Tami Simon speaks with Margot Anand, an internationally acclaimed authority on tantra and the cultivation of ecstatic states. A much-beloved teacher on the integration of spirituality and sexuality, Margot is the founder of SkyDancing Tantra and author of The Art of Sexual Ecstasy. Her programs with Sounds True include the 6-session audio course The Art of Sexual Magic: Cultivating Sexual Energy to Transform Your Life. In this episode, Tami speaks with Margot about techniques for harnessing orgasmic energy, how cultural dynamics affect multiple orgasms in men and women, the role of the heart in tantra, and how to use ecstasy as an energy for manifestation—what Margot calls “sexual magic.”

Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today I speak with Margot Anand. Margot Anand is an internationally acclaimed authority on tantra and the cultivation of ecstatic states. She is the bestselling author of the book The Art of Sexual Ecstasy and a much-beloved teacher and founder of SkyDancing Tantra. Margot’s books, videos, and audio programs are widely regarded as the seminal teachings for integrating spirituality and sexuality and for cultivating the art of ecstatic living.

A native of France, Margot received her degree from the Sorbonne in Paris and has spent decades studying with many of the world’s prominent masters of Hindu and Buddhist tantra, including the great mystic Osho in India. With Sounds True, Margot has released the audio program Sexual Magic Meditations and a six-session audio course on The Art of Sexual Magic: Cultivating Sexual Energy to Transform Your Life.

In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Margot and I spoke about bringing orgasmic energy up through the central channel of the body using breath and micro-movements. We also talked about multiple orgasms in both men and women and underlying cultural dynamics that can be at play in exploring multiple orgasms. We talked about the rule of the heart in tantric practice, and also the manifestation process, what Margot calls “sexual magic,” and how we can use the space of ecstasy for creation. We also talked about how meditation can create ecstasy through the whole body and beyond. Here’s my conversation with a true pioneer: Margot Anand.

Margot, you’re well-known as someone who has popularized tantra in the West. And I know that now I’m speaking to you, and you’ve been living in Bali for the last six or seven years or so. And of course, it makes sense that I would be talking to a tantric teacher who is in Bali. Bali seems like the perfect place. And I’m curious how your work has been evolving since you’ve been in Bali. How, perhaps, it’s been changing at this point in your life.

Margot Anand: Well, I decided when I moved to Bali to put the closed on sign the door of my previous life and to no longer be a teacher and to no longer practice the previous spiritual practices I was practicing—to practice nothing, to teach nothing, to say nothing. And I did that for three years.

What emerged is something simple, much more humble, more mysterious, more graceful, and more in-the-moment. So I don’t have a great new method, but I can say that what I’m now most interested in is the capacity of our brain to open up to new dimensions, which reveal themselves through what I call “bioluminescence,” which is the empowering of the pituitary, the pineal gland, and generally speaking, the brain’s capacity to bring us to ecstatic states, to expanded states, in a natural way through meditation practice.

TS: Now, it’s interesting that you’re talking right here at the beginning of our conversation about the brain, because one of the things I wanted to talk with you about is this quote that I found from your work, which is that “the pinnacle of tantric practice is the orgasm of the brain.” And I wanted to know, what do you mean by this? The brain has an orgasm?

MA:with. And then, when the energy’s channeled higher, to the next chakras, you eventually end up in the brain, in the sahasrara, in the crown chakra. And there, the energy becomes a transcendence, beyond the boundaries of the body, into spaciousness and into a feeling of being one with all that is.

Now, that is the movement going from the root to the crown. But there is another movement—that was brought forth by Sri Aurobindo, the founder of Auroville, and by many other teachers since—which talks about the descent of the energy from the sky to the earth. Which would mean that you start with the brain and you start with the powers of the brain to connect with expanded dimensions of consciousness, and then you move that down to the rest of your being.

So after having explored sexuality in so many different ways, I became interested in that second approach. The orgasm of the brain is either the one that is the sexual orgasm transmuted and transformed into a finer and finer experience that doesn’t so much depend on the genitals anymore, but there is also another kind of orgasm, which is ecstasy. The orgasm of the brain is basically the ecstatic experience. It’s a blink into God, I would say. [Laughs]

TS: So, really, one way of putting what you’re saying is that you’re talking about an ascending current as well as a descending current. Is that accurate?

MA: Yes. That’s accurate.

TS: Let’s talk about both a little bit more. Here you are, you’re talking about this descending current as something that has lately been of great interest to you. Can you talk a little bit—how do you bring the energy down through the body? How does that work for you?

MA: Well, it’s not like there is a direction anymore. It’s more like, after doing certain meditative practices and focusing on the empowerment of various parts of the brain, you enter into a feeling that the body is kind of not really material anymore. You become one with spaciousness and with light. So the experience of light is important here, and there is then an ability to touch this deep inner joy, this deep inner source of joy and of freedom. And so you don’t direct things at the point.

Well, you do. Yes, you do. You do, you direct things down from the higher chakras through the throat, through the heart, through the belly with your mind, with your awareness. And energy follows consciousness, so little by little, you empower each of those centers in your body to be opening up to stronger and finer energies of light.

