July 24, 2012 • 41 mins
Sure, you're no stranger to yoga, but how much do you know about its ancient origins in magical ritual and tantric sex? In this episode, Julie and Robert peer into yoga's sensual past and consult modern science on what yoga can do for your sex life.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
You know we're in the studio here. We just recorded
an episode on yoga and the benefits of yoga, the
risk of yoga, a lot of the science that we
(00:24):
find in yoga, and in that episode we refer out
to an additional episode which we're recording now, Yoga Sex Magic,
because there is a there's a lot to be said
about about sex and yoga, about the sensual side of yoga,
the sexual benefits of yoga and its roots in mysticism
and UH central experience. And don't worry, we're not going
(00:45):
to talk about stings sex life here, um, because he
has often talked about tantra yoga right as being a
part of his UH deal deal. Yeah, I was gonna
say magic sauce, but that just doesn't sound right, Um,
But we are going to talk about I guess some
people would say it's yoga's dirty little secret, but the
fact of the matter is is that it has its
(01:06):
roots in tantric yoga, which is associated with sexuality. As
you say, and celebrating sexuality and uh, and a lot
of mysticism too. Yeah. So let's uh, let's let's let's
run back the clock here. Let's let's discuss ancient history. Um. So,
hindu Hinduism is the oldest of the dominant world religions
(01:29):
today and arguably the most difficult to summarize. Okay, the
roots of Hinduism stretch back a good five thousand years
through the soil of human history. And that's the soil
that's just right, with variations with with different important texts,
poetic epics, sex diversions, uh, God's goddesses, religious rituals, it's
(01:51):
just there. There is an entire rich culture there around Hinduism,
and any attempts to summarize it or would be incomplete
that it would be a podcast into itself. But it's
very nature. What is it proposed to do. It aims
to free the practitioner of Hinduism from something called the
(02:12):
wheel of sam Sara. And I feel like I've mentioned
this before in terms of Buddhism, and of course there's
a lot of crossover between Hinduism and Budism. Sam Sara
is the endless cycle of death and rebirth that sees
the human um consciousness or soul flow and rise and
fall through varieties of tragic, doomed, and ephemeral lives. It's
(02:32):
the idea that it's not the sort of vague Western
idea of of reincarnation where it's like, oh, I'm not
really gonna die. I'm gonna come back as a cat
or something that would be great. And I'm not saying
don't find some comfort in that thought. But the idea
of sam Sara is more that I'm going to continue
to live lives that are ultimately going to be filled
(02:53):
with pain in one way, shape or another, even though
even the loftier, more pleasant life that I of are
going to end in death and may end up shooting
me down to a lower level of existence. So I
might be uh uh, and I'm borrowing more from the
some of the Tibetan Buddhist ideas here, But I might
live life as a demigod in the next life and
everything it will be awesome, but I'll kind of be
(03:16):
awful at the same time and earn myself a position
in the lower hells in the life after that. So
the idea is that you want to eventually rid yourself
of this wheel. You know, it's kind of like, yeah,
it's kind of think of it this way. It's like
the person who's in one bad relationship after the other
and they desperately want to free themselves with that cycle
and find a good relationship. That's kind of what we
(03:37):
have here. And in that good relationship, that liberation from
the wheel of sam sara is what Hindus call maksha,
which means release or liberation. So this carnival ride sucks.
I want to get off of it. That's what That's
what Hinduism that's ultimately trying to do UM and we
might not do it in this lifetime or the next um,
(03:57):
but we need a we need a game plan, right,
so we get into something called trim Marga, which is
the three path. So we have Karma marga the way
of action, Jannana marga the way of knowledge, and Bakti
marga the way of devotion. So this is where yoga
gets involved here. Yoga means discipline uh or regime or yoke,
(04:19):
and it derives from the Sanskrit route for yoke yoke,
which also means union, you know, And we talked about
this in the other podcast. This union between mind and body. Yeah,
you know, Jesus sent our example again, instead of a
mind riding the body, this man riding the horse. It
is the man horse, it is the body. Uh, the
body mind union. And this is where that intermingling of
(04:41):
sexuality and spirituality happens as well. This is the same
sort of yoke, and this is where we're really sort
of driving the path toward tantra, right right. So within Hinduism,
the word yoga is often used interchangeably with marga. It
involves far more than just poses, and it includes meditation, fast, um,
various asthetic practices, ethical behavior, you know, intense study in
(05:05):
some cases, and and it's one of the six schools
of Orthodox philosophy, and often just sort of a generic
term for spiritual discipline. So just culturally, when you look
at yoga in the East versus yoga in the West,
there's there there are a number of differences that arise.
So let's talk a little about yoga in the path
(05:25):
because they're really getting into the tantra thing. We have
to again get into examples of of what is the
the yogi of three years ago, like versus the yogi
that you might find, Uh, you know in the San
Francisco Bay area. Well, I mean even like in the
eighteen thirties, Broad William Jobrad, who wrote the Science of Yoga,
brings up Rama Kashna and this was one of Hindu
(05:49):
Hinduism's great modern saints. Um, there's this idea that he
was always in such a constant state of ecstasy. And
we say ecstasy, we are sort of making a little
uh hat tip here to orgasm as well. Um, or
at least a sense of transcendence. Um. Well lepique more
(06:10):
does the French say um, which is a little deaf
right transcendence? And and again just to mention the body
mind connection. And when we're talking about body and mind
in a religious context, you can think of it, you know,
body and spirit. And so something intense that happens in
the body just by virtue of being intense has to
have a connection to the spirit as well. So it
(06:33):
would seem obvious then that an orgasm would be of
interest to someone seeking to understand the mind. And you
think it's weird that we're saying orgasm when we were
talking about religion or just even meditating or being in
a state of ecstasy without some sort of you know
slap and tickle involved. Well, we're going to talk more
about that slap and tickle. Yeah, you know, we'll talk
(06:54):
a little bit more about that later and connect at all.
But um, I did want to bring up Rama Krishna
because apparently he was in such a constant state of
bliss that he had assystance to tell him when to
eat and breathe. So this is this is intense stuff.
