In American society, approaching sex mindfully is a radical act. Sex pervades our media, most often for marketing purposes; the Internet has given people access to greater quantities and ever-widening varieties of explicit sexual material. At the same time, our culture remains profoundly sex-negative––purity balls, abstinence-only education, and slut shaming are still commonplace—and a large segment of the population is against providing easy access to contraceptives or even opposes the use of birth control entirely.
Neither the overexposure to sexual material, whether for marketing or titillation, nor the censorious, sex-negative attitude that treats women who enjoy their sexuality as sluts and idealizes sexual “purity,” is conducive to developing a mindful approach to sex. The former often leads to checking out and numbness. The latter partakes of a way of thinking that at once presumes sex is a natural function that we should be able to engage in without instruction (and perhaps without too much enjoyment) and also stigmatizes sexual pleasure and sexual self-awareness.
If women are often shamed for using birth control or openly embracing their sexuality, men are often subjected to a standard of masculinity or hypermasculinity that discourages consciousness around sexual activity. This has been a concern among twenty-something women we’ve met while traveling and lecturing on Tantra, relationships, and sexuality. One told us that she would have loved to share our book Partners in Passion with her fiancé but that doing so would have been received as an insult. Thinking that real men know how to satisfy women instinctively and that asking how to please a partner is somehow unmanly harms everyone involved.
We won’t presume to argue that sexual mindlessness is the root of all social evil, but it’s clear that the cultural pressure to be sexually unconscious has damaging effects. The moral panic over what’s characterized as “the epidemic of porn addiction,” the debate over consent on college campuses and elsewhere, and the association between risky sexual behavior and alcohol consumption are all symptoms that might be mitigated (if not eliminated) by a shift toward mindfulness in the sexual realm. At minimum, bringing more awareness to your own sexuality is likely to make you freer, bring you more pleasure, and help you feel more at home in your body and in the world.
Virtually everyone imbibes these wildly contradictory ideas about sexuality, beginning in childhood. Freeing oneself from them may take some effort, but bringing a more mindful approach to your sexuality and your erotic encounters will be beneficial. If you use one or more of the tools in this chapter, you should discover new pathways to pleasure. You may even find that becoming more erotically energized has unexpected positive effects in other areas of your life.
Tantra and the Inner Marriage of Masculine and Feminine
Our background is in Tantra, a tradition that has gotten a great deal of media hype over the last two decades but remains poorly understood. Our teacher, Dr. Jonn Mumford, defines Tantra as a “tool for expansion.” We often say that Tantra is “an ancient Indian tradition that recognizes sexual energy as a source of personal and spiritual empowerment.” In this context, sexual energy doesn’t mean sexual activity (although it can). The core principle is that the more fully you can recognize, embrace, and work with your sexual energy, the more fulfilled you will be as a human being. To return to our teacher’s definition, what you’re expanding is your consciousness, and your tool is your physical body. From this perspective, any sexual encounter, and indeed any experience at all, can be an opportunity to expand yourself––if you approach it with the right mindset.
Tantra is often misrepresented as sexual yoga, sexual athleticism, sexual healing, or couples’ therapy. It can be perceived as being too exotic, silly, or esoteric to be of interest or value for ordinary people. This is unfortunate because developing a Tantric approach to living can be beneficial regardless of your belief system. In fact, many of the techniques that are included under the “mindfulness” umbrella quite likely had their origins in Tantra, a tradition that influenced Hinduism and many branches of Buddhism, including the Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese forms. Our mission here is to examine the core principles within a tradition that emerged in a very different time and in a very different culture and to find ways to apply them in a twenty-first-century American context.
In Tantric cosmology, the universe is perceived as an ongoing process of sexual union between the masculine principle Shiva and the feminine Shakti, and the classical sex ritual is a microcosmic reenactment of this macrocosmic concept. In the ritual, participants were typically cisgender (those for whom there’s a match among the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identities) and heterosexual, but the concepts can be useful for people of all genders and orientations. In Hindu Tantra, Shiva is inert consciousness and Shakti is energy. It is said that Shiva is shava (a corpse) without Shakti; this is reflected in Tantric imagery that shows a goddess (often Kali) having intercourse with a supine Shiva. The underlying concept is that energy without consciousness can be diffuse or destructive––think of manic states or being in a rage. Inert consciousness just sits there…
Thus, Shiva and Shakti are unrelated to cultural concepts about gender, gender roles, or one’s anatomy. The underlying belief in Tantra is that everyone contains both Shiva and Shakti and that balancing these elements, creating an “inner marriage” between them, is central to leading a balanced life. These ideas exist in other traditions as well, and we find them to be useful as metaphors, as tools for deepening self-knowledge.
