by Donna Eden
“Just Do It” Doesn’t Do It
If your time together has resulted in waning passion (if you are still hot for one another, just jump to the next chapter), the instruction offered here—that you say yes and then create the wanting—is vastly different from the simpler advice of a generation of sex therapists who counseled, “Just do it.” “Creating the want” makes all the difference. The old theory was that having sex stimulates hormones and brain chemistry that make you want to have more sex. While biologically accurate, it does not take into account that such prescriptions (1) promote impersonal sex, (2) breed further alienation if a lack of intimacy was the source of the low desire, (3) are asking at least one partner to ignore his or her feelings, and (4) are robbing the person who is more desirous of sex of the chance to feel wanted.12 Meanwhile, there is much to look forward to. Interviewing 150 women ages 20 through 90 about their sex lives, Iris Krasnow found that many in the after-70s group claimed that they are having the best sex of their lives.13
A challenge in writing about good sex is that one of the most important principles is to counter expectations, judgments, and notions about “good sex.” Recipes don’t support your spontaneity or internal authority. Nicole Daedone, author of Slow Sex, tells a story of bringing home to her grandmother a dish she had prepared in her home economics class that had gotten her an A. Her grandma took a taste and spit it out, saying, “You killed the food with the recipe!” Daedone goes on to explain that recipes don’t work for sex either, because women:
want smooth, silly sex; we want climactic sex and we want slow undulating sex. We want range. We want gradients. We want sex to move from slow to fast, from hard to exquisitely soft. We want to be surprised by nuance and subtlety. . . . We want to communicate our sensations and hear about yours.14
This chapter would be much easier to write if we could just tell you how to “do it,” but no matter what recipe you follow for good sex, you will be removing the spontaneity, variety, and surprise. To retain these over time requires communication, an easy flow of information between one another. “Give us the time, space and permission to taste a bit of every possible sensation,” advises Daedone, “and to communicate which ones we like.”15 Many women have been systematically trained to deny what they desire, even to not eat when they are hungry, and cultivating an atmosphere that invites her to put into words what she may not even have been acknowledging to herself opens new worlds for both of you.
When you meet at this deep level, each encounter is new and fresh. We originally thought this chapter was going to describe energy techniques that are easy turn-ons to intensify everything from sexual desire to wild orgasms. Push this, feel that. As we delved into the topic, however, we realized that physical techniques that enhance sexual energy are just the icing on the cake. The foundation that lets us soar together over a distance needs to be built on a sense of safety, trust, communication, and deep encounter, all fueled by our ability to enjoy the sensations that travel through our own bodies. As Schnarch puts it, “Techniques make you a technician . . . not a lover.”16 We read and experimented with so many books and taped programs that had good techniques that we know that information is readily available. What we want to encourage you to do is learn to recognize and communicate about how the energies flow in your body and communicate about them (verbally and non-verbally) so you are able to surf the waves of your sexual energies in harmony and as shared erotic adventure.
Entering the Sexual Zone
Marianne Williamson cautions that “when sex is merely a substitute for communication,” the emotional gap between two souls who long to connect is not bridged. But when sex “deepens conversation,” the body “becomes a door to a realm that the body can’t even enter . . . joining is of the spirit.”17 The sexual act opens energetic pathways that can bring us into states of consciousness that transform the collective field between us. Through sex, your shared biological, psychological, and spiritual energies have an opportunity to align themselves and build on one another. This allows the energies that form the matrix of your relationship to come into greater harmony and depth and for disruptions to be healed. Sex is indeed nature’s “energy medicine for couples.” Yet so often in long-term relationships, its power for pleasure, healing, and transformation is neglected.
Creating the Wanting
Saying yes and then “creating the wanting,” Armstrong’s advice, can turn this around. For us, the practical demands coming our way were unceasing, calling more loudly than the whisper of spiritual possibility or even the opportunities for momentary pleasure. Reflecting on this as we settled into writing this chapter, it became quite clear that if we waited until our to-do list was empty, a future of marital celibacy awaited us. So we started experimenting—with the guiding principle being “be creative, not rote.” Using what we know about energy and passion, we innovated many intimacy dances that will never be repeated or even recalled. One we did jot down as possibly being useful for this chapter was designed for people who, like us, are so busy that some tricks may be needed to break the inertia and get with the program. It is brief and playful, signaling to our libidos that they are on deck. There are a thousand kinds of foreplay. This is just one of them. We found that it quickly shifted our mental states from busy and distracted to connected and ready for more.
PART 1: RELEASING THE DISTRACTIONS
Our first step was to clear our psyches of competing thoughts or nagging responsibilities in order to get on with the business at hand. Energy medicine offers an excellent tool for quickly shifting from a cluttered mental state to a clear one. When you’ve said yes but haven’t yet created the desire, turn to one another and state, honestly and courageously:
“The most compelling thing that is, right now, keeping me from wanting to be in rapture with you is . . .”
