June 12, 2013

The Breath of Life


After last week's scare, I was grateful to be able to head off with Tom to celebrate our 25th anniversary with a weekend workshop at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY.  I have been drooling over their body, mind, and spirit course offerings for many years.

The course we took was essentially about love, intimacy, and tantra sex.

I don't think it was a coincidence that Tom's anaphylactic shock episode and this workshop came together within 3 days of each other.

Tantra originated in medieval India.

I first heard of tantra or tantric sex several years ago when HBO featured it on their show Real Sex.  While watching it I thought, "Wow. This really takes sex and intimacy (and energy) to whole new level." The show piqued my interest and I never forgot about it.

You might be wondering if last weekend was one big orgy. It was not. In fact it didn't involve anything too strange, although it did put me outside my comfort zone at times.

Which is good.

The workshop was basically about breathing, and creating an energy flow, in part by squeezing the PC muscle, and bearing down with the stomach muscles.

Tantra is about channeling sexual energy, that normally leaves during orgasm, back into the body.

Kind of like recycling :-)

When we focus on the "grand finale" we miss an amazing range of pleasure. So instead of having a relatively quick genital orgasm what happens is that you are able to have a full body orgasm that goes on and on.

I kid you not.

And the beauty of it is that you don't need to have a partner to garner this energy and pleasure.

I will say no more but to add that I highly recommend taking a tantra class. What a great way to usher in the second half of life, create greater intimacy, and deepen pleasure.

Dr. Christianne Northrup has said that "Sexual energy is one of our most powerful energies for creating health. Our stress hormones lower and serotonin shoots through the roof."


If you are still with me, and curious, below is a video made several years ago by Steve and Lokita Carter of Ecstatic Living Institute, who taught our class.

They journeyed all the way from California and were terrific teachers.