The Tantra Fusion Blog

Meditate Your Way to Great Sex

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
To have great sex you need to be able to switch off and focus at the same time: switch off from the rest of the world and focus on what's happening right here and right now. You need to be able to lose yourself into the experience.

One of the main reasons I hear that people have trouble getting in to sex or getting around to sex is that they can't switch off and become present to the connection, so clearly this is a skill that modern people are in need of.

Even if you are having decent sex, improving your ability to let go and be present in the experience will make the sex better and better.

So how to learn that skill? Learn to meditate! The better you get at meditating, the easier it is for you to sink in to sex.

It’s that ability to ‘sink in’ to yourself, that deep, calm feeling that’s so good for sex. This is especially so for long-term partners, where the va-va-voom let’s-go-for-it-baby intro that you might have had in the early days, has waned. Well, let’s face it, when you’ve been cleaning the house, putting the kids to bed, catching up on emails, watching the late news…it’s not exactly va-va-voom material is it?

To connect well sexually in a long-term relationship (especially from the time you move in together) you need to be able to ‘sink in’ to sex rather than jump in passionately. There are external and internal elements to this. I’ve written a lot about having a lovely bedroom, a boudoir, so that your surroundings can help get you in the mood. That’s the external aspects of getting in the mood. On the internal side, it’s about being able to sink in and let go. A regular meditation practice helps with this.

Meditating is so simple: all you need to do is sit quietly for five to 20 minutes. Play some music that relaxes you, sit comfortably in a chair or on a meditation cushion, and focus on your breath. That’s all. Simple, but not so easy. You’ll find your mind wanders. A lot. That’s fine, that’s what our minds do. When it wanders simply notice that it is wandering, and bring your focus back to your breath. Over time you’ll find that it wanders less and you’ll feel a ‘sinking in’ feeling more easily. It’s good to do belly breathing as you meditate, especially as you start, my earlier blog Breathe Well: Love and Live Well explains how and I have a video on YouTube as well.

With practice you’ll find that this really helps with sex. Augment it with many other yummy activities such as a bath, a massage, a lovely cup of tea together, a walk after dinner, or whatever is your unique way of transitioning from life to sex, and you’ll find that sex becomes easier and easier and more and more delicious!

If you're having trouble "switching off" and would like to be more present and connected in life and love then book in to one of my Tantra Fusion Workshops or see me for Private Sex Therapy and/or Coaching.

A Beautiful Vulva is Like A Luscious Hamburger

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
A wonderful new book has just been released, 101 Vagina. The left-hand pages each have a black and white photo of a woman, front on, from belly to thigh, nude. On the right hand page is a piece written by the women about her genitals and how she feels about them.

So, depending on how much hair she has, you can see her vulva, looking like a little hamburger nestled between her thighs.

I love those little hamburgers! And from what I've heard from men, they do too!.

It’s such a shame though that so many women don’t love their little hamburger. To the extent that there is a boom in women, particularly young women, having their genitals mutilated by plastic surgeons so that their hamburger looks like just the bun, without any filling.

I’m using deliberately emotional language here, because I think it’s appalling that women have such a negative image of their bodies that they think spending large amounts of money to mutilate a part of the body that is rarely shown, is a desirable thing.

Who said a woman’s inner labia should be shorter than her outer labia? Or that the edges of her outer labia should meet perfectly so that all you see is a crease? Why is it that women’s genitals are supposed to look like pre-pubescent girls - hairless and with only a crease on show? (Which begs the next question, if the genitals are supposed to be pre-pubescent, why then are the breasts supposed to look like lactating mothers - full and round, almost bursting?)

There are a couple of wonderful documentaries, one Australian and one British, about how censorship of girlie magazines requires that only the ‘genital crease’ be shown - the hamburger is not allowed to have any filling at all. No doubt this has led to women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies not looking air-brushed.

Another wonderful book is The Heart of the Flower which beautifully portrays wide open genitals. While from the front they look like hamburgers, when open, they do look like flowers - with a very wide range of petals!

The saddest think I think about women feeling their genitals need to be ‘simplified’ is that they actually look more boring. It’s like picking the petals off a flower and leaving just the bud.

Open flowers, like mature vulvas, are luscious things, diverse in their appearance, with unique textures and patterns and scents. Take away all that and you’re left with a plastic barbie doll - uniform, soulless, and ultimately, not at all sexual.

Bring back the appreciation of lusciousness in vaginas! Love your overflowing hamburger! Love your petalled flower, no matter the shape and form of your petals!

Let’s love our luscious lady parts - our vaginas, vulvas, yonis, honey pots, cinnabar crevaces, bajingos or whatever you call her.

She is unique,
she is yours and
she is lovely!

I’ll be speaking at the Festival of the Vagina in Sydney on 29 June - come along to the exhibition and join in the celebration!

