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Sexual yoga 
Ever thought of using that yoga pose as a sexual position? This weekend in London, you may be able to try it. The London Healing Arts Festival will offer a chance for the new agey practices of all over the world to teach yoga, feng shui and Tantra. There are currently 36,000 doctors and 39,000 natural health practitioners in the UK today. And even more practictioners. So the festival should be packed. And not just with old dodders-in a recent MTV survey 14- to 25-year-olds from the US and the UK ranked Tantric sex as the number one subject they'd like to study. If only the folks who design school curriculums had been listening, drop-out rates might not be so high. Don't they know that MTV has more pull than god? But the pop culture version always comes up short. Perhaps some of these aspiring Tantrikas would back off if they knew traditional Tantra didn't always involve sex and required years of discipline under a yogi master. Probably not exactly what the short attention span generation is looking for. Tantra arose in South Asia around 3000 B.C. The general term "Tantra" encompasses strains of both Hinduism and Buddhism and a wide variety of practices, cosmological views and sacred scriptures designed to baffle the non-initiate. Like most mystical traditions, Tantra defies definition. But in the contemporary West, it has become almost synonymous with "sacred sex"—a taboo in Christian culture, which regards sex as sin and separates spirit from flesh. I guess someone should have told the priests. Buddhism, unlike Christianity, acknowledges many paths to enlightenment—including the path of sensual pleasure. Not surprisingly, Tantra—or at least its contemporary namesakes, Neo-Tantrism and Tantra Lite—are alive and flourishing. The traditional Tantrik pursues enlightenment through transcendence of the ego. In "Tantric sex" the partners learn to prolong lovemaking and treat sex as a sacred act—worshipping the lover as a god or goddess. Human sex reenacts the cosmic embrace of the Hindu god Shiva and the Goddess Shakti. Tantra, also known as Kundalini yoga, awakens the Kundalini power that lies dormant, coiled like a snake at the base of the spine. High sexual arousal can move the Kundalini energy up the spine through seven energy centers or "chakras," located at the base of the spine, genitals, navel, heart, throat, between the eyebrows and the crown of the head. Each chakra represents a higher level of consciousness.
To move the Kudalini upward, men learn to delay ejaculation, since the release of semen supposedly dissipates energy. Traditional Hindu Tantra doesn't say much about women's orgasms, but contemporary Neo-Tantrism and its "pop" version "Tantra Lite," encourage both women and men to ride a wave of sexual arousal that many experience as "full-body orgasms" or "multiple orgasms." Men learn to orgasm without ejaculating; women learn to ejaculate when they come. It's like the diet soda of sex—all the flavor without the spunk. But if you're thinking one night of hot sex can jolt that Kundalini to the top of your head, think again. The Kundalini can take lifetimes to rise to the "crown chakra." Traditional Tantrikas in India trained for years with a guru and became yoga masters before they engaged in sexual rites. Those seriously interested may find a contemporary teacher at this weekend's festival. For those who don't have the time or patience to pursue enlightenment, there are weekend workshops and 90-minute tapes. And of course, we can all look forward to MTV's newest reality show rage—The Osbournes do Tantra. Tantra Lite dispenses with most of the traditional trappings—like the years of disciplined yoga under the guidance of a guru and some non-sexy-sounding names of sexual positions, like "Elephant Posture," "Tail of the Ostrich" and "The Fitting on of the Sock." (Okay, that one we understand.) Nonetheless, Tantra Lite's emphasis on long, slow lovemaking, ritual, breathing techniques and gazing into each other's eyes can ignite people's sex lives. So if you have the time and don't mind delaying your orgasm for maybe a year or so, you might have a chance at reaching nirvana. If this doesn't work for you, check out the Yoga boxing, also featured at London Healing Arts Festival.
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