The Multi-Orgasmic Couple: Sexual Secrets Every Couple Should Know (21 page)

How romantic is your bedroom? Does it prepare you and your partner for lovemaking? How, you may ask, does a room prepare you for lovemaking? Just like a fine restaurant prepares you for a romantic meal. There is a beautiful

Tantalizing each other during the evening with loving words and caresses can start the
fl
ame of passion burning bright by the time you go to bed.

How romantic is your bedroom? Does it prepare you and your partner for lovemaking?

Every body, whatever its shape and size, can be a source of energetic and ecstatic lovemaking.

Our bodies are deeply affected by the sights, sounds, and smells that surround them.

decor and soft lighting. Everyone has his or her own aesthetic of what feels nurturing and romantic, but make sure that your room nurtures and relaxes your bodies.

Keep distractions like books, papers, and television to a minimum. Sleep experts recommend that people who have difficulty sleeping avoid reading or watching television in bed. The rationale is the same. If we are accustomed to reading or watching television in a room, our body prepares for these activ-ities rather than for sleep or, in our case, sex. If your television is the most prominent object in your bedroom, you will probably be watching it a lot more than you will be doing it. In short, try to keep your television out of your bedroom.

Lighting is also essential. While many people choose to make love in the dark, it is easiest to experience Healing Love when there is some, preferably soft, light. During Healing Love, couples focus their love and attention on each other’s eyes and body. It is harder to be fully present with your partner when you are groping for each other in the dark.

Lighting a candle is an easy and regular ritual that can prepare your body for lovemaking. Candlelight allows us to gaze into each other’s eyes and to rejoice in the lines and curves of our magnificent forms. Candlelight is also generous light, softening our shapes and hiding the imperfections that exist in all bodies. The focus of Healing Love is the subtle exchange of energy; it transcends the obsessions of body image that consume most modern people. Every body, whatever its shape and size, can be a source of energetic and ecstatic lovemaking.

Learning the Circuits of the Body

Touching each other out of bed and in bed is vitally important to harmonizing desire and pleasuring each other. While touch is instinctual, most people do not know how or why touch is so important, and most people do not touch each other nearly enough.

When we touch each other, a hormone called oxytocin is released into our bloodstream, which increases our affection for each other, decreases our stress, and increases our production of sex hormones. For women it increases their sexual responsiveness, and for men it increases the sensitivity of their penis and improves their erection.
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Without regular affectionate touch women tend to become depressed and uninterested in sexual touch, while men tend to become more aggressive and

become uninterested in touch that is not sexual—a recipe for marital disharmony if ever there was one. Holding hands and holding each other are not only emotionally satisfying; they also are physiologically essential.

In addition, our hormones create positive feedback loops, which means that the more you have it the more you want it. This is why the more touch we have the more we welcome touch, and the more sex we have the more open to sex we become.

Unfortunately, the negative feedback loop is equally powerful, which is why couples enter into vicious cycles of separation in which they don’t touch and don’t make love. For this reason, it is important to continue touching each other even when you do not wish to be sexual.

It is also worth erring in the direction of having sex, assuming that there is no major reason not to (tiredness doesn’t count). Because we are creatures of habit, if we do something today, we are more likely to do something tomor-row. In the case of sex, habit as well as hormones can encourage us. Keep the feedback loop moving in the right direction.

YOUR TOUCH IS ELECTRIC

For Taoists, touch is not simply a matter of physical contact or even chemical reactions. As we discussed in chapter 3, according to Chinese medicine, we are surging with electromagnetic energy that travels through specific

Without regular touch women tend to become depressed and uninterested in sexual touch, while men tend to become more aggressive and become uninterested in touch that is not sexual
—
a recipe for marital disharmony if ever there was one.

Touch releases a hormone that increases our affection, our sexual responsiveness, and our sexual sensitivity.

Touch is touch, but ecstatic, healing touch requires attention and love.

For sensually touching a woman, a man needs to remember that her sexual energy needs to be brought to her vagina from the extremities of her body.

For sensually touching a man, a woman needs to remember that his sexual energy needs to be brought out of his penis to the rest of his body.

pathways, called meridians, to every corner of our body. We can exchange this energy with our partner through our touch. Our fingertips, our lips and tongues, and our genitals are the most powerful ways in which we can exchange this energy with each other.

When you touch your partner, focus on your hands and imagine loving energy flowing from your fingers into your partner’s body. Remember, our chi, or energy, follows our mind. Touch is touch, but ecstatic, healing touch requires attention and love.

LIKE THE WEIGHT OF A FEATHER

Energetic and sensual touch is featherlight touch that simply grazes over the surface of your partner’s skin, awakening the nerve endings and drawing energy to the area. In a massage, harder pressure will relax your partner’s muscles, while light touch will awaken your partner’s skin.

For sensually touching a woman, a man needs to remember that her sexual energy must be brought to her genitals from her extremities. Time providing, he should start at her hands and feet and move along her legs and arms. Then he can start at her head and caress along her torso. Only after circling her genitals should he touch them directly. In the metaphors of the Tao, yin is like water and so it must fall down the mounds and folds of a woman’s curvaceous body to the lowest point, her vagina. Water always settles in the lowest place.

For sensually touching a man, a woman needs to remember that his sex-ual energy needs to be brought out of his penis to the rest of his body. For this reason, she can start at his penis, touching it lightly but without focusing on direct stimulation. She does not want to stoke his fire but to keep it at a low burn. If he gets too excited, he will explode and ejaculate. By taking the sex-ual energy from a man’s genitals, his partner can spread it out through his legs and arms, out to his hands and feet, and up to his torso and head. This will draw the energy away and allow him to have greater ejaculatory control and help him experience whole-body orgasms.

Of course, if he is having difficulty with an erection, the energy should be drawn
to
his penis. (Bear in mind, when a man lies on his back, gravity works against his maintaining an erection as the blood flows out. If maintaining an erection is an issue, it is best for the man not to lie on his back, so that gravity can draw blood to his penis, not away from it. Standing, sitting, kneeling, and lying over his partner are all better positions for helping a man to get an erection.)

Body Parts

In the West, we tend to think of people as machines and the parts of our body as separate, like the parts of a car. When touching your partner’s body, it is important to remember that the energy meridians (channels) circulate throughout the body and that you are trying to awaken your partner’s sexual energy and not just to stimulate a particular part of his or her body. Put differently, great pleasure can be generated by touching particular nerve endings on our hands and feet or nipples and genitals, but these nerves are connected through a complex web with the rest of the body. Try to maintain a holistic and energetic view of your partner’s body even as you refine your skills for pleasuring individual parts. In Healing Love, every touch is part of harmonizing with each other; holding hands or pressing lips together is as important as intercourse.