Magazine: Yoga Journal
Issue: May/June 1994
Author: Mark Gramunt

SACRED SEX

In the art of conscious loving, sex can become a way to heal our wounds, open our hearts, and fuel our spiritual awakening.

Before you begin this article, Id like you to take a test. Not some tabloid questionnaire to assess your level of sexual performancehow often you have an orgasm, for example, or (if youre a man) how often you have an orgasm before youre readybut a kind of sexual Rorschach, an opportunity to reflect on some of your sexual attitudes and expectations. As you envision the following scene, pay attention to how you feel.

First, you enter a doorway into a candlelit bedroom where your beloved awaits. (If you dont have a beloved right now, imagine your ideal man or woman.) You begin by sitting quietly together, meditating or praying or simply opening to the sounds around you. Then you bow to one another, acknowledging the sacred or divine within you. As you embrace and kiss, you feel your throats, hearts, bellies, and genitals align and your breathing come into harmony. Lying down side by side, you begin to touch one another with utmost sensitivity, bringing all your presence and love into every caress. With awareness, you help one another gently open to the places inside where you may feel fear, shame, or aversion. Looking deeply and soulfully into one anothers eyes, you whisper endearments and tender words of love. As your passion increases, you touch one another with greater urgency, never losing your heart connection or the deep conviction that your lovemaking is a sacred activity. Theres no performance anxiety because theres no particular goal youre trying to achieve.

As the charge between you increases, you experience a powerful current of energy connecting you at the genitals, rising up to the heart, bridging the space between you, and dropping back to the genitals again. Although your lovemaking continues for an hour or two, the energy between you continues to grow and expand, flowing from your heart like a never-ending fountain of love. At times, all sense of separateness dissolves, and you feel yourself to be one with everything.

Now take a moment to notice how youve responded to this vignette. Are you feeling uneasy or even annoyed at the juxtaposition of sexual passion and spiritual experience? Or maybe you long to achieve similar heights in your own lovemaking.

Perhaps you feel a nagging sense of shame about what you perceive to be your own sexual inadequacies. Then again, you may be inclined to dismiss the whole thing as some silly new age fantasy. Who has time to make love like that these days anyway? With two jobs, the house, and the kids, we barely have enough energy at the end of the day to kiss one another goodnight.

Whatever your response, its clear that many of us still feel uncomfortable when sex and spirit are mentioned in the same breath. Blame it on the body-negative values of our Judeo-Christian heritage or the ambivalent, do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do attitudes of certain Eastern gurus, but few of us have managed to forge a secure and fulfilling link between our sexuality and our spirituality. Although all of us have genitals, and most of us presumably use them, we have difficulty communicating openly about our sex lives, even with our closest friends, and we may be so confused and conflicted about sex that we seek asylum in spiritual teachings that counsel us to avoid it entirely.

In the culture at large, of course, the split runs even deeper. Despite the sexual revolution, the womens movement, Masters and Johnson, and the Hite Report, sex for many remains a brief and loveless encounter, fueled by loneliness and lust but largely devoid of true passion, intimacy, or heart. Beneath our sexual impulse as a species lies a desire to penetrate the veil that separates us from one another. But rather than risk exposing our vulnerability, we hurry about in search of the right partner, or the right position, or a better vibrator, or a more titillating obsession.

If we choose to remain monogamous, we may simply fail to show up for sex, either emotionally or spiritually. (How often have you caught yourself planning your schedule or fantasizing about your favorite movie star in the midst of an ostensibly passionate moment?) Or we may respond to our sexual shame and confusion by shutting down and withdrawing from relationships entirely.

Those of us who are spiritually inclined are even more acutely aware of how difficult it is to bring our spiritual values, our hearts, and our genitals into harmony. Id meditated and practiced yoga for nearly a dozen years, reports one woman, but somehow I couldnt bring the same depth and presence to my lovemaking. It was so hard to open up and let go. Or, as one man puts it, No matter how much meditation I was doing, as soon as Id become sexual, Id become a different person. All the old conditioning and anxiety would come back about how a man is supposed to behave.

