" IS Sex Dirty?"

Woody Allen's Famous answer to that question- "It is if you're doing it right." –has fallen somewhat out of fashion in the wake of the arrival of the New Age. Tantric sex is a new self-help movement on the seminar circuit whose aim is to reclaim sex from the realm of the profane and return it to that of the sacred (Tantra is what the Kama Sutra is based on). The movement uses Buddhist concepts and techniques to teach followers how to "increase intimacy and heighten sexual communication." We sent a civic-minded couple we know to sample the teachings of Charles and Caroline Muir, authors of Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving, who hold weeklong seminars on Tantric sex in Hawaii.

Eve and Dave Shore (not their real names), our selfless experimenters, have been married for 24 years. Dave, 50 is a transplanted Midwesterner who has spent 25 years as a producer in the television business in Los Angeles. Eve, 44, from Atlanta, raised a family before beginning a career in film production. What follows is an account of their experience.

Eve: We've been married for nearly 24 years, but recently I reached the point where I felt there was something missing in my relationship with my husband. Sexuality is important to us, and yet, for the most part, we seem not to really address it with the same openness that we seem to address other things in our lives. It's easy in long-term relationships for disconnections to become the norm. You tend not to make love for a little while, and then the time between lovemaking gets longer and longer.

Dave: I was vaguely aware that somehow or other there was more out there sexually than we were experiencing –not that the sex wasn't good, -but there was just something missing. I never would have done anything about it, but when Eve brought up this seminar, I thought, "What have we got to lose?" We'd spend a lot of time in bed in Hawaii, and our sexual relationship would get better. And I figured I could manage a few days at Kapalau to play some golf.

Eve: I entered into this with a really open mind and began by reading the Muir's book. We were exhausted before this vacation, so I felt that it was going to give us a chance to relax into more of a sexual mode. One of the problems with living a fast-paced lifestyle is that sex becomes an afterthought. We have our daily routines, and then occasionally we have our sexual experience.

Dave: I actually had given very little thought to what I expected. I had no pictures. I sort of felt what I should do is just let it happen, whatever it was going to be. I was a little worried, though. Even though the book –which Eve made me read – emphasized that this wasn't about performance, I kept thinking; "Am I getting old?" I had a vague, threatening feeling that I might be placed in a position where I had to, if not literally, then figuratively expose myself not only to Eve, but to strangers.

MONDAY

Eve: We got our schedule; the week began with an orientation meeting in the dining room. When we got there it was quite a sight: Everybody sprawled across beds covered in tie-dyed Indian bedspreads. There were twenty-four couples in all.

Dave: My first reaction was, "My god! I have to eat twenty-one meals with these people? It's a good thing I get to play some golf when this is over!" Then I got curious –who were these people? There were all different types; couples who had been married 30 years, down to people in their twenties who were dating.

Eve: When we finished dinner we went down to the "classroom" to meet Charles and Caroline and begin our instruction for the week. It had flowers and plants, rugs on the floor, flowered paintings and fabric. IN this initial session Charles and Caroline spoke about their histories and how they'd become involved in Tantra and introduced us to the main concepts. I remember that they emphasized that to Tantrics, sex is a sacrament. It is intense & prolonged, with each step leading to an unforgettable climax.

Dave: I liked Charles instantly. He was engaging, open, sensitive and impishly funny, if a six-foot-two-inch guy can be impishly funny. The high point of this first night was Charles introducing us to the language of the workshop; the new names for the organs –lingam for the man, yoni for the woman. Most of our words for the penis stem from a man's feelings of hostility, or machismo. They're words like Dick, prick, scaling, that degrade it. But lingam means "wand of Light," which sounded colorful to me. And yoni means "sacred space." When I heard this introduction to these names, I began to reconstruct the mental set I (and our society) have to sex. I began the process of consciously viewing sex in a new light.

Eve: You realize that the vocabulary of sex defines our whole way of looking at what the experience is going to be. Let's face it, our society has debased sexuality.

After the introductory session on Monday night, we were encouraged to walk on the beach and talk to each other about why they were taking the workshop. I talked about the fact that I was a woman in her 40's who's going through enormous changes, in terms of feeling desirable as a woman, sex is possibly more important now than at every and any other time in my life.

TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY

Eve: The next few days were given to learning ways for us to connect with one another and at night we would go back to our room and practice our "homework" like the good little students we'd always been. We spent hours learning about the importance of establishing and maintaining eye contact, for example. It sounds pretty simple, right? But so often you make love with closed eyes and never look at your partner. There's a tendency for couples to completely disconnect, to close their eyes and recede into there own heads.

The next lesson was breathing. Both yoga and Tantra really stress breathing because breath carries great energy and feeling. To accomplish this, we were guided into situations where we had to sit facing each other in the yab-yum position (the woman faces the man with her legs over and around his body), breathing slowly and remaining in contact.

We learned the Tantric Kiss, a prolonged exchange of breathing in this position, which made us feel as if we were one. Another exercise was to choose a partner and first use their arm as a way to experience touch –to look at different ways you can touch with the fingers and hands and to completely separate yourself from everything else and concentrate on a single sense. So there was a tremendous emphasis on this "process," which I like, it gives me a sense of order. This, however, wasn't Dave's most magical moment.

Dave: It's not that I hate processes; it's just that I have a limited potential and limited attention span for them. By Wednesday, around noon, I had had enough of looking in people's eyes. Enough of breathing. Enough of energy exchange. I figured it had better get down to the nitty-gritty fast, or I was going to go nuts!