There is this intermingling of these two concepts of sexuality
and mysticism or um spirituality, and in Hinduism is that
(07:19):
this is not unusual. We usually think about our more
western religions and how these are mutually exclusive things, but
this is not in some Eastern religions UM. And this
is this idea too, that the spiritual energy UH lies
dormant at the base of the spine until it was
activated and channeled upward to the brain to produce enlightenment
(07:40):
through the chakras, these various circles in the body through
which the energy flows. Right, So the state of ecstasy
turns out to be a state of enlightenment. So Yogi's
and centuries passed. UH. We mentioned this a little bit
in the other podcast about yoga. But um, they might
(08:01):
be poly men who would legitimately give you a little
more insight into the spirit. Yeah, they might be mystic
carneys who would bury themselves alive for money. They might
contort their nude ashmerrored bodies in the street. They might
smoke dope and kidnap children. They might run protection rackets
and uh and some were capable of supposedly uniting the
(08:23):
male and female aspects of the universe through sexual sensation.
So they really kind of ran the gambit from really
holy to really uh skiez I mean it. I mean
that That's one of the things that Broad really does
a great job of pointing out is that yoga is
especially historically so much broader than what you would encounter
at the y m c A or the local yoga studio.
(08:46):
It runs the gambit between like just total enlightenment and madness,
between between physical health and debilitating or life threatening injury.
And uh and I mean it's just it's just there's
there's a rich world there and uh and and and
out of that also comes this uh this uh subject
(09:10):
of tantric yoga in tantra. Yeah, and I wanted to
bring up half a yoga, which we all if you
practice yoga. Um, this is a branch of tantra yoga.
And we'll talk a little bit more about tantra yoga
in a second Um. But the tan tric agenda again
was reaching enlightenment as fast as you could. And William J.
Broad brings up the fact that there's a fifteenth century
(09:31):
book called half a Yoga Product car and it instructs
and poses but also talks about stimulating genitals. Right again,
in this this agenda to try to reach enlightenment, and
one line from the book says, press the parent paraneum,
that's an orogenous area between the genitals, known as the
(09:52):
taint in some circles. Press the taint with the heel
of the foot. It opens the doors of liberation. So
I mean these this is a specific text telling people,
you know, how to proceed in this path enlightenment, which
has to do with sexuality. Yeah. And if I remember correctly,
hatha means violent and not in the sense that it
(10:14):
is violent um yoga and that it's like you know,
karate chaps and stuff, but more about the speed and
the intensity of getting there. Right. This is a path
to this enlightenment again, so tantra um sexy side of yoga,
but also the sexy roots of yoga. Um. It rises
(10:36):
to prominence within Hindu traditions in medieval India. So this
is around the fifth century UM Common era, but it's
root mysterious roots may go back even even farther into
the past, into the practices and traditions of the Indus civilization,
which would have been thirty three hundred to undred BC.
(10:57):
So UM. The idea here is that the beliefs were
present in this earlier culture than they go underground for
thousands of years and then they evolve back up into
into practice in eastern and southern India. And Tantra is
based on the Sanskrit word meaning that which extends knowledge.
And uh, it's the stated purpose of tantra isn't sexual
(11:20):
bliss in and of itself or but rather spiritual bliss
and enlightenment and ultimately uh moksha that we were talking
about early. Ultimately the idea is to uh find liberation
from this endless wheel of suffering. And I'm here's the
other thing about tantra is that it does not subscribe
to the cast system. So and it was free then
of the Brahmin priest that we're ruling over women's democratizing
(11:45):
sexuality but also spirituality. So it had a lot of
people who were very interested in being a part of it. Um.
The I guess you would say the problem mom or
as William Jay Broad puts it, is that eventually the
h it becomes so associated with with sex that's sort
of overshadowed by this and and people begin to think
(12:08):
of it as okay, well it's not just you know
this spiritual awareness or enlightenment. But you know a lot
of people are getting kind of randy here, yeah now,
and and and you know, squirreling away from the path.
Yeah now, now, why are they getting randy? Or what
is the stated reason? Well, historically you had right handed
(12:28):
tantra and you had left handed tantra and uh, and
that doesn't have anything to do with like right or
left handed being bad or one being dirty. That has
to do with like the position of God and goddess
um in a typical iconography. But right handed guy tantra
was more traditional and in terms of like worshiping the goddess,
(12:49):
whereas left handed tantra involved the ritual use of taboo
items in Hinduism specifically these five ms. You had Masma
which is eat uh, nazia no mean mazia, fish, mudra,
parched grain which was seen as an aphrodisiac, h Maja
which is wine, and then mathuna ritual sexual intercourse. So
(13:15):
what you would have happened is you would have this
this group of individuals and uh and generally these are
people that already have some exposure to to yoga or
do yoga principles. This is not just random people on
the street. They come into a sacred space in the
presence of you know, some sort of a guru or
an adept, and it will be in on on an
auspicious to day. You know, that's something that lines up um,
(13:38):
you know, numerologically important in m in the tradition. And
you'll have male and female participants who were called tanto
riquez ritually bathe, dress and generally you know, doll up
and purify through uh meditation and reciting mantras, and then
they form into male and female couples. Then they they
consume these various things ritually, have a little meat, a
(14:00):
little fish, a little parched grain, a little wine, and
then they will they will unite sexually say, and then
it becomes a key party. Well, no, I mean, I
mean that can certainly that can be the the charge.
But it's not just like, all right, we're done with
the We're done with the meat and the fish. Let's
let's get down to business. There's also a lot of
the mantras continue and the meditative aspects um uh continue
(14:25):
and U and the in fact, it's the pronunciation of
the mantras. Uh supposedly turns the female partner into an
embodiment of the goddess and the male becomes an embodiment
of the gods. So on a mythic level, they're enacting
the cosmological union of Shiva and shotkey of Deva and
Devi and uh. It takes on this larger cosmic proportion.
(14:48):
And and again it involves you know, intense meditation, intricate
yogurt postures, the visualization of these yantras, which are kind
of like a mandala that represents divine female energy, kind
of this um geometric design that you envision in your
head um and the attempt to stay immobile and to
facilitate mental processes in the prevention or delay of orgasm. Well,
(15:12):
and and this is something we'll talk about a little
bit to this delay of orgasm, which is also um
extending the Enlightenment period right this ecstasy. So this is
when I brought up staying. I brought up this idea
that you could do breathwork, you could do meditation in
order to um, to stave off the inevitable yea, before
you get that lapite mort um. And they're generally talking
(15:35):
not about like imagine a race course with a start
in the finish line, with the finish line being orgasm.
The idea is not to slam on the brakes before
you get to the orgasm, but to slow things down
to the point to where you're in a continuous, in
a continuous state of the almost crossing the line. Yeah. Um.
