Body Orgasmic: 7 Ways to Great Sex

Shasta Townsend

Yoga practice helps us feel better in body, mind and spirit but what if it also offered access to a deep, blissful, connected state through sex?

There are millions of women practicing yoga around the globe. We stretch, sweat and strengthen ourselves so we may be more radiant, powerful and beautiful on and off the yoga mat. Women have embraced Yoga as an empowerment tool (and I salute our male yogis too) but there is one final area yet to be embraced—our sexuality and our power as sexual beings.

Yoga may have changed your life in a myriad of ways but has it changed your sex life? The time is ripe to extend our practice from body beautiful to body orgasmic—great yoga on the mat leads to great joy on the mattress.

This article is not intended to be a dissertation on the power of sexuality but rather a joyful offering of how your yoga practice can help you experience ananda (bliss) through sex.

7. Know me, know my body.

Yoga increases your awareness of your body. You begin to know your body in new and wonderful ways which means you can know what is nourishing, strengthening and affirming for your body on the mat and on the mattress.

I remember a friend in university telling me she had no sense of where her body was most of the time and during sex she felt like a disconnected head.  Needless to say her level of body connection and therefore pleasure was non-existent. A relationship with your body is one of the most important steps to great sex.

The next time you are in Triangle Pose, ask yourself where your body really is in space. Notice exactly what feels good and what feels uncomfortable. Begin to know your body deeply so it may tell you what you truly need to feel fabulous.

6. The gateway drug.

Which brings us to a deep truth—great yoga and great sex is not just about technique but about a deep connection to presence. Presence can be described as that radiant life force or Divine power within us.

Remember a time you felt so alive in your practice; your body was a gateway to calm, beauty, sensuality and the Divinity within you. Your body is your tool for awakening. Embrace it. I guarantee this gateway will be one of the most euphoric drugs available to you—your own body.

5. Slow down baby.

Speaking of presence, yoga contributes to great sex because it teaches us to slow down. When we are rushing through our life, our practice and foreplay all with a sense of urgency to get it done we miss the deeper radiance within us as well an opportunity to make a deep connection with our self and our partner.

The average lov making session is less than seven minutes. I take longer to drink a cup of coffee!

What’s the rush? Perhaps it’s our addiction to “busy.” Remember you created your to-do list so you can decide what’s on it. Would you rather be busy or “get busy” with your lover? Perhaps joy, celebration and connection could be at the top of your list as you slow down and embrace joy.

4. Getting my sexy back.

Within a year of starting yoga I went from a size 14 to a size 6 and felt sexier than ever before. I am not suggesting in anyway that body size should indicate how women feel about themselves. I know size 20+ women who are some of the sexiest women on the planet. Self-deprivation, eating disorders and feeling worthless because we aren’t toothpicks is not what it’s about.

Skinny does not equate to sexy. However, all women know that when you don’t feel attractive you don’t feel turned on. Yoga helps balance our weight, our hormones and the way we feel about ourselves.

Now at a happy size eight I am not the skinniest woman in the room, nor do I need to be. I embrace my curves and feel confident in my skin which allows me to be confident and embracing in the bedroom as well.

3. Shameless.

Although we have come a long way baby we still carry a lot of shame about our bodies and sexuality. I think of myself as a free, alive and radiant woman but still remember a university party and the guy who called me a “slut” because I would not sleep with him, but had slept with his friend. I know this is a clear example of jerk-dom combined with a ridiculous premise but I also still feel the remnants of the shame of this experience.

Liking sex and wanting it for myself and not as a servant to men’s desires made me a “slut” in his eyes and made me question myself.

Women who are overt sexual beings in our society are often seen as “whores” so we lock our sexuality away to fit the good girl or virgin archetype. This compartmentalizing is not only extremely damaging as we deny ourselves, but also why we struggle as a culture for holism on our planet today.

Yoga is a tool that reminds us that all truly is one. We are the radiant sexual Goddess and the innocent girl. We do not need to sacrifice any part of our self or feel shameful as all is beautiful in the eyes of the Divine.

As I freed up my shame about my robust sexuality I felt a new confidence grow in myself. This allowed me to feel more fearless and therefore less protective and defensive, which in turn opened up a new depth of intimacy and joy in my relationship with my husband, which meant even better sex.

2. Saying yes to joy.

In ancient Yoga philosophy, kama, defined as pleasure, joy and desire was a high principle. It was one of the four highest goals of life along with service. As humanity embraced a punishing God and viewed life as suffering and the body as dirty, we moved away from the philosophy of life as a gift and saw detachment, self-denial and suffering as holy.

Tantric teachings remind us that we are here to experience joy in this life and in this body. Even current neuroscience confirms that the human brain is wired for connection, freedom and celebration. Your right hemisphere is all about the party—joy is your natural state! Yoga helps us experience and remember our joy.