Ironically, many of us have glimpsed the possibility that lovemaking can be a gateway to a higher state of consciousness. We may have had peak moments in sex when all sense of separation fell away. Or we may simply have the intuition that our sexual longings have a higher purpose. As Georg Feuerstein points out in his book Sacred Sexuality, sexual love is the most intense and tangible way that ordinary men and women strive for a union that transcends the boundaries of our everyday experience. For some people, notes Feuerstein, sexor to be more precise sexual lovecan be a hidden window onto the spiritual reality. For the rest of us, without guideposts or role models, sacred sex remains little more than an empty oxymoron.

Of course, not everyone experiences such sexual frustration and emotional angst. Some of us have warm, supportive, reasonably fulfilling relationships in which we give and receive love freely. Or do we? Its not that my husband and I dont love one another, explains one woman in her mid-40s. We do. We still make love every week, and we even meditate together daily. But when he has an orgasm, which is generally within a few minutes, he abandons me emotionally. I lose him for several days. Of course, he makes sure I have an orgasm toobut its not the same. I keep thinking there must be more to lovemaking than this.

The Art of Conscious Loving

If popular authors and workshop leaders Charles and Caroline Muir are to be believed, there can be more to lovemaking than this. The Muirs teach an approach to sacred sexuality they call the art of conscious loving, a contemporary Western adaptation of the ancient spiritual teachings called tantra. With other well-known tantra teachers like Margo Anand and David and Ellen Ramsdale, they are at the forefront of a movement that invites its followers to approach sex as a sacrament, and sexual union as a sacred activity whose ultimate goal is self-actualization.

The essence of tantra, the Muirs teach, is to bring all of your consciousness and all of your love to the bedroom and to transform your lovemaking from a brief and entirely genital encounter into an extended meditation that affects you on every level of your being: physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual.

The reason for our confusion about sex, say the Muirs, is that we were never initiated into the mysteries of lovemaking by knowledgeable elders, but instead gleaned what little we know from sex manuals, womens magazines, locker-room banter, and limited personal experience. The combination of our early conditioning and lack of formal education in this area leaves most people in an interesting predicament: We dont know how to feel or give love sexually or how to mix passion and intimacy in the beautiful blend that sexual loving can be.

Indeed, many of us, the Muirs note, are more than simply uneducatedwe have been deeply wounded or even abused in our early sexual encounters and bring a history of pain into the bedroom with us. As a result, weve learned to split our hearts and our genitals, having sex without really making love. Before we can become fully empowered sexual beings, they claim, we must heal this split through the practices that tantra provides.

Tantra teaches important tools for todays couples who are searching for a significantly different way of relating to each other and, as a by-product, healing the wounds of their past sexual traumas, Charles Muir explains. Tantra asserts that negative imprints from sexual preconceptions and past experiences make their home in the second chakra, the sexual center. The first step toward healing our sexual scars is to shine the light of our consciousness into our second chakras, so we can see what is creating the short circuit.

Imagine the second chakra as a doorway into a room filled with your personal sexual belongings. You must enter this room with a lantern held high against the darkness. You must walk through the room, past everything in it, in order to overcome your personal obstacles. Each time you enter with the light, you will eradicate a little bit of the darkness.

This split between the light of consciousness and the darkness of the lower chakras is often most pronounced, the Muirs have noticed, in practitioners of Eastern spiritual disciplines. Their own personal journey is a case in point.

Before he became a teacher of tantra, Charles, 47, was for many years a successful and widely respected hatha yoga teacher who felt confident of his spiritual accomplishments. Then, in 1980, the breakup of his first marriage and his precipitous return to the single life threw him into emotional turmoil and forced him to face his sexual duplicity. In professional life I was the model yogi, but in my sexual life I was just acting out old scripts. I decided to figure out how to bring the yogi into the bedroom with me. There werent a lot of role models. It was devastating to discover that many of the swamis I loved and honored were sleeping with their disciples. Id already cleared my mind and my heart, and Id developed an understanding of breath, energy, and concentration from my yoga practice. Now I needed to work on my lower chakras.

