In her second post as Guest Writer, Vina Green explores a gorgeous erotic fantasy. Keep a hand free on this one

The walk over the clifftops from Waihi Beach to Orakau Bay was hot. Beyond hot – it was sticky, my skin was a slick of sunscreen and salt. The clear water below, wet with the promise of a cold swim at the end of a long walk, felt far away. It was the first hot day we’d had for most of the summer, but it was muggy. The sky felt heavy with rain, making the sea seem thick and full. I liked the bite of a wave, somehow more alive after rain, salt water mixing with fresh. I picked my way carefully down the hill, and imagined my body piercing the cold water below. God, it would be so pleasant to be sheathed in the seas embrace, wet from my neck to my feet. I had brought a swimsuit, to satisfy the sensitivities of other swimmers if there were any, but I hoped to be able to swim naked, feeling the cold water thrashing against my skin.

Just then I saw them, four workmen, stacking lengths of timber on the beach. A crate from the wrecked ship, Rena, had washed ashore, and these were men sent by the local council I supposed, to clear up the mess. The beach was otherwise deserted. Initially, I was annoyed, plans for my solitary swim unravelled. I wasn’t sure if it was safe for me to swim while they worked, I could see ropes in the water, attached to their boat, anchored a hundred yards or so offshore. I didn’t want to be in the way. And the presence of such obvious masculinity made feel unusually self-conscious. These were real men’s men, muscled, strong, with powerful limbs. They all wore wetsuits, three of them zipped to the neck, and the fourth, zipped only to the waist. They looked like seals, black and glistening in the sun. One was young and lean, he looked maybe twenty, twenty one, the others appeared older and bigger. I felt oddly drawn to the half zipped one, the biggest. He was perhaps thirty-five, well muscled, with a layer of fat over the top, like a rugby player out of season. He was beginning to bald, but had shaved his hair, from above I could see the outline where it was beginning to grow back. He had very large, powerful hands, like paddles. Large enough to span the small of my back. He was at least partly Polynesian, or Maori. His skin was the colour of burnt caramel, and sweet too, I bet, to lick. They must be hot, I thought, working in the sun like this, wearing wetsuits. I imagined they were probably naked under their suits, or perhaps trying to protect their bare skin from the glare of the sun. I imagined what it would be like to watch the four of them working naked, their balls, dropping in the heat, slapping against their thighs.

I was down at the beach now, watching them from the privacy of the low-branched trees that grew just back from the sand, overhanging the dunes. It was cool and dark in my hiding place, and I nuzzled my feet into the damp earth to cool them. Squatting down motionless I felt the discomfort of my clothing sticking to my skin. I itched with sweat. I reached a hand up the back of my shirt, unhooking my bra and letting my breasts spill out against my t-shirt. My nipples were hard, despite the warmth, and watching the men work, I felt I wanted to run my hand down inside my skirt and touch myself. These thoughts made me hotter still, and I pulled my t-shirt over my head, and my skirt and my knickers down off my feet, so that I was completely naked, squatting down with my arms wrapped around my calves and my breasts pressed against my thighs. The wind brushed across my bare back, bringing a brush of sand with it, light as feathers scratching my skin.

Then, the workmen broke away, sat down on a pile of timber, and one of them produced a six pack of beer. Three of them opened beers, sitting on the stack of timber with their legs slung over the side. The fourth, the burly one with the unzipped wetsuit took his can and jogged gently across the beach, the arms of his wetsuit flapping loosely around his waist. He was heading directly for me. I hugged in closely to the trunk of the tree that I was sitting beneath, and let out a soft sigh. He hadn’t seen me. “Taking a piss”, he yelled back to the boys on the beach behind him. I was stuck now. I couldn’t move without attracting attention.

