For a moment Bob didn’t make a sound. Then he began giggling uncontrollably. The combination of adrenaline and natural opiates had him higher than a kite.
“Thank you, Mistress.”
Nora slowly unwrapped his balls from the bandage and reached up to remove the rope from his mouth. Untying it, she carefully removed the coil of rope, making sure not to pull too much hair in the process.
Once free, Bob’s cock was still erect. Nora intended to make good use of it over the course of the night. Now it was time for his reward. Both Nora and Bob knew it would be a scene they would enjoy again, but now it was time for just plain lust.
CHAPTER 7
KINKY TWISTED TANTRA
BARBARA CARRELLAS
The place on the erotic map where the paths of Tantric sex and BDSM intersect was once as lonely and obscure as a tiny no-pub town in the Australian outback. Not only was it nearly impossible to find, hardly anyone looked for it because no one believed it actually existed. In recent years things have changed dramatically. Some Tantric practitioners are now combining elements of power and intense sensation with traditional Tantra in a variation sometimes referred to as Dark Tantra. Longtime BDSM players are coming out of the closet as spiritual seekers and creating scenes intentionally designed to welcome god/goddess/universe/all-that-is into the dungeon. Communities in which kinky people and Tantrikas meet, mingle, and play together are growing and now can be found all over the world.
It’s not surprising that it’s taken a while for these two communities to find common ground. From a stylistic point of view, it would appear that people wearing leather and wielding floggers would have little or nothing in common with people wearing sarongs and stroking each other with feathers. But like most everything else in life, outward appearances and preconceived notions have little or nothing to do with the essence of an erotic or spiritual art form.
Tantric sex and BDSM have much more in common than may seem apparent at first glance. Both are erotic arts of consciousness. Both arts add intensity to life and sex. Both embrace a wide variety of powerful consensual practices. Both Tantric and BDSM rituals are about raising erotic energy. Both practices involve conscious giving and receiving. Both encourage risks—either physical or emotional. Both erotic arts encourage personal freedom, individuality, and imagination. And both produce trance states, and transcendental, transformational experiences.
Why has it taken this long for BDSM aficionados and Tantrikas to discover each other’s charms? One of the stumbling blocks has been the lack of a common language. The two communities have traditionally described what, how, and why they do what they do in language that has sounded off-putting, inflated, or obscure to anyone not in the club. One of the primary missions of my work has been to translate words, actions, and intentions across sexual boundaries. So before we go any further, let’s define some terms.
WHAT IS TANTRA?
Tantra is the ancient Eastern spiritual practice that embraces sex as a legitimate and effective path to enlightenment. Tantra is an embodied spiritual practice. It embraces all elements and aspects of life—including but not limited to sex—as a way to experience direct knowledge of the divine. Notice I call it a spiritual practice, not a religion. Religions tend to approach spirituality in a controlled, ordered manner. There is usually a hierarchical organization and an emphasis upon a particular set of rules. If you follow the rules, you are promised a predictable goal of salvation or enlightenment or peace.
Can you have a wild, ecstatic, spiritual experience within a religion? Absolutely. You can have a wild, ecstatic, spiritual experience within the context of almost anything. For many of us, however, spiritual experiences are easier to create within the context of a spiritual practice. A spiritual practice is just that: practice. You consistently practice a way of being and seeing in the world that invites the unknown, the unexpected, and the chaotic. Spiritual practices encourage you to step out of your ordinary reality into a realm of infinite possibilities where you are likely to find that there is no separation between you and everything else, including god—goddess—universe—divine—all-that-is.
Tantrically speaking, being conscious simply means that you are in a relaxed state of awareness with a quiet mind able to focus gently and easily on what’s going on in the present moment. It’s mindfulness. It’s putting your attention on your intentions. To be conscious is to go totally into whatever you are doing—whatever it is you are experiencing. When I talk about conscious sex, I am talking about a sexual encounter in which you are focused on each successive moment of your journey through pleasure. It is not a goal-oriented activity. In Tantric sex not even orgasm can be a goal, because there is no goal. Orgasms certainly do happen—all the time, in fact. But you are likely to find other erotic moments as exquisite as orgasm on this goal-free path.
Tantric sex is a way to explore and experience sex that includes and encourages a spiritual experience. Tantra (and Taoist sexuality, which started as a branch of Chinese medicine) sees sex as an energy rather than an activity. In Tantra we use techniques such as breath, touch, sound, and movement to move the sexual energy that starts in the genitals into the rest of the body, effectively turning the entire body into a sex organ. During sex with a partner, we build and exchange this energy with a beloved. Consciousness plays a vital role in this exchange, because as you increase your level of consciousness, you increase the intensity of the energy within yourself and between the two of you.
TANTRIC SEX TECHNIQUES
There is an entire universe of possibilities to be discovered when we blend Tantra’s focus on energy, consciousness, and spiritual connection with BDSM’s traditions of consent, negotiation, and intensity. In order to experience the deep erotic sensations that can carry us into prolonged ecstatic states of arousal and altered states of consciousness, we first have to slow down and get back to basics. In that sentence we find the first of these basics: Slow down! In Tantra, we do not slow down just for the sake of making sex last longer. Rather, slowing down is the natural consequence of being more conscious. So as you practice the following basics, remember that it’s not about how fast or how intensely you practice, but how much consciousness you bring to your practice.
We’re going to begin by focusing on the physical, nongenital components of a great sexual experience. Nongenital? Aren’t genitals the most important part of sex? Well, no. In fact, you can have amazing, prolonged, full-body orgasms by combining the following nongenital techniques. And these basic elements are not just essential in the practice of Tantra—they are actually the building blocks of all erotic experiences. So let’s take a deep breath, drop into our bodies, and discover all the ways that we can generate, enjoy, and share massive amounts of sexual energy.
Our breath is our greatest source of energy and aliveness, yet most of us breathe just enough to stay alive. If you are not already a dedicated erotic breathwork junkie, I strongly suggest you become one. Deep, full conscious breathing can take you higher and deeper and farther than any other sex toy or technique. Regrettably, instead of breathing more, most of us tend to stop breathing in intensely erotic situations. I attribute this to a rule that almost all of us learned as adolescents. I call it the Quiet and Quick Rule. When we were first masturbating on a regular basis, we had to be quiet so that other members of the family would not hear us. We had to be quick so that we could get to orgasm before we were discovered. How did we manage to be quiet and quick? We held our breath. There was no chance of accidentally making a sound if you weren’t breathing. Unfortunately, the constant repetition of the Quiet and Quick Rule imprinted in it on our muscle memory, in much the same way that we learned to type or ride a bicycle. So now when we approach orgasm or any other peak erotic experience, we tend to hold our breath. To reach the level of erotic heights we long for, and to get the most out of the commingling of Tantra and BDSM, we need to break this habit and reprogram our bodies with breath.