As fate would have it, a series of women of great power appeared in Muirs life who, as he puts it, insisted on healing me, initiating him into the arts of sexual tantra. In addition, he read as much as he could in the tantric texts then available in English and put what he read into practice. As he became increasingly successful in the integration of his own upper and lower chakras, he began to share what he was learning with his students. However, he never lost his dedication to hatha yoga, which he continues to teach in his workshops on tantra.

Like Charles, Caroline Muir, 51, began practicing hatha yoga in the late 60s, when she was a frazzled, cigarette-smoking housewife and mother who had relocated to New York from the midwest. When she and her family moved again, to California, six years later, she happened upon a class being taught by Charles and enjoyed it so much that he became her yoga teacher of choice. For many years she attended the week-long workshops Charles led each year in Rio Caliente, Mexico. Those retreats opened my chakras and transformed my life, Caroline recalls.

When Charles started adding tantra yoga to the curriculum, Caroline was fascinated. Id always been a very sexual person and a very spiritual person, but never the twain did meet. As soon as Id get to the bedroom, Id go into overdrive and become goal oriented. I lost my sense of connection with myself and with my husband, and that made me very sad.

Although her husband reluctantly agreed to study tantra with her, he eventually lost interest and the marriage ended. As Caroline felt called to follow the path of tantra, she increasingly sought out Charles for instruction, and eventually the two became lovers and finally, eight years ago, husband and wife and coteachers of tantra.

Sexual Healing

At the core of the Muirs work is the experience and cultivation of energy, which they teachin a safe, supportive workshop setting involving no classroom nudity or other possibly intimidating sexual behaviors through a series of exercises incorporating asanas and breathing techniques derived from hatha yoga. Sex is seen not merely as the rubbing of two bodies together, but as an energetic exchange in which two people nurture and empower one another.

In the traditional tantric view, the universe is the play of two polar energies (the masculine Shiva, pure consciousness, and the feminine Shakti, pure energy), and sexual intercourse is used to rouse the shakti, or kundalini (believed to lie coiled at the base of the spine), and thereby fuel the process of spiritual awakening. Adapting this view to more interpersonal ends, the Muirs teach that the energy generated by the polarity between the sexeswhich often gives rise to misunderstanding and conflictcan be used to inspire, deepen, and sustain an intimate relationship. The differences between men and women can be used as a positive force in a partnership, they write, and the proper combination of these differences can produce a near-alchemical reaction, an ether in which everything flourishes, in which the garden of your relationship bursts with color and new life and growth, and you and your beloved thrive. (Although their workshops are addressed especially to heterosexual couples, singles are also welcome, and the same principles are applicable to gay and lesbian couples.)

Passion is a crucial component in an enduring relationship, the Muirs believe, and must be cultivated if the relationship is to survive. When a couple lessens their lovemaking, they begin the not-so-slow process of starving their love. Love is nourished by the sexual energy a couple generates. Yet the generation of sexual energy need not involve intercourse, or even foreplay in the usual sense. For example, busy couples are counseled to spend at least 10 minutes a day practicing one of several exercises for sharing and harmonizing their energy (see sidebar).

Among the most powerful techniques the Muirs teach are those that enable a man to make love indefinitely by withholding his ejaculation and retaining and recirculating his sexual energy. Men who have mastered this process often report that their passion continues to build from one lovemaking session to the next, fueling the love they feel for their beloved. Before I learned this technique, one man relates, I found myself feeling a certain aversion toward sex, especially as I got older, because I knew it would take me several days to recover my energy. Now I feel endlessly attracted to my sweetheartand perpetually in love.

When a woman realizes that her lover wont abandon her, she can relax and open to receive his love, opening more fully to her own deep sexual feelings as well. When my partner contains the energy of ejaculation, his presence with me brings through a quality of maleness that supports me in experiencing the power of my deep feminine, reports one woman, a veteran of many workshops with the Muirs. I often feel a primal sense of masculine and feminine coming together that makes me hopeful about the healing of gender conflict in our culture.

