The Enlightened Sex Manual: Sexual Skills for the Superior Lover (19 page)

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31 LOCK ENERGY IN YOUR SOFT PARTS

The "soft parts" of your body are the most important places through which to regulate the flow of internal sexual energy. In addition to your anus, genitals, and perineum, the soft parts in• clude your throat and entire belly area.

As mentioned earlier, during sex it is important to keep the tip of your tongue gently pressed against the roof of your mouth in order to complete your internal circuit so energy can flow from your head down through the front of your body. In addition, the tongue can also be used to regulate a "diaphragm" located near the back of the throat.
With some strength, push the thick back part of your tongue up into the soft palate toward the rear of the roof of your mouth while you contract your upper throat.
If you do this exercise correctly, you will feel a pressure in your head.

By experimenting during your sexual practice, you can deter• mine just the right moments to apply this tongue pressure to help move the flow of energy upward and temporarily seal energy in the head (for example, during brain orgasms).
After applying this energy lock, always remember to draw the energy back down the front of the body with a full inhalation and an expanding belly so the energy doesn't become stuck in the head area and create pain or tension.

The solar plexus - the soft region in the center of the body, just below the ribs and above the navel - is another major energy

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regulator. The solar plexus should, in general, remain completely relaxed. If energy is flowing unobstructed through your com• plete internal circuit during sex, you will experience a pleasant sensation of fullness in the solar plexus, as well as the whole abdominal region, as this entire area fills with sexual energy de• scending down your front.

Occasionally, you may want to emphasize the upward flow of energy along your spine, perhaps when you have accumulated too much energy in your genitals or when you want to experi• ence a whole-body or brain orgasm rather than a genital orgasm. We have already described how to do this by using your breath, intention, visualization, and upward tension in your pelvic floor. The solar plexus and the entire belly can participate in this pro• cess, especially when the urge toward genital orgasm becomes particularly intense. We will look at two basic methods for con• tracting the belly and solar plexus.

The first method increases the upward flow of energy so that it fills the body.
Inhale energy up the spine while simultaneously contracting and pulling in your pelvic floor, belly, and solar plexus. Your belly and solar plexus move in toward the spine as you inhale (the opposite of their normal movement), then lift up toward the head.

Your belly and solar plexus are not merely made hard and tense, but are actually made hollow or concave as you inhale, pulling inward and "scooping" upward during the contraction. Remember that normally your belly and solar plexus expand with your inhale, as energy moves down and fills the front of the body. This exercise of pulling inward and upward with your inhale is a unique practice for helping to convert genital orgasms into whole-body orgasms.

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A second method can also be used for equilibrating genital energy and continuing to make love without an excessive urge toward ejaculative or depleting orgasm. First, exhale all your breath. It is important to exhale completely, so you feel no air re• maining in the body at all. Then, while you are still empty of air, simultaneously contract your pelvic floor, belly, and solar plexus while pulling inward and upward at all these areas.

In other words, after a complete exhalation, hold the breath out of your body while applying inward and upward tension at the front of your body all the way from your anus to your ribs.
Your belly is sucked inward - the entire area from your pubic bone to your sternum is concave. Hold this for as long as you comfortably can, while your breath remains held out. (For added effect, you may also apply the tongue pressure toward the back of the throat that we discussed previously.)

When you finally need to inhale, first relax the front of your body and then inhale slowly and deeply, allowing your belly and solar plexus to become large, soft, and round.
It is good to maintain a subtle up• ward tension of the pelvic floor in order to seal the energy that comes down the front with your inhale.

While you are holding the exhaled breath out and your belly and solar plexus are contracted inward and upward, energy in your lower body will dissipate upward. Your excess genital stimu• lation will spread out as the energy moves upward throughout your body.

Follow this exercise with several cycles of full and deep breathing down the front and up the spine, circulating fresh en• ergy in a smooth and even fashion. The intensity of your genital energy will spread wide, easing into a whole-body fullness and internal brightness.

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All these exercises are best learned by making them quite muscular at first. While doing the throat lock, for instance, re• ally push the broad part of the back of your tongue up toward the back of your throat. While doing the abdominal lock, really pull the belly and solar plexus inward and upward with signifi• cant force and strength. This takes practice, but over time it will become easy and effortless. You can feel the effects of these exer• cises on your energy immediately, and you will begin to develop a style that works best for you.

Once you know how to do the basic exercises with good re• sults, you can experiment with making the motions more and more subtle.
Over time, the muscular contractions will become less and less outwardly obvious, as you are able to simply intend the energy to move in different ways through your body.
You will be able to feel and direct your internal energy, as well as the energy of your partner, by using subtle internal adjustments and eventually by means of simple feeling, breath, and intention. The muscularity of the ex• ercises will decrease as you become more sensitive to the internal circuitry of your body and more adept at regulating the flow of sexual energy in your body.

