The Kama Sutra Is Not Tantric Sex

Now that I’ve published Secrets Of The Kama Sutra as an ebook I’ve had a few emails from people confused about the Kama Sutra and Tantric Sex. Even some professional sex writers are confused. So let’s be clear. The Kama Sutra is not about Tantric Sex.

Here’s the difference:

  • ·         In the Kama Sutra, sex is for pleasure.
  • ·         In Tantra, sex is for spiritual experience.

This is a big difference. So why the confusion? A little of the history of Tantric sex will make everything clearer. Back in the early days, some Tantrikas (it’s important to stress ‘some’) used the energy generated in sexualised group rituals to gain siddhis (magical powers) and enlightenment. Well, that’s what they hoped. Every woman who took part became a goddess for the duration of the ceremony and every man became a god. So it wasn’t important who you had sex with. It was the spiritual experience that was important.

Continue reading

Sex For Beginners

I’ve decided to add a ‘Sex For Beginners‘ section to my website because after talking to a group of teenagers recently I was surprised by many of their questions. They just weren’t the kinds of things I was expecting, nor the kinds of things I would have written about. So I’d like you ‘beginners’ to send me your questions and I’ll answer as many as I can in my blogs. That way, I’ll be writing about the things you want to know, rather than the things I think you ought to know.

One of the things we discussed was the ‘purity ring‘. There were two points I made:

  • ·         A ‘purity ring’ should not be instead of sex education, as many parents seem to wish. The evidence is that many young women do eventually have sex despite their ‘purity rings’ and that a proportion of them do become pregnant or contract STDs. So it should be ‘purity ring’ and sex education. In any event, young women who defer sex until after marriage still need sex education.
  • ·         My other point is that I’m against the name ‘purity ring’. Calling it the ‘purity ring’ suggests that to refrain from sex is ‘pure’ and that to have sex is ‘impure’. That’s very wrong. It can take years to overcome the inhibitions caused by that kind of teaching and some people never ever manage it. Contrast that sort of thinking with Tantra, which teaches that, far from being in opposition to spirituality, sex can be a path to enlightenment. If you’d like to know more about Tantric Sex, click on the button.

So why not just call it the ‘deferment ring’ or the ‘not until married’ ring? Other suggestions, please.

Sex Tips Please, Lachlan, Bob, Emma Et Al

Sex Tips Please, Lachlan, Bob, Emma Et Al

The artist Tracey Emin has told me that her favourite sex position is ‘face in pillow, bum in air’.  Well, she didn’t actually tell me personally. She told a journalist writing for the Sunday Times and the journalist told me. Well, the journalist didn’t actually tell me personally. She wrote it. But, anyway, it all comes down to the same thing. I know and you now know that Tracey Emin likes doggy or, as I call it in my book Have Great Sex, ‘cuddly bears‘. (Some women object to the idea of having sex like a dog, which is why I renamed it and added a few refinements.)

Why should that be so unusual? After all, most adults have sex. And yet it is unusual. No one wants to say anything in case they’re thought weird. Basically, most people are very inhibited when it comes to sex.

The point of all this is that I’m just not getting enough feedback to my blogs. I know you’re out there Lachlan. You too, Bob. And Emma and Barbara and Erica. And all the rest of you. At the very least, you could just click on ‘Comment’ and say you think I’m writing rubbish. But it would be even better if you did a ‘Tracey Emin’. Say what’s your favourite sex position and I’ll compile a league table. (For the purposes of the exercise I’m considering a position to be the combined effort, rather than the individual posture of one or other of you.)

Or just share a sex tip with us. Recently I gave a lift to two women. To pass the time they asked what I do for a living and I explained that I write about sex. I could also have said I write about happiness but I enjoy the reaction when I say ‘sex’. Neither woman was at all inhibited. One of them then told me that when she was really excited she enjoyed having an ice cube slipped into her vagina. She said it facilitated an incredible orgasm.

Over to you.

Happiness Is The European Union

Living here in Spain I’m part of the European dream which, sadly, seems in danger of falling apart. Almost everyone sees the European Union in economic terms. They only ask: Does it make me richer or does it make me poorer? Personally, I don’t give a damn for the economics. I care about being happy and the European Union makes me happy.

I was brought up in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England. If I had to stay there I’d be very unhappy. But because of the European Union I can live just about anywhere I choose from the Arctic to the Mediterranean and from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. I can snowboard in the Alps and I can swim in the Aegean. Right now I’m living in Spain, with the Med half an hour away and the winter resorts of the Pyrenees two hours away. Maybe next year I’ll live in France. Who knows? I have the right. It’s the most fantastic thing.

As far as I’m concerned, the right to choose where you live is fundamental. If you don’t have that then you don’t have the right to choose your own lifestyle. And if you can’t choose your lifestyle you can’t be yourself and you can’t be happy.

Don’t let the dream die.

Gangs – My Life As A Gang Member

I confess that as a youth I was a member of a gang. My only excuse is that I was forced into it. I was made to wear a uniform and told to consider myself superior to members of other gangs. My gang was called Westcliff High School. The other big firm was Southend High School. When we met there was trouble.

Within my gang there was also a subculture. I was told I was in the Northside group. There were also Southside, Eastside and Westside groups. I was told that whenever we squared up – in rugby, cricket or whatever it might be – I was to do my best to pulverize the other group, even if I had friends in that group. And I had to blindly follow the instructions of the Northside leader, whether I agreed with them or not

Continue reading

Can You Remember The Womb?

I’ve just delivered the manuscript of my latest book, Be Your Own Personality Coach. Well, that’s an old-fashioned way of putting it. I just clicked here in Spain and a few minutes later my editor in London was reading it. The internet has certainly changed the writer’s life.

It’s been a fascinating book to research and write but also a tremendous struggle because I’ve been working inside day after day, including weekends, while everyone else has been on the beach. What I need is a truly rugged sandproof and waterproof laptop with a screen that can be read in bright sunlight. Until that comes I’m stuck indoors. So I celebrated immediately by going for a swim and that set me thinking once again about the possible connection between the pleasure of swimming naked and unconscious memories of the womb.

Having waded through quite a lot of research I’m convinced the first nine months before birth must make a significant contribution to personality differences, especially as it’s proven that foetuses have a memory of sorts at 22 weeks. Wombs aren’t all the same nor are births. I’d love to hear from anybody who thinks they can remember life in the womb, or who has been through some sort of rebirthing experience. Click on the Comments button or send me an email.

Prevent Erectile Dysfunction

While I was working hard on Be Your Own Personality Coach, various research papers were piling up in my ‘in tray’. I’ve just been reading one which makes a link between gum disease and erectile dysfunction.

The research, by Pradeep, Sharma and Arjun and published in the Journal of Periodontology, found that four out of five men with severe erectile dysfunction had gum disease, while two out of five men with mild erectile dysfunction did.

I don’t see these findings on their own as conclusive but they certainly fit in with what we know about bacteria from the mouth getting into the bloodstream.

I would make one criticism. This kind of research almost always focuses on men, ignoring the fact that women, too, have erections. Obviously, the erection of the labia and the visible part of the clitoral system isn’t as spectacular as the erection of a penis. But women can have a tremendous erection internally. The female equivalent to the penis is the internal clitoral system which engorges with blood along the vagina, increasing sensitivity and excitement for the woman, and increasing sensation for men.

So the message is, if you want to have a good time in bed, both of you should get busy with the electric tooth brush.

Kama Sutra Ebook Online Now

My ebook Secrets Of The Kama Sutra is now available online. To buy a copy all you have to do is click on the banner at the top of the page. For a trivial sum of money you could be enjoying some really exotic sex this very night. What’s different about this book compared with all the other books about the Kama Sutra? The fact is, most books about the Kama Sutra just aren’t accurate. Mine is. For example, you’ll find plenty of ‘Kama Sutra’ books describing postures known as the ‘pair of tongs’ and the ‘mare’s position’. But those aren’t positions at all but techniques a woman can use to increase excitement. My book explains those secrets and many others. The Kama Sutra is the oldest sex manual in the world to have survived in its entirety. If you want to know the truth about it, click on the banner.

Were Monique Roffey’s Tantric Workshops Really Tantra?

I’ve been reading reviews of With The Kisses Of His Mouth, novelist Monique Roffey’s account of her sexual adventures in the small ads, French nudist resorts, English sex clubs and…‘tantric workshops’. Good luck to her. But I put ‘tantric workshops’ in quotes because they don’t seem to have had very much to do with Tantra.

I do get a bit irritated when the Tantric tag is attached to things that really aren’t Tantric at all, whether by journalists or by those running courses. I don’t doubt that the workshops were invaluable and professional but why call them Tantra if they’re not?

Because Tantra was not founded by any single person and has never had any sort of ruling body to define its beliefs, so its teachings have varied from century to century, place to place, and guru to guru. But there are certain essentials and if you really want to practice ‘Tantric sex’ it’s important to understand what they are.

Continue reading

Sex Is Better Than Alcohol

So the Royal College of Psychiatrists has said that the over 65’s should limit themselves to 1.5 units of alcohol a day, and on the Today programme Emma Soames, Editor-at-Large for Saga Magazine, became almost apoplectic. Eating and drinking were the only pleasures some elderly people had left, she fumed.

I have to take issue with Emma on this. If you let food and alcohol become your only enjoyments then it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You won’t be capable of doing anything else.

My friend J is 85 and still sailing, hiking, painting, writing and bonking. He remains muscular and not at all fat. If you’ve got age-related health problems eating and drinking too much can only make things worse. A paunch on a man is the enemy of sex. It causes excess production of the aromatase enzyme which converts testosterone (the ‘male hormone’) to oestrogen (the ‘female hormone’). Alcohol is high in calories, diminishes sexual response and, following years of abuse, can lead to erectile dysfunction in both men and women.

Make sex your number one pleasure. Alcohol hardly compares.

Skinny Dipping Makes You Happy

I’ve just done something that has made me very, very happy. And I want to share it with you. I went swimming. Avid readers of my blogs will know I’ve been having a go at surfing for a month or so. But for that I’ve been dressed in a wetsuit. What made swimming so special on this occasion was that I went into the water wearing… nothing. And my partner wore the same.

Kinky? Just imagine this for a moment. A warm, sunny day and you’re cycling along a track beside a beautiful lake. You come to a spot where there’s a tiny beach. And there’s no one there. In fact, there’s no one to be seen anywhere. What do you do?

Continue reading