We’re always looking for ways to last longer in the sack, and with women becoming more demanding, many of us have our work cut out. So how about Tantric sex, the ancient Eastern discipline that teaches men, among other things, how to delay ejaculation and have an eight – hour orgasm? It works for Sting and how soft is her? Australian Penthouse grabbed its chakras and incense sticks and entered this mystical world for the lowdown on a misunderstood and untapped sexual elixir. Watch out ladies!

I’m sitting on a couch in a cosy apartment in a suburb in Sydney’s North Shore, not knowing what quite to expect. I;m here for a private session with Tantric Goddess Michelle. She works for Kerry and Diane’s LoveWorks which provides experts in Tantric Practices.

Michelle begins by making me feel comfortable and we review some of the exercises we will be doing. We then go into an adjoining room, which she calls her “temple”, where candles and incense burn and soft music plays.

“It’s a sacred space, which creates a warm and intimate feeling,” says Michelle as she changes into transparent clothing and bikini bottoms. She hands me a robe. Over the next hour and a bit she shows me how to move my body in Tantric ways that allow the seual energy to flow through us both. She shows me breathing exercises and ways to release my thoughts so that nothing distracts me and I’m kept connected and “present” in the moment.

While we are in Yab Yum together – a close embrace where she sits astride me face-to-face but with no penetration – there is a connection between us on all levels iin what can only be described as a sexual-spiritual experience. Before you mock me, read on.

Tantra means different things to the many people who espouse its benefits. The proponents of Tantra – first practiced in ancient China by horny old emporers with a harem of concubines to satisfy – take a ‘holistic’ approach to sex, practicing ejaculation control and directing the energy, or ‘chakras’, generated in lovemaking away from the genitals and to other parts of the body so that sex can continue for as long as both partners want.

Ask any bloke if he would want to know how he can extend his lovemaking, to enjoy sexual intercourse over and over again in the one evening, or at least as long as he or his partner want to, and the answer would be a big yes.

Now imagine adding another dimension, where you could tap into what a woman wants and feels, and move that energy you produce during lovemaking throughout your body and hers. But wait, there’s more. How about having her beg for more and you being able to comply.

The 2003 National Surbey of Sexual Behaviour and Attitudes in Australia, published earlier this year, showed that among the more than 19,000 respondents to the Australian Study of Health and Relationships, 48% of men and 72% of women in relationships confessed to experiencing sexual difficulty in the past year(low sex drive, premature ejaculation, impotence). A difficulty they said persisted.

Over the years men have turned to all sorts of potions, lotions and pills to address these difficulties, and a brave few have even sought the help of a sex therapist (men are historically reluctant to seek help for their sexual problems).

But with high-profile celebrities such as pop singer Sting singing Tantra’s praises (not to mention his widely quoted boast that he’s able to make love to a woman for eight hours straight) more men and their partners are turning to Tantra therapists, like Kerry and Diane.

Internationally recognized Tantra teachers, they have taught across Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Bali, Italy and Spain.

Both teach techniques to extend lovemaking and master ejaculation control. With the assistance of “sex goddesses” under their employ (women trained in the art of Tantra), they claim to show clients how to turn pleasure into ecstasy. They show men how to satisfy a woman on every level – body, heart and soul – and “give them the keys to the whole body orgasm and female sexual ecstasy”/

A common complaint from many women from the survey is that men are not taking their time making love. They’re “making their dick the centre of attention” or, conversely “trying too hard” to make the woman reach orgasm. Tantra addresses this problem.

“Most women don’t just want a stud in bed. Most men think they do, But women want to feel they’re being made love to, not just pounded on”. Kerry explains “Tantra shows you how to make love to a woman, how to get the energy more into your heart. How to make a woman feel special.”

Kerry says that men can learn methods of making love for extended periods of time.

“If you practice the skills, you get the ability to last longer and if you practice them long enough you also have a way of addressing sexual problems that often happen in older age like waning sexual virility and losing erections”, he says. “But it goes beyond the physical. We’re starting to move into the energy exchanging that happens when we make love with someone.”

Kerry sees Tantra as a holistic approach to sexuality, where men can move away from the preoccupation of amking a woman come and concentrate more on learning to “direct energy to your partner to connect with her spiritually and emotionally, as well as physically”.