(15:57):
So here's the thing. In the West, tantra really becomes
synonymous with sexual debauchery. And this is where Broad in
his book says Tantra reaches a natier with um, an
alleged cannibal sect of Yogi's the a Gory who quote
eate the flesh of human skulls, drank urine liquor from
human souls, lived in cremation grounds and dunghills, and defiled
(16:22):
all social social convention supposedly to court public disapproval as
tests a humility. And none of those things are wrong
in and of themselves. But I mean now I mean that,
I mean there are you could you know, drinking urine,
drinking like or even drinking from human skulls. I mean
that's you see, these things occur in various traditions. Well,
(16:43):
the problem is is that India in nineteen twenties starts
to realize that you know, they have a political agenda
right there. They want to become independent, um, they want
to rise up. So they can't really have this whole
light cannibalist yoga sect representing them because what's coming out
of India, Um, you know, one of the exports we
see is this idea of yoga. So it sort of
(17:06):
gets this history of the sexuality particularly gets whitewashed because
you have um Indian nationalists like Gunang we talked about.
This is someone who really started to try to research
yoga in earnest in the nine twenties, and he began
to distinguish half a yoga from tantra, sanitizing yoga's association
with its roots. But the interesting thing here is that
(17:29):
you end up engaging in the duality of oh, there's
the good, there's the good yoga, and then there's the
bad yoga. It's like the here's the here's the the
law abiding yoga, and here's the road yoga. But and actually,
when we talk about the road yoga to we're talking
about something called kundalini, So we talk about contra yoga tantra.
This is one of the branches Kundalinia is practiced today.
(17:50):
Although as far as I've never been to some sort
of orgiastic class in it, I've just been We've talked
about the metaphors of the snake and the energy cooling
up through the spine. Yeah. Well, um, it's it's interesting
when you look into like why are they engaging? Why
would a ton trick um yoga prented practitioner engage in
the consumption of these five ms? And you know what
(18:12):
does it all get down to. Aside from just this
idea of well, let's use sexual sensation body sensation to
to you know, channel the spirit. Um, it's this idea
too that you have these things that are forbidden, their taboo, right,
So there you're human, these temptations are going to be there.
(18:32):
These things are there in your life. So you can
either run from them, um and try to deny them,
or you can take them and try to do something
spiritually beneficial with them. So that's that's part of it,
taking these negatives or potential negatives and spinning them into
a spiritual positive. So you're saying with within the Hindu
tradition that that not one thing is entirely good or bad.
(18:54):
Everything everyone contains both. Yeah, because on one on one
level again the direction of otherwise dangerous desires into acts
of devotion. And then there's this idea too that it
awakens participants to the non duality of the world. Okay,
the idea, there's this important idea in Hinduism. The world
is a single, indivisible reality uh known as Brahmin. And
(19:16):
to see it uh and to see the world as
anything else than that, to see it as anything that's
divided and composed of parts, is illusion. And you want
to see through that illusion and see that a glimpse
and understand experience the reality of Brahmen. So if you
see the world as oh, eliminates good and wine is bad, uh,
you know are not. No, sex is great and sex
(19:37):
is bad. And destructive. Then you're you're seeing a divided
vision of the world, and you're not going to sing
brahmin or or even yoga yoke right, the union of union.
It's not about division. So I find that that very fascinating. No,
I think it's a it's a wonderful context to talk
about this. Um, we should take a break. When we
(19:59):
get back, we're gonna get down to the science of
sex and yoga, or as I like to call it,
the yoga beast with two backs. Yes, so, UM going
to pigeon post, listen to this message. And when we
get back, look all right, we're back in. Come out
of pigeons and go back into child's post. So let's
(20:23):
let's continue. We've we've covered a lot of ground already
talking about the the roots of yoga, the basics of Hinduism, Uh, Tantra,
the five ends, why you should do them, um, what
spiritual good they can do in the long run. Yeah,
I wanted to talk about Cundolini for a second, because
we talked about this. We're talking about tantra, its role
(20:44):
in tantra, the idea of the snake coiling at the
base of the spine, this energy that rises up um
and and actually cundalini um is sanscrit for coiled or
she who is coiled, and it really is a metaphor
of rebirth because of it's the snake's ability to to
shed its own skin, right, and it has a high
(21:05):
status in Hinduism. Um. But I wanted to mention that
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Young was really intrigued by Kundalini and
he wrote of a twenty five year old woman whose
symptoms included a wave of physical turmoil that rose from
her paraneum. Would you call it the taint to her uterus,
to her bladder and then eventually to the crown of
(21:27):
her head? Okay, this is classic Kundalini imagery right here.
And so he found it really curious that instead of
her fearing um what was happening these physical manifestations, she
actually really enjoyed it, and he came to understand it
though in terms of of an induced psychotic state, he
thought of it as a very destructive force. And in fact,
(21:50):
if you ever pick up or thumb through his book
called The Red Book, which is a bunch of illustrations
by him but of his dreams, you'll see the snake
in there as this sort of destroyer or this this
menacing um symbolism in his own dreams. But I wanted
to bring that up because it's so close to what
we've talked about before, and it's this idea of thinking off.
(22:13):
We've discussed this in the Female Orgasm podcast, but it
was called the Orgasm Wars, and um, we talked about
this woman named Barbara Correlli's who claimed to have trained
herself to climax on demand, okay, without any sort of stimulation,
and uh, she's been thinking herself off for a number
of years and she actually demonstrated her ability to do
(22:34):
this when she went into an m R I and
then she came to climax several times while researchers at
Rutgers University studied her brain patterns and they saw, indeed
that it was matching the types of brain patterns that
you see in in orgasms people who actually have had
sex with each other and undergo m R at the
same time. It seems a little awkward, but UM, so
(22:57):
I bring this up because William Abroad also talks about
thinking off, but he also talks about this idea that, um,
the same thing is sometimes happening in yoga practitioners brains,
particularly when they're meditating, and meditation and yoga of corpse
go hand in hand. Yeah, And he he talks about
the Anonda Margot sect which was studied by James C.
(23:19):
Corby UM. This is a sect of UM yoga practitioners
and they underwent this this study at Stanford University, and
he had a control group of nonpractitioners all meditate, and
then he had the Anonda Market sect also meditating. And
just so you know, Anonda Market totally hardcore. We're talking
(23:39):
about three and a half hour long meditation sessions daily,
very rigorous. So what happened is that they had the
both of the groups. They had them um relaxed for
twenty minutes, and then they had them gives them attention
to their breathing for twenty minutes, and then twenty minutes
just for straight up meditation. So the cool thing about
(24:01):
this is that the control group that they show all
sorts of signs of classic relaxation, right for instance, their
blood pressure drops. But our friends over here, the are yogis,
are all sorts of crazy things are happening with them.
