Oztantra Blog – Love Sex & Passionate Relationships

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.

Things men have been conditioned NOT to know about sex

November 3, 2022 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

That diminish their capacity for pleasure and satisfaction.

His need to achieve external success through goal-oriented performance gets in the way of real success.
Rather than it being selfish for him to fully feel his own pleasure, it is vital to good lovemaking.
That openly feeling his pleasure will not detract from his lover’s pleasure, it will increase it.
That his continued need to achieve success through his lover’s pleasure can feel like pressure (even control) to them. This increases the likelihood of fake orgasms and limits true felt pleasure for BOTH.
When he gives himself permission to really feel his pleasure it allows him to feel more connected to himself. Which significantly reduces the pressure to perform that he often feels. This transforms his intimate connection into something truly magical.
It is NOT selfish, or wimpish, for a man to let go of striving for the end goal and take the time to slow down and feel more along the way. For when a man is more familiar with feeling his pleasure it means he is more present and more in his body. This invites more potency, allowing his pleasure to arise, rather than his having to force it. Which can feel like letting go a of big burden, and precious feelings of freedom.
Chooses to be present in his body, opens up men’s full potential for pleasure during the whole love making session. Rather than in just his usual few seconds at the end. It’s the beginning of his ability to become multiply orgasmic. With practice this allows a man to be more present with his lover, as well as his own pleasure, no matter how intense. His lover will eat this up!
Women actually enjoy feeling a man feeling his pleasure, not just performing. As it means she can feel more of him open and connected to her, similar to him enjoying feeling her pleasure. Knowing this can help him feel himself more easily without disappearing.
Feeling himself and being at ease in his own pleasure allows him to enjoy that place in himself where he just loves to give from. Where the giving comes direct from his heart, rather than his ego. It’s truly yummy for the receiver!
Focussing more of his own pleasure takes away the burden of having to ‘provide’ his partner with theirs, whilst he is missing out. Although there are layers in this, ultimately each person is responsible for their own pleasure. This takes away the subtle (and not so subtle) manipulations that can occur in trying to make pleasure happen through the other person, allowing more intimacy and authenticity = even more pleasure.
When he’s connected with himself he will automatically be more aware of the subtleties of his experience and where his partner is at. It makes him less reliant on having the right ‘technique’ and more available to intuitive understanding which is much juicier.
Both lovers benefit from the resonance in the matching energy vibrations of pleasure (entrainment), where the pleasure in his body literally invites the pleasure in theirs to awaken, creating more pleasure for both.
By not focussing on performance in sex men experience greater satisfaction, leaving them less needy of, and controlled by a need for sex.
And lastly, both open to the possibility of a more intimate, loving and deeper connection that happens through being embodied and available in your feelings, senses, emotions and pleasure that needing to perform takes away.

Women’s Pleasure: Is the idea that it is overly complicated true?

October 19, 2022 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Is it making women’s pleasure more elusive?

Leaving men confused and women frustrated.
And both missing out on the pleasure they are capable of.

It is surprising how much of our reality is influenced by the beliefs of our time.

You might think it’s just you in the bedroom with your partner. Yet there are many other voices in the background as well, both heard and unheard. Voices that help determine women’s pleasure. And man’s.

Maybe it’s “women must bear these things for the compensating joys of motherhood”.

Or “It’s a man’s obligations to sow his wild oats so he can show off his experience to his woman”.

Or even that “sex is dirty, you shouldn’t be doing it.”

One of the most detrimental ideas we carry about sex is that women’s pleasure is complex and tricky, and men’s is simple and straightforward.

It’s detrimental because believing this puts us on the back foot in approaching female sexuality. Whether it’s our own, or our partners.

And this idea is possibly not even true.

It’s possibly something we’ve simply come to believe.

Women’s pleasure statistics

Now a large, collaborative study published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour has revealed that 95% of women orgasm every time they practice solo sex.

This drops to around 65% in women when they are with a known male partner. And it drops even further in casual sex experiences with men. This same drop is not experienced in lesbian sex.

Whilst (straight) men are shown to orgasm “usually-always” 95% of the time. This is whether they’re alone, with a long time partner, or having casual sex.

There are several reasons for this pleasure gap

The people who responded to the survey may have been more comfortable in their sexuality (although it was a very large survey, over 52,000),

In masturbation the orgasm for a woman could be serving a purely functional, even stress relieving purpose. In other words, it’s kept simple.

In sex, especially with a male partner, it is easier for a woman to get her orgasm tangled up with desires for romance, intimacy and commitment. Which would make it easier for her to lose focus on achieving her orgasm.

Though we still have a way to go, the rise of female power and equality is happening across the world. But even in this emancipated day and age, a woman is still likely to give her man’s orgasm a higher priority than her own.

A woman will give a man’s orgasm higher priority because:

she has a lifetime of conditioning to give to others before herself.
both her and her man have been conditioned by the patriarchal system to think he is entitled to his orgasm every time, and she is not.
women still hold a lot of shame about their pleasure and can hold it back in front of their partner.
she has been conditioned by the patriarchal, goal oriented way of viewing sex that doesn’t work for her feminine body, leading her to not be in touch with what it wants, or how to ask for it (even though she can easily order three different kinds of lattes, muffins and smoothies).
she doesn’t want to offend him by making him think he’s not doing it right.
it’s common for her to endure suffering eg. in periods and childbirth. So it’s easier for her to endure a lack of pleasure long enough for him to come, rather than cause offence.
she has got really good at faking her orgasms.

Yet underlying all these are two very powerfully held beliefs.

Firstly, that a woman’s pleasure is complex and tricky, so it is easier to give up on.

And secondly, that a man’s pleasure is simple, like a microwave, 30 secs and beep, beep, beep, he’s done. Giving him no reason to hold it back, just a little more effort and it’s done.

These beliefs are doing both men and women a disservice.

It:

makes a woman’s pleasure seem more daunting, and off putting to seek.
keeps her in a straight jacketed, uninformed way of thinking about her pleasure capacity.
keeps both thinking that one good come and he’s done. This view of male sexuality is a very limited, purely biological one.
short circuits man’s ability to have the more deeply fulfilling, full bodied, multiply orgasmic pleasure he is capable of.

How would it be to believe that both mean’s and women’s pleasure were more similar than different?

Both deserving of time and attention.

Both deserving of a curious, rather than a goal oriented approach.

In a goal oriented approach you have a pre determined outcome that you try to achieve.

A curious approach is more experimental and open ended ie. let’s try this and see what happens.

Leaving both lovers more in the moment, in their bodies, aware of their responses, open to seeing their desires.

Women who orgasmed more frequently were more likely to receive more oral sex, deep kissing, manual genital stimulation in addition to vaginal penetration, have longer duration of sex, be more satisfied in their relationship, ask for what they want in bed, praise their partner, be flirtatious and adventurous eg. use sexy talk and lingerie, and express love during sex.

Wouldn’t men benefit from this variety of approaches to more parts of their body as well?

Leaving them more capable of experiencing more extended pleasure.

Not to mention leaving them more interested in trying a few tantric tips. Tips that leave both lovers even more more in the moment, in their bodies, aware of their responses, open to seeing their desires. Leading them to higher states of ecstasy and bliss, and receiving more of the benefits.

Pleasure Benefits such as:

enhanced mood and body confidence
reduced stress and better sleep
improved relationships through more enhanced oxytocin levels
better communication
boosted immune system
improved skin
increased release of the body’s natural painkillers, called endorphins, which are released during touch and sex.

There are, and likely always will be differences between men and women’s pleasure, and their psyches, sexually speaking.

But perhaps it’s time to put some of those differences to bed.

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