Sexual Secrets: Twentieth Anniversary Edition: The Alchemy of Ecstasy

published	December 1st 1999 by Destiny Books
binding	Paperback
isbn	0892818050 (isbn13: 9780892818051)
ebook
pages	352
description	<p /> <br />• The #1 guide to sex and mysticism, redesigned in full color for the new millennium. <br />• More t...more [close] <p /> <br />• The #1 guide to sex and mysticism, redesigned in full color for the new millennium. <br />• More than 600 illustrations of the erotic sentiment, 200 in full color. <br />• More than 1 million copies sold with translations in 19 languages. <br />• Combines the wisdom of the great Eastern sages with images from the West to present a celebration of creative sexuality. <br /> Sexual Secrets is the definitive guide to sex and mysticism, revealing the wisdom of the sages of India, Nepal, Tibet, China, and Japan whose teachings on sexuality unveil how physical love can be the pathway to spiritual liberation. Containing more than 600 illustrations--the most comprehensive collection of images expressing the erotic sentiment--and with more than one million copies sold in more than 19 languages, Sexual Secrets unlocks for everyone the experience of ecstasy once sealed in the ancient texts and art of the East. In celebration of its 20th year in print, Sexual Secrets has been completely revised and redesigned and includes 200 color illustrations to complement Penny Slinger's unsurpassed black-and-white illustrations, which evoke all the major cultures of the East. Working from contemporary models and from ancient pieces originally commissioned by kings and emperors, Slinger blends images of the West with the sentiments of the East to further enhance the experience of the text and to help in the transmission of the secrets--a celebration of creative sexuality. [close]
date added	04-21-07 edit book

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Derek rated it:

03/08/08

Read in January, 2003

recommends it for: any one who likes to have sex ; anyone interested in yoga, tantra or Eastern spirituality

This book has a lot of interesting things in it. The main focus is esoteric sexual practices, but it also covers some basic yoga exercises and goes into meditation and archetypes a great deal. The authors have a background in hinduism, yoga and tantra rather than taoism, but they do include taoist works in their book, in the interest of completeness. For a perspective rooted in taoism regarding the same subject, you can read Mantak Chia's books.

I have followed the types of sexual practi...more This book has a lot of interesting things in it. The main focus is esoteric sexual practices, but it also covers some basic yoga exercises and goes into meditation and archetypes a great deal. The authors have a background in hinduism, yoga and tantra rather than taoism, but they do include taoist works in their book, in the interest of completeness. For a perspective rooted in taoism regarding the same subject, you can read Mantak Chia's books.

I have followed the types of sexual practices covered in this book for many years. I began studying tai chi in 1998, and little things that my teacher would say during class led me to research "eastern" thought and qi gong literature on my own and eventually led me to discover these practices. Pathnotes of an American Ninja Master by Glenn Morris was the book that introduced me to the idea. That book highly recommends this book for further study, and so I delved into it and Mantak Chia's books, which I had also recently discovered, at the same time. My tai chi teacher had taught me a lot about qi energy, and when I followed the esoteric sexual practices I felt like it was way better for my qi. Guys know what I am talking about. When you cum it feels good at first, it's a release, but then you kind of start to feel like shit. You get tired and hungry. If it's a one-night-stand you will suffer from what a friend of mine described as "Bitch-get-away" syndrome - wanting to keep some space between you and the woman you just had an intimate encounter with, perhaps to the extent of throwing your clothes on right away and getting the hell out of there. That load or loads you just spewed out contain, from a western perspective, tons of nutrients, and, from an eastern perspective, a lot of qi. There's enough there to create another life, theoretically enough to create many lives. That is why you feel such an energy loss.

The first step for a man wanting to follow the esoteric sexual practices is to not ejaculate. This will keep you from losing energy. People talk about blue balls. When I first started these practices there was a little bit of pain, but not much. I focused on breathing deeply (this may sound funny, but it helps - breathe into your balls), and on moving the "stuck" qi up into the higher chakras (as they explain in this book) or the microcosmic orbit (as Mantak Chia explains in his books). This qi movement and chakra stuff I had already been practicing in my tai chi, in qi gong exercises I learned in class and in meditations and practices I learned from books. Anyway, very soon, I think just after 2 or 3 times, blue balls was not an issue at all. After getting the hang of it, I did some comparisons. Not ejaculating, I felt great, I got a sense of release and my desire was sated and I also had a ton of energy. Ejaculating, after the initial release, I felt like shit. So I've stuck to the practices ever since.

The book goes into things that partners can do together: visualizations, rituals, meditations, etc. These sound like a lot of fun, but I can't comment on them because I have not found a woman who was interested in trying them out. All I can say is that taking the first step, the withholding of ejaculation, has led me to have some interesting qi experiences and it feels right to me. After having sex, I can feel the qi moving around my body and doing things on its own that feel really good and really healthy to me. Sometimes I have really vivid dreams. Qi is a really interesting thing, and learning about the energy body and how it subconsciously regulates itself is fun.

