Customer Reviews

The Tao of Sexual Massage

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book does a good job of explaining not only technique, but also the philosophy and purpose of each movement. It's illustrations are excellent.

My wife has experienced a complete renewal of her body since starting just a few sessions ago. It is enjoyable, life enhancing, energizing, healing and a truly integrating experience for each of us as individuals, and as a couple.

I recommend it for anyone who wants to experience greater self-acceptance and intamacy with their partners.

This is the only do-book that I've read on tantra, and I've read quite a few, which delivers immediate results. If you practice the exercises in this book you'll wonder why TV has ever been invented...

This is the most erotic, sensual experience you can share with a partner. Use the massage techniques and find true bliss!

There are plenty of sensual massage books around with a sacred aspect to them, in fact there are more and more of them, and they're not all bad by any means. This one though has always stood apart.

It's *not* just the techniques themselves. Many are truly excellent, and some very different from regular approaches. The cleverness of the light pummellings, for example, that are used to arouse chi, move and mix it... these aren't things you will find elsewhere.

It's also *not* just the philosophy. Again that's great -- a lot of honesty, a lot of psychological acumen, and a great deal of real spiritual understanding which is more and more entirely absent from modern 'tantric' ideas. Particularly appreciated is the clever psychological description of the flip-flops around puritanism and hedonism (with neither very helpful/balanced), the ethical and adult approach to fidelity, and the genuine understanding of Mysterious Conjunction. This book will work alongside any practice that understands things like the microcosmic orbit, and show you new ways work with your meridians too. A tip: if you do know how to move chi already, take the time to understand the *intention* behind some of what is shown in the actual massage techniques themselves.

But what really impresses about this book is the presentation. Try though they might to resist the modern commercial sex aesthetic (and they do try), more recent books like Charla Hathaway's Erotic Massage can't help but present their models as pornographic. In terms of poses, looks and way of being gazed at, the common denominator is Hollywood and narcissistic marketed 'fascinating passion', of a kind with which I'm sure you're very familiar.

But this book's attitude, though it really isn't that old (1992), reveals a world that now seems to have vanished from our culture. The models certainly aren't unpleasant-looking, but there is nothing commercial or fake or over-glamorous about them either. They pose, not as porn stars, but as people -- dare I say it, people with intentions towards spiritualizing their bond and opening themselves to something sacred, rather than just having a good time and trying to fulfill the promises this culture makes about sex. They even have the goodness to be *shy* with each other, not covered in a wall of 'professional' intimacy the way economics has forced on most photographed lovemaking -- and many human beings full-time of course.

I think the word I may be looking for is *innocent*. In line with its philosophy of approaching sex for energetic and spiritual motives without fantasy and expectation, or daft images of what it takes to be a 'good lover', this book is as sensitive to the real intimacy needs of its readers as it would have those readers be with each other's. I'm not sure if the days of mainstream books talking about 'reframing your entire sensual experience as a form of meditational practice', or teaching 'sexual massage' which includes a whole section of energetic refinement for those who don't want to have intercourse, aren't gone forever. But this is a great record of a time when it was really possible to understand these distinctions, and when selling took second place to beauty and integrity. This book still has the Tao.

Waste of money. Not really a good guide for massage. Massage techniques are quite general, noting special about these techniques.

Better off buying a regular massage book.