A man sitting next to his partner said, ‘I want to have more and better sex with him.’
‘I want to work out how I can include this in my dark tantra practice.’
The idea of incorporating what I learn today into a ‘dark tantra practice’ is very appealing. I wish I had one somehow.
I play safe and say, ‘I’m here to learn about the breath.’
Barbara says,
‘In sex, it’s particularly important to be in the present – not in the past or the future,’ she reminds us again. ‘If you’re in the past, you’re thinking, “Will it be as good as last time?” If you’re in the future, you might be thinking, “I wonder if I’m going to come?” When you focus on your breath, you come into the present moment. You jump right into the middle of the fire, into the heart of the experience so that you can go through it totally.’
We always, whether in any kind of spiritual practice or any kind of sexual practice it seems, use the breath to bring us present.
Going on with her personal story we learn that Barbara moved from teaching on the East Coast to working in Australia.
‘It’s easier to do tantric work in a country founded by convicts than it is in one founded by puritans.’
She jumps around from teaching to personal story and back again.
‘Sex is an energy you allow rather than an action that you do. Just let go and let the life force do you.’
I scribble notes frantically.
‘It’s remarkable how so much of the energy created during sex has nothing to do with the genitals. So many of the other things that we do when we are having sex build up the energy.’
Barbara uses a simple analogy that I hadn’t heard this year. When she was a child she learnt how to take her bike apart to find out how it works.
‘… in the same way there are various parts that make up good sex and we need to understand the components.’
This is what I have found so bewildering this year. Everywhere I have gone, all the books I have read, they all seem to have one part of the bike. They can all explain how their bit works but they may never even mention another important piece. I remember a long time ago I met Nityama, a tantric teacher, who talks a lot about the importance of women making noise. Apart from the fact that many of us live in small buildings with other people through thin walls, making noise is just one tiny part of the whole.
I’ve read books this year with whole chapters dedicated to the need to exercise the pelvic floor muscles or, as in slow sex, a whole book dedicated to understanding the clitoris. I did workshops with Shakti Tantra that seemed to place huge value for women in overcoming our inhibitions and learning genuine sexual expression. Then there’s everything that I learnt from Alexey about touch, listening and making love with sex. And here I am today doing a whole workshop about the breath. No one seems to have taken the bike apart, shown how all the parts work and put it back together again.
‘We need to learn and to understand how each of the components work to understand how the energy field builds.’
Hooray. Thank you Barbara Carrellas for that astoundingly simple piece of very necessary logic. I’ve learnt that, for most women, good sexual experience does not happen ‘naturally’. We have to learn and understand the bike and how the parts work before we can ride. OK, enough of me, back to Barbara. She’s telling us how to use thought.
‘Hold up your little finger and imagine breathing into the little finger of your dominant hand, as if it were a third lung.’ We breathe and imagine this.
‘Now imagine filling it up with any colour you like. Now imagine it has a whole universe inside your finger.’
My finger starts to feel warm. It’s unaccustomed to having a universe inside it.
‘The more you breathe the more you feel,’ she says. That’s important. Underline it. Write it down. Star it in the margin or something. Highlight, write on the book, anything. Just remember those eight words. Just to make sure you do I’ve taken the liberty of underlining it for you myself.
We put down our buzzy fingers.
‘You are going to learn to fill your whole body with life force energy. If you hold your breath when you are heading toward an orgasm you are limiting the amount of “fuel” you’ll have to journey into that orgasm. You want to fill yourself completely.’
Now breathe. Take three deep breaths now. As you read. Please.
‘Want to become a breath terrorist?’ Barbara smiles ‘Try this. When you are in a lift take some deep breaths and make a big sigh on the exhales. Watch how it totally freaks some people out.’
Ha ha ha. I love it. Why should the sound of people breathing make people so uncomfortable?
Barbara says that we often stop breathing during erotic encounters of one kind or another. She suggests that we ask our partners to remind us. Even better, perhaps, is just to breathe fully yourself and let them follow your breath.
