Oztantra Blog – Love Sex & Passionate Relationships

Are You Dancing in the Full Spectrum of Sex?

January 26, 2023 By Annette & Graeme 2 Comments

Our sexuality offers us SO many opportunities to explore, pleasure and play.

Yet it is so easy just to fall back into what is familiar, what is comfortable.

Even while longing for something new.

We’re often still operating on the insights we first learned in our teens, or from our first sexual experiences.

Or from the girls over coffee, or locker room after footy. Or from porn, which can be great entertainment, but which creates problems when we try to be like this in real sex.

Rather than from people who have studied the art of sex for years and its unlimited possibilities aka. us!

That’s why today we’re offering you some suggestions to play with to expand your spectrum.

The key word here is ‘play’.

It’s a great skill to not take sex too seriously. At least at the beginning. As you open into it the depths can appear. But if you get too serious at the beginning it can end up in performance anxiety. This leads to all sorts of unhelpful behaviours as we try to cover our anxieties by being cool and in control. Rather than just being our authentic selves.

Here’s a list of things you might like to play with (especially as it’s a long weekend):

One thing sex – choosing one aspect to focus on and doing it reaaally well.
Breathing sex – actively breathing in different ways – deeper, slower, faster, shorter and seeing the effect on your pleasure.
Sensory sex – awakening your senses with different smells, feels, music, sights, tastes.
Seasonal sex – consider the time of year and season, what does it inspire? Outdoor sex, by the fire sex, hot and sweaty sex, slow and relaxing under the covers sex?
Rocking sex – instead of thrusting, try rocking your hips, it’s opens up your energy and can make a world of difference. then try different strokes.
Playful sex – where the object is to play like children innocently exploring for the first time.
Slap and Tickle – play with different touch styles- stroking, scratching, licking, blowing air, soft, firm, fast, slow, just holding, biting. Always get consent and start slowly with the more intense styles.
Handcuff and Blindfold – everything can feel more intense this way. Again, always get consent first.
Heart Connected sex – take time to actively feel into your hearts as you make love. Breathe into and put your hand over your heart to help make the connection. Give it time. Make whatever you find ok.
Blowing Raspberries – blow raspberries on each others’ bodies and genitals.
Dess Sexy sex – each person dresses sexy and stays dressed, with clothing that has the right access. This can be really sexy for blokes to do too.
Grinding sex – like the sex you used to have as teenagers, grinding your genitals together, with lots of kissing.
Kissing sex – while we’re on the subject, explore each other’s whole mouths and lips. Start light and teasing, then slowly get deep and hot.
Edging sex – come up to the edge of orgasm, pause, breathe deeply and start again.
Teasing sex – give each other permission to flirt and tease, bring out your inner vamp!
Tantric sex – breathe white light in from the soles of your feet, up through your body out the top of your head and back down again, becoming light and love beings.
Kegel sex – practice your Kegels together. Squeeze your pc muscles to increase each other’s pleasure. Kegels have never been so pleasurable.
Valley sex – after you’ve been making love for a while and have some intensity built up, drop into stillness and just breathe deeply, exhaling out of your mouths. Amazing.
Giving/Receiving sex – one person receives what the other suggests, after checking it feels good in their bodies. Then swap.
Taking/Allowing sex – one person does what they really want to the other, with the other’s full consent. Consent is what really makes this one work for both people.
Emotional sex – give yourselves and each other permission to show and express any emotions that may arise during sex, taking it to a whole new level of intimacy.
Sounding sex – give each other permission to make sounds, as it amplifies whatever you’re feeling. Try a variety of sounds, make them real.
Slippin’ and Slidin’ sex – if you have outdoor privacy, put down a plastic sheet, cover each other in body friendly oil and start slipping and sliding.
Energy sex – touch each other lightly, slowly, all over, whilst breathing deeply to activate your energy bodies.
Chakra sex – put your hands over each other’s different chakras and breathe into them, whilst imagining their colours and see what happens.
Fantasy sex – explore one of each person’s fantasies and if it feels right to both, find a way to act it out, even if it is in your imaginations (which can be better and more creative than the real thing, and your mind can’t tell the difference).
Gifting sex – start sex by each giving your partner a gift of some kind that is a unique expression of you ie. a dance, a compliment, a simple gift, a poem, a song etc.
Oral sex – it matters less about skill and more about whether you’re really enjoying it. Relax and find what is enjoyable.
Oral sex – Talk dirty. We all know it can start out embarrassing, but it gets better as you go. Start gently, don’t think too hard about it, build as you go. Research it online together and see what might work. Refrain from judging each other’s preferences, say yes where it feels right.
Oral sex with a difference – tell each other what you love about each moment in sex, and about the other person you’re having it with. It’s completely different, but just as opening as dirty talk. Try that too, if you like, next time.
Spot sex – explore a spot together- start with a GSpot or a PSpot.
Lab sex – make a sex time for experimenting non judgmentally with what might feel good. Start with some of the suggestions here, with no expectation on the outcome.
Erotic sex – read a sexy book to each other, or watch a sexy movie, try a new sexy toy.
Tired and Hungry sex – often we use being tired or hungry as a reason to not have sex, yet these states taken into sex can find us with either our walls down or our desire up, as long as you start with lots of deep breathing (with mouth exhale) your state will shift and your energy will start to move powerfully.
Daily Devotion – less is more, read about it here.
Gender sex – focussing on sex that has gifts for your gender – for women, for men.
Swapping Roles sex – try putting one person in charge of the sex, especially the one who is not usually in charge. Make it an exploration, rather than an expectation. Given time and space it can be very freeing for the one receiving and empowering for the one being dominant.
Tantric Massage sex – explore a deeper way of touching.
Scheduled sex – sex doesn’t need to be spontaneous. Put it in your calendar and look forward to it. When the time arrives feel into what you would like- is it something slow and gentle, hot and heavy, playful etc. and talk about what you can create together to get into the mood. Using this list might help.

