by Donna Eden
The Taoist physicians understood that an active sex life is a vital part of health and longevity, and they studied it with the same determination they applied to every other area of health. In Taoist sexual practices, the focus is on the way energy moves through the meridians, particularly the Governing and Central Meridians that flow along the spine and up through the center of the torso. The Taoist “Arts of the Bedchamber” have been beautifully systematized in a book for Westerners called The Multi-Orgasmic Couple: Sexual Secrets Every Couple Should Know.26
In the Tantric sexuality practices of India, the focus is on an energy known as kundalini energy that is channeled upward from the chakra at the base of the spine, up the spine, through each chakra, and finally reaching the chakra at the crown of the head. The most accessible yet authoritative book we have found on Tantric sexuality as it has evolved in the West is, dare we name it, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex.27
While it is not possible to present these bodies of wisdom and technique for working with sexual energy within the confines of a chapter, we will provide a few insights and exercises that give you a taste of each system. Also, along with the meridians and the kundalini energy that can move up the chakras, another vital energy is involved in sexual activity. It is called the radiant circuits. We will offer a brief introduction to this energy system as well.
The Meridians
The meridians—the pathways that bring energy into every organ of the body—are as basic to sexual activity as blood flow and breath. The primary meridians involved in sexual arousal are different for a woman than for a man. A woman’s energy begins to climb along her inner thighs up into her genitals as well as reaching downward through her abdomen. This energy is carried upward on the Spleen, Liver, and Kidney Meridians and downward on the Stomach Meridian. The lightest upward touch on her inner thigh or downward touch on her abdomen moves the energy along these meridians, building a sexual response. Write that down, fellas. And remember, it’s a feather touch!
For a man in his prime, the Kidney Meridian, which is considered the “Wellspring of Life,” is always at the ready to stream large quantities of vital energy directly to the prostate and genitals, bypassing all logic, reason, or other distractions. It can be triggered by a lover’s seduction, an erotic touch, or a cereal box. Not only are men and women aroused differently in these core energies, they also reach orgasm in different ways. For women, the energies that build toward orgasm are usually slow and not as easily separated from the energies of the relationship. For men, the buildup toward orgasm can be very rapid and less dependent on the energies of the relationship. As Billy Crystal famously quipped, “Women need a reason to have sex; men just need a place.” However, as a relationship develops, these differences recede as the energies of the relationship bring both partners into a more natural harmony.
Two energy channels, the Governing and Central Meridians, connect in both men and women and form a circuit of energy that runs from the sexual organs, up the spine to the head to the back of the tongue to the lower lip, down the front of the body, and back to the sexual organs. Various practices can enhance the flow of this circuit—called the Microcosmic Orbit in Taoist sexual tradition28—which connects the reservoirs of energy in the brain, heart, abdomen, and genitals. Gaining control of the flow in the Microcosmic Orbit is a key in Taoist sexual tradition for progressing from genital orgasms to full-body orgasms to “soul orgasms.”29 In a full-body orgasm, the sexual energy is moving freely and fully through the Microcosmic Orbit. In a soul orgasm, the energy is not only moving freely through your entire body, but the energetic boundaries between the two of you dissolve. The exchange can profoundly expand and transform your consciousness and bring your love to deeper levels.
The energy that flows through the Microcosmic Orbit when it has been activated includes not only the electromagnetic energies that can be detected by scientific instruments but also the more subtle life force called chi. Chi is the vital energy inherent in all of life, though with no instruments that can detect it, Western science denies its existence. But there is an instrument. When you are alive, chi is flowing. When you are dead, it isn’t. Is that so complicated?
The unimpeded circulation of chi, along with balance in its energetic polarities (yin and yang), is considered essential for good health. We can influence the flow of chi in many ways. An old Taoist saying instructs, “The mind moves and chi follows.”30 The converse is also true: Chi moves and the mind follows.