So, I watched. He put his beer on the ground and unzipped his wetsuit further, pulling it down past the top of his thighs and exposing a thick mound of pubic hair. The wetsuit was stiff and waterlogged, he wriggled the rubber down a little further, and held his cock in one hand, just enough to aim into the bushes in front of him, perilously close to my hiding place. I wanted to bury my face in his cock, to lick his balls, and then feel the weight of them in my hand. The thought made me flush, and my nipples grew stiffer. I licked my lips. He held his cock and concentrated. Then, I watched an arc of piss, a golden stream, shooting out in a rush. I was desperately thirsty, and I wondered for a moment, how the heat of his piss would feel on my face – would it be hot or cold? A couple more short streams, and then, just shaking off the drips. Oh, how I wanted to lick the tip of it. “Hey”, he yelled behind him, “I’m just going for a wander”. Then, he ducked under the overhanging branches, stepped on my pile of clothes and cursed. “Fuck”, he said, picking up my bra and looking around. Then he saw me. “Shhh’ I hissed, my finger over my lips. His eyes widened, and he smiled playfully. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, presuming that he’d stumbled on two lovers in the bushes. “No”, I whispered. “It’s just me”. “Oh”. His eyes widened further, and he looked at the bundle of clothes at his feet, and the bra in his hand, and realised I was naked. ” Are you hurt?” he asked gently, concerned now, for this strange naked girl in the bushes, watching him pee. “I’m fine”, I replied, and I grabbed his hand, exposing my right breast to him, and pulled him in to sit down next to me. “I don”t want your friends to see me”, I continued, blushing. “Oh”, he said again. “were you getting dressed?” “No”, I said “I was getting undressed. To swim. Then I saw you”.

Close to him, I could smell the heat of his body, the salt of his sweat mixed with the salt of the sea, and perhaps the salt of his piss, a few drips left on his hand, and his cock. “Can I have a drink?”, I asked, motioning to his can of beer, unopened. I was parched. He flicked the top of the can, releasing a hiss of bubbles, froth running down the side of his hand. I leaned forward, and licked it, from the base of his thumb to his forefinger. He sat absolutely still, so that I could hear the thud of his heart in his chest. “Sorry”, I said, embarrassed. “I should have asked”. “That”s okay”, he said. “Wasn’t expecting that, but it’s okay”. I looked down at his crotch, he had an enormous erection, and I realised that he could see all of me now, I was kneeling at his crotch, with my body fully exposed to him. “Can I touch you?”, he asked, and I nodded. He ran the side of his hand along my jaw, and his fingers down the nape of my neck. He was using his cold hand, the one that had been holding the beer, and he squeezed my nipple gently between his icy thumb and forefinger. His lips parted a little, they were nearly as thick as his fingers. He seemed entranced. I wanted him to spit in my mouth. I wanted to pull his wetsuit down over his arse, to climb on top of his cock, and to fuck him, really fuck him hard. But I couldn’t of course, I carry condoms with me almost everywhere, but not to the beach. I felt my muscles clench in frustation. I grabbed his hand, and pulled it down between my legs, and sat on his fingers. I was wet, wet as the sea, dripping, and he slipped straight inside me, one, then two fingers. His eyes widened, he moaned. I shifted myself, more upright so I was bearing down on him, thrusting against his fingers as if they were his cock. He leaned forward, gently positioning his hand so that my clit rubbed against the meaty part of his palm, at the base of his thumb. “Fuck me”, he said, an exclamation rather than a command. “I’m trying” I replied, thrusting harder. His wrist was strong, as if he’d been lifting timber all his life, my weight on his hand didn’t seem to bother him.

There was some commotion back at the beach. “Mikey, Mikey”, I could hear the rest of the workmen calling. He grabbed my head with his other hand and pulled me towards his mouth. “I’ve got to go”, he hissed in my ear. I was still sitting on his hand. Gently, he wriggled it out of me. Then, he ran his fingers over my lips, wet with my own juices. “Suck it off”, he said. I took three of his fingers into my mouth, sucked down as far as I could, rubbed his hand across my face. I tasted sweet, and salty. He kissed me hard on the mouth, and pushed me away. “I’ve got to go”, he said, again. He adjusted himself, so his cock, still hard, was less prominent, pushed himself off the ground to standing and walked out through the trees, without looking back.

I watched as they finished hauling the rest of the timber, then attached it to pulleys. One swam back to the boat, and the others stood with the timber, checking the ropes as they went taut, pulling the logs into the sea with a judder and slap. Then one by one they dived in, to swim back to the boat. Mikey was last. He pulled up his wetsuit with his back to me, and I watched as the ocean swallowed him up. I ached, my whole body ached. I wanted to be touched, to be swallowed, to be surrounded by wetness. I walked down to the water, still naked, delighting in the brush of the breeze against my flesh. I waded in, to a shock of cold, just up to the top of my thighs, so the cold water lapped my clit, and I thought of his tongue. I parted my lips with my right hand, feeling the cold water lapping against me, and rubbed my clit, slowly first, then faster. I imagined pushing his body onto the ground and riding his cock, hard, and I rubbed faster and faster until I felt fire rising inside me, and I came. Then I dived into the ocean, and I swam.