We’d like to take this a step further and suggest that the inner marriage is not so much the union of opposites as it is the development of an ability to move along a spectrum from passive and reflective to active and energetic, from being profoundly in touch with and in control of your body and its responses to surrendering completely to the erotic experience. It also means being focused on and acutely aware of your own mental state and emotions while also being able to tune into those of your partner(s) and to move fairly freely along the entire spectrum of interiority and exteriority.
Doing this requires a deep level of self-awareness. To the extent that there’s such a thing as sexual mastery, it has little to do with techniques, ejaculatory control, or the “Singapore grip” (the ability to bring a partner to orgasm by pulsing the vaginal muscles). Instead, sexual mastery involves doing two apparently inconsistent things at once––maintaining focus and giving oneself over with abandon. This is a mental skill that can be developed and refined.
Witness Consciousness
The first, and in some ways most difficult, step is to cultivate what is called witness consciousness. Witness consciousness is the capacity to observe one’s experiences without judging them. Try paying attention not only to what you feel during sex, whether partnered or solo, but also what happens whenever you feel aroused or have a fantasy. In addition to paying attention, keeping a journal is one of the most effective ways to hone your observational skills.
Exercise: Keep an Erotic Diary
Keep a notebook next to your bed and record your dreams for a minimum of two weeks, focusing specifically on any erotic content. Also chronicle daytime events or thoughts that precede or accompany any feelings of arousal. This can help bring your attention to the current state of your unconscious and your current sexuality. Don’t analyze or judge what you observe, but do your best to note any patterns or themes. If you can openly and honestly recognize your erotic triggers, you can work with them as a way to become more sexually self-aware.
Another way to think about witness consciousness is to draw on the idea that you are experimenter, experiment, and laboratory. The experiment can be anything you’re doing. The laboratory is your mind-body complex, and the experimenter is the witness, the scientist whose job is to collect data. Generally speaking, data collection and interpretation are distinct processes that aren’t done simultaneously. The same principle applies to self-observation because as soon as you start trying to “understand” what’s happening or attach meaning to it, you’re no longer in the experience; you’re in story-telling mode. It’s normal and human to want to attach stories to whatever happens to us, but there’s more value in gathering the data first and attaching the meaning later. In our years of teaching, this concept has often been one of the most difficult to get across, so strong is the urge to interpret.
We have one very important caveat regarding witness consciousness. In certain respects, it resembles dissociation––the partial or total standing apart from an experience. Dissociation is often a by-product of abuse or other trauma, and in its severe forms it is recognized as a mental illness. Dissociation is not typically voluntary; it’s a reflexive coping mechanism. By contrast, witness consciousness is something that you can choose to employ; it’s a way to become more self-aware. If you have any problems with dissociation, especially if those issues are related to sexual abuse, we strongly encourage you to seek professional help before trying to use witness consciousness as a tool, particularly in a sexual context. While it’s true that becoming aware of sensation and focusing on it moment to moment can be helpful in bringing people back into their bodies, enabling them to reclaim their sexuality, this reintegration has to be undertaken carefully, usually under the guidance of a trained sex therapist.
Awareness
Among spiritual seekers there’s a fairly common belief that total awareness, a kind of omniscience, is an earmark of the enlightened state. But, in fact, total awareness would be unbearable for any of us, even for a few minutes. Imagine being aware of everything that’s going around you and inside you––the noise from the street, the wind, the buzzing of the electric lights, the feeling of your clothing on your skin, your digestion, and on and on. We need our filters; we need the ability to tune out, just as much as we need the ability to tune in.
As we see it, the central purpose of doing Tantric practices is to become facile with your awareness—in other words, to develop the ability to regulate your attention at will. Perhaps the greatest meditation manual ever written, the Vijnanabhairava Tantra (a seventh- or eighth-century Kashmiri text), describes a vast array of techniques for doing so, and we recommend it highly for anyone with an interest in developing a more mindful approach to living.
