I was in session with a couple recently, looking at some challenging aspects of their relationship, when one of them said: ‘I guess you have to wade through your shit to get the insights to make change…’ and I responded with: ‘You’re not wading through it, you’re composting it!’.

They loved the analogy! And it’s a good one. We’ve all got our shit – defences, traumas, fears, confusions, resentments - that has accumulated over our history. If you don’t deal with it, it ferments and turns bad. But if you do deal with it, you are composting it, turning it into fertilizer for new growth.

I like food analogies when talking about sex, and I like gardening analogies when talking about relationships, because a good relationship needs cultivating. Like a garden, it needs constant tending – pulling up the weeds, pruning here and there, moving things around, adding new plants at times, and always watering and fertilizing to keep everything blooming. Otherwise ,it withers and dies.

Too many people put huge amounts of focus into other parts of life – work, health, friends, family, hobbies – and then wonder why they don’t have a good relationship. It has become a withered garden, dying from lack of nurturance.

As I’ve written elsewhere, a good relationship is a high-maintenance relationship, it takes focus, time, attention – and you have to pull out those weeds and compost them! It’s the best fertilizer there is.

So don’t shy away from your shit, use it for insight and growth!


If you need help with the composting, book in for sessions at my LoveLife Clinic, or come to a Couples Retreat!

You can live life to the full or you can sink into dreary monotony. You can mature with vibrancy or you can grow old and tired. You can have a relationship that continues to explore and grow or you can have one of complacency and dullness. You can see your parenting role as one of keeping under control or as growth and delight (for you and your children).

It’s a choice. There is nothing ‘inevitable’ about how life turns out. The only thing inevitable is that life mirrors your attitude and beliefs. If you believe life, relationships, anything is all downhill after the early flush, it will be. If you believe life can continue to open up and bring new and interesting experiences, it will.

So many people succumb to flat-lining, limiting themselves. Accepting the status quo means you don’t have to take risks. Low expectations mean you can’t be hurt.

Flat-lining is safe, if dull. Flat-liners live safe, dull lives and their sex, if any, is flat and dull. Sex mirrors life.

Flat-liners sit on the beach and watch other people surfing the waves. They might do it timidly, wishing they were brave enough to pick up a board and go out there too. They might watch contemptuously because even though they’re not experiencing the highs, they’re not risking making fools of themselves. They might watch critically, criticising those surfing, without ever taking on the challenge of doing it themselves. And no doubt some people sit on the beach and have no interest in surfing for themselves, they’re happy on the beach and happy for others to surf.

The last category is fine, because they’re accepting of themselves and the surfers. The others though, they need to either shut up, man up or pick up the board and surf too.

For those that are out there surfing, some are riding the big waves, some are still on the little waves. Everyone has a level where they feel comfortable and confident. If you go to the big waves too soon, it won’t be fun it will be terrifying. Conversely, f you don’t push yourself when you’ve got proficient at a level, you could get bored.

Some surfers will hit a level that feels just right, with no desire to seek bigger waves. That’s fine. Those who do surf the bigger waves know that the ride is greater, but potentially the dumps are also greater. To ride the big waves you have to be willing to take the big dumps.

It’s the same with life, with relationships and with sex. You can play it super safe and super dull or you can strive for more and continuously push yourself, at a rate that suits you.

When you let go, allow yourself to be vulnerable, take the risk and surf the waves of life, you’ll confront great difficulties and reap great rewards, and part of that will be surfing the waves together, including the potentially awesome waves of sex, love and intimacy.

Sex within intimate relationships can be an extraordinary place to grow spiritually, to deepen in love, expand conscious awareness, to feel more peace, bliss, ease. But it’s also very easy to fall into what’s called spiritual bypassing, thinking that you’re becoming more spiritual but actually doing some or all of the following:

• exaggerated detachment,
• emotional numbing and repression,
• overemphasis on the positive,
• anger-phobia,
• blind or overly tolerant compassion,
• weak or too porous boundaries,
• lopsided development (cognitive intelligence often being far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence),
• debilitating judgement about one’s negative or shadow side,
• devaluation of the personal relative to the spiritual, and
• delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being. *

Which means you’re bypassing doing the psychological work you need to do to actually be able to develop spiritually.

