The Multi-Orgasmic Couple: Sexual Secrets Every Couple Should Know (34 page)

PBd:
You mention that the Taoists also saw sex as way of healing, and you have a chapter on “
Sexual Healing
.” Disharmony is one thing, but
healing
connotes a wound, damage.

Rachel:
The Taoists called sex the “human herb.” In addition to prescribing medicine they would also recommend that their patients make love in particular positions to heal different ailments. Today we know that hormones are released during sex that can be extremely healing to the body. We try to help couples use their sexual energy and their sexual life to rejuvenate their beings and to help them stay healthy. Our coauthors, Mantak and Maneewan Chia distilled these ancient teachings into practical techniques that they call “Healing Love.” We give these exercises so couples can have the most healing lovemaking.

PBd:
What was it like to work on this book as two married couples, and how did you all work together—was everyone assigned a certain topic?

Doug:
Mantak and Maneewan are the originators of the Healing Love techniques, which they have simplified from the ancient Taoist sexual practices. Our goal was to help them present these practices in a way that ordinary Western couples like Rachel and Doug could understand.

Rachel:
As a physician, my role was to see how the Taoist practices compare to what we know in Western medicine about the body and about our sexuality.

Doug:
Rachel was also the lead on the sections for women, which offer women practical and achiev-able approaches to their sexuality and tapping their desire.

Rachel:
I see many women in my medical practice who have a host of complaints—from lack of desire to pain during lovemaking—and I try in the book to address many of the issues that are most important to women’s sexual fulfillment.

PBd:
You have a chapter called “
Making Real Love
” in which you discuss connecting love and lust, one of the big bugaboos of being human.

Rachel:
Sexuality is essential for intimacy as much as pleasure, but we often confuse our lust, or our sexual energy, with our love, or our compassion. By learning to connect love and lust, we can keep

our relationships passionate
and
compassionate.

PBd:
I can see how this ties in with the Taoist view of sex as sacred.

Doug:
Yes, in our society we have torn ourselves apart, separating our spirit from our body. However, many of us experience transcendence as much in our bedroom as we do in our churches, synagogues, temples, or mosques—if not more. For the Taoists, sexuality is a part of our spiritual life. As we learn to harmonize and create Healing Love in our relationship, we are able to create harmony and compassion in our lives. Sexuality is seen as so important to our spiritual growth that the Taoists called lovemaking upon awakening “Morning Prayer.” People who practice Healing Love can even have Soul Orgasms.

Rachel:
Soul Orgasms occur when couples are able to exchange sexual energy and begin to fuse. Not only do they experience intense and lasting pleasure, they experience a profound union with their partner.

Doug:
Like anything, cultivating our sexuality takes time and practice but people can start experiencing multiple orgasms and other deep sexual pleasures soon. As couples learn to harmonize they can reach intense multiple orgasms quickly. Multi-orgasmic quickies, you might say.

PBd:
Ah, yes—
the quickie
. But people must say to you a lot: “Who has the time?” Are you tempted to respond, “How can you
not
have the time?”

Doug:
Many people worry that learning to improve their sex life or, even more so, to experience sex-ual ecstasy, will take a great deal of time. We understand since Rachel and I have three small children and two full careers. A doctor’s life is always busy and we were practicing Healing Love while Rachel was working 100-hour weeks as a medical resident. So we understand how people can feel that they do
not
have time. Still, we explain that once couples are able to be multi-orgasmic and to harmonize their sexuality, they can do it quite quickly.

PBd:
Thus the multi-orgasmic quickie.

Doug:
Right.

Rachel:
Also, Healing Love gives both partners a great deal more energy. As they learn to cultivate their sexual energy into creative energy they can use that energy in other parts of their lives. It’s better than caffeine!

Doug:
And frankly, too many people spend too much time watching television or movies about

other people having romantic, passionate relationships. With Healing Love, you don’t need to waste your time watching others, since you’re living it yourself.

PBd:
I take it you believe there’s no age cap on the multi-orgasmic experience or Healing Love.

Doug:
Everyone can enjoy these—young lovers and older couples; the newly partnered and those in mature relationships. Straights, lesbians, and gays can all benefit. Even singles can learn to cultivate their sexual energy and attract a mate who will match their potential.

PBd:
Your final chapter is “
Making Love for a Lifetime
.” What changes as we grow older?

Rachel:
We tend to think that passion peaks on the wedding night—

PBd:
Or earlier!

Rachel:
—but the Taoists believed that couples could experience ever-deeper sexual pleasure and intimacy until the day they died. It’s actually easier for many men to become multi-orgasmic as they get older. As men and women change hormonally, they need to adjust to these shifts in desire and sexual response, but if they do, they can truly make lust and make love for a lifetime.

