By Lucy Corkhill
04th February 2012
A relationship naturally changes over time and you may not be going at it hammer and tongs like you were when you first met. Time for a new, more sensual, intense and intimate sexual phase of life. Holistic sex is something that suits being shared with someone you have known and loved intimately, who has been there at your most vulnerable, powerful and even embarrassing stages of life. The connection that forges between a loving couple who have shared lots of life experience, including the rollercoaster ride of parenting, can be electrifying. It’s just making the time to reconnect with one another, putting aside all the responsibilities and concerns of daily life, and tuning in to the god and goddess energy that resides within you. Try these tantric practices to remind you why your lover is so damned gorgeous, delicious and loveable:
Awaken each other’s senses
Create a sacred space where your partner will feel relaxed and safe. Try using cushions, candles, dim lighting and oil diffusers; you can also include god and goddess iconography or pictures if you have any. Play music that makes you feel sensual. You can create a very sexy harem mood with Arabic or Indian instrumental music. Lead your partner blindfolded into the space, let them get comfortable and begin by arousing their sense of smell. Try sweet-smelling oils and lotions or incense wafted around them. Awaken their sense of taste with delicious tidbits of food – have these ready-prepared and tantalise your partner with different tastes and textures. To awaken their sense of touch, begin almost imperceptibly with feathers and silky fabrics and slowly introduce your own touch, try licking their fingertips or gently biting their earlobes. Hold back here, it’s easy to get carried away but you want to keep them on tenterhooks! Finally, you can lift their blindfold and allow them to feast their eyes on your beautiful form (in your sexiest clothes, or in none at all). To complete the experience, why not throw British inhibition out the window and do your most sensual and erotic dance for them?
Celebrating the god/goddess within
This is a wonderful practice for celebrating the god and goddess within each of you. Set aside an hour or two in which one of you becomes the god/goddess and the other becomes the servant. Don’t be put off by the word servant – it is an incredibly empowering experience to serve the one you love completely and entirely. The god/goddess’s wishes must be met, but they must also be impulsive, rather than a list of chores. Let your imagine run riot and fully inhabit this gorgeous decadent self within you. It’s sometimes helpful to get a few supplies of favourite drinks (champagne!), food (strawberries!) and unguents (sensual massage oils!) in before you shut out the outside world and explore your inner god/goddess. You should swap roles a little later in the week – don’t play both servant and god/goddess in one day.
Breathe together
Breathing together is an incredibly simple way of creating an intense connection between you with very little effort. With the woman sitting astride the male (naked or clothed), you begin by connecting through the eyes. Look into each other’s left eye and begin to slow your breath. Breathing slowly in unison in this position, you begin to feel the electrical charge between each other’s bodies. You can stay like this for as long as you want.
Morning Meditation
Meditation with a difference! In that sleepy, just-woken-up fuzziness, the man enters the woman and they lie comfortably on their sides, facing one another. Remain still. Meditate on your partner’s eye (focus on the left) and feel the energy build between you. This is an incredibly lovely way to start the day (kids permitting!) – try it for 5mins every morning. Our western ideal concerns goal-orientated sex, with each partner chasing their orgasm and drifting away to their own world to achieve it. This practice takes away the pressure and just allows you to experience the intensity of a sexual experience with your lover. Don’t worry if you can’t keep still, you orgasm, or you fall asleep (it happens!), after all, it’s a practice so is ever-evolving.
To find out more about the wonders of tantric practice, there are many brilliant books (see reading list below) and courses. My husband and I tried the Couples Intimacy course and highly recommend it.
