Slow Sex: The Path to Fulfilling and Sustainable Sexuality (9 page)

Set aside twenty minutes for yourself and take a conscious rest. It’s as simple as this: Lie down on your back, close your eyes, invert your attention, and reside within your body.

1. First, place a rolled blanket or pillow directly behind the crease of your knees, so that the legs are slightly bent and the feet/toes turned slightly inward. This support creates a softening at the knees that helps the connection to the lower body and is a great aid to deepening relaxation.
   
2. Then lie back and get your head, neck, and spine into one precise line. Tuck your chin slightly toward your chest so that the back of your neck lengthens. This physical alignment is crucial, because aligning yourself in this way increases the capacity to be present.
   
3. Lie with your hands open, palms facing up, arms lying close to your body.
   
4. Close your eyes, inhale a deep breath into the belly, scan and release any tense parts of your body, and then simply be present and aware in your body. You can also use the home in your body as an anchor, as was outlined in an exercise at the end of chapter 3.
   

Just be in your body for twenty minutes or so. It may happen that at a certain moment you sort of slip into yourself, then beyond yourself, and become taken in by your inner world into a space of timelessness. Resting in a conscious way is refreshing and rejuvenating, and turning inward gets easier with practice. This can also be used as a form of foreplay and attuning to yourself before coming together with your partner.

Dynamic/Receptive Pole Variation

The preceding exercise can be slightly varied by moving the hands and placing them over the groin area, palms down on either side of the pubic bone. Then follow the steps for the aligned body position as outlined above, resting at home in your body, alive to the vitality in your cells.

After a while, man can focus his attention internally to the perineum, a knot of muscle at the root of the penis. Imagine a thread of light or warmth connecting this area to the inner home. And in the same way, woman can draw her attention into the vaginal canal, soften and widen the muscles, and rest easily with the awareness within.

5

THE SEXUAL POWER OF RHYTHM

R
hythm is an integral part of the universe, nature, and human beings. There is rhythm in the seasons and as a pulse, in the ebb and flow of life. The very same pulse beats within each of our hearts, no matter how different our individual realities may be. We are similarly subjected to the rising and setting of the sun, and the waxing and waning of the moon. In the absence of rhythm there will be an absence of life. There are many rhythms in the human body, in addition to our basic heartbeat. Each of the visceral organs, such as small and large intestine, liver, gallbladder, stomach, and so on, has its own individual and precise rhythm and repeating pattern of movement. There are even rhythms in the brain and spinal cord, as well as three subtle levels of respiration in the body.

Perhaps the rhythm most overlooked—and therefore most neglected, even in our twenty-first century—is a rhythm truly basic to human sexual expression, the different rhythms of man and woman. In sex it is generally assumed that we have the same rhythms, that our bodies get turned on in the same way and at the same time. But this is not true. On occasion, most of us have experienced meetings or phases of being totally in tune, but as a general rule, we are different.

MAN AND WOMAN HAVE DIFFERENT RHYTHMS

Men’s and women’s bodies open up, or warm up, at varying speeds. Man is fast and woman is slow as a direct result of the bodies being equal and opposite forces. The discrepancy is not psychological, despite the myth that men enjoy and want sex more than woman do.

Nature designed man and woman as complementary forces of dynamic and receptive. Dynamic is “positive” and ever ready, as most men will agree, but this is not necessarily true for women. The reason for the slowness or lack of immediate readiness on the part of woman is that the quality of receptivity is an “absorbing” force, one that can also be described as passive or “negative” polarity. A receptive force will come alive when time and space is granted for the sexual temperature to rise and equal that of man. This is a basic requirement for the full sexual metabolism to be mobilized into existence. Only then does woman become alive as a force, equal, and truly in her feminine power.

In the early stages of a relationship there is more likelihood that woman will be present with a full “yes” at the same time as her man. Everything is fresh and new, so she is naturally propelled into the moment-by-moment experience—the mysterious present. Another basic reason for this increased rapport, or woman’s yes to sex, is that she is in love and her heart is alive, vibrant, and open. The heart/breast area plays a significant role in woman’s general readiness for sex, as will soon be discussed.

WOMAN’S LOSS OF INTEREST IN SEX

As the initial weeks and months of wonderful sexual spontaneity in a relationship span into years, and the situation settles into a routine, it is extremely common for women to feel an increasing reluctance to get involved in sex. And as already mentioned, the avoidance of sex by a woman is usually not something coming from her mind, in the sense that resistance is something she chooses for herself, but a very physical response in which the body just closes down and loses interest. The female body begins an involuntary and gradual withdrawal from sex because the essential quality of receptivity is not honored and given space in which to thrive. The fundamental qualities of man and woman, and the opposite qualities they bring to the sexual exchange, are totally ignored in fast sex, and the reality is that as life gets busier and the novelty wears off, sex tends to get faster and be over more quickly. As a result, in the course of time a woman will find herself hardening, losing her femininity, and becoming slightly male as a by-product and kind of defense.

I know for a fact (through the personal histories of so many couples that I meet while teaching) that the majority of men would like to have sex more often than their partners would. Yet woman is unavailable to man on the “instant” basis that he has been conditioned to expect. Instant sex is the reason for the existence of the oldest profession in the world—prostitution—because it represents to man the possibility for instant sex. Sex on demand, no fuss, no foreplay. I also know for a fact that when women have slow sex, when everything is taken with ease and leisure, then women want more sex. The solution is so simple. Some of us will remember the well-known words of an old song—that a woman likes a man with a slow hand—it is true.