The electromagnetic energy that comes out of your hands can move chi. To explore the Microcosmic Orbit, you can trace it with your hands. Sitting comfortably, bring either hand to the bottom of your sacrum. Very slowly and with a light touch, move your hand up your spine. The electromagnetic energy coming off your hand, not the pressure, is moving the chi. Remember, feather touch. When you have gotten as high on your spine as you can reach, bring your other hand over your shoulder and back to your spine while imagining the energy moving up the gap between your hands. Continue to slowly move your hand up to your head, over your head, down your forehead, and to your upper lip. Now bring both hands to your lower lip and continue down the front of your neck, down the center of your body, to your genitals, underneath the trunk of your body, and back toward the base of your spine. You have just traced the Microcosmic Orbit.
How much you felt or didn’t feel depends on a number of factors, including how kinesthetic you are in your sensory style (chapter 1) and how practiced you are at attending to your inner sensations. The sensations you may feel as the Microcosmic Orbit is activated may be warmth, tingling, or pulsating. If you go over the Orbit a number of times, the energies are likely to become more vivid in your mind, but simply doing the exercise activates these energies whether or not you consciously experience it. The energy generally moves very slowly, particularly at first, so your hands should keep pace. Once you are able to consciously move the energy through the entire circuit by tracing it with your hands, you can experiment with moving it with only your mind.
A series of Taoist practices begins with exercises (such as the one just described) that are designed to bolster the Microcosmic Orbit in your own body. They then progress to sharing the experience with your partner. Unimpeded by clothes, one partner sits on the bed and the other (usually the lighter) partner sits on the other’s lap, maximizing the amount of contact from the pelvis up, supporting each other to the extent you can with your arms around one another’s backsides (see Figure 8-1). Alternatively, you may sit facing one another in chairs or cross-legged on the bed or floor. Each partner activates the Microcosmic Orbit in his or her own body. While this may lead to intercourse that is primed for full-body orgasms, first take the time to get your own energies flowing and share the experience. In the more advanced forms, you bring the energy up your own spine and send it down the front of your partner’s body, meet it at your partner’s genitals, and bring it up your partner’s spine so your energies are merging, facilitating an even more profound exchange.
There is of course much more to the Taoist sexual practices of cultivating spiritual connection. For instance, the man learns how to have orgasms without ejaculating (yes, the two can be pleasurably separated) so that the couple can become “multi-orgasmic.” The Multi-Orgasmic Couple promises that learning how to have “multiple whole-body orgasms” can open the way for you “to harmonize your sexual needs and to reach ever more fulfilling levels of intimacy and ecstasy together.”31
FIGURE 8-1 Joining Microcosmic Orbits. An alternative position is to find balance so you can meet your hands palm to palm instead of around one another’s backs.
The Chakras
Whereas Taoism concentrates on the meridian pathways, Tantric sexual practices focus on the chakras. The seven major chakras are situated at the pelvis (First or Root Chakra), lower abdomen below the navel (Second Chakra), solar plexus (Third Chakra), center of chest (Fourth or Heart Chakra), throat (Fifth Chakra)
, forehead (Sixth Chakra or third eye), and the top of the head (Seventh or Crown Chakra). According to most texts, sexuality originates and is expressed through the Second Chakra. But Donna sees it differently. She sees the Root Chakra as the seat of sexuality. Wide agreement does exist that the Root Chakra is related to safety and survival. Donna indeed sees primal fear, traumatic memories, and survival strategies as being stored in the Root Chakra. When a person is feeling relatively safe, the Root Chakra is a source of stability, drive, and vital energies that move up the body, feeding the other chakras and empowering them. The genitals and other sexual organs are bathed by the energy of the Root Chakra, so it is not surprising that the survival chakra would be involved with sex, nature’s sweet enticement for actions that ensure collective survival.