Technique 1: Eye Gazing
One of the most basic techniques is known as tratak, which means “to gaze without blinking.” The purpose of tratak is to develop one-pointed concentration; it is often done on a candle flame. According to the Vijnanabhairava, “Having fixed his gaze without blinking on a gross object (and having directed all his attention inward), and thus making his mind free of all prop of thought-constructs, the aspirant acquires the state of Shiva without delay.”50 Eye gazing—looking into another’s eyes in silence, a practice we describe in detail in Great Sex Made Simple—is also a form of tratak.51 It differs insofar as the object of focus is another person, so it’s a more layered experience, involving emotional and energetic exchange, even though the intellect is not engaged.
This technique may be challenging for some, or it may feel silly, or it may seem almost ridiculously simple, but over our many years of teaching, we’ve watched eye gazing at work in public and private settings, and the benefits are palpable. Couples sometimes arrive at our classes in obvious disharmony, due to being late or having experienced some other disruption. Almost without fail, people will be in each other’s arms after just a few minutes of eye gazing. (There may even be a few bursts of laughter or giggling.)
Technique 2: Meditating on Sound
Another technique from the Vijnananbhairava may seem at first glance to be unrelated to sex. It involves meditating on sound: “If one listens with undivided attention to sounds of stringed and other musical instruments which, on account of their (uninterrupted) succession are prolonged, he will, at the end, be absorbed in the ether of consciousness…”52 If you’ve ever heard tingshas (Tibetan cymbals), you’ll likely recognize that their sustained chime has a similar quality. It’s even possible to use mechanical sounds, such as passing cars or planes, in a similar way.
The basic practice involves listening intently to the prolonged and gradually fading sound, staying with it until it disappears and then withdrawing the consciousness as fully as is possible, snapping it back, in a sense, and mentally blocking out all external sounds and stimuli. Becoming adept at this technique is a way of playing with your awareness and becoming familiar with a very broad range of states––from fully exterior to fully withdrawn. As with the concept of Shiva and Shakti, this is about developing the ability to move along a spectrum of awareness.
And what is great sex anyway? We’d suggest that one of the keys to having it lies in developing this facility with your awareness, which is far more important than knowing all the right moves and positions. Being a skilled lover entails being both acutely aware of your own state and also being attuned to your partner’s. Sometimes it’s good to simultaneously have awareness of both, sometimes you really need to turn inward, and sometimes you will want to focus on your partner with one-pointed concentration. Becoming skilled in choosing how to direct your awareness and recognizing the appropriate times to shift your focus will make your sexual encounters more intense and more fulfilling. It may seem paradoxical, but developing and refining this exquisite self-control is actually the key to giving yourself over, to surrendering, to making love with abandon.
Our good friend and colleague Arabella Champaq describes her approach to balancing self-control and surrender and how this process has transformed her sexual experiences:
One of the principles of Tantra I have explored in my sexual intimate encounters is the principle of the inner marriage of Shiva (consciousness) and Shakti (energy).
I bring my full attention toward the Lover––my initial experience of that inner marriage. This is sometimes called mindfulness, sometimes called presence. In this attentive space, I turn my breath toward the Lover while they turn their breath toward me.
But not me. Not the Lover. Soon in this exchange of breath, attention, and energy, there comes a place of merging. Of emergence. This place is the beginning of the engagement of Shiva and Shakti. Edges, the distinction of I and Thou, are blurred, one breath no longer independent of the other; the experience is of being breathed, not by the Lover but by breath itself.
Energy follows the breath, is carried by the breath. The energy flowing through the channels in my body into the Lover’s body, until the edges become indistinct.
I invite the energy to be pleasure and the pleasure to move from my body to the Lover’s. This requires my exquisite attention, as well as the balancing relaxation of my need to control the experience.
Part of me is determined to get it right and is limited to the awareness of what has been right before. When I attempt to re-create what has been right before, my experience of the moment is limited. Even the presence, the attention, the mindfulness can become a cage against what is possible. This is an apparent paradox. In fact, if we set up the stage (presence, breath, pleasure) and then get out of the way, the inner marriage is realized. The best sex of our lives, every single time.
