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If you create a Venn diagram with the word “sex” on one side and “yoga” on the other, you might find some overlaps: there's deep breathing, pretzel-y positions, Tantric roots.
In fact, a quick Google search of “sex and yoga” will pull up hundreds of tips for incorporating yoga into sex, and vice versa. You’ll find a YouTube video of Christopher Gladwell, the author of Engaged Yoga, explaining how we can use yoga strategies like asana and meditation to open up our bodies "bliss lines." He opines that this can help you go "from a genital orgasm" to a "whole-body orgasm," even a whole-cosmos orgasm." Sounds intriguing and fun, right? Who doesn't want an orgasm so strong it can be felt from their fingertips into the cosmos?
Traditionally and historically, however, yoga and sex have very little to do with each other, according to David Gordon White, the author of Kiss of the Yogini: "Tantric Sex" in its South Asian Contexts. There are a few X-rated, ancient connections, but they're fairly scant — and when they do exist, they don't resemble Gladwell's method at all.
"A couple of medieval yogic texts refer to a practice called vajroli mudra, in which following sex, the male partner draws his semen back into his penis,” Gordon White writes in an email. “The assumption appears to be that by controlling his breaths yogically, he can use his penis as if it were a vacuum cleaner. He not only draws back his semen, but also some of his partner's sexual emission (and/or menstrual blood), which is considered to be essential to male practitioners because the female emission contains a divine essence that males do not naturally possess… But that's about it in terms of any authentic (or pre-1960s) connection between yoga and sex.”
While that particular move may not be of interest, yoga and sex can be brought together in a modern, inclusive, fun, and incredibly pleasurable way. Enter: sex positions that incorporate yoga. Here are a few of our favorites that'll help you get your bliss on.
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