This involves breathing exercises, learning to control the PC muscle (the key to ejaculation), concentrating on the out-stroke, minimizing distractions and using your hands to bring each other to higher states of pleasure through the use of Tantric massage.

“As men, we’re the provider. We’re putting energy out and trying to get her somewhere,” says Kerry. “That’s good. But to expand the ways you make love you must also learn to absorb the feminine energy. To drink deeply of it because it’s a lifeforce.

“It’s what those ancient Chinese Emporers realized. What they discovered – and didn’t share with the masses – was that sex is like a herbal tonic, If you’re having a sexual connection with a woman, it gives you energy.

“Some men only have to look at a beautiful woman walk by or look at the cover of Australian Penthouse and they’ve got energy. But most men don’t know how to absorb that energy. When they’re inside the woman they’re thinking about what they’re going to have to put out to get her to come.

“When they’re older they’re still trying to put it out like when they were younger. So they lose energy during sex. And after a while, they don’t want to come home, especially if they have a younger woman. They’re out playing golf more often because it’s embarrassing. It lowers your self-image as a man if you start worrying about not being able to keep your woman happy.”

Kerry says Tantra can address the often mismatched sexual drives of men and their partners, a difficulty cited by a large percentage of female respondents to the sex survey.

With Tantra I teach pulling energy into yourself, so instead of men only concentrating on their in-stroke, I get them to concentrate on their out-stroke. You go gently in and  draw into yourself on the out-stroke. Like you’re filling it up and drinking it.

“It’s a way of giving yourself so much energy, and in doing some of the strong breathing practices internally you can spread the energy out of the genitals up through your body and you have a release – everything relasex, and you feel satisfied but not drained. It’s like an internal orgasm. It’s not as powerful as an external one, but you can do that one many times.

“It’s not like stopping and not coming, because if you just stop you’ll get pains in the scrotum and may end up with prostate troubles.”

Kerry says most men need to be shown. To wit, he and Diane have written a book, Sexual Secrets for Men, and produced a DVD, The Secrets of Sacred Sex, as an introduction to Tantra.

But there’s nothing better than getting actual experience with a woman who knows what she’s doing says Kerry.

“That sort of woman is very rare, that’s why we created this work with the Tantric goddesses” he says. “It’s like learning how to dance. You can read about it, but if you experience it you’re more likely to ask your own partner for a dance.”

Kerry says that more men need to realize that sex for most women, particularly in a committed relationship, is more than just a physical exercise.

“There may be women out there adopring the male role, saying. ‘Who am I going to fuck next?’ Which is good because at least they’re starting to accept their sexuality. Fifty years ago they couldn’t say that. But generally, through lovemaking, women want connection on more levels than just getting pounded on.

“Men need that little bit of something extra to keep a woman interested. One thing you can do is develop your lovemaking abilities to address things that other guys aren’t doing. So you’ve got a unique feature about you.

“Or you can drive around in your Porsche and you can get them that way too. Eventually, even with a Porsche, if you stay with the same method of love making – the pounding away – it’ll get to a point where eventually she wants something else”.

Michael, a single man in his late forties and a client at LoveWorks agrees.

“It’s all about communication and understanding why a  woman does what she does,” he says. “I’ve been to three sessions and I’ve reached the stage where I can put the things I’ve learned into practice.

“I see it as an investment in myself. It’s not like going to see a hooker. Tantra puts you in touch with yourself and teaches you about Yin and Yang, positive and negative. It’s very helpful on a spiritual as well as physical level.

“At first I talked to Kerry over the phone and he gave me chapters from his book to read. The goal was to increase my spiritual sense of everything and to achieve a better understanding of what a woman wants and needs.

“The more you know the more you have at your disposal. You learn to understand why women do particular things. Tantra is about knowing how to control sexual energy and spreading it. For most men sex is often about ejaculating. It’s better to give her a little of what she wants, rather than what you think she wants.”

Kerry says Tantra is accessible to everyone, not just the New-Age brigade. There are no real pre-requisites, other than an open mind.

“Tantra doesn’t require a big penis. If you’ve got one, good luck to you. You make the best of what you’ve got. If you’re a good lover, that’s not the only thing that counts. If you can extend the energy when you’re making love to a woman, it’s not just the penis she feels – she feels her body too.”

What you get in Tantra is to play in that earlier field of sensual play with a woman fro an hour, not to get somewhere but to enjoy her enjoying you.

