Oztantra Blog – Love Sex & Passionate Relationships

Honouring

September 23, 2022 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

It Works Because We All Love Being Appreciated…

That’s why this practice is a no brainer for creating real connection.

It’s a time honoured tantric practice called Honouring:

We all love to be respected, acknowledged and appreciated, especially by someone who loves us. It’s why this honouring practice works.

It leaves us feeling warm and gooey and more connected to the person who expressed these sentiments.

This is especially true because it’s more common to hear criticism and judgment in our daily lives. Most often from ourselves.

At times, we can also feel a little uncertain of being loved. This can simply be because we’ve been too busy to connect. Or things have gone wrong at work or with family, or you haven’t made love for a while.

Do it even if your relationship already has you feeling well loved and appreciated. For there is always benefit in celebrating that.

Honouring is more than just words…

Done with presence, honouring and appreciation become more than just a mental exercise.

They remind us how to feel. How to be in our bodies and to deeply connect with each other. This is because they come straight from our hearts. They can even awaken our desire to make love.

The benefits of honouring, love and appreciation

The benefits of regular honouring are legendary. So legendary it’s a mystery why we don’t offer it more often.

Your mindset changes. You start looking for more of the good, than the problems.
Your mood improves.
Your level of engagement increases.
Like it or not, people hearts and souls are brought into their relationships. Honouring gives them more opportunity to show up- in both tears and smiles. We need permission and a place for both.
You build trust.
You want to stay longer.
You inspire your partner to greatness.
Your partner hears what really gets your attention in as affirming way and is likely to give you more of it. Becoming more creative and efficient in doing so.

The practice can be done as formally, or as informally as you like, depending on your relationship style.

The practice works even if you’re not feeling particularly open to your partner. It’s not where you start that matters, it’s where you finish!

So here we go with the practice…

The Honouring Practice:

The practice can be done as formally, or as informally as you like. It depends on your relationship style.

You can even give yourself this precious gift by using a mirror…

Allow 10 minutes. You can take longer if you want, but short and sweet can keep you coming back.

Beginning:

First check out the steps below and agree to doing the practice.
Sit directly opposite each other (or as direct as you feel comfortable with).
Take a few moments to connect eyes and share a smile. You can hold hands, or rest a hand somewhere on your partner, if this helps.

First person starts:

Then, if you’re the person sharing first, close your eyes, take some deep breaths, exhaling out of your mouth. Centre into yourself and focus on your heart.
If you’re doing this formally, hold your hands in prayer position, resting your thumbs against your sternum (this literally helps activate your heart energy).
When you’re ready, allow your words of honouring, love or appreciation rise from inside your heart.

Don’t rush:

Be OK if this takes a minute or two. The trick is to not try and work this out beforehand or think about it too much. The more you focus on your heart and speak from it, the more real your words will be.
Share five things that you honour, love or appreciate your partner for.
The things can be little or large – it doesn’t matter. The main idea is that they’re genuine, rather than trying to be romantic.
Take your time. This is a precious gift you’re giving your partner.

Keep it clean:

Make sure your words don’t carry any hints of negativity or covert sarcasm. This needs to be a totally safe space. One that you and your partner can trust if you’re going to build love in it. You can use humour, just be clear you are being open hearted in it.
The person receiving your appreciation is to be quiet, saying nothing. Other than, “Thank you!” at the end. This helps you receive your honouring fully. It helps your partner feel their gift has been received too.

Add some magic:

Finally, share a mutually happy memory from your relationship – one that reignites the feelings of loving connection all over again. This is not only enjoyable, it helps to overwrite any negative re-writing of your relationship you might have going on.
When you’re done, swap over. Give a bow first, if you’re doing the formal version.

Finish with a melting hug, or a third eye kiss (melt your foreheads together).

If you would like further connecting practices check out our book Coming Together: Solving the Mystery of Intimate Sex and Relationship.

What Does Your Sexual Energy Mean to YOU?

September 8, 2022 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Our sexual energy lies at our core

Most people think of sex, as just something they do between the sheets at night with an intimate partner, but it’s so much more Tantric Sexual Energy than that. Treating the heat and tingling we feel in sexual pleasure as such will change your relationship with it and with each other.