They're breathing really rapidly they begin to sweat. What they're
seeing the researchers realized, is this autonomous arousal very much
(24:26):
the same sort of thing that you would see with
someone who was approaching an orgasm. In fact, one of
the participants had a heartbeat of one and twenty beats
per minute, which broad says is very similar to frenzy
the lovers. Yeah, so there is an idea that through UM,
through meditation, but also through yoga like posts like cobra,
(24:50):
in which your pelvic region is on the floor you
place a lot of pressure there that this is stimulating
certain hormones in the body and you begin to get
this benefit of UM. I guess you could say, I
don't want to say I love cocktail of hormones surging
through your body, but there there's direct evidence that this
can actually increase, uh, your libido and there I mean,
(25:14):
and there's certain poses to write that I have been
shown to have a more of a link to to
the to the sexual side of yoga. Right, Oh, yeah, definitely,
I mean cobra. As I said, bow pose is another
one and without now Cobra for those that I don't know,
this is one where it's like you're you're lying on
your stomach and your hands to side here, and then
(25:35):
you sort of the front of you, your your torso
sort of rises up like a snake. Yeah, your hands
on your side and they're pushing your your upper torso
up and so you are putting a lot of pressure
in your pelvic region. But what they're also finding is
that one of the hormones that is taking up quite
a bit is testosterone and uh I and men and women.
And in fact, in one study they saw a woman's
(25:56):
testosterone go up by And this is incredible because heretofore
they had decided that yoga was lowering men's testoster room level.
And this was based on a study in which it
wasn't um yoga that was lowering the testosterone level. It
was this vegetarian diet that the practitioners were at the
same time, uh and they had a bunch of soy
(26:18):
in their diet and that was lowering lowering the testosterone.
So that's sort of a myth that broad bust here
and says no, like this, testosterone can actually increase your
libido as well, for both men and women. So I
also wanted to mention too that that broad says, there's
a clinical study of more than one men and women
whose self report their sex lives before and after they
undertook yoga in the study, and across the board, they
(26:41):
all reported increased arousal, better orgasms, and more overall satisfaction.
So one of the things I do want to point
out that broad points out is that when they are
conducting these um, these studies and this research, they are
they're very aware of creating really good solid studies, UM
(27:01):
at least now in trying to study this into earnest
And what I mean by that is that they're they're
looking at all the different ways in which people practice
yoga in their habits, and just like any sort of study,
you want to get a good rate of participation from
people who are healthy who um you know, are not
you know, seven yoga practitioners, so that they sway the results. UM.
(27:26):
So they're trying to get this idea, this baseline of like, Okay,
if average Joe walks into yoga class, what does that
mean in terms of average Joe's or average Jill's uh,
sexual proclivity um down the road. And so this is
really interesting data that's coming from this. And then he
does admit that there's not a ton of it. Again,
there's not people who have said, oh hey, we can
solve this whole viagra thing with just doing yoga, you know.
(27:50):
I mean that's not the claim that he's saying, but
he is pointing to a body of mounting evidence that
yoga very well could be um a sort of nature
is viagra. I also found it interesting in his book,
William Dave Brod goes into the the sexual aspects of
yoga by discussing various sex scandals that have arisen with
(28:14):
with yoga gurus. And the main ones who was talking
about are are some of the earlier U S dudes
who had large followings. Generally we're talking like guys in
the fifties sixties, and uh, and suddenly there are all
these charges that they have behaved inappropriately with the young
women or even not so young women under their charge. Well,
in Broad's point is like fifties sixties, I mean, okay,
(28:35):
first of all, there's there's this whole other issue of
power structure and taking advantage of someone. But also like
fifties sixties, these dudes aren't taking viagra. Like there's there's
a certain vitality here that he's saying that plays into um,
you know, practicing yoga. Yeah, and and you do see.
I mean actually there there have been recent scandals involving
yoga gurus as well, but uh, you can't look at
(28:59):
it just as yoga is the sexualizing thing and it
just turns men into monsters. Well, there have been some
female vous too that there have been charges against who
say that they are um taking advantage of their position
in order to to gain lovers and uh, sexual encounters.
(29:20):
But I mean, but that's what people, that's what especially
men do. I mean, it's it's like the President Clinton
thing all over again. You put a man in a
position of power and you put these impressionable young women
in his charge, especially if you have a mystic aspect there,
which is a largely unavoidable in a in a yoga setting. Well,
(29:41):
I think the problem is when your guru is saying that,
you know, you should practice abstinence is not doing the same.
So that's that's really what the issue is here. People
will say, well, you know, that's that's horribly hypocritical of you.
But I mean even the maharishi John Lennon said that, um,
the Rosemaries baby mia Faro that he had tried to
molest her, and so they actually that was one of
(30:03):
the reasons why they broke away from the maharishi because
they were like, dude, you're full of it, and being
full of it is is very again, very in touch
with some of the roots of yoga, because, as we
discussed in the other podcast, you go, you go back
in time and look at the look at the roots
of yoga, and you you find a lot of a
(30:23):
fair amount of deception of Charlatanism at times, I mean
outrageous claims that that yoga can make you live forever,
that can can defeat evil, and can cure diseases, things
that simply aren't so within the confines of scientific reality.
What I think is interesting, though, is this this again
when I say this mounting evidence, this data, that that
(30:46):
yoga can inform a person's um sexual identity, even like
there's there are some claims of neo tantrics that broad
talks about, this idea that people may begin to have
an alternative sexuality. We're off becomes the norm, so it
becomes kind of like an a sexuality that is um
(31:08):
that is inward looking. I mean, I mean it's just
mental masturbation really too. I mean that's that's really sort
of taking it down to a notch that it probably
doesn't deserve. But that's or maybe it does. But that's
sort of what we're talking about here, a certain a
sexuality like it's like more like a psycho masturbation really,
like think of it in terms of like not psycho
(31:31):
but psycho. Yeah. Yeah, So yeah, there you have it.
