Introduction
1. Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson, The Essence of Tantric Sexuality (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2007), pp. 1–2. “Tool for expansion” is one of several definitions Dr. Mumford uses. It does not appear in such succinct form in his published work, but he has frequently expressed it just this way in personal communications and in conversation.
Part 1: The Fundamentals:
Key Concepts and Attitudes
2. Hugh B. Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, and Power in the Study of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Urban provides a good overview of the role of secrecy in Tantra.
3. Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson, Secrets of Sacred Sex: The Essence of Tantric Sexuality (Delhi, India: Moltilal Banarsidass, 2011). The Alexander Institute, Advanced Tantric Sex Secrets DVD, 2008.
Chapter 4. Take Your Time
4. Diana Richardson, Slow Sex: The Path to Fulfilling and Sustainable Sexuality (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 2011); Nicole Daedone, Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of Female Orgasm (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011); and Belisa Vranich, “Why Slow Sex is Better: Like a Bottle of Fine Wine, Great Sex Takes Time,” Men’s Fitness, http://www.mensfitness.com/women/sex-tips/why-slow-sex-is-better. Accessed September 26, 2012.
Chapter 5. Build Excitement
and Prolong Arousal
5. John Horgan, “The God Experiments,” Discover Magazine, December 2006. http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec/god-experiments/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C. Accessed September 5, 2011. The article discusses the similarities between mystical experience and orgasm in the brain. A more recent study suggests that while there are many subjective similarities between the orgasmic and meditative experiences, the brain areas involved are different; however, the study seems to have focused on a limited number of meditative approaches and does not seem to have considered how combining meditation with sex might affect the brain, or how extending arousal might affect brain function. Nadia Webb, “The Neurobiology of Bliss—Sacred and Profane: Sex in the Brain and What It Reveals about the Neuroscience of Deep Pleasure,” Scientific American, July 12, 2011. Online at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-neurobiology-of-bliss-sacred-and-profane. Accessed September 5, 2011.
Chapter 6: Be Present
6. David Eagleman, “10 Unsolved Mysteries of the Brain: What We Know—and Don’t Know—About How We Think,” Discover Magazine, August 2007. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/aug/unsolved-brain-mysteries/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C. Accessed September 5, 2011. As Eagleman’s article explains, not only are experiences in the past when we process them, our senses register events at different rates, and our brains then synchronize the divergent sense impressions.
Part 2: Self-Pleasuring
7. “Oprah Talks Masturbation,” The Huffington Post, January 17, 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/17/oprah-talks-masturbation_n_82070.html. Accessed September 5, 2011. See also, Joan Z. Shore, “Politically Correct Sex (for Women),” The Huffington Post, January 22, 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-z-shore/politically-correct-sex-f_b_82689.html. Accessed September 5, 2011. Shore’s is a sharply critical take on “self-cultivation.”
Chapter 10. Pleasure Yourself
in Front of Your Partner
8. Patchen Barrs, The Erotic Engine: How Pornography Has Powered Mass Communication, from Gutenberg to Google (Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2010).
Chapter 11. USE A Vibrator:
It’s More Than JUST a Sex Toy
9. Hillary Howard, “Vibrators Carry the Conversation,” New York Times, April 21, 2011, E1. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/fashion/21VIBRATORS.html?pagewanted=all. Accessed September 5, 2011.
10. Rachel P. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Maines’s book is an engaging and comprehensive history of the vibrator.
Chapter 12. Fantasize Freely
11. Nancy Friday, My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies (New York: Trident, 1973). Friday went on to write a number of other books in the same vein. My Secret Garden remains in print nearly forty years after it was first published.
12. Bill Herring, “What Is Sexual Sobriety?” July 10, 2009, billherring.info/atlanta_counseling/definition-of-sexual-sobriety. Accessed September 5, 2011. Herring describes sexual fantasy as a “boundary,” which he claims is “like a warning track on a baseball outfield, signaling an imminent collision without a change of course.”
13. Patrick Carnes, “The Ten Types #1—Fantasy Sex,” http://www
.iitap.com/documents/SDI-R%20The%20Ten%20Types%20-%20Long%20Version.pdf. Accessed September 5, 2011. Patrick Carnes, Don’t Call It Love: Recovery from Sexual Addiction (New York: Bantam, 1992), 285–86.
14. Dr. Dale A. Robbins, “About Sex and Marriage,” http://www.victorious.org/sex.htm. Accessed September 5, 2011. Robbins’s perspective is but one example of the prevailing conservative Christian attitude toward fantasy.