Sexual energy is the primal and creative energy of the universe.

Everything that’s alive was created by it: animals, plants, humans, and even the universe itself by the first big bang. We ourselves were all created by an orgasm, even though most of us cringe at the idea of our parents having sex.

In fact, sex reminds us all of our humanity.

Almost everyone has succumbed to the urge to get vulnerable and naked (and let’s face, even slightly ridiculous, if you think about it!). We’re linked through the ages by those moments of total, sweaty abandon.

“Modern men and women are obsessed with the sexual; it is the only realm of primordial adventure still left to most of us. Human lives otherwise are pretty well caged in by the walls, bars, chains and locked gates of our industrial culture.”

Sex At Dawn, Edward Abbey

Yet sexual energy is so much more than just biology.

It’s your animating life force energy, the creative part of you that brings new life within yourself, as well as bringing your offspring.

Sexual energy is present in:

A relationship as attraction, arousal, passion and pleasure.

It’s equally present in your enthusiasm for interesting projects in work or hobbies.

You’ll find it in the energy you use to run around the back yard with your children and grandchildren. People with disabilities stepping out of shame

It lies in your inspiration for new ideas and creativity, and it’s the energy you feel when you’ve had a shift in your level of self-awareness.

You’ve probably noticed that after really satisfying sex, you find yourself with increased enthusiasm and vitality for living.

Sexual energy opens us and makes us available for life.

When sexual energy is transmuted up through the body to the heart (rather than drained away) it becomes love…

Equally, when sexual energy is transmuted up through the body to the higher chakra centres (rather than drained away) it becomes spirit…

At a physical level

Sex has multiple benefits from reducing high blood pressure and stress, producing dopamine to build confidence whilst inspiring action, oxytocins to enhance affection and bonding to opoids that produce feelings of happiness and wellbeing. Sex keeps us physically fit, and we keep fit to enjoy better sex (and we have to keep fit to have great sex!). Our pleasure may even boost our immunity and reduce chronic inflammation- the source of many disease processes through the production of Nitric Oxide.

Saying YES to your sexuality

Saying YES to your sexual self, connects you to a very deep part of yourself. Even deeper than the love and pleasure you share with your lover. That place within you has nothing to do with actually having sex, it’s your power centre.

Sex is power

This is why it’s used to sell everything in the world from cars to ice cream; and it’s also why the church, culture, society, parents and now pharmaceutical companies want to control it. Even science now tries to explain it- good luck with that! The explanation can never be the experience.

Being connected with sex in a healthy way makes you powerful within yourself

Healthy sex makes you available to deep vulnerability, compassion and healing. It’s worth cultivating your sexual energy for these reasons alone. And the more aware of, connected with, and authentic in your sexual self you are, the more your sexual pleasure flows. It’s a win-win situation!

It’s a natural human desire to want to feel good

Humans commonly seek experiences of altered or uplifted states of consciousness.

Feel good moments that can be as simple as having a glass of wine, watching a sunset, taking a moment in prayer – or as complex as taking mind-altering drugs, or doing a BDSM ritual.

This is part of our longing to break free from the burden of our ordinary minds, and to connect with something larger than ourselves to make sense of the world. Almost every community on earth has some kind of ritual or spiritual practice to access something they call God or Spirit. From shamanic plant use to whirling dervishes to seeking God through prayer.

Suppressing and corrupting this energy is life-taking and unhealthy

For it denies our true nature and makes us neurotic. Suppression of this energy comes from our fear of and conditioning around its power. Sexual problems generally relate to unconsciously acting out the repression, or the unhealthy expression of this energy, rather than by its healthy expression.

Sexual Energy is Natural, Powerful and Beautiful

Sexual energy is catalytic: you can’t see it or measure it, but you can notice its effects. This energy arises in you, changes your state and leaves you feeling different afterwards.

Sexual energy is not just physical

Sexual energy is emotional, psychic and subtle, and it impacts your soul-body. When you’re having sex you’re connecting a lot more than just your bodies. It fosters your capacity for wonder, your absolute confidence and your openness to the world and to your heart. If you can experience this simultaneously with another human being in a loving, sexual context, it’s absolutely magical.

