Sacred Sexuality Unraveled

Tantra teacher Pam Babbit explains how sacred sexuality can help anyone experience a deeper richness of life, health, and appreciation of themselves and others.

Does the term sacred sexuality intrigue you?
Are you open to inviting rituals, new techniques and a spiritual practice into your sex and love life?

Sacred sexuality can transform you, your life experiences, and your relationships. I’ll tell you how:

The good news is:
You can enjoy sacred sexuality on any level of experience and dedication, and all rituals, techniques and exercises can be modified for solo practice or same sex couples. Select those that you enjoy and weave them into your current lovemaking practice. You will experience a deeper richness of life, health, and appreciation of yourself and others. Read more

The Benefits of Tantra and Sacred Sexuality

Does Tantric sex have any benefit beyond sexual pleasure? Robert Frey says it does.

Having taught a blend of traditional and modern Western Tantra for nearly twenty years, I am well aware of the many benefits available to its students and practitioners. From my experience and perspective it is much more than a non-essential luxury item. In response to common curiosity about Tantra, here then is an overview of some of its most notable benefits.

• Tantra, the ancient sacred approach to sexuality, has much to offer modern men and women. Tantric teachings are both a spiritual approach to sexuality and a sexual/sensual approach to spirituality. As such we can learn to use our natural sexual energy to enliven and heighten our spiritual awareness. Also Tantra offers a well-developed spiritual orientation to sex­uality that is based on respect, honoring, openness, and love.

• Tantra offers easy, effective, reliable methods for medi­tat­ing, quieting the mind, and reaching positive states of consciousness. These methods often work well for Westerners who either haven't been able to learn to meditate or who are beginners. Tantric meditations utilizing breathing, undulation, and energy awareness, especially when coupled with sensual or sexual arousal, have been measured to consistently pro­duce alpha and theta brain wave shifts more significantly and rapidly than any other traditional or non-technological tech­nique. Read more

The Joy of Spiritual Sex

The joy of spiritual sex is about more than going Tantric, says Hannah Borno. Being open to transcendent experiences can help us reach our sexual potential.

Jenna and her husband Mike had sex last Saturday morning. Nothing remarkable about that, but something happened to Jenna that she’d never experienced before. ‘Something clicked and I completely lost my sense of self,’ she says. ‘It’s hard to explain. It was as though I was transported outside my body and I lost myself, but simultaneously discovered something far bigger. I didn’t have any sense of “me” at all. Afterwards, I remember lying in Mike’s arms, tears running down my cheeks, suffused with a feeling of love for him and for everything. I don’t think I’ve ever had such an intense emotional experience, and it left me feeling incredibly centred, positive and strong.’ Read more

Bare Naked Fun: Discovering the Transformative Spiritual Power of a Bacchanalian Orgy

Ancient Greek Bacchanalian orgies celebrated sex, spirituality, and culture. Michael and Lissa hope to recreate the event in 2010 at a pagan-friendly site in French Lick, Indiana.

Lissa and Michael are on a mission to change the world, one orgy at a time. And their plan just might work. Michael is a modern day priest of Dionysus, the mythological Greek god of wine, who is most notorious as the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy. The ancient Romans called him Bacchus, and made him the patron deity of agriculture and the theater. He was also known as the Liberator – the god who helps free the human spirit through ecstasy, or wine. Of course that was back in the days when Jesus could turn water into wine without anyone suggesting that he should go to an AA meeting. Even today many Christians sip a bit of wine, portraying it as the symbolic blood of Christ. One can't help but think that the dynamic duo of Bacchus and Jesus might have been a lot of fun at parties. "Wine, women, and salvation" has a rather nice ring to it.

