Tantric and Dual Cultivation methods and techniques have many similarities once you remove their religious and cultural wrappings. There is one major difference, however. Tantra is primarily a method for raising Sexual Qi up the spine to create a state of ecstasy. For many people this can be a religious or spiritual experience as well as an incredibly powerful way of working with Sexual Qi. Dual Cultivation also works with moving Sexual Qi up the spine; the fundamental difference between the Tantric and the Taoist methods is that the Taoist techniques move the Sexual Qi back down the front of the body to complete the ‘Xiao Zhou Tian’. This circular movement of energy has been translated as ‘Microcosmic Orbit’, ‘Small Heavenly Circulation’ or ‘Small Orbit’. This circulation of Qi has a profound healing and energizing effect as the generated energy is packed or stored back into the body.

Tantra therefore focuses on the ecstatic release of sexual energy and is quasi-religious, sometimes at the expense of the physical body. Dual Cultivation, on the other hand, is a method of using sexual energy to promote good health and longevity as well as spiritual development. This is an important point that is very often not made clear, especially when reading Tantric source material and later Neo-Tantric books and other instructional material.

A Western Scientific Explanation for Sacred Sex

After all this research into Eastern philosophies, I was still left with the question of ‘How do the techniques of Sacred Sex actually work?’ I had studied the Taoist and Tantric texts at length and verified through solo and dual practice that the techniques function when practised diligently and as described. So it was clear that Eastern adepts had identified and accurately documented ways of managing Sexual Qi. But what is actually going on in our body when we use these techniques? I then found some research that sheds a great deal of light on the subject; John C. Lilly M.D. (1915-2001), one of the world’s foremost brain researchers, carried out some groundbreaking research involving the pre-optic nucleus portion in the brain that contains the sexual system. In males, this controls erection, orgasm, and ejaculation – each in a separate place – while farther back, in the mesencephalon, the three are integrated and fired off in sequence. He demonstrated that the orgasm and ejaculation could be triggered separately by stimulating these different brain areas.

So it appears that the Taoists and Tantrikas discovered, through a process of experimentation over hundreds of years, that it is possible to guide our internal electrical energy to different sections of our brain, just as Lilly proved with electrodes. There will be a lot of practical information later in the book about how to do this (without electrodes!). What about the female brain? There is a lot of evidence that points to clear differences in the structure of male and female brains. Most of this seems to indicate that women do not have the same ‘compartmentalization’ in their brains as men. The female brain is less concentrated and utilizes significant portions of both hemispheres when it is engaged in a task. This would explain why ‘relationship’ is so important to women! Later in the book I’ll show how to use this understanding in a practical way when learning how to generate Sexual Qi.

So how does this flow of Sexual Qi work? Well, thoughts are basically electrical signals. This means that each thought generates a very small amount of current. This current has an effect on the tissue of your brain. I saw an amazing picture recently of brain scans done on meditating Tibetan monks. These images show very clearly that meditating has a powerful, measurable effect on the brain. It’s not a great leap to imagine that if, instead of meditating, you direct your awareness elsewhere, such as visualizing a circuit through your body, you actually create a circuit. It may be quite a weak circuit to start with but what happens is that over time, and with practice, it gets stronger and stronger. If this circuit then stimulates areas of the brain that are connected to sexual and ‘spiritual’ pleasure, then you will experience exactly what the Taoists and Tantrikas describe.

It appears, therefore, that there is not only a large body of Eastern knowledge but also Western scientific research to confirm that the conscious direction of internal electrical energy can, and does, have a beneficial effect on our bio-electrical systems. My personal conclusion from my research is that I’d rather practice Sacred Sex than have an electrode inserted into my pre-optic nucleus! I did find it reassuring, however, to find that there is Western research to indicate that there is a scientific basis to Sacred Sex.

Putting It All Together

At the end of the day, I found that the Tantric tradition is very interesting for what it teaches about using Sexual Qi for ecstatic sexual experiences and spiritual development, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to say about health or grounding sexual energy on a day-to-day basis. The Taoist tradition, on the other hand, has a great deal to say about health and energy-grounding and therefore ended up as the cornerstone of our Sacred Sex work. However, the Neo-Tantrics do fill in an important gap. Many of the modern Tantra courses use skills and exercises from the Human Potential Movement that are very useful when learning how to deal with (and heal) some of the emotional and communication issues that inevitably arise when working with sex and relationship. Finally, Western healing science (both conventional and alternative) is making great strides in understanding how our bio-chemical systems work. This book is a practical synthesis from all four of the above traditions.

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