With your sexuality...it is your vitality, your life force

Sadly, it’s the only way most people feel absolute freedom – in that moment of orgasm where they’re free of their everyday, ordinary, limited minds. This experience is known as the surrender or ‘little death’ of the ego.

Almost all of us have been there at some time in our lives, and we want to go back as often as possible

We promote our sexual energy by saying YES to it through how we live, as much as what we do in the bedroom.

You say YES to your sexual energy and potential for ecstasy by:

• Eating plenty of fresh foods

• Living in an aware and embodied way that minimises your negative stress

• Developing a ‘felt’ sense of your body so you know its real signals, including hunger, thirst, tiredness, sexual desire etc

• Minimising your addictions (as they take you away from your felt sense)

• Getting regular exercise, including some that challenges your body

• Getting adequate rest

• Taking a few minutes each day to stre-e-e-e-tch your body

Say YES also by:

• Taking regular breaks from your electronic devices

• Finding gratitude

• Appreciating beauty

• Doing something just for the joy of it

• Doing something purely for sensual pleasure daily

• Making life-affirming choices rather than life-defeating ones

• Being honest and in your integrity

• Doing something for others

• Doing something you love

• Keeping your mind active by learning new things

• Being willing to take healthy risks

• Finding a way to express your inner wild man or woman (the primal part of your nature) to balance the time you spend being civilised

• Developing some kind of spiritual practice, whatever this means for you

You can say YES in the act of sex by:

• Having life-affirming sex through tantric transmutation practices, rather than the energy-draining kind

• Keeping an open mind to the connection between sex and your spirituality

Reviewing your own relationship with this part of you

It’s important to explore the relationship you have with your own sexual energy so you can care for this awesome power in a healthy way. And so you can talk about it more clearly with your partner.

So ask yourself- How do you view your sexual energy? How do you manage it- both in sex, and in your everyday life?
Is it something you nurture, cultivate, savour, transmute, deny, avoid, shut down, drain yourself of or let it control you?

Your answers will give you insight into what is possible in this part of your life.

This post is an excerpt from our book, Coming together- Solving the Mystery of Intimate Sex and Relationship

The Myth Called Porn Addiction

July 29, 2022 By Annette & Graeme 1 Comment

Porn addiction is a myth.

On numerous occasions, we have come across people in relationships who are struggling with what they believe is an obvious problem. They believe their problem is one partner’s addiction to big bad porn. We commonly find it is not actually the porn addiction that is the the problem. It is a symptom.

In his article “Why we Should Stop Calling Porn Addiction an Addiction”, Sex Psychology 2015, Dr. Justin Lehmiller has measured brain waves of drug addicts and porn users. He found that porn has the opposite effect on brain waves that drug addicts experience This indicated that porn should not be called an addiction, the word addiction should be replaced with something else.

Porn is easy to blame

It is confronting for couples to realise that blaming porn merely shifts the focus away from what is really going on in their relationship. It shifts responsibility to something that is cloaked in shame and conveniently easy to blame.

Anything which is done in secrecy and isolation usually leads to shame. Isolation and shame then make it difficult for those involved to share true intimacy with others. Especially with society turning up the heat by publicly blaming or shaming porn.

Many men are already afflicted by sexual shame, due to unresolved sexual projections from society, religion, the media and even therapists’ unresolved issues about sex. Demonising porn just makes it worse.

We believe that porn itself is not wrong

It’s the behaviours that go on around it that make it so.

Porn targets sexual desire and sexual vulnerability. It’s also reliable, and without fear or rejection, something sex in the real world is definitely not! It gives the watcher a place to indulge their desire for sexual variety without risking going outside their relationship. Porn creates a fantasy of fulfilled sexual desire, enticing with its easy access and its privacy. Particularly when the watcher doesn’t have to deal with any messy emotional crap. It can leave men thinking this is how all sex should be, instant gratification with little effort or emotion.

This pisses most women off, and rightly so.

Many men struggle with the emotional intensity of relationship. Not because they are incapable of feeling. But because they have been shamed about, or indoctrinated not to feel or express their emotions. It is important to understand that, given the opportunity, men are highly capable of emotional work. We see it all the time. Especially with the right motivation – the potential for truly fulfilling sex.