This list is a great beginning, use it to help make your way all through the year.

So there are no excuses for staying in a sexual rut, or having the same sex you’ve been having from the start.

Make 2023 the year to take your relationship to the next level

January 5, 2023 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

What are your desires for your relationship this year?

What would you like more of? What would you like less of?

Now is a great time of the year to reflect on your relationship over the last 12 months.

What worked, what didn’t.

It’s also a great time to discover your relationship desires for the coming year.

What you’d like more of, what you’d like less of.

Most of us spend more time trying to survive, rather than thriving

We focus on doing what keeps us safe and familiar.

Rather than on what might ultimately serve us best.

We do this because the oldest parts of our brain are focussed on protecting ourselves, keeping us safe and out of pain.

The downside is that this lets our defensive, unconscious habits run our lives.

Habits that can cause us more pain in the long run.

Rather than supporting us to make choices from the newer, more conscious parts of our brain.

Choices that will lift us into something new, more rewarding and fulfilling.

In truth, this way of being is serving our fear, rather than our love and our empowerment.

It is serving our smallness, sense of unworthiness, rather than our worthiness.

It is not an easy thing to break out of living in survival. There are so many models of fear, paranoia, power mongering, mismanagement and hate reflected around us.

Yet survival IS just a mindset (once our basic necessities are taken care of)

We can choose to be like the rest of the world, feeling unsafe, mired in our defence mechanisms.

Yet when we choose love, we find worthiness, trust, empowerment, healthy choices and freedom.

We cannot serve both these masters at the same time.

So what are you going to choose?

What are you going to bring into your relationship in 2023?

Are you going to serve your fear based negative stories about your relationship?

Or are you going to create beautiful new ones?

Are you going to continue purely mind-based sex that leaves you unsatisfied, and even hating of your limited self?

Or are you going to breathe new life into it, creating exciting new desires and possibilities?
Possibilities that will serve you both in and out of the bedroom.

Are you going to let your defence mechanisms win the day, keeping you safe but separate and alone?

Or are you going to reach out to your loved one and foster intimacy that comes from the truth of your heart?

Are you going to focus on everything BUT your relationship, letting the outside world dictate to it?

Or are you going to give it a life of its own by creating space for it on a daily basis?

The biggest danger to any relationship is apathy

Another danger is fearing making the wrong move and doing nothing.

Yet another is waiting for our loved one to do it for us.

