Cultivate a sense of adventure

The Tantric approach to living is fundamentally an experimental one. If you apply this sense of curiosity to all your experiences, they will provide you with opportunities to learn about yourself and your partner. If you can treat your relationship and everything you experience as a shared adventure, you will create a deep and enduring bond.

Gaze into each others’ eyes

Eye gazing has its origins in the classical Tantric practice of Tratak, which means “to gaze without blinking.” In its most basic form, eye gazing requires you to stand facing your partner in a comfortable and open pose, while gazing softly into your partner’s eyes. When people are first falling in love, this comes very naturally. Some long-term couples may find it quite difficult at first, but it’s a wonderful way to recreate the experience and physiological state of falling in love.

Treat each other with reverence

See your partner as a manifestation of the divine (however you define it) and bring a sense of worship to your lovemaking. If you can cultivate a feeling of reverence for your partner, you can make every aspect of your relationship, including hot sex, a form of spiritual practice.

Pay attention

We like to define love as “profound interest.” Life can be stressful, and demands on our time often leave us disconnected from our partners. You can choose to be interested and attentive. It only takes a little effort, but the more genuinely interested you are in your partner, the more connected you will be.

Make a date

The value of scheduling dates and times to be intimate is often overlooked. People tend to wait for the perfect mood to strike or the right moment to arrive because they fear that planning will cheapen the experience and make it artificial. Remember that anticipation can be a powerful aphrodisiac. Don’t just take advantage of those times when the mood hits you. Make dates for brief encounters and plan romantic getaways together.

Get in synch

Take the time to synchronize your breathing. If you do this in conjunction with eye gazing, you can use both visual and auditory cues to determine when you are in synch. If you are not looking at each other, you can feel the rise and fall of your partner’s chest. Bringing awareness to the breath is frequently the first step in learning how to meditate. Consciously synchronizing with your partner is a way to harmonize and to create a calming, peaceful intimacy.

Give and receive massage

One way to learn more about your partner and yourself is by exchanging massages. Use soft lights, candles, incense and soothing music to set the mood. Take your time and explore your partner’s body. This will help you learn more about your partner’s responsiveness and help you develop the ability to touch consciously. We recommend trading sessions — giving one day and receiving the next.

Gently suck on your partner’s upper lip

In Tantric anatomy, it is believed that a psychic nerve runs from a woman’s upper lip to her genitals and that sucking it can be very arousing. Men have often reported feeling the same spark of sensation in response to this form of kissing.

Stimulate the sacral nerves

Stimulate the sacrum (the triangular bony structure in the small of the back) using pressure, percussion, or vibration — pressing your hand firmly, moving it back and forth in short rapid motions, or tapping gently with the edges of your hands. The sacral nerves connect to the genitals, so this kind of stimulation can be intensely arousing.

Pulse your pubococcygeal (Kegel) muscles during lovemaking

These are the muscles that comprise the pelvic floor. You can locate them by interrupting the flow of urine. Exercising these muscles is a yogic practice, and there are many benefits in keeping them toned. If you pulse your PC muscles back and forth during intercourse, it will drive you both wild. This is an ancient courtesan’s technique, sometimes called the secret language, but both men and women can do it.

Try these simple techniques and cultivate this open, experimental, and reverent attitude. Whether you’ve just started dating or have been together for years, you’re likely to discover new and wonderful things about yourself and your partner. If you’re single, going into your next relationship with this information in mind will help you get off to a good start. These tips hardly do justice to the richness and complexity of the Tantric tradition, but if this is all you ever learn about it, you’re likely to find that you’ve got some powerful tools for transforming yourself and your relationship.

Copyright © 2006 Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson

Authors

Mark Michaels (Swami Umeshanand Saraswati) and Patricia Johnson (Devi Veenanand) are a devoted married couple who have been teaching Tantra and Kriya Yoga together since 1999. Their popular workshops have been featured in several publications, including the Village Voice, NOW magazine, and Breathe magazine.

