The Enlightened Sex Manual: Sexual Skills for the Superior Lover (3 page)

If you have trouble postponing ejaculation or participating in sex with deep emotional surrender, then you will want to practice strength• ening your exhalation.
Allow your exhalations to be long, slow, and full, really letting go of all of your breath, as if you were "dying" into bliss. As you exhale, release all hold on yourself so you feel you are giving yourself totally to the moment, to your partner, and to love. Surrender yourself more deeply with each full exhalation as you offer your gifts of energy and love to your partner. Release the breath from your whole body, including the lower part, so your belly and genitals feel fully released and given in love.

To summarize, weak inhalation means weak genital arousal. Weak exhalation means weak ability to circulate energy. If you want to increase genital arousal, emphasize inhalation. If you want to decrease genital arousal, emphasize exhalation. As you inhale, open yourself to fully receive love, life, and energy. As you exhale, surrender yourself, giving yourself totally, so that no love is left

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ungiven. The sexual occasion provides an opportunity to practice these two primary emotional aspects of breath - reception and surrender - in an intensified fashion. Sex can fill you with so much love-energy that the pleasure and brightness becomes almost un• bearable. Sex can also allow you such deep surrender that you let go of everything and give your gifts fully, offering every ounce of your love and energy.

As you practice filling and surrendering yourself through your breath during sex, you strengthen your capacity to do the same throughout the day. Your inhalations and exhalations be• come constant reminders to fill your body with love and energy and also to yield it all, giving your deepest gifts, holding nothing back - only to be filled again.

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2

RETRAIN YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM

To enlighten your sex, you and your partner can practice to ef• fortlessly open as deep being while simultaneously circulating unobstructed energy. Passionate sexual desire is felt through as a transparent shimmering in the openness of being. Seeking re• solves itself in an abundance of bright love.

A part of this practice is to retrain the nervous system using your breath. Most people have become accustomed to kisses and hugs, a few yanks or caresses, perhaps some licks and sucks, several minutes of warm and wet genital friction, and finally a burst of energy that releases into a peaceful, tension-free sense of relaxed depletion. This kind of sex is considered normal, even good. It is unfortunate that our culture leaves most people completely un• educated in the higher enjoyments and deeper blisses of sexuality

In order to move to a new level of sexuality, you can retrain your nervous system. You can learn to relax your old tenden• cies of habitually building up and then releasing sexual tension. You can learn to use your breath to circulate unimpeded energy throughout your body and through every shade of your emo• tional spectrum all day. You can practice relaxing into the bliss of your deep being and then expressing it as love's light through the openness of your body. This entire process can be broken down into six steps:

1. Clear your nervous system of kinks.
   

   Imagine energy flowing through the internal circuitry of your body like water flowing through a hose. If the hose becomes
   

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   kinked, the water flow is held back and only a trickle makes it through the obstruction. Meanwhile, water pressure builds up at the site of the kink, perhaps even springing leaks and squirting out senselessly.
   

   As an example, suppose your father was loud and cruelly abusive to you as a child. First, you were frightened, and your vulnerable heart was deeply hurt. Second, you closed your heart, held your breath, and tensed your body to protect yourself from being hurt even more. Third, your body's energy ceased to flow freely in response to masculine energy So your internal circuitry becomes blocked by an accumulation of fear, tension, and frus• trated energy: you develop an emotional kink in response to loud masculine energy.
   

   Now, as an adult, whenever you experience the sharp, de• manding aspect of masculine energy - for instance, your lover raises his or her voice and tells you what to do - your energy gets blocked. Your kink stops it from flowing. Your heart closes, your breath tightens, and your body becomes tense.
   

   Meanwhile, pressure builds up behind the obstruction. You may feel angry, confined, hateful. Your internal "hose" of energy is about to burst. If you are in a more masculine moment, you may strike out at someone or punch a hole in the wall. If you are in a more feminine moment, you are more likely to turn your an• ger inward and "strike in," abusing yourself through overeating, overspending, or neglecting your responsibilities.
   