Strive to Be Here Now—Most of the Time
You may be familiar with the Buddhist dictum that “the path is the goal” or its Tantric and yogic equivalent, “be here now.” As commonplace as these sayings have become in American society, they reflect an approach to living that is basically in opposition to the way people are raised and conditioned to be in the world. Our society is driven by very materialistic beliefs about success and failure. We’re expected to plan our work, to work our plan, to build our careers, to put money aside for retirement. We’re likely to think of ourselves as “failures” if we don’t achieve the goals we’ve set for ourselves.
We also live in a society in which looking backward is valorized––something that’s reflected in the popularity of memoir as a genre and in much psychotherapy, which seeks to understand present behavior through the lens of past experiences, especially childhood experiences. By contrast, there’s an old Buddhist story about two celibate monks who encountered a prostitute near a flooded stream crossing. She asked them to help her across. One monk immediately took her on his back and carried her to safety. She thanked him and went on her way. The monks continued their journey in silence, with the one who did not lend a hand brooding over what had transpired. Finally, he spoke up and said, “Brother, our vows preclude us from having contact with any woman, let alone one like that. Why did you carry her across?” The first monk replied, “I put her down by the stream, but you’ve been carrying her all this time.”
Thus, some of the fundamental characteristics of contemporary America are directly at odds with philosophies that see the future as unknowable and the past as having no more reality than a dream. Of course, these ideas have probably never applied to all aspects of life in any culture. Tantric and yogic texts, for example, include many references to various forms of magical practice designed to influence future outcomes, and even within the context of monasticism, reference is frequently made to ancestral teachers and teachings. The very concept of karma depends on the recognition that past events and actions continue to reverberate in the present.
There is great value in thinking about both past and future. The level of historical ignorance in twenty-first-century America is shocking and potentially dangerous, and contemporary society is, if anything, insufficiently concerned about the future. People in many other cultures view their time on earth as limited and are taught to consider their responsibilities to future generations. Today everyone on the planet would be wise to give far more consideration to the future.
But in individual terms, it’s fairly safe to say that people have difficulty freeing themselves from ruminating on the past or fantasizing about the future and that individuals are conditioned to be focused on everything other than what’s happening in the moment. This conditioning often has profoundly negative effects in the realm of sex, where developing the capacity to be present is so central.
Avoid Making Orgasm a Goal
Let’s talk about orgasm in this context. For cisgender males, there’s typically a very visceral and visible series of associations around sex, from arousal to orgasm. There’s erection, which is equated with being aroused; there’s a buildup; there’s the point of orgasmic inevitability (or no return), and there’s ejaculation, which is typically deemed to be synonymous with orgasm. This is true even though ejaculation can occur with few or no orgasmic sensations and orgasms can happen without ejaculation and even without erection. In many instances, boys discover this series of associations in early adolescence and fall into a pattern of masturbating to ejaculatory orgasm as quickly as possible to avoid being caught at it.
We have little use for essentialism and think of gender as a spectrum, not a binary. Still, we recognize that the situation for cisgender females is more complicated for both cultural and biological reasons. Where boys have readily apparent and obvious indicators of arousal and orgasm, girls in general do not. In many parts of the United States, female masturbation and sexual self-knowledge remain taboo. There’s still a widespread belief that the ideal (or perhaps only real) orgasm is experienced during penetrative sex. In addition, most of the available research indicates that female orgasmic response is more varied than male, involving a number of different neural pathways. All of these factors play a role in creating conditions in which “fewer than a third of women consistently have orgasms with sexual activity”53 and an estimated 10 percent of women are anorgasmic.54
These cultural and biological factors help create a climate in which having an orgasm is treated as the goal in virtually every encounter. This idea is reflected in our everyday language. An orgasm is the Big O, the climax, a completion, a happy ending; it is something that must be reached or, even worse, achieved. Make no mistake, orgasms are great; they feel good, and they’re good for you. There’s nothing wrong with being orgasm-focused from time to time. The problem lies in the fact that when you’re focused on achieving something, when you have an objective in mind, it’s much harder to pay attention to what’s happening in the moment. And for some, this goal orientation can actually interfere with the “achievement” of the desired result.
It’s far better to relax and enjoy the journey. The Tantric approach to sex takes this idea to what some might consider an extreme, where orgasm is de-emphasized (and male ejaculatory orgasms are discouraged in some schools) and building and prolonging arousal are central. The primary reason for this approach is to produce an alteration of consciousness, something that many people experience in the orgasmic state. By prolonging arousal, we are creating the conditions for this alteration of consciousness to begin during the excitement phase and to persist through orgasm and into resolution and beyond.
