Have you ever heard of Margo Anand. She seems to have the world's best and most unusual job. Margo is a tantric sex teacher. She conducts tantric seminars and I had the good fortune to have taken one in Quebec this summer. She is a passionate, totally committed pioneer and teacher. She recently stated in Dimensions, an alternative health magazine in Toronto: "I live in a world of tantra. That is all I live in. I'm criss-crossing the world and creating the tantric subculture, and its growing into a bigger and bigger wave". Why don't you join us in the water?

For 15 years Margo explored the great traditions of ecstatic sexuality. She discovered and developed a unique path to sexual ecstasy she calls High Sex. It is this path that she teaches as a complete practice in her new book, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy. These ideas and practices emerged through her studies of various traditional and innovative sexual practices in the East and in the West, on three continents. Margo writes: "Far from being complex and esoteric, High Sex is a simple, step-by-step process that is accessible to anyone who wants to find a gentle and conscious way of bringing the spirit back into sex, of honoring sexual union as a bridge between body and soul."

High Sex takes the experience of orgasm to a new dimension -- a dimension in which genital orgasm is only the beginning. It inspires you to explore the full capacity of orgasm, culminating in ecstatic body-to-body and soul-to-soul communion. It is an experience of the whole body, the whole being. The path of High Sex helps your body to be free of tensions, your heart to be trusting and open, and your mind to develop such psychic skills as visualization, imagination and meditation. When the integration has taken place, you are ready for a new, qualitatively higher sexual experience in which physical pleasure becomes a delight of the heart and an ecstasy of the spirit. The course on sexual ecstasy that Margo Anand has developed teaches us to contain the energy charge that erotic arousal generates, which is normally concentrated in the genitals, and to consciously redirect it, via the inner flute, through the body using subtle channels that are comparable to the meridians of acupuncture. When this energy reaches the heart and head, a whole range of peak experiences becomes available. Orgasm is experienced as ecstasy, pleasure floods through every pore of your body, your heart dances with delight, you feel contentment and peace, and your energy is expanded beyond the boundries of your body and soul.

One of the most original and fascinating teachings of Margo Anand's approach is her concept that in each man there is an inner woman and in each woman there is an inner man. "From the perspective of High Sex, a balanced relationship between a man and a woman, based on love and intimacy, begins with the harmonization of these two polarities within oneself".

During the tantra weekend, for a period of two hours, the men wore a dress and carried a purse while the women all wore pants. I found it to be an overpowering experience. The whole of chapter eight is dedicated to this theme. I put on Françoise's dress and tried to enter into her thought processes. "I tried to juggle my time between the hospital, my home office, the daycare center and looking after my three year old daughter." We try to imagine the inner man and woman we all have. For as Nicholas Berdyaev said: "The union of the sexes is four-membered rather than two-membered; it always means the complex union of the male element of one with the female element of the other, and of the female element of the first with the male element of the second. The mysticar life of the androgyne is realized not in one bisexual being but in the quarpitate union of two beings." Or as Jesus said in the Second Epistle of Clemen, when asked at what moment the Kingdom would come: 'When the two shall be one, outside like the inside, the male with the female, neither male nor female". We learn from Margo Anand that men have a sexual thought on an average of every three minutes and women every six minutes. She tells us that it is most natural for men, and above all women, like herself, to have several partners.

We learn about genital geography and genital massage techniques. We learn exercises for erotic control and stimulation like the PC pump, sexual breathing and pelvic rocking. I found out that, when parents practice tantric lovemaking, their children sense it and become happier and more creative. Tantric lovers are more likely to switch jobs to those they like more.

And, if you continue reading this beautifully illustrated book, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy and its 450 pages, and practice the lessons and exercises with your partner(s) regularly, you will reach the peak, which is "The Advanced lnfinite Cycle", where the energy circulates in a circular fashion as illustrated here between the woman and the man and you become one. Then,"there is only the experience of ecstasy".

"May your life be the reflection of the Ecstatic one within.
May this Esctatic One be the instrument of love without end'.

By Robert Silverman.

© Robert Silverman 2000