A different perspective

As a woman, you might be feeling the hackles on your neck standing up at this image of a man taking the easy way out. Take a moment to see things from his perspective, through an example a bit closer to home. The romance industry, widely available through movies, books, advertising and chats with your girlfriends is like porn. It exerts an equally manipulative effect on a woman, similar to the impact that porn has on men. Stories of instant attraction to a perfect man offering a woman everything her heart desires with very little real effort on her part is the female flip side of porn. These romantic fantasies have a similar “passive making” impact on women. They create many false expectations for men to live up to, and leave women frustrated when they don’t.

The difference is, romance has general society’s support and its effects slip beneath the radar. While men carry the worlds’ unconscious judgment and shaming of their desires for sex and porn. This adds even more intensity to their feelings of sexual shame and emotional inadequacy. Shaming any man about his porn habit is shaming the man deep into his core. This shame accumulates and can eventually shut him down, both sexually and emotionally. Leaving women frustrated at his increasing lack of availability.

Whether we like it or not, porn is spreading

According to Pornhub, women are the fastest growing demographic of porn consumers, especially younger women. Women are reported to watch porn out of curiosity, to spice up their sex lives and learn new techniques. Some women, like men, watch it to satisfy their lust. Children as well are becoming exposed to porn, and doing so at earlier ages due to its easy availability. This is a concern if they are viewing it without the context of real life sex to balance it with. Yet the vast majority of porn users remain men.

There are some positives with porn, as is it can be way to keep sexuality alive when sex is not available. It can also spice things up in the bedroom for a while… But, by targeting these desires, pornography creates a fantasy experience for the watcher that will still ultimately leave them “high and dry”.

It’s a visual performance, not a reality.

Because that is all porn can ever do is create an illusion of satisfaction.

One that will ultimately end in frustration for the user. This frustration usually results in more porn watching in an unconscious attempt to achieve the fulfilment is truly longed for. This is desensitising, ending in a loss of sexual and emotional feeling. Either numbing it down, making it difficult to get, or maintain an erection, or to ‘come’ without intense stimulation. More and more young men are resorting to use of Viagra to deal with what is essentially, a disconnection from self.

At this point, the issue IS porn

It’s vital to track back to what is behind the need for porn, the need to dissociate from the full spectrum of feelings we are capable of. A something else that makes it so much easier to blame porn and overlook what is really happening.

Each couple are different, unique, so one size does not fit all, but the negative influence of porn can be beaten, all it takes is the right approach and mindset. Each couple must find their own solution. It starts with understanding the solution is ultimately found outside of where they believe the problem lies.

Learning the skills in tantra is a great next step

Porn is something that we watch, it’s focussed on the visual. Where women are effortlessly wet and men are permanently hard. In tantric sex, thrusting doesn’t need to be continually hard for pleasure to be had. In fact, a man does not even need to be hard at all to experience full bodied orgasm.

Tantric sexuality
Truly satisfying sex, as in Tantric sex, comes from how it feels rather than how it looks. In fact, when it’s really good, we don’t give a damn about how it looks! Tantra is actually pretty boring as a visual medium, as the action (and the magic) is more internal…(Tantric sex would never become an Olympic sport..) Tantra teaches us that there is incredible pleasure, and satisfying connection to be found in the slower, deeper moments, as much as the active ones. Especially if you consciously deep breathe, which is not something you’ll see actors doing in mainstream porn…

Men and Women Touch Differently

July 21, 2022 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Have you ever recoiled from your lover’s touch because it was too much, too soon?

Or have you ever got bored waiting to be touched where you really, really want it?

This is not always your lover’s fault.

It’s about understanding each other’s bodies more accurately.

You’ve probably noticed that men’s and women’s bodies are different.

Even though they start life in utero exactly the same in baby girls’ and boys’ bodies.

Then at a few weeks old a nifty little thing called the ‘Y’ chromosome develops, causing the male genitals to shift to the outside (with occasional exceptions). This shift, along with the different hormonal framework in men and women, causes a difference in how they respond to touch.

Understanding this difference makes it much less confusing, and much more rewarding, to touch each other.

A Woman’s Body

In her body, woman’s sexuality works from the outside in, from her extremities to her genital centre, her yoni. She’s capable of a high level of energetic intensity and touching her from the outside in really pays off. It it isn’t her body will not only not awaken fully, it will turn right off.