Here’s a possible source of the confusion. In many situations, a woman’s Root Chakra will not shift into a sexual response without a sense of emotional safety. A report that the safety check has been passed must be sent downward from the Second Chakra. The Second Chakra is the guardian at the gate that must usually be passed through before a woman becomes sexually aroused in the presence of a potential partner. It is receptive, creative, and full of feelings. The Second Charka has even been referred to as the “second heart.” Babies develop while bathed in its energies. Romance, love, affection, admiration—or at a minimum, a sense of emotional safety—are required before the Second Chakra sends energy back down to the Root Chakra that clears the way for a full sexual response to be generated. Men do not require this two-stage clearance process to become aroused. This basic difference can be traced to the divergent sexual anatomy of males and females.
For men, sexual activity occurs outside their bodies and, once the act is biologically over, it is biologically over. Seed planted. What’s next? Women, however, are not only taking another person’s anatomy into themselves; once the act is completed, a baby that will grow in her body for nine months and eventually be asking to borrow the car may have been conceived. In the wisdom of the body’s energies, which evolved into complex systems with decision-making capabilities, it would seem natural that the chakra that holds the womb (Second Chakra) has some say in who is going to help choose the car the baby will be borrowing. The Second Chakra assesses the potential partner in the moment and decides to send sexual energy into the Root Chakra . . . or not. Of course she can override the wisdom of her body, but indiscriminate sex can be much more costly to her than to him. Just as the meridians function differently in men than women in regard to sexual responsiveness (with the Kidney Meridian capable of bringing men into instant arousal but women needing the energy to also build in their Heart, Spleen, Liver, and Stomach Meridians in particular), the chakras conspire with the meridians in dictating a slower and more studied response in women than men.
The word Tantra, from ancient Sanskrit, means “expansion through awareness.” A core attitude in Tantra is mindfulness: “You pay attention to what you’re doing in the exchange between you and your partner. Being mindful induces a sense of respect and reverence for the experience, which lends itself to honoring each other as god and goddess.”32 Tantra itself is a profound spiritual philosophy and discipline. In its original form, many years of meditation, chanting, and postures that channel subtle energies are combined with initiation and purification ceremonies for worship and expanding spiritual awareness. The Tantra sexual practices that have been adopted in the West “use breath, sounds, movements, and symbols to quiet the mind and activate sexual energy, directing it throughout the body to achieve states of consciousness and bliss.”33
Many Tantric practices are reminiscent of the Taoist joining of the Central and Governing Meridians to activate the Microcosmic Orbit (after all, they are both working with the same physical and energetic anatomy). These Tantric practices use the breath and the mind to move the powerful kundalini energies that are coiled at the base of the spine, raising them up along the chakras. As the kundalini energy moves up the chakras, it can lead to different levels of awakening and mystical insight until it reaches the Crown Chakra at the top of the head, where it can produce profound mystical experiences. Kundalini is an intrinsic, libidinal force that resides in the Root Chakra. For this reason, Donna sometimes refers to the Root Chakra as the “pilot light” of the chakra system. As the kundalini energy slowly rises through the chakras, it is often accompanied by a wave of euphoria and happiness as well as spiritual opening. We must also note, however, that in rare cases it is possible for it to rise so quickly and powerfully as to overwhelm a person who is unprepared, resulting in a psychological or physical crisis that has been termed a spiritual emergency. Untold numbers of people have been stigmatized and medicated or hospitalized when this has spontaneously occurred in an unusually powerful manner. Counseling that is attuned to this complex dynamic has, on the other hand, been shown to turn spiritual emergencies into opportunities for spiritual emergence.34
Thinking of the Root Chakra as the pilot light that can ignite each of the other chakras and open them to spiritual energies is a vivid metaphor for understanding the Tantric practices designed to raise the kundalini energies. Here is a basic Tantric practice that uses both breath and imagery. Sitting comfortably:
Tune into the Root Chakra at the base of your spine. It spins in a circle, creating a powerful, vital force. Think of it as a pilot light igniting the chakras above it. With a deep, slow in-breath through your nose, draw the energy from your Root Chakra up the center of your body, vividly imagining it activating, in turn, the chakras in your lower abdomen, solar plexus, heart, throat, and third eye, and the top of your head. As you breathe out through your mouth, send the energy down your spine to your Root Chakra. On the in-breath, again draw the energy up your chakras. Continuing this loop creates a clear channel in your body through which you can imagine or sense a stream of energy traveling past your chakras, “cleansing, feeding, and fueling”35 them. A variation you may want to try is to take the energy up your spine with the in-breath and down the center of your body with the out-breath.