Sensate Focus: A Mindfulness Technique
The tendency to focus on orgasm at the expense of the rest of the sexual experience is so deeply ingrained that it can be difficult to break out of the habit. Working with witness consciousness is the key. Western sexologists and therapists have been aware of this since the era of Masters and Johnson, although they frame the process somewhat differently, emphasizing what they call “sensate focus” for people dealing with various types of sexual dysfunction. Sensate focus is, essentially, a mindfulness technique, and it’s one worth exploring even if you’re satisfied with your sex life. It’s typically done in a partnered context, but you can also explore it as a solo practice, imagining that you are, in turn, the person touching and the person being touched.
Exercise: Basic Sensate Focus
Sensate focus was popularized by pioneering sexologists William Masters and Virginia Johnson as a method to address people’s inability to relax during sex. Many sexual problems or dysfunctions are related to loss of focus, becoming overwhelmed by the need to perform, or anxiety about what a partner may be thinking. Sensate focus is a way to become present in the experience, and it can help people move beyond distraction and anxiety.
During basic sensate focus, each partner takes a turn touching the other while concentrating on what is interesting in the experience of caressing, and without thinking about trying to please or create arousal. Set aside time, limit distractions, touch with or without clothes. Do not treat these sessions as foreplay, and avoid any overtly sexual contact.
This practice helps to cultivate a sense of curiosity during intimacy and can also guide you to having an embodied understanding of agenda-free touch. At the same time, it is important for the person receiving to give feedback and set boundaries. As long as you stay within the bounds of your partner’s wishes, then you can freely touch in ways that pique your interest.
Imagination, Fantasy, and Mindful Sex
The most recent scientific research suggests that orgasm begins in the brain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals that when people think about having orgasms, the same brain regions light up as when they are actually having them. Our brains are incredibly malleable, and it’s even possible for people with spinal injuries to train themselves to have orgasms when parts of the body that still have sensation are stimulated.55 Similarly, some women have trained themselves to orgasm when performing oral sex. At the opposite end of the spectrum are some women who believe themselves to be anorgasmic but who are, in fact, not recognizing their orgasms for what they are (perhaps because they’re looking for that Big O, bombs bursting, dams breaking, fireworks going off) and some men who are locked into the idea that ejaculation and orgasm cannot be separated.
Thus, mindful sex can also encompass an imaginative component. We don’t advocate faking orgasm to please a partner or to bring a sex act to a close; however, the act of imagining that you’re having an orgasm from having your toe sucked (or that you’re having one in your heart or your thumb) can be the key to expanding your capacity for sexual pleasure. The act of imagining can begin to forge new neural pathways and instill you with the knowledge that orgasm is more than a genital phenomenon. Beyond that, merely recognizing that such things are possible is the first step toward making them attainable.
There’s another dimension to the imaginative component of mindful sex. Some people argue against using fantasy during an encounter with another person because it’s escapist, disconnected, a way of not being present. This can be true in some cases, especially if you feel compelled to keep the fantasy to yourself or become dependent on fantasizing about someone other than your partner while in the act. Nevertheless, the intentional use of fantasy can actually help you become more present. As we’ve observed, anxiety and distraction are two of the most important contributors to sexual dysfunction and can affect and even preclude becoming aroused, let alone reaching orgasm. Consciously and intentionally creating a fantasy scenario––whether mild, wild, silly, kinky, or an utter cliché––and playing it out can serve to get you out of your head and into your body.
If you dive fully into the fantasy or play the role with conviction, the chances that anxiety or intrusive thoughts will interfere may decrease, and if you can maintain witness consciousness, you won’t have to worry about whether you’re “checking out.” If you’ve ever done any acting, you should recognize how playing a role produces a highly focused state. You may also see some parallels between certain method-acting and mindfulness techniques. This makes sense because good acting requires immersion in the role and the ability to be present, listen to the lines, and respond to them naturally. It’s also worth pointing out that there’s a performative aspect to role-play, even though the audience is small. If you haven’t acted, think back to childhood and remember how immersed you could become in playing a role. In this sense, role-play is similar to repeating a mantra to quiet the mind and go into a meditative state. This approach may not be for everyone, but if you fantasize, do so freely, fully, and use it as a tool for becoming more present. Above all, be playful about it!