Or worse, expecting them to and resenting them when they don’t. Without owning our own inaction.

You don’t have to make the right moves

You just need to make A move.

Then you can keep learning and adjusting and creating as you go along.

You’ll be surprised how self-empowering and relationship thriving this can be.

And we’ll be here giving you tips, tools and inspirations along the way, so you don’t have to do it alone.

Don’t let fear, hate and apathy win in your relationship (and in your life).

Let love, desire and action be the way.

Celebrating Your Relationship: What are the Benefits and How to do it

November 30, 2022 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Did you know that celebrating your relationship can actually enhance it??

Often when we actively focus on our intimate relationships we focus on what is wrong with them.

This might be because when everything is going ok we tend to put them on automatic pilot.

We unconsciously believe that our relationships will take care of themselves and that they will always be there when we want them. Kind of like falling back into our favourite old sofa with the faded cushions, or our favourite David Bowie tshirt worn soft with washing.

This is SO not true.

Our relationships are a reflection of ourselves.

And like us, they’re a force of nature that is always changing.

Our relationships are either growing or dying, they’re never standing still.

That’s why taking the time to celebrate them is a good thing.

It helps them to grow. Celebrating our relationships is like sprinkling them with a dose of water, sunshine and a dash of Miracle-Gro.

This might sound like a fairly superficial thing to do.

Yet researchers at Stanford University in the US have found celebration has such a positive effect it’s set to become the next big thing, the new wave of gratitude.

Why is this so?

Well, it’s partly because we so often focus on the negative, or fear producing parts of our relationships.

We do this because our minds most instinctive response is to protect us, to keep us safe, in order to procreate the species.

And to show us where change is needed. Fear = action = change.

The downside of this protection is that can make our relationships appear in our minds to be more negative than they really are. Which is reinforced by something called confirmation bias. Our minds keep looking for what is familiar that make it seem true. This is our tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of our existing beliefs or theories.

Which can lead us to feeling stuck in our relationships.

We just ruminate on the bad bits without actually doing anything constructive to change what’s not working.

a happy couple This mindset can also lead us to unconsciously see our partners as a source of pain, rather than one of love or pleasure. Which causes us to unconsciously put up walls to protect ourselves when we’re around them.

Which makes deep intimacy, the place where our walls come down a little (or a lot) so we can connect with each other, seem scary. At least, scarier than it otherwise might be.

Deep intimacy always involves a little bit of fear, because of its very nature. It’s more than just sharing our time, company and points of view. It’s about revealing parts of ourselves we otherwise keep hidden from the world.

So, celebrating our relationships works at many levels to enhance them.

Celebrating reminds us of what is good in our intimate relationships.

Celebration not only makes us feel good, it draws us closer together. Because it helps us to open our hearts. It even works on our unconscious mind. It helps this part of us to see our partner as a positive source of love and pleasure. This helps us drop our walls around them a bit more, creating more rewarding intimacy.

How DO we go about celebrating our relationships?

It doesn’t have to be anything large.

The main thing is that it is genuine.

It can be:

As simple as taking the time to hold your partner and look them in the eye. Then saying “Out of all the people in the world I’m really glad I am sharing my life with you
Reflect on some wonderful times you’ve had together (even if they were a long time ago).
Having dinner together, getting dressed up, making it a special occasion. Doing it with the intention of celebrating your relationship
Buying your partner some flowers, or a small, meaningful gift you made
Trying a new adventure activity together- hiking, skiing etc
Go out for ice cream in your pyjamas
Reflect on the your best lovemaking experience- what made it great?
Go to the beach and build a sandcastle that reflects your relationship
Read parts of a steamy novel to each other
Make love slooowly- whilst celebrating all the times you have made love together
Play hide and seek- spice it up!
Watch a sunset or gaze at the stars or the moon together
Do couples yoga
Play “never have I ever” and learn something new about each other
Write each other a love letter
Have a photo shoot, take playful shots of each other and make a collage
Do whatever it is that is fun for the two of YOU.

Separating Orgasm and Ejaculation: How to

November 10, 2022 By Annette & Graeme 4 Comments

Have you heard about separating orgasm and ejaculation?

Maybe you’ve read about it.

