Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Ironically, I learned about this concept without a partner. In my single years, I executed a crazy experiment where consciously, I decided not to have an orgasm for a year.
No touching or canoodling—nada.
Suspecting the spiritual nature and sexuality were connected, I wanted to test abstinence’s effect on my spiritual self-actualization. Walking around like a monkish pleasures-of-the-flesh-abstinence adept, I hoped to transmute the latent sex energy into something awesome. My body would become a living alchemy of crazy sex energy, bursting with power.
Ultimately, this method would provide me with a river of rapid flowing energy discharged for quick manifestations.
In tandem, I yoga’d out and built a meditation practice om’ing three times a day to cope without my usual orgasmic release, which even without a partner, was (ahem) considerable.
At the time, the experiment yielded some fascinating results.
I wrote a book in six months, found an incredible loving partner and saw a major increase in my spiritual expansion. But recently, I was feeling my partner’s absence as something more unsettling. After spending over a week in the Costa Rican rainforest, the lack of my partner’s touches had me feeling the pang of truth from the old adage.
Like the times before without the release, I felt my head was going to pop off.
While lamenting to my best girlfriend about my recent ‘urges’ percolating, she mentioned Tantra as a sexual practice. She’d been to a couples workshop in Colorado led by tantric veteran Caroline Muir. She encouraged me to let the current of bubbly sex energy build, ride the wave and read Caroline’s work to my husband after I got home.
Partner Pleasures
Granted, we already had a pretty rockin’ sex life, even after eight years, but my being away for this stint awakened a strong desire to be more creative in the sack. We’d never broached the subject of Tantra, but if Sting was into it, how bad could it be? I wanted to carry that heart pounding absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder thing back to Alaska and knock his woolly socks off like a Lioness.
I had images of my hair wild, singing Carol King’s, “I feel the earth move under my feet” writhing over top of him like a nature Goddess, riding our wave of ecstasy.
I like to follow the philosophy of the Tao and watch what is present. So when I searched for Caroline Muir and couldn’t find her book online I purchased Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas instead—I wasn’t disappointed.
Carrellas goes into vivid detail and great depths on using the tantric way for mutual stimulation and arousal. She teaches how to literally breathe more life into sex through more traditional tantric techniques like yoni and lingham massage, to more alternative methods like S & M and fetishes; she covers a wide swath.
Thankful for Barbara’s visual aids and along with her compelling voice and stories, I was ready to trust the Tantra.