If this is an issue that's sensitive to you and you think you could better appreciate your lusciousness then come along to my Luscious Woman Workshop or Retreat or book in for Private Sex Therapy and/or Coaching with me.

My Ejaculation Opens the Door to Deeper Orgasm

Mon, 27 May 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
My lover is a strong advocate of mindful love-making : ie it's not what you do but how you do it. (He'd have to be or I wouldn't be with him!)

There's a lot of contention about whether men should ejaculate freely or whether they should refrain from ejaculating for their health and/or spiritual development.

As I said in my recent post, To Come or Not to Come, I believe it’s not whether you should or shouldn’t, but how you orgasm. So given that my lover is a man, I thought I’d ask him how he finds his orgasms.

When we first met he was very shagadelic, very much into the bigger harder faster style of sex. These days however:

“I find my orgasms to be very different from before, very meaningful. I feel grounded, very complete and even more connected during and after the ejaculation.

“Everything leading up to the orgasm - our interaction, the setting of the room, the approach to foreplay and all the stages, it doesn’t matter how long we make love for, at the point of orgasm it’s just completely different.

“Before, it was more a carnal thing, there wasn’t so much intimacy and connection. At the moment of orgasm I felt disconnected. It was a big release, then “I’m done.”

“Now at the point of ejaculation it’s like, hey! I come even closer, we’re even more connected. I feel: this is amazing, wow, this is a whole different level. I don't want to pull out, I don’t want to be disconnected from that moment.

“Most of my energetic experiences happen after the ejaculatory orgasm. The real orgasm, the whole body orgasm, the energy surges, happen after the ejaculation.

“It’s like a passage, a door that opens, bang, into a new place, leading deeper and deeper into the experience.

“And afterwards I feel rejuvinated, alive, like I’ve had a recharge. It’s not draining like it was before. I don’t want to roll over and go to sleep. I want to get up and conquer the world! Or at least talk and snuggle and keep the connection going.

“It makes me whole.”

To learn more about mindful love-making book into one of my Tantra Fusion Workshops or have Private Sex Therapy and/or Coaching with me.

Melting Moments

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
There are many melting moments during quality sex.

Moments where there is a sense of melting:

melting into relaxation,

melting into bliss,

melting away tension,

melting into your partner,

pelvic melting,

abdominal melting,

heart melting

throat melting

consciousness melting

Moments of melting leading to moments of rapture.

This is slow sex. Or at least, starting out slow sex.

There is the melting of desire, the yearning, the opening up and into the other.

There is the melting when the genitals join. A release and relaxation in the pelvis as the vagina and penis sit together, in embrace.

There is a softening, a melting of the heart.

The tension drains away with the union. From the face, the throat, the chest, the abdomen.

Eyes meet and melt together.

Lips meet and melt with tenderness: sensing, tasting, touching.

Hands touch skin, melt. Limbs join, entwine, melt.

The joining together leads to motion, rhythm, the dance of bodies together. Merging, melting. Intensity and subtlety creating unique interplays of movement, sensation, feeling.

Melting into depths of pleasure, melting into peaks of delight.

In the melting is release, freedom, bliss.

To learn how you can experience more of these melting moments come along to one of my Tantra Fusion Workshops or Retreats or book in for Private Sex Therapy and/or coaching.

Finger Finesse

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
A clitoral orgasm is a very fine thing.

It can leave you drained though.

If you approach clitoral orgasm like a male ejaculatory orgasm, then it becomes about a build-up of localised sensation leading to an explosive orgasm where you feel an outward burst of energy. Momentarily pleasurable, but often flat afterwards, and generally not able to continue love-making (whether alone or with a partner). You feel kind of 'done'.

A far better way to approach clitoral orgasm is the slow build, allowing arousal to rise and fall, losing yourself in the pleasure of the sensation moment by moment. Then when the orgasm arrives, you open to it and fall into it. There is no tension, there is no grasping for the orgasm, there is no sense of forcing it. It’s a welling up and releasing. And that releasing feels more than just genital, as though your whole body is washed with warmth and pleasure.

Then you can leave your hand (or your partner’s) over your clitoris, just touching it lightly without movement, palm over your pubis, as you relax into the feeling and allow the waves of pleasure to wash over you. This can help maintain the sensation for some time. Then, if you wish, you can do it again. Even several times.

Clitoral orgasm in this way is not draining, it’s energising. By the end of the love-making session, whether solo or partnered, you have a sense of being ‘filled-up’, recharged.

You might also find that each orgasm in succession has a different feel to it. I often find that the first feels more like tension release, it’s allowing my body to get into a deeper state of relaxation, so that subsequent orgasms are fuller and richer and more blissful.

For this approach to clitoral orgasm I recommend using fingers rather than a vibrator. Fingers have more finesse, more delicacy and complexity. You can play with stroke and pressure and rhythm far more easily with fingers than with a fixed implement. While I’m not against vibrators, they can be too intense for this style of pleasure and orgasm. Often women tell me they find it easier to orgasm with a vibrator. I don’t doubt it. But does the fact that it’s easier to put a frozen dinner in a microwave rather than cook from scratch, make it better? No, it’s just easier.

