Our couple Jan & Jeremy from the recent story 60 Minutes have developed a range of skills to balance their levels of desire and to strengthen and enjoy their long term relationship. See here some of what they have learned!

Overcoming barriers to desire:
1. It is not a new idea but it is an important one - give your relationship the same amount of attention and education that you give to your job or your family, for even the best relationships won’t thrive without a commitment and effort to making it happen. Don’t expect that once you commit to each other the relationship will look after itself. This might sound like hard work but the time you spend focussing on each other in a loving way will bring you benefits that are tenfold. We give you some ideas how below.

2. Decide how important lovemaking is to your relationship. Listen to your partners concerns without making them (or yours) wrong. Discuss any barriers to making positive changes happen and find a way to work through them. Don’t be put off if things get a little messy at first, bringing things out into the open will eventually help you find solutions. Remaining in the dark won’t. ask for expert help if you need it.

3. Set an intention to use lovemaking as an important tool for connection in your relationship. Be open to how making love might look. It doesn’t need to be the rigidity of foreplay, oral sex, her orgasm, his orgasm every time. Be creative. Try just lying together naked, relaxing and holding each other for a change, or try some of the many other Tantric loving ideas on this website. The idea is to be together with no other agenda than just to share sexual intimacy. In this performance driven, goal oriented society it may sound sacrilegious to plan to do nothing in particular, but this allows space for us to feel nurtured and for desire to arise without forcing it.

4. If the time arrives and one of you is not in the mood, remember your intention to make sex a tool for connection in your relationship. Ask yourself if your “no” comes from a place of fear of intimacy, wanting to keep a distance, resentment or wanting to withhold. If so, could you validate these concerns and make a conscious choice to move beyond them and see what happens? Or if after this check in with yourself it is still a “no” then it is important to respect that.

5. Help overcome differences in desire by understanding the different way men and women work. Men give love from their (positive) sex centre first which then opens their (negative) heart centre, allowing love to flow for him. Women open their (positive) heart and then love flows into their (negative) sex centre allowing desire to arise. Usually we try to force our partners to give to us from their negative (more closed) centre because we think they should be just like us, which causes much disappointment and much frustration. But the truth is we can open our negative centres ourselves and so make it easier for our partner to open to us ie. when a man is present in his heart a woman will open to him more readily for sex. And when a woman is more open in her sex a man will be more ready to be intimate with her. Same sex partners can alternate this process between them. (see the More Orgasms section for Men & Women for more about this)

When you have time to spend with each other make the most of it with these deceptively simple but powerful suggestions:
Using a chair or some large cushions sit opposite each other or have the woman sit in the man’s lap. (same sex partner’s can decide who sits where). You can also do this lying down if you wish, but it can be nice to try something different.

Come out of the busyness of the mind and into presence with your body for you cannot feel pleasure or desire if you are not aware of your body. Do this by focussing your mind on breathing and feeling: Allow yourself to stop and just be for a moment. Focus on your breathing, breathe deeply into your belly, letting go on the exhale. Become aware of any physical sensations you are experiencing in your body. Allow any thoughts just to pass through your mind, without attaching to them. Let go of any agendas and just BE together. Allow yourself to relax further with each exhalation.  

Spend some time eye gazing for the eyes truly are the window to the soul. This is not a staring competition but a soft focus into your partners L eye (considered the receptive eye) as you allow yourselves just to soften and connect with each other.

Then begin to take some conscious breaths together, breathing deeply into your bellies and rocking your pelvises to loosen them up. As you arch your back breathe in and as you flatten your back breathe out, making the sound “ah!”. A few minutes of this will help to overcome a sluggish libido.

Next try breathing together up from your sex centres to your hearts. You can do this by imagining white light moving up your spine as you inhale up to your heart and down again as you exhale. You can add a pc squeeze in holding it as you inhale which helps to stimulate the sex centre to release energy, let it go as you exhale. Repeat as desired.

Then breathe from your sex centre all the way up to your third eye in the middle of your forehead, hold the breath for a moment as you connect third eyes and then exhale together letting the breath and light come back down your spine. This invites a more spiritual connection into your intimacy. Be amazed at what can happen here.