I see a lot of this in my work, here are the most common examples:

• Spiritual narcissists, where one partner considers themselves spiritually ‘superior’ to the other. This may be because they have studied or engaged in spiritual practices more than their partner and assume that that makes them more spiritual. In fact, this is merely an inflated ego speaking. This can manifest in small ways such as bamboozling their partner with spiritual terminology. In more serious cases the ‘superior’ partner doesn’t take personal responsibility for their part of the relationship because the ‘less developed’ one just needs to ‘grow’ for the relationship to improve, and if they have a complaint they’re just ‘projecting their own shortcomings and need to look at themselves’, because of course the superior one doesn’t have any.
• In contrast to the first point, some people overly romanticise relationships, seeking a ‘soul-mate’ with whom they can have ‘perfect’ ease and harmony. This is actually fusion, which leads to avoiding issues as conflict of any sort indicates a lack of ‘perfect union’. This in turn stops real vulnerability and intimacy and leads to suppression rather than growth. If conflict aversion is combined with low self-esteem, a person might hand their personal power over to the other, which inevitably leads to control imbalance and inequality in the relationship and a whole heap of issues that stem from that.
• Clients who have succumbed to sexual predators masquerading as spiritual teachers and healers:

- The worst case I’ve had was a woman who was repeatedly sexually assaulted by her guru while he was staying at her house during a visit.

- I’ve had clients who had seen so-called tantric goddesses who have traumatised their clients under the guise of sexual healing. One such case was a rather reserved man whose wife was complaining he wasn’t sensual enough. The woman did teach him some ways to breathe and embrace - then finished the session with a hand-job! This was a shock in the sudden turn from sensual to overtly sexual, and more importantly because it breached the marriage vows, causing problems for him and his relationship.

- Lots of clients who have been to spiritual and/or tantric workshops and retreats and come out traumatized by the psychologically unsafe practices, or who had a major opening without supportive follow-up to enable integration back into their lives, leaving them at best confused and at worst verging on the psychotic.

• Many of my clients who have done a lot of spiritual development struggle with intimacy. In these cases, it can simply be a lack of understanding that personal growth does not necessarily equate to relationship growth, that intrapersonal development and interpersonal development are different. More often it’s because the person has mistaken emotional detachment with spiritual transcendence. Relationship requires openness and ability to be vulnerable with another, whereas spiritual bypassers hide behind a solid wall of impenetrable ‘spirituality’.
• People who confuse spiritual experiences with spiritual states. Too much success-driven ego is applied to the spiritual, people seek extreme experiences, visions, body convulsions, etc. And while these can be illuminating, they are only experiences in time, not permanent shifts in awareness. In fact, seeking these experiences does nothing to truly open and expand in love with wisdom and humility.
• So many people use the pleasure of sex to avoid their issues. The intensity of sex and the release of orgasm can distract from the pressures and issues that really need dealing with. They are using sex to make themselves feel better. This applies just as much, if not more so, if people are using ‘tantric’ or ‘spiritual’ sex as a cover for really looking at themselves.

Truly joyful, spiritual sexuality can’t be forced or coerced. You can’t use it to achieve a state, it is an expression of a pre-existingstate. There’s no short-cut. It requires dedication and a lot of challenging personal and relational cultivation to get there, both psychological and spiritual. Not that you ever actually get ‘there’, there’s no destination, simply ongoing focus and openness - and the potential for a lot of great loving along the way!



*This list is from Spiritual Bypassing by Robert.A. Masters - a great book if you want to read more about the topic.

The clitoris is a wonderful thing, one that leads to many and varied delights - but it is not an on / off button.

The clitoris is not the spot that turns a woman on.

In fact, a woman has to be already turned on before you touch her clitoris.

Once she is already turned on and feeling quite aroused, then the clitoris can be a portal to greater pleasure. But if you go there too quickly it can feel unpleasant, invasive, even painful, and certainly not pleasurable.

A bunch of physiological processes cascade in a woman’s arousal. The cascade can start as a small trickle, then build up to a full-on waterfall of arousal - if you let it. Too much intensity too quickly can short circuit that arousal and cause the cascade to “dry up” so to speak.

That process, her arousal, starts way before she’s even thinking about sex. It starts with the way the two of you relate: the kind words and thoughtful gestures, the laughter and enjoyment you share. When you have that as the basis, then she’ll be in the mood for embracing and kissing. If that’s going well, then, and only then, she might be in the mood for some genital play, not a moment before.

If you really need to find an on-off button on your partner, try her lips - the ones on her face. Women tend to find kissing the most arousing activity. Get that right and the rest of her body will open up to you. Always keeping in mind though, that she won’t even want a kiss if the two of you aren’t relating well.

Relate well and kiss well - then the world is your oyster.

Well, her body is, at least!

Phase One: Two Become One

When we fall in love, there is so much newness and discovery that it’s very easy to feel like ‘two become one’, you feel you have so much in common! It’s just like the fairy-tales and you feel that you really will ‘live happily ever after’!!!

