Chapter
16

Tantra: Chakras and Love

Now for the fun part. Not that the rest of it hasn’t been fun, but now we’re talking fun. In other words, we’re talking sex.

Sex is about pleasure, fulfillment, and most importantly, about connection. Because these are all aspects directly reflected in the chakras, working with the chakras can enhance and intensify your sexual health and experience of sex. Chakras are the ultimate relationship aid!

When you look to the chakras to improve your sexual experience, you will quickly understand that this approach takes sex beyond the physical. The idea that sex is a spiritual act is nothing new. Sex as a metaphor for union with the Divine Universal Spirit is ancient and a part of many different traditions. Hinduism explores this metaphor, as do Taoism in China, many of the ancient pagan religions from Europe, and even Christianity, where nuns marry God. In all these traditions, however, sexual energy is transformed into spiritual energy, rather than being “wasted” on plain old physical kicks.

But maybe you didn’t sign up for some esoteric spiritual experience. You just want to get healthy, feel good, and have better sex. No problem. We can help you with that. However, to do so, you need a brief lesson in Tantra.

The Truth About Tantra

Tantra is a branch of the yoga tradition often associated with sexual practices, but this is a misunderstanding of this esoteric form of yoga. According to Tantra, our sensory experience and the physical Universe itself is a manifestation of Divine energy, and so it should be celebrated, rather than transcended. Talking about sex in a book about chakras pretty much demands discussing Tantra, even though understanding Tantric philosophy can be the work of an entire lifetime. But we promise to keep things simple.

Tantra is a school of yogic thought that arose as a backlash against the traditional philosophy that the material world, including the human body, is illusory and distracting, a source of suffering, and that it must be transcended to experience enlightenment. Tantra says no! According to Tantric thought, the world is beautiful, the body is beautiful, and physical pleasure is beautiful, too. The physical Universe, including the body, is a manifestation of Divine perfection, so enjoying and celebrating these things is just like worship. Isn’t that nice?

Tantra is nice, but it also has a naughty reputation. People automatically associate Tantra with sex and esoteric sexual rituals. Sexual rituals are a part of Tantra—it’s true. However, they are just one part—a very advanced part—and definitely not the point of Tantra.

Despite what you might have heard, the Kama Sutra has nothing to do with Tantra and never mentions the chakras. The Kama Sutra is a practical treatise on sexual techniques and the art of love, penned by a Hindu scholar named Vatsyayana in about the fourth century and translated for English audiences in the 1800s by an Englishman named Sir Richard Burton. It is meant to guide, instruct, and counsel a sexual society on everything from handling multiple wives to kissing to the best ways to stimulate the clitoris. You can certainly use some of the techniques in the Kama Sutra as you seek to have a deeper sexual relationship, but don’t mistake the Kama Sutra for a Tantric text.

Tantra is Yin/Yang Union

Tantra means “weaving together,” and the Tantric philosophy says fulfillment comes through the weaving together of the yin and yang of opposites: Earth and Heaven; night and day; Moon 4 and Sun 3; and of course, female and male.

The Tantric philosophy of the Universe is that (to simplify) there are two Divine parents, not just one male god or female goddess. There is the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine. The Divine Feminine is of the Earth, and she is unruly, dark, wild, full of movement, yielding, and even a little dangerous. The Divine Masculine is steady and quick, bright, solid, serene, and infused with Spirit. Each is amazing, fantastic, and fascinating, but neither is whole without the other. Wild shifting ground and Earth nature in motion is steadied by bright serene Spirit, and bright serene Spirit is enlivened and animated by wild Earth nature in motion. Doesn’t that sound sexy?

Tantric philosophy also involves Kundalini. We go into more detail about Kundalini in Chapter 5, and if you’ve read that chapter already, you probably remember that Kundalini is latent, powerful, wild, unruly, and feminine energy that waits inside the first chakra to be awakened. When Kundalini awakens, she seeks her mate, the serene spiritual male energy. She moves up through the seven chakras as each is ready to receive her and pierces them as she rises from the Root chakra to the Crown chakra. Once there, she can finally unite in Divine union with her male counterpart who is frequently represented in Hindu literature as the god Shiva.

