When my wife of five years invited me to spend a week in Hawaii studying the "sacred art of sexual tantra," I winced. A yoga meditation that focuses—and heightens—sexual energy? Wasn't I a sensitive enough lover? Yet I had to admit it had never occurred to me to bring the reverential attitude I'd learned on my yoga mat into the bedroom.

That's precisely what tantra experts Charles and Caroline Muir teach in their workshops. Thirty of us (15 couples), mostly middle-aged neophytes, gathered nervously in a hotel banquet room, just a Frisbee-toss from the languorous Pacific. Most of us were staying in the hotel itself. The Muirs explained to us the sacred sex—tantra—is a loving meditation, an opportunity to join our hearts and genitals and heal sexual wounds of the past.

The husband-and-wife team created a safe and respectful atmosphere for their workshops, which combine gentle hatha yoga, breathing and energy exercises and some explicit homework assignments. By the final day of the weeklong workshop, even the chilliest of couples were luxuriating in each other's arms.

Was our love life transformed? Yes, I can honestly say it was. In addition to a few simple-but-powerful skills for intensifying our passion and prolonging our embrace (which this 40-something male found well worth the price of admission), we learned that sex can be an endless deepening into new levels of pleasure, connectedness and love.