A lot has changed over the past 2000 years, but the human thirst for spiritual enlightenment and liberation is still a powerful force in all cultures of the world. And, as the internet and other forms of modern media prove on a daily basis, we still have an insatiable interest in sex. Wouldn't it be nice if our spiritual lives and our sexual lives could team up and provide a whole new meaning to the idea of a "church social"? Indeed, this is roughly the sort of vision that Michael, Lissa, and other Pagans wish to share with the world. Sex, they would say, is sacred and should be celebrated as an integral part of our social and spiritual lives. Read more

Sacred Sex: Tantra to Magick

Dr. Joy Davidson discusses the differences between goal-oriented Western sex magick and consciousness-raising Eastern sex magick. Both of the resources she recommends are excellent, though for serious Tantric practitioners Demons of the Flesh is far superior.

Spiritual Sex: Healing the Cultural Wounding

Sex educator Linda E. Savage says to experience truly flowing sexual energy, we must first move beyond negative cultural conditioning into positive, healthy attitudes.

Sexual energy is the life force moving through the whole body and when it flows easily, it energizes all energy centers. However, sexual energy can get stuck, particularly if the heart center is afflicted. When someone relates to sex addictively, it is often because of significant blocks or leaks in one or more of the energy centers.

For the next few blogs, I will explore dilemmas associated with each energy center, progressing from the base of the spine to the crown of the head. These areas are:

1. Permission: Healing the Cultural Wounding Read more

Church Urges Couples to Pray before Sex

A prayer for couples to recite "before making love" has been included in a new British book of prayers for married couples.

Newly-wed Roman Catholic couples are being encouraged to say a special prayer together before having sex.

The specially-composed Prayer Before Making Love is aimed at 'purifying their intentions' so the act is not about selfishness or hedonism. Read more

Tantric Orgasms and Sacred Sex: New Age Spirituality in the Sex Community

Greta Christina tries to answer the question of why so many people in the sex- positive community are so heavily invested in associating sex with spirituality and religion. I think her third reason is the most important and relevant.

Why is New Age spirituality so prevalent in the sex- positive community?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on this blog about my skeptical, materialist, atheist, entire non- spiritual view of sexual transcendence, and why you don’t need to see sex as metaphysical to see it as magnificent and meaningful.

I deliberately didn’t make the piece critical of spirituality and religion. Partly, that simply wasn’t the point of the piece: the point wasn’t to tear down the spiritual view of sex, but to offer an alternative to it. And partly, I’ll admit, it was because many of my friends and allies in the sex community have spiritual beliefs about sex, in some cases deeply held spiritual beliefs, and I was gun-shy about alienating them.

But I recently gave an interview to Greg Fish of the Weird Things blog, who read the piece and wanted to talk with me about it. And what Greg mostly wanted to know was the very question I’d been deliberately avoiding. He wanted to know why, in my opinion, so many people in the sex- positive community are so heavily invested in associating sex with spirituality and religion.

This is an attempt to answer that question. Read more

The Sacred Quickie

Francesca Gentille, host of Sex: Tantra & Kama Sutra, explains the different between a quickie and a sacred quickie.

This morning . . . well I only had so much time. I had to pick up the car from the repair shop, make lunch for my son, clean, and go to the city to consult. Yet, I was feeling out of sorts, and disconnected from my love. What to do?

THE SACRED QUICKIE!

What’s the difference between a quickie and a sacred quickie? Read more

Spiritual Sex: Begin the Practice

Sex therapist Linda E. Savage follows up her post Spiritual Sex: Ecstatic Love Beyond the Physical with advice on how to begin the practice of spiritual sex.

It is true that our relationship with sexuality is complicated by everything that makes us human. We are all experts on our own experience, so in that regard, everyone who speaks for themselves is absolutely right. Since we are all influenced by culture and ours is particularly ambivalent about sex, much of our feelings about the subject get reflected in attitudes: the meaning we attach to sex. I know there are other models of sexuality and the one most prevalent in popular media is the Biological model. The attempt to reduce sex to physical and chemical components, a bit like plumbing systems, is perhaps a way to control the mystery of it all; but the mystery is what makes sex so interesting. As a colleague of mine, Dr. Leonore Tiefer said, to limit sexuality to biology makes it more like digestion than dancing. I choose dancing.

