Susan Crain Bakos
Reviewer: R.W. Hulme
In the introductory chapters to The New Tantra, author Susan Crain Bakos does an unbelievably efficient job systematically alienating all her potential readers. In attacking old school Tantra devotees—followers of what she labels ‘your Mama’s Tantra’—and then scornfully deriding practitioners of the ‘inpure’ Neo-Tantra, Bakos successfully insults anybody picking up her book who’s got more than a passing interest in Tantric sex.
‘Some Tantra practitioners,’ her emphasis added, ‘are smug, righteous, pompous and judgmental.’ She lives up to every one of those adjectives herself. First she criticizes the ‘True Believers,’ who believe there’s ‘only one true path’ to Tantra and have formed ‘an exclusive, self-righteous club.’ She then goes on to hypocritically outline her own ‘one true path’ of Tantra, as self-righteous as any of the ones she’s criticized.
So if you have any experience or knowledge of Tantric sex, you’ll find it very difficult to force yourself through the opening chapters of The New Tantra. If you can stomach it, though, the book does get a lot better.
Despite her dismal opening, the concept behind The New Tantra turns out to be very promising. Bakos advocates taking some of the practices and techniques of traditional Tantric sex and adapting them to our fast-paced, goal-orientated Western sexuality. Tantric sex needn’t be about finding some kind of ‘whacked out,’ all-consuming bliss, she reveals; rather it can be used to ‘make sex more focused, intense and orgasmic.’
The New Tantra, it turns out, is Tantric Sex pared down to the bare essentials, without all the fluffy language and confused Eastern spirituality. Susan Crain Bakos outlines the practical philosophy behind Tantric sex and some easy and practical ways to improve your lovemaking through the application of simple Tantric practices.
Some of these are deceptively simple. Eye contact? Kissing? They seem astonishingly obvious, but for many people, especially long-term couples, their sex life has lost some of its emotional intensity and the basic Tantric techniques Bakos recommends can help couples instantly reconnect.
But Bakos also delves a little deeper into the often misunderstood philosophy behind Eastern sexuality, giving some practical instructions on how to increase arousal and intensify orgasm. She outlines some techniques for women and men to achieve ‘sexual miracles’ like multiple orgasm, the ‘full-body’ climax and powerful breathing techniques to increase blood flow.
What she doesn’t achieve quite so well is keeping her thoughts progressing in a logical and organized fashion. ‘Fire breathing,’ for example, is a breath-control technique she requires you to use during several Tantric techniques. Unfortunately, she doesn’t explain how to ‘breath fire’ until several chapters afterwards! But if you’re willing to flick back and forth and make sense of her slightly disjointed thought process, the potential and simplicity of her techniques is quite exciting.
Bakos concludes The New Tantra with some of her favorite sexual positions, as demonstrated by an attractive couple in some beautifully shot, full-page photographs. At 141 pages, The New Tantra is a good sized coffee-table book and the copy and photographs are wholesome enough not to offend any houseguests. The techniques she outlines seem practical and potentially very exciting. Although she derides traditional Tantric practitioners as ‘midlife couples who aren’t dating in the city,’ it’s these people who’ll find her book the most rewarding—certainly not her intended (i.e. cooler) audience of ‘modern lovers’ with ‘busy, complex lives.’
Susan Crain Bako’s smug, self-important style of writing will undoubtedly leave a rather unpleasant taste in your mouth, but the woman does seem to know what she’s talking about. The New Tantra ultimately delivers what it promises, making modern-day Tantric sex ‘simple and sexy’ even for the newcomer.
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