Michelle H. enjoys fantasy and role-play as a tool for enriching her erotic experiences and for bringing herself more fully into her encounters. She had this to say about fantasy:
Using fantasy/role-play during sex is just an added dimension of discovery for me. If I’m with a long-term partner, the one thing I can literally never be again for them is “new,” but with role-play as a part of our repertoire, we can reimagine who we are and what we know or don’t know about this imagined scenario or couple.
Conversely, if I’m in a casual relationship with someone but not in love (which tends to be the default context for most sex), role-play helps me to contextualize our sex in some alternate way that isn’t predicated on being in love and the pressure inherent in feeling that way or not feeling that way. Role-play allows me to be more true to my actual feelings about a partner because I don’t have to inflate or invent any feelings that aren’t really there.
It also reduces a lot of anxiety about floating new ideas in the bedroom, since you can just “be” your character. It’s like improv comedy in that you sort of just work with whatever’s there and don’t take it too seriously.
Mindful Exploration of Your Sexual Identity and Inner Taboos
Ours is a very strange society. We have unprecedented access to explicit sexual material and information about sexuality. The Internet enables us to research virtually any form of human sexual expression and to find a community of people who share that interest. At the same time, sexual words are still widely used as insults. Children are still taught that pregnancy and disease are punishments for engaging in sexual activity, and we as a culture worry a great deal about shielding our kids from being exposed to sexual material even as we are relatively unconcerned about their seeing gruesome and violent scenes. This attitude may be more prevalent in more conservative parts of the United States, but it is not limited to them. We live just outside New York City, and not long ago our gym removed a flyer for a local book-launch party because parents complained that the word “sex” appeared on it and they might have to answer questions from their children. Being open about sexuality in twenty-first-century America remains taboo.
We suspect that just about every person has at least one or two unconventional tastes or fantasies. If conventional sex is still taboo, unconventional sexuality is often treated as freakish or worse. This is true even though the therapeutic community has become more accepting of alternative expressions––from nonmonogamy to homo- and bisexuality to kink. This cultural climate affects us all no matter how open-minded or free we might think we are. Thus, it’s safe to say that most of us have some measure of guilt and shame around our sexuality, especially those desires or acts that are not considered normal by others or that we may deem to be “abnormal” ourselves.
A mindful approach to sex is not limited to being mindful during sexual activity; it also involves becoming self-aware as a sexual being and conscious of your interests, desires, fantasies, and proclivities. This requires courage and a willingness to explore and ultimately to violate deeply held cultural taboos, at minimum the taboos against sexual self-knowledge and thinking about sexual expression as something intrinsically good or intrinsically spiritual.
One of the core components of Tantric practice is transgression. This aspect is often overlooked in popular Western renditions of the tradition, and it may not be fully appreciated by more conservative practitioners of Buddhist or Hindu Tantra. But we think it is central and that it can be valuable to apply in a contemporary American context, regardless of your belief system. While some claim that Tantra is several thousand years old, we think the argument that Tantra emerged in the early common era is more compelling, and while the early practitioners drew on concepts that were far older, it was in part a movement that resisted—indeed, deliberately violated—the prevailing social norms. Tantric rituals of all kinds were conducted in cremation grounds, places of both power and impurity. The renowned sexual ritual or maithuna involved the consumption of meat, fish, alcohol, a type of grain that was considered forbidden, and sexual intercourse in a ritual setting, with others present and sometimes across caste lines.
It appears that these early Tantric practitioners were focused on obtaining power, and that the power was transmitted from women to men through the sexual ritual and the consumption of combined sexual fluids. Over the next few hundred years Tantric ideas and practices were absorbed into more conventional Hindu and Buddhist contexts, and the emphasis on acquiring powers diminished. The focus shifted toward spirituality. Nonetheless, these transgressive aspects persisted.56
What’s the purpose of violating taboos? First, doing so can create a shock to the system, wherein we discover that something we’ve always feared or condemned suddenly loses its grip on us. If we’ve always believed that we would be punished for doing something, and nothing bad happens as a result, we will be released from this limiting belief. On a more subtle level, it can help free us from conventional thinking and preconceptions that we have about ourselves. In other words, breaking taboos can help us become more fully human, provided the transgressive behavior is undertaken with awareness and for the purpose of learning and growth.