So I believe that if you want quality clitoral orgasms - ones with subtlety and variation and, to use a musical term, timbre - then it’s good to develop finger finesse, both your own and those of your lover.

Then let the long-lasting pleasure begin!

If you would like to improve your Finger Finesse and learn more about a woman's potential for orgasm then book into one of my Tantra Fusion Workshops or Retreats or come and see me for Private Sex Therapy and/or Coaching.

To Come or Not To Come

Mon, 06 May 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
One of the main differences between 'standard' modern sexual practices and the more alternative, spiritual sexual practices is the attitude to orgasm.

In the mainstream, orgasm is generally considered a highly desirable, usually necessary, part of sex, and generally the bigger the better and the more the merrier.

In the Tantric/Taoist approaches there is a strong emphasis on not having an orgasm. Which to many modern Westerners seems crazy, especially for those who think the whole point of sex is orgasm.

So, who’s right? Should we or shouldn’t we? Is it more healthful/spiritual/ecstatic/pleasurable/fulfilling to come or not to come?

Well, to me it’s less about whether you come or not, and much more about how you come.

You see, nothing in life is black and white, particularly when it comes to sex.

To believe that we shouldn’t come is as limiting as believing that you have to come.

I certainly encourage everyone to move away from the mindset, firmly entrenched in the Adolescent Male Masturbatory Model of Sex: that sex is about a sexual excitation that has to result in an explosive genital orgasm. I definitely encourage people to expand their sexual repertoire and explore styles of love-making that don’t lead to orgasm.

The ‘orgasm at all costs’ approach to sex is very limiting and not always satisfying. Having explosive genital orgasms can be debilitating and can lead to feelings of emptiness and either neediness or distance afterwards. The big ‘O’ is not the holy grail of sex.

It’s actually very liberating to open yourself to the reality that there are many ways to approach sex and to realise that making love in a way that doesn’t lead to or require orgasms, can be just as satisfying, if not more so, than sex with orgasm.

However, to then extend that argument to say that orgasm itself is ‘bad’ and that we shouldn’t orgasm at all, is falling into the either-or trap.

Orgasms are a natural part of being human and having orgasms can be a highly beneficial thing.

If the orgasms aren’t beneficial, if they do leave you feeling drained, distant, grumpy, needy, then the problem isn’t ‘orgasm’, the problem is the way you orgasm.

If you see orgasm as just part of sex, not the point of sex, and certainly not the end-point, then you can play with the orgasmic experience. You can use orgasm to take you deeper and further. You can experience orgasm in different forms, not just genital. You can orgasm in different parts of your body, you can experience it throughout your whole body, you can feel different kinds of energies and sensations, it can be brief or it can last for minutes or longer, you can enter into orgasmic ‘states’ where you feel the bliss for very long periods of time.

To experience orgasm in this way you need to approach love-making more like a picnic than a three-course meal. This means you go with the flow of what feels right at each and every moment. There are no ‘shoulds’, there is no expectation, there is no defined sequence.

When you approach sex like this it doesn’t matter whether you have no orgasm, one orgasm, many orgasms or whether you enter a blissful orgasmic state where you don’t know if you’re orgasming or not because it just feels soooo good.

I call this Third-Level Love-Making: it’s not just genital excitation, the ‘peaks’ of sex, it’s not just love and spiritual connection, the ‘valleys’ of sex: it’s all and everything. If orgasm is part of that, great, if it’s not, great. If it’s real, true, an authentic expression of self - it’s all great!

If you would like to learn more about the 'peaks and valleys' of sex and how orgasms relate to your sex life then book in for Private Sex Therapy and/or Coaching or come along to one of my Tantra Fusion Workshop or Retreats.

Penis Size

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
I seem to have been talking penis size a lot lately. So here's an adaption of an article I wrote for Men's Health Magazine, on how penises of all sizes can be used to good effect.

They come in all shapes and sizes, and all with the same intention in mind - to have great sex. But with all the variation, which penises are the most effective, and does size really matter?

To stimulate the vagina a penis needs to touch the sides, so girth is an important factor. Some penises are thick enough to fill most women, some are too thick for comfort, and a large proportion need deft handling to reach the good spots, not being thick enough to fill all around (although that also depends on the size of the vagina in question, there’s considerable variation in capacity and muscle tautness there too).

But never fear, if your girth is less than ideal, it’s more about how you wield your weapon than its size. So here are some tips for guys of all sizes:

Modest

Prove your skills as a lover before she gets to see your member. She’ll already be impressed and size won’t be a big issue. She’ll also be good and aroused, and a well-aroused vagina is a responsive vagina, so her muscles are more likely to naturally clamp around your penis, increasing sensation. Your advantage in the penile size stakes is that you can move around a lot and get to the good areas. So add rotating, screwing motions to your thrusts, particularly when you’re on top so that you’re stimulating all around her vagina and her clitoral area at the same time. (Another bonus – you get the best blow jobs because she can do so much more with your more manageable size!)