Let's start with the experience of sexual energy. You can try this exercise by yourself. It helps if you know how to do pelvic rocking. Lie down with your knees bent, feet about hip distance apart, and your low back flat on the floor (don't try this if you have back problems). As you rock your pelvis back with a slight arch, breathe in and as you tuck your pelvis, breathe out. Do this for just a few minutes and then lower your knees, straightening them to rest on the floor and continue breathing. Visualize energy moving up your spine with the in-breath and moving down the front of your body with the out breath. Read more

Spiritual Sex: Ecstatic Love Beyond the Physical

Sex therapist Linda E. Savage asks us to imagine living in a culture where sex is sacred and not a sin and sexuality is seen as a positive expression of the life force - the norm in many cultures pre-dating Greek and Roman times. In these cultures, she says, sexuality was widely understood as a pathway to spiritual ecstasy.

Eleven minutes: that's the estimated time most couples spend making love and sometimes its not even much fun. Between one quarter and one half of long term relationships are beset with low desire and it is common for spouses to find other sexual outlets. We are living in a time when all the marital roles and rules have changed and old solutions don't seem to be working.

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So imagine living in a culture where sex was sacred and not a sin and sexuality was seen as a positive expression of the life force. This perspective was the norm in many cultures pre-dating Greek and Roman times and these societies date back 30,000 years. Even as late as 3,500 years ago those who lived on the island of Crete recognized sexual pleasure as a wonderful way to connect with spirit, renew the abundance of the land, and unite deeply with one another. In this culture sexuality was widely understood as a pathway to spiritual ecstasy. Read more

Tantra: From Ecstasy to Enlightenment

Keith Hall explains how ecstasy through Tantra can lead to spiritual enlightenment.

... Our sexual relationships can become fuller vehicles for intimacy, self-knowledge, and spiritual evolution. As you make love, look deeply into the eyes of your beloved. Feel the electric heat of your union rippling upward with your breath, transforming into Divine Ecstasy as you gaze upon the face of God. Practicing sacred sexuality primes the mind and body to accept and amplify the creative life-force and ecstasy that is slumbering within us. Read more

A Short Definition of Sacred Sex

Catherine Yronwode gives a short definition and history of Tantra, karezza, and other forms of sacred sex. It doesn't get any clearer or more succinct than this.

Tantra (a Sanskrit word which means "woven together") is a term loosely applied to several divergent and even contradictory schools of Hindu yoga in which the sexual union of male and female is worshipped either in principle or in human practice. It has also come to be applied to sex-based religious practices developed in other religions, including Bon, Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Judaism, and Transcendentalism. Read more

Sex Makes You Feel Closer to God

The Naughty American looks at Arthur Versluis's, book The Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism: Sacred Practices and Spiritual Marriage.

Outdoor orgies bring people closer to God.

It sounds strange, but humans have been using sex for centuries as a way to get closer to God, according to Arthur Versluis, author of "The Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism: Sacred Practices and Spiritual Marriage" (Inner Traditions & Bear).

In his research, Versluis uncovered religious sects that made radical sexual practices part of their worship, including engaging in group orgies in the wilderness and having sexual intercourse without allowing men to ejaculate. Read more

The Essence of Tantric Sexuality

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of the Sweet Spot Podcast, interviews Mark Michaels (Swami Umeshanand Saraswati) and Patricia Johnson (Devi Veenanand) authors of Essence of Tantric Sexualit. Mark Michaels and Patricia Johnson are a married couple who have been teaching Tantra and Kriya Yoga together since 1999. They seek to combine a traditional, lineage-based approach with the best contemporary, Neo-Tantric methods. Their approach includes breath work, meditation, chanting, and puja (a type of Hindu devotional ritual), and their "initiated Kriya yoga" practices aim to lay a spiritual foundation for bringing the heightened awareness and pleasure of sex into everyday life. Listen to the podcast.

