Tantra is a spiritual tradition that originated in India some 4,000 years ago. It is a way of life that celebrates and strives for the union of body, mind, heart and soul. Tantra is a form of yoga. Yoga means union. The ultimate purpose of Tantra is the union of lovers, and ultimately union with the Divine. In the Tantric tradition, sexuality and spirituality are joined. Lovers actually invite God into their bed!

Many cultures have a variation of this challenging and delightful practice, the Taoists in China and the Cheyenne in North America. There are differences in these practices, but all forms of sacred sexuality share the intentional cultivation and use of sexual energy for spiritual growth, healing, creativity and enhanced pleasure.

The practices of Tantra were first introduced to the west in the 1800s, but a Tantric revival in the ashrams of India during the late 1960s has led to a gradual popularization of these practices in Europe and North America. Recent testimonials by celebrity musicians and movie stars like Sting and Woody Harrelson have promoted it and Tantra is becoming the sexual learning of choice for those who want to have it all: a passionate sex life, a healthy body, and spiritual growth.

Tantric lovemaking involves breathing exercises, muscle contraction exercises, sound, visualization, affirmations, creating a sacred loving space and other ceremonial practices, meditation, sensual massage, and sexual play. In order to build a high sexual energy charge and to move into ecstatic states of divine connection Tantric lovers extend lovemaking over several hours, experiencing extraordinary levels of pleasure along the way.

Part of the delight of Tantra is that you can continue to learn and advance throughout years of practice; it is never-ending in its potential for growth. At the same time, it is a practice that yields immediate results. You can experience a difference in your lovemaking immediately by reading one book or attending one weekend seminar.

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Try two different versions of a sexual technique-for example two different tongue strokes in oral sex, two different thrusting maneuvers during intercourse, two different caresses on back or thighs, two different kisses. Refer to one as A and one as B. Ask which (s)he likes best. This opens you up to all sorts of new pleasures and avoids any hurt you might feel when someone tells you they do not like something. Repeat as often as wanted to learn each other's arousal and orgasmic responses. You can use this technique during any lovemaking, but we suggest you set aside times when your intention is not to progress in your lovemaking to orgasm, but rather your intention is only to learn about each other. This removes any performance anxiety and can really be lots of fun if you keep it very light and playful. Repeat this as a learning exercise at least three or four times per year, or more if you discover that you both really like it.

A superb thrusting technique that brings great pleasure to a woman and helps a man to last is a combination of deep and shallow thrusts. By shallow thrusts we mean your penis only enters 11/2 to 2 inches inside your partner. This first couple of inches is the most sensitive part of a woman's vagina. Deep thrusts mean your penis enters as fully as you can.

In this technique you combine a series of nine fairly quick shallow thrusts with one slow deep one. The shallow thrusts stimulate your partner's most sensitive vaginal tissues and at the same time create a vacuum effect that makes her ache for the deep thrust to come. And because most of your thrusts are shallow ones, exciting only the first few inches of your penis, you're able to rock on for much longer!

With your attention fully engaged in this way - on your partner, your breath, your genital muscles - you are going to last a long time. As your lovemaking goes on, and on, and on... perhaps for hours, the energy within you and between you and your lover will accumulate to such an intense level that you may spontaneously experience the opening of your higher "spiritual" centers. With this opening comes an experience of ecstasy, bliss, joy, and wonder. This is where mastery of ejaculation can lead you and your satisfied partner.

The sexual fire breath is one of the best exercises, especially with a partner (but you can also do it alone), for rapidly building a hot sexual charge and moving it up through your body, helping to open all of your chakra centers. In the sexual fire breath you use a combination of sound, pelvic rocking, PC (pubococcygeous) muscle squeezes, deep abdominal breathing, visualization and hand movements.

The sexual fire breath is one of the meditations on Pala Copeland's CD, Apertio: Tantra Energy Meditations, with lyrics and voice by Pala Copeland, and music by Jeff Davies. Use the sexual fire breath on your own to open yourself to your full exquisite sexual potential. Do it as a charger-upper before making love. Do it during lovemaking as you are being manually or orally stimulated. Do it during intercourse, but be very observant and ready to stop in a flash in the early learning stages or the man may go beyond his point of no return to ejaculate before you are both ready to end the lovemaking. If "energy" is very subtle for you and you don't usually feel it, try this exercise. Most report really feeling something the very first time they do the sexual fire breath.