There's a nice little intro into the into the sexual
magical paths of cannibalistic path Now, if you're if you're
sitting there wondering, you're like, WHOA, I didn't turn into
this episode that was going to have contra and you
didn't give me a single um tip for tontric Sexum,
(31:52):
We're not going to do that. We're not gonna do it.
But you are in luck because if you go to
how Stuff Works and you type in tantra or tontric
into the search bar, you will find a Discovery Health
article written by the staff of Discovery Health that goes
into some of the specific specifics of modern tantric recommendations,
like they're not really telling you like how what order
(32:14):
to eat your fish and meat and wine or any
of that. But but some some recommendations and I talk
about the slap and tickle and one of them, at
least the definition of some of the things they talk
about are very sort of straightforward, kind of more you know,
like they're some of the tips are based and like
brings some eroticism into your into your sex life for
a light of candle, look into her eyes, that kind
(32:36):
of thing, and where you're kind of like that doesn't
really seem all that mystical. That's just kind of I
mean to some people, that's new information now. But there
there is one that I believe that's the discovery health.
If I think if you put tantra in there, it
will it actually talks about the mechanics of it and
when we're talking about drawing out the ecstasy part of it, Yeah,
(32:56):
and it gets into it gets into breathing, and it
gets into this idea again yoga means yoke and union
and uh. And so when you you take these yoga, uh,
these these yoga principles into the bedroom, you're you're dealing
with situation of people coming together being aware of their
their own breaths and in their own bodies and what
they're doing uh, and then using that information to slow
(33:20):
things down as they approach the precipice of of of orgasm. There,
so that's out a little death, a little bit assances
ectas to I know, just the in French fancy. Yeah.
So so look that up if you want some more
information on that. Um, if you want to know more
about the science of yoga, check and are And also
(33:42):
if you want to hear more just about Julian eyes
thoughts on yoga and or and and and I'll check
out the other episode that we did call the Science
of down Dog. Check out the book The Science of
Yoga by William J. Broad It's excellent. We can't recommend
that highly enough. And if you want to know a
little more about Hindu tradition, was a great book by
Mark W. Muse that's m U. E. S. S. E.
(34:04):
Called The Hindu Traditions a concise introduction and it's just
a really good, like well laying out illustrated guide to
generally what Hindu ritual consists of. It's a great book.
I have a recommend that as well. So let's call
the robot over here alright. Listener by the name of
Peter writes and it says, Hello, Robert and Julie. Was
(34:25):
just listening to your podcast about life in microgravity. One
thing that got me thinking, uh was the off topic
comment about sour dough. How did we end up talking
about sour dough? We talked. We talked about how people
living off Earth would only visit us when they needed
to come back and get genetic material, and that we
would be like the sour dough bread in San Francisco
that provides the mother dough for sour bread. Sour dough bread, okay,
(34:50):
at least well Peter goes on. He says, a sour
dough mother can be simply created by mixing flour and
water in a bowl and letting natural yeasts in the
atmosphere start the fermentation. As this can take a while,
most breadmasters keep the original pot alive by simply adding
more flour and water to the bowl once they have
removed enough for the current batch of bread. Enjoying listening
to your podcast as I am having to lie flat
(35:11):
with my eyes pointed at the floor to aid my
detached retina to recover, share and enjoy. Peter, who's in
the Plymouth few K Yeah, I feel like I saw
an article on some sort of service like if you
can't um soup up your bread or feed it, someone
will for you. I don't like the baby, said your mother. Yeah, mother,
(35:32):
mother bread all right. We also heard from Zach Zack
right soon and says, hi, I just finished listening to
your Planetary Internet episode and had some thoughts on the
speed of light the legs, specifically in sci fi. In
the majority of sci fi I have watched or red
that deals with interstellar travel, uh, neglect's interstellar communications and
that they are either not a major plot point or
(35:53):
a magically instantaneous uh example Injur's game and uh and
then he got it goes on to say, one series
where this is addressed, however, is done in the Doom universe.
A large number of communications are carried out by actual
physical messengers, writing on starships and delivering the message directly.
These were the best examples of communications sci fi that
I could think up with think of. Thanks for the
(36:15):
great podcast. Um so so yeah, that's and I've forgotten
about that detail from the Don universe. But they didn't
have the means to actually send the data, but they
had the means to send the ships. So they just
include an actual courier on board. We also heard from
listener Jim Jim Wrightson and says, uh and he's referring
(36:38):
to the zero G episode of micro Gravity and talking
about movies with zero G in space. He says, Robert
and Julie, you mentioned that two thousand and one was
the only space movie that you knew of that maintains
zero G. I thought of three More two thousand and ten,
a sequel to two thousand and one. It's kind of
obvious now, I guess had zero G as well, but
there are some scenes where it's not quite obvious whether
you're in part of the ship that zero G or
(37:00):
using rotational gravity. Apollo thirteen had zero G for a
historical reasons. They voto set on the Vomit Comet and
film several scenes in actual zero G. I heard the
stars say that they spent a lot of time on
the ends of the booms being moved around to simulate
visual zero G drift in close ups. They just swayed
back and forth. So yeah, I kind of forgot about it.
(37:20):
Paul of thirteens so historically based Mission to Mars maintain
zero G as well. They even fluff out the female
stars hairs that would happen in zero G, and I
legit only forgot about that one. And then he goes
on to say, I'm guessing studios avoid zero G because
it has to be very expensive and complicated to film
it convincingly. Assuming artificial gravity has got to solve a
(37:41):
lot of logistical problems. So so yeah, there's a there
a few there that I've forgotten about. Yeah, that's just
made me realize how surreal it must be to be
an actor. Sometimes like camer to deliver my lines. If
I'm as sway back and forth, just very slightly in
front of a green screen talking to a puppet that's
(38:01):
not a puppet that will be added sat with c
g I later, but right now is just a stick
with the word alien written N. Yeah, that I have
to in my mind imagine this monster with vagina dentata
coming at me. You know. I actually rewatched part of
two thousand and one is Space outosey Um last week,
and it's kind of heartbreaking because on one level, this
(38:24):
is not this is a vision of the twenty century,
but it's not the twenty century that actually happened, and
it's it's beautiful and stunning and uh, and then the
other side is we don't actually make movies like this
century either, So I was kind of torn as too
as to which was sadder. Like the scenes with the
monkeys and two thousand and one, those are the best
(38:46):
best scenes I've seen in cinema that features monkeys, like
and I'm counting real monkeys, Like it's better than than
than any film with Clint Eastwood or you know, at anything,
And it featured actual acting chumps, better than that, better
than anything I've seen with c G I. Monkeys in
the best monkey costumes ever employed in a motion picture. Like,
(39:07):
those scenes are just fabulous. They're perfect and and just
and just the visual the nash of that film is
just just wondrous. It is it is. I'm sorry, it
is it is. You just brought up the Clint Eastwood
and I'm imagining him in a truck going down in
the highway with his friend. It should deduce is one
(39:29):
of those suits. I mean, it's just I could go
on and actually there was some really good Facebook discussion
on this topic. Yeah, yeah, I brought it up on
Facebook yesterday. Anyway, if you haven't seen two thousand and one,
do yourself a favor because it's great. Anyway, at this
that point, we should probably move on and close out
this podcast, I know, and I just want to say
no mistake, no mistake. Yeah, um, but we do have
(39:54):
to keep talking because yeah, I know. We also have
to point out that, hey, you can get in touch
with us. You can join you on Facebook conversations with
this about um, how awesome two thousand and one is,
or what kind of yoga you prefer. Um, you can
find us on Facebook we are stuff to blow your mind.