Eve: Which was not secret to me, of course. I wondered if you were going to reject the whole process.

Dave: We talked about it for a few minutes about noon on Wednesday and then we went off to the group beach trip.

Eve: This beach experience was billed as a "clothing optional experience." Now, I had never participated successfully in "clothing-optional experiences." When I go to a nude beach, I keep my bathing suit on. All the way there we talked incessantly about bathing suits-on vs. Bathing-suits-off.

Dave: I was adamant. I wasn't going to take my damned bathing suit off. Then we got there and I spread the blanket out and was looking around and everybody was nude. It looked so easy! It was just a little bathing suit. So I took it down. And the funny thing was, in a nonesuch sort of way –it was liberating. That was a kind of turning point for me. I dropped my resistance.

WEDNESDAY EVENING

Dave: By Wednesday afternoon we were both ready for then next step. This was a sort of opening up of the sexual "menu," exploring new dimensions of sexuality. For instance, Wednesday night was the man's turn to "pleasure" the woman and Thursday the woman's to "pleasure" the man.

Eve: I must say that for someone who considered herself to be a pretty sexual woman, one of the things that this workshop really revealed was the many places that I was quite illiterate sexually. To allows myself to simply be the receptor was a new thing for me.

We learned about the infamous "G-spot" and where it was. There's been a lot of debate about the existence of this Grafenberg spot, which is supposed to be a place of extremely heightened orgasms. Tantrics have always believed that inside a woman lie two sensitive poles, or charged spots; the northern or forward pole which is the clitoris and the deeper southern pole, called the "sacred spot" –OK, the G-spot. The hands-on stuff Dave learned this evening –so to speak, was about massage techniques that can help heighten the sexual experience for the woman. I found being completely passive a little awkward the first time, but it's important to remember that Tantra is not a one-shot experience; no one expects any particular moment or any particular exercise to be the final experience. It's a process.

Dave: That evening was particularly wonderful for me. I felt that this was the reason I had come to Hawaii. I think I learned how to be a more complete lover, less obsessed with my own sensations; less selfish, more interested in her pleasure. It was an unforgettable lesson.

THURSDAY EVENING

Dave: Thursday afternoon the men split off from the women. We went off to a natural pool up in the hills. It wasn't exactly a "wild man" experience (I would call it a "slightly free man" experience), but we did jump in the water, swing from ropes and play Frisbee with much abandon. There we talked about the evening that was coming up, & specifically the man's approach to sexuality (At least, most men's approach and definitely my approach) that sex was a goal-oriented activity (the purpose being orgasm). And we spent a lot of time on the issue of sex having no goal other than the process of connection and pleasing each other.

Charles talked about men's obsession with having a "hard-on," and that we should expand our sexuality to include a "soft-on."

This was a revolutionary concept to me; that I could be sexually competent and not be erect all the time. Not worrying about being erect also takes your mind off the goal aspect and you can begin to focus on the process of making love.

The we learned techniques to delay orgasm. Charles talked to us about not ejaculating every time, especially as men get into their late forties and fifties, when it diminishes our sexual energy. If a goal was to make love every day, then we needed to practice ejaculatory control to maintain a high level of sexual energy. It's not that "cuming" is bad; but it can be draining.

Eve: While the guys were off discussing that stuff, the women got together to talk about what was going to happen that night. Caroline explained that this would be the time to "pleasure" our man, and went on to help us learn the appropriate techniques. She talked frankly about the varieties of touch, taste and massage; about using oil and lubricants to heighten sensuality. She taught us about contact and harmony, to be aware of the ebb and flow of sexual energy.

Dave: That night, after all this instruction, was "my night" to receive pleasure. This was when the delayed orgasm stuff came in handy –the extent to which I could delay an orgasm was just going to be going to be the extent to which I could be pleasured.

Eve: I loved being the pleasure-giver. I think it was rather difficult for Dave, who likes to be a little more in control, to allow himself to be the recipient.

FRIDAY

Dave: Eve and I sort of floated through the last couple of days. Learning about these techniques and practicing them –and in fact just engaging in a more open discussion about how things feel and what you want –had created a tremendous degree of intimacy.

Eve: A friend who saw us when we returned home from Hawaii said, "You both look like your glowing. Do you realize that you are constantly touching or stealing looks at each other?" And there were other wonderful, quirky things that happened, just in terms of our intimacy. For example, throughout our entire relationship, I have always been late and Dave is always on time. So whenever we're going out Dave is always saying, "Honey, are you ready? Honey, are you ready?" The last night of our trip we were getting ready to go somewhere and I was, as always late doing my toilette. And it was actually the first time ever in our relationship where Dave didn't look at his watch. He pulled up a chair into the bathroom and actually talked to me and watched me.

POSTSCRIPT

Dave: It's now five months later. The original flush is gone. We have, by and large, been pretty good about practicing. Is the sex better? Without a doubt! It's more satisfying, more surprising; and I don't see any end to it.

Eve: Somehow in our daily lives we learn to tell ourselves, "I can have a certain amount of pleasure, but I can't have an endless amount." Tantra taught us that we could create an endless amount. We don't have to feel guilty about it. In fact it's a source of health, a way to keep young and increase our vitality.

The only drawback was that Dave never did get to play that game of golf.