We think that’s pretty sexy, too, and in Tantra, that’s just what sex is—a sort of acting out of this Divine partnership where male and female join in ecstatic union that is both intensely pleasurable and significantly spiritual—the best of both worlds.

If you have a same-sex partner, of course you can still experience Tantric sex. Each human being has a mixture of feminine and masculine qualities that seek each other. When you and your partner become immersed in the passionate energy of sexual union, all those energies will find each other, and the merging will be just as sacred and profound in Divine union. The sexual orientation or gender identity of the intimate partners doesn’t matter one bit.

The consensual intimate unions of adult sexual partners are sacred—no matter the race, ethnicity, gender orientation, or gender identity of the partners. The striving for balance and harmony through sexual intimacy with a beloved is a hallmark of what it means to be human. We search for that perfect expression of wholeness and Divine union in the body of our loved ones.

What Tantra Isn’t

Knowing what you now know about Tantra, it is probably pretty clear that some of the ideas people have about Tantra aren’t true. Tantra is not about new complicated sexual positions, role playing, or having multiple sex partners.

Tantra is not just sex, sex, sex either. Most Tantric rituals don’t even involve sex. They are about connection, weaving together opposites, and union in all its many forms. Yes, Tantra can increase your physical and sexual energy, but it also channels that energy in a way that increases pleasure, joy, balance, and bonding.

Tantra isn’t actually a religion, either. It is a philosophy. If you sign up for a Tantra yoga class, we can guarantee you that you won’t be rolling around having sex with the person on the mat next to yours. Tantra is about opening up your mind and body to experience the Divine energy of the Universe to comprehend the truth that we are all part of one great harmonic energy body. There are many ways to do that. Sex is just one of them.

Tantra for One

Is Tantra restricted to sexual unions between partners? Or, can Tantric Divine union be achieved solo? The self-knowledge and acceptance that comes with true self-love can only deepen the bond of union when experiencing love with an intimate partner. Sending loving messages to your body while exploring solo Tantra is a wonderful way to learn how to love your body.

Touch your body to help you get to know how you respond and how emotion and sensation arise within you. Focus, too, on your breath; be aware of breath entering and leaving your body. Breathe into your Sacral chakra to feel the intensity of passion gathering there. Breathe into your Heart chakra to feel the sensation of balance and wholeness rise there. Vocalize the seed sounds into each chakra as you touch its place within your body. Use long steady even breaths and continue to breathe through climax. Solo Tantra can give you a newfound sense of personal wholeness and wellbeing that will make you feel better and that will only be welcomed by an intimate sex partner should you choose one.

The Heart Chakra: Your Sexual Command Center

You might recall from Chapter 8 that the passionate second chakra, or Sacral chakra, is the chakra that reflects our sexual desires, pleasures, and longings. That’s true, and we’ll get to the second chakra in the next section. However, when it comes to sex and the chakras (doesn’t that sound like some new HBO series?), the fourth chakra, or Heart chakra, really is your sexual command center.

Remember how the Tantra of Kundalini serpent energy works? As Divine Feminine wild, earthy, and unruly Kundalini rises from the Root chakra toward the steady, bright, and Divine Masculine waiting for it at the Crown chakra, that steady, bright Divine Masculine can’t help being drawn downward toward earthy grounding pleasure, and guess where they meet? All that energy collides and explodes right in the chakra resting exactly between the three Earthly (lower) chakras and the three Heavenly (upper) chakras. Remember, Tantra means weaving together and the union of opposites, and where else to merge those opposites than on neutral ground? The Heart chakra, with its Venus 6 natural planetary ruler of both Taurus R yin and Libra O yang, celestial balance is that neutral ground (see Chapter 10).

When we talked about Kundalini before, you might remember that we talked in Part 3 about how it rises through all seven chakras to find fulfillment at the Crown chakra. That’s true, but there’s also a lot more going on energetically. Kundalini does seek to rise all the way up through each chakra, but Divine Heavenly energy is always seeking the Earth, too, so the person with seven open and balanced chakras experiences all kinds of back and forth and up and down energy.