When couples come to realize that lovemaking can enhance their vitality and empower them in the rest of their lives, sex becomes much more attractive, and their sexual connection is renewed. Right now we only have one avenue for this creative sexual energy, says Charles Muir, It moves downward and outward to create a baby. Tantra teaches us to move the same energy inward and upward to regenerate and recreate ourselves. When people at our workshops unblock the conduits that carry this energy throughout the energetic and physical organism, theyre surprised by its power, and they realize it has all kinds of creative uses that arent sexual at all.

Early in their workshops, the Muirs focus on attempting to reclaim sex from the mire of shame, fear, and obsession into which our culture has cast it. On the first evening, for example, they talk about how the names we use to refer to our genitals not only reflect our negative attitudes toward sex, but continue to perpetuate them. Amid much laughter, Charles rattles off a long list of slang terms for the penis, many of which are derogatory: prick, dick, stick, schmuck, weeniead infinitum. Brandishing a similar list for the vagina, Caroline declines to read it, stating gravely, Theyre just not funny.

Instead, the Muirs suggest that women replace their accustomed term for vagina with the Indian yoni, meaning sacred space, and that they learn to treat it accordingly. Isnt it wonderful to know we have a sacred space down there, Caroline tells the women, not a cunt or a pussy. Men are likewise encouraged to replace their customary name for penis with lingam, meaning wand of light. Later in the workshop the Muirs offer exercises in which men and women learn to transmit love and respect to one anothers sacred space or wand of light, healing some of the shame and pain that has accumulated in these venerable organs as a result of negative sexual conditioning and abusive sexual encounters.

Couples are counseled to revere one another in their lovemaking as god and goddess, embodiments of the divine masculine and feminine. At one key moment in the workshop, the Muirs divide the men and women into separate groups and instruct them in the art of being fully present and attentive to their beloved as a sacred sexual being. In the event that culminates the workshop, called a puja, couples dress in their finest clothes and form two circles, the men on the outside and the women on the inside. As they slowly circle around, changing partners in a kind of tantric musical chairs, they draw on deep inner wellsprings of love and nurturing to offer balm for the wounds of their brothers and sisters.

In one exercise, for example, the man assumes the guise of a benevolent father and sends healing to the womans vulnerable, wounded little girl. (In the next station of the puja, the man and woman trade places.) In another exercise, the man and woman sit in the yabyum position (the woman sitting astride the man) and give and receive loving energy in a kind of loop of awareness: She sends it through her heart to his on the outbreath, while he receives on the inbreath; he sends it to her through his second chakra on the outbreath while she receives it on the inbreath.

--- Continued in Sacred Sex.2 --- Continued from Sacred Sex.1

As the puja progresses, a famed new age vocalist named Sophia wanders through the group like a minstrel, strumming a guitar and softly singing. Whispering voices are punctuated by gentle sobs, and by the time the ritual draws to a close, most of the participants, men and women alike, are teary-eyed and radiant.

Through exercises like the ones used in the puja, the Muirs give men and women an opportunity to act as sexual healers for one anotherno small promise in this age of growing conflict and even violence between the sexes. One of the high points of this healing exchange is the sacred spot massage, which occurs as homework, on an evening halfway through the workshop.

The sacred spot, also known as the G-spot in Western sexology, is a little-known and widely misunderstood area of sexual sensitivity located on the front wall of the womans vagina, just behind the pubic bone. According to the Muirs, this area is frequently the dark closet where a woman stores the shame, fear, and pain of past sexual experiences and conditioning. It may be painful to the touch at first and trigger powerful feelings when stimulated. But on the other side of this closet, as in C. S. Lewiss classic tale The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, lies a vast realm filled with secret treasurespowerful vaginal orgasms and the awakening of the goddess Kundalini Shakti. The key to entering this realm and liberating these treasures is the sensitive, skillful touch of a loving partner.

