Tantric sex for dummies?

May 22, 2012 6:27 PM

Is tantric sex as awesome as they say? Any resources for a beginner couple?

Have you tried it? Do you like it? How did you get good at it?

posted by Tarumba to Health & Fitness (5 answers total)

Do you have previous experience with pranayama and yogic breath and so forth? I've only read about tantric sex and practiced some solo tantric breathing and what I've experienced of it is... intense. I can really see how it might scare the shit out of someone dabbling around for the first time. Or, for that matter, how it might not work at all for someone dabbling.
posted by cmoj at 6:50 PM on May 22, 2012

A minimum-woo introduction is the book Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas. I had no background at all in the topic, and still got some basic, surprisingly pleasurable results from it.
posted by naturetron at 9:03 PM on May 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

It may be worth noting that historically, tantra was not developed solely for the pursuit of sexual pleasure, but rather for samadhi: a joining of the practitioner and the divine. The idea is that through the manipulation of the body's male and female energies, the sexual union of male and female is a microcosm for the creative divine forces that are creative of the cosmos. Sex, when accompanied by tantric techniques, alters consciousness. So, the awesomeness aimed at is generally a religious experience more than a purely physical one.
posted by reverend cuttle at 3:22 AM on May 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

From my understanding and experience of (Tibetan Buddhist) tantra, it's unlikely to be very pleasurable at all. It's grueling, tedious work, as is all meditation, at least in the early stages. Finding a qualified partner is extremely difficult. That process would start with finding a guru, completing years of study with that person and completing the preliminary practices (e.g. 100,000 prostrations and mantra recitations).
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 1:28 PM on May 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

sensualblissvoayger has a good introduction and here is some more on breathing and breath control.
posted by adamvasco at 1:03 AM on May 24, 2012