Average

No surprises here. Your partner is not going to get distracted by the size or otherwise of your member and neither are you, you’ve got no need to feel either worried or smug about what‘s on offer. You can try any position, any way you like it. So get creative!

For you and your more modestly sized brothers, you can get in deeper by getting your pelvis in as close as possible, so you want her legs as far apart as she can. She can hold them or you can. With you kneeling and her on her back, you can lift up her legs, hook them over your arms and get in good and deep. From behind is another good position if her bottom is up high and her chest down low. Her on top is also good as she can move herself around and sink down good and deep. Avoid standing poses.

Well-proportioned

There’s no denying it, you’ve definitely got the advantage here. But…avoid complacency! While the sight of your impressive member might make a girl swoon in anticipation, if that’s all you’ve got on offer your sex might get dull after a while. Yes, it fills a girl up nicely while still having the finesse to move around and get to the good bits inside. But it’s not all about the penis. Make sure you develop your all round skills as a lover.

Blessed/Cursed

You’d get hired on a porn set in an instant, but the reality is that your massive member is more likely to make a girl faint with shock than swoon with pleasure! Unfortunately a very large penis doesn’t always feel great, it can hurt on entry and can make the girl feel simply stuffed, without the subtlely of sensation she gets from smaller penises. Kind of like using a bulldozer to do a bob-cat’s work. So the advice is quite similar to that of your modestly hung brothers – prove your skills as a lover before she gets to your member, so that she’s already turned on and interested, and therefore less likely to turn tail and run! Make sure she’s well aroused and well lubricated before you enter. Take it slowly, let her guide the initial depth and speed. You’re going to have to be a true gentleman of a lover, chivalrous and gentle, and she’s going to love that!

If you'd like to learn more about how you can 'wield your weapon' and become a great lover then join me at my men's only Blackbelt in the Bedroom Seminar or book in for Private Sex Therapy and/or Coaching.

10 Tips For Your Vagina

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
A friend asked me recently what my top 10 tips for a vagina would be. Good question, I thought. So many women feel disconnected from their genitals, don’t have a good feeling about them. We don’t even have a decent word for them, often using the word “vagina’ to apply to the whole genital area. So here I use the word ‘vagina’ to apply to just the vagina, and as to the whole of the genitals..? Well, read on!

1. Honour It. The female genitals are the source of life. Other than a small input by the man at the start, the whole process of creating life takes place in the female genitals. That would have to be the most awesome thing in the entire universe!

2. Name It. For such an awesome part of the body, it’s incredible that we don’t have a decent name, other than ‘genitals’ which is a pretty ugly word. Even in casual talk there are not a lot of strong gorgeous names. We often refer to our ‘bits’, ‘down there’, ‘private parts’ or ‘nether regions’. It’s to relate to an area of your body that you can’t even name! So give it a name: it’s my fanny or my quim, my yoni, qualia, bajingo, honey-pot, cinnebar crevasse….Even my cunt, because originally the meaning of the word cunt was “to beguile a man with one’s feminine charms”, which is rather a wonderful concept.

3. Understand It. I think one of the reasons women don’t feel so good about their quim/farfalla/bajingo is because they don’t know how incredible it is. Women are built for extreme sexual pleasure! The anatomy, the physiology, the energetics. Once you understand that, and realise what you’re sexual potential is, then wow, you’re going to love it. Do you know how big your clitoris is? Most of it is on the inside! Do you know how much engorging material there is down there? How orgasms work? How you can go beyond normal orgasm to an orgasmic state? All thanks to your amazing bajingo.

4. Incorporate It. It’s part of your body, so feel it as part of your body. Close your eyes and and go over every part of it in your mind, both the inside and the otuside. Explore it with your hands and fingers. Take a good look at it in the mirror. When you can recline in front of a mirror with legs wide apart and look and say to yourself “Mmm, that is gorgeous!”, then you’ll know it’s part of you.

5. Pamper It. Our bodies love and deserve to be pampered. It’s so good for the soul. Your honey-pot is part of your body and deserves that pampering too. So if you’re in a hot bath, part your legs and allow the warmth to wash over it. If you’re in the ocean, part your legs and allow the salty sting of the water to caress it. When you apply creams to you body, slather yourself all over (no creams or oils on the inside though). When making love with your partner, request/invite/allow it to be touched/massaged/embraced.

6. Pleasure It. Our genitals are made for pleasure. The clitoris has no purpose at all, other than to provide exquisite pleasure. The mass of nerves, engorging material, lubricating and wetting functions, all conspire to show that our fannys and meant to be used for pleasure. So do so. With another or on your own. Particularly on your own. The womanly art of self-pleasuring is so important to self-loving and self-honouring. See my video on self pleasuring if you need advice on how to do this.