So the whole issue of woman’s apparent lack of availability is due to a lack of understanding of rhythm and how male and female bodies open in different ways in sex. A woman is definitely capable of a superficial opening without being fully involved and alive to the experience, without participating as a fully energized and willing body. For a woman sex can, and usually far too often does, take place inside her body when she is not really involved, except as the location. For countless centuries women have yielded to the pressure of sex, gone unwillingly into sex, without participating and sharing equally in the act. Sex starts and finishes with such speed that for a woman’s female body, there is not enough time to awaken and connect with her inner receptive qualities. Embracing the female force of receptivity is fundamental to elevating the sexual exchange.

THE OPPOSITE POLE IS CARRIED WITHIN EACH INDIVIDUAL

The secret to awakening or equalizing the sexual energy of woman, and thereby her interest in and wish for sex, does not lie in the clitoris or vagina. The route to woman’s sexual source and innate vitality is via her breasts, which, on an energetic level, are very connected to the heart.

Earlier, in chapter 4, man’s penis is explained as a positive, flowing, streaming force, while woman’s vagina is seen as the complementary negative, receptive, absorbent force. Over and above the specific polarity we carry in our genitals, there is an even higher level to the intelligence of our human bodies—within each individual lies the equal and opposite pole. This means that in the male body there exists a female pole that is receptive, and in the female body there exists a male pole that is dynamic. Man is part woman and woman is part man, an inner design that has been proven by chromosome studies within the past hundred years. Our bodies must have always carried this astounding higher intelligence and vibration embedded in the cells of our sexual organs. Even though humanity has been following other patterns in sexual expression since the dawn of time, the creative potential of sex and its numerous benefits continue to remain alive within us as a source of vitality, inspiration, and spiritual elevation.

The body can be visualized as carrying an inner magnet with north and south poles. Or plus and minus poles, positive and negative poles, yang and yin poles . . . name them as we wish. In man the dynamic pole is the penis and his equal and opposite negative, receptive pole is the heart and chest area. In woman, as equal and opposite force to man, the receptive pole is the vagina and her dynamic pole lies in the breasts (including nipples).

Energy Is Raised from a Positive Pole

The problem with the common approach of going directly to a woman’s genital area in foreplay and sex is that the vagina is a receptive pole, a passive organ, and energy cannot be raised from a negative pole; energy can only be raised from a positive pole. So for woman this means the breasts are the true source of her sexual awakening, while the clitoris and vagina are secondary. When attention (by woman herself, and also by man) is given to the breasts there will usually be (after some time) a kind of answering or response in the vagina, which is experienced as vibration or vitality, an inner awakening, together with an increasing wish to receive the penis. Awakening the positive pole in woman gives birth to the quality of receptivity in the vagina. So any inner connection a woman has to her breasts has a remarkable influence on erection, especially spontaneous erection, as described in the previous chapter.

The Role of the Clitoris Is Not Central

In my understanding and experience there is a better sequencing of events, and that is to leave the clitoris in the background until well into the lovemaking, if indeed you want to give the clitoris any direct attention at all. Again, there are no rules, but some women feel more relaxed and serene when there is no direct contact or stimulation of the clitoris; finding it preferable when pressure happens more indirectly, for example, through the position. Many women have highly satisfying sex lives without any clitoral engagement or climax-type orgasms at all. Some women find a quick peak orgasm will act as a link to the inner regions of the vagina, increasing their sensitivity. Others will feel a loss of interest. Each woman must explore the impact the clitoris has on her ultimate sensitivity and presence, and what is true for her.

The clitoris is not central to woman’s higher sexual experiences. Stimulating touch of the clitoris causes sexual excitement and makes a woman full of desire. This has the effect of tightening the vagina as it gets tense with expectation. Most men have had the experience at times of entering a woman and the vagina feels hungry, demanding, or greedy, and it’s an instant turn-off. The needy quality in the vagina can sometimes cause a loss of erection in man, or an immediate ejaculation. The tension of excitement and stimulation disturbs the receptive environment and throws the two equal and opposite forces out of balance.

Some men correctly observe that in their experience some women do, in fact, like, or even demand, to have hard and fast sex. Yes, this is true, some women have adopted and display man’s basic attitude, but this reflects our sexual misunderstanding. Women are usually not familiar with the inner workings of their own bodies and their essential quality of receptivity. Many women have intuitions about how their bodies function, but these signals are usually discarded and the normal style of sex chosen through fear of not being loved, fear of losing a man, fear of not being sexually satisfied, or fear of being different from other women. These fears cause a lack of trust in the body, because we do not know ourselves very well. Recently I was with a group of sixty women where I asked the direct question: “Who has recognized that you have become sort of male in the way you have sex?” Every single woman in the room raised her hand. I also asked: “Who would wish for more time before being entered by man?” Again all hands were raised. The other pertinent question I asked was: “Who has observed that clitoral stimulation affects the quality of receptivity in the vagina and the impact of the penetration?” And again all the women raised their hands. The fact is, we all know the same things about our individual bodies, and yet as a group, as womankind, we continue to move forward under a collective hypnosis, repeatedly going against the truth of our bodies.