Did you enjoy Vina’s fabulous fantasy? Feel free to leave a comment, either with feedback on her story or one of your own. We’d also encourage you to check out her excellent article Can Pleasure Be Sacred?

In late November the lovely Vina Green attended Scarlett French‘s erotic writing workshop at The Pot. We were so blown away by the hot story she wrote that we’ve invited her to take up a month-long Guest Writer Residency.

In this first article, Vina explores a question close to our hearts: can pleasure be sacred? Later in the month she will  put her ideas to the test by attending and reviewing Smörgåsbord; in between she’ll create some new erotic stories to titillate and excite us. Enjoy!

“Sacred Pleasure”. Those two words might seem like an anomaly, a contradiction in terms. After all, ‘pleasure’ conjures up images of hedonism, excess and indulgence, whereas ‘sacred’ is often associated with religion, which encourages self-sacrifice, denial and abstinence. But for me, Sacred and Pleasure fit together like a hand in a glove. Here’s why.

My first experiences of sex and sexuality occurred at church. I was raised in one of the more modern, quite Puritan religions, where excess is shunned – greed, lust, and of course, sex before marriage, or even sex within marriage if the sex includes any variation on the bare basics. They don’t call it the ‘missionary position’ for nothing. Although I didn’t take to religion in the way my parents hoped, I did enjoy reading the bible. My favourite chapter was The Song of Solomon, or ‘the Song of Songs’ which contains such beauties as: ‘I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste’ and ‘Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.’ Pornography wasn’t easy to come by when I was growing up. My first experiences of masturbation were aided by the bible. Pleasure doesn’t get any more sacred than that.

But what does “sacred” really mean? When associated with Western religious traditions, “sacred” often refers to a definable place or a thing, such as a church or a relic. Sacred things have common characteristics – they’re precious, they’re considered worthy of veneration, they may be a route to God, and they’re thought to have power, often the power to heal. Sacred can also have a wider meaning – in Australia, it’s one the government have tried to define by law, in relation to Aboriginal ‘sacred sites’. These are places of cultural significance to the indigenous people, often associated with cultural stories (myths and legends). They’re places that are spiritually alive. Places that have energy. Anyone who has visited Uluru (Ayers Rock) has probably felt it, as do many folk who visit Stonehenge.

So, something that is sacred has power and energy, is precious, worthy of respect, and can be a vehicle to a higher place. Can we say those things about sex?

When we think of Sex and power, it’s usually in a negative sense. Rape is about power. Sex is used as a weapon of war. When we think of sex and powerful men, the power is usually associated with ‘misuse’, as in priests and Presidents. Indeed, the power of sex is enough to overthrow an empire (I did not have sexual relations with that woman!) Powerful women are, sadly, often thought of wholly in terms of their sexuality. Back to the bible (or, Dexter season 6), think of the whore of Babylon, the scarlet woman, usually pictured in red, either with blood, wine, or in more modern day versions a flash of red nail polish (particularly on a hand holding aloft a whip) such as Irene Adler in Steven Moffat’s Sherlock.

What about the positive power of sex? My personal experience is that sex can be deeply healing. There’s proper, scientific evidence for this. I give you the Marvin Gaye classic:

Baby I got sick this morning
A sea was storming inside of me
Baby I think I’m capsizing
The waves are rising and rising

And when I get that feeling
I want Sexual Healing
Sexual Healing is good for me
Makes me feel so fine, it’s such a rush
Helps to relieve the mind, and it’s good for us
Sexual Healing, it’s good for us

The medical benefits of sex are vast – it reduces blood pressure, burns calories and reduces stress. People who have more orgasms live longer.

Is sex precious? Yes, of course. You wouldn’t be reading this website if it wasn’t. I felt that I had lost my capacity for sexual pleasure for what felt like an age (about five years) after a negative sexual experience, and I can tell you that I mourned the loss of my sexuality like a part of me had died. Sex is a little like faith, precious, and fragile – it can be both the simplest thing in the world, or the most difficult, to find, and it’s easily lost. when you find it, and you’re comfortable in it, it has enormous power.