Once you have learned to consciously loop the energies through your chakras as described above, you can use this skill with your partner in some exciting ways. Sit comfortably facing your partner with your spine straight and using the position shown in Figure 8-1, in chairs or sitting cross-legged on the bed or floor. Do the chakra breath while maintaining eye contact and, if your position allows it, with your palms touching your partner’s palms. This practice has three variations—called the “synchronizing breath,” the “reciprocal breath,” and the “circulating breath”—which can be learned in the order presented to get you “connected in a powerful, loving exchange.”36
a. The Synchronizing Breath: Do the breathing simultaneous with your partner. If it isn’t obvious, signal in some way when you are starting the in-breath and the out-breath. Once you are in rhythm with one another, close your eyes and sense into one another’s energy patterns.
b. The Reciprocal Breath: Again breathe in rhythm with your partner, but this time one of you inhales as the other exhales.
c. The Circulating Breath: As you do the reciprocal breath, imagine that you are inhaling your partner’s breath and energy. With your in-breath, consciously bring the energy up from your Root Chakra through the other six chakras as you have been doing. With your out-breath, however, imagine you are sending your energy down your partner’s spine. With your next in-breath, imagine you are picking up your partner’s energy at your Root Chakra and bringing it up through each of your other chakras, and then again sending the energy down your partner’s spine with the out-breath. You are making a loop inside yourself and into your partner.
Such practices, basic to Tantric sex, are applied in creating many forms of loving connection that may or may not involve intercourse or orgasm. Like Taoist sexual practices, Tantric sex is a spiritual path that is oriented toward using sexual energy “as a means to sacred love.”37 Both the Tantric and Taoi
st sexual systems are disciplines that teach couples to open their hearts and manage the masculine and feminine energies within each partner so orgasms are prolonged and become sources of healing, ecstasy, and sacred love. This is not to say that you should or need to pursue the highly disciplined sexual practices found in Tantra or Taoism to have a satisfactory sex life. These are not paths we ourselves have followed. Rather, we have sought to inform our natural instincts with our understanding of the body’s energies, and we love our sexual relationship. Nonetheless, as Marianne Brandon put it after reviewing a variety of sexual practices and arrangements, “If you wish to engage your partner in a spiritual ride of a lifetime, Tantra may be for you.”38
The Radiant Circuits
The radiant circuits are the energy system of ecstasy. Called the “strange flows” or “extraordinary vessels” by ancient Chinese physicians, they were not given nearly as much emphasis as the meridians. Donna, however, sees them as an exceedingly important system that is directly tied to a person’s health and happiness.39 In addition to activating ecstasy—sexual or otherwise—they also promote healing, generate joy, and orchestrate all the other energy systems into a coordinated dance for maintaining your health. Each of the eight radiant circuits has a pathway that, like a meridian, can be traced on the surface of the skin. Unlike the meridians, however, the radiant circuits are able to jump their paths and go to wherever they are needed or attracted.
All eight radiant circuits are activated during any ecstatic experience, but one of them, the Penetrating Flow, plays a special role in sexual activity. As its name suggests, the Penetrating Flow penetrates. It directs energy into every cell, muscle, bone, organ, meridian, and chakra in your body. It may be active or dormant at any given moment. When it is weak or blocked, people feel depressed or empty inside and sex may feel hollow. When the Penetrating Flow is strong, sex will be ecstatic as the energies deep inside you are catapulted throughout your body, activating your emotions and your love, and awakening you to your spiritual depths.