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WELCOME TO THE APRIL ISSUE OF VENTURESQUE
 THE TANTRA ISSUE
This month, for me, is all about teething babies and trying to find ways to get more sleep. This has meant that I have been following the advice given in THE GENTLE NO-CRY SLEEP SOLUTION by logging every minute detail of Eden's day naps and night sleeps. So far, there has been little change in the amount of crying but also, and rather tragically, not very much more sleeping. Here I have a moan about being very tired.
This month Venturesque is dedicated to Tantra. I suggest tantric techniques to couples who wish to reconnect with themselves and each other emotionally and sexually and for people who may be struggling with intimacy and trust issues.
My Top Tip suggests giving some thought to breathing and sex. Conscious breathing techniques can help your sexual growth and enable you to lose a sense of painful and critical self-consciousness during sex.
The main article offers some tips and advice about how to incorporate tantra into your everyday sexual experiences.
The Sex Question asks how mindful are you of your sexuality? |
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DETAILS OF MY COACHING SERVICES AND MY
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DR TARA'S TOP TIP - SEXUAL BREATHING
One of the most important aspects of Tantra and one of the easiest to introduce into your sexual encounters is conscious breathing. Focusing your attention on the way you are breathing brings you into your skin and promotes bodily awareness rather than mental/emotional self-consciousness. Specifically, harmonising your breathing with your sexual partner's promotes profound intimacy between the two of you. Try this exercise to practice.
Sit quietly, cross-legged and facing each other. Rest your hands on your knees with your palms facing up. Gaze into your partner's eyes and take long, soft, but deep breaths from your lower belly. Keep your eyes open and maintain eye contact with your partner. Although this may feel uncomfortable at first, sustained eye contact is essential for building intimacy.Next, pay attention to your breathing. Begin to breathe at the same pace, bringing air slowly in through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. You may want to contract your genital muscles as you exhale and release when you inhale.
This body breathing creates an energy circle between the two of you. Keep up the eye contact while you breathe together. Practice this exercise until you can sustain eye contact and harmonized breathing for about 10 minutes.
You may also wish to move on to try this exercise with one of you wrapping your legs around the other's waist and hips. You are still sitting and facing each other.
It sounds very simple. Yet this exercise lays the foundations for the intense relaxation and slow-building arousal, which begin your tantric sexual encounter. | |
 How to bring tantra into your sex life
The practice of tantra encourages its followers to undertake a committed and profound path to spiritual enlightenment. It is the art of pleasure and a practice that honours the sacredness of sexual union. It is possible to bring elements of tantra into your sex life and, indeed, many therapists are beginning to incorporate tantric exercises into their work with couples in sexual crisis. Emotional and sexual energies do not always connect and tantra can be a way to reunite your energy field once again as a couple. When synchronised breathing is well-established with your partner, you can move on to experiment with other elements of tantric sex.
Massage awakens the senses and invites both of you to enter into an intimate sexual space with your partner. A sense of ritual can help both of you prepare for tantric sex. So, on the occasions when you want to take your time and bring a little tantra into your life, massage is an excellent way to signal to yourself and each other that you are willing to take things slowly and work to build up a mental and well as sexual connection with each other. Begin by lightly touching the skin with feathery and gentle strokes. This is not a sports massage so be light and gentle. Lean over and breathe onto your partner's skin. The heat of your breath is extremely pleasurable.
Sexual energy is an important concept to understand. We all give out a sexual energy, which varies in kind, in sensibility and in strength between different people. Far from being an unconscious aura of sexuality, tantric practitioners see sexual energy as something that can be consciously created, directed and released. Think of massage as a way of giving and receiving sexual energy. When you are breathing with your partner, try and visualise the sexual energy passing between you. Try and describe it.
Taking things slowly. A long and slow build-up to arousal is key to tantra. You are aiming for a blissful sexual state and an intense sexual journey, not a quickie characterised by frantic desire and over-excitement. Keep focusing on your breathing. You can also breathe alternately. One inhales, the other exhales. Resist the urge to breathe quickly. Panting speeds you towards orgasm. If you find yourself breathing faster, stop what you are doing and focus on taking long and slow breaths.
Different sexual goals For most of us sexual experiences follow a fairly predictable pattern. Sex proceeds to intercourse via foreplay with mutual orgasm the preferred end of sex. In tantra, orgasm is unimportant. What is important is the sexual journey and the connection that you make with your partner. The whole of your body is involved and receives attention. Ejaculation problems can be addressed via tantra. Prolonging the period between arousal and orgasm (often referred to as the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle) is key to tantric sex. Tantric practitioners describe this as being like catching a wave of sexual energy and surfing the edge of it without going over.This plateau phase is usually rushed or missed out entirely when you have worries about when you are going to come. Being able to remain between arousal and orgasm allows you to explore your capacity for pleasure and connection. Making ejaculation a non-issue means that the sexual experience is more rounded and relaxed. When orgasm ceases to be the goal, then tension and anxiety are greatly reduced.