Remember the euphoria you experienced after a great Yoga class? You were glowing with possibility and all was beautiful in the world. Your heart was open and you could not stop smiling. Stepping into our joy is one of the most powerful tools of healing available on this planet today.

Sex can also be a great source of joy if we embrace it as such. Part of this is letting go of our shame, fear and denial but also to see ourselves, our bodies and our union with another as a source of what we are here to experience—joy! So next time you say yes to sex, think of it as a way to say yes to kama.

1. I bow to you gorgeous one.

Yoga reminds us to honor each other. When we bow and offer a Namaste we are literally bowing to the Divine in each other. Our sexual union can also be a way of honoring the Divine in our selves and our partner. How do you honor your partner? How do you think about your lover? Do you seek the Divine within them?

I have been married for nearly 10 years and I still have amazing sex and yes, with my husband. Not only am I still in love with my husband, I am also extremely attracted to him. Why did this attraction last? Well, I look for things to appreciate, to love and to honor. I purposefully choose to get turned on about him rather than to think about the things that annoy me. Moreover I honor the Divine in him and seek to affirm it in and out of the bedroom. I see him as the Divine in gorgeous form.

In Yoga philosophy our Ishta Devata is the Divine in beloved form. My husband is a powerful living breathing emanation of the Divine to me as I am to him. Who would not want to have sex with a god?

It’s time for us to embrace our sacred sexual current and free ourselves to experience ananda (bliss) on our mat and on our mattress.

Sex, Immortality and the Future of Women

Sex, Immortality, and the Future of Women

An interview with Barbara Marx Hubbard
by Jessica Roemischer

Barbara Marx Hubbard
Bio ; resources

Is sex evolving? Barbara Marx Hubbard, the grand dame of the “conscious evolution” movement, emphatically states, “Yes!” As an author, a futurist, and the president of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, Hubbard has been at the forefront of an emerging worldview positing that humans are at the threshold of a new phase in the evolutionary process. And this, as she reveals here, has great implications for our favorite pastime.

A wonderfully spry and energetic seventy-five-year-old, Hubbard freely admits to “not being that sexually oriented” and says that sex had never been primary in her relationship with her eighty-one-year-old partner, Sidney. While that would, under most circumstances, consign the sexual dimension of a marriage to the back burner, in Barbara's case, she has characteristically used it as an opportunity to discover a deeper evolutionary significance and possibility. “Wanting to be responsive to Sidney,” she says, “I began to ask myself, 'What is my heart's true desire? If recreational sex is not what motivates me, what would motivate me at the deepest part of my being?'” That question led Hubbard and her partner into a dynamic exploration of the evolutionary significance of sex. And as she explains in the following interview, when two people come together with the conscious intention to evolve, sex becomes a “regenerative” experience that can ignite passion—the passion to become a new expression of man and woman, co-creative partners with the evolutionary process itself.

What Is Enlightenment: Barbara, you have recently been speaking about a new form of sexuality called “co-creational” or “regenerative” sex. Could you begin by describing how co-creational sex is different from procreational and recreational sex?

Barbara Marx Hubbard: In procreative sex, there's a higher purpose, which is to create life. The fact that the woman's body is capable of receiving a fertilized egg and creating another being is mysterious, miraculous, and sacred. That is its most profound purpose, the extraordinary miracle of the biological imperative. So there is a sacred meaning to sexuality, which is to reproduce the entities that are engaging in sex, no matter what those two entities think they're doing! Recreational sex, on the other hand, is for intimacy and pleasure. It's enhancing in many ways, but it doesn't have the higher sacred purpose of procreational sex.

In evolutionary sexuality, or what I call “co-creational sex,” rather than reproducing the couple or engaging in intimacy and sexual pleasure for recreation, the sacredness of the intimacy is compelled by a vision of the couple evolving through their union. In that sense, evolutionary sexuality is comparable in its sacredness to procreational sex. While nature's purpose is to reproduce the species through procreation, in co-creational sex, we are using the sexual impulse to evolve the species for the highest purpose.

WIE: How did you begin to discern a higher evolutionary purpose for sex beyond that of reproduction?

Marx Hubbard: I began to observe a fundamental inequality between men and women in their later years and sought its significance. As we live longer and longer lives, more and more women are entering menopause. They are no longer producing eggs, and yet men continue to produce sperm until they die. So I began to ask myself, “Is there a higher purpose for the sperm, since the man continues to produce so many of them? And if he loves a postmenopausal woman and she has no eggs, is it possible, through intentionality, to unlock a higher purpose within the coding of the sperm? What if the woman desires, above all else, not a new baby, but a new body and a new being—sensitive to spirit, capable of self-healing, self-generating, and self-evolving?”