Our society however is really fucked-up and closed-minded, and that affects the minds of women within it. I've shown this book and others I have on the subject to women I've dated and at best they look at it as amusing and puzzling. Perhaps I need to find a woman who already has some experience working with qi or prana, and so will be able to understand what this way of having sex is about. Women get kind of weird and insecure about a man who doesn't ejaculate - as if it means they are not attractive, even though I tell them it's a conscious choice, that they would make me cum if I hadn't learned these techniques and realized that it's a healthier way of doing things. I consider it my body and my choice, just as they have the right to demand I wear a condom so that they don't get pregnant. They get the benefit of a partner with a great amount of control who can make them feel good, and they make me feel good too and I tell them, so I do not understand why there exists this illogical, psychological addiction to making a man ejaculate. I think too many people in America are tied to the traditional American way of doing things and this extends to what they look for and expect in sex and relationships. This traditional American way is so fucked-up, it's aesthetic and ethical choices are often idiotic and ridiculous, it's closed-mindedness is appalling, it extends even to people who are supposedly liberal and irreligious - not just the more conservative - and I don't understand why people don't grow up and shed the ideas they are born with or why they are not independent enough to try ideas that are not followed by any one else in the culture around them when it is painless to do so and won't affect your normal every day interaction with the people in the culture you are born in and forced to live in. I've talked about the practices to male friends as well as female friends who I do not or have not had sex with, and despite the seemingly increasing amount of literature being released on this subject I am still the only person I've actually met in real-life or who anyone else I know has met who actually follows these practices. No one I have spoken to has been induced to try them out, but at least my friends listen to me , sometimes tell me about interesting sexual techniques that get a good reaction and don't (or at least seem like they don't) judge me for being an adherent of these esoteric practices. Since I don't fuck them, it doesn't really matter to them how I fuck. The girlfriends and sexual partners I've had since adopting these practices have also been somewhat accepting, but a greater amount of confluence is needed with someone with whom you have an on-going amorous relationship, and from beneath this surface acceptance there keeps popping up a desire to ultimately change me into someone "normal" who does not follow these practices. Furthermore I'd like to go further into these practices - to do the things that partners can do together, but I need to meet an attractive female who is really into it, who wants to try these things.

Thus my review of this book cannot be complete, but I can say that the things in it having to do with the sharing of qi and sexual energy between partners look like they would be fun.

This book, divided as it is in 3 corresponding sections, helped me to more deeply understand the trinity of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. The authors have and are able to impart a certain understanding of these and other archetypes that people interested in mythology, mysticism, metaphysics, deep psychology and/ or meditation would appreciate. This book is one of those that I can open up, flip to a certain page, read and then think about the deeper meaning of what it says and its implications, leading to interesting meditations and thought-paths.

I highly recommend this book. I have only a few problems with it. These problems would not keep me from recommending the book, but do lead me to caution anyone who is to read it. The first is that the book has a strong anti-gay bias which I disagree with. I do not think that homosexuality goes against nature. Homosexuals interested in esoteric sex will find that Mantak Chia is more open-minded in his books on the subject than are the authors of this book. This book also has a chapter devoted to how anal sex between heterosexuals is wrong. I do not have much experience with anal sex, but I did have a (female) partner who was very into it, and friends of mine have had such partners as well. I don't see how a practice that gives a woman pleasure is wrong. The authors say that anal sex forces the qi down the wrong path or in the wrong direction. My partner who liked anal did not know about qi so I cannot comment on that, but she did say she often craved anal orgasms and that they were different than clitoral, g-spot or deep-vaginal orgasms. My experience with qi and esoteric sex is that you can find a way of reaching sexual release and climax without letting your qi be lost - this is essentially what esoteric sex is. For a man that means learning to have climaxes and sexual energy releases before ejaculation. Since none of my past partners or girlfriends have practiced esoteric sex, I'm not sure what the corresponding practice in women is, but this book and all others I've found on the subject seem to indicate that since female orgasmic secretions and female ejaculate do not go into creating another life, women do not have to worry about losing energy with their secretions and with-holding them as men do. They can learn to extend orgasm, to withhold in order to stack it up and save it for a bigger one later, but they don't have to worry about maintaining control when they're ready to climax and can allow their energy to spill over when they have an orgasm, without fear of losing or wasting energy. I wish a woman who understands qi could tell me if she feels an energy loss one way or the other, like I feel the difference between ejaculating or not, so that I might confirm what the books say. Anyway, I don't see how an anal orgasm would be any different for women with regards to qi than the other types of orgasm. I think the authors of this book are being too abstract here....less

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