This is what you will release with the energy technique. For instance, for Donna last night: “I am finally beginning to unpack from this last trip.” For David: “I feel a lot of pressure to prepare for my talk tomorrow.”
Once you have recognized what is pulling you away from wanting rapture (and how trivial it probably is in relation to feeding yours and your partner’s soul’s longing), you can make an informed choice for intimacy. The distraction may, however, still have an energetic hold on you. To release it, do the Blow-Out/Zip-Up/Hook-Up technique (here), blowing out obligations or other distractions that are preventing you from being able to bring yourself toward intimacy. Situate yourselves so you aren’t expelling these energies onto your partner.
Do this a second time, or more if you wish. Then turn toward one another, let your eyes meet, and bring your hands, with one hand on top of the other, up the center of your body until they come to rest on the middle of your chest. From here, you can go in any number of directions, and with less energetic pull from your day-to-day responsibilities. We suggest you move right on to “Playing in Rhythm.”
PART 2: PLAYING IN RHYTHM
In this shared movement game, one of you will lead and the other will follow, while you both maintain eye contact. Your energies will begin to dance as you stay in sync with one another. It is ridiculously simple but gives a structure from which you can be playful.
Put on music that makes you want to move. We still come alive to our old Flashdance and Dirty Dancing albums.
Make eye contact and again place your hands over the centers of your chests. When one of you is inspired to move to the music, the other follows, maintaining the eye contact.
Continue for as long as you wish, and then return to center, hands still over your chests, keeping eye contact. The other partner can then lead. Continue leading and following as many rounds as you wish.
Without touching one another, you can play with the motion, the speed, and the form. In summary, these two brief exercises—Releasing the Distractions and Playing in Rhythm—can create an energetic space that beckons the wanting. The next step is up to
you.
Skin on Skin
Use your body to bring into manifestation the fullness of your love for your partner. Let every stroke whisper with your longing, every expansion of your iris bring through more light, let every brush of your lips administer the healing nectar of the reunion. Imagine . . . that you have been separated for eons, through all time and space, and that this moment has been given to you so that you may discover one another again in the flesh.
—ANAIYA SOPHIA, SACRED SEXUAL UNION18
Sex invokes such powerful energies that many couples turn the whole encounter over to their bodies. Your body knows what to do with little discussion. But you can also open your consciousness to your partner’s experience, create inroads into one another’s vast interiors, and pave the way for your spirits to connect at ever deeper levels. You can begin at a very basic and concrete plane, which is to learn about one another’s sensations. Your sensations are the language of the energies that move through your body, connecting your outer world and your inner world.
In the simplest terms, touching and being touched generates sensation. Touch, the first sense you acquire, can tell you much about your partner’s inner experience. A great deal of intimate communication is nonverbal. In an experiment where people were blindfolded and touched by someone, they were able to identify the feeling the person had been instructed to express—anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, or sadness—78 percent of the time through touch alone.19 We are wired to correctly interpret the touch of our partner.
A Kiss Is Not Just a Kiss!
While we are wired to correctly interpret touch, sexual touch can still lead to misunderstandings. Not only can we misread or totally miss our partner’s signals, the honesty inherent in touch may convey information that is awkward or ambiguous. For instance, Schnarch asserts that even foreplay is much more than it appears: “We like to think that . . . foreplay is where couples establish emotional connection and instill feelings of love, arousal, and desire in each other. Too often, however, foreplay establishes disconnections.”20 Take kissing, for example. Pointing out the many meanings that may be conveyed in a kiss, Schnarch describes a range of kissing varieties that can be turn-offs:
The mushy, limp kiss of passivity and withheld eroticism.
The impatient kiss of a partner preoccupied with more important things.
The sloppy, soupy, wet kiss that triggers repulsion rather than desire.
The rigid-tongued kiss of the mechanical lover.
The smothering kiss that rekindles childhood fears of an intrusive, engulfing parent.
The begrudgingly given kiss of the “you can’t take me for granted” lover.21
Kissing is, of course, more often a turn-on, but turn-on kisses also have their own vocabulary, which Schnarch describes as follows:
The soft but electric kiss of a familiar lover.
The hard kiss of passion.
The breathy, languid kiss of tasting and smelling each other’s body.
The gentle bite on the lip from someone begging to be “rode hard and put away wet.”22
Think of the ways you and your partner kiss. Do you know how your partner experiences your kisses? Does your partner know your experience? If not, this can be fun to remedy.
