Getting Off by
“Thinking Off”
I practice yoga. Sometimes. And after what I am about to share with you, perhaps not enough.
Yoga, after all, is one of life’s little pleasures. It helps Me to enjoy My body . . . and keeps Me lithe, supple and sensual.
It is also now, I see, a movement with a secret: Yoga began as a sex cult. (Yum. I should have known!)
So reports the New York Times, anyway, in an article covering accusations of “sexual impropriety” on the part of the founder and leader of a popular school of modern yoga.
Such charges are of no interest to me. There’s nothing improper about “sexual impropriety” among consenting adults, after all. Life would be awfully dull if people were all neat and proper.
No, what interests Me are yoga’s origins . . . and the delicious notion of getting off by “thinking off.”
Here’s the tasty “juice” of the article:
. . . . Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult — an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise.
Hatha yoga — the parent of the styles now practiced around the globe — began as a branch of Tantra. In medieval India, Tantra devotees sought to fuse the male and female aspects of the cosmos into a blissful state of consciousness.
The rites of Tantric cults, while often steeped in symbolism, could also include group and individual sex. One text advised devotees to revere the female sex organ and enjoy vigorous intercourse. Candidates for worship included actresses and prostitutes, as well as the sisters of practitioners.
Hatha originated as a way to speed the Tantric agenda. It used poses, deep breathing and stimulating acts — including intercourse — to hasten rapturous bliss. In time, Tantra and Hatha developed bad reputations. The main charge was that practitioners indulged in sexual debauchery under the pretext of spirituality.
Early in the 20th century, the founders of modern yoga worked hard to remove the Tantric stain. They devised a sanitized discipline that played down the old eroticism for a new emphasis on health and fitness.
B. K. S. Iyengar, the author of “Light on Yoga,” published in 1965, exemplified the change. His book made no mention of Hatha’s Tantric roots and praised the discipline as a panacea that could cure nearly 100 ailments and diseases. And so modern practitioners have embraced a whitewashed simulacrum of Hatha.
But over the decades, many have discovered from personal experience that the practice can fan the sexual flames. Pelvic regions can feel more sensitive and orgasms more intense.
Science has begun to clarify the inner mechanisms. In Russia and India, scientists have measured sharp rises in testosterone — a main hormone of sexual arousal in both men and women. Czech scientists working with electroencephalographs have shown how poses can result in bursts of brainwaves indistinguishable from those of lovers. More recently, scientists at the University of British Columbia have documented how fast breathing — done in many yoga classes — can increase blood flow through the genitals. The effect was found to be strong enough to promote sexual arousal not only in healthy individuals but among those with diminished libidos.
In India, recent clinical studies have shown that men and women who take up yoga report wide improvements in their sex lives, including enhanced feelings of pleasure and satisfaction as well as emotional closeness with partners.
At Rutgers University, scientists are investigating how yoga and related practices can foster autoerotic bliss. It turns out that some individuals can think themselves into states of sexual ecstasy — a phenomenon known clinically as spontaneous orgasm and popularly as “thinking off.”
The Rutgers scientists use brain scanners to measure the levels of excitement in women and compare their responses with readings from manual stimulation of the genitals. The results demonstrate that both practices light up the brain in characteristic ways and produce significant rises in blood pressure, heart rate and tolerance for pain — what turns out to be a signature of orgasm . . . .
Notice the similarities to hypnosis. Both yoga and hypnosis involve the mind taking control of bodily functions that are outside the realm ordinary consciousness; both share relaxation as a key fundamental. And both involve worship of the Feminine. It makes Me wonder what those brain scanners would find among My hypno submissives and slaves when I command them to “think off.”
Have we any yoga practitioners here? Have any of you had any experience “thinking off?” Has your tolerance of (and appetite for) pain increased? And how do your yoga-induced erotic experiences compare with your hypnotic erotic experiences?