Because this area is excruciatingly sensitive in some women, the sacred spot massage is approached with utmost delicacy and respect. The men are instructed to transform the bedroom into a temple, to consecrate it with flowers and incense, and to be saintlike in the attention and presence they bring to their beloved. The womensome of whom have never even heard of their sacred spot before, let alone touched itare encouraged to allow their lover to touch them more deeply than theyve ever been touched before.

Id spent years in psychotherapy, reports one woman, but it wasnt until I received the sacred spot massage from my partner that I finally felt I healed the deep pain I still carried from my earliest sexual experiences. Says another: I would get to a point in my lovemaking where Id be afraid to let go into the pleasure. The sacred spot workand the support of the other womenempowered me to have all these incredible feelings. For women like these, the exercise is a transformative experience, in which they release old sexual conditioning and contact deep wellsprings of energy. For others, its only the beginning of an extended journey of sexual healing. Whatever their initial response, however, couples usually report that regular sacred spot massage gradually releases a new level of orgasmic potential.

Aside from the increase in pleasure this affords, orgasm actually energizes and empowers a woman, claim the Muirs. The shakti of men and women are complementary energies. While a man is empowered by controlling his sexual energy, a womans energy is brought to fruition through release. By using the various methods taught in the Muirs workshops, couples learn to circulate and share this shakti energy, thereby empowering each other.

For men, negative sexual imprints tend to lodge as much in the heart as in the second chakra, the Muirs note. Hence, healing for the man often involves opening to intimacy and learning to give and receive love freely. Men have also been wounded by having their sexuality repeatedly rejected, they add, and a woman can help a man heal his wounds by loving his lingam.

Tantra or Neotantrism?

The tantra taught by Charles and Caroline Muir and their colleagues is not without its critics, of course. Popular writers tend to dismiss it (as yoga was once dismissed) as some quirky new age fad, as the following remark by a syndicated columnist makes clear: The new age element has the idea that tantric sex is some ancient secret of the Orient that will give you the ultimate orgasm. But in fact all it is is prolonged intercourse without ejaculation. There are many ways to accomplish this, of course. I can do it thinking about the Chicago Cubs.

More telling are the criticisms of yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein. Feuerstein debunks what he calls neotantrism, regarding it as a bastardized version of the traditional tantrism taught in India and Tibet, which is generally kept secret and reserved for an advanced spiritual elite. In tantrism, according to Feuerstein, sex is used only in a ritual fashion for the purpose of awakening the kundalini-shakti, transcending the ego, and achieving spiritual realization. Practitioners are forbidden from engaging in sex for personal pleasure and must bypass orgasm entirely; indeed, the whole point is to channel the energy ordinarily expended in sexual release. The mind must remain one-pointed, says Feuerstein, and unification happens not at a personal level, but at the level of consciousness only.

By contrast, neotantrism in Feuersteins view is just an elaborate strategy for ego fulfillment, rather than ego transcendence; the best it can offer is not true bliss, but merely oceanic sex, a pleasurable sense of fusion and melting with the partner into a state of blissful unity. In neotantric circles, argues Feuerstein, the bliss of Being is all too often confused with a heightened state of sensory pleasure. . . . [But] pleasure, like pain, pertains to the nervous system, [while] bliss belongs to an entirely different order of existence. It is not a feeling or sensation but rather that condition which prevails when all feelings and sensations as well as all thoughts have been eclipsed by the realization of sheer Being.

Feuerstein does acknowledge that neotantrism may have a certain limited value for spiritual seekers. It has undeniably become an important factor in the emergent body-positive spirituality, writes Feuerstein, providing meaning and hope for some of those who have outgrown guilt-ridden puritanism and conventional sexuality. . . . The ultimate usefulness of neotantrism in the present-day process of reappraising our ensexed human body as the basis of spiritual life will depend on two factors: first, whether its adherents can overcome their Western consumerist mentality with its penchant for instant gratification; . . . and, second, whether they can truly recover . . . a deep-felt sense of the sacred, of the awesome Mystery that will not be compressed into convenient formulas, ready-made belief systems, or elegant rituals.

