Marrying Sex With Soul

Sex used to be about sex—and sometimes about love. “Soul” used to be about church—and sometimes about spirituality. But today, in a combination that Baby Boomer spouses could never have imagined, couples are increasingly looking for sexual relationships that include spiritual connection, while spiritual seekers are consciously making their sex lives part of their spiritual odyssey.

This change in emphasis is chronicled in a fascinating new anthology, The Marriage of Sex and Spirit (http://www.MarriageOfSexAndSpirit.com). It contains sage advice from many best-selling authors, including John Gray, Riane Eisler, Deepak Chopra, Margot Anand, Wayne Dyer, and others. It embraces perspectives from the theological (Thomas Moore) to the mythological (John Welwood) to the downright raunchy (David Deida). Collectively, they have some good advice about engendering a spiritual-sexual connection in a relationship. Among their tips are these:

Change Your Life Script

We all act out of concepts of who we are: The Temptress, the Good Guy, the Amazon Warrior Woman, the Rescuing Knight, and so on. We establish these archetypes early in life, and live out of the scripts they provide. When we’re in a crisis, or in a new relationship, we often pull out the old reliable script and read our familiar lines—even if they’ve brought disaster every time in the past.

Yet our scripts are choices. They are not engraved into our personalities; they can be changed. They are difficult to change, but with effort, we can identify our scripted behaviors. How? We are comfortable with them. They feel familiar to us, while other behavior seems strange when we try it. Throwing away the old script and picking up a new, and less dysfunctional one, is an act of great courage. Under pressure, acting differently is difficult, but with practice, by sticking to it, we can make the new and better script a habit.

Slow, Slower, Slowest

In an African village, a friend of mine was renting a bicycle from a bush peddlar. “It has three gears,” the tribesman explained: “Slow, slower, slowest.” That’s a good metaphor to apply to sex, even when we’re hot and bothered and want to jump right into it.

The beauty of slow is that it works whether your sex life is like a pile of cold ashes, or like a raging inferno. A long slow session of non-sexual touching and massage can often kindle desire where there was none before. It can also prolong the pleasure when the desire to jump into intercourse is unbearably strong. Either way, slowing down forces you to connect with the spiritual and soul aspects of your partner, and integrates them with the sex act.

Find the Diamonds Among the Gravel

Your old relationships may have been full of pain or even abuse. Learning to find the lessons in them, and growing from them, has many benefits. One is that once you’ve learned a lesson (like boundaries) the hard way, you’re unlikely to forget it. Another is that if you consciously find the good in people and situations in your past, you are training yourself to focus on the good qualities in your current partner.

When you look beyond the gravel of your partner’s ego and personality, you can often see the deeper and more spiritual aspects. Chances are, those are the very diamonds that attracted you to that person in the first place. Their personality patterns might annoy you no end. But if you focus on those patterns, you just buy yourself more annoyance. And when you shift your perspective to their soul qualities, all the passion of the earliest parts of the relationship might just come rushing back.

Breathing From Your Heart

New scientific research is showing that the neurological loop between heart and brain is strengthened by moving your attention into the center of your chest. When you shift your focus from thinking (say, during an argument, or during foreplay) to your heart, physiological changes occur that make you feel more integrated. You inhabit your body more fully. It is especially effective to imagine your breath coming into your heart on the inbreath, and leaving your heart on the outbreath. Such “heart breathing” can shift the dynamics of an argument, center you during an excess of sexual passion, and bring your attention back to your partner when it’s wandering somewhere else.

Any of these techniques can help change a relationship. Some techniques work better for some people, others work better for others. Play around to find the ones that work best for you. And just doing something—anything—differently from your usual pattern shifts the dynamics of a couple, and opens up a space for fresh and healthier interactions.

© 2007 Elite Books. Permission is granted to any site or individual to reproduce this article online provided a link to http://www.MarriageOfSexAndSpirit.com and this copyright notice is included in such reproduction.