Tag: Lifestyle

Can tantric massage result in sexual confidence? First one needs to understand what sexual confidence really is.

We could all start by asking ourselves the question: ‘Am I a sexually confident person?’

The following is a pertinent quote from Osho, who was not only a popular guru, but sometimes known as the ‘sex’ guru’ of the seventies:

“ All religions have turned man against his own energies. Sex is man’s whole energy, his life energy. So through condemning sex … and preventing the orgasmic experience, religions have made men and women slaves. And the basic strategy is :’because sex is the most powerful energy in you, sex should be condemned, a guilt should be created. Then the individual has a split … his nature is sensuous, sexual and his mind is full of garbage against it. So man is afraid of sex as far as the mind is concerned, but his biology has nothing to do with the mind.The biology has its own way of functioning, so it will draw him towards sex and his mind will be standing there continuously condemning him. So he makes love, but in a hurry. He is hurrying because he feels he is doing something wrong. The only compromise is to be quick. That avoids the orgasm.

Because of his hurry, he cannot manage the orgasm. Sex has become equivalent to ejaculation. That is not true as far as nature is concerned. Ejaculation is only a part, which you can manage without orgasm. You can reproduce children, but you have become deprived. Man is deprived and because he is so quick in making love, the woman is also deprived. The woman needs time to warm up. Her whole body is erotic and unless her whole body is throbbing with joy, she will not be able to experience orgasm. So for millions of years, women have been denied their birthright. So they become bitchy… nagging… ready to fight…

Then you go for therapy. But without meditation you can go on painting on the surface, but the inner reality remains the same. My therapists have to introduce meditation as the very center of therapy. Then we have made therapy something really valuable Our therapy should give a person his individuality back. We give him his childhood and innocence back We have to teach people how to live totally and wholly … Then  orgasm will  give you your roots, which have been taken away from you. It is immensely important for meditation that a person has the experience of orgasm … Then you can make him understand what meditation is. It is an orgasmic experience with the whole existence.”

I have included the above long quote because even though it was written in the 1970s, it is still applicable to us in many ways today. You may be thinking that these things do not apply to the majority of people in the 21st century. There is so much open communication nowadays, knowledge and techniques are freely available, and we are no longer affected by guilt and secrecy. But the fundamental body/mind/spirit disconnection has simply taken other forms. Society and advertising exert different but equally powerful pressures. People may look confident but here, at Tantric Massage London, we experience every day that underneath the surface, there is a fundamental of lack of sexual confidence. Our connection with ourselves as a sexual being is very often impaired.

We have allowed our culture to de-sensitise us and we no longer feel with the entirety of our being. We now tend to be in our heads. As the inner disconnection between mind, body and spirit becomes habitual, men and women are no longer able to feel turned on in the usual ways. So they resort to fantasising all kinds of situations, or they can only have sex in a particular way, or they watch porn before they are able to have sex. Our society also encourages this type of behaviour and this makes people even more out of touch with themselves and more insecure because they compare their bodies and performance to those of porn stars.

Women develop anorexia and bulimia because of lack of self-esteem. They worry about how they look. Their body can never be beautiful enough, so they diet, wax it everywhere (as do men nowadays too); they undergo all kinds of procedures like anal bleaching, breast enlargement. On the other hand, men worry about the size of their penis and have surgeries to enlarge it … all because of the fundamental insecurity and over-identification with the physical appearnance of the body and the lack of connection with the true self inside.

So let us take a look at how this fundamental insecurity affects women, men and couples and the ways in which tantric massage and tuition can help. All of the following can be helpful, be it whether one is single or in a relationship.
Our tantric tuition process can be broken down into the following:

1. Learning to feel—begin to feel one’s own body and senses, learn to slow down the mind and integrate the body-mind-spirit
2. Education—provide information on what to touch, how to touch, what turns you on, what turns your partner on.
3. Communication—how to communicate honestly without hurting your partner.
4. Connection—feel the connection within, which leads to feeling the connection with your partner.

Women

Women often have the idea, sometimes sub-consciously, that the focus is to keep their man pleased so they concentrate on their partner rather than on themselves. When a couple comes and see us and each wants to receive a tantric massage, we advise them to have the massage in separate rooms at first, so that the woman can concentrate on her own pleasure.

Very often, it is the male partner who initiates the idea of having a tantric massage together and he asks for the massage to be in the same room,so that he can enjoy watching his partner being turned on and also learn how to turn her on. And often, the woman will agree with him because she has become conditioned to wanting to please him and is unaware of how out of touch she is with herself.

So we need to explain to both of them that a woman needs privacy to discover what turns her on before she can show her partner. She needs to become familiar with her own vagina, to masturbate, use sex toys and generally be aware of and in touch with her own sensual responses. For this, she needs privacy and will be much more free, uninhibited and comfortable on her own.

We often recommend women to take a look at Betty Dodson’s website. Betty is a pioneer of sex education for women and was one of the first therapists to encourage women to get a mirror and actually look at their own vagina. As she says in her website: ‘Our Bodysex workshops teach women how to overcome negative body image and pleasure anxiety.’ She encourages women to masturbate together in a group and to share their experiences with one another. Women soon realise that they are not alone and that their issues are shared by others too.

We explain all these to women who come to us for tantric massage and have found it to be of special help to women who lack sexual experience. In today’s world, men increasingly expect women to be sexually confident and to know how to please them sexually. Gone are the days when women were supposed to be innocent. Yet we have found that many women who have been married for a long time or have had several lovers, are still often disconnected from their own bodies and really do not know how to give pleasure to themselves or to their partners.