15. Kerry Sheldon and Dennis Howitt, “Sexual fantasy in paedophile offenders: Can any model explain satisfactorily new findings from a study of Internet and contact sexual offenders?” Legal and Criminological Psychology, Volume 13, Issue 1, pp. 137–58, February 2008.
16. Brett Kahr, Sex and the Psyche (London: Penguin, 2007), excerpted as “Sexual Fantasies: All in the Mind” in The Times (London), online edition, February 7, 2007, http://women.timesonline
.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article1341377.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1. Accessed September 5, 2011.
Part 3: Beyond Words:
Silent Ways to Create Intimacy
and reverence
Chapter 14. Gaze into Each Other’s Eyes
17. H. A. Sackheim, R. C. Gur, and M. C. Saucy, “Emotions Are Expressed More Intensely on the Left Side of the Face,” Science, October 27, 1978, 202 (4366): 434–36. Abstract: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/202/4366/434.abstract. Accessed September 5, 2011.
Chapter 15. Keep in Touch
18. Dr. Jonn Mumford in Michaels and Johnson, The Essence of Tantric Sexuality, p. 31.
Chapter 18. Bow to Each Other
19. Media Matters for America, “Conservative Media Continue Tired Obsession with Obama’s Supposed ‘Bowing,’” April 13, 2010. http://mediamatters.org/research/201004130016. Accessed September 5, 2011.
20. Bhagavan Das compared bowing to ducking in a class we attended more than a decade ago. The statement has stayed with us.
Part 4: Kissing
Chapter 23. Play with Cupid’s Bow
21. Karen Hart, “Face Reader; Rose Rosetree, 58, Sterling,” The Washington Post, June 18, 2006, M3. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1062128911.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Jun+18%2C+2006&author=Karen+Hart&desc=Face+Reader%3B+Rose+Rosetree%2C+58%2C+Sterling. Accessed September 5, 2011. Full article at http://www.rose-rosetree.com/SundaySource.htm. Accessed September 5, 2011. See also “How to Tell If You Have a High Sex Drive,” http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080403161048AAIpgM8. Accessed September 5, 2011. These items describe some of the beliefs about the philtrum and sex drive that exist in both Western and Asian traditions.
22. Stuart Brody and Rui Miguel Costa, “Vaginal Orgasm Is More Prevalent in Women with a Prominent Tubercle of the Upper Lip,” The Journal of Sexual Medicine, June 15, 2001. Abstract: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02331.x/abstract. Accessed September 5, 2011.
23. Henry C. Lu, Traditional Chinese Medicine: How to Maintain Your Health and Treat Illness (Laguna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publications, 2005), p. 89. Lu describes the role of the philtrum in acupuncture.
Chapter 24. Exchange Essences
24. David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in Its South Asian Contexts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
25. Christiane Northrup, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing, revised edition (New York: Random House, 2010), pp. 233–34. Northrup’s writing on “amrita” reveals how this conflation has reached the mainstream.
Part 5: Awakening the Senses
Chapter 25. Smell
26. Dr. Kevin Kelliher, http://www.sci.uidaho.edu/biosci/labs/kelliher
/research.htm. Accessed September 5, 2011. Scientific understanding of the sense of smell is evolving, and the bright-line distinction between the roles of the main and accessory olfactory systems is no longer accepted.
27. Johan N. Lundström, Julie A. Boyle, Robert J. Zatorre, and Marilyn Jones-Gotman, “The Neuronal Substrates of Human Olfactory Based Kin Recognition,” Human Brain Mapping 30:8, 2571–80, August 2009.
Chapter 26. Taste
28. Molly Birnbaum, Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way (New York: HarperCollins, 2011). Birnbaum’s memoir is a personal account that illuminates the intimate connection between smell and taste. For wine tasting, see Jonah Lerner, “The Subjectivity of Wine,” Scienceblogs, November 2, 2007. http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/11/the_subjectivity_of_wine.php. Accessed September 5, 2011. Lerner describes several such experiments with wine drinkers.
29. We’re grateful to our friend Jonathan Pratt, owner of Umami Café (www.umamicafe.com), for explaining the five tastes to us.
30. http://www.umamiinfo.com/2011/02/the-discovery-of-umami.php. Accessed September 5, 2011. Although umami has been recognized as a taste for more than a millennium in Japan, it was only scientifically accepted as such in the 1980s.