Feuersteins point is well taken. As with hatha yoga, the quality of our practice of tantra will depend on the presence and intention we bring to it. Just as tradition holds that yoga can be used to achieve a variety of endsphysical health, psychic powers, spiritual realizationso tantra can be used to enhance our personal pleasure, heal our sexual wounds, strengthen our connection with our beloved, or fuel our spiritual awakening. In fact, these may not be mutually exclusive.

Were at the beginning of our own journey as a culture into the unknown territory of sacred sexuality, and I think we need to honor our experimentation, offers a student of tantra, a woman in her mid-30s. As a therapist, I know that our pathology is often our path, and the deepest wound is often the gateway to the highest awakening. In this country, our deepest wound is our sexuality.

Mark Gramunt is a freelance journalist living in San Francisco.

Resources

For more information about workshops offered by Charles and Caroline Muir, contact Source Tantra, P.O. Box 69, Paia, Maui, HI 96779; (808) 5728364.

Books

Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving by Charles and Caroline Muir (Mercury House, 1987)

Sacred Sexuality: Living the Vision of the Erotic Spirit by Georg Feuerstein (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Perigee, 1992)

The Art of Sexual Ecstasy: The Path of Sacred Sexuality for Western Lovers by Margo Anand (Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1989). Available from YJs Book & Tape Source on page 116.

Sexual Energy Ecstasy: A Practical Guide to Lovemaking Secrets of the East and West by David and Ellen Ramsdale (Bantam, 1993)

Freeing the Female Orgasm and Awakening the Goddess by Charles and Caroline Muir (Hawaiian Goddess, 1993)

Sidebar: A Tantric Healing Journey. After 10 years of intensive yoga and meditation practice, Stephanie had opened her heart and experienced some powerful spiritual openings. But my sex life led a parallel existence she recalls, filled with dark and abusive fantasies. Raised with a sexually intimidating stepfather, she had a series of relationships in her 20s that started out loving but were undermined somehow by the sexuality and ultimately became abusive. I was so afraid of repeating the old patterns that I avoided intimacy for more than five years, she admits.

Although psychotherapy helped her heal some of her emotional issues, Stephanie, now 38, never lost the fear that sex would somehow seduce me away from my spiritual practice. I used meditation to avoid dealing with sex. Yet I also had the intuition that sexual love could be a deeply transformative experience, that what I experienced spiritually could be expressed through my sexuality. But I didnt know how.

The split had an intense poignancy for me, she continues. I considered giving up sex entirely and becoming a swami, but this seemed dishonest. I knew I couldnt continue my spiritual practice without healing the split.

In her early 30s Stephanie happened upon the Muirs book, Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving, and a year later took their workshop. It was clear from the outset that sex was being held in a respectful, sacred, loving way. And because we did yoga together, the workshop brought to bear on my sexual healing all that Id learned spiritually.

The womens circle was especially powerful for me, she continues. I got to meet older women who had really awakened their sexuality, their goddess energy, their shakti, and had had profound spiritual experiences in their lovemaking. It helped me to realize that the two in fact could be integrated. I felt their blessing on my path as a single woman.

The high point of the work for me was the sacred spot massage [see article]. It healed a deep layer of shame that had always prevented me from giving myself completely to lovemaking. It also opened me to my power as a woman in a new way.

In my meditation before, I would have spiritual openings but feel like I was bouncing off my lower chakras. Now the oneness I experience in meditation includes my body and my sexuality.

With her newfound confidence, Stephanie, an elementary school teacher, set about finding a mate who would share her interest in following the path of sacred sexuality. After a year and a half of casual dating, she finally met the man who has become my partner, the kind of relationship I only imagined before. Weve continued to heal one another, sexually and emotionally. We share a dedication to spiritual practice, a strong heart connection, and a transformative, awakening sexual connection.