Is all sex Sacred? What about when it’s less candles and incense and foreplay, and more tits and arse? Here’s where my religious upbringing comes back into force, again, not in the way my mother had in mind. Something that people used to say to me often, when I was going door to door to talk to them about God – “I worship in my own way” or “God is within you”. The same is true, I believe, of Sacred Pleasure. You don’t need your Kundalini, or even your cunt, to be awake. Sacred Pleasure finds you when you’re not looking for it, it exists as a constant in the world. Much as Aboriginal sacred sites don’t become any less sacred when idiots come along and build apartment blocks on them, sacred pleasure is inviolable. So, it makes no difference whether you’re partnered or unpartnered, straight or gay, exhuberantly sexual or asexual, active or celibate, female, transgender, male or somewhere in between – Sacred pleasure is accessible to everyone.

Now, let’s get all fruity and talk about sex and energy. Tantra types will immediately know what I mean. For everyone else – think of chemistry. Pheromones. That moment when you lock eyes with someone across the room and go ‘phwoaar’. Standing near them makes the hair on your arms stand up, the tips of your fingers tingle. You caress them gently (and I’m assuming here that the feeling is mutual and consent has been negotiated) or you get them home and rip their clothes off in a flurry of arms and legs and oh oh Oh! That, that electric tingle, is sexual energy. But. you don’t need to be having sex, feeling sexual, or even feel like you will ever be sexual, to experience the power of sacred pleasure. It’s all just a different manifestation of ‘energy’ which you might find in many other places. I get it from the ocean, mountains, yoga, the endorphins that result from exercise. Many people feel it in art, poetry, music. It’s that little bit of magic that produces a sense of wonder, of connecting with an undefinable something that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. And, like electricity, it can be felt gently, or channelled in a way that leaves a room full of people buzzing.

All you need is an open mind and the intent to enjoy the pleasures of your senses – and that, my friends, is when the sacred becomes the divine.

Would you like to explore this question experientially through a series of evening classes in March? Join us at Pleasure Portals, our lovely introduction to conscious sexuality. Find out more >>

We are delighted to present this intelligent, thought-provoking article about Tantra written by Nigel K. He wrote it a few years ago, when he was 42 and worked for a corporate law firm. He attends Sacred Pleasures.

I used to own a series of role-playing video games for my computer called King’s Quest. In one of them you controlled a character called Cedric, who had the task of saving the ailing kingdom of Daventry by finding a magic mirror in which one could foresee the future, a magic chest that was always filled with gold coins and a magic shield that would protect the bearer from all harm.

Cedric travelled around exploring the kingdom, meeting mysterious people and creatures who would give him the information, and finding and acquiring the objects, he would require in order to fulfil his task. Quite near Cedric’s starting point, for example, was a piece of ploughed earth which, on further investigation, turned out to be a carrot patch. It was obvious that Cedric was supposed to pick a carrot but less obvious was what he was supposed to do with it. Eating it didn’t seem to achieve anything. But how about eating it in the dark? Would that enable him to see in the dark? You would put the carrot in Cedric’s bag and carry on exploring, waiting for the moment when the carrot might come in useful.

As I eventually discovered, Cedric was supposed to show – but not feed – the carrot to a goat that he would meet elsewhere in Daventry. This would cause the goat to follow Cedric around and, later in the game, Cedric’s goat companion would be critical in his progress when it would help him to cross a bridge that was guarded by a troll. As in the story of Billy Goat Gruff, the goat charged the troll and knocked it into the water. This wouldn’t happen, of course, until after you’d made several frustrated attempts to get across the bridge to the mysterious island that, it was obvious, contained some element essential to your progress. All of these attempts would end with you being unceremoniously thrown into the water by the troll.

Finding and collecting the items and information that you’d need, and piecing together the clues that enabled you to solve the puzzle, would take hours of game play over the course of weeks, and sometimes months. Periods of frustration, where you seemed to have exhausted all your exploration possibilities and couldn’t figure out what you were supposed to do with the items in your bag and the information you’d acquired, would be followed by the joy and excitement of making a breakthrough.