This is the ‘symbiotic’ phase of a relationship. It’s a very important part and builds a strong foundation.

Symbiosis or Fusion?

However, inevitably, you start to realise that two have not become one, two are still two. The cracks start to appear, your differences are more obvious and unsettling. I call this the ‘aargh’ phase of a relationship.

Sometimes couples split up at this phase, thinking that they’re not right for each other. That might be true, but not always.

Others pretend it’s not happening, they don’t talk about the differences. These couples tend to lose the singular pronoun and talk about ‘we’ and ‘us’ exclusively, and their relationship becomes more and more limited. They are not game to push boundaries, make suggestions, try new things, for fear of creating ‘conflict’.

Others recognise the differences, and blame the other! These are the couples that bicker all the time, caught in a web of hostility. They use the second person pronoun ‘you, you, you’ as they harangue their partner.

And some couples fall into a power play where one always acquiesces to the other. The old patriarchal model where the good wife submitted to the will of her husband, or when you hear men say "happy wife, happy life...whatever you say dear..."

None of these approaches is healthy. These couples are fused. They’ve tried to force the lovely symbiotic phase to continue, but in so doing have prevented authenticity and growth. They are stuck in co-dependance.

You can’t stay in the first phase. You have to evolve. You need to move to ‘two become two again’ and from there you can move to ‘two become three - two individuals and a couple’.


Phase Two: Differentiation - ‘two become two’

This means moving through the unsettling ‘differentiation’ phase. In this phase you drop the rose-coloured glasses and see your partner in their entirety as they really are. And they see you. This is the phase where you become experts on each other, really discover how each other ticks. You learn how your partner is different, their weaknesses, dysfunctions, and you get clearer on your own.

From there you can learn to relate to your partner in a way that works for them rather than just yourself. You jointly develop a dynamic between you that is safe and supportive when dealing with issues of difference.

You learn to simultaneously self-regulate and inter-regulate, attending to the other while managing your own emotional arousal. This is the master skill of relating!


Phase Three: The Couple Bubble - ‘two become three’

The better you master this phase the easier is to move to the ‘two become three’ phase, or as I like to think of it ‘the couple bubble’ phase. A bubble can separate into two and re-join again. That is how a good relationship is, you are both individuals and a couple. Your individuality enhances your coupledom and your coupledom enhances your individuality. You each know yourselves and your partner so well that you can self-soothe and soothe the other. You can ask for what you want, and you can give what the other wants. You create safe, secure space so you can support each other through the tough times and share the joys of the good times.

You can dip into your bubble momentarily: with a glance, a touch, a thought; or you can be in it for longer periods: a conversation, a night out, a session of lovemaking, a weekend away. This fills up your 'love bank', keeping you connected and recharged, so when you're apart you can be fabulous as an individual, you still have a sense of the 'bubble'.

When you're in this phase you feel as though you have a unique frequency that connects you, you know someone always has your back. To the outside world this phase might look like the first phase, but it's fundamentally different because you've differentiated. You've become experts on each other, you've got a secure, strong dynamic, and you continue to grow and evolve as individuals and as a couple.

To learn more about evolving as a couple, join me at one of my wonderful Couples Retreats: five days in Bali or three days in the Blue Mountains.

One of the absolute keys to good sex is the ability to let go, to surrender to the experience.

I'm going to speak directly to female readers here, because I find that women have more trouble in this area. Yet it’s actually more important that the woman let go for the couple to be able to reach heightened states of arousal and pleasure.

Essentially what women need to do is allow for self-indulgence.

Now there are some ‘precious princesses’ out there who are all about self-indulgence: me, me, me. I'm not talking about them. I’m talking about all those women I see in my clinic and at workshops and in the street and in the school playground, etc, who can’t allow themselves to indulge. Especially sexually.

Sex as letting go, opening up, being real, requires self-indulgence. As a woman it requires you to open to the experience, to allow pleasure, wonder and ecstasy.

Yet so many women hold themselves back from experiencing this pleasure. So many women hold back from allowing themselves the indulgence of engaging and receiving pleasure.

Which is such a shame! Because the more a woman lets herself go in this way, the more pleasure there is for her, and therefore the more pleasure there is for her partner.

This is a completely different approach to the ‘sex as stress relief’ or ‘sex as performance’ or ‘sex as duty’ approaches to sex that are so common. This is ‘sex as letting go’, ‘sex as indulgence and heightened states of ecstasy’. This is truly good loving.

If as a woman you have trouble letting go to this extent, if you can’t allow yourself this indulgence, ask yourself why:

• Is it that you have blocks to pleasure?
• Is it that you have false beliefs about the purpose of sex?
• Are you buying into false beliefs about the roles of men and women in sex?
• Do you not really trust your partner enough?
• Do you not trust yourself enough?