Contemporary American society is nothing like India two millennia ago, and it’s not much like Indian society today. For the most part, it’s pretty easy to find a bar where you can have a few drinks, eat a hamburger, and perhaps meet someone who’s up for having a one-night stand. Having sex in a cemetery might get you arrested for public indecency, but few of us believe that cemeteries are impure places where powerful and menacing spirits prowl. Classical Tantric transgressive behavior simply doesn’t carry the same psychological weight in twenty-first-
century America; however, breaking your own taboos can still be immensely valuable, especially when it comes to sexuality.
It’s very easy to become attached to a specific identity around sexuality. Orientation is perhaps the most obvious example; bisexuality is still questioned by some who believe that people are either gay or straight. The truth is that orientation is considerably more fluid and complex, and interacting with a gender you’re not attracted to can be a very interesting form of taboo- breaking and experimentation. Sexual identity involves more than orientation; it includes many other ideas about ourselves and what we like and what we don’t. These ideas are often based on preconceptions rather than experience.
Mindful exploration of one’s sexual identity and inner taboos coupled with a gentle pushing of one’s boundaries is a way to become more integrated and in touch with your sexuality. Intentional experimentation may lead you to realize, for example, “No, I really don’t like being spanked,” but it might also lead you to discover that spanking someone else turns you on. This is an ongoing process because no one’s sexuality is static. What was smoking hot for you at eighteen may leave you nearly indifferent at thirty-five. By the same token, you may discover that something you thought of as icky when you were forty is sexy when you’re sixty. If you don’t allow yourself the opportunity to explore, you’ll never know.
Note that we are not advocating doing things to shock others or going to extremes. We’re asking you to find your limits and push them gently. Mindfulness in this context also entails being aware of and sticking to safer-sex protocols, keeping your welfare and that of others in mind, and being sure that you’re engaging in behavior that’s enthusiastically consensual. There are some risks involved in pushing boundaries, so it’s important to be clear, careful, and ethical when you do so. And as always, it’s crucial to maintain the ability to observe yourself and how you respond.
To close out this chapter, we want to reiterate that bringing mindfulness to sex can be immensely rewarding regardless of your belief system. Our references to Tantra should not be understood as suggesting that you subscribe to any particular worldview or follow any teacher or set of teachings; however, we think that many aspects of the Tantric approach have value for people who have been conditioned to think of sex as something “filthy” and shameful (we all have, at least to some degree). Practitioners of various forms of “sacred sexuality” often speak of the need to reunite sex and spirit. The truth is that fertility rites are perhaps the most ancient form of human religious expression, so at the deepest level of human consciousness, there is no dichotomy between sex and spirit. Approaching sex with awareness and intention—and a healthy dose of humor—enables us to become more fully ourselves; when we’re comfortable in our sexuality, we are far better able to share our light with the world.
Adrian Buckmaster
a devoted married couple, have been teaching and writing together since 1999. Internationally known and widely quoted as experts, Michaels and Johnson are the authors of Designer Relationships and Partners in Passion (Cleis Press), as well as Great Sex Made Simple, Tantra for Erotic Empowerment, and The Essence of Tantric Sexuality (Llewellyn). They are also the creators of the meditation CD set Ananda Nidra: Blissful Sleep (Llewellyn) and co-founders of Pleasure Salon in 2007 to support New York’s sex- and pleasure-positive community. Visit www.MichaelsandJohnson.com.
[Contents]
50. Jaideva Singh, ed., The Yoga of Delight, Wonder, and Astonishment: A Translation of the Vijnana-bhairava (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 75.
51. Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson, Great Sex Made Simple: Tantric Tips to Deepen Intimacy and Heighten Pleasure (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2012), 52–54.
52. Singh, 39.
53. MayoClinic.com Health Library, “Anorgasmia in Women,” http://riversideonline.com/health_reference/Womens-Health/DS01051.cfm.
54. “Female Orgasm: Myths and Facts,” http://sogc.org/publications/female-orgasms-myths-and-facts/.
55. Sara C. Nelson, “Rafe Biggs, Quadriplegic Learns to Orgasm Through His Thumb,” Huffpost Lifestyle, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/22/rafe-biggs-quadriplegic-orgasm-thumb-pictures_n_3130545.html.
56. David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in Its South Asian Contexts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). We think White’s argument about the historical origins of Tantra is compelling..