7. Listen to It. This is particularly in relation to having sex. One of the biggest problems I’ve noticed with people’s sex lives is that they move too fast. You have to listen to your body and in particular to your quim to know when you’re ready to move on. So you don’t start to kiss until your mouth is drawn to your partner’s. You don’t allow your breasts to be touched until you feel them lifting and moving towards your partner, wanting to be touched. You don’t allow your qualia to be touched until you feel your hips raising and your legs opening. And you don’t allow your partner to enter you until you feel your cinnebar crevasse yearning for his jade stalk, your yoni invites in his lingam, your cunt is dripping with desire for his cock… If you’re not really feeling it, don’t go there.

Now some tips on keeping it in good shape:

8. Squeeze It. There’s a band of muscle that goes from your pubic bone to your tail bone. It’s important to keep it toned as it does some very important things. Firstly, it holds all your internal organs in place. If you don’t keep those muscles toned, your vagina might fall out when you get old. I kid you not, vaginal prolapse can happen to older women.Secondly, the contraction of these muscles is an important part of orgasm. The more toned the muscles, the better the orgasm. So ladies – squeeze! And squeeze some more! Imagine you’re stopping urine from flowing, those are the muscles to use. Squeeze rhythmically, then squeeze and hold a few seconds, then squeeze progressively tighter, keeping your abdominal muscles relaxed.

9. Rest It. Rest is such an important part of health and wellbeing. It applies to your vagina too. It’s good to give it a rest. Particularly during your period. In many traditional cultures women would take time out during their period to relax and rest, often with other women. This is not as many anthropologists have interpreted it because the women were considered ‘unclean’ at that time, but because it was a sacred time for a woman to go within. We modern women would benefit from doing the same. Take it easy during your period, especially the heavier days. Avoid exerting yourself, be peaceful, and avoid genital stimulation, especially intercourse. Get into the rhythm of your cycle, be aware of the ebbs and flows of your energy and work with those flows, rather than ignoring them or fighting them.

10. Let it flow. And finally, on the topic of menstruration, let it flow. I do believe modern women try to hide to ignore and hide their cycles excessively. Tampons have their place, but if you let the blood flow, you’ll get more in touch with your body. So rest and let the blood flow during your period, and you’ll find more energy and more intuitive flow in the rest of your life.

To learn more about how you can honour yourself as a woman book in for Private Sex Therapy or attend my Luscious Woman Workshop or annual Luscious Woman Retreat.

Sex as Spiritual Practice

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
I'm often asked about spiritual sex, and terms like 'Tantric Sex' are the most commonly googled requests that link to my website. I believe that to reach your sexual potential you've got to be open to the spiritual elements. So let's talk sex and spirituality.

'Bliss', 'ecstasy', 'connection', 'union', 'transcendence', losing self', 'merging with the universe.

What do you suppose I’m describing here?
a) A spiritual experience
b) A sexual experience
c) Both

The answer is (c). Not all sexual experiences are spiritual and not all spiritual experiences are sexual, but there is a strong connection, and when the two merge the sex is truly awesome.

For many of us in western culture this seems at odds, because we’re often brought up to believe that sexuality and spirituality are opposites, that one is base and ‘bad’ and the other is lofty and ‘good’, that to get to the spiritual we have to overcome the sexual.

So instead of embracing our sexuality, which is an intrinsic part of being human, we at best trivialise it and at worse deny it. Which means that instead of a whole healthy society we have one that is obsessed with superficial sexuality and full of people with dysfunctional attitudes and behaviours around sex.

Sex is not meant to be like this. Sexual energy is our basic life energy. We all come from orgasm. Denying or corrupting it damages our selves. It’s far better to embrace our sexuality and experience life-affirming and life-enhancing sex.

You see, sex has three purposes. The first is reproduction. That’s a wonderful thing, but it’s not the essence of human sex, all animals have sex to reproduce. The second is pleasure. Our bodies are sexual pleasure machines, we are designed to experience exquisitely delicious sex. The third is personal transformation. By deepening the intimacy and heightening the erotic, we are capable of having sex that is far more than a physical joining of the genitals. We can have sex that takes us far above the physical rutting of animals, way up into the realm of the angels.

This type of sex can be called ‘high sex’, I think of it as ‘deep sex’, it’s definitely spiritual sex. Whatever you call it, you have to realise that it doesn’t just ‘happen’ (although plenty of people have experienced a glimpse of this possibility), just as blissful transcendent spiritual experiences rarely occur spontaneously. You have to cultivate deep sex.