Although not all sources agree on this, we subscribe to the notion that Kundalini can rise, then fall, and then rise again, just as Divine energy can radiate all the way down from the Crown to the Root chakra, and then flow back up. Our bodies—and indeed our chakras—are vessels for our own constantly fluctuating and circulating energies that are both masculine and feminine, Earth and Spirit. However, the real combustion happens in the Heart chakra during sexual union.

That means if you have a blocked Heart chakra, you might experience isolation during sexual intercourse, rather than union. You might also experience personal pleasure but feel nothing for the person helping to provide this pleasure.

During sex, your body does everything it can to orgasm so that chemicals can be released that promote bonding. However, a blocked Heart chakra can reroute those pleasurable feelings so you begin to associate them not with the other person but only with yourself. When sexual pleasure becomes purely self-centered, sexual addiction through casual hookups can be the result—a constant search for the pleasure, rush, and “high” of sex without any feelings linked to the sexual partner and even a profound sense of emptiness in the self after. Sex becomes like a drug of choice, and the Divine essence of the partners coming to the union seems to be the last consideration. An overloaded Heart chakra might seek sex through blind need and cling too hard, negating themselves and elevating their partner to a status of power through obsession—there’s little possibility of balance in such an exchange or partnership.

Seeking sex for pure personal pleasure is a hard problem to address because there is typically little motivation to change this behavior when the sex seeker sees few negative consequences and ample opportunity. However, that is only because the person with the blocked Heart chakra has not experienced the much more intense, pleasurable, and complete experience of sexual pleasure that is based in total spiritual union with a beloved intimate partner rather than the shallow physical pleasure of the hookup.

Sex and the Passionate Sacral Chakra

But let’s not forget the second chakra, or Sacral chakra, where all that passion and pleasure begins. Masculine and feminine energy may meet at the Heart chakra, but the physical, earthy, sensual-pleasure part of sex comes from the second chakra.

If the second chakra is blocked, it becomes difficult to experience physical pleasure during sex, and this physical pleasure—and all its associated chemical signals in the body—is an intrinsic part of the sexual experience. The second chakra also reflects the body’s fertility and creativity, which sexual energy can illuminate. A closed second chakra blocks off all those other wonderful, rich aspects of sexual union.

This can lead to periods of sexless relationship(s), where the partners often cannot articulate the problem in an otherwise loving union. Reconnecting to passion can immerse the partners in emotional vulnerability and physical sensitivity. Care must be taken. Vocalizations from the Sacral chakra (see Chapter 15) can help partners who are lost to find each other in the second chakra, Svadhisthana, which is “the dwelling place of the self” where they will meet in “the sweetness” of their sexual union.

Remember that in Tantra, physical pleasure is a manifestation of Divine ecstasy. It is not something to feel guilty about or to be suppressed. The intimate union of your bodies and spirits is something to celebrate, honor, and revel in, as you join totally with another human being. Without it, sex is just an exercise, like doing sit-ups. You must allow yourself to be present in the moment to acknowledge and welcome the Divine energy your partner brings to this moment. You are given permission to explore, to seek union in the other, to feel pleasure, and to bestow pleasure.

An overloaded Sacral chakra can get in the way of sexual pleasure, too. The second chakra is the source of feelings, emotions, and passions. If you get too needy, too clingy, or too desperate because of an overloaded Sacral chakra, the whole experience goes out of balance. This could lead to unbalanced personal power in the Solar Plexus chakra and to the ultimate out-of-balance nature of your relationships through the Heart chakra. An overload might also lead to engaging in sex purely out of selfish reasons. If you feel empty inside, you might believe merging sexually with another will fill your cup. It might fulfill you in the moment, but when the event is over, the emptiness returns. Ideally, sexual union is about the merging of equally potent energies, and if you can fill yourself up without needing someone else to do this task, sex can reach the next level of true connection and ecstasy.