The Practice of Left Hand Tantra: Vama Marga

The term Tantra sometimes creates confusion because Tantra has become associated with sex in the West, but a minimal amount of research reveals that not all Tantric traditions include sex in their practices. The branch of Tantra that does use sexual practices for spiritual development is called vama marga or left hand Tantra, due to the fact that women, who are of lunar influence, negative polarity or the left, play an essential role in this science.

The science of tantra has two main branches, which are known as vama marga and dakshina marga. Vama marga is the left path which combines sexual life with yoga practices in order to explode the dormant energy centres. Dakshina marga is the right path of yoga practices without sexual enactment. Previously, due to the barriers in sexual life, the path most widely followed was dakshina marga. Today, however, these barriers are rapidly being broken, and the path most sought after by the people everywhere is vama marga, which utilizes sexual life for spiritual development.

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The contention of vama marga is that the awakening of kundalini is possible through the interaction between man and woman. The concept behind this follows the same lines as the process of fission and fusion described in modern physics.

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The elements that are brought together in this process of union are known as Shiva and Shakti. Shiva represents purusha and Shakti represents prakriti or energy. Shakti, in different forms, is present in all creation. Both material and spiritual energy are known as Shakti. When the energy moves outwardly, it is material energy, and when it is directed upwards it is spiritual energy. Therefore, when the union between man and woman is practised in the correct way, it has a very positive influence on the development of spiritual awareness. Read more

Tantra 101

Kip and Lexi explain a simple formula to awaken the life force in the body.

Tantra and the Kama Sutra

When the general public hears the word Tantra, they often associate it with the Kama Sutra, a book written well over a millenia ago in India for male citizens on how to please and how to be pleasured. However, the only relationship between the two is that both originated in India and involve sex.

Tantra or Tantric Sexuality is making waves in the western world – especially in places where people lead an active lifestyle – but the fact is that this concept has been around in the world since at least five millennia. Tantra is a byproduct of Indian spiritual practices, where sex was an embodiment of everything good...

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The Kama Sutra is a compendium of sexual norms and customs pertaining to the act of seducing women and lovemaking with them. Since the society at that time was highly patriarchal, the treatise is also masculine in its outlook – in fact, most parts of the Kama Sutra are directly addressed to the male city-dweller, on how he should go about his sexual life. In the only part of the Kama Sutra that is addressed to women, they are only told about how they should submit themselves wholly to appease their men. Read more

Six Gateways to Sacred Sexuality

Shamanic tantra is a path to enlightenment through the body that draws from Wiccan, Druidic, and shamanic roots. Kypris has created six gateways to sacred sexuality as an attempt to structure the work of shamanic tantra for teaching.

The journey to enlightenment can take many roads. The six gateways are a path that happens to be working for myself and my healing partner, Steven Jay. Together we have intuitively created this road map for discovering the bliss that is created when we connect spirituality to sexuality. This is a practice that can be used alone or with a partner. These steps are not necessarily practiced in order. In fact, they seem to interweave and spiral with each other, spirals being a geometric pattern often used to describe earth-centered spirituality, where linear motion from point a to point b is rare. Read more

Improve Sexual Intimacy with Yoga

Practicing yoga can bring intimate couples closer, which results in better sex. How does it work? Mark Whitwell, the author of Yoga of Heart: The Healing Power of Intimate Connection says:

"Normally, couples rush at each other and focus on orgasm, using sex as a stress-release mechanism," he says. Instead, he claims, sex can be more intimate and loving if both partners commit to a daily 20-minute yoga practice. "You begin to have better sex because you start to feel your whole body. Sex becomes about enjoying your partner as life, as feeling," he says. "That's the point. You feel better and your partner feels better. That's what yoga develops."

Whitwell explains more in this interview.