Currently, males inseminate women to conceive babies, and as men get older, they have recreational sex. But what if the woman's desire brings forth from the male sperm its true fulfillment and noble purpose? What if the male inseminates the woman with the evolving potential inherent in the sperm, triggered by the woman's desire to give birth to her self? What if he is consciously inseminating and co-creating with the woman the new being who is required for the evolution of life on earth? The woman has the biological capacity for self-reproduction through sexuality, and she may also have the capacity for self-evolution through sexuality. Now this exploration is occurring only in the realm of intention and imagination—in the imaginal realm. But men find it very empowering when the woman says, “I feel that the sperm has a higher purpose.” It's very arousing to the man, that's for sure! It really would be shocking if I became the Dr. Ruth of “evolutionary sexuality.”

WIE: If there was demonstrable proof of this, something unprecedented would happen in the elder generation in this country, and in the world. It would definitely start a revolution!

Marx Hubbard: It would! Sexuality is not just a small aspect of life; it is an expression of the life force of evolution. And that life force in the postmenopausal couple has a higher purpose that hasn't been fully experienced yet. The intention, the love, and the intimacy this idea generates in my partner and me is itself vitalizing—even if it hasn't actually changed my DNA. I've projected this forward into the future, imagining that if we really are going to be able to extend our life span to a radical degree, then sexuality would have to assume a higher purpose beyond recreation in order for it to take on the sacred dimension of procreational sex and express the dynamism inherent in the life pulse. We are a self-evolving species now, and consciousness evolution is not only about our psyches and our social action but also about our own bodies. To raise sexuality to the possibility of regeneration and self-evolution is a wonderful exploration.

WIE: You have coined the term “regenopause” to represent this new perspective on the postmenopausal years.

Marx Hubbard: Yes. When I was fifty, I was diagnosed with a form of chronic cancer, and I began to search for the deeper plan of my being. I heard an inner voice that asked, “Would you like to regenerate or would you like to die?” I had no idea I had such a choice! And this inner voice said, “Cancer is the body's panicked effort to grow without a plan; regeneration occurs when you say yes to the deeper plan of your being.” I realized that this deeper plan involved tuning in to the evolutionary process and becoming an embodiment of that. When a woman in her menopausal years is overcome by a profound impulse to co-create and to self-evolve, this signals a next phase in the life cycle of the feminine. I asked for a word that would describe what I was going through in my postmenopausal years—the internal liberation, as well as the desire for co-creation—and the word just flashed: regenopause.

Regenopause happens when the woman gets so turned on to her creativity and her life purpose that it starts to activate her at the cellular level. When an increased spiritual desire to participate in evolution crosses over into the aging process, it sends a signal that says, “We're not finished, folks. We're not ready to go yet. It would be a waste of evolutionary time to die now because look what it took to get us here!”

Our species is being asked to self-evolve, or we will devolve and die. And I think that the regenopausal woman who is activated by this life purpose is, perhaps, the missing link in the story. So many women are entering menopause, so many women are turned on, and our culture is finally open enough to call us forth without trying to destroy us. It's the first time in modern history that we can even begin to see the potential of the “feminine co-creator.” We haven't seen this full-scale woman until now because, in our culture, women haven't been allowed to pursue this except in a very narrow way. So regenopause transforms menopause into a new and open-ended life cycle, which doesn't have an existing lid, or an existing label, or a social image of itself.

WIE: You seem to be observing that women in their later years are awakening to an evolutionary or developmental context for their lives—that they are thinking about what it would mean to evolve and to be free in ways they hadn't even begun to consider when they were younger.

Marx Hubbard: That is exactly right, and I was one of those women. I got married in 1951 at the age of twenty-one, and I was of the generation that Betty Friedan wrote about in The Feminine Mystique. Through interviewing hundreds and hundreds of women, she discovered that we had no self-image after the age of twenty-one, and that that was accompanied by a kind of malaise and sadness. Then in the sixties, we burst out with the women's movement. But I think that there is a third phase to the women's movement in the third millennium, because over the last fifty years, the evolutionary perspective has taken hold. This new phase is about the drive to self-evolve and self-express, which is different from wanting equal rights in the masculine world. It's deeper, and it's motivated by a passionate love of our potential.

WIE: This next step is the most exciting aspect of what you're talking about because it would mean transcending many of the premodern, modern, and postmodern notions of what it means to be a man and a woman. It seems that you're pointing to a natural, unpremeditated, and spontaneous expression of a liberated masculinity and a liberated femininity.

Marx Hubbard: This is the new Adam and the new Eve—whole being with whole being at the Tree of Life. In the story of Genesis, Eve was not only going for the Tree of Knowledge, she was heading for the Tree of Life, which is the tree of the gods. And it seems to me that the human species is heading for the Tree of Life. We have the power to destroy worlds and build worlds, to change our own bodies, and perhaps, eventually, to have ever-evolving life. Now, when the woman has become whole, so that her own masculine and feminine are joined, and the man too has become whole, they can come together beyond domination and submission in such a way that will bring forth the greater potential of each. So we see the couple as a very powerful arena of self-evolution. And when you add sexuality—from procreation to recreation to regeneration—you begin to see the New Man and the New Woman gaining the wisdom to guide the new powers of humanity forward.