Our aim is to provide a safe space for women to air their concerns and to discover their own bodies—to learn what turns them on at their own pace, without worrying about having to please anyone else, and maybe even to experience an orgasm for the first time in their lives. We also emphasise that orgasm is not the goal. In fact, there is no goal. The objective is to feel our feelings in the moment, in their totality, without the mind’s interference, without extraneous thoughts, without expectations and without blocking the feeling. In this way, we learn what real pleasure is. Women also discover that once they actually feel intense bodily arousal and pleasure, this in itself, is a turn-on for their partner. There is no greater turn-off for a man when he is trying to please his partner, than to see her just lying there and to feel that whatever he does is not having much of an effect on her. That said, men are not mind-readers. Women need to be able to show their partner what they like and don’t like. In order to do this, they must first know themselves what they like, and then have the confidence to show their partner and to also have the confidence and tact to tell him if he is doing things that make her feel uncomfortable. Both partners also need to be relaxed and basically enjoy the moment.

These are the skills we teach women in our tantric massage/tuition sessions. We also offer tuition to couples so that they can practice on each other, with the guidance of a tantric therapist. This encourages a couple to learn in a practical way about what pleases their partner, and also to be entirely honest about what they like and don’t like. While this process of self-exploration and learning to communicate in an honest way sounds so simple, we have found it to be lacking in many. In fact, once the initial hurdles of shyness and embarrassment are overcome, sexual confidence is the natural result. In tomorrow’s article, we will learn more about how men can reap the benefits of tantric massages and how it can boost sexual confidence.

Have you seen the movie Hysteria? It came out a couple of years ago, and a friend contacted to tell me that I must see it.

I must confess that I haven’t seen the film myself yet, but what interested me was that my friend pointed out how very respectable it was for a woman to go to a doctor to receive ‘manual digital relief’ in order to produce a ‘paroxysm of relief’ in Victorian times

The film is about the invention of the vibrator in late-Victorian England and how a society doctor administers manual relief to his wealthy female patients as a cure for hysteria. Back then, ‘hysteria’ was a condition ascribed to women and thought to be caused by disturbances of the uterus. It was a catch-all diagnosis for women suffering from anything ranging from a headache to depression to disobedience (the diagnosis was only finally dropped in the 1950s). In this movie, the doctor develops a ‘masturbator’s elbow’, also known as a carpal tunnel syndrome, and this leads to the invention of the first electric vibrator.

The film’s director, Tanya Wexler, commented, ’They didn’t consider the treatment sexual, because the husband was not involved. They thought the orgasm, or paroxysm as they called it, was purely involuntary … There is something about that time in the 1880s, and just how strict the cultural codes were, that makes it funny … everyone pretended it was a medical thing, not a sexual thing, and they really believed it.’

The practice of stimulation as a means of diagnosis has been going on in doctors’ consulting rooms since 1653 or even earlier, with a midwife sometimes called in to provide assistance. Early machines were then designed to help doctors who felt unable to complete the task manually. Such is the humble and interesting beginnings of the vibrator that has now become the most prolific sex toy of all time.

Yet, this is a contrast to modern perceptions when a man receives a sensual massage or a tantric massage. He still often feels that he has to go for such sessions secretly due to the stigma attached to any form of  ‘sensual’ service as it is still not considered ‘respectable’ by the majority of society. The ‘therapeutic’ aspect has still not been truly understood or accepted and unfortunately, naturally there will always be one set of ideas ascribed to women and a very different set for men.

Here at Tantric Massage in London, we offer sessions for both men and women. We believe that the male and female bodies are not that different when it comes to receiving a tantric massage—it is the same process (minus a few technical anatomical details)!

Nowadays when our women clients approach us for tantric ‘tuition’, one of the first things we stress is the importance of getting to know our own body. Betty Dodson, from the US, organises masturbation groups where women get into a circle and are given mirrors so that they can practice masturbation while looking at the own vaginas. Speak of being well acquainted!

Celeste, our masseuse who specialises in tantric tuition is currently in the midst of completing a course in Sexological Bodywork. One of the points she stresses is that better solo sex leads to better partner sex. In other words, a woman needs to know what really turns her on, so that she can communicate that to her partner. Women’s bodies are often a mystery to men and we can’t expect men to know what to do if we don’t know ourselves. We need to be able to communicate verbally and physically with our partner.

People often get into their own sexual ruts through masturbation patterns they have developed over the years, using the same techniques and fantasies. This can lead to seeking more inspiration through sex toys, porn, etc. A tantric massage can allow a man or woman to have more of a total body experience, rather than a quick localised, fleeting feeling. We also teach deep breathing techniques, which help to release physical blocks in the body, and thus enable energy and sensation to spread throughout the entire body.

The fundamentals of achieving more sensation, greater pleasure and full body orgasms come down to:

1. Presence or awareness and quality of touch
2. Experience or knowing oneself
3. Imagination and curiosity
4. Communication.
5. Breath

Celeste emphasises the importance of being curious and creative and changing positions. This also allows us to experiment with different types of touch and become more aware and mindful of the erotic sensations throughout our entire body as well as that of our partner.

We have sure come a long way from going to a doctor or midwife!

Tantric Massage London

Featured image courtesy of Tantric Massage London
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