For a start, you have to be truly present in the experience. For a society that increasingly views sex as a performance activity, this can be hard to achieve, because to be present you have to be out of your head and into your body, you have to turn off the incessant monkey chatter. Spiritual sex does not happen if you’re constantly thinking about whether you’re doing it ‘right’ or if you’re worried about your bits jiggling or whether you ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be doing a particular act.

By being present you become more intuitively attuned to your partner, so the sex flows. You also become more sensually aware, so the sensual aspects of sex are heightened. You’re also more likely to take it slow, delighting in every exquisite morsel of the experience. Our society tends to focus on the peaks of sex, the harder-faster-louder side of sex, which of course is good, but it’s only half the story. The valleys of sex, the slow, sensual, deep aspects are at least as glorious and often more ecstatic, and the sensations linger longer….

When you practice sex like this, it can go on for hours, and the sensations go beyond our normal concept of orgasmic. Too many of us see orgasm as the point of sex, believing that all the preliminaries just lead up to the grand finale of the big O. In spiritual sex orgasm is an outcome of sex (often many times over) not the point, and certainly not necessarily the end. The heightened states of arousal reached can transcend the usual experience of orgasm, so the feeling extends way past the genitals into the body and beyond, and potentially for a very long time. In fact, experiencing sex like this means you carry the bliss into the rest of your life, so that the whole of life becomes an extended experience of sexual and orgasmic energy.

I’m not advocating some hippie herbal version of sex here where it’s all about worshipping the god/dess in each other and dancing around in sarongs to Indian sacred chants (although that can be good too). This sex can occur anywhere - in a bondage parlour, for instance, or in a back alley up against a wall, or even a simple late-night cuddle under the sheets - if it’s part of a life lived in a heightened state of spiritual and sexual awareness.

You see, high sex incorporates the intimate and erotic, in fact you can’t really have erotic without the intimate. True intimacy is about showing your real self and surrendering to the experience. If you’re playing a role, or if you hold yourself back out of fear of your partner’s reaction, or a belief that certain acts are ‘bad’ (some are, I’m assuming consenting acts between living adult humans here), then you won’t be able to open yourself, to surrender yourself, to experience the sublime.

Spiritual growth involves an ever deeper knowing of oneself. A centre, a presence, a union with wholeness of the universe, an experience of self as selfless, of loss of self. There are many paths to this awareness, sex is one of the most accessible and beautiful paths to spiritual awareness and growth.

I encourage you to start the journey…

If you would like to learn more about sex and spirituality and how you can bring the two together for yourself then book in for private sex therapy and/or coaching or come along to one of my Tantra Fusion Workshops or Retreats.

Fill Up Your (Self) Love Tank

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but a couple of weeks ago I was in an emergency ward with a suspected heart attack. Yes, me, the supposed expert on chilling out, taking it slow, enjoying life and love....Oops!

So what happened? After all, I do regular yoga, meditation, relaxation...or do I?

Being attached to a machine that goes 'bing' for eight hours gives you a lot of time to reflect. It's kind of a forced meditation, especially as I was having trouble breathing and had to focus on my breath.

Well, the honest truth is that my regular self-care had become more than a little irregular. I hadn't been practising what I preach. I was proving that not doing what I advise to do does in fact result in a lack of peace and harmony.

This kind of work, where I'm constantly giving out nurturing and inspiring energy to people, plus having three children of my own, means that I have to keep filling up my love tank. So: physician heal thyself.

I share this so that you know that even we 'experts' struggle at times. In this era where there are so many things competing for our time, and where the truly important things in life tend to put aside in favour of the non-nurturing and the non-loving, it's so important that we each stay focused on what's important.

I often talk about how couples need to prioritise time for themselves, to fill up their mutual love tank. Before you can even get to that, you need to fill up your own self-love tank. It's like when the oxygen masks come down in the plane, you have to put your own on before you attend to anyone else, or else you'll be dead and no use to anyone.

For people with a stronger bent towards tending others, it can be hard to focus on yourself. "Who's got the time," you say, or "I'd feel guilty".

But if you don't, you either become a withered up drained shell of yourself, or you become harder and harder (and unhappier and unhappier) which leads to grumpy, bitter and twisted, and other nasty traits.

So, go through your life and start removing the irksome, the time-consuming, the draining, and prioritise the rejuvinating, the uplifting, the peace-inducing. And if you feel you 'can't', then book in for some sessions with me, so I can help make that a 'can'.

As for me, I have reinstated daily mediation and yoga, I have modified a lot of the ways I work, and I am heading off to a tiny little island in Indonesia called Gili Air to do an eight-day rejuvination retreat from the 10th of May....

The love tanks are re-filling.

Practice Expressing Your Feelings

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
A key to intimacy is expressing your feelings. Not your thoughts, your feelings: being able to share with your partner how you are feeling, and being able to hear what he or she is sharing with you.

It's not an easy thing to do. More commonly people hold back out of fear or a negative reaction from their partner. So they end up playing this weird dance of trying to mind-read what the other wants and feels, and generally getting it wrong.

