The Modern Lover’s Guide To Ancient Sexual Secrets

Magic Happens Where Sex and Spirit Collide!

May 11, 2023

We’ve previously discussed the perils of porn in terms of the way it skews men’s expectations and anxieties about sexual intimacy. These effects tend to manifest as an excessive focus on the physical at the expense of emotional/energetic/spiritual elements of the sexual experience. In this article you will learn some practices based on ancient Tantric and Taoist teachings that will help you to correct this problem and achieve new heights of pleasure both for yourself and your partner.

How to Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Body

Without taking time to think about it, what sensations are you feeling in your body right now? Many of us become so absorbed with our thoughts and worries that we tune out the incessant flow of sensory information that gushes constantly through our subconscious vying for our attention. Indeed, the ability to tune out unwanted stimulus has become an essential skill for the preservation of sanity in a world where speakers, screens, neon signs and billboards seek to influence our thoughts and emotions wherever we go.

On the other hand we must retain the ability to open ourselves up to sensation, especially in the places of sanctuary where we seek solitude or intimacy.

Rediscover Your Senses

For this first exercise, you will need a quiet, comfortable space free of distractions and interruptions for about 15 minutes. You will need a place to sit comfortably, a device that can play the audio clip below, and two special props:

A source of pleasant scent: this could be a bottle of perfume, cologne, essential oil or a fragrant flower or herb like rosemary or mint from the garden. If using a fresh flower or herb, seal it in a zip-lock bag or plastic container before we begin.
A fruit that bursts with flavour: choose a fruit that you can put in your mouth whole, and that has a dry edible outer skin or membrane containing a juicy pulp. A blueberry is ideal, or a grape, cherry, or even a peeled segment of mandarin

Sit comfortably. You may like to dim the lights, but you will still want to be able to see your surroundings. Place the scent and the fruit within easy reach so that you can reach out and find them with your eyes closed. Comfortable? You’re ready to begin. I’ll ask you to close your eyes in a moment, so play the following audio clip to hear the rest of the instructions and I’ll rejoin you in text on the other side!

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-18:04

I hope your experience with that exercise was as profound as my first time! You’re welcome to practise that whenever you feel like you’re losing touch with your senses. It’s also fun to share with your partner, and makes an excellent prelude to intimacy as it both gets you grounded in your body and heightens your senses.

Learn to Feel Energy

If you’re sceptical about the existence of sexual energy or qi or prana (choose your preferred cultural take), then I invite you to suspend your disbelief for long enough to experience the sensation that these terms describe. Whether the energy is real or just a hallucination of our senses, there is no doubt in my mind that the experience is real, and that’s what we strive for.

To learn to feel energy we’ll take an exercise from Taoist teachings called the “Microcosmic Orbit”, but before we can practise it, we need to become more familiar with feeling our own internal anatomy.

Kegels, aka Pelvic Floor Contractions

Are you familiar with your pelvic floor muscles, aka PC muscles? Most men never give their PC muscles any thought until later in life when they develop issues with their prostate and/or incontinence. Identifying and toning these muscles provides tremendous benefits to long term health, continence, and sexual function. The easiest way to find your PC muscle is to begin urinating, and then use your internal muscles to stop the flow mid-stream. That is your PC muscle in action.

Once you’ve identified your PC muscle, practise contracting only these muscles while keeping the rest of your body relaxed. Contract, breathe in, breathe out, relax for a breath cycle, and repeat until you have difficulty maintaining the contraction or feel any discomfort. With practice you will be able to hold each contraction longer, and perform more contractions in a set. If you need a little more guidance to perfect this technique, see the Mayo Clinic’s guide here: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/mens-health/in-depth/kegel-exercises-for-men/art-20045074

It pays to practise these exercises as part of your daily routine. Toning your PC muscles is an essential step towards more advanced sexual practices such as ejaculatory control and multiple male orgasm, but more importantly, strong healthy PC muscles are essential for maintaining urinary continence later in life!

Introducing The Microcosmic Orbit

Energy flows where attention goes.

You will often hear this saying as you dip your toe in the waters of Tantra and Taoist energetic practices. For the sceptics, perhaps what we refer to as energy is nothing more than a heightened sensation manifested as a psychosomatic response to focusing our attention to specific parts of our body? (Having witnessed “energetic orgasms” brought on by a combination of breathing, meditation, and the ministrations of an expert practitioner who never once touched the recipient, I’ve come to believe that there’s more to it than this! Nevertheless, each of us has our own unique journey of enlightenment, so for now I just ask that you suspend your disbelief and have a go!)

Find a quiet and comfortable place to sit or lie down.
Relax your body. It may help to focus on each part of your body from head to toe, acknowledge whatever tension you’re holding there, clench it, and then let it relax.
Focus on your breath and take slow breaths, breathing deep into your belly.
Breathe through your nose (if you can) and rest the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, just behind your top front teeth.
Bring your attention to the area between the base of your spine and your PC muscle.
While inhaling, imagine energy flowing up your spine to the crown of your head.
1. It may help to visualise this as a radiant ball of pure white light.
2. The first few times you attempt this, you may need to take several breaths to “feel the energy” make its way the full length of your spine.
Continue to breathe slowly and deeply, as if your breathing is a pump drawing the energy up from the base of your spine, to the crown of your head, and then let it flow over your scalp to your forehead.
Keep breathing, noticing the energy flowing down the front of your body to your lower abdomen, and back to the area of your PC muscles.
Continue this cycle, focusing on the flow of energy through the body.
Gradually increase the speed of the circulation as you become more comfortable with the technique.

Try practising this for at least ten to fifteen minutes per day for a week, especially if you find it difficult to feel anything on your first attempt. If nothing else, this exercise helps to relax you and return priority to the parasympathetic nervous system1 (i.e. switch from “fight or flight” mode to “rest and digest” or “feed and fornicate” according to your circumstance).

Bonus Exercise: Eye Gazing

Once you feel comfortable practising the Microcosmic Orbit, you might like to try doing it with a partner. This is an amazing exercise for building connection and intimacy, and since there is nothing explicitly sexual about it, you can easily try it with a date or a friend. (I do recommend practising with someone of the opposite sex, as it does actually feel different).

Start by sitting facing each other, close but not necessarily touching. Get comfortable, either on chairs, cushions, or however you can both sit comfortably for 15 minutes or so.

Remain silent throughout the exercise.

Close your eyes and go through the relaxation process of the Microcosmic Orbit. Once you both feel settled, open your eyes and with a soft gaze, let your left eye gaze into the left eye of your partner.

Continue practising the Microcosmic Orbit, allowing yourself to blink as necessary, but try to maintain your gaze.

If either of you become uncomfortable, you can stop the exercise. Otherwise you may prefer to set a timer - e.g. for 5 or 10 minutes - to signal the end of the exercise.

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