Sexual Fire Breath

• Lie on your back. Feet flat on the floor/bed. Knees bent. Legs comfortably apart. Hands at your sides, palms up. Eyes closed.
  
• Begin to breathe slowly and deeply into your belly.
  
• Focus your attention on your genitals and visualize drawing breath in and out through them.
  
• When you have a comfortable breathing rhythm established, begin to rock your pelvis, tilting it up toward the sky. Use your feet to slightly push off the floor so that you are not using your abdominal muscles to rock and they can remain loose and open.
  
• Inhale as you rock back. Exhale as you rock forward. (Note: some bodies want to do it the opposite way - listen to yours and go with what feels right).
  
• Make sound as you exhale - AAAAAHHHH. (This is the most difficult part for many people but it helps enormously, sound carries the energy).
  
• When you are in a comfortable rhythm, add PC Pumping. Tighten your PC muscles as you rock back. Relax them as you rock forward. (Note: your body might want to do it the opposite way, let it.).
  
• Begin to visualize your sexual energy as a great ball of golden fire in your genitals. As you rock, breathe and pump draw the golden fireball up through your chakra centers, one chakra at a time.
  
• Send the energy out through your crown chakra into the universe. Do not leave it to build up in your head. If you are making love with a partner, you can also pass the energy to him through your eyes, your kiss, your breath.
  
• Pass your hands in flowing motions up your body to help with the energy movement.
  
• Breathe more rapidly to move the energy higher within your body, allowing yourself to open into its flow.
  
• When you reach a high edge of energetic arousal you can maintain this level by deepening and slowing your breathing and keeping your body relaxed.
  
• Rest in stillness for a few moments when you are finished practicing so that the energy can continue to flow through you. Bring it back down and store it in your belly chakra for later use.
  
• If you have left a store of energy in your head and feel some congestion there do Grounding and apply firm pressure with your fingertips to your crown chakra.

Most Tantric sacred lovemaking texts substitute more poetic terms to refer to the male and female sexual anatomy. Penis is lingam. Vagina is yoni. There are hundreds of other terms commonly used, such as golden rod, wand of light, jade stalk, tangled garden, honey pot and secret cave. Using such terminology is generally perceived to be more respectful, sensual and romantic. Certainly the language commonly heard on the streets such as cock and cunt, seems by comparison crude and disrespectful.

Genital Sizes - Mix and Match

The Kama Sutra, by Vatsyayana classifies the lingam and yoni according to size.

Male - Lingam: Hare (small) - Bull (medium) - Horse (large)

Female - Yoni: Deer (small) - Mare (medium) - Elephant (large)

According to Vatsyayana (and common sense) matches of equal size are ideal, but lovers can manage the other combinations quite nicely. Certain positions are helpful when there is a mismatch of genital sizes.

When the lingam is small and the yoni large try the following positions.

• Man on Top - "Missionary" (variation - legs over shoulders) - allows for maximum penetration
  
• Woman on Top - "Crouching Tigress" (variation - "Sidesaddle") - allows for the skillful use of PC squeezing by the woman
  
• Opposites - "Backslide" - provides an ideal angle for stimulation of the G-Spot

When the lingam is large and the yoni is small try the following positions.

• Man on Top - "Missionary" (variation - man supports his weight off the woman) - allows for holding back from maximum penetration
  
• Woman on Top - "Tender Surrender" (variation - lying face to face) - the lady is in charge of penetration and thrusting
  
• Face to Face - "One Crutch" - allows for holding back from maximum penetration
  
• Sideways - "The Lover's Scissors" - penetration is not deep and thrusting is relaxed
  
• Other Positions - Pregnancy - "The Cradle" (variation II) - shallow penetration and relaxed thrusting

This is an excerpt from our eBook Tantra and Kama Sutra Sex Positions

Grounding is a very effective process for calming and stabilizing. Grounding connects you with the earth, carrying overpowering negative energies down and away much like a lightning rod. There are many methods for grounding. Try this one daily, as often as you think of it. Even if you don't "feel" anything while you are doing it notice the difference grounding makes to your overall sense of well-being. Grounding is also an excellent practice whenever you are feeling sexually "wound-up":

• Sitting or standing, with your body relaxed, take a slow breath in through your nose.
  