PBd:
Doug and Mantak’s first book,
The Multi-Orgasmic Man,
is a bestseller and has been translated into, what, fourteen languages?

Doug:
Yes. We wrote a book for men first because much of the power of Healing Love depends on the man’s ability to cultivate his sexuality and, ideally, to become multi-orgasmic. We were delighted by its reception, but everyone kept asking for a couple’s book that would help women and men bring Healing Love into their relationships.

PBd:
So should a man read
The Multi-Orgasmic Man
first?

Doug:
We wrote the books to be complimentary. They can be read together or independently. Men might wish to start with
The Multi-Orgasmic Man
and then read the couple’s book. One review called the men’s book “an excellent manual for every guy’s favorite appendage.” We were pleased because we wrote it to be a manual—clear, direct, and with a sense of humor. Women will probably want to start with the couple’s book and then, if they want to understand more about their partner’s sexuality, they can read the men’s book. We wrote the couple’s book as more of what the Taoist’s called a “pil-low book”—because they propped their sex guides up on a pillow. The couple’s book is more sensual and romantic.

Rachel:
We were fortunate to have John Raynes as the illustrator—his drawings are beautiful as well as descriptive.

PBd:
Has anyone told you about the
The Multi-Orgasmic Couple
, “Your book improved (or saved!) my marriage”?

Doug:
We’ve heard from numerous men and women that the book has improved—usually the word is
transformed
—their sexuality and their relationship. We did hear from one woman that the book had saved her marriage, but mostly we hear that it helped deepen and make marriages or committed relationships more passionate and intimate. Healing love is an extremely intimate experience that effects all aspects of a relationship beyond the bedroom.

PBd:
Obviously there’s a risk—among people who have heard of your book, maybe glanced into it, but not actually studied it and put it to practical use—that sex will be seen as just another form of “self-improvement exercise.” So one cannot emphasize the spiritual side of this enough, I guess, or, really, that we’re talking about a kind of artistry here—not the kind of thing you can pick up in the way you can watch a crunch-those-abs tape and, maybe, flatten your abs.

Doug:
Yes, it
is
an art. The Arts of the Bedchamber, as they were called in ancient China, are a body of sexual wisdom and techniques that have been created from the sweaty experience of millennia of lovers. And when we want to be good at any art, we need to develop skills. The mistake we make is thinking that since sex is natural, ecstasy should be as well. Once we realize that lovemaking is an art, we understand that it requires some effort and to some degree “self-improvement exercises.” At the same time, we need to remember that the most important part of lovemaking is the love and healing that we exchange with our partner. There is a time to cultivate skills and a time to harvest our pleasure. Learn and enjoy. Learn and enjoy. Healing Love is a very enjoyable thing to learn.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1.
Alfred Kinsey was the first to report that men could experience multiple orgasms. For more on Kinsey’s pioneering research see chapter 1 below or see his classic work: Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
(Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1948), pp. 158–59. William Hartman and Marilyn Fithian were the first to document male multiple orgasms in the laboratory. See Hartman and Fithian’s
Any Man Can: The Multiple Orgasmic Technique for Every Loving Man
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984) or our
The Multi-Orgasmic Man
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996) for more detail on male multiple orgasms.

CHAPTER ONE

1. According to the thirteenth edition of
   Smith’s General Urology,
   orgasm includes “involuntary rhythmic contractions of the anal sphincter, hyperventilation [increased breathing rate], tachycardia [increased heart rate], and elevation of blood pressure.” See
   Smith’s General Urology,
   13th ed., ed. Emil A. Tanagho and Jack W. McAninch (Norwalk, CT: Appleton and Lange, 1992), p. 710.
   

2. Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin,
   Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
   (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1948), pp. 158–59.
   

3. Kinsey et al.,
   Human Male,
   pp. 158–59.
   

4. Herant A. Katchadourian,
   Fundamentals of Human Sexuality,
   4th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), p. 292.
   

5. William Hartman and Marilyn Fithian,
   Any Man Can: The Multiple Orgasmic Technique for Every Loving Man
   (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), p. 157; Marion Dunn and Jan Trost, “Male Multiple Orgasms: A Descriptive Study,”
   Archives of Sexual Behavior
   18, no. 5 (1989): 382.
   

6. Female ejaculation has been demonstrated in the laboratory over the past twenty years, since the publication of the landmark book that popularized its existence:
   The G Spot and Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality,
   by Alice Kahn Ladas, Beverly Whipple, and John D. Perry (New York: Dell, 1983). The Taoists have long described a woman having three waters (the first water is lubrication, the second water is orgasm, and the third water is ejaculation). Generally ejaculation is experienced as a copious amount of fluid, although some woman do actually experience a spray of liquid.