Sometimes a breakthrough would open out whole new areas of the game to explore, such as when you overcame the troll and crossed the bridge to the previously inaccessible island. Sometimes, the seemingly unrelated items in your bag would all suddenly turn out to be connected. For example, you might have been re-exploring a room in a castle for the umpteenth time when you discovered a catch that caused a secret panel to slide open and reveal a hidden door. The mysterious gold key that had been given to you earlier by an elf would turn out to open that door, and the matches that you’d bought from the shopkeeper and the candle that you’d picked up in a deserted house would enable you to illuminate and explore the darkened passage beyond. The purpose of the hunk of ham that the farmer’s wife had given you would then be revealed – you’d use it to distract the lion that was guarding the door at the end of the passage – a door that could be opened by the silver key you’d found under Dracula’s pillow. In the room beyond lay a beautiful sleeping princess. Oh yes, you’d plucked a red rose from the flower bed outside the house..…

I used to think that the search for spiritual enlightenment was like a journey on a path or, more particularly, along a series of interconnected paths which all ultimately led to the same place. Thus, someone pursuing spiritual enlightenment might start off on the path of one of the established Western religions, switch at some stage in their life to one of the Eastern religions and, from there, into one of the more New Age “Mind Body Spirit” practices that abound nowadays. Ultimately though, I felt that the person who pursued the yogic path would end up in the same place as the Tai Chi devotee or the person who pursued the path taught by Christ. The important things, I felt, were to find a path that suited and attracted you, to stick to that path in a disciplined manner to the exclusion of other possible paths that might distract you (“one deep well is better than twenty shallow ones”) and that it be, as Don Juan told Carlos Castaneda, “a path with heart”.

In recent days, I have changed my view on the search for spiritual enlightenment. I now think it is more like a role-playing video game than a path or series of paths. Over the course of our lives, I believe, we move about picking up clues, information and tools. We may not even be aware that these items are clues, information or tools, let alone useful ones. Then later on, when we have forgotten that we are even carrying them, and the possibility that they are in any way related hasn’t even crossed our minds, they combine together to enable us overcome a barrier, or series of barriers, at which we have been stuck for some time.

My change in view has come about as a result of personal experience. At the beginning of 2002 my girlfriend Sophie and I embarked on a year-long Tantra course for couples. It comprised five residential blocks of five days each spread over the year, with “homeplay” exercises for the couples to practise between blocks. A couple of weeks before the fourth block of the course, I began to get the feeling that several rather disparate areas of my life were coming together at a meeting point.

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Anna Winstanley

Debs G

Belle

From January to September 2011 we invited different writers each month to write about their areas of interest and expertise. To look through these sets of articles, please visit the 2011 Guest Writer Archive.

Going forward we are delighted to publish articles and stories on a more fluid schedule. If there’s something you’d like to write about, please email info @ sacredpleasures . co . uk to propose it to us.

On the 20th November we held Pleasure Parlour No. 5 “Arousing Words” – a sensual afternoon of erotic writing led by the marvellous Scarlett French. During this workshop one of the participants – the talented Vina Green – wrote this erotic mini-masterpiece.

Drip

It was the dripping that really got to me. It seemed to follow me everywhere. I heard it in the kitchen, in the living room, even in the bathroom, behind the spurts of the power shower and the scrub of my teeth, rustling of hands into drawers and slathering of face cream, closing of curtains and shutting of doors, behind it all there was the steady drip, drip, drip, drip, drip of my leaky kitchen tap.

It was the slow shudder of the thing, as if it was trying desperately to hold back, and with each drip I thought, this will be the last. Then the pressure building again, the wetness coming to a gradual, resistant head before being squeezed forcefully through the rusty faucet. My mind could taste it, the sharp metallic tang of water that has sat too long in a pipe. I could smell it, the scent of a damp penny picked up from the street.

Of course, I could fix it. All it needed was a new washer. Just turning the existing washer over would probably do it. But there was something about the holding on and then the letting go that I found both so tantalising and so frustrating at the same time. It was like walking the knife edge between nothing and something, dryness and wetness, quiet and sound, stillness and movement.

I once lay in a yoga studio, for 90 minutes, beneath a slow, but steady drip. I arrived late, and took the last spot in the room, wall to wall with perspiring bodies, inches between mats. Directly in front of the mirror I lay, with a body that I couldn’t see to my left, one to my right, one at my feet. Between every posture, in Savassanah, the drip would fall. I lay and watched the wetness grow, gather, and finally form a droplet as if it were desperate to keep a hold on the ceiling, then splosh, it fell, directly onto the middle of my forehead, right between my eyes. Drip, drip, drip.

I could have moved, just a few inches, to my left or to my right. But I enjoyed the relentlessness of it, the loss of control, the holding on, and then the letting go.