Conscious Kissing
Of course you are aware of your own experience during a kiss. When you are also relatively aware of your partner’s, an alchemy occurs that brings another dimension to your kiss. Ellen Eatough is a sex educator who understands the energetic dimension of sexuality. We found her audio CD program “Four Keys to Sexual Ecstasy: Experience Soulful Connection with Spine-Tingling Sex”23 to be one of the best home-study programs available. She explains how kissing is the most intimate activity two people can do. Many prostitutes, for instance, who will have intercourse and engage in all kinds of other sexual acts refuse to kiss their clients on the lips. It is too intimate. The lips and tongue are among the most nerve-rich and sensitive areas of the body. Since we have an enormous amount of control over them, this allows for splendid “variety, and variety makes our brains light up with arousal.”
Because people in long-term relationships often take kissing for granted, Eatough suggests that couples bring renewed attention to this staple of intimate contact. It can be as simple as the following, for starters:
Show your partner how you like to be kissed.
Ask your partner to kiss you as you’ve just explained or demonstrated.
Tell and show your partner what felt right and what needs adjustment.
Have your partner give it another try.
Continue until your partner is able to kiss you just like you wanted.
Switch roles so you learn how your partner likes to be kissed.
You can also experiment with new ways of kissing one another. For instance, you could explore the inside of your partner’s lips with your tongue and then receive your partner’s tongue on the insides of your lips. Or gently nibble and suck your partner’s upper lip. Envision the energy that is moving within you and between the two of you. Let your partner know what feels good. Ancient teachings say there is a subtle nerve connection between the woman’s upper lip and her clitoris. Find out if this is true for anyone in your relationship who has an upper lip and a clitoris.
Ask for What You Want
Use kissing as your training wheels for discovering what pleasures your partner sensually and sexually. Even healthy, relatively enlightened couples often have difficulty communicating what they want sexually or in allowing themselves to be creative in moving beyond established patterns. Among the most important skills for maintaining sexual satisfaction in a long-term relationship is to be able to ask for what you want, to ask for it without a lot of justification, and to ask for it without inadvertently conveying criticism. Your partner wants to give you what you desire. Since your partner usually can’t read your mind, you need to ask for it with words, sounds, gestures, or touch. Crossing the barriers of shyness, modesty, shame, habit, self-judgment, or sense of not being deserving is the path toward ever greater sexual satisfaction.
Talk About Your Energies
Words may not come easily when you step into the realm of describing sensations and energy, but it can be enticing while opening new vistas of intimacy. Be curious. Notice the sensations in your body and describe them. You can focus your attention in ways that make this easier. For instance, put your hands over your chest, your Heart Chakra. This is the home of many emotions. Are the sensations heavy, fluid, agitated, calm? Do you feel flooded? Do you feel empty? Do you feel happiness? Sadness? Grief? Joy?
Still with your hands on your chest, let your eyes meet. Drop your hands. The energies of your Heart Chakras will naturally touch and engage one another, with or without your awareness. Notice what you feel in the center of your chest, what you feel coming out toward your partner, what you feel coming in from your partner, and what you feel between you. Use words that describe the sensations stirred by the energies that are continually moving through your body: warm, cold, liquid, flowing, tingling, pulsating, intensifying, calming, spinning, stretching . . . If words do not come, just gently notice what enters your awareness, moment by moment, as you keep your attention on your Heart Chakra and the space between you.
Knowing Your Partner Intimately
Many couples never really explore one another’s sexual anatomy. In a new relationship, such exploration might push boundaries of intimacy and propriety. However, long-term partners who have never crossed this bridge and developed a comfortable familiarity with one another at the most intimate physical levels have left standing an unnecessary barrier to easy communication about their physical relationship. To be sure, such sharing can feel highly vulnerable and requires that your sense of safety with one another is well established, but it is an exploration well worth taking on.
Start with the
conscious kiss and the communication it requires. Then other kinds of touch. (A note from our Etiquette Department: If you are going to enter anything delicate and sacred, be sure your hands are clean and fingernails short.) Knowing that you will be sharing and exploring your most intimate landscape with your partner may also motivate you to learn more about your own sexual anatomy and physiology. You can’t count on what you learned growing up. Nor, until recently, was the wider culture particularly forthcoming on these topics. For instance, the clitoris, the only human body part that exists solely for pleasure, was not even correctly described by scientists until 1998.24 Cultural inhibitions aside, nature was in high gear when designing your sexual physiology, and detailed information about her handiwork is finally readily available.25
Three Kinds of Sexual Energy
As we attempted to pull together our own understanding of sexuality from an energetic perspective, we discovered that teachings about sacred sexuality can be found in at least the Taoist, Tantric, Sufi, Buddhist, Jewish, Pagan, Wiccan, occult, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean traditions. We were particularly drawn to the Taoist and Tantric teachings because of their profound understanding of the relationship between sexuality and the body’s energies in terms that we already use, such as the meridians and the chakras.