Then she gives us the full talk on the importance of the pelvic floor muscles and ensures that I never again call the squeezing of the pubococcygeus muscle a ‘Kegel’.
‘I am so tired of the 20th-century phenomenon of white male doctors naming erotic techniques that women have known about for thousands of years after themselves. I’m over it.’
OK. We owe Dr Kegel a lot, but she has a point.
The next part of the bike she tells us about is the voice and how different pitches relate to different chakras (or if you’re not a chakra person different parts of the body). Lots of this goes way over my head but I understand that the energy we are ‘breathing in through our base chakra’ (or between the legs if you prefer) has a low note with it and, as we breathe and imagine the energy travelling up the body, we make higher notes.
To practise she has us all imagine that we are making a porn movie and can’t afford voiceover artists so we have to play all the parts ourselves. All at once we all do porn movie sound effects – from low grunt sounds to high-pitched squeals. Then laugh a lot. Then do more porn movie sound effects.
‘Oh! Oh my! Oh my God! Ahhhhh! Aghhhhh! Yes! Ohhhh! Oooooooo … Ahhhh.’
‘Making sex sounds moves a lot of energy, but it frightens some people.’ No one dies or leaves the room.
‘If you find, for example, that the sound is stuck at your solar plexus, just make a higher sound. It will help to draw the energy up.’
Then finally Barbara demonstrates simple movements that we may want to make while we are breathing into the ‘energy orgasm’. She moves her hips up and down and moves her arms as if she is directing the energy upwards. So, in the breathing exercise we are about to do we are asked to remember the role of the mind, the breath, the pelvic floor muscles, sound and movement. And we are about to breathe ourselves into an orgasmic state with no genital stimulation. ‘The point is to explore how much energy you can allow to run through you. You want it to fill you totally, not just a small area around your genitals. Now if your fingers go all tingly or even cramp up, don’t worry – they won’t fall off. Sometimes this happens when you first learn the breath and energy orgasm technique. It’s harmless.’
An atmosphere of nervous tension suddenly fills the room. Barbara catches it and says, ‘Watch your expectations. You’ll be limiting your experience if you decide, for example, that this is your fast track to a meeting with the Divine Goddess. Or, that you may as well give up now because you’re a pet rock and there is no point in you doing this because you’re obviously not going to experience anything at all. It’s much better to just throw yourself in and see what happens, right?’
She has a pleasing logic.
‘Now I’m going to give you a demonstration of a breath and energy orgasm.’ Drum roll.
I can’t believe that people can learn to be so uninhibited they can first learn these things and then learn to demonstrate them in a room of people.
She lies down on the floor in front of us all. And breathes and moves her arms a bit and laughs as the sensations move up her body. She’s definitely not fak
ing this. You don’t build a career on something that is faked. She’s somehow stimulating the nerves in her body using, as she says, a mixture of mental focus, loads of oxygen, pelvic floor squeezes, sound and movement. The sounds do not sound like a porn movie, more like the sounds of surprise you might make when your body delivers an unexpectedly good sensation. Then she laughs some more as the sounds get higher and higher, and then she changes the breathing pattern and speeds up so that she’s breathing fast. Then she takes three deep breaths, and then holds her breath. There’s a pause for a couple of seconds and then we see her writhing around in a state that she describes as ecstasy.
We all watch in a mixture of envy, horror, curiosity, admiration, and heaven knows how many other emotions and sensations are in the room. It’s certainly hot compared to the temperatures outside.
‘Let’s have a break now,’ says one of her assistants. ‘Then later we’ll come back and do this ourselves.’
So do you wish you were here with me? Or are you glad you’re not? Just checking.
Come Then Go
I go out with one of the other women from the workshop. She’s strikingly beautiful but I can’t describe her more than that … you’re about to find out why. We chat for a while about the morning. And then, almost from nowhere, she says,
‘I go to a man called Dr M. He’s not a real doctor. He has a desk job during the day.’
