies and the intentions of the beings to a higher consciousness, thereby achieving an ego less state where there are no longer lovers, only Love. The culmination of these practices is a tremendously satisfying sexual and spiritual life and, believe it or not, the relatively rapid, easy and joyful attainment of ecstasy, enlightenment, or what we call “Riding the Wave of Bliss” – a hypersensitive state of being which goes on for hours, beyond time or words, where every nerve in the body is vibrating at a higher frequency and the entire body and consciousness is in a state of suspended orgasm!