   In addition to emotional kinks, you might have physical kinks. Perhaps through faulty exercise or inadequate breathing, you've developed rigidity in your belly Your abdomen is no longer re• laxed and open. Energy cannot flow through it. An obstruction like this can have a number of results: a lack of sexual desire;
   

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   an inability to achieve penile erection, vaginal lubrication, or or• gasm; even a lack of assertiveness in social situations. Your rigid belly prevents the full force of energy from descending down the front of your body and giving you the power to act that you would otherwise have.
   

   Besides emotional and physical kinks, mental kinks may also block your flow of energy. Perhaps you are obsessed, day after day, with certain sexual fantasies: being tied up and forced to have an orgasm, seducing your best friend's spouse, finding a lover who will never leave you. Or maybe you are stuck mulling over what someone said about you at work earlier in the day
   

   These mental kinks may obstruct your flow of internal en• ergy, especially as your energy flow increases during sex. While you are trying to enjoy sex, your magnified sexual energy may get caught in dead-end loops of thoughts, hopes, and imagery, unable to complete the circuit of fullness throughout your entire body. Parts of your body may feel numb, tense, or painful. Sexu• ally, your power will be absent and your pleasure will be thin. Your presence and love-energy will stay locked in your head, ob• structed by the mental kink.
   

   So, the first step is to unkink your emotional, physical, and mental obstructions. This can be done through many means. Be• cause each person is unique, you must discover which methods work best for you. Usually a combination of techniques is most effective, and your daily practices may change over time as you grow and new stresses come and go from your life.
   

   For instance, you might visit a psychotherapist to resolve some mother-issues that you can't seem to resolve on your own. In con• junction with this, you may use massage, hatha yoga, or tai chi to help open the channels of your body so your energy circulates
   

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   more freely. Changing your diet may be important. Volunteer work and serving others is often a significant way to encourage a full flow of love through your body. Dancing and singing may be integral for keeping your inner channels of energy open.
   

   Through trial and error and the guidance of those you trust, discover which treatments and therapies most precisely address your current issues and help open the kinks that are limiting you now, emotionally, physically, or mentally. Choose the practices that meet your particular needs and help you to express your deepest gifts. It is an axiom of spiritual growth that your deepest gifts are often capped by your most stubborn obstructions.
   

   In addition to whatever other methods you choose to use, the sexual practices presented in this book may be an extremely effective means to open yourself so that you may know and ex• press your deepest being. In the way of the superior lover, sexual energy is circulated through your body to clear out the kinks so your love can flow more freely.
   

1. Train your nervous system to circulate energy.
   

   Instead of pumping the genitals till they burst, learn to circulate energy throughout the natural circuitry of the whole body. It is as if you become one huge genital, rushing with orgasmic light and energy from toe to head. Your heart opens wider and wider so that the size of your loving expands to infinity, engulfing you and your partner in an open bliss of being that renders fear and desire obsolete.
   

   This practice involves learning to move energy through your natural internal circuitry, up the spine and down the front of the body in a continuous circular flow. You learn to use intentional muscular locks at specific places throughout your body to serve
   

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   this circulation. Complete step-by-step instructions for how to circulate your internal energy are presented in Part Four.
   

   BASIC ENERGY CIRCULATION
   

   As energy builds in your genitals during sex,
   exhale
   and con• tract the floor of your pelvis, pulling upward slightly, as if you were trying to stop yourself from urinating. Feel or imagine your sexual energy moving
   up
   along the line of your spine into your head as you exhale. Then, as you
   inhale,
   draw the energy
   down
   the front of your body, so that your belly expands as it fills with energy and breath. Draw the energy all the way down to your genitals and pelvic floor.
   

   (As described in Part Four, at times it is better to
   inhale
   en• ergy up your spine and
   exhale
   it down your front. In any case, your energy always circulates
   up your spine
   and
   down your front.)
   