I love a good story.
‘I’m single and I got bored of masturbation. I looked round for something different. I wanted a massage with a happy ending.’
‘Really? I have never met a woman in London who uses a service like this. Or I’ve never met one who has admitted it. It’s on a massage table?’
‘Never off the massage table. He’s very good with his hands.’
‘So, he does give you a massage then?’
‘Yes. He massages you until he feels that you are relaxed enough and then he starts giving you more focused pleasure.’
I think I must look shocked. I had thought that, after this year, I was unshockable. But no.
‘Does he give you any kind of instruction? I mean, ways to receive the pleasure or anything?’ I vaguely wondered if this could be compared in some ways to the work I’d done with Alexey. But Alexey is clear that he’s not there for ‘happy endings’, he’s there as a coach. So this is definitely not the same.
‘No instruction at all. He’s just very good. He does all kinds of things with his hands until he finds out what works for you. I’ve sent all my girlfriends.’
I start to laugh out loud. ‘The married ones too?’
‘Oh yes. The husbands think they’re just having a massage.’
Ah, gullibility – thy name is man.
‘Once I had orgasmed twice so we had really finished but there was ten minutes of the session left. He said, “What would you like now?” I told him whatever he wanted. He got out a large, round-shaped back vibrator, but he knew how to use it. Perhaps it was because I was in a super-sensitive state as I’d already orgasmed twice, but I had an orgasm that was about three minutes long. Non-stop. I was nearly hanging off the ceiling.’
‘I’ve heard this year that it’s possible to have a 30-minute orgasm.’
‘Well, that’s a new goal of mine then.’
‘But how is any man in your life going to compete with Dr M?’
‘The other men in my life are all happier since I’ve been seeing him. And I’m more confident of my body.’
‘But there is no penetration?’
‘It’s all finger and vibrator. He’s made me squirt twice and the two men I’ve been with since love it.’
‘So, this isn’t something that he taught you how to do?’
‘Isabel, I didn’t know that squirting existed. And since it happened with him it’s happened with other men. They are very happy indeed.’
I glance at my watch and vaguely wonder if I could fit this in before flying back to the UK. But I can’t. Not that T has ever expressed any interest in seeing me squirt.
‘Squirting is actually quite shocking for men. I was dating this doctor and I warned him. He said, “I’m a doctor, these things don’t bother me.” I asked him, “Have you ever been with a woman who squirts?”’
‘No.’
‘So you’ve never seen it?’
‘No.’
‘A month later it happened and he said, “Oh my God!” I had to laugh.’
‘Just how much moisture was there?’
‘Well, the bed had a patch about this big.’ She held up her hands the size of a large dinner plate.
‘Doesn’t it feel a bit weird paying for massages with happy endings?’
‘Yes, it does. I was very nervous at first. But a friend gave me the website and I spoke to him at length on the phone. He put me totally at my ease. So, now I don’t think about it. I’m just there for the pleasure. I don’t have to reciprocate or give him a blow job or spread my legs. It’s all about me. I walk out of there SO happy, glowing and I can barely walk. It’s the best $140 dollars I ever spend.’
• • •
But back to Barbara’s ecstatic breath orgasm.
When we get back to the room it is in semi darkness. ‘Find a space where you can lay down easily and extend your legs without touching anyone.’
I lie down and begin to breathe in the way that she instructs us. ‘Breathe in through your mouth gently, not forcing the breath, but taking in as much air as you can. Just relax and breathe out naturally with an “ahh” sound.’
As far as I can work out what’s happening here – it’s because you are not pausing between one breath and another, as we do naturally, you are oxygenating the blood to an unusual balance. This has a very weird effect on the body. I squeezed my now-toned pelvic floor muscles. I breathed with her instructions. I moved my hips up and down to increase the energy. I visualized energy entering with the breath and rising up through my body. Women and men around me are doing the same but I’m really not very aware of them. I’m too surprised by the hot sensation that is building in my body.