A key to making her feel this way says Kerry, is to spend more time on “warming her water”. A common complaint from women is that men don’t pay enough attention to foreplay.

“A good lover knows how to warm a woman’s water and knows also how to pleasure her for pleasure’s sake. Often intercourse starts with foreplay – even if we don’t feel like it – then we get into the intercourse and then we try to get her to come and then we come ourselves. This is the so-called perfect intercourse. But what you learn in Tantra is to play in that earlier field of sensual play with a woman for an hour, not to get somewhere, but to enjoy her enjoying you.

“If you warm a woman’s water like that, and learn how to bring her into high pleasurable states for elongated periods of time, that in itself is lovemaking.

“In Tantra we expand the ways we make love. You learn some lovely ways to massage a woman in her body. In Kundalini (sexual and spiritual energy) for example, you use your hands to take a woman into peaks of energy, higher and higher and start connection with the G-spot area.”

Kerry says that clients usually come in for four sessions with a Tantric goddess. A one and a half hour session with one of the women as well as the book is priced at $280 +GST. There are also a number of other programs catering for individuals and couples.

“Most clients are okay around sexuality and they just want to explore more. If they have a real serious situation they’re probably better going to a medical practitioner.

“The average person comes to a point where maybe because they’re older or they’re under stress, they don’t maintain their erection as long. So we’ll talk about that if it’s an issue.”

“If the’re on the phone and they’re just looking for a fancy scres. I’ll tell them there’s a million sex workers out there, go see them.”

The client is recommended to take sessions with a Tantric goddess, like Michelle, who told Australian Penthouse that she stumbled onto Tantra by accident.

“At the time I was exploring my own sexuality and became really comfortable with that and I thought there has to be more to sex thatn just going through the motions and being performance-based.

“I read an article on Tantra a couple of years ago and then started reading up on it. Then I found Kerry and Diane.”

Michelle says there’s not real typical client who she sees.

“There are those who come in for a specific reason such as premature ejaculation or erection problems, to clients who have practiced Tantra in the past and just want to expand their knowledge and techniques. Others just want to learn how to please a partner who is becoming frustrated.

“A lot of men may have been in relationships and weren’t able to last the distance they would have liked. Quite often you find if the relationship ends, and a woman has been sexually frustrated all that time, it can become bitter at the end and certain things come out. Guys get burnt. And there are single guys who say, “I’m here because I have had partners whose bells I haven’t rung. Can you show me how to be a better lover?”

“The first thing I do is try to work out why. Whether it’s just their confidentce or that they really don’t have any idea what a woman needs. Generally, if a man can have confidence over his own sexual energy to begin with – and not worry about when he’s going to come, or whether he can sustain his erection – that’s a really good start. He’s got the time and the confidence not to be stressing and preoccupied with that and be more present for his partner.

“Men’s thoughts tend to run a lot faster when they add sexual energy, so I teach thought release and ways of putting that into practice when you have sexual energy, to become aware of what you’re feeling.”

In the first session the Tantric goddess will teach the client the basic tools – controlling the PC muscle, breathing and creating energy. As things begin to flow easier, the clients puts those tools into practice through Tantric massage. This show a client how different it is to be in control of your energy and have orgasms without ejaculating.

“We also spend time on the spiritual side, especially if that’s an area a client is interested in,” Michelle says. “It’s quite sexual, but there’s no intercourse.”

Which begs the question, with so many physical hands-on techniques being learned, does the client ever ejaculate in a session?

“Sometimes in session four,” Michelle says. “We’re teaching men more about how to move their energy, which is almost like retraining ourselves. Usually when we have a build-up of sexual energy and it gets too much we ejaculate and get rid of our energy. This is teaching you how to do something totally different.”

Asked to give her opinion on where so many men are going wrong in satisfying their partners, Michelle says, “Men are very performance –based and goal oriented in most aspects of life, especially the bedroom. That can leave a woman feeling quite unsatisfied. Which is probably the opposite to what most men think – that orgasm is the be-all and end-all for a woman and that their job is finished after that. A lot of the time, if a woman’s being pressured to orgasm, she’s going to fake it, so they’re being left unfulfilled.

“Orgasm is the icing on a very nice cake. If the pressure’s taken off for a woman to orgasm, chances are she’s going to anyway. Or it will be more fulfilling and allow her to be more free with her sexuality, open up the lines of communication and focus on showing him ways to please her.”