Ideally, when the passionate Sacral chakra is open, balanced, and strong, the physical arousal and pleasure you will get from sexual union will be enough to make you weak in the knees. When your Heart chakra is open, balanced, and strong as well (surging with the power push of the Solar Plexus chakra), you’ll have plenty of inner space for masculine and feminine energies to merge into one complete and realized whole as your body merges with another body that is experiencing the same thing. Two become one, and that one becomes sacred.

The Sacral chakra is located just above the genitals. An exercise to help open and energize the second chakra is to get very close to your partner and press your second chakras together—abdomen to abdomen. (You can be clothed or not.) Stay in this position for a full five minutes, looking at each other directly in the eyes (which also opens the Heart chakra). Don’t speak or move. (Laughing a bit or giggling might be unavoidable.) This is an intense exercise and more difficult than it sounds, but it can really get the passion of the second chakra flowing.

One of Tantra’s more talked-about techniques involves the notion that if orgasm can be suppressed intentionally, sexual energy will move back up toward the Crown chakra, rather than out of the body. The theory goes that sexual energy is so potent and powerful that releasing it through orgasm wastes it on mere physical pleasure. Instead, by becoming aroused and then directing the energy up through the sushumna nadi toward the Crown chakra, all that potent energy stays within the body and moves the consciousness closer to enlightenment, which is the ultimate blissful ecstasy.

Can’t All the Chakras Have Some Fun?

Kundalini energy can’t move up the spine seeking her masculine counterpart if any of the chakra doors are slammed shut, and each and every chakra plays its own role in the sexual experience. The more open and balanced all your chakras, the more complete your union will be.

Regular chakra work, regular yoga, regular massage, and yes, regular sex with a loving partner will all contribute to healthy, open chakras, but as further motivation, here are each chakra’s contributions to your great sex experience:

• The healthy first chakra, or Root chakra, makes you feel secure enough that you can reach out to another human being without feeling like your own identity is at risk. The first chakra also takes care of your basic needs, so you don’t have to worry about the unpaid electric bill or getting enough to eat when you are trying to focus on more elevated pleasures.
• The healthy second chakra, or Sacral chakra, provides actual pleasurable sensations within the body, the ability to feel your own body and the body of someone else, and a steady emotional connection with your partner. Swellings of passionate feeling and the desire to reach out and merge with another body also come from here.
• The healthy third chakra, or Solar Plexus chakra, gives sexual union power and volatility. It is the part of you that recognizes yourself as an individual and the other person as a different individual. It is also the part that gives you the courage and fortitude to step forward and extend a metaphorical hand to another human being, which isn’t always easy to do.
• The healthy fourth chakra, or Heart chakra, serves as the energetic “bed” on which feminine and masculine energies consummate their union. This exact center of the chakras is the meeting ground for Earth and Heaven, and it also enhances sexual union with sensitivity, compassion, sacrifice, the desire to please someone other than yourself, and ultimately, love that far exceeds pure physical sensation.
• The healthy fifth chakra, or Throat chakra, provides a mental context for physical union. This is where we understand what sex is, as well as what it means. We speak to our partners from here, but we also listen, not just to the other’s words but to actions, movements, and expressions. Without this capacity, sex withdraws into the purely physical without understanding of its implications, without a true understanding of the other person, and without any heightened sense of the meaning of union.
• The healthy sixth chakra, or Third Eye chakra, adds subtlety and nuance to the sexual experience. Without intuition, sex can become basic and desensitized, but with the health of the sixth chakra, each partner becomes keenly aware of what the other needs. This kind of mutual awareness catapults sex out of the realm of the ordinary or of duty to make it an art form. The sixth chakra adds the embroidered details to the Tantric weaving.
• The healthy seventh chakra, or Crown chakra, brings sex out of the physical world and adds the final Universal dimension that makes sex not just pleasurable but Divine. With seventh chakra involvement, sex is still a union of two bodies, but it also represents the union of body and Spirit, of Heaven and Earth, and of the human with the Divine.