You can find us on Twitter where we are blow
the mind. And and definitely we would love to hear
from any of you guys that are yoga practitioners. Uh,
(40:17):
let us know what effect has had on your life. Um,
if you are not a yoga practitioner and you're trying
it out or or your your new Twitter you're interested
in giving it a go, we'd love to hear from
you about that topic as well. Yeah, and also would
love to know if anybody's ever had any like huge breakthroughs,
revelations or even like some you know, sort of surreal
(40:38):
thoughts and chevas knowing at the end when they're resting,
because it's a great fertile time for for the mind.
So I have chevasna visions um fairly regularly. I forget
there's there's actually a term for it for those visions,
but I can't remember what they are. Yes, very cool stuff,
so it kind of reminds me of lucid dreaming in
a way. Um. You can also send us your thoughts
(40:59):
via email and you can do that and blow the
mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
M
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
You know we're in the studio here. We just recorded
an episode on yoga and the benefits of yoga, the
risk of yoga, a lot of the science that we
(00:24):
find in yoga, and in that episode we refer out
to an additional episode which we're recording now, Yoga Sex Magic,
because there is a there's a lot to be said
about about sex and yoga, about the sensual side of yoga,
the sexual benefits of yoga and its roots in mysticism
and UH central experience. And don't worry, we're not going
(00:45):
to talk about stings sex life here, um, because he
has often talked about tantra yoga right as being a
part of his UH deal deal. Yeah, I was gonna
say magic sauce, but that just doesn't sound right, Um,
But we are going to talk about I guess some
people would say it's yoga's dirty little secret, but the
fact of the matter is is that it has its
(01:06):
roots in tantric yoga, which is associated with sexuality. As
you say, and celebrating sexuality and uh, and a lot
of mysticism too. Yeah. So let's uh, let's let's let's
run back the clock here. Let's let's discuss ancient history. Um. So,
hindu Hinduism is the oldest of the dominant world religions
(01:29):
today and arguably the most difficult to summarize. Okay, the
roots of Hinduism stretch back a good five thousand years
through the soil of human history. And that's the soil
that's just right, with variations with with different important texts,
poetic epics, sex diversions, uh, God's goddesses, religious rituals, it's
(01:51):
just there. There is an entire rich culture there around Hinduism,
and any attempts to summarize it or would be incomplete
that it would be a podcast into itself. But it's
very nature. What is it proposed to do. It aims
to free the practitioner of Hinduism from something called the
(02:12):
wheel of sam Sara. And I feel like I've mentioned
this before in terms of Buddhism, and of course there's
a lot of crossover between Hinduism and Budism. Sam Sara
is the endless cycle of death and rebirth that sees
the human um consciousness or soul flow and rise and
fall through varieties of tragic, doomed, and ephemeral lives. It's
(02:32):
the idea that it's not the sort of vague Western
idea of of reincarnation where it's like, oh, I'm not
really gonna die. I'm gonna come back as a cat
or something that would be great. And I'm not saying
don't find some comfort in that thought. But the idea
of sam Sara is more that I'm going to continue
to live lives that are ultimately going to be filled
(02:53):
with pain in one way, shape or another, even though
even the loftier, more pleasant life that I of are
going to end in death and may end up shooting
me down to a lower level of existence. So I
might be uh uh, and I'm borrowing more from the
some of the Tibetan Buddhist ideas here, But I might
live life as a demigod in the next life and
everything it will be awesome, but I'll kind of be
(03:16):
awful at the same time and earn myself a position
in the lower hells in the life after that. So
the idea is that you want to eventually rid yourself
of this wheel. You know, it's kind of like, yeah,
it's kind of think of it this way. It's like
the person who's in one bad relationship after the other
and they desperately want to free themselves with that cycle
and find a good relationship. That's kind of what we
(03:37):
have here. And in that good relationship, that liberation from
the wheel of sam sara is what Hindus call maksha,
which means release or liberation. So this carnival ride sucks.
I want to get off of it. That's what That's
what Hinduism that's ultimately trying to do UM and we
might not do it in this lifetime or the next um,
(03:57):
but we need a we need a game plan, right,
so we get into something called trim Marga, which is
the three path. So we have Karma marga the way
of action, Jannana marga the way of knowledge, and Bakti
marga the way of devotion. So this is where yoga
gets involved here. Yoga means discipline uh or regime or yoke,
(04:19):
and it derives from the Sanskrit route for yoke yoke,
which also means union, you know, And we talked about
this in the other podcast. This union between mind and body. Yeah,
you know, Jesus sent our example again, instead of a
mind riding the body, this man riding the horse. It
is the man horse, it is the body. Uh, the
body mind union. And this is where that intermingling of
(04:41):
sexuality and spirituality happens as well. This is the same
sort of yoke, and this is where we're really sort
of driving the path toward tantra, right right. So within Hinduism,
the word yoga is often used interchangeably with marga. It
involves far more than just poses, and it includes meditation, fast, um,
various asthetic practices, ethical behavior, you know, intense study in
(05:05):
some cases, and and it's one of the six schools
of Orthodox philosophy, and often just sort of a generic
term for spiritual discipline. So just culturally, when you look
at yoga in the East versus yoga in the West,
there's there there are a number of differences that arise.
