I know it's Hollywood. I know I write about sex truths. I know sexual activities shouldn't be on a hierarchy. Pleasure is pleasure. But still...

I have always deep down wanted to have an orgasm while 'having sex with my male partner' (aka 'P' right in da 'V')

Juliet Allen is a tantric coach, with a workshop coming up in Melbourne. So I asked her last week (in retrospect, naively) how tantra could help me orgasm. This is like asking a yogi how to win at yoga. She explained kindly :

"Tantra isn't so much about orgasm, it's more about connecting at our sex centre, our heart centre, and our consciousness. When we can connect with our partner at all three centers, we experience deep ecstatic connection that leads to orgasmic states that last for hours. 

In Tantra, orgasm isn't thought of as a 'peak' experience. Instead we encourage that people cycle the orgasmic sexual energy through their entire body and use that energy in everyday life."


An orgasmic state for hours and spills into my everyday life?

Well then, I have done away with my peek-orgasm goal-oriented mindset. Sign me up. Let the neighbors marvel at how I energetically take out the bins.


** disclaimer : in retrospect, my sneaky and not very tantric goal was in fact to see if I can reach a sort of orgasm while having penetrative sex with my partner. Yes, it's society telling me that I want it, but still can't help chase that Hollywood climax damnit **

This is how I tried to Tantra for the first time...

After a boozy Easter brunch spree we returned home (aka - our sexperiment den). We were slightly on the tipsy side and amidst snogging decided to try the three techniques from Passionfruit's first post on Monday.

Grounding Hug

We were standing when we decided this so jumped straight in at exercise three with grounded hugging (that one where you're a tree). I think I put on a bit of a 'taaaantraaaa' voice and slowly explained to my partner like a relaxation recipe to stand comfortably, breathe deeply from the root of his spine and I was going to imagine I was a tree (I also kept telling him to take it seriously but really I was talking to myself). 

We first ran into problems at step one. What is stand comfortably? Have you ever tried to stand comfortably? You suddenly become so aware of how weird standing is and when you try to do it comfortably you immediately want to lie down. The 'Urban Tantra' book elaborates and tells you to soften at the knees with your feet hip distance apart, so I asked my partner to do that. The deep breathing was nice and made time slow down, but I could feel my partners whole body tense, his focus directed to having the softest of soft knees. We switched over. He visualised being a tree, rooting his legs into the earth. I felt his knees get heavy. Then I felt us sinking. We were two trees in quick sand. We buckled forward. We fell.

Eye Gazing

We decided we might be better suited to sitting. We chose eye gazing. We lit candles and incense first to show we were taking our tantra seriously and sat opposite each other. Without laughing (eventually, I nervously laughed three times before we could start), we softly gazed into each others eyes. Softly... 

So there's the softly problem again. Doing this for the first time there is so much you can't help but consider. If I look at him softly, will my eyes slowly glaze over? What should I be thinking about while we're doing this? Probably not thinking... but it's too late because I'm already thinking! 

Luckily he broke the over-thinking spell a few seconds in :

"Darling... my eyes are going cross eyed... I think we might be a bit drunk"

This was a rational point. We were pretty darn tipsy. And tantra was new and probably not conducive with alcohol. Lesson learnt, do not operate heavy machinery or hug like a tree under the influence. So after this realisation we laughed. And that led to sex.

'Non-tantric' Sex

While we were back to the sex we were used to, I remembered a phrase by Diana Richardson that stood out from my research, "relaxing into the sex energy rather than putting pressure on it." I kept that in mind while we were at it. I noticed how when penetrative sex began my instant thought was to get both him and myself to orgasm. This had always been a silent thought in the background, I hadn't noticed it there before, but it definitely was changing my sexual behaviour. I was way more on the grinding, performance, and speeding up side, damn it - there was pressure there! I know I was enjoying it and I always did, but for once I decided to slow down and imagine we weren't doing this just as a race towards an end. 

Before you ask - no I didn't magically orgasm everywhere from this one mindset shift, but I did feel way more pleasure and notice the way my whole body felt during the penetrative act (I feel like a weird sex priest saying that but linguistics that don't sound medical or cult-like still fail me around this stuff). 

So lessons learnt or the TLDR is this :

Don't tantra drunk, and notice when you're trying to get 'somewhere' rather than enjoying where you are.

 

Image: Robert Mapplethorp