Increase intimacy, connection, and joy in your relationships with these simple Tantric practices.
Love Hack # 1: Honouring, increases intimacy
When you do a Tantric practice, you begin by honouring your partner. You acknowledge and appreciate each another.
For instance, the honouring could be appreciation of your partner for doing the practice with you. Or it may be for some more personal and unique qualities you appreciate within your relationship.
This is especially powerful!…and I’ll tell you why…
When it comes to positive feelings in your relationships, you have a wired-in uphill battle!
The ‘negativity bias’ in your primal brain:
Your brain makes a lot more ‘noise’ about anything threatening than it does about anything positive and pleasant!
This is a survival mechanism in the ’primal’ part of your brain.
OK, you do need this for survival. You can’t afford to ignore real threats, however, love and intimacy do naturally involve feelings of vulnerability.
If you experience vulnerability as frightening or threatening…and let’s face it, most of us do, at least some of the time!… your primal brain will be operating in overdrive.
The more you want to be loving, conversely, you can become hypersensitive and overly focussed on negativity.
John Gottman’s famous 5:1 ratio:
John Gottman’s famous 5:1 ’magic ratio’ is a great example of this fact in action.
For a relationship to be happy and stable, you need a minimum of 5 positive experiences for every 1 negative experience within that relationship.
Think about that! 5 positive experiences doesn’t even get you ahead of the game, it just balances out that one misunderstanding!
Honouring quiets this primal brain.
It helps both partners feel seen, valued and safe.
Honouring allows you to experience the vulnerability of intimacy as deep, pleasurable connection, rather than as a potential threat.
It brings you closer together instead of pushing you apart.
As you practice verbally honouring one another, you may find, as I have, that it naturally becomes part of your day to day relating.
This is potent fuel for lasting love!
Love Hack # 2: Eye Gazing, deeper intimacy
You know the saying, ‘The eyes are the window to the Soul’…
Tantra teaches that you exchange a lot of energy with others through your eyes.
What passes between us through our eyes is profound.
Eye gazing is incredibly intimate. Whatever you’re feeling, love, fear, desire…it’s all there in your eyes.
Eye contact for just 30-60 seconds releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone.
The presence of this hormone actually produces feelings of love, connection and pleasure!
That’s one of the reasons eye gazing is a Love Hack…that is a big effect for very little effort, right?!?
When you combine honouring with eye gazing, you imprint powerful positive feelings and associations about your partner and your relationship directly into your brain and cellular memory.
Eye gazing, for even 30-60 seconds, releases Oxytocin, the bonding hormone, producing feelings of
love, connection and pleasure.
A step into the Mystery…
When you gaze deeply into someone’s eyes, you can catch a glimpse of their very essence.
You feel their energy and their uniqueness.
This direct energetic experience, beyond what your rational mind can grasp, is a powerful reminder of the mystery you each are.
This is a step into a deeper kind of intimacy.
At times, very interesting experiences can arise. For example, you may see your partner’s face change, a stream of different faces may be seen.
This magical experience similarly invites deep, soul level connection.
Love Hack # 3: Tantric Breath, The intimacy of merging
The power of directing your breath is well known and used in meditation, yoga, and martial arts, as well as in medicine and psychology.
Deep breathing brings about the relaxation response, calming the nervous system and easing anxiety, depression, pain and more.
Tantric breathing harmonises and aligns the partners’ nervous systems.
Partners’ breathing, heart beats and even brainwaves can synchronise, creating deep attunement and connection.
Breath is also used, along with sound and movement, to get move energy in your body. This makes you feel alive, and is pleasurable and healing.
With practice this Kundalini, life force energy, can move upward through your energy channels, leading to the opening of pathways to bliss, union and Oneness.
Experiencing such states with an intimate partner is one of the most joyous, magical and intimate experiences I can think of and is well worth the practice!!
Love Hack # 4: Conscious Touch, expanding intimacy
Human touch is a language of the body that transcends words.
Touch can take you beyond the mind, into the realm of pure presence, spontaneity and passion.
Touch can be nurturing, pleasurable, ecstatic.
It can create deep feelings of intimacy and bonding, and has many physical and mental health benefits.
The use of conscious touch to relax your body can take awareness, patience and honesty.
This is because sometimes touch is not experienced as pleasurable.
When touch is not enjoyable:
When you touch, or are touched, in a careless or mechanical way, it can create withdrawal and distance instead of closeness.
This can happen when when one or both partners are not fully present to what they are doing and their partner’s response.
Additionally, sensitivities and trauma held in the body can be activated by touch. Emotional and/or physical reactions you didn’t expect and may not understand can come up.
What is conscious touch?
Conscious touch exercises are done when both participants are already present, connected and attuned to one another.
This creates a safe, compassionate and non-judgemental space in which to explore.
Usually you and your partner will take turns to give and recieve touch.
The touch is slow and deliberate so that there is time for communication between you.
You respect one another’s experience, feedback and boundaries so that over time, this practice opens the door to the deeper, more pleasurable and expansive experiences that touch can ignite.
A final word about Tantra:
Tantra is an ancient spiritual path to Enlightenment that seeks not to transcend life but, rather, to embrace it fully.
Practicing Tantra, you awaken in and through all aspects of life, including passion and relationships.
The benefits I’ve talked about in these love hacks are the tip of the iceberg.
They are, in fact, some of the natural side effects of engaging your relationship fully, openly and curiously.
I wish you a joyous and passionate journey as you learn more about Tantra,
Martina D
Author: Martina Duel Dip Couns, BScPT is a Counsellor and Workshop facilitator with a life-long curiosity and passion for understanding and healing past wounds that limit us and creating healthy, joyous relationships.
Martina consistently delivers refreshing new points of view on all aspects of love, intimacy and human connection.
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