If you do want to open up more to self-indulgence and allow for sexual pleasure, then please come and see me for private sessions, or attend my LoveLife Women's Retreat or do my women's online course.

We’ll get you indulging again. You deserve it!

At the end of my last Couples Retreat, one participant, who’d had quite a challenging time of it, declared with a big smile and evident relief that she realised that prior to the retreat she had not been relationship oriented.

I see this a lot, in various manifestations.

In some couples, one declares they are quite happy in the relationship and so their dissatisfied partner must have their own issues to deal with. Well, no, I’m afraid that if one person is not happy then there is something wrong with the relationship not with only one of the individuals in it. Thinking otherwise is not being relationship oriented.

I see other couples where they might both be feeling dissatisfied in the relationship, but one claims to know what the problem is, and the problem is the partner, who needs to sort out ‘their’ issues. This person is also not relationship oriented.

And frequently I see couples where they have both done a lot of individual personal development and growth and so are puzzled as to why they are having relationship issues.

In all these cases, one or both is seeing themselves as two separate individuals, rather than as a two-person psychobiological unit.

If you’re recoiling from this, then you probably fall into this category too – you’re not relationship-oriented. And I have to confess that I used to be this way myself! I thought a good relationship was one where there were two strong independent individuals who got on well together.

I was partly right, yes, you do need to be two strong independent individuals, I’m not talking about fused co-dependency here. But we are a social species, and we are a pair-bonding species. When we have quality relationships with people we love, we are physically and mentally healthier and have a stronger sense of well-being.

When you are in close relationship with someone you affect each other’s biology and psychology – for the good and for the bad. So, you want to be sure that your interactions are positive for both of you. That creates a secure functioning relationship.

When you have a secure functioning relationship, I like to think of it as your ‘couple bubble’, it gives you greater security in life, so you become a better individual; and becoming that better individual also strengthens your couple bubble. It’s a positive feed-back loop.

If you see yourselves as two separate individuals, then there is no couple bubble, with none of the benefits that brings. So, you need to make sure that you are paying attention to your partner. You need to become experts on each other, really understand how your partner ticks, what he or she needs and wants and feels, who they really are. In that way you are relating to them in a way that works for them, not just in a way that works for you. When you are both doing that then you are co-creating in a way that is positive for both of you.

So, think about it: are you an expert on your partner? Do you relate to your partner in a way that works for them? And are they doing the same for you? Is your relationship a secure couple bubble that supports both of you physically, mentally and emotionally? Are you both relationship-oriented?

 

In the Tantric yogic traditions they talk about ‘actionless action’ or inaction through action. This is part of the karma-yoga tradition, developing spiritually through right action. Rather than renouncing the world and avoiding actions, karma yoga is about engaging in the world - cultivating wordly life and spiritual life simultaneously.

In the Taoist tradition there is the concept of wu-wei ‘action through non-action’ or action without intent, which leads to a life of harmony, aligned with the Way or the Tao.

As it says in the Tao te Ching (Daode Jing) "When action is pure and selfless, everything settles into its own perfect place," and “The highest virtue is to act without a sense of self”.

So what’s this got to do with sex? How can we modern people have sex through non-sex and thereby achieve harmonious living and spiritual growth?

Firstly - sex without attachment. This means you enter the sexual or intimate activity without being needy, without an expectation of outcome, you’re not assuming or expecting that it will be orgasmic, not even that it will be genital. You go with the flow, the wu-wei of the encounter.

Secondly - sex that is virtuous, morally sound. This means you come together with a purity, an openness, a sense of rightness. Don't confuse this with any prudish concept of purity, you can be playing in an S&M dungeon and do it with purity; and similarly you can engage in so-called ‘spiritual’ sexual activities from an impure basis, led by ego rather than soul.

This is so different to the western view of sex, which in the old days was considered shameful and wrong, and which in the modern era is often considered a need or a right, something to ‘achieve’ in the same way that we want to achieve so much in our ego-led society.

Cultivate yourself, through your sexuality as much as the rest of life, in this way and you will find that bliss, ecstasy, sense of unity with the cosmos, oneness of all things, harmony. You’ll ride the tantric wave….

An orgasm is good, great in fact, but it gets better than that - it gets orgasmic!

Yes, the range of orgasms and orgasmic experiences we can have is mind-blowing. If you think sex is about stimulating your genitals until you have an orgasm and then you’re done, oh boy, have you got a long way to go! And what a journey!