TS: And you’re saying that this exploration is something, through meditation, that you’re opening the top of your head, the top of the crown chakra, and then experiencing this stimulation in the brain that then results in this experience of space and light?

MA: Yes. I am developing an approach which is based on working with certain energy points that are called vortex points, in which there is a connection between touch and certain sounds and focus of the mind in those points. Which then open us up to receive many universal energies, if you wish, or stronger energy than we would normally perceive.

TS: Wonderful! This is so exciting, Margot! What a fabulous development of your work.

MA: Yes, thank you! Thank you. It’s in its infancy, and I feel very protective and very humble about it, because I couldn’t say that I have mastered this one as much as I have mastered the rest. I’m letting it unfold in an organic way and I have my own struggles in it.  My struggles are currently based on the fact that I’m by nature a rebel, and this is a strong pattern in me, and I’ve had to have that pattern to do what I did. But at the same time, the rebel in me has a hard time finding the discipline to have a regular meditation practice, which is really required in this phase. And when I enter into a regular meditation practice, I access amazing space of light and joy, and you would wonder why, if this is the case, I wouldn’t want to have a regular practice.

And then I get to the point where I ask myself, “Well, how much ecstasy can I hold? How much good is possible before it becomes too much?” And this is the ultimate question, even in sexuality: How much orgasmic bliss can we hold at any given time? [Laughs] There’s sort of this sense of la petite mort, or the feeling that some part of us is disappearing, and the ego is holding on for dear life. So this is my current struggle.

TS: You’re exploring your thresholds for ecstasy. Can Margot Anand, the woman who wrote The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, go into even further and further and further ecstasy? Now, you mentioned different parts of the brain that are stimulated. Can you say a little bit more about that?

MA: Yes. I would say that the pituitary gland, which is located behind the eyes, is actually called the third eye or referred to as the gland responding to the third eye because it opens us up to the ability to see energy as light. And so we can see our inner energy in forms of geometric shapes or colors, and this is a sign that we are activating the pituitary gland. And then the pineal gland is the master gland, through which a certain current can circulate, which allows [us] to balance out all of our endocrine system.

So by activating these parts of our brain, we also balance out all of our endocrine system. We’re like a gardener that’s gardening the flowers in the garden.

TS: Now, let’s talk about the ascending current, starting with the orgasmic energy of the genitals, and how it’s possible to bring that energy up to the brain. I mean, I know this is something that you taught on for several decades. Tell us what the essence of what this is. When I start feeling orgasmic, what do I do? I don’t just have a normal genital release, but tantric practice involves a different approach.

MA: Yes, it involves, first of all, the art of relaxing in high states of arousal. So normally when we get aroused, we tense up and we want more and we’re pushing or we’re striving toward a particular position or a particular sensation. And in this process, we often lose what our mind perceives as the maximum potential of that moment or of that orgasmic possibility.

And so the art here is to be willing to let go enough to relax into that sensation, not knowing where that sensation is going to take you. It could be that you lose it or it could be that you lose it momentarily and you come back to it. But the idea of relaxing into it also allows us to welcome more of this excitement energy, of this pleasure energy.

And as we find different ways of lovemaking, we actually can move in the same way that I mentioned before—in a meditative way—the sensations of the energy by placing your consciousness in different parts of the body. And then there’s also, as I teach, micro-movements of the sexual muscles and of our breathing, which gently pull the sensations that are like an electrical current up the different chakras—up into the belly, into the heart.

And so it’s a very delicate yoga which needs a certain amount of practice to be mastered. But the ultimate practice of that is the kings and queens position in tantra, which is the yab-yum, which is the man sitting in lotus or semi-lotus and the woman sitting on his lap. And in this, they can create a circle of energy that moves through their genitals, through their central channels, with their breath, into their third eye, or exchanged via their breath, and create a circle of energy that becomes very ecstatic, and in which they are SkyDancing, meaning they leave the sense of having a physical body and they feel that they’re dancing in the sky.

TS: And is there a difference in this process for men and for women, in this embrace?

MA: Yes, there is. For both, actually, the art of mastering the path of the middle between the yin and the yang—or between being uniquely on the male side or the active, admissive side and uniquely on the receptive or female side—it’s being in the middle and being able to play with both polarities, with each other. So sometimes one is admissive and the other is receptive, and sometimes you switch and it’s the man who’s admissive and the woman who’s receptive.

And it all has to do with movement, with breath, with certain practices that are too complex to explain here, but it’s very, very rewarding.

TS: The actual working with the orgasm process, is that different for a man than for a woman?

MA: Well, yes and no. I mean, for the man, it is the ability to not release his seed and to keep the energy and the excitement within himself so he can move it through the inner central channel that I call the “inner flute,” and move it to his heart and move it to his brain. And for the woman, it’s actually the same process.

But when you consider that our chakras have opposite polarities—like in the female, the sexual center, which is chakra number one in my system, is receptive or feminine. And in the male, it’s active, admissive, or masculine. So the fact that we have opposite polarities in these energy centers makes it much easier for us to share energy and circulate the energy between our sex, between our bellies, between our hearts, between our breasts, between our third eyes.  And this is what makes it so fun!