Or perhaps you have experienced it in a spontaneous moment.

Without knowing how to do it again. Or even why you might want to. Lasting Longer

Almost all men orgasm and ejaculate together almost, all of the time.

It’s the primary urge that has helped sustain the survival of the human species.

Porn, being a visual medium, has helped sustain this dual focus. Ejaculation can be seen, pleasure cannot, or at least, not so easily.

Which leaves men thinking that the two aspects are one, yet this isn’t true.

How are orgasm and ejaculation different?

Orgasm is the delicious tingling feeling that rises, peaks and falls in a wave of pleasure.

Ejaculation is the release of semen, which can be pleasurable but isn’t an orgasm.

There is a rise of heat in the body that happens too.

And they can totally happen separately.

An ejaculation can happen without much pleasure.

And an orgasm- a peak of tingling, orgasmic pleasure, can happen without the release of semen.

Why is separating orgasm from ejaculation something worth cultivating?

There are two big reasons.

It helps you last longer in sex.

Plus, most men have a limited number of times they can ejaculate without draining themselves of their sexual energy. Or at least without some serious recovery time. Especially as they get older.

Energetically, it is not a good thing to drain yourself of too much sexual (life force) energy. It leaves you feeling depleted, less potent and less able to be present and motivated.

It also leaves you hooked into the need to ‘offload’ the burden of your sexual energy. Making this your primary sexual goal, instead of focussing on maximising your pleasure.

Whereas you can orgasm as many times as you like, without this draining effect. Leaving you feeling uplifted and energised instead. Especially if you have circulated your energy around your body a few times first.

So how do you go about separating orgasm and ejaculation?

(And just to be clear, we are not talking about a non ejaculatory orgasm here. This is where you injaculate your semen back into your bladder. We don’t recommend this practice)

The first step is to identify your pelvic floor muscles (the sling of muscles between your legs) and how to relax them. This is the opposite of what happens in an ejaculatory orgasm.

The best way to do this is to get curious about your orgasmic experience. Notice what is really going on in your body, don’t just lose yourself in your pleasure. What is really going on? Where are you tensing, relaxing, feeling etc.

Then try taking a pee with your hands behind your head. This is best done standing out on the back lawn last thing at night. Let all your urine drain out, noticing your pelvic floor muscles relaxing as you do so. Once you’ve finished, take a deep breath, exhale out of your mouth and let your muscles relax a little bit more.

It’s this feeling you need to cultivate as you get close to ejaculation.

It helps the need to ejaculate to drop away whilst keeping the energy in your body. You don’t lose it, it just shifts.

This is one of the many things men are conditioned not to know about their sexuality. There are many more.

Once you’ve learned to do this, you can then start to bring the energy back up by contracting and releasing your pelvic floor muscles. These contractions act as a pump, to activate the tingling pleasure of your orgasmic energy.

To further help identify your pelvic floor muscles correctly, try this. Stand with your toes pointed inwards as you contract and release. This position stops any other muscles in the area eg. your butt, from being activated as well.

Play between building and relaxing

With practice your pelvic floor muscles can activate endless amounts of orgasmic energy. Then you can play between building the energy up and relaxing it through the body. Notice how your body responds, get curious. You’ll find that you can feel pleasure whilst being relaxed. Without having to constantly build tension in your body to offload the ‘burden’ of your ejaculation. It can feel incredibly powerful too, to have this level of choice in your body.

When you choose to ejaculate, it will still be there, it may even be better. Just go back to how you would normally do so. The good thing is, when you do ejaculate, you won’t lose as much energy as you normally would. Take note of how you feel afterwards, do you feel different? It can take a little while to get used to feeling full of energy, rather than emptied out.

Start on your own

It’s great to do this in self pleasuring, as it can be too complicated to start in sex. It helps too, to place your other hand over your heart. Your hands are energy receptors and spreaders and will assist your sexual energy to stay in your body. Once this practice is familiar, you can bring it to your lovemaking.

And the good thing about separating orgasm from ejaculation is that you’re not constantly draining your energy, OR limiting your pleasure. You have the best of both worlds.

If you want more…

Check out our book on things sexuality, where we go in-depth into enhancing pleasure, lasting longer, multiple orgasms and more.