Play with gender roles Tantric sex allows each of us to explore the fullness of our sexuality. Men are encouraged to be gentle, vulnerable and submissive and women to be direct and initiate (if you aren't already). Play with positions outside your usual repertoire and see how you feel. We each deserve to feel both generous and receptive.
Whole body orgasm is possible through practice. I suspect this means a lot of practice! The sexual journey that begins with breathing moves via massage into a sexual experience in which each part of your body contributes to your arousal. Our idea of sex is typically quite genitally focused and tantric philosophy rejects such an impoverished view of our sexual potential. Using visualisations of sexual energy, orgasm can be felt throughout the whole body rather than just between the legs.
To fully appreciate what tantra has to offer takes time and commitment and it will not be for everyone. It is a valuable antidote to a sexual mindset and culture that offers up endless toys, outfits and accessories to solve our sexual problems. Tantra gives us back the truth that it is always what is inside you that is going to bring you sexual fulfilment. You cannot buy or wear your way to sexual bliss.
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 THE SEX QUESTION this month asks:
how mindful are you of your sexuality?
Being mindful means focusing on one thing at a time. Being able to fully live in the present moment is a powerful aid to sexual fulfilment. Sexual mindfulness is a concept that is being explored as an antidote to low sexual desire. Losing desire often results from a disconnection between your mind and your body. Your mind has no clue what your vagina or penis is doing because it is elsewhere during sex.
Practising mindfulness means accepting that thoughts will distract you but allowing them to drift in and out of consciousness without you reacting to them. For example you can imagine thoughts as items on a conveyor belt that are passing in front of you and that then disappear out of sight. Sexual mindfulness means paying attention to your physical sensations and doing your best to quieten your mental chatter.
Where is your mind during sex?
During your next sexual experiences, pay attention to the thoughts that drift in and out of your mind.
What are you thinking about?
What is the effect of these thoughts on your body? On your mood?
How do they affect you sexually?
Finding answers to these questions can help immensely in finding the best way to connect with your sexual desire. If you don't feel desire, this can help tell you why.
If you find your desire is disconnected from a partner connection, this can tell you why - and if it actually really bothers you.
Sometimes my clients are reluctant to express their desire. It may feel as if they have no desire but actually it is there but they hesitate to give in to it. Desire is squashed before it has a chance to build to arousal. The reasons for this are wide-ranging: worries about perceived bodily imperfections, unresolved issues with a partner, feeling negative about sex and one's entitlement to fulfilling sex. Rarely is low desire a simple matter of physical origin. Uncovering the mental activity that stops you focusing on your sexual sensations and then acting to address this begins a process of recovering your sexual desire.
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 WHO AM I?
You have been reading a newsletter lovingly crafted by me, Dr Tara Few, The UK Sex Coach. I work as a sex, relationship and singles coach.
Sex coaching helps you to make sex about pleasure not performance. You can increase your confidence, calm your sexual anxieties, explore your sexual style and remove the emotional and physical blocks that might reduce your capacity for sexual and sensual pleasure. I work with people who have chosen to do all that they can to make their ideal sex life a reality.
Relationship coaching helps you to communicate more successfully, reduces conflict and enables you to understand your own and your partner's needs, priorities and desires by working out what's not working, what needs to change and how to move forward. It is also about fun and excitement and discovering things about yourself and each other that you never knew. My clients are people who feel that something important is missing from their relationship and who often aren't sure whether the relationship is worth saving.
Singles coaching will help you to reflect upon the role that you want a relationship to play in the new and exciting life that you will make for yourself. Are YOU ready for a relationship? Well find out. I work with people who want to build their self-knowledge, self-esteem and to massively increase their confidence, optimism, purpose and joy in life.
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WOULD YOU LIKE TO WORK WITH ME?
I coach individuals and couples to get in touch with what makes them sexually happy, confident and fulfilled, resolve relationship dissatisfactions and help you to discover a life full of hope, passion and purpose.
Sex, relationship and singles coaching helps you to examine your life, your relationship (or lack of one) and sexual satisfaction and enables you to bring back optimism, courage and direction to the sex life you create and the person you want to become.
GET YOUR SELF, YOUR RELATIONSHIP AND YOUR SEX LIFE BACK IN BALANCE.
Get in touch with me now to arrange a free consultation.
If you know that your sex life is making you feel frustrated and frustrating, bored and boring, undesirable and without desire, then get in touch to arrange a time for us to talk. I offer a free 20-30 minute consultation, in which we can get to know each other better and decide how well we might work together.
Almost all sexual problems are resolvable when you face up to where your sex life is going wrong. You can choose not to settle for second-best and to make your sex life about confidence, pleasure and play rather than sadness, resentment and disappointment.
I would love to hear any comments, suggestions about issues you would like to read about in future and I am happy to answer reader questions in future newsletters.
I will never limit your sexual potential and fully support all forms of sexual behaviour between consenting adults.
I WOULD LIKE TO ENLIST YOUR HELP IN BUILDING MY READERSHIP.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL USING THE LINK BELOW TO ANY PEOPLE YOU THINK WILL BE INTERESTED. |
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