Tantra Tips: Waiting to Exhale? — Breathing & Relaxation in Tantra, Tantric Sex

Breathing and Relaxation in Maithuna

Dear Friend,
People often ask me how to become “tantric” when they make love. The answer is simple – attitude and awareness.

For the masculine partner – a centered attitude of eros, love and devotion. For the feminine partner – an awakened, kinetic attitude of eros, love, and devotion. More about that in the Tantra Tips issues later in the week.

As far as awareness goes, an old tantric saw says that there are three awarenesses in lovemaking:
1) Awareness of your Mind/ Mental State:

Is your mind agitated or is it relaxed?
Is your mind focused, or is it wandering?
Is your mind numb, or is it fully awake and alive?

2) Awareness of your Breath:

Is your breathing relaxed, rhythmic, and effortlessly in control? or is it a-rhythmic, labored, out of control?

3) Awareness of your Sexual Energy:

Is sexual arousal building into an uncomfortable feeling of congestion around your genitals, begging for a quick and unceremonious release?Or is it circulating throughout your body in a delicious tingling sensation, including stimulating the higher centers in your brain and heart?

The old tantric saying goes on that if you can keep any two of the three awarenesses, the third will be automatic. So if your breath and mind are in control, so is your sexual energy. If your sexual energy and mind are in control, your breathing will automatically be relaxed and full. And so on.

Today we’ll cover a bit of breath awareness.

When you are making love, do you breath through your mouth or through your nose?

Think about that dull, stupid feeling we all get when we have allergies or a cold, and are forced to mouth-breathe. If you mouth-breathe during sex, you’re depriving all of the nerve centers in your brain, keeping those delicious feelings of sexual pleasure from “going to your head.”

Here’s a hint – for sex to be tantric, pleasure needs to “go to your head” – and everywhere else in your body. So experiment with breathing through your nose!

Second, the more rhythmically and slowly you can breathe during lovemaking, no matter how fast your pelvis may be moving, the more that sexual and emotional pleasure and awareness will circulate throughout your body!

If you can’t breath deeply and rhythmically in your daily life, playing sports, or sleeping, it sure ain’t gonna happen while getting it on! So practice long, rhythmic, deep breaths all day long, whenever you can remember. That way breathing right becomes second nature, even in the heat of the moment! Your sex partner will thank you, a thousand times over!

Proper breathing for men means ejaculatory control and full-body orgasm, with or without ejaculation. For women, it means the body
relaxes, she feels more pleasure, has her first orgasm sooner, and keeps on orgasming throughout her whole body!

The last thing is, in general, breathe through all three regions of the torso when you make love – at least until you have the body awareness to use more specialized breathing. Abdominal, thoracic, clavicular: In plain english, that means you should inhale all the way down to your tailbone, relaxing and inflating first your belly, then your chest, then your collarbone area, and then exhale all the way back up, gently squeezing your belly toward your spine as you exhale.

Having both partners practice good breathing in and out of bed will give you dramatic results in both your physical and subtle sexual experiences, not to mention your health!
Stay tuned for ways to amplify pleasure and consciousness using breath…

For every student there is a teacher.
Smile, breathe right, and keep your tongue up!
Tao Semko

  • November 29, 2012
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