Taoist Sexual Meditation
Ancient teachings on truly extraordinary energy sex.
In the early days of television when everything was “black and white,” the three existing channels stopped broadcasting by midnight. People who watched TV simply enjoyed what they had. No one looking at that small, grainy screen could possibly have conceived of a full-color picture, much less a high-definition flat screen. Such an eventuality didn’t exist — even in the realm of wild imagination.
And yet here we are, 90 years later, enjoying hi-def as well as round-the-clock programming on more channels than most of us bother to count. That much variety, depth and color — more, in fact — can be brought into your sex life.
Like so many of my women friends, I’d been led to believe I should be able to tell a man, even “train” him, how to please me in bed. This purportedly enlightened approach always left me feeling more like a drill sergeant than a sex kitten. By the age of forty, my sexual frustration hit its peak. I kept thinking, “There has to be more to it than this.” I knew I hadn’t fulfilled my sexual potential and felt sure I never would.
Then I met someone quite unusual — a man who knew what my body wanted better than I did. Sweet surrender. I could finally get out of my head and into my body. He was a natural — so brilliant in bed I could let go and allow our mutual arousal to take us into unknown territory. No more following a predictable routine. No more being in control. No more striving for orgasm. And no more thinking is that really all there is? Making love became an adventure, our bodies a playground. Everything that happened was fresh and new, unpredictable in the most delightful way. And every time we made love, we discovered new terrain we’d never expored before. This wasn’t just chemistry; this was a special type of genius. I began to refer to it as sexual intelligence.
As a marriage and family therapist with innumerable friends and clients who endure frustrating sex lives, I couldn’t help but wonder if this type of genius could be learned. I wasn’t willing to accept that a person is either born with the gift or not, but I knew of no comprehensive training to increase a person’s sex IQ.
Even in the San Francisco Bay Area, the tantric sex capital of the Western world, very few people seem to understand what my genius lover had shown me: sex isn’t something you do — it’s a place you go.
Try as I might to describe my experience and develop a curriculum, I couldn’t find the words for what my beloved just seemed to know. Then I received the first draft of a book about Taoist sex meditation by Bruce Kumar Frantzis. After I finished reading the manuscript, I felt encouraged. Here was an author who could teach men how to read the intricate signals that reveal what a woman’s body wants.
The manuscript also contained crucial information women should have about what gets a man turned on. Even more exciting, the author himself wasn’t born with the gift; he had developed it through specialized training.
Once as oblivious to the secrets of a woman’s body as the average man on the street, Frantzis stepped off the beaten path at the age of 18. After witnessing a murder, he left his home in New York City to study martial arts in the Far East. Determined to never feel that kind of terror again, he began his training in earnest. He studied karate in Japan, then travelled to China where he studied under renowned masters of qigong, tai chi, hsing-i, bagua and Taoist meditation.
Early in his training, Frantzis had the rare opportunity to be invited into a secret Taoist community that practiced sexual meditation as an accelerated spiritual path. This marked the beginning of his second radical departure from the mainstream. Frantzis shifted his allegiance from pure martial arts training to the ancient three-fold path of the warrior-healer-priest.
Since his return to the West in 1987, Frantzis has taught over 20,000 students and certified hundreds of tai chi and qigong teachers around the world. He has authored more than ten books, establishing himself as a definitive authority in the field. My personal favorites are his groundbreaking Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body, which details core principles of qigong, and The Power of Internal Martial Arts, a fascinating read and consummate guide.
In any given area of study, certain individuals stand out for their mastery and expertise. In the best-selling book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examines what makes these people unique. One factor he identifies is having undergone at least ten thousand hours of training. By conservative estimate, Frantzis has trained and taught for fifty thousand hours in various subtle arts of energy — what the Chinese call qi. This puts him in a unique position to teach us about energy sex. And, for the esoterically inclined, to use it intentionally as the Taoist’s do to springboard from energy sex to sexual meditation.
In a world where self-proclaimed “sexperts” flood the Internet with advice, finding your way through the maze of information is no simple task. Truth be told, information alone cannot possibly usher us across the divide that separates us from our slumbering sexual intelligence. This type of crossing cannot be accomplished in a tantra weekend. However, the seed of potential planted in us by Infinite Intelligence can start to germinate when we meet a true master like Frantzis.
At first I asked myself, “Why another book on Taoist sexuality? Didn’t Mantak Chia and Lee Holden cover all those bases?” As it turns out, they did not. Frantzis’ perspective and teachings are distinct from those of other authors in two very significant ways.
First of all, most of what has been written about the Taoist’s sexual practices has been primarily limited to sexual qigong, or what has come to be know as energy sex. The deeper subject of sexual meditation has not been brought to the West.
Secondly, most (if not all) authors who write about Taoist sex are describing the Fire tradition of Taoism. The approach used in the Fire tradition emphasizes pushing through limits, which can result in injury.
The Water tradition is relatively unknown in the Western world. Nearly lost to antiquity, this approach emphasizes letting go and relaxing into a natural state of pure Being. Even in China, it would be difficult if not impossible to find a lineage master in the Water tradition, let alone one willing to teach.