I never would have been open to creating a relationship like this if I hadnt discovered tantra, she adds.Mark Gramunt

Sidebar: The Nurturing Meditation. The nurturing meditation is one of the simplest yet most profound of the tantric secrets for sustaining loves energy in a relationship. It is a physical form of communication that tantricas practice at least twice a day. For most Western couples who are apart during the day, this exercise is usually performed in the morning before they get out of bed, at the end of the work day when they reunite, and/or before they go to sleep. This connection may or may not be sexual; its goal is strictly to nurture one another and to exchange intimacy and energy.

Too often couples engage in all or nothing sex. Either they do it and go all the way, or they dont do anything at all. For some reason many couples seem to think that the joy of passionate kissing, of touching one another, means one thing only, and must lead to one thing only. But sex is not the goal of this particular communication, and it should not be the expectation.

To practice the nurturing meditation, couples assume the nurturing position. They lie together spoon-fashion on their left sides (for reasons of energy flow, according to the tantric texts). The partner on the inside is enveloped in the arms of the partner on the outside. Sometimes the man will be on the inside enveloped by the woman, sometimes the woman will be on the inside enveloped by the man. Whoever feels most in need of nurturing, whoever has experienced the most stress that day or is the most tired, should take the inside.

The purpose of this nurturing position is to create the balance necessary for harmony, to influence a synchronicity between the partners, to adjust their separate energies so that they are vibrating on the same frequency. Tucked together this way, with their chakras aligned front to back, the two bodies tune one another. Their separate energy centers resonate one to the other, and balance between the partners is achieved.

The position will vary slightly from couple to couple, because of preferences and the size and shape of the partners, but in all cases comfort is essential. Neither person should experience any strain, or persist in a position that is the slightest bit uncomfortable. If the woman is holding the man, her right hand might rest on his belly (third chakra) or on his genitals (second chakra); her left arm might slip under the crook of his neck (the weight of his head borne by a pillow so her arm is free to move) and her left hand might rest on his chest (fourth chakra), or on his forehead (sixth chakra).

As you lie together, close your eyes and relax. Quiet your mind by focusing on deep breathing. Concentrate on the path of your breath as it rises up into and then down out of your nostrils. After a while, become aware of your partners breath. Two breathing techniques are performed in this position. The first, used during the first few minutes of the meditation, is called the harmonizing breath: The couple inhales together, holds the breath together, exhales together, and holds the breath out together. During this harmonizing breath the partner on the inside is the receptive body, accepting energy through the back and into the chakras, filling up with that energy on each inhalation. The partner on the outside is the giver and should emphasize each exhalation, projecting the chakras energy from the front of the body into the receptive back side of the beloved.

Practice three whole breaths (inhaling, holding in, exhaling, holding out) at each chakra, beginning at the heart center. Focus attention on the brow chakra next, then on the base chakra. From there concentrate on each of the other chakras in ascending order, bypassing the heart and brow chakras already visited. It is important for both partners to focus on the same chakra region at the same time.

The second breathing technique, used during the second part of the nurturing exercise, is called the reciprocal charging breath. This time one partner breathes in as the other partner breathes out. In this way, during the several seconds that the breath is held, one partner will be holding the breath in, the other holding the breath out. As you practice the reciprocal charging breath, be conscious of the energy your partner is imparting to you as well as the energy you are giving back.

The nurturing meditation allows couples to communicate on at least three levels: on the conscious level, skin to skin; on the more subtle respiratory level, breath to breath; and on the most subtle level, chakra to chakra. Over time such regular communication creates a kind of synergy between the partners chakras.

The focus on breath and on energy centers seems to create its own energy. Certainly when partners complete this meditative posture, they each hold more energy than when they first joined together. When you start each day with the nurturing meditation, you not only charge your partner with part of yourself and in that way reaffirm your relationship, you also begin your day with love, creating a wonderful mood to get up into and providing yourself with extra energy for whatever the day requires.

[Editors note: Although this exercise is addressed to heterosexual couples, it can be used to similar effect by gay and lesbian couples as well.]

From Freeing the Female Orgasm and Awakening the Goddess by Charles and Caroline Muir (Paia, Hawaii: Hawaiian Goddess, Inc., 1993). Used with permission.