Soul Sex [Paperback]

Al Link (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2008

This is not only a book about Tantric practices, but also about how you can use them to create a life-long, loving relationship. Because Pala and Al's emphasis is on Tantra in relationships, both beginners and skilled Tantric practitioners will find value here.

Through the authors' mix of ancient Eastern sexual practices and modern Western approaches to communication and intimacy, you and your partner will learn to connect in ways that are respectful, nourishing, and lusty.

Pala and Al offer their relationship as a model for a successful, long-term relationship in which to be happy, fulfilled, and spiritually awakened. Soul Sex includes thought-provoking discussions, personal anecdotes, and precise but simple techniques to inspire you to apply to your daily life. The observations and exercises included are drawn from the authors' own heady partnership and from the hundreds of couples they have had the privilege to teach at their Tantra sacred sex workshops.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Soul Sex: Tantra for Two will introduce you to the delightful and surprising world of sacred sexuality, a world we have personally explored since 1987, and have taught others about in workshops since 1997.

Our purpose in writing Soul Sex is to help readers discover how wonderful a joyous, happy, healthy sexuality can be and that it is available to any ordinary couple. We try to simplify and demystify Tantric and Taoist sacred sexuality practices so anyone can understand and apply them in their lovemaking. We also connect sex to spirit and do this in the context of a committed long-term relationship.

If you want a relationship that lasts a lifetime and satisfies through and through; if you want to grow old together, share a passionate sex life to any age, feel and look your best, and be gloriously happy, then sacred sexuality is something you would benefit by exploring. All the ideas and easy-to-use exercises that we share with you in this book are things we actually do to keep our own relationship juicy, thriving and growing.

All good things, Al Link and Pala Copeland

From the Inside Flap

Late Autumn 1987

It was the early days of our romance. In Ottawa on a clandestine lovers' weekend we spent most of the time in our hotel room greedily exploring each other. Late Saturday night we lay side by side breathing deeply, sweat soaked bodies flung wide, gathering ourselves for another round of life's most joyous dance. I stretched my leg so that my toes rested on Al's instep. As my skin touched his, electric pulses raced through me, from my toes through my legs and groin all the way up to my head and back down. On the outside I was barely moving. My body was a lacy ribbon waving lazily on a light summer breeze. Inside it was as if the entire lava load of an erupting volcano were surging through my veins at incredible velocity. Every fiber of my being was shot through with light, like a time exposure photo of car headlamps beaming down a dark roadway. I closed my eyes and let the blaze run. The familiar blackness behind my eyelids became a deep blue, vast, open and welcoming. Huge purple orbs floated by, amethyst geodes trailing light. I lay in ecstatic wonder marveling at the beauty and the glory.

When I moved my foot away from Al's, breaking the spell of our connection, the flowing stopped. When I touched him again it recommenced. Experimenting, I touched our bodies together at different spots - finger to nipple, hip to thigh, forehead to forehead. Each joining made a bridge for the transporting energy stream. My heart opened. Love poured in with the fire. The laughter of bliss rose up from its flames. Unable to speak, I could only keen trilling "ohs" into the night. Like a kiss from God the merging came, a melting into Al, the room, the city. I was All and all was rapture. When daylight found us I was still flying high on love's ardent wings.

"What was that? Where did it come from? Do you think we can do it again?"

"Probably. I think what we experienced was something I have heard about called Tantra" replied Al, my new lover, my seeker of enlightenment and explorer of all things spiritual.

We set off for the nearest bookstore to find out more about this mysterious Tantra. It was the beginning of a journey that has wrought extraordinary change in our lives, brought us ecstatic pleasure and intimate connection, and freed our hearts and awakened our spirits.

It is a journey that continues.


Fast Forward 2003

We are lovers still. Day-by-day and minute-by-minute we recreate our love. It is quite simple, but it is not always easy. We have learned what to do and how to do it with the help of teachers and books, but mostly through our own experiments. We are self-taught lovers.

Since childhood, sex has been a driving force for both of us, as has the desire for connection with God. In our culture, these two forces do not usually go together. When we met each other and fell into an intensely passionate relationship, it satisfied our sexual desire but not our spiritual longing. Over time, however, we discovered that our relationship itself, our conscious loving union, could become our pathway to divine connection. Modern Tantra, which combines sexuality and spirituality in a practical, down-to-earth way, provided the perfect vehicle. Now Tantric sacred loving is what we do full time, both in living and in earning a living.
In this book we describe how we teach others and what we actually do to keep our own relationship emotionally rich, sexually passionate, and spiritually evolving. Our purpose in writing is to motivate couples to act together to achieve something rare in the world--passionate relationships in which to grow spiritually together into old age, creating love year after year.

