YOGA AND SEX
Sex is perhaps the most problematic of all human activiuties. Along with eating and breathing it is a natural precultural activity that is deeply embedded in our organic makeup. So deeply is it embedded that it is not easy to recognise and express its natural place in our lives. Especially as, like eating and breathing, it can be and is profoundly effected by cultural experiences. The fact is that we have all been subject to very powerful, and destructive, cultural forces of sexual conditioning. Few us are not suffering the consequences, one way or another.

Yoga and sex are inextricable. The practice of yoga reveals the single continuum of human nature. It is not possible to separate sexual energy from anatomical, physiological, emotional, mental or spiritual energy. Yoga can be understood as a process of transforming sexual energy into spiritual energy. But this transformation does not involve the denial of sexual energy. To become truly comfortable in life, and in yoga we must enjoy a new, open, creative expressiveness of natural sexuality. The more truly at peace we are with life the less and less this creative expression resembles the compulsive, habitual patterns of sexual behaviour to which we have been historically conditioned.

Yoga is in effect internalised sex: it is a very physical, sensual practice: we spend a lot of time focussing on our bodies and how they feel. We are also encountering, focussing and rechanelling the very energies that we express in sex. Yoga also gives us a lot of vitality, energy. It also gives us stamina and sensitivity; both of which contribute to our enjoyment of sex. Some people find that their increased general energy level spills over into an increase in sexual appetite and stamina. This is a healthy and encouraging sign. It should not be regarded as unspiritual or unhealthy. Many women also find that practicing yoga can make them feel very sexy. There is no doubt that being and feeling comfortable with one’s body and oneself is very sexy, from the outside as well as the inside. For most yoga students the effect of their practice on their sexuality is positive and wholesome. As we become healthier, more alive and more self-confident, this spills over into every aspect of our lives, including sexuality. An increase in sexual appetite, sensitivity and stamina is a happy outcome of yoga practice that is in no way a hindrance.

The sex drive is a powerful, natural and necessary force of nature: it creates sexual appetite as a matter of course. It cannot be healthily denied, but must be embraced and navigated consciously. On each of the different paths of yoga the means to do this are different: the ends also. While some yogis abandon sexual activity altogether, tantrics enjoy it as the cornerstone of their practice and life. This is not a matter of right and wrong, better or worse. It is a question of conditioned disposition and possibilities, or in other words: of karma and dharma. To pursue either extreme as an idealised concept is dangerous and bound to be harmful. By becoming sensitive to the depths of one’s being the most honest and authentic expression of our sexual nature can and will be found.

In those yogas that are inherently Tantric; those that honour and utilise the body, sexual energy is embraced methodicallly, but withoit direct reference. This starts with sensitising, awakening and integrating the body. This inevitably involves awakening our sexual energy, as a result of regeneration of the sexual organs and an increase in general vitality. This has a direct relationship to what is esoterically known as ‘kundalini’. This tragically misunderstood phenomenon is nothing special or supernatural. It is the very basis of embodied individuation as an expression of the organic power of life itself: it is the organic power of life itself necessarily present in every human organism. It does not need to be conjured up or even awoken. If you are alive it is awake and functioning. For it to function freely; for your life to express its deepest potential, is another matter: one that yoga has been designed to address.

For human beings the mechanism whereby life sustains and perpetuates itself is sex. This is an irrefutable and irrevocable fact of life. The life force then is most fundamentally, and most necessarily, sexual in its expression. However it is at the same time so much very more than that. When our sexual conditioning has been unnatural and distorted, as it always is and has been within hierarchical, competetive, anti-natural societies, then the life force becomes blocked in its organic expression. This can manifest in so many ways, most of which are familiar to any psychiatrist. These can range from overwhelming sexual obsession to complete sexual shutdown. Both of which are expressions of the blocking of the life force through unhealthy sexual conditioning. This blocking must be released if the life force is to be able to flow freely and fulfill itself: which is esoterically known as ‘kundalini rising’.

Life always seeks to express and fulfil itself as fully and authentically as possible. This is no less true of the human being than a blade of grass, amoeba, tree or pack of wolves. Kundalini rising is the natural course of events: only too often prevented as a result of destructive social conditioning. Tantric (Hatha) Yoga systems can be productively seen as nothing other than profound invitations to ‘kundalini rising’. By opening and integrating body and mind life becomes able to take care of itself again and produces its deeper, more subtle inherent human capacities: capacities which become distorted, lost, denied and mythologised by those whose social and cultural conditioning masks them. When life begins to flow freely in the human boldy its latent, inherent capacities naturally begin to function. Most of these are nothing other than a profound sensitisiation of our natural faculties that can seem supernatural to those not enjoying them.

‘Kundalini rising’, or life’s recovery of its innate integrity, can have powerful and remarkable effects on human sexuality. However, if attempts are made to force kundalini to rise, without the body having been effectively opened and reintegated, it can create devsatating and painful effects. These can include new patterns of sexual distortion and obsessiveness to add to those embedded through the conventional forces of social conditioning. Often the powerful energy teachniques of hatha yoga (asana, bandha, pranayama) are used unconsciusly in a way that makes this happen, and the increased energy of the life force unable to circulate freely can become trapped in many different forms of neurotic and manipualtive tendencies: not only sexual.

The tantric yogas, were designed to approach this problem head on. In Tantric Sex Yoga the emphasis is on conscious sexual activity, that uses the conscious cultivation of desire between partners to awaken the physical and subtle body, generating and focussing energy that can then be used spiritually for illumination and liberation. In other tanric yogas, hatha yoga and kundalini yoga in particular, sexual energy is cultivated in a focussed, transformative way without a partner. Through sensiticity, honesty, openness,presence and generosity (yama) sexual energy is released by being made fully conscious. Then it is able to undertake its natural journey towards spiritual awakening. The technqiues of hatha yoga: asana, bandha, pranayama, mudra and meditation support this process.

Mulabandha helps to keep the fundamental life energy of sex focussed and contained, and with the help of Uddiyana Bandha, directed upwards and transformed into more subtle possibilities. Pranayama provides the tranquillity to remain unperturbed by strong sexual feelings that are bound to arise in a healthy organism. The depth and clarity of meditation provide the opportunity to recognise the source and consequences of these feelings, and to see through the ways we distort them destructively. Eventually prolonged, effective yoga practice brings about a deep calming, focussing and transformation of sexual energy. Sexual energy becomes less and less a defining, motivating force. It becomes more and more a true and honest expression of intimacy and love.

Becoming free from the deeply destructive effects of our sexual conditioning is not easy. Yet yoga practice can help us considerably in doing so. But not if it is undertaken as an extension of the manipulative moral condtioning by which we have been so deeply and devastatingly imprisoned. Sexual freedom does not mean license, and is not represented by the exhibitionist/voyeurist dynamic of contemporary media. It can only be accessed by applying the lenses of yama and niyama to our sexuality in all of its subtelties. Then perhaps we can rediscover the joy and delight that being in a body can provide through sexual intimacy: where intimacy is a sensitive, honest, open, present, generous exchange of attention, presence and love.

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