Chapter 27. Sight
31. Richard Restak, The Secret Life of the Brain (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2001) pp. 19–31. Restak provides a good, brief overview of how sight develops in the first year of life and issues that may arise.
32. Turhan Conlee and John D. E. Gabrieli, “Imaging Gender Differences in Sexual Arousal,” Nature Neuroscience 7:4, 325–26 (2004). http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/Homepage/Group/MestonLAB/Publications/brain.pdf. Accessed September 5, 2011. There is much conflicting data on gender and responses to erotica, including with regard to brain function. This is a highly contested area, and the authors of this study that found significant gender differences in reactions to softcore and hardcore material (despite self-reporting to the contrary) pointed to another study that reached the opposite conclusion—that while men reported greater arousal, there were no detectable differences in brain function. The authors also make it clear that the recruitment process for studies of this type calls the results into question.
Chapter 28. Touch
33. Michaels and Johnson, The Essence of Tantric Sexuality, p. 96.
Chapter 29. Hearing
34. Jaideva Singh, trans., The Yoga of Delight, Wonder, and Astonishment: A Translation of the Vijnana-bhairava (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 39.
Part 6: Erotic Trigger Points
Chapter 31. Nape of the Neck
35. “What Does a Kiss on the Neck Mean,” FreeDating411.com, http://www.freedating411.com/kissing/What-Does-A-Kiss-On-The-Neck-Mean.html. Accessed September 5, 2011. The site also ascribes meaning to kisses on other parts of the body, claiming that a kiss on the lips conveys a message of attraction, not desire.
Chapter 40. G-spot
36. “The vulva contains a tube shaped to the penis, which is the swing in which the Love-God resides. Opened with two fingers, it causes the love-juice to flow . . . not far from it (the clitoris) within the vulva is a duct purnachandra (full moon), which is filled with this juice . . .” Alex Comfort, trans., The Koka Shastra and Other Medieval Indian Writings on Love (New York: Stein and Day, 1965), 154. This passage seems to provide instructions on digital stimulation of the G-spot, as a precursor to intercourse. Comfort suggests that the duct is the Bartholin’s duct, but the passage does not evoke lubrication; the location described is not consistent with the location of the Bartholin’s ducts, and the reference to the full moon is suggestive of the larger quantity of fluid associated with ejaculation.
Part 7: Enhancing Oral Sex
37. Annie Auguste, “The History of Fellatio,” Salon, May 22, 2000. http://www.salon.com/sex/feature/2000/05/22/oral_history/print.html. Accessed September 5, 2011. The survey is mentioned in this online interview with Thierry Leguay, a French author, whose book Histoire raisonnée de la fellation (History of Fellatio) has not been translated into English. The article also includes some interesting bits of information on attitudes toward fellatio in different cultures.
38. Adena N. Galinsky and Freya L. Sonenstein, “The Association of Developmental Assets and Sexual Enjoyment Among Emerging Adults,” Journal of Adolescent Health 48:6, 610–15 (June 2011). The study also found that, in men, self-esteem was linked to the enjoyment of giving oral sex.
39. “Question: Is the Usage of Toys Allowed During Sexual Intercourse?” Catholic Writings, http://catholicwriter.wordpress.com/2006/09/13
/question-is-the-usage-of-sex-toys-allowed-during-sexual
-intercourse/. Accessed September 5, 2011.
40. Fr. Stephen F. Torraco, “Is It a Sin for a Married Couple to Have Oral Sex with Each Other?” EWTN, Global Catholic Network, http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=507442&Pg=Forum5&Pgnu=1&recnu. Accessed September 5, 2011.
41. Michaels and Johnson, The Essence of Tantric Sexuality, p. 116.
Part 8: Sex Positions: A Tantric Twist
42. White, Kiss of the Yogini, pp. 8–13. We think White’s arguments about the origins and early history of Tantra are compelling.
43. Dr. Jonn Mumford, Ecstasy Through Tantra (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Worldwide, 3rd. rev. ed., 1988), pp. 47–68 and associated color plates. Dr. Mumford discusses the classical postures, as well as oral and anal sex and khechari mudra.
Chapter 49. Doggy Style
and Some New Tricks
44. Michaels and Johnson, The Essence of Tantric Sexuality, pp. 123–25. The work of Dr. Stuart Meloy was reported on Good Morning America. “Doctor Discovers the ‘Orgasmatron’: Physician Working with Pain Relief Stumbles upon Delightful Side Effect.” Good Morning America, ABC-TV, November 9, 2004. Meloy found that he could induce orgasm in an overwhelming majority of his subjects through electrical stimulation of the sacral nerve.