An exercise I give couples to improve this skill is every evening to have a chat over a cup of tea and take it in turns to share how you’re feeling.

Some people are fine with that level of guidance; others struggle and need more direction. If you’re in the latter category, here’s an activity for you.

Set aside some time for a chat, maybe after dinner, or if you’ve got young children, once they’ve gone to bed. Do not do this in front of the TV. Sit somewhere comfortable, and if it feels right, have a cup of tea together. Humans have been sharing over cups of tea for centuries. It’s comforting and bonding.

Now take it in turns to share five things from your day, in this order.

1) How you’re feeling right now.
2) A good thing that happened today and how it made you feel.
3) A bad thing that happened today and how it made you feel.
4) A good thing that your partner did today and how it made you feel.
5) A (preferably small, until you get better at this) not so good thing, a neglect, that your partner did today and how it made you feel.

So each of you share how you’re feeling, then each of you share point two, then point three, until you’ve done all five. When you’ve finished, thank your partner for sharing, and tell them how that made you feel.

The important part is that you say how it made you feel. Not just ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘pissed off’, be more specific, expand your vocabulary, such as: “I felt appreciated, as though you really cared” or “I felt really isolated and unsure of what to do”, ie be more expressive about what you felt or are feeling.

When you’re in the listening role, it’s important that you tune in to your own reactions. Be the watcher watching yourself. Note what your own emotional reaction is to what your partner is saying. Notice if you feel defensive, if you feel you want to justify yourself, if you feel you need to make them out to be wrong. It’s this response that causes people to hold their feelings in and not share. So make sure that your focus is what your partner is saying, not your reaction to it.

So listen, and repeat back what you’ve heard. That’s all.

The hardest one will of course be the something you did that made your partner feel bad. The important thing is simply that you acknowledge how they are feeling. You don’t have to fix it or justify it or anything for this exercise, just acknowledge their feeling.

Once you get in the habit of listening actively like this, your partner will become more comfortable with sharing their feelings honestly, because they know you are capable of listening without judgement. Similarly, your own level of comfort in sharing will increase because you’ll learn to trust your partner’s ability to listen without reacting badly.

This is mature relating. It’s not always easy, which is why you need to practice until it becomes second nature. Then your relationship will evolve, in all areas, particularly sexually.

If you or your partner are finding it difficult to express your feelings then book in for a private sex therapy session or come along to one of my Tantra Fusion workshops.

Beyond Orgasm

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
I'm often asked what I think is the biggest problem people have with sex these days. I'd have to say it's the performance model of sex, that's it's all about giving each other orgasms. It's not surprising so many people think sex is a performance activity, given how driven we are in this society, all driving harder, harder, faster, faster to achieve more and get more. It's so exhausting! And leads to a number of problems in relation to sex.

First, if people think sex has to achieve something, but they’re not really feeling up to it, they might not bother.

Second, people get performance anxiety. This reduces their confidence and enthusiasm, which tends to result in less satisfactory sex (if any at all) and sets up a negative feedback loop of low sexual confidence.

Third, and most importantly, if you’re focused on the endpoint of sex you miss all the good points in between!

The point of sex is not orgasm. The point of sex is a complete luscious experience. Orgasm is a delicious outcome of sex, not the point of it.

Sex is a journey, not a destination.

Otherwise you might as well just masturbate. That’s the difference between solo sex and partnered sex – solo sex is generally just about orgasm, partnered sex has so many more aspects to it.

Great sex has peaks and troughs, softness and intensity. It’s all good. You have to get into the pleasure of the valley as much as the pleasure of the heights. The feelings are different, but the valleys can be just as orgasmic, in a gentler, exceptionally exquisite, blissful way.

Paradoxically, by savouring all the different aspects of sex, rather than just going for the one big O, you can experience more orgasms and more varied orgasms in the one sex session.

Men can too! One of the important steps for men in becoming multi-orgasmic is to fully experience both the valleys and the highs of sexual sensation and learn to appreciate sexual sensation in a whole body way, rather than being genitally focused (I’ll write more on that another time).

One other paradox, if you move away from this performance-oriented it’s-all-about-the orgasm style approach to sex, you’ll experience a wider range of sexual sensations – even without orgasm. For instance, the style of sex I call “Cup of Tea Sex” can be absolutely gorgeous, just gently lying together without much activity at all, just feeling close and bonded.

Have you ever tried having sex without any intention to orgasm? Try it, in fact try it several nights in a row – just lie together, him inside her (spoon position is good, on your sides, her back to his front), and do nothing. You can both squeeze your pelvic floor muscles now and again to keep the erection, but move as little as possible. Align your breathing as you do it, and you’ll find it even more interesting. Do that for 15 minutes or so, see how it feels. This will get you learning to appreciate the quiet, soft, troughs. This is so different to what we usually think of as good sex that it might seem really odd at first, but do it every night for a week and I think you’ll find it’ll change the way you make love ever after.

