“I asked my husband to commit to an adventure that I hoped would salvage the passion we had once so enjoyed in our relationship.” ~ Tantra Student
“Tantra Stories” is a series of touching testimonials from our Source School of Tantra Yoga seminar students. This story is written by a married woman and mother of 5 who went on a mission to bring the spark back to the bedroom with her husband of 10 years. Learn more about our Tantra Seminars HERE!
I’m not sure when I first heard of the words “tantric sex”. The concept had vague associations with a magazine article I had read years earlier about the rock star Sting and his wife Trudy engaging in 10+ hour lovemaking sessions. Some crazy trend for sex addicts, I remember thinking at the time. Who could even stand that many hours of intercourse? Pass the Teflon coating and a whole lot of lube!
But I was curious, and after 10 years of marriage, five children between us, and fading sparks in the bedroom, I asked my husband to commit to an adventure that I hoped would salvage the passion we had once so enjoyed in our relationship.
My husband – ever the pragmatist – chimed in with his reservations as we drove to our tantric seminar, along the winding California coast from LA to Big Sur. “Rub earlobe, one hour” was his comically barbed projection of what he anticipated: some “hippy dippy commune” – his words, not mine – with “unwashed tree-huggers making love to Grateful Dead LP’s while eating magic mushrooms”. (Love that sense of humor, but of course his fear was beneath that.)
Our arrival at a gated enclave and self-sustaining community perched on a cliff over the Pacific Ocean proved us wrong almost immediately. Many of the people we saw were like us – well educated, 30 to 60 years old, and seekers who preferred journals to laptops. Okay, so they had a penchant for nude sunbathing.
On day one, my husband proclaimed that “there was something wrong” with anyone who was compelled to public nudity. I’ve always loved nudity and even posed for Playboy in college, so I was stripping off on day one. To his credit, my husband was buck-naked on day two, asserting that “there’s no big deal anyway, and it really is much more comfortable”. Oddly, there was nothing salacious or even sexual at the mineral baths where nude sunbathers reclined on marble patios. Round Asian women splayed across massage tables next to balding yogis, old and young and male and female neither averted eyes nor stared.
There was something – dare I say it? – holy about the entire place.
Ten couples were in our Intro to Tantric Sexuality Seminar. One lovely friend confessed a recent mastectomy had rendered her very self-conscious about her body. When the women in the group rallied around her on our third night there, and brought her to the baths, and literally frolicked beneath a vivid crescent moon on that cliff side…well.
If it sounds profound it was. Words cannot convey the healing for all of us in body image issues as we celebrated our beauty and individuality.
The tattooed and the firm, the heavyset and the scarred. The crones and the maidens and the mothers alike, we bathed and anticipated our evening with our partners which waited when we left that place. Tantra teaches about chakras, moving energy, aligning intentions with our partners, and the central urgency of breath in releasing the female orgasm.
Here is what I know: as a mother of daughters it is so very easy to place myself at the end of my own list. I volunteer at schools, cook, clean, recycle, organize, sustain friendships, and work several jobs simultaneously. How absurd to think that someone as competent as me would have difficulty prioritizing my own pleasure. But there it was – I realized a lifetime of bad habits has crept into my bedroom: closed eyes when the gaze is primary, clenched energy when relaxation is key, and most importantly breath-holding when conscious inhale and exhale have now released me to levels of physical bliss I did not know were possible.
Moms do so much for so many. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, but she who rules the world deserves to be rocked, too! If you have fallen into the trap of self-last, self-lessness, wake up. Being a mom doesn’t mean you’re done – maybe it is time to reconsider the importance of being your own priority. Think of the example we set for our daughters and our sons. Let’s not show them a lopsided, desexualized mother.
How ironic – when lovemaking brings us to motherhood in the first place! Embrace your body; challenge what you think you know about your sexuality. Enliven yourself and then release that life and chi into your family and community.
As a 46-year-old mother and beginning Tantric practitioner, I invite you to experience this amazing journey.
~ Pamela D. Tantra Student