‘Don’t forget to make sound.’ Barbara is one of many teachers who teach that climax can be more intense when you open the throat and make sound. Barbara holds the mike and instructs us. I’m good at making low sounds. I’m good at making middle-range sounds, but not too good at the high sounds. I can hear her instructions.
‘Enjoy the in-breath. Relax the jaw. Squeeze your pelvic muscles.’ I go on breathing. I breathe in and let go easily and breathe in again until my whole body’s singing. This must have gone on for about 20 or 30 minutes. I’m thrusting my hips in the air next to the gay male couple. I hope no one who reads this book accuses me of being inhibited. My hands and feet are tingling. My head feels light.
I go on and on breathing this way and I seem to be developing a whole new relationship with my body. I don’t feel disassociated – I feel very much inside the body, but at the same time I’m not there. It’s no longer as if I’m doing the breathing but as if the breathing has taken over. Mooji’s question, ‘Who is breathing you?’ seems more relevant than ever. There’s a life force here that ‘I’ (that is the created personality that has the name Isabel) really have nothing to do with.
‘Breathe in fully. Relax. Breathe in fully. Relax.’
‘Now …’ she says, ‘we are going to take 30 fuller, faster breaths. Fuller, faster. In, out. In, out. In, out.’ It’s like pumping. I even remember to pump my pelvic floor muscles at the same time. Then she asks us to take three really full deep breaths. (How weird is this?) She says, ‘Now, hold!’ I hold my breath and push my bum into the floor, tense my pelvic muscles, tense my abdominal muscles. I extend my legs and push my hands down on the floor as she’s shown us.
‘And hold. And hold. For ten seconds, 11, 12, keep squeezing, 13, 14, 15. Then release. Now just relax and do nothing.’
I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on here or how it works. But it feels as if my body expands. Not in th
e way that I imagine a ‘full body’ orgasm would feel from genital stimulation, this is different. This is my body singing internally. This is heat and a feeling of pleasure that is vibrating in my body at some high pitch. My hands and feet are tingling so much they feel as if they are going to explode. I feel hot and pulsing and more alive than I ever remember feeling. And there is a feeling of astounding sweetness about it. Sweetness that somehow goes around my body and does, unexpectedly, also light up my genitals internally. It’s intense.
What do we call a feeling of bliss like this? I think that, just as Barbara calls it, I’d have to call it ecstasy. It’s not shared with another – which is the way I’d prefer to be experiencing this – but it’s certainly the most intense physical feeling of pleasure that I’ve ever had. My whole body is pulsating. Weird. Around me women are laughing and making sounds of pleasure. And we haven’t even taken off our clothes.
If this is the impact of just one of the bike parts, then it’s certainly been underestimated. I’ve read whole books on sexuality this year where the breath hasn’t even been mentioned. And this is free, doesn’t spread disease, you don’t get pregnant and you don’t even need a partner.
But I haven’t forgotten that my quest is about finding ways to make my sexuality work best with a partner. Neither has Barbara.
‘That’s an exercise in the exploration of energy with no partner and with no genital stimulation. Now …’ she smiles at her room of blissed-out beings, ‘If you were to combine that with genital stimulation and a person that you love can you imagine where you’d go then?’
Touché.
Happy Endings
So, now here I am back in London. And it feels like spring. It’s not spring, quite yet, but it will be soon. The snowdrops I planted last year are beginning to peep little green shoots through the cold earth. I can wear my favourite gloves that have no fingers in them and I can get into bed without a hot water bottle. Well, that’s on the nights that T isn’t there.
I know what you are wondering. You’re wondering how all that I’ve learnt works out in my relationship. Is this journey going to end with a big sex scene where I manage, seamlessly, to incorporate everything into one graphic, simultaneous 30-minute multi-orgasmic experience with T where the bed collapses with exhaustion and the neighbours call the police to complain about the noise?
Sensation Page 24