Osho? The first time I heard my friend tell me about the festival, I thought yikes, sociopath with 96 Rolls Royces. I’d dropped in on the Pune ashram once many years ago, but it was closed to visitors that day. However, everyone I meet nowadays seems to be a sexual healer of some kind, and many work with Tantra, so I stayed with it.

I had two other fears, prejudices even, before going to this five-day festival at a country house with its own campsite, cabins and yurts. I thought first that there would be lots of really irritating creepy men trying to get fresh with me in the guise of being spiritual, and second, that there would be loads of posh young ravers, all dressed in couture yogawear, permatanned from workshops in Thailand and Nicaragua, and with no visible means of support. Both suppositions, I can report, turned out to be wrong. The men were pretty well behaved. (Mind you, I am 45 and hassle tends to drop off when you hit 40.) And there were people from their 20s to their 70s there; many in the older age group.

Another concern: how would I cope with five days of vegetarian food? Or the rules, about no nudity in the daytime and no penetration in the Love Temple? But I’m leaping ahead.

I had already done a lot of work on myself. In terms of sacred practice, I’ve done 5 Rhythms, Vipassana, Nichiren buddhism and yoga. And I’ve been in all kinds of alternative sexual spaces and happily been naked in front of groups of people. I’ve also done a lot of therapy and am in training to be a therapist myself. So I had a firmer foundation than I realised for a week of Tantric practice.

The first day I did biodanza with Niraj in a sunny orchard. It was total immersion into eye contact and communication with a lot of people at once. I think of myself as a shy person, but perhaps I’m not. I realised that others were nervous too, many far more than me. In the afternoon we paired off and eye-gazed for what seemed like hours. I ended up with another woman who had a very powerful experience while she was with me, working through her childhood issues with her cold mother and sister. I felt privileged to hold the space for her.

Thursday was ‘gender day.’ Gender binaries are starting to look old and outdated, and Rebecca Lowrie held the Meta group, for those who chose to be neither. I was sad to miss Rebecca’s sessions, but as I had never done Tantra, I decided to check out the women’s group with Jewels. It was emotionally very confrontational, and the moment she asked us to imagine our mothers, everyone in the room immediately began to cry. Gradually everyone stripped off and did the shakti dance. 70 naked women shouting and screaming. It was brilliant. In the afternoon we paired off and continued as Shiva and Shakti the serpent. Again, I paired with a woman, who had a very powerful experience with me in the Shiva role. ‘I felt infinitely safe with you,’ she said. I began to see a pattern that was very validating for me. Later we went to meet up with the men again and hugged. Hundreds of hugs.

As the days passed I found myself having many deep chats with women almost at random during meals and breaks, but very few with men. It reminded me that most of the people I talk to regularly back home are men, that there are not many close women around, and I had a deep need to interact and bond with women. I also realised that I was actually feeling just a little bit annoyed with men, in some contexts anyway, and I was glad to dive into a new pool.

Friday was Jason and Ingo, trading touches, and working on boundaries. It took me a while to work into this as I had never done it. I asked a man to stroke my hair at first. However, the universe clearly wanted me to experience femaleness this week, and my second and third partners were women. I asked the second woman to stroke my breasts and it all felt very natural. That afternoon I needed a break from workshops, so I walked around and looked at flowers instead.

That evening we danced for hours. I found a man on the dancefloor and we went to the Love Temple, which was a big tent full of cushions with a sign outside saying ‘No sexual union or oral sex.’ It was sensuality I was looking for anyway, rather than strictly intercourse. By the time we got in there it was sardined with naked people and we found an awkward corner, with my feet on a pile of shoes and my head a little too near a woman delivering her very sad life story to a very patient younger guy. It almost killed the vibe for me, but the atmosphere was warm and friendly.

Saturday was the biggest challenge of all – AUM meditation. There was a talk with Devaraj the night before to prepare newbies. It’s not for the faint hearted and carries a mental health warning. It’s a two and a half hour emotional journey – you rage for a while, then hug people, then jump, then shake, then go mad, then cry, then laugh, then sensually honour someone. I was almost in tears with nerves at the start – what if I had a panic attack? But I was absolutely fine. Another validation. 60 people going mad around you is a kind of holding space. Afterwards, I was flying and could hardly speak all day. I felt equal.

I didn’t always feel equal. There were several moments during the week when it felt like a school trip. I felt excluded from noisy groups of people puppy-piling on the sofa, who all seemed to be friends with each other. And when the genders were split during a morning meeting and then asked to cross back over and hug, the men seemed to rush past me to women they knew, and it felt like the school disco all over again. Others felt the same at times, I found. This came up often in the family group chats we had every afternoon.

