Tantra offers many easy-to-learn practices to help you and your partner evolve spiritually while you enjoy great sex. Many of the practices and lessons in other chapters of this book come from or were inspired by tantric theory, like the repeated reminder to focus your mind on your heart and your partner's heart when you are making love.

Meditation

In many different circles today, meditation is being recognized for its value in bringing focus and quiet to the mind. Its simple techniques are easy to learn and are useful in a variety of ways. As little as twenty minutes a day can bring relaxation, concentration, and lower blood pressure.

At some time or another during sex, most people have found their mind wandering, or have found that they think about whether they are doing it right or about what they wish their partner would do. The highest honor and gift you can give a partner is focused attention. When you bring that quality to your loving, it doesn't matter what techniques you know — you simply are a great lover. Practicing meditation will enable you to focus your attention during lovemaking.

Let Your Heart In

Here is a simple practice you can try the next time you are making love. It's about connecting the heart chakra with the genital chakra. Both men and women need to learn to connect the genitals and the heart. Touching these two areas at the same time can bring immense healing, enabling you to experience this connection.

While you are stimulating the genitals of your partner during foreplay or oral sex and, place a hand on her heart chakra. Breathe love deeply into it. Think of the possibility of having a pure heart orgasm or extending the orgasmic release from the genitals up to the heart. You may even want to wave your hand over your lover's body with focus on the heart area. Remind the receiving partner that he can spread the orgasmic feelings all the way up to his heart.

Tantric Orgasm

Tantric philosophy talks about two seemingly different types of orgasm: the physical orgasm and the heart orgasm. At first appearance they may seem contrary to each other, but on closer inspection one supports the other perfectly.

Modern sexology recognizes that there are several forms of orgasm. In women there is the clitoral orgasm, which tends to be localized to the genitals. There is the vaginal orgasm, which involves the G-spot and a few other areas of the vagina. There is the blended orgasm, involving the clitoris and the G-spot. Men's orgasms tend to be of one general kind. These are all forms of the physical orgasm. Through tantric practices the orgasmic plateau can be extended for long periods of time. Moreover, tantra offers another kind of orgasm — the energy orgasm, or heart orgasm.

Orgasm from the Heart

Tantric practice encourages us to be in our hearts at all times. That blissful state can be equated to an orgasmic state of being in which heart energy is transferred to all that we experience and do during the day. In tantra this is sometimes referred to as the right-hand path. Certain sects of practitioners achieve this optimum state of being through meditation, yoga, compassionate states of mind, mantra chanting, and celibacy.

In the left-hand path, sexuality is the vehicle one rides to achieve this same blissful state. Sexuality is used as a form of yoga to go to the deepest spiritual levels one can attain. The orgasm is used as the gateway to recognize the bliss state. Once this state of being is recognized, you are able to use that recognition to develop the ability to attain higher states of consciousness that enable you to bring the bliss state to all aspects of life.

When the two paths are blended, the possibilities for personal growth expand exponentially, and the duality between the two types of orgasms vanishes. Just as breath is of the utmost importance in meditation, it is the consciousness of breathing that can be the tool to help you reach a transformational lovemaking experience.