So let's talk a little about yoga in the path
(05:25):
because they're really getting into the tantra thing. We have
to again get into examples of of what is the
the yogi of three years ago, like versus the yogi
that you might find, Uh, you know in the San
Francisco Bay area. Well, I mean even like in the
eighteen thirties, Broad William Jobrad, who wrote the Science of Yoga,
brings up Rama Kashna and this was one of Hindu
(05:49):
Hinduism's great modern saints. Um, there's this idea that he
was always in such a constant state of ecstasy. And
we say ecstasy, we are sort of making a little
uh hat tip here to orgasm as well. Um, or
at least a sense of transcendence. Um. Well lepique more
(06:10):
does the French say um, which is a little deaf
right transcendence? And and again just to mention the body
mind connection. And when we're talking about body and mind
in a religious context, you can think of it, you know,
body and spirit. And so something intense that happens in
the body just by virtue of being intense has to
have a connection to the spirit as well. So it
(06:33):
would seem obvious then that an orgasm would be of
interest to someone seeking to understand the mind. And you
think it's weird that we're saying orgasm when we were
talking about religion or just even meditating or being in
a state of ecstasy without some sort of you know
slap and tickle involved. Well, we're going to talk more
about that slap and tickle. Yeah, you know, we'll talk
(06:54):
a little bit more about that later and connect at all.
But um, I did want to bring up Rama Krishna
because apparently he was in such a constant state of
bliss that he had assystance to tell him when to
eat and breathe. So this is this is intense stuff.
There is this intermingling of these two concepts of sexuality
and mysticism or um spirituality, and in Hinduism is that
(07:19):
this is not unusual. We usually think about our more
western religions and how these are mutually exclusive things, but
this is not in some Eastern religions UM. And this
is this idea too, that the spiritual energy UH lies
dormant at the base of the spine until it was
activated and channeled upward to the brain to produce enlightenment
(07:40):
through the chakras, these various circles in the body through
which the energy flows. Right, So the state of ecstasy
turns out to be a state of enlightenment. So Yogi's
and centuries passed. UH. We mentioned this a little bit
in the other podcast about yoga. But um, they might
(08:01):
be poly men who would legitimately give you a little
more insight into the spirit. Yeah, they might be mystic
carneys who would bury themselves alive for money. They might
contort their nude ashmerrored bodies in the street. They might
smoke dope and kidnap children. They might run protection rackets
and uh and some were capable of supposedly uniting the
(08:23):
male and female aspects of the universe through sexual sensation.
So they really kind of ran the gambit from really
holy to really uh skiez I mean it. I mean
that That's one of the things that Broad really does
a great job of pointing out is that yoga is
especially historically so much broader than what you would encounter
at the y m c A or the local yoga studio.
(08:46):
It runs the gambit between like just total enlightenment and madness,
between between physical health and debilitating or life threatening injury.
And uh and I mean it's just it's just there's
there's a rich world there and uh and and and
out of that also comes this uh this uh subject
(09:10):
of tantric yoga in tantra. Yeah, and I wanted to
bring up half a yoga, which we all if you
practice yoga. Um, this is a branch of tantra yoga.
And we'll talk a little bit more about tantra yoga
in a second Um. But the tan tric agenda again
was reaching enlightenment as fast as you could. And William J.
Broad brings up the fact that there's a fifteenth century
(09:31):
book called half a Yoga Product car and it instructs
and poses but also talks about stimulating genitals. Right again,
in this this agenda to try to reach enlightenment, and
one line from the book says, press the parent paraneum,
that's an orogenous area between the genitals, known as the
(09:52):
taint in some circles. Press the taint with the heel
of the foot. It opens the doors of liberation. So
I mean these this is a specific text telling people,
you know, how to proceed in this path enlightenment, which
has to do with sexuality. Yeah. And if I remember correctly,
hatha means violent and not in the sense that it
(10:14):
is violent um yoga and that it's like you know,
karate chaps and stuff, but more about the speed and
the intensity of getting there. Right. This is a path
to this enlightenment again, so tantra um sexy side of yoga,
but also the sexy roots of yoga. Um. It rises
(10:36):
to prominence within Hindu traditions in medieval India. So this
is around the fifth century UM Common era, but it's
root mysterious roots may go back even even farther into
the past, into the practices and traditions of the Indus civilization,
which would have been thirty three hundred to undred BC.
(10:57):
So UM. The idea here is that the beliefs were
present in this earlier culture than they go underground for
thousands of years and then they evolve back up into
into practice in eastern and southern India. And Tantra is
based on the Sanskrit word meaning that which extends knowledge.
And uh, it's the stated purpose of tantra isn't sexual
(11:20):
bliss in and of itself or but rather spiritual bliss
and enlightenment and ultimately uh moksha that we were talking
about early. Ultimately the idea is to uh find liberation
from this endless wheel of suffering. And I'm here's the
other thing about tantra is that it does not subscribe
to the cast system. So and it was free then
of the Brahmin priest that we're ruling over women's democratizing
(11:45):
sexuality but also spirituality. So it had a lot of
people who were very interested in being a part of it. Um.
The I guess you would say the problem mom or
as William Jay Broad puts it, is that eventually the
h it becomes so associated with with sex that's sort
of overshadowed by this and and people begin to think
(12:08):
of it as okay, well it's not just you know
this spiritual awareness or enlightenment. But you know a lot
of people are getting kind of randy here, yeah now,
and and and you know, squirreling away from the path.
Yeah now, now, why are they getting randy? Or what
is the stated reason? Well, historically you had right handed
(12:28):
tantra and you had left handed tantra and uh, and
that doesn't have anything to do with like right or
left handed being bad or one being dirty. That has
to do with like the position of God and goddess
um in a typical iconography. But right handed guy tantra
was more traditional and in terms of like worshiping the goddess,
(12:49):
whereas left handed tantra involved the ritual use of taboo
items in Hinduism specifically these five ms. You had Masma
which is eat uh, nazia no mean mazia, fish, mudra,
parched grain which was seen as an aphrodisiac, h Maja
which is wine, and then mathuna ritual sexual intercourse. So
(13:15):
what you would have happened is you would have this
this group of individuals and uh and generally these are
people that already have some exposure to to yoga or
do yoga principles. This is not just random people on
the street. They come into a sacred space in the
presence of you know, some sort of a guru or
an adept, and it will be in on on an
auspicious to day. You know, that's something that lines up um,
(13:38):
you know, numerologically important in m in the tradition. And
you'll have male and female participants who were called tanto
riquez ritually bathe, dress and generally you know, doll up
and purify through uh meditation and reciting mantras, and then
they form into male and female couples. Then they they
consume these various things ritually, have a little meat, a
(14:00):
little fish, a little parched grain, a little wine, and
then they will they will unite sexually say, and then
it becomes a key party. Well, no, I mean, I
mean that can certainly that can be the the charge.