We want to help you realize your dreams through discovering the four freedoms of Body, Mind, Heart and Soul.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 286 pages
• Publisher: Career Press (October 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564146642
• ISBN-13: 978-1564146649
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #841,441 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If Tantra is for you, this is a great resource, October 8, 2004

By 

Toby (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soul Sex (Paperback)

Let's get one thing straight before we start. You don't have to have a sex partner, or even a sex life in our society's understanding of the term, to study Tantra.

"If Tantra were just sex, my donkey would be my master," said Abhinavagupta, a Tantric master of the tenth century. This is funny, because donkeys are known to be well-endowed, but in any case the misconception has persisted. The word Tantric as applied to sex has rejuvenated the marriage manual over the last twenty years. Tantra is not sexual technique, it is a genuine spiritual practice, a rather iconoclastic one.

For centuries Tantra was anathematized in India, just because it recommended nothing and condemned nothing. Many there still believe its practitioners eat dead babies and what all. They are not entirely without reason--the famous Thugs were a Tantric sect, a murderously misguided one. There is no central Tantric authority, a Tantric Pope or College of Cardinals, to say this can be done but that can't. And so anyone can use the word Tantra to describe their practice, and practice itself can include anything and everything. What gives Tantra a special kick for the Western mind is that it is spiritual, and it doesn't exclude sex. That's different from the spirituality we're used to.

What many people think of as a Taoist or Tantric approach to sexual relations is concerned with prolonging sex from start to finish, that is, from foreplay to ejaculation. The goal is to bring satisfaction to the female partner, who often needs more time than the man to reach it. Naturally a happy wife makes a happy couple, but many men regard the prospect of this kind of thing with dread. Not only does postponing or worse, eliminating ejaculation look difficult, it threatens to take away most of the fun. Women may view it with a jaundiced eye because they've had their hopes raised so often in the past, only to be dashed over again.

And yet it can happen during sexual relations that for a moment or for hours, the partners, both of them, feel a oneness with all things which is infinitely poignant because it feels like the state we were born to live in all the time, our original nature. There is such peace and timeless beauty here that all questions are answered and all wounds are healed. It is a state of spiritual grace, and it goes beyond all goals. Tantrism and Taoism propose ways to reach this state in sexual union, but sex is very much not the only way they propose. In any case it is no small undertaking. At the very least it requires practice. It also requires time, two hours at least and more if possible, which means that the average couple's normal time-slot for sex will not suffice.

Where does that leave the modern Western consultants, the ones who write books and offer workshops of a day or more?Pala Copeland and Al Link are two such persons who have experienced the timeless ecstatic state and offer to help other couples reach it too. They suggest ways to practice, they provide pictures, and if the reader wishes, he or she can enter the supportive environment the authors provide at their Canadian centre. There, partners can take advantage of the chance to spend more than seventeen minutes, or the continental average, making love. What they actually do with their time, and how they prepare, is the material of this book.

The authors make it clear from the outset of this rich and compassionate work that they are committed to their relationship as a spiritual practice. Everything that arises between them is an opportunity to deepen awareness. This makes them a genuine Tantric couple. Sharing their experience with others is the natural outflow of their commitment. The activities they propose, whether their own creations or gathered from other sources, have all helped them to `push the envelope', grow beyond the self they think they are.

There are too many of these to list but they include heart talk, breathing, massage, positions, orgasm, the chakras, moving subtle energy or `ki', rituals, and a rather imposing set of questionnaires meant to help you uncover the truth about your sexual attitude and conditioning. The whole is truffled with apposite quotations from William Blake to Zsa Zsa Gabor. A lot of reading has been done, but the result is not academic or overpowering; we simply find the occasional pearl.

There are many sexual exercises, a lot of practices with a meditative flavour, a good deal of the kind of explanatory talk that helps you to relax and feel grounded, and several personal stories and confidences. When Al and Pala talked on page 174 about how they learned, together, the challenging skill of circulating hot energy rather than letting it blow off in a discharge orgasm, they spoke to me.