Frantzis studied under such a master, the Taoist sage Liu Hung Chieh, on a full-time basis for three solid years. What’s more, Liu took the unprecedented step of adopting Frantzis as his son and passing on the lineage. Rarely, if ever, has an American received such an honor.
Bruce’s story of a joining a secret Taoist group and being adopted by an old Taoist sage initially struck me as far-fetched, even unbelievable. The skeptic in me thought his story must be an exaggeration, my inner cynic thought perhaps all that esoterica had led him round the bend.
But once I got to know Bruce, my doubts started to dissolve. Then Fratzis invited me to attend his Dragon and Tiger Medical qigong teacher training in Maui. The training would start the following week. I may be an energy dunderhead, but I’m no dummy. I dropped what I was doing and started packing.
Those seven days with Frantzis and his Energy Arts students changed me. For the first time, I knew what people mean when they say things like “I feel the energy.” What I once dismisssed as California trippy-talk became palpable. I could feel the energy. The veracity of the pure Taoist lineage Bruce carries became real.
I came to understand why this man I’d judged as “crass and lumbering” has thousands of enthusiastic students who travel from all over the world to take his courses.
By the time I returned to San Francisco, all of my doubts and skepticism had evaporated. Clearly, Frantzis is uniquely positioned to deliver this esoteric tradition to Westerners in digestible form.
For millennia, the Taoists have harnessed sexual intelligence as an essential part of their religion. Take an ancient tradition that has actualized the spiritual potential of sex for thousands of years, cross-pollinate it in the Western world through a master like Frantzis, and you get a truly important breakthrough.
In Silicon Valley, advances of this magnitude are often referred to as a “disruptive technologies” because they upend the status quo. Given that the sexual status quo of so many people locked onto a setting that reads “bored and dissatisfied,” this is one disruption that’s long overdue.
Change can be challenging, of course. Whether we’re adapting to new technology or increasing our sex IQ, we progress through a natural learning curve. Once we achieve a higher baseline, all sorts of possibilities that were previously unimaginable are ours to enjoy.
In the sexual realm, the terrain is infinite — literally — and that’s the Tao.
What I’ve seen of where this information can lead has given me tremendous respect for the Taoists’ wisdom. Their intricate, exacting system can reveal the true nature of human beings. This is the ultimate aim and destiny of every sentient being: to achieve an extraordinary degree of body-mind integration and ecstatic union with the Tao.
I’d like to offer a word of advice to other skeptics and energy dunderheads out there. I recommend you approach this teaching with deep curiosity. Easy to say, not so easy to do. So here’s some specific instruction:
1. Suspend any expectation that simply reading words on a page should result in comprehension. A book like Taoist Sexual Meditation is more than a book — it’s a transmission. The content in this book has a vibrational quality that will not translate to your linear mind.
2. Rather than try to comprehend what you read, set a conscious intention to let your deeper self be moved. You cannot understand what you have not yet experienced, so let go and surrender to an instinctive encounter.
3. Develop a playful mind. Play is essential to learning, and ever more so deep diving into esoteric material. Sadly, most of us left this vital capacity behind in the sandbox. We do well to bring it back into our adulting.
4. Understand that a book such is this is not designed to inform so much as to plant seeds in your mind. Those seeds that will be watered subliminally by the Tao out of which your very thoughts arise.
A transmission such as Frantzis has poured into this book can become personal, direct knowledge. You will know that has happened when the reality words can only point to reveals itself in the field of your awareness.
This has occurred for me a number of times since I first read the manuscript. Detailed instructions I don’t even remember reading suddenly just transpired, revealing new terrain. For example, one evening I found myself focusing on my lover’s upper body rather than responding to what was going on below his waist. According to Taoist theory, this allows a man’s yang energy to build. I worked on his head, neck and shoulders while he pressed into me with his yearning. I could feel his essential yang more tangibly than ever before, which gave my yin nature a new of level of permission to receive and be nourished by his masculine energy.
On another occasion, a surprising revelation occurred with respect to the Microcosmic Orbit, the alchemical energy current that flows through the human body.
I’d always been intrigued by drawings of lovers whose bio-electric circuitry was intertwined like a caduceus. But the actual existence of this co-joined inner current remained conceptual, nothing more than a lovely idea.
Then, shortly after I completed my qigong instructor training with Frantzis, my man and I were in the throes when, out of nowhere, the Microcosmic Orbit became a tangible reality. It was as if a river of energy ran through my body. While feeling and sensing the movement of this river, I discovered I could connect with that same river flowing through his body. This gave me a glimpse of who and what he might be beyond the ordinary construct of a “person.” And that made me super-excited to learn more about the two of us beyond the ordinary construct of “man and woman.”
Deep inside every one of us there is a seed that has never left the Tao. That part of you will be stirred by this book. You can consciously evoke this inner quickening by reading Taoist Sexual Meditation as if the knowledge it contains is native, rather than foreign.
So sit back and relax. Somewhere in the multiplex of universes, an ancient Taoist sage has just invited you to discover the truth of who you truly are.
Geralyn Gendreau, LMFT, is a psychotherpist, editor, ghostwriter, and writing coach who has been helping authors finish their books for 20 years. Connect with Geralyn and she’ll show you how to build emotional momentum and become one of those authors who says: “My book practically wrote itself!”