The two seek to combine a traditional, lineage-based approach with the best contemporary, Neo-Tantric methods. Their approach includes breath work, meditation, chanting, and puja (a type of Hindu devotional ritual), and their “initiated Kriya yoga” practices aim to lay a spiritual foundation for bringing the heightened awareness and pleasure of sex into everyday life.

The authors are senior students of Dr. John Mumford (Swami Anandakapila Saraswati) and have been named lineage holders of the OM-Kara Kriya® system for the Americas and Europe. Sunyata, coauthor of The Jewel in the Lotus, named Michaels his lineage holder in 2001. Michaels and Johnson have studied Bhakti Yoga with Bhagavan Das and Tantra with Dr. Rudy Ballentine, and they have been featured in Dr. Judy Kuriansky’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex.

Michaels is a graduate of New York University School of Law, is a member of the Bar in New York State, and holds master’s degrees in American Studies from NYU and Yale. A playwright and translator, he translated and adapted Goldoni’s The Mistress of the Inn for New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company and cowrote The Thrill of Victory, The Agony of Debate, which premiered at New York’s Primary Stages. Patricia Johnson is a professional operatic soprano who tours extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and South America and has performed with the New York City Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, and the Berlin Komsiche Oper.

They make their home near New York City.

But how does a person know which piano books are necessary and which books are redundant, to say nothing of good or bad. There are books on music theory, scales, chords, books about composers, books about music in general, and of course piano lesson books by Schaum, Williams, Alfred d’Auberge, Bastien, John Thompson, Glover, etc., etc.

The best way is to divide the study of piano playing into it’s components:

General lesson piano books:

While there are many, for the adult beginner I would select the series by Bastien titled “The Adult Beginner” It is excellent for adults, and includes quite a bit of music theory along with the piano lessons.

General books about music:

Far and away the most inspiring book about music in general is “The Joy of Music” by Leonard Bernstein. If you want to wrap your brain around music, this is the book for you. (Berstein, in case you don’t know, was both a great conductor and a great composer, having written “West Side Story” and many others.)

Another great selection would be “What To Listen For In Music” by Aaron Copeland. (He was also a great composer.)

Technique books:

The best book I have found for developing finger dexterity and piano technique is a book that has been around for a hundred years or so, but is still the standard. It is “The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises – Complete: Piano Technique” by C. L. Hanon.

Music theory books:

There are many, most of which are complex and difficult to understand, but a good choice for a beginner would be “The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Music Theory” by Michael Miller.

Books on piano chords:

In this category I’m going to have to cast all modesty aside and select my own book titled “Piano Chords & Chord Progressions: The Secret Backdoor To Exciting Piano Playing”. It’s thorough, cheap, and very easy to read and understand.

Song books:

In addition to books that teach all aspects of piano playing, you’ll need several good songbooks so you can practice the things you are learning. The piano books you select are largely a matter of taste: if you love rock, you’ll want to buy books of rock songs. If you love jazz, or gospel, or pop, or whatever, you’ll want to get the song books appropriate to your likes and tastes.

But in addition to regular piano song books, be sure to also get a “fake book”. A fake book is a book which contains the melody, the words, and the chord symbols for songs. Usually a fake book has a thousand or more songs in it, so it is a huge bargain.

When I was a teenager fake books were illegal, but they were sold under the counter to musicians all the time. I paid $50. for my first fake book (which I still have, incidentally) which contained only 200 songs. Fifty bucks back then is similar to the national debt now. But it was something working musicians had to have.

Now fake books contain thousands of songs and sell for much less — often just $25. or so. So be sure to pick one up — preferably several, as they come in all flavors — jazz, folk, western, gospel, pop, and just about any other musical classification that you could think of.

All of these books can be obtained at your local music store or from online stores such as Amazon.

Then there is another totally different class of piano books that are part of an audio-visual course. Usually these books are supplementary to the DVD or CD (or both) which comprises the course. This type of piano books are new in the history of the world, because obviously DVD’s and CD’s haven’t existed all that long. This type of course puts it all together, so in addition to reading a book, you can hear the instruction and see it being demonstrated on your own TV or computer screen.

But whatever books you select, the important thing is to just get started learning in all these areas of music.

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