I especially enjoyed their attention to relationship issues and ways of dealing with the "stuff" that creates hurt and dissension when it is acted out. If students of Tantra get one thing out of the work, it should be this. Another key subject is the meditative attitude--how to learn detachment from mental events and remain in the here and now. It is clear that the authors have the knowledge of both meditation practice and psychology behind them. This is reassuring. One thing you don't want Tantric training to be is centred on performance, sexual performance least of all.

Do the authors provide easy-to-learn steps that anyone can follow to Tantric bliss? No they don't, and that's good. But are they sex-positive and encouraging? You bet they are. The illustrations and personal anecdotes are pertinent and fun. Do the authors understand that Tantra is more than sex? Do they know that couples may have to deal with obstacles in their relationship, or undergo deep healing before they are able to reap the benefits of a Tantric approach? Do they realize that everyone's experience is different but that the key to ecstasy is awareness--being here and now--and a loving heart? Yes to all these. Their work is based on personal experience, and they have met the obstacles they describe.

Tantra is intensely personal because it teaches the use of every situation in life to attain the natural honesty and spontaneity which reflect our true nature. The path takes commitment. If it is for you, and if you are active sexually, Pala Copeland and Al Link would be excellent coaches.

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sex with soul and sizzle!, November 9, 2005

By 

Terry and Ann (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soul Sex (Paperback)

We stumbled across "Soul Sex: Tantra for Two" when scanning through various sex manuals trying to learn more about sacred sex and tantra. Most books on tantra appeared to be cheap raunchy treatises on kama sutra sexual positions, or alternatively overbearing theses on mantras, meditation and complex Eastern Philosophy. But there in the stacks along with the sleaze and the sermons was a delightful alternative that beautifully wove together the concepts of sexuality, love, soulful living and spirituality. Although tantric sex is a hot theme throughout the manuscript, its focus is more on relationships, personality development and unconditional love. The key lessons this book stresses are about learning to trust, surrender and open one's heart to one's partner, and that these are the ways to spiritual lovemaking and transcendence. According to the authors, there is no goal in tantric lovemaking, rather only purpose, and that purpose is union, and through union each can achieve transcendence. Another key point is to realize that fantastic sex does not come from a great sex partner, but your own ability to let yourself go, and to focus your attention on the moment. True passion comes from a keen capacity to both give and receive love fully. There are also various creative practical exercises, within the book, aimed at reducing sexual inhibitions and negative sex attitudes, enhancing expressions of affection, solving relationship difficulties, reflecting on one's life goals, improving communication during lovemaking, ejaculation mastery for men and orgasm enrichment for women, promoting sexual playfulness, generating heightened sexual energy both individually and jointly, and learning to move that energy throughout one's body using relaxation, breathing, concentration, mantras and rituals. Perhaps one of the most genuine and refreshing aspects of this book is the gentle and seductive way that the authors, Pala Copeland and Al Link, have provided insights about tantric lovemaking by revealing various critical steps or missteps in their own ongoing tantric journey. The authors set by example the means to achieve sexual openness by opening their hearts to all who truly read this book. By so intimately sharing their knowledge and experience, Pala and Al show that they not only have achieved transcendence in their own sacred sexual practice, but allow this wisdom to transcend to their readers/students. We would recommend this book to any couple who want to grow together in their relationship and add more intimacy and passion to their sex life. The information in this book is priceless!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't judge a book by its cover, January 17, 2005

By 

William N. Gray "(Nowick)" (Victoria, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soul Sex (Paperback)

Soul Sex: Tantra for Two deserves a prize, both for the quality of its writing and the choice of material making up the content. No, it's not for titillation, but for holistic relationship building and physical/spiritual bonding that this book is valuable. If anything, the occasional black-and-white photos are downright unappealing. But on virtually every page is an inspiring and fresh articulation of just what is missing in so many of today's ordinary love relationships. The authors are well-versed in the literature of contemporary Tantric teachings, and they also bring an obviously well-experienced perspective from their own relationship journey. The book is so comprehensive, in fact, that often the writing skips rather too quickly over the many methods for deeper, more intimate and more spiritual connection. Or, maybe that's as it should be: not a blueprint for ecstasy, but rather a collection of points that might be stimulated further with the reader's own creativity. In the meantime, there are profound truths to chew on, such as the following:

The arbitrary separation of body, mind, and spirit in most cultures is an intellectual, psychological, and emotional tragedy of incalculable proportions. This error of judgment has been the cause of great suffering for countless generations of people. It is now time for sexual healing that can only be possible by reuniting sexuality and spirituality. (p. 15)