as far as is comfortable.
Now lie on your back with your buttocks touching the wall and your legs straight up, resting on the wall. Settle your spine into the floor. When you are comfortable, let your legs slide open, and exhale as you hold the stretch. Slowly slide your legs together again as you inhale. Do this several times.
Sit comfortably upright, with your legs opened out in a ‘v’ shape. If you are practising with your partner and are quite flexible, you can sit on the floor facing each other with your feet touching. Bend forward for a few minutes, loosening up the muscles and tendons before reaching forward to hold your partner’s hands. Using the weight of your partner as a gentle counterbalance, let your upper bodies rotate in a circle together. Be very careful not to pull too hard and strain a muscle. If you are practising alone, bend forward and place your palms on the floor between your legs. Allow your body to rotate as you gently push against your hands.
Squat!
Practising squatting can give you more stamina during active lovemaking postures where the woman is on top. Squatting releases tension and opens out your pelvis, stretching the muscles around the hips.
Move into a standing position with your feet hipwidth apart. Keep your feet parallel as you bend your knees and sit on your haunches, moving into a squatting position. Your weight should be on your heels, with your buttocks hovering just above the floor; be careful not to strain the tendons in your ankles. Sit for several minutes at least, breathing into your lower abdomen. With each out-breath, focus on relaxing all the muscles around your hips and pelvis. Let your pelvis open more with each inhalation, and release even more tension with every exhalation.
Swing your hips
Stand up and place your hands on your hips. Circle your hips as if you were tracing a hoop, easing all your muscles as you move in a gradually wider circle. Inhale for half a circle, and exhale for the other half. Pause with each in-breath, just before you begin each half-circle.
Try describing a horizontal figure of eight with your hips.
Release your upper back
Repeat the squat position described above.
As your hips and ankles ease into the posture, relax the top half of your body, letting your head hang forward and your arms drop loosely between your knees. Let all the tension you are carrying around your shoulders and upper back drop away.
Release your shoulders
If your shoulders still feel tense, slowly bring your upper body into a standing position again. Then bring both arms behind your back, holding the palm of one hand in the other, with your arms straight. As you bend forward your arms will fall away from your body.
Remain in this position, bent over with clasped hands, relaxing the tension around your shoulders as you breathe.
Corpse pose
In yoga, the corpse is the traditional name for the relaxation pose used at the end or beginning of a sequence of postures. In lovemaking, the corpse posture is when the man lies underneath his partner.
Lie flat on your back on the floor, with arms relaxed by your side and your palms facing upwards. To lengthen your back and straighten your spine, start with your knees bent upward and focus on relaxing the small of your back, settling it into the floor. When your back is comfortable, lengthen your neck by drawing your chin more toward your chest.
With your next few breaths, straighten your legs along the floor, with your feet slightly apart.
Spend several minutes relaxing. Concentrate on the breath moving through your airways, filling your throat, sternum and ribcage, and releasing all the muscular tension as you breathe out.
Make a bridge
Remain lying down for the four final postures.
With your knees bent upward and your arms along your side, slowly lift up your hips as you breathe out, letting the breath go right down into the centre of your pelvis. With each out-breath unfurl your back, lifting it from the floor. Leave your neck extended and in contact with the floor, but lift up your back right up to your shoulders. With every out-breath, release any tension you can feel. Think that you are offering your body to the universe; your body is a bridge for your energy to move outward.
Let your back relax and move slowly downwards. Begin with your shoulders, then release your back, hips and buttocks, so you return to the corpse pose.
Release
Bring up your knees, keeping the soles of your feet resting flat on the floor and the small of your back snuggling into the floor. Place your hands, palms down, over your heart area, and focus on breathing into your heart. Let your arms fully relax, with your elbows resting on the floor. Your fingertips should touch each other.
The butterfly
The butterfly describes the action of your bent knees, which move together and apart like butterfly wings. This exercise opens your pelvis to sexual energy.
Open your knees to each side as you breathe in, taking the breath all the way down to your pelvis. Exhale, and relax into the posture with a feeling of surrender.
Take another breath in and, as you exhale, press your feet together and down into the floor in order to bring your knees back to the upright position. If this is at all uncomfortable for your back or hips, support each thigh with cushions.
When you have familiarized yourself with this ‘out-in’ movement of your legs, switch your attention back to the rise and fall of your abdomen with your breath.
Surrender
The posture of surrender focuses your attention on the movement of sexual energy by drawing your breath in and out through your genitals.
Lie on your back, with your arms out to the side and your palms facing upwards. Let your knees drop to the floor on either side, placing the soles of both feet together. If you are not very flexible, don’t bend your knees quite so much, but leave the soles of your feet together. As you inhale, imagine that you are drawing in energy through your genitals and the base of your spine; in your mind’s eye, see it climbing up your spine and resting at the crown of your head as you finish inhaling. As you exhale, visualize that your breath drops back down to your genitals and streams out through them.
To finish
Repeat the corpse pose, and relax for at least five minutes.
Get a head start: meditation
Most meditation practices start with paying attention to your breath. Breath is the source of our vitality; it is how we live. In Sanskrit, the word for ‘breath’ means ‘spirit’. Breathing deeply also stimulates your unique energy-body, the internal, subtle energy that is stimulated through Tantric practice.
The best posture to meditate in is ‘easy pose’, which helps to keep your back upright while sitting for long periods. Sit with your feet crossed at the level of the calves so that each foot is under the opposite knee.
How to breathe
This breath meditation helps relax your body, and bring your mind to the present – it is this quality of presence that makes sex ecstatic, when you