On Saturday afternoon there was another workshop, with Joy, about pairs and boundaries. I stroked a naked man all over, and sat pelvis to pelvis with another, doing energy breathing, but it was almost too much after the AUM. The last night felt, to many, like the last chance, and there was a lot of hopeful tramping in and out of the Love Temple, but I was very tired and there were too many single guys having a slightly frantic last-ditch scope-out, and I went to bed.

On the last morning, 200 of us danced together in the sun and held hands in a final ritual. More and more hugs. I found the guy I’d stroked all over and had a shower with him before leaving. As we stood there embracing, the water got colder and colder, which was, I think, the universe’s way of helping me say goodbye to the festival.

For me, the Tantra festival was a really important part of the sexual and emotional journey that I’ve been on for a year now. It would have been even better with more dance in the evenings, as this work generates so much energy, and the kinksters present talked about suggesting a conscious dungeon for next year. But it was an amazing and alchemical week. Even my hair reacted – the air was so damp, from the weather and getting sweaty from dancing and workshops, that it went from pretty much straight to curlier than it’s ever been before. Another sign?

I’ve got some deep and fundamental challenges in my life right now and I’m amazed that I’m coping. But I am, just, and I think it’s partly because of what I experienced at Osho Leela.

As it turned out, the basics came to me very easily. Once I’d let go of the “spent my gap yah in India” association, I found that saying namaste and bowing felt respectful and oddly moving. I’ve always been pretty good with eye contact, and it only took about half a day before gazing at someone directly without politely averting my eyes after a few seconds felt quite natural. And once I realised that the long hugging was actually optional, that a namaste would do just as well, and that each hug only had to last as long as you wanted it to, I got quite comfortable with spending 30 seconds in a stranger’s arms listening to their breathing. Since nobody was telling me what any of this had to mean to me, just doing a whole load of objectively quite ridiculous things was surprisingly unproblematic. It sometimes felt a bit like church, but mostly like doing drama games, and the link between theatre and tantra was explicitly recognised in one of the best workshops of the week, John Cremer’s session on improvised comedy. Not only did this session provide some welcome light relief, but it highlighted how much of tantra is a form of improvisation: being truly present in the moment and giving yourself up to whatever happens, even if it’s going to make you look ridiculous.

There were many moments over the week where I found myself thinking, this is probably the silliest thing I’ve ever done, but then remembered that I like directing operas, and nothing is sillier than opera. (Or more glorious, obv.)

So by the end of the first day I’d stopped thinking that my difficulty with tantra would be whether it was #magicorbullshit, (the hashtag I initially put on my tweets) – I’d enjoyed the first few workshops, liked my tantra camp family, and nobody seemed to be insisting I start believing in some kind of Spirit. Instead, I’d found a whole other problem: I’d realised that this was one of the most heterosexual spaces I’d been in a long time. The tantrikas confused me – they didn’t have the same boundaries as straight women, but in some ways the boundary was more immovable because of it. My next set of tweets adopted the hashtag #toogayfortantra?

The second day was “gender day”, when the men went off to roar and shout, while the women did cathartic crying over their wounded yonis. (I’m oversimplifying and being a bit flippant – I can see that for a lot of straight people who’ve had bad relationships and bad sex this stuff is really important and healing, but I’ve mostly had good relationships and good sex with both genders so it’s not very relevant to me.) If these had been the only options on the table I would have found the whole day quite alienating, but fortunately the wonderful Rebecca Lowrie had organised a third “meta” space for anyone who didn’t feel quite so straight/cis at that moment. The meta group was pretty amazing – not so much personally, because I’ve spent much of my life analysing my gender identity, but for some of the people who came it was the first time in their whole lives they’d ever expressed a sense of not conforming to the stereotypes imposed on them, both by society at large, but also by the tantric community because the practice is taught in such a heteronormative way. The metas were the rebels for the day, and the fact that even a marginally gender-queer space was available had big repercussions for the next three days. (In the final ritual on the Saturday I took the option of having a brown dot on my face and being “in my Shiva”, pairing with women in the exercises which were gender specific.) I was immensely grateful to Rebecca for holding a space like that which not only made me feel at home, but gave voice to a lot of other people’s views.

