Conscious sexuality. How to relax ourselves in passion
For an ordinary person, lovemaking is more a chase after increasingly stronger excitement. The majority of couples make love in a rather tense manner, much too fast, without delighting themselves of the refined pleasures of amour. It is known that sexual arousal increases together with the amplifying of the tension of the body that reaches its maximum in the moment of the orgasm with discharge. After this moment, the two lovers collapse, relaxed but also exhausted on their bed-sheets. Thus, we can say that the ordinary manner of making love comprises two stages: before the orgasm with discharge – excitement and tension, after the orgasm with discharge – relaxation and fatigue. However this is just one of the possible ways of making love.
Tantrism teaches us to experience the entire lovemaking act as an alternate control between arousal and relaxation and we unite the two states into a new form of making love that closely resembles the way lovers experience during beginning period of their love.
Before seeing how to combine excitement with relaxation, we will offer you a brief description of them:
The sexuality of the ordinary person aims at arousal – from the first sight and the way people dress, to the first touch; from the first physical contact to the stimulation of genital organs. Because the man gets aroused much faster than the woman lovemaking, which usually ends with the man’s ejaculation, has a duration rather brief. This state of men upon sexuality acquires extreme forms in the case of pornography and prostitution, both being designed almost exclusively to satisfy the man through powerful stimulation, arousing, provocative and fast, where the concept of “wellbeing” has no relevance.
Relaxation, on the other hand, largely becomes some sort of panacea, a solution to all our problems. Anyhow, we are not talking here to that way of relaxation that serves to conceal under a layer of “everything is alright, stay relaxed” the monsters which sleep inside every one of us. Here we are talking about that authentic relaxation which emerges from the bottom of our being after we have faced those monsters and have accepted them as being an integrated part of ourselves.
When relaxation begins, the muscles are relaxed and the breathing becomes deeper, but this relaxation is a superficial one, because if we deepen this process, our inner defense layers diminish their vigilance and a certain irritation (repressed emotions) start emerging. As a rule in this moment the relaxation technique ends for most people.
Those who dedicate themselves to prayer or meditation for many years and have started crossing either the layer of this defense system or the one of emotions will realise that after the initial relaxation, the subsequent turbulences also emerge. Penetrating more profoundly inside our being, we reach the source of the being’s vitality and sexuality, at which point we feel aroused. Many people who have reached this level in meditation, are afraid of it because they feel it like some kind of “mental unbalance” accompanied by powerful erotic fantasies and a certain nervousness. The more powerful is the taboo of sexuality in the surroundings which they belong to, the more upsetting and painful this stage becomes.
It is often said that when we are young we make love better and as we get older, our interest in sexuality tends to diminish. However recent research shows the very opposite: women especially start enjoying lovemaking much more after they reach 30 years of age and almost half of the women over 40 years of age state that the quality of lovemaking improves, due to experience and an increased intimacy. At the very point when we no longer wait for major things and eventually we relax, we reach that quality, that relaxation we could have been felt before, if we accepted ourselves to be how we really are. But what we are is often something else than what we would like ourselves to be, if we consider that percentage of 35% of men that – according to statistics – are not satisfied with their erection and that 30-50 % of women who often experience difficulties reaching orgasm during lovemaking.
A phrase which we often hear is that, “before starting any tantric techniques, I would like to solve my problem”. In fact, the problem resides even in this very belief, in the thought that “first I need to be OK and they I will be able to start to practice.” This is an illusion. In tantrism there is nothing to obtain, nothing to be surpassed, and nothing at all that means becoming different, because all these beliefs and efforts are only related to the layers of our defense systems and separate us from our true being. The belief that we need to become different from how we are does not help us a single bit, but just hinders our personal development. In a similar way, the obsessive idea that “I have to have an erection” or that “I have to have an orgasm” creates only subsequent mental tensions that make it difficult to approach pleasure and the entire range of emotions we experience when we make love.
When we talk about bringing relaxation into sexuality, we definitely do not refer to complacency into laziness, but a mental space where anything can occur, where we are open before ourselves and wait to see what specifically will occur inside our body in the following moments. Thus the initial axis: arousal-relaxation, is transformed into a triangle due to the apparition of a third element – awareness. Relaxation forms “the vessel” which contains arousal. When the two are balanced, they form a stable foundation for increasing the energetic charge, but also the awareness.
The following exercises are all opportunities for experiencing this triangle: excitement-relaxation-awareness, in a very practical manner:
Hip Rotation
Sit comfortably on a pillow facing your beloved and start by becoming aware of your breathing. Look at your beloved full of transfiguration, then both of you will gradually increases the intensity of your breathing – with the mouth slightly open. It is probable that, at this point, a sound will accompany your breathing, again increasing the energetic charge which exists between you. Allow the rhythm of your breathing to synchronize. You must not force, make in a way so these things happen in a spontaneous way and start to rotate the hips. Push your pubis forward when you exhale and pull it back in when you inhale, so that the perineum rubs gently against the pillow. It is important that during the whole exercise you keep uninterrupted eye contact. Looking into each others eyes. Attention remains constantly focused on the breathing which in its turn will be synchronized with the movement of the hips. For the moment excitement is not genital, but created through the deep inhalation. Allow it to expand in a state of relaxation and make the movements so as not to get tired. You will realize very soon that this movement does not tire you, on the contrary, even helps you relax the entire lower part of the body, starting with the legs and ending with the diaphragm.
When this movement connects you to your deepest emotions, while you maintain always full eye contact with your beloved, it is possible some certain uneasiness may manifest. We are more used to be in contact either with ourselves or with our beloved: not with both in the same time. Continue. This is the beginning of intimacy.
Intimacy does not mean to interfere with the other as much as possible but about being syntonic with ourselves and with the other in the same time. In this state we become really receptive because we are deeply open and show ourselves to our beloved, parting the veils concealing us.
Make this exercise for 10 minutes, then, in the end, you can share your sensations, feelings, thoughts and fantasies experienced during this exercise.
When you become familiar with synchronized breathing, with rotation of the hips and visual contact you will be able to realize certain experiments with this form of expanded arousal the next time you make love:
– reserve more time than usual to it
– caress, touch and arouse each other, delighting of the foreplay
– after penetration, do not start with the usual pelvic movements but stay in a comfortable and relaxed position for about 10 minutes
– then start to rotate your hips as how you did previously when you were seated: push your pubis forward during exhalation and pull it back during inhalation
– when arousal becomes too powerful, slow down the rhythm and when it decreases, increase the rhythm, so as to be relaxed and aroused in the same time, even when the energetic charge goes up.
Continue to play with this balance between relaxation and arousal for at least 10 minutes and observe how you become more and more lucid and aware, and the perceptions become refined. You will start perceiving fine sensations inside your body, tasting arousal in a new way or even to feel different sensations from the usual ones in your genital organs. Observe attentively all these perceptions. Sometimes it is possible to experience more profound sensations but most of the time, you will savour diverse small changes that together will grant a more relaxed quality to lovemaking.
Yogaesoteric
February 2007