Now pause and share a melting hug where you allow your bodies, hearts and minds to soften and melt together, enjoying the feelings you have created together.

This can be a prelude to making love, or a completion in itself if this is all the time you have.

Sex-Spirit Connection:
To join in sexual union with no foreplay and no orgasm. This may sound like a shocking thing to suggest, why would we do such a thing?  The practice of Sex-Spirit Connection is to take you to the place that is beyond doing in sex, the place of being, as in meditation, it allows men to let go of performance anxiety, having to get it right, and for women to relax with no expectation of having to give anything. 

This practice will also take you beyond orgasm, and beyond orgasm is where you need to go if you want to take your sexuality to a higher level. To commence the practice get into sexual union without foreplay, using lots of lubricant, and using just enough movement to maintain the physical connection. 

Get into a position that is comfortable, using extra pillows if needed to feel supported - scissors position works well - them man lies on his side, the woman on her back, she lifts both legs over his hips then slides one leg in between his, leaving one on top. 

Just breathe and be present with each other, hands on hearts, have eyes open occasionally, use making love as a meditation, eventually you will discover there is no orgasm like no orgasm. You can do this for 10 minutes – first thing in the morning, it can be a nice way to start the day, or 10 minutes to an hour anytime you have the time! Note that this practice should not be used as a prelude to lovemaking, it needs to be an end in itself!

The idea of a tantric relationship is to commit to spending regular intimate time together to keep your hearts open and your desire flowing. If you have been disconnected for a while this can take a little time to recreate, but if you persist it will happen. Sharing intimacy and love is cumulative - each time it happens more easily.

Remember sexual intimacy is a challenge for all sorts of reasons and we can come up with all sorts of barriers and resistance's to why we want to avoid it, by either avoiding sex altogether or by having closed hearted, goal oriented mechanical sex where our itches get scratched but not much else happens.

There is no fail safe technique that will permanently bypass these intimacy challenges. Ultimately, as Jan & Jeremy found, the best way is to go through them. See your journey into pleasure and intimacy with each other as a pathway to wholeness, and see each obstacle as a chance for healing on your pathway to bliss.

For more ideas on tantric lovemaking click here

Tantra is an eastern spiritual tradition of rituals and techniques that has existed for thousands of years, predating modern religions. It has roots in many of the major spiritual traditions existing around the world including Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism.

It is unique among religious beliefs and esoteric or spiritual practices in that it does not repress or ignore our sexual nature, it fully embraces it. It honours sexual energy and the sacred union of male and female energies as a pathway to the divine.

To help clarify some of the extensive philosophy behind Tantra here we explain a few of the principles that we have found it valuable to understand:

1. We exist as different frequencies of energy
2. The Masculine & Feminine as one
3. Living In The Present Moment
4. Dissolving our ego allows for the presence of the divine

Regular sex is widely believed to be an important part of maintaining good health and wellbeing through heart opening experience of intimacy and the stimulation of rejuvenating hormones.

However what we generally believe sex to be - a biological urge resulting in a brief encounter between two people, experiencing some physical closeness and/or the release of tension through orgasm, is an enjoyable but limited view.

HISTORY AND LINEAGE
The teaching of the Cobra Breath is an oral lineage passed from teacher to teacher for thousands of years.

It is passed on by word of mouth and has never been written. The reason for this is one of responsibility. If you think about it, because of this oral tradition, the teacher must always meet the student in person. Once something is written anyone can access it.

contributors

Oceana & Icarus met at sunrise on the top of a peak in the Himalayas.

Together, they have become the world's foremost tantra teaching married couple, offering weekend workshops and residential retreats throughout Australia.  

Their teachings are for people of all mature ages and are equally beneficial for single people and those already with partners.

The atmosphere they facilitate is totally safe and within each individual's own boundaries.

Article reprinted kindly with permission from International WellBeing magazine.

Images courtesy of A. Andrew Gonzalez.

Emotional Intelligence can be described as the ability perceive, describe and feel our emotions, to see them as positive and recognizing their effects on ourselves and others. At Oztantra we have added understandings in emotional intelligence to deepen our understanding and access of Tantra in our modern lifestyle.