In general, the Festival didn’t contain much of the practice/technique element I guess I’d hoped for, but I also realised quickly it wouldn’t really have been the right place for me to learn. (I.e. I need a queer tantra school.) There was a lot of personal development work which, to be honest, I’m not especially in need of, primarily because I’m younger than most people who get into tantra and life hasn’t scarred me yet. But I did like the social dynamics, and the high-octane non-verbal communication – at the end looking round the 250 people there I had a clear memory of about 80 of them, which is an awful lot of people to pay attention to over 5 days.

The most amazing thing was actually right at the end, when I’d packed up my stuff and everyone was leaving. I went and sat quietly on my own for about five minutes and afterwards found that my mind was totally blank – without realising it, tantra camp had taught me to meditate. I think tantra definitely has something to offer me and my ilk, and I met some really excellent people, so I’m glad I went – even though I probably was a bit too gay for that kind of space. I’m now hoping to get involved with some of the queer tantra stuff coming up with Rebecca and SP, which I probably wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t gone to the Festival, so thanks so much to for giving me the opportunity to go.

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Rebecca Lowrie is running a workshop on Exploring Gender at Sacred Pleasures on Saturday 1st October. More information >>

#1. Unethical Married Man

#2. Turning 30

#3. Free Free, Set Me Free

#4. Welcome Home

#5. Pleasures Sacred and Profane

#6. The Summer of Ritual

#7. Groundwork

#8. Ending and New Beginnings

There have been dramatic changes in my disposition since attending the Tantra festival. 5 days of Tantra makes for a tough, fantastic, cathartic journey. I am now sporting a shiny new aura, which I call ‘the love vibe’ and it’s catching. Not for years have I been as charismatic and open to life & people’s beauty… or as generous with my love gestures. Mmmm!

There was blood, sweat and tears (money and vomit) to pay for this, but it was definitely worth it all. I will go again and recommend it (preferably sans the vomit. I don’t want it to be remembered akin a bout of sickness, but as you will hear, for me it will be… anyway, all better now!) I learned a lot.
Emotional & sexual blocks needed exorcising and the magical festival did it.

I had been scared and doubtful. Scared of the usual things… Not being good enough, desired etc.
On some level, I secretly hoped that I would find a soul-mate and live happily ever after, and on another, hoped for scorching poly-amorous, highly orgasmic, rampant ecstasy sessions with no strings attached. Both wishes port anxiety for me! (I know I am not alone in at least this aspect of anxiety).

Before I went I was contorted by life’s demands, as one gets too frequently and stressed and dubious about what I would find at the festival. I felt cynical about Osho Leela. (I’m old enough to remember the ‘Orange People’, Bagwan Rajneesh followers, who set up Osho Leela, a mansion house in Devon). I was slightly fearful that the experience would involve converting talks, but it didn’t. Nobody forced religion on me at any time.

I had attended a couple of weekender intros to Tantra, with the wise, earthy, sexy, Goddess teacher Jewels Wingfield, whom I highly rate and I knew would be good. I also knew Rebecca Lowrie to be a spunky, insightful and loving Tantric and sexuality facilitator and BDSM, pan-sexual celebrant, so I felt that, whatever happened, these ladies… (Shaktis) would give some saucy substance to the occasion and they sure did. There were about 20 teachers and facilitators delivering workshops at the festival.
I would be in a tent, but other than that, I felt ignorant about how the festival would be in reality.

‘Tantra’ can be a commercialised excuse for sensual/sexual relations without responsibility or commitment. No defining body protecting the punters. Cynical voice says…’perhaps people justify getting-off and using each other in this way by believing it is ‘spiritual’, when really it’s a big wank?’ Would I feel used, or indeed use people, be repulsed and critical? Would it really matter? If I came back crushed by the experience, who could help me? What are the ethical issues around group-sex workshops? Would these Tantric teachers be prioritising my well-being, or their bank balances?

And what about the other 250+ participants?! Eek!
Why are there so many crusty old men at Tantra events? Am I a crusty old lady now in my 40’s?
I think that some 1960’s children (like me) who grew up experiencing a ‘free- love’ and permissive sex culture, might go to a Tantric festival hoping for a bit of loving-up, ye olde style, with kindred spirits.
Indeed there were a large percentage of participants over 40/50 years+
It can be shit getting older; Menopause and self-esteem doom etc. as our bodies fail.
Agism was one of the issues I had to contend with. I had brought it there.

Read more here >>