So, what makes for better sex? Relax, switch off your brain and get into the groove of sex, enjoying every exquisite moment – the highs, the lows and every point in between.

Enjoy!

On Being Real

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
There's a beautiful quote from Anais Nin: There came a day when the flower realised that the pain of remaining tight in a bud was greater than the risk of opening up and blossoming.

That's how people often feel about their sexuality before they come to see me. It's what I love in this work, whether it's with private clients or in the group workshops, people start to tap into their true selves and allow themselves to be who they really are and express themselves honestly and openly.

Our sexuality is one area where many people aren’t open and honest and true to themselves. No matter how much personal development work they’ve done, if they’ve missed out this crucial part of themselves, then they’re never going to be whole and real.

You see, true sexual expression comes from a very deep part of ourselves, it’s probably the part of ourselves that is truer than any other part. Many people think our sexuality is part of our lower, animal side. I beg to disagree. I believe our sexuality is part of our higher human side, along with creativity and art and music and all those attributes of being human that come from higher evolution and bigger brain and more complex and meaningful existence. And just as to tap into and express ourselves in those other areas of humanity, so it’s important that we tap into the realness of ourselves sexually.

Which is tricky in a society that’s so juvenile in its approach to sex – more giggle and snicker than expression and growth.

So if you’re on this journey, you’ve got to get past all the myths and crap in society around sex. Get over the limiting beliefs and lack of permissions, toss out the ‘should’s and ‘shouldn’t’s. Get informed, get creative, and get transformed!

Again tricky in a society which has so little real sex education and inspiring sexual information. So in my little way I try to start the ripples that will turn into waves and turn our society into one where sex has it’s rightful place and people feel and express the love. Getting back to my opening line, I see in the workshops people opening up to possibility and realness. It’s so good. I love my work. I’m a small drop in an ocean of sexual repression and sexual distortion, but every little bit counts. And what counts is you, the change starts with you.

Ponder deeply on that…then start to express yourself freely. Feel the love, feel the pleasure, live the ecstasy.

The Number One Secret to Good Sex

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
The number one secret to good sex is to surrender. That's all. You've got to surrender to the act. Let go of the crap in your head and get completely and utterly in your body, in the flow, surrendered to the pleasure.

Sounds easy, very hard to do. We're so caught up with thinking that we live our lives in our heads, so we're not really present in our bodies. Our bodies almost become an appendage to our heads. But to really feel, you have to get into your body, really present in your body.

Paradoxically that enables the boundaries of the physical to dissolve and allows you to get to the transcendent states where you lose touch with the physical plane and get into the more spiritual, ecstatic plane.

There's an exercise I do in my workshops, usually very early on because it's so instructive, where I enable people to get present in one side of their body and not the other. They're always amazed at the difference. One side feels warm and alive and tingly, the other feels empty and dead. When I point out that they mostly go through life with their bodies feeling dead like that, they realise what they're missing out on (and hopefully then pay a lot more attention to what I'm teaching!).

We then do more work on breath and becoming centered and heightening sensory perception and lots of other delightful exercises that get people out of their heads and into their bodies. It might not sound all that relevant to sex, but it's fundamental. In fact it's fundamental to living.

It takes dedication and application to live and make love with that level of presence and to be able to surrender so fully to the experience. Personally, I think it's worth it.

Get A Whole New View of Sex

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Available as a podcast: download here!
I love getting feedback from clients, workshop participants and readers of my newsletter and blog, as well as people who see me in the media. I'm sure it's partly an ego thing(!) but it also shows that this work is touching people, improving the quality of their lives, and slowly but surely changing our society into one which values sexuality and promotes quality sex.

One thing people so often say is that I'm giving them "a whole new view of sex".

One client in her 50s who has decided, like so many women I see in their 50s, that it's about time she got in touch with her sexuality, gave me the feedback: "I feel my whole definition of sex is being rewritten - scary but exciting!" She'll also be at my women's workshop in a couple of weeks, and her husband is coming to my men's seminar too.

Another woman in her early 30s who came to my women's retreat last November, and whose partner is also coming to the men's seminar, sent me this wonderful idea: "We’ve started this thing where every few nights we each choose one of your blog topics, which the other has to read out. It’s been rather enlightening and some old perspectives have been shifted."

And this lovely comment from someone who heard me on ABC radio recently: "As a single for way too long and an even longer history of bad "head" sex, I think you're spot on! Well said about so many things."

It is good to get this feedback, because it is hard doing this work! Putting oneself out there to challenge entrenched beliefs is a challenge. So I'd like to acknowledge everyone involved, all the clients and workshop/retreat participants who take the brave step to do something positive about their lives and sexuality, even those of you who simply subscribe and read this blog. It all makes a difference.

To change your view of sex book in for private sessions or join me for one of my Tantra Fusion Workshops or Retreats.