Eventually, it becomes just as easy to regulate the energy flow in your partner's body as in yours. Then, with your intentions unified, you can heal one another through the mutual flow of en• ergy, resting more deeply in the ongoing and effortless beauty of conscious love and radiant openness. With practice, sex becomes a full merger in the motionless peal of light, as all the channels in your body and your partner's body are opened and summarized as a single force of love.

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CONCLUSION

Enlightened sex is rare. Even after learning how to make love, we will often refuse. We may blame our partner for not loving us, for betraying, rejecting, or ignoring us. We may blame our body for being too tired and the world for being too difficult and painful. We may blame the universe for denying us the right lover - or maybe our family and professional life require too much for us to surrender in the bloom of unbearable pleasure. We long for the same fullness of bliss that we never seem to have time to offer. We complain about our life and blame others, until we realize that right now, we
are
making love. Or we are
refusing
- right now.

No blame is necessary; no blame is useful. We are either offer• ing love or refusing to do so.

Imagine you are with your lover, who is closed down and not willing to connect with you. First, feel your lover. Be willing to feel your lover more than you feel yourself. Feel your lover's rhythm of breathing, as well as his or her tension, posture, and mood. Look at your lover's face, and feel the history creased into his or her skin. Be willing to feel your lover's joy and sorrow, an• guish and anger. Your lover feels alone much of the time, and yearns for more and truer love, just as you do. Your lover, too, often experiences himself or herself as separate and emotionally isolated, and blames others - perhaps you - for not loving him or her enough. Your lover can feel as trapped by life and aban• doned by love as you do.

Whether it is you or your lover who seems closed down, your responsibility as a superior lover is to offer love. If your body is tense, then do your best to relax and offer love through your

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body. If your breath is tight, do your best to breathe deeply and easefully offering love by connecting your breath with your part• ner's. If you are occupied by your own emotions and thoughts, feel beyond yourself so you can fully feel your lover. Feeling fully is love.

Enlightened sex means to feel beyond your own body, mind, and emotions so you can feel your lover's. Then, feel even beyond your lover. Include yourself and your lover, but also feel outward to the horizons of every present moment. While making love, feel everything. Help your lover to open and feel by offering your own open feeling as a gift.

Enlightened sex means unlimited feeling. If we collapse our feeling onto ourselves, limiting our feeling to our own body, mind, and emotions, then we are not practicing enlightened sex. When you have felt your lover's heart and body and breath, gaze deep into his or her eyes, which are portals to the soul. Sus• tain your eyes, body, and breath wide open. Even if your lover refuses, sustain openness. Your heart will want to close down to protect itself from the insult of your lover's rejection, but a pro• tected heart is unable to feel. A protected heart is a limit on love.

Unguard your heart over and over in the face of your lover's clo• sure, rejection, and betrayal.

Like a reflex, your heart will close to protect itself when your lover pulls away or closes down. Practice to open and feel, even when your lover hurts your heart. In many short moments re• peated frequently, reopen and re-feel your lover, and also feel beyond your lover. Actually feel your lover, then feel the space around your lover, and feel outward to the furthest reaches of feeling. This is how to train in enlightened sex. Over and over, notice you are refusing to love fully, then consent to love.

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CONCLUSION

Notice you are holding back your feelers, then allow your feeling to enter deep into your lover's heart and to spread wide to feel all beings. Be willing to suffer your partner's and everybody's closure without closing yourself. And if you do close, remember to open again. Continually re-offer the opportunity for you and your part• ner to open together in love and feel all.

This choice to open and feel is our fundamental moment-by- moment practice in enlightened sex. Instead of focusing merely on our own pleasure, or reacting to our partner's coming and going, we train to feel through and beyond every experience. We don't avoid our own sensations and emotions or those of our lover. We feel them, but we don't stop there, perpetually fixated on thoughts and emotions. With training, our hearts become spacious, allowing room for embracing and making love with all thoughts and emotions, pleasures and pains, as they come and go. Even when our partner betrays us, we remember to open and feel, over and over. We may choose to change our behaviors - or our relationships - but such choices emerge from an open, feel• ing heart.

Light flows from our open heart. Our face becomes radiant with the flush of love. Our sexing becomes a dance of delight. Should we stub our toe, we may say, "Ouch!" And then we re• open and connect with our partner, feeling outward as love, again and again. This is enlightened sex, and the skills presented in this manual for being a superior lover are steps to help us learn the ba• sic moves and rhythms so that the light of love may shine through our passion.

May our sex always flower as an offering of love's light.

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