SUZI GODSON
I have to admit the whole tantra, mantra, Tao thing eludes me. Regular readers
may remember that the last time we got a question such as this I hauled my
poor husband to a Tantric sex workshop with disastrous results. This time I
decided to play safe and immerse myself in the Ancient Chinese texts.
I now know that Tao dates back to the Tang dynasty. The Taoist way of making
love centres on semen retention. According to Tao teachings, ejaculation is
an outward explosion of jing, the essence of primordial energy. The
temporary feeling of depletion that a man feels after ejaculation - when he
rolls over and goes to sleep while you lock up, feed the cat, turn off the
lights and brush your teeth - occurs because a man has used up his reserves
of jing. Taoists believe that the loss of ejaculate equates to the loss of
vital life force and this results in premature ageing, disease and general
fatigue.
Female orgasm, on the other hand, is considered to be an inward explosion.
When a woman reaches orgasm, the sexual secretions she ejaculates are
retained within her body. However, her partner can then absorb the jing that
she creates to boost his reserves. It smacks a little of misogyny,
particularly when woman is referred to as the “enemy” in Taoist texts,
before graduating to being called “other”, “crucible” or “stove”, but I
don't mean to be cynical.
There seems to be mounting scientific evidence that regular ejaculation is
beneficial. Two studies, one from Melbourne, Australia, and another from the
National Cancer Institute in Bethseda, Maryland, have linked regular
ejaculation to a lower risk of prostate cancer. In the Australian study, men
who had ejaculated more than five times a week in their twenties were
one-third less likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer later in life.
Another study of 918 men, aged 45 to 59, from Caerphilly in South Wales, which
was carried out over ten years, found that mortality risk was 50 per cent
lower for men who had a high orgasmic frequency, either with or without
partners.
Graham Giles, of the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, who carried out the
Australian study, speculates that ejaculation prevents carcinogens building
up in the prostate gland by flushing out the ducts. His findings suggest a
parallel between the development of prostate cancer and breast cancer.
Lactating is known to reduce a woman's risk of breast cancer and Giles
suspects that it, too, may be down to the flushing out of carcinogens.
Although it looks as if ejaculation has potential health benefits for men,
there doesn't seem to be much evidence that semen retention is dangerous.
Indeed, the internet is awash with blissed out men who hold it all in at
orgasm and rave about the increased focus and energy they gain. Mind you,
the internet is also awash with blissed out men who let it all out at orgasm
and say exactly the same.
Suzi Godson is the author of The Sex Book (Cassell, £16.99) and The Body Bible
(Penguin, £16.99)
DR THOMAS STUTTAFORD
The philosophy and disciplines glorified by the terms Tantric and Taoist sex
are designed to allow a couple to have long sessions of lovemaking by
prolonging the plateau stage of sexual response without having a complete
orgasm and ejaculating. Advocates of Taoist and Tantric sex explain that the
aim is to maintain a state of ecstasy for as long as physically possible and
not to be preoccupied by the need to score an orgasmic goal.
Like Victorian schoolmasters and doctors, who believed that masturbation was a
cause and a symptom of criminality and psychiatric disease, the Tantric and
Taoist enthusiasts suggest that semen has a value in helping to maintain a
man's health and vitality. Their supposition is that if semen is constantly
wasted, the luckless fellow will be weakened and risk being reduced to a
feeble wreck, a shadow of his former self. You may be assured that this is
medical nonsense, and semen retention is not harmful.
The Taoists correctly teach that an unsophisticated, animalistic sexual
technique - such as that summed up by the 1970s phrase “wham, bam, thank you
ma'am” - without much, if any, foreplay and with the man ejaculating within
seconds deprives both partners of the subtler but deeper pleasures of sex.
There are occasions when a quickie may add piquancy to a sexual encounter.
There are also some women whose sexual preference is for lovemaking shorn of
any niceties and men who are unable to maintain an erection or suffer from
premature ejaculation. In these cases their need for a quickie is determined
by necessity, not choice.
Perhaps the crucial question we should be asking here is the age of the man.
For the older a man gets the less sensitive his penile skin endings become
and, in turn, the more sluggish his reflexes. Thus it becomes easier for him
to control his ejaculation.
Men in their sixties, seventies and eighties will be grateful to be still
potent and able to maintain an erection. My experience working at an
inner-city clinic made me aware that British men are particularly prone to
under-rating their sexual performance.
Yet it was interesting in the clinic when, as sometimes happened, an old
married pair told me how much better their lovemaking had become as they got
older, or a young woman said that she was attracted to old men as they were
so much better sexual partners. Frequently they added, “More experience, I
suppose”. However, I am afraid that this attribute of older men has not much
to do with experience or Tao, but everything to do with ageing.
The origin of the ideas underlying Tantric and Taoist sex, like the Kama
Sutra, came from the Far East. Tantric sex is more prescriptive than Taoist,
which is described as being much freer although based on 26 standard
positions. These, despite their exotic names, are equally well described in
either The Joy of Sex or The Sex Book, by Suzi Godson. However, if anything
improves the quality of someone's sex life, good luck to it.
Neither Tantric nor Taoist sex will either preserve or undermine a man's
constitution.
Dr Thomas Stuttaford, The Times doctor, spent many years working in a
genitourinary clinic
