Slow Sex
It’s in the How, Not the What
Sexual Style #2 of 6 from Your Erotic Menu
By: Corinne Farago
We’re learning a bit more about Slow Sex/Tantra.
Although I speak about how sexual styles may differ from each other, I don’t view them in any kind of hierarchy. I think all 6 sexual styles (sensual, slow sex, romance, passion, fetish and kink) are alive in every one of us. We’re just more familiar with some and less familiar with others. But combined, they offer a full-spectrum erotic experience that can feed us on multiple levels, sometimes even within one sexual occasion.
We’re all multi-dimensional lovers, so let’s look at the part of us that can appreciate slowing down and adopting the wisdom of Slow Sex.
Many couples have a somewhat narrow perspective of what sex looks like.
Let’s face it, mainstream porn, and media in general has indoctrinated our culture into fast sex. It makes for a more engaging, high-octane entertainment.
How many images and scenes have we seen over our lifetime of passion being expressed by clothes getting ripped off at the speed of lust? Bodies are grabbed and positioned for penetration like it’s a race to the finish. Partners barrel down the sexual freeway solely focused on the personal gratification of their orgasmic destination.
Engage in any kind of sex the same way a few hundred times and it’s no wonder sex eventually becomes a somewhat mechanical, one-dimensional, intercourse focused act.
Without some variety, after a year or two, couples may end up feeling uninspired and somewhat obliged to engage in sex that has lost its appeal.
Humans have a deep longing for union
An innate need for peak experiences of bliss, merging and ecstasy.
As humans with bodies, sex is the place we go for that feeling of union. Union is the coming together of two people with the shared desire to expand the feeling of being loved and connected. In Slow Sex we use body positions, our breath, our intention and our 5 senses to direct our sexual energy and heighten our experience of union.
Finding heart-centered union with our sexual partner is what makes Slow Sex so valuable.
You can call it Slow Sex or Sacred Sex or Tantra, depending on your penchant for Eastern terminology and belief systems, but it’s perfectly fine to secularize this sexual style without losing the ancient wisdom that comes with it.
Traditional Tantric sexual practices, which were born in the East, embrace the union of two people as a means to a sacred end. The end, ultimately being union with the Divine or Enlightenment. It views sex and (every experience for that matter) as a representation of the Divine. The traditional palm-to-palm greeting, Namaste, means ‘the Divine in me honors the Divine in you’.
Combine that beautiful sentiment with the intentional control and direction of sexual energy in the body for the purpose of transcendence, and you’ve got Traditional Tantra or Sacred Sex, a path to Divine Enlightenment incorporating (rather than shunning) the physical body.
Slow Sex/Tantra is easier said than done.
It can be challenging for some couples to embrace Slow Sex. As I said, I believe we’re all a product of our sexual upbringing and the style of sex we’re exposed to through media and entertainment, but I have an additional theory on why resistance to slowing down can arise.
Slow Sex is a confrontation with our willingness to become intimate.
It’s a confrontation with ourselves.
If you engage in Slow Sex you can’t avoid intimacy. Slow Sex is an intimacy exercise in many respects.
You’re tuning into your partner, tuning into your heart, tuning into your body. You’re looking into each other’s eyes, you’re breathing together, you’re opening your heart to your partner.
Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Not to some people. For some, Slow Sex is outside of their intimacy comfort zone. I know this based on the couples I’ve seen in my coaching practice.
If you’re used to sex as more of a physical/conceptual/psychological activity, then intimacy, and the vulnerability it brings with it during sex, may feel self-conscious, or too exposed.
Capacity for intimacy isn’t assigned to any particular gender
It’s fair to say that in our gender biased society, intimacy is something more readily offered to little girls, than little boys.
Those same little boys grow up to be men who crave this kind of connection as a missing piece to their human development. Interestingly over the years, I’ve seen more men than women seek out Tantra training in order to learn the intimacy skills it offers.
Likewise, the women I speak to will often complain about missing the depth of intimacy they long for in their relationship. Sex has become mechanical and often disconnected, so introducing Slow Sex into their lovemaking helps guide them back to the heart-centered connection that’s missing for them.
The Missing Link
Slow Sex, and the awareness it brings, is the missing link in many couples’ sexual experience.
I want to acknowledge you if you’re someone who tenses at the thought of eye gazing, and offer some reasons why you might want to incorporate slow sex skills into your erotic encounters with your partner:
- The intimacy found in Slow Sex creates the bonding hormone Dopamine, which you take with you outside of the bedroom.
- It takes the emphasis off of performance and places it on connection.
- By taking the focus off orgasm, it makes room for deeper and more relaxed experiences of touch and sensation.
- It allows for erections to come and go during sex, rather than holding the expectation for erections to be the star of the show.
- It acknowledges that arousal is a state you guide each other into during sex, rather than a prerequisite for having sex.
- It allows for the time it naturally takes for a woman’s body to open and be ready for penetration.
- By using our breath to direct energy away from our genitals, it spreads and intensifies our orgasms when they do happen.
- It teaches us that love is an energy we can direct throughout our entire body.
- It views our bodies as temples, where we honor lovemaking as a sacred event.
- Lastly, Slow Sex is a healing balm for sexual trauma. It repurposes sex as a loving, nurturing act rather than a nonconsensual violation.
Bringing consciousness into our sex
It’s not so much about what we’re doing, but how we’re doing it.
Slowing anything down, heightens awareness.
The fundamental objective of Slow Sex is presence and awareness.
Here are some Slow Sex practices that I teach couples.
- Breathwork to move sexual energy
- Eye gazing
- Extended hugging
- Full body and multiple orgasms
- Lovemaking positions (Kama Sutra)
- Soft entry during intercourse
- Taoist exercises for orgasm control
I love hearing from you!
Drop me a line and I’ll send you a very simple example of a Tantric exercise you can do with your partner.
Just write to corinne@corinnefarago.com. Type “Slow Sex Exercise” into the subject line.
Allow our Genitals to Lead the Way
Unlike some Tantric traditions, I don’t prescribe to the idea that orgasm should be bypassed, but I do recommend that we reexamine our attachment to orgasm as the goal for every lovemaking session.
When we stop striving for orgasm (to happen or not happen) we reduce performance anxiety when the conditions are right.
There is far more to sex than two people creating friction with their bodies for the purpose of getting off. Slow sex will challenge that notion, and by doing so will open up a much wider perspective of how you experience sex with your partner.
Slow sex speaks to the feminine energy in all of us (both men and women). It’s soft, it’s receptive, it invites feeling and noticing. It requires us to be present and aware during sex, and focus on our physical sensations for their own sake, rather than a means to an orgasmic end.
If you were to study the lovemaking practices of indigenous cultures all over the world, you’d find that the wisdom of slow sex is part of their sex education. For many sex-positive indigenous cultures, sex is seen as sacred, a natural act of worship to be extended and enjoyed, not as a sin to be denied, repressed and controlled. That’s modern man’s unfortunate contribution.
If Slow Sex is outside of your comfort zone then I recommend you stretch a bit and allow your experience of sex to incorporate some of these practices.
Your current discomfort should be evidence to you that you could expand your capacity for intimacy with your lover.
If you’d like to learn more about Slow Sex/Tantra and are ready to explore what sex and intimacy coaching can offer you, set up a Discovery Call with me, and let’s talk about the “how, and not the what.”