Chakra Bonding for Better Sex

So, how can you have yourself some sacred sex? Try these Tantric-inspired techniques, some to try with your partner and some just for you, and remember, practice makes perfect!

Down-Under Workouts for Greater Orgasmic Control

You can’t run a marathon without getting in shape, and you can’t expect to have an intense prolonged sexual experience without getting in shape, either. Yet, to build up sexual energy for a more complete and total merging experience, you can’t just rush through sex and fall asleep. You need to take some time.

But that takes stamina and the ability to control the rush to pleasure. Regular cardiovascular exercise actually goes a long way toward improving sexual strength. It also improves stamina, so you will be less inhibited, have more fun, and maybe even experience more intense sexual pleasure longer.

However, you can also spot-train for better sex and better orgasmic control. Both men and women have muscles around their sexual organs and pelvic floor that help to control and sustain orgasms. If you tend to be highly orgasmic and reach orgasm too quickly, toning these muscles can help you control that rush to pleasure. If you have trouble having an orgasm at all, toning these muscles can finally make the Big O a reality in your life.

To begin conditioning this area, squeeze the pelvic floor muscles and release them in a pulsing movement. This is the same muscular contraction you would use to stop the flow of urine. (This applies to both men and women.) These are sometimes called Kegel exercises.

Once you get the feel of it, do 10 repetitions. A few hours later, do it again. If you can do this a few times a day and gradually work up to about 50 reps, your muscles will be in great shape for whatever challenges they might encounter.

Shakti and Shiva

Sometimes husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, can be so … annoying. They don’t load the dishwasher the right way, they take your phone charger without asking, or they forget to pick up the laundry. They have that little habit that just drives you crazy. But guess what? As much as your partner is a faulty and sometimes irritating human, she or he (or they) is also Shakti (Goddess energy) or Shiva (God energy).

We’re not talking about idol worship here. We’re not even talking about religion. We are talking about union because you are also a Goddess or God, the embodiment of Divine energy. When it comes to sex, you have to let all those annoying things go. What’s more, you have to … or shall we say, you get to … worship your partner for the Divine embodiment she or he (or they) truly is.

This brings a whole new energy to sexual union, one that can completely transform your relationship. If your first reaction is something to the effect of, “You want me to worship him? I don’t think so!” or “Worship her? Don’t I do enough for her already?” then we have news for you. You need to work on your Heart chakra.

Part of the potent power of sacred sexual union is in the merging of equal opposites, but the only way for that to happen is for both partners to open their hearts and fall down on their knees in worship of the other. It doesn’t work if only one person does this, but if neither one does it and if nobody wants to go first, then real union will never happen. One of the secrets of Shakti (the power to Become) and Shiva (Pure Being) is that mutual worship breaks down all barriers of separateness, ego, and the false idea that we are alone. If you worship your partner, your partner is likely to fall down in gratitude and worship you. This is human nature, and the beginning of an understanding of Divine union. Although mutual worship probably won’t be easy or fast-acting, when equal forces meet with open hearts and a sense of commitment, it can, and quite often does turn into something beautiful.

Of Lingams and Yonis

Two of the sacred symbols of Tantra are the lingam and the yoni. The lingam is, essentially, a sacred phallic symbol that represents male energy and is depicted as a penis-like shape. The yoni is the sacred symbol of the female sex organs, representing female energy, and is depicted as a vagina-like shape. In ancient statues from India, these two symbols are often joined together and represent the energy that fuels the entire Universe.

Another potent and energy-generating activity is to massage each other’s lingam and yoni (take turns) without coming to orgasm. Focus on total relaxation. When excitement builds, stop. Wait. Then start again when the energy dies down. This gradual building up increases sexual energy to levels far beyond what can be achieved in regular sexual contact. Touch and worship your partner’s lingam or yoni, but keep pulling back until the energy has built to a peak.

Ancient Hindu sculptures embrace the union of feminine (yoni) and masculine (lingam) energy.

We can’t be responsible for what might happen next, but we hope you will keep exploring, keep coming together in union with your opposite, and keep worshipping the Goddess and God you seek for, and find, in each other.