   Continue breathing energy in a circle this way, contracting and pulling upward at the pelvic floor while exhaling energy up your spine and then inhaling it down the front of your body to your belly and genitals.
   

   This circle of energy, up your spine and down the front of your body, is the way energy moves in a naturally open body. By practicing this way of breathing and moving energy both throughout the sexual play and randomly throughout the day you will remove obstructions to the free flow of your energy, sexually and at other times. Please see Part Four for complete instructions as well as more advanced techniques for circulating your internal energy.
   

   With practice, your orgasms will explode upward through your body, filling you with intense bliss and light, melting all
   

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   resistance so that love flows without limitation. Your tensions become liquefied and evaporated in this intensity of love and openness. Man or woman, gay or straight, your body learns to sustain long periods of orgasmic bliss that you would not have been able to handle before.
   

   Over time, you can learn to open as love and feel through the bliss even as its intensity exceeds anything you have experienced before. Ravished by pleasure, dissolved as openness, and bright• ened as the force of love, your usual obstructions are loosened in an effortless profundity of being, like clouds dissolving in the clear light of the sky. Spacious peace and unbounded love may shine through you, at least for a moment, so that your sexual embrace becomes a spiritual revelation.
   

   With regular practice, your daily life becomes transformed. Your body becomes healthier and more vital. Your mind becomes more keen, responsive, and deep. Your emotions flow alive and fluid without becoming heavy or stuck. By learning how to open yourself through the inevitable pains and pleasures of sexual play with your partner, you strengthen your capacity to stay open dur• ing the pleasures and difficulties of daily life. You learn to live at a new level of awareness, strength, and spiritual openness.
   

2. Train your nervous system to sustain high levels of energy.
   For many people, being relaxed means being low energy. They feel at ease only when they are depleted of energy, such as after a full meal or an orgasm. They can't handle long periods of high energy without feeling hyper, stressed, or anxious. They can't wait to have a beer, chat with a friend, watch
   TV,
   stuff their faces, or masturbate.
   

   Enlightening your sex involves cultivating the capacity to sustain high energy over long periods of time while remaining
   

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   relaxed and open. It is as if the hoses through which the water flows grow wider. More water can flow through with less pres• sure. You can maintain ease even when great force is coursing through your body, mind, and emotions. Your body is pregnant with flexible force, like a fiercely tumescent fire hose. Your mind is still - yet agile, bright, and ready with insight. Your heart is alive, vulnerable, and responsive. You may cry one moment and laugh the next, but whatever you do, your flow of life force is strong and unimpeded.
   

   You can look at two people, a conventional lover and a supe• rior lover, and see the difference. Throughout the day, at work as well as in bed, the conventional lover swings between an agitated mode of frantic activity and a collapsed mode of tired depletion. The superior lover, however, steadily acts with great force and creativity - resting when appropriate but not collapsing due to an exhaustive spurt of energy.
   

   To develop this capacity for sustained high energy, prac• tice plugging your energy leaks and circulating the energy as it builds in your body. Don't fidget. Don't eat unnecessary snacks. Don't ejaculate or orgasm too often. Don't talk excessively. Don't watch TV or read newspapers, catalogs, books, and magazines simply due to habit. Don't grind your jaw or tap your pencil unconsciously.
   

   If you stop depleting your energies through these habitual means, you may first notice yourself getting anxious to some de• gree. This is because your body is being filled with more energy than it is used to handling. In the past, you might telephone a friend or masturbate in the shower to release energy and decrease your internal force. Now, since you have plugged many of these leaks, your internal pressure builds.
   

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   You can accommodate this growing internal force by help• ing it flow throughout the natural circuitry of your body. Over time, you can cultivate a capacity to conduct a much larger flow of energy. Your internal "hoses" can unkink and widen, so your old trickle of energy becomes a full flow of force. You develop a much stronger ability to circulate great energy without dispers• ing it in TV orgasms, chatting, snacking, and fidgeting.