• Gently exhale through your mouth.
  
• Focus your attention on the top of your head (your crown chakra).
  
• Picture a funnel on the top of your head through which vital energy from the cosmos flows into your body-this is powerful, masculine, active energy.
  
• As this sun and sky energy travels down through your body it gives you strength and vitality.
  
• As it passes it also gathers up any negative energies you may be feeling-anger, lethargy, hyperactivity, grief, anxiety, fear.
  
• Now focus your attention on your genitals (your root chakra) and picture a funnel there-with the small end of the funnel inside your body and the mouth of the funnel pointing down to the earth.
  
• Allow the energy to flow through your lower funnel, away and down into the center of Mother Earth, taking with it all your tension; leaving vigor and calm in its wake.
  
• Continue to visualize energy flowing in through your head, down through your body and out into the earth-bringing vitality and serenity and taking away stress.
  
• Do this for a minimum of 3 minutes at a time.
  

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Supercharged Kama Sutra Illustrated (Complete Idiot's Guide to)
by Al Link, Pala Copeland

With its ageless wisdom and explicit advice for getting maximum orgasmic pleasure, the Kama Sutra is still considered the definitive sex manual on the market. But among its countless translations and pictorial editions, no volume has gone so deeply into its secrets as this one does-thanks to a very satisfied husband and wife team of sex experts.
--Completely full color, this book includes more than 70 photographs by Eric Levin, whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, among other publications
--Authors are counselors and certified sex experts
--Explicit instructions and advice, with beautiful photographs
--Hot, valuable tips not found in other books on the Kama Sutra

Amazon Price: $14.93 (as of 12/06/2007

Sensual Love Secrets for Couples: The Four Freedoms of Body, Mind, Heart & Soul
by Al Link, Pala Copeland

Library Journal, February 1, 2007
The titular four freedoms are the four aspects of self, and the heart of this book is made up of exercises for developing each aspect alone and in harmony with one's partner-sensually, socially, and sexually. The exercises are creative, playful, serious, and sometimes unusual, such as rewriting a recipe in sexual imagery to create an appetizing and erotic poem. Link and Copeland (coauthors, Soul Sex), a Canadian couple who have run Tantra workshops for a decade, are well grounded in Eastern mysticism and its Western interpreters; their bibliography is excellent. Unfortunately, there are no illustrations. This book would be a helpful read for a new or reawakening couple of any age.

Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 12/06/2007)

28 Days to Ecstasy for Couples: Tantra Step by Step
by Al Link, Pala Copeland

Take your sex life-and your relationship-to new heights in just twenty-eight days! 28 Days to Ecstasy for Couples can help you and your partner rekindle lost passion, intensify your lovemaking, and experience a sublime spiritual connection. Perfect for today's busy culture, this step-by-step, illustrated guide to Tantric sex features simple, fun exercises that take twenty minutes or less. Discover how to extend lovemaking, become multiorgasmic, control sexual energy, and engage in sexual, ceremonial, and ritual play. But physical pleasure isn't the only reward. Each activity also includes inspirational messages and lessons in trust, communication, and intimacy. By practicing sacred love, you'll reap the delights of improved health and vitality and a fulfilling sexual and spiritual relationship.

Amazon Price: $13.46 (as of 12/06/2007)

Soul Sex: Tantra for Two
by Al Link, Pala Copeland

Review from the cover of Soul Sex: Tantra for Two; review by Mantak Chia, Author of The Multi-Orgasmic Couple
"Copeland and Link represent the new generation of spiritual sexuality work that will give realistic support to sincere, dedicated couples."

Omega Source, Vol.5, Issue 2, Spring/Summer 2003, Omega Centre Bookstore, Toronto Canada
"It is a sensitive, intelligent and well written book."

Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 12/06/2007)