When you touch a woman, to keep it simple, no matter where you’re touching her start from the outside and work slowly towards the centre. This helps her feel safe enough to relax and open more deeply.

Imagine that she has a bikini on and the parts covered by the bikini are touched last.

– With her body start at the top of her head and the tips of her fingers and toes, and work your way to her centre.

– If you touch her breast, start at the outside and slowly make your way to its apex, the nipple.

– If you touch her sexual centre, her Yoni, start outside with her belly, inner thighs, pubic area and her perineum- these last two are important parts of her arousal system.

– If you move to her Yoni itself, start at the outer lips, then the inner lips (whether the inner lips are smaller or larger than the outer lips), then the clitoris. The clitoris and internal arousal tissues extend underneath these lips, so including them assists in her overall arousal.

– If you touch the inside, begin at the entrance, taking your time, and then move to the GSpot then eventually the cervix area.

– Vary your touch in pressure, speed and between stroking, massaging, tapping, licking and even holding it still.

Given time and proper awakening, a woman is capable of high states of bliss, where relaxation, pleasure and love merge into one in her body, heart, mind and soul. A woman’s sexual energy is magnetic, attracting, and negative in polarity. Lovemaking transforms this negative energy into positive, which is why a woman often has an excess of energy after sex and wants to talk. When her energy is fully transformed, she feels whole in herself, and open to her lover but not needy of him. Her breathing deeply and exhaling through her mouth as she is being touched helps create this energetic shift.

Nb. There may be times when a woman doesn’t want a slow approach, it’s always best to check in with her desires first.

A Man’s Body

His sexuality works from the inside out, from his genitals to the rest of his body. When you touch a man’s body, start at his sexual centre, his Lingam.

A man’s sexuality has traditionally been thought of as straightforward like a microwave: give him two or three minutes and beep, beep, beep, he’s done. His ejaculatory orgasm is generally seen as the apex of his experience, with sex and love being completely separate. This is of course a gross misunderstanding. It’s merely the outcome of his conditioning, rather than his ultimate sexual reality. Given time, a man is capable of matching a woman’s sexual intensity, including her capacity for multiple orgasms (both with and without ejaculation). Given time he can meet her in her multi-dimensional sexuality too, that includes intimacy, emotion and spirituality.

Start at the man’s sex centre, then invite him to spread his sexual pleasure through the rest of his body, rather than remaining and being released from here. Beginning at his centre, he can relax and expand, seeing that he doesn’t need to wait until those few moments right at the end for his pleasure. (The one exception to this is beginning at his PSpot (his prostate gland) – he needs to warmup to this one!)

He can spread his pleasure by breathing deeply and exhaling out through his mouth, imagining as he does so that he is lifting his sexual energy up into his heart as he inhales, and is spreading it through the whole of his body as he exhales. Where the mind goes the energy follows.

Help him by keeping one hand on his Lingam and use the other (and the rest of your body) to stroke his pleasure outwards to his extremities. Do remember that his breasts and nipples are pathways to pleasure and heart opening just like a woman’s so don’t be afraid to give these some attention along the way.

Man’s sexual energy is electrical, positive and discharging in polarity. Lovemaking transforms his positive energy into negative, which is why it can be draining for him to discharge his energy and send him to sleep This is where Tantric-style lovemaking, where he moves his energy up and through his body first, is a more restorative pathway. It allows him to charge his body with positive energy and retain more of it when he ejaculates.

Connecting together

Though you might start in different places one way to connect both of you to your bodies at the same time is that while the man is pleasuring the woman, she can hold his Lingam, either in stillness or lightly stroking it. Using lubrication will help him to relax into her touch. Because this connects him with, and validates his sexual centre, he’ll be happy to touch and stroke her, taking all the time she desires. It’s also a great motivation for him to practise his energy spreading practices so he can enjoy for a long time.

She can just hold him, or occasionally lightly stroke him, without distracting her from her own experience. She can also benefit from feeling the rise of his sexual energy in his lingam and feel it echo in her own body’s response.

It’s a win win.

If you would like more details on how to touch each other contact Annette or Graeme here.