Part 9: Expanding Orgasmic Response
45. Singh, trans., The Yoga of Delight, pp. 66–67. The Singh translation also includes the commentary.
46. The Yoga Sutras translation is from Mumford, Ecstasy Through Tantra, p. 32.
47. Dr. Jonn Mumford, Sexual Tantra (audio cassette) (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1989).
48. Janniko R. Georgiadas and Gert Holstege, “Human Brain Activation during Sexual Stimulation of the Penis,” The Journal of Comparative Neurology 493: 33–38 (2005). http://keur.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES
/wetenschappers/1/17556/human_2005.pdf. Accessed September 5, 2011.
49. Janniko R. Georgiadas et al., “Regional Cereberal Bloodflow Changes Associated with Clitorally Induced Orgasm in Healthy Women,” European Journal of Neuroscience 24: 3305–16 (2006). Studies conducted at Rutgers University suggest that the left pre-frontal cortex shows increased activity during masturbatory and mentally induced orgasms. The reasons for this disparity are unclear, although the presence or absence of a partner seems like a plausible explanation. See Kayt Sukel, “Sex on the Brain: Orgasms Unlock Altered Consciousness,” New Scientist 2812: 6–7 (May 2011). http://www
.newscientist.com/article/mg21028124.600-sex-on-the-brain
-orgasms-unlock-altered-consciousness.html?full=true. Accessed September 5, 2011. Sukel observes that “[d]espite orgasm being a near-universal human experience, we still don’t know that much about it.” We should learn a great deal more over the next few years. Nan Wise, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University and a member of the team that is on the cutting edge of this research commented: “The exploration of these discrepancies will be the focus of my dissertation work. The biggest difference between the studies is the methodology used: PET (Georgiadas et al.) versus fMRI (Komisaruk et al.). FMRI is by far a superior method when it comes to both spatial and temporal resolution of brain activity. Another important point is that Georgiadas et al. (2006) did not find significant activations of the hypothalamus, striatum, or brainstem, areas which were shown to be activated by Komisaruk et al. (2002, 2010) during orgasm, and would be expected to play an integral role in orgasm and other rewarding behaviors based on previous studies. I will use fMRI and have three different conditions of orgasm for my dissertation study: self-stimulation (masturbation), partner stimulation (partner), and imagery stimulation (without touch) to compare and contrast with special attention to the frontal regions.” Nan Jacobson Wise, email message to authors, September 6, 2011.
Chapter 50. Simply Give and Receive
50. Shaoni Bhattacharya, “Frequent Ejaculation May Protect Against Cancer,” New Scientist (April 6, 2004). http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4861-frequent-ejaculation-may-protect-against-cancer.html. Accessed September 5, 2011. The study itself was published in Journal of the American Medical Association 291:1578 (2004).
51. Barbara Carrellas, Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts, 2007), pp. 165–200.
52. Joseph Kramer Productions, Fire on the Mountain: An Intimate Guide to Male Genital Massage DVD (2006). Erospirit Productions, Fire in the Valley: An Intimate Guide to Female Genital Massage DVD (2004).
53. Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson, Tantra for Erotic Empowerment: The Key to Enriching Your Sexual Life (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2008), pp. 151–62. Michaels and Johnson, The Essence of Tantric Sexuality, pp. 145–61.
54. The Alexander Institute, Tantric Sexual Massage for Lovers DVD (2008).
Chapter 52. Anal Sex
for Energy Activation
55. Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1971). Kundalini is one of the seminal works on the purported dangers (which are also mentioned in some of the classical texts) of the Kundalini experience. Krishna’s writing had a significant impact on Western thinking about the subject.
56. Tristan Taormino, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women (Berkeley, CA: Cleis Press, 2nd ed., 2006). Tristan Taormino, The Anal Sex Position Guide: The Best Positions for Easy, Exciting, Mind-Blowing Pleasure (Beverly, MA: Quiver, 2009). Jack Morin, PhD, Anal Pleasure and Health: A Guide for Men, Women and Couples (San Francisco: Down There Press, 4th rev. ed., 2010).
Chapter 53. Break your patterns
to discover new sensations
57. Nina Hartley and I. S. Levine, Nina Hartley’s Guide to Total Sex (New York: Penguin, 2006), pp. 132–33. In the book, Hartley describes this form of sexual response by saying that she and some other women “ . . . come once, hard, but it’s not easy to get there . . . ” She has used the exact phrase “hard come” in lectures we’ve attended.