To have a nice clitoral orgasm if you’re a woman, or to have a nice ejaculation if you’re a man, is important. Some women have trouble with this, so I love to help them start to have orgasms. It’s just the start though…

For women in particular, the orgasmic possibilities are vast, but men too can experience a lot more than just an ejaculation, and they can certainly have more than one. Women, well, women can get into an orgasmic state - and stay there a long time!

Let’s start with women. How to achieve this? Well, for a start, don’t think that once you’ve had an orgasm you’re done. Far from it. Often the first orgasm is little more than stress release. Even the second might be a nice build up and small explosion. By then you’ll be nicely aroused and you can start having orgasmic 'waves', where the pleasure comes in waves as it rises and falls, or get into an orgasmic 'state', which is when you can barely tell if you’re orgasming or not, it all feels so good, and which lasts for extended periods of time.

So once you’ve had an orgasm, stay with it. If it’s a clitoral orgasm, keep you or your partner’s hand lightly touching the clitoris, without stimulating and feel the yummy pleasure suffuse your body. Breathe with it, luxuriate in it, then you’ll find in a little while you can build up the stimulation again, heading for another orgasm or finding yourself in an orgasmic state of wow-I-can’t-imagine-it-could-feel-better-than-this type sensation (not that you’ll be thinking as your mind will be turned off!).

It’s the same for vaginal orgasms - once you’ve come, slow down movement and stay with the delicious feeling, drawing it throughout your body. Only after a while of really immersing yourself in the feeling so that the orgasmic feeling is drawn out do you start movement again.

This applies to however you have an orgasm - some women can orgasm from having non-genital parts of their bodies stimulated - nipples, neck, thighs, lips, mouth (yes, you can orgasm giving oral sex), others can orgasm from simply being watched, others from breathing with their partner, or even on their own. However the orgasm arises, stay with the feeling, minimise stimulation, then slowly build up again. This will allow you to go to ever higher stages of arousal, leading to orgasmic states rather than specific orgasms (or both!).

And for men, the key is to not focus on your ejaculation but on her pleasure. That way after you’ve had an orgasm you can keep on going. Make sure your orgasms don’t come from tension, but come from release. Stay inside her and tune in to the on-going sensation in your penis, allowing the sensation to pervade your body, so after the ejaculation you experience a whole body orgasm that can last for quite a while. Bring your attention back to your partner and focus on her pleasure.

The more you practice this approach, the more she’ll be letting go and staying highly aroused, as though she’s in an altered state of consciousness, which you’ll find highly arousing and which will allow you to stay present to the love-making without needing to roll over and go to sleep (as long as you’re not doing this late at night, in which case a sweet little bonk is probably more appropriate).

Chances are you’ll be able to have another ejaculatory orgasm, or you might prefer to simply swim in the pleasure of her pleasure. As my partner says: “It’s like swimming in the energy you release and I don’t necessarily need to come myself.”

Having said that, for some men it’s important that they learn to receive before they can have extended orgasmic experiences, in which case the approach outlined above for women works for men. Have the partner focus on the man, bring him to orgasm, stop stimulation but continue focusing on the penis, he stays with the sensation, breathing it throughout his body, then you can continue with stimulation. Do this for as long as you like - you can keep this up for hours!

It's Autumn, the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” to quote Keats - a time of ripening and reaching fulfillment. Mmm, doesn’t that sound so sexual!

It’s not an intense, fiery time of year though and I don’t advocate an overly intense approach to sex.

Too many people go too far too quick, rushing into it, without allowing the time for the ‘ripening’ in order to achieve real sexual fulfillment.

Truly awesome sex always takes connection, a 'sinking in' within oneself and with each other. It’s different from the rapid-fire approach to sexual excitation, which is the more “normal” mode in this society. With this sinking in comes a ‘syncing in’, where you can let go and really feel each other, really tune in - and for a while the two can indeed become 'one'.

This is so different to the performance approach so many people are trapped in, with each person in their head, wondering if they’re doing the 'right' thing or responding in the 'right' way, or thinking about something else entirely and wishing it was all over!

With sinking in to sync in, it’s not about the head, it’s about two bodies moving in union, in an unstructured flow of pleasure. No expectations, no focus on orgasm, it’s just about the pleasure. That pleasure can be slow and sensual or intense and hard, it can be short or it can continue for hours. It simply is what it is.

Syncing in is about mindfulness - being present in the moment. Using your breath, your awareness, silencing the monkey chatter, letting go of distractions, and simply being there, allowing your eroticism to express in whatever way is real.

So in the mellow season, take the time to sink in and to sync in, to connect mindfully and with presence, and discover just how sublime love-making can be...