But it's not just like, all right, we're done with
the We're done with the meat and the fish. Let's
let's get down to business. There's also a lot of
the mantras continue and the meditative aspects um uh continue
(14:25):
and U and the in fact, it's the pronunciation of
the mantras. Uh supposedly turns the female partner into an
embodiment of the goddess and the male becomes an embodiment
of the gods. So on a mythic level, they're enacting
the cosmological union of Shiva and shotkey of Deva and
Devi and uh. It takes on this larger cosmic proportion.
(14:48):
And and again it involves you know, intense meditation, intricate
yogurt postures, the visualization of these yantras, which are kind
of like a mandala that represents divine female energy, kind
of this um geometric design that you envision in your
head um and the attempt to stay immobile and to
facilitate mental processes in the prevention or delay of orgasm. Well,
(15:12):
and and this is something we'll talk about a little
bit to this delay of orgasm, which is also um
extending the Enlightenment period right this ecstasy. So this is
when I brought up staying. I brought up this idea
that you could do breathwork, you could do meditation in
order to um, to stave off the inevitable yea, before
you get that lapite mort um. And they're generally talking
(15:35):
not about like imagine a race course with a start
in the finish line, with the finish line being orgasm.
The idea is not to slam on the brakes before
you get to the orgasm, but to slow things down
to the point to where you're in a continuous, in
a continuous state of the almost crossing the line. Yeah. Um.
(15:57):
So here's the thing. In the West, tantra really becomes
synonymous with sexual debauchery. And this is where Broad in
his book says Tantra reaches a natier with um, an
alleged cannibal sect of Yogi's the a Gory who quote
eate the flesh of human skulls, drank urine liquor from
human souls, lived in cremation grounds and dunghills, and defiled
(16:22):
all social social convention supposedly to court public disapproval as
tests a humility. And none of those things are wrong
in and of themselves. But I mean now I mean that,
I mean there are you could you know, drinking urine,
drinking like or even drinking from human skulls. I mean
that's you see, these things occur in various traditions. Well,
(16:43):
the problem is is that India in nineteen twenties starts
to realize that you know, they have a political agenda
right there. They want to become independent, um, they want
to rise up. So they can't really have this whole
light cannibalist yoga sect representing them because what's coming out
of India, Um, you know, one of the exports we
see is this idea of yoga. So it sort of
(17:06):
gets this history of the sexuality particularly gets whitewashed because
you have um Indian nationalists like Gunang we talked about.
This is someone who really started to try to research
yoga in earnest in the nine twenties, and he began
to distinguish half a yoga from tantra, sanitizing yoga's association
with its roots. But the interesting thing here is that
(17:29):
you end up engaging in the duality of oh, there's
the good, there's the good yoga, and then there's the
bad yoga. It's like the here's the here's the the
law abiding yoga, and here's the road yoga. But and actually,
when we talk about the road yoga to we're talking
about something called kundalini, So we talk about contra yoga tantra.
This is one of the branches Kundalinia is practiced today.
(17:50):
Although as far as I've never been to some sort
of orgiastic class in it, I've just been We've talked
about the metaphors of the snake and the energy cooling
up through the spine. Yeah. Well, um, it's it's interesting
when you look into like why are they engaging? Why
would a ton trick um yoga prented practitioner engage in
the consumption of these five ms? And you know what
(18:12):
does it all get down to. Aside from just this
idea of well, let's use sexual sensation body sensation to
to you know, channel the spirit. Um, it's this idea
too that you have these things that are forbidden, their taboo, right,
So there you're human, these temptations are going to be there.
(18:32):
These things are there in your life. So you can
either run from them, um and try to deny them,
or you can take them and try to do something
spiritually beneficial with them. So that's that's part of it,
taking these negatives or potential negatives and spinning them into
a spiritual positive. So you're saying with within the Hindu
tradition that that not one thing is entirely good or bad.
(18:54):
Everything everyone contains both. Yeah, because on one on one
level again the direction of otherwise dangerous desires into acts
of devotion. And then there's this idea too that it
awakens participants to the non duality of the world. Okay,
the idea, there's this important idea in Hinduism. The world
is a single, indivisible reality uh known as Brahmin. And
(19:16):
to see it uh and to see the world as
anything else than that, to see it as anything that's
divided and composed of parts, is illusion. And you want
to see through that illusion and see that a glimpse
and understand experience the reality of Brahmen. So if you
see the world as oh, eliminates good and wine is bad, uh,
you know are not. No, sex is great and sex
(19:37):
is bad. And destructive. Then you're you're seeing a divided
vision of the world, and you're not going to sing
brahmin or or even yoga yoke right, the union of union.
It's not about division. So I find that that very fascinating. No,
I think it's a it's a wonderful context to talk
about this. Um, we should take a break. When we
(19:59):
get back, we're gonna get down to the science of
sex and yoga, or as I like to call it,
the yoga beast with two backs. Yes, so, UM going
to pigeon post, listen to this message. And when we
get back, look all right, we're back in. Come out
of pigeons and go back into child's post. So let's
(20:23):
let's continue. We've we've covered a lot of ground already
talking about the the roots of yoga, the basics of Hinduism, Uh, Tantra,
the five ends, why you should do them, um, what
spiritual good they can do in the long run. Yeah,
I wanted to talk about Cundolini for a second, because
we talked about this. We're talking about tantra, its role
(20:44):
in tantra, the idea of the snake coiling at the
base of the spine, this energy that rises up um
and and actually cundalini um is sanscrit for coiled or
she who is coiled, and it really is a metaphor
of rebirth because of it's the snake's ability to to
shed its own skin, right, and it has a high
(21:05):
status in Hinduism. Um. But I wanted to mention that
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Young was really intrigued by Kundalini and
he wrote of a twenty five year old woman whose
symptoms included a wave of physical turmoil that rose from
her paraneum. Would you call it the taint to her uterus,
to her bladder and then eventually to the crown of
(21:27):
her head? Okay, this is classic Kundalini imagery right here.
And so he found it really curious that instead of
her fearing um what was happening these physical manifestations, she
actually really enjoyed it, and he came to understand it
though in terms of of an induced psychