Category: Welcome to the Home of Happiness

Welcome to my website. I hope you’ll find plenty here to help you get the most out of your life. I’m the author of more than 30 books including How To Be Happier, Have Great Sex, Transform Your Life With NLP, Get Intimate With Tantric Sex, Help Yourself To Live Longer and the ebook Secrets Of The Kama Sutra.

Happiness And The End Of Something

Yesterday we drove the two hours up to Les Angles to go snowboarding again. It was hot and sunny, as it has been for days now, and the pistes were slushy and running with water and I knew it was the last time this season. Snowboarding is one of the things I live for so how do I deal with it when something wonderful like that comes to an end? How do I stay happy? I learned various techniques when I was writing How To Be Happier (Teach Yourself).

Hemingway wrote a marvellous short story called The End Of Something. I’m a great admirer of Hemingway. As a craftsman in words he never has been equalled and probably never will be. And, yes, when I’d finished reading everything of Hemingway’s that was ever published I felt sad about that, too.

What I love in Hemingway is the feeling of enjoyment that comes right off the page. No man seemed to relish life more. And he, too, loved the mountains and wrote some short stories about skiing. And yet Hemingway sometimes suffered from depression. And, of course, eventually committed suicide. At around my age.

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Goodbye CBT, Hello Dating Tips

This morning I finished my book on CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). A few clicks later it was in my editor’s office in London. Not so long ago I would have had to print it out, drive 20 km to the nearest post office in Figueres and spend 20 Euros sending it. The internet has transformed the lives of people like me.

Less sure is the impact of the internet on my income. It seems that readers are just as willing to pay for fiction but far less willing to pay for factual material like mine. There’s so much available on the internet for free. I take the view that, say, £10 is very little to pay for a book that could change your life. I hope enough people agree.

What now? I have a friend who spends about three years writing a novel. She uses the D.H. Lawrence method of writing a draft then setting it aside and writing a second version. And a third. And even a fourth. She takes holidays in between.

I don’t have that luxury at the moment. Every paragraph may be revised several times but once the book is finished it’s on to the next. No holiday. And so, this afternoon, I’ll get down to the book on dating and seduction. Thanks to all those who have already sent in suggestions. Keep them rolling in, please.

In my youth I copied from a film the idea of sandwiching blank sheets of paper between a few pound notes to make it look as if I had a thick wodge of the folding stuff. With today’s plastic money does anybody on a date still do that?

Snowboarding, Tantric Sex And CBT.

One of the great thing about being a writer is that you can take off when the mood comes over you. Yesterday it came over me and we drove the two hours up to our nearest decent ski station, Les Angles in the French Pyrénées Orientales. Actually we both now snowboard rather than ski because it’s far, far easier off-piste. And the reason I like to get off-piste is that it’s just like Tantric sex. The aim is the same. An altered state of consciousness in which a spiritual experience is possible.

Sadly, there was no real off-piste yesterday. The weather has been too warm and the snow off-piste is rotten. So after a bit I changed tacks and headed for the snowpark. Much as I like the idea of out-of-this-world experiences I’ve always been intimidated by jumping. But I had a possible solution in cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT, which I’m writing a book about. If you’re not familiar with CBT, you could say that it’s a method of altering behaviour by eradicating negative ways of thinking. The behaviour I wanted to eradicate was my practice of boarding round the side of the jump rather than going over it.

I decided I would no longer label myself as a non-jumper, no longer focus on the negative aspects of my performance, no longer magnify the scale of the challenge, no longer jump to the negative conclusion that I would make a fool of myself and no longer see myself as a failure if the jump was much less than perfect. All these kinds of thoughts are errors in CBT.

Well, I did do the jumps. There were three in a row and I did them three times. I had a couple of falls and some of the moves were less than graceful. But so what! I had a good time, I improved and I’m looking forward to my next visit.

If you’d like to know how CBT might help you, drop me an email and I’ll send you details of the book as soon as it becomes available. Meanwhile, you’ll find plenty of useful advice in my already-published Be More Confident, Transform Your Life With NLP and How To Be Happier, all of which are in the Teach Yourself series.

Writing About Sex

It’s a tough job writing about sex. I could have been watching TV like other people but yesterday evening I devoted myself to the one-hour yoni massage. And there was no overtime pay. But, as they say, somebody has to do it. For those of you not yet into Tantric sex the yoni is the vulva/vagina.

  • 1st stage. According to my friend P who recommended it (see my Writer’s Life entry for March 19th) you begin with a special kind of whole body massage for 15 minutes. Essentially you ‘brush energy’ with your fingertips firstly towards the base of your partner’s spine and then towards the pubic mound.
  • 2nd stage. Next, for 2 minutes, comes the special moment when, seated beside her, you place your left hand over her yoni and your right over her heart and circulate the energy from yoni to heart to yoni.
  • 3rd stage. Conventional thigh massage for 5 minutes.
  • 4th stage. Massage the outer and inner lips for 10 minutes.
  • 5th stage. Massage and tease the clitoris for 15 minutes.
  • 6th stage. Massage the G-spot for 5 minutes.
  • 7th stage. Massage the G-spot and the clitoris together for 5 minutes.

The verdict? Time seems to pass very quickly for both of you. Especially if you’ve got some good music going. (And don’t forget the incense and the candles). In fact, it’s a very beautiful experience, more Taoist than Tantric but nevertheless resembling the Tantric nyasa as described in Get Intimate With Tantric Sex. (And it’s infinitely more enjoyable than TV.)

According to P, the one-hour yoni massage isn’t foreplay. It’s something for itself and when it’s over it’s over. But how many people will be able to resist carrying on? Try it and see.

Dating Advice Wanted

I’m currently writing two books at the same time. One is on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and the other is all about dating. Now it’s quite a while since I was dating. I’ve got all the scientific literature about, for example,  how many times a woman has to smile at a man before he’ll pluck up the courage to chat. (It’s nine, since you ask.) But I’m not up to speed with the latest dating conventions. So I’d appreciate any advice. Just click on Contact and email me. I’ll publish the best ideas on the website.

Cherie, Tony And Yoni Massages

Last week I wrote about the way so many people feel guilty about sex. That certainly doesn’t apply to Cherie and Tony Blair. But the fact that their ‘revelations’ have left so many people aghast just underlines how repressed many people are. For those who haven’t caught up with the interview Mrs Blair gave to the Evening Standard’s ES magazine, she said the ex Prime Minister ‘still excites me, in all possible ways’. The nation, apparently, was horrified.

Well, why not talk about sex? If you’ve just discovered something really good, why not pass it on?

P, a friend of mine, did just that by telling me about one-hour yoni massages. My partner and I are pretty used to lengthy sex sessions, including the special kind of Tantric foreplay known as nyasa. But one hour just on yoni massage did sound rather a lot. I’ll be letting you know how we got on in another post. But meanwhile I’d recommend the Blairs to include yoni massage in their repertoire, if they haven’t already.

 

Sex Lessons In Chicago

The story about the human sexuality class at Northwestern University, Chicago, is just the latest to underline how frightened and guilty so many people are when it comes to sex. For those who missed it, it appears that on the 21st February Professor John Michael Bailey allowed a couple to demonstrate the use of a vibrator in front of about 100 students. The couple, named as Jim Marcus and his fiancée Faith Kroll, volunteered, and the students had been warned to leave if they objected. So it’s difficult to see why so many parents and commentators complained so strongly. The professor himself said he would give an F grade to the arguments put forward by his critics. Quite right.

The first school lesson I received in sex involved frogs. I spent the next few months under the impression that human sex was accomplished on Sunday nights, with the man clinging to his partner’s back while she crawled around the bath.

Several columnists recently have anguished over what to say to children who accidentally come across sex scenes on the internet. Well, why not explain that the people are…having sex? Is that so terrible?  ‘They’re having sex, which is a lovely and beautiful thing that you’ll be able to do when you’re older.’

The secrecy and embarrassment causes children to think that there must be something wrong with sex. They grow up feeling guilty and inhibited and, in turn, pass on their anxieties to their children. The cycle is endless and it causes a lot of misery.

Incidentally, Faith said that she was an exhibitionist and was turned on by having an audience watch her naked with the vibrator. Try using this as a fantasy next time you have sex and see what happens.

Sex Every Day

Sex was pretty soon the topic of conversation when we had a few friends around for dinner last night. I’ve got quite skilful at cajoling people into revealing what they do and what they don’t do. Occasionally someone will say, ‘People who talk about it don’t do it.’ But, of course, that’s not true. Do you know people who talk about skiing if they don’t go skiing?

‘I don’t understand the point of Tantric sex,’ said J, who knew I’d written a book on the subject. ‘It would be like coming for dinner and not eating anything.’ He gestured at the food my partner had prepared.

It’s a common misconception that Tantra is all about non-ejaculatory sex, but I let that pass. J is over 80 so I pointed out to him that by not ejaculating he’d be able to have sex for longer and more frequently. At this G, who is pretty young, interposed that he neither wished to have longer sex nor more frequent sex, and his even younger partner nodded in agreement.

I’m always astonished how infrequently most couples have sex and how little time they spend over it.

‘You could have sex every day,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t that be great?’

‘That would just be boring,’ said H.

H had already told me that he’s had sex with over 300 women so his opinion counts for something. But he’s wrong on this.’You eat three times a day and don’t say that’s boring,’ I pointed out. ‘If you don’t ejaculate you can turn a snack into a banquet that goes on for an hour, two hours, three hours…’

‘Ah! Terrible!’ said E, who is G’s partner. ‘I’d just get sore.’

‘Could someone just pass me the olive oil?’ I asked, and trickled some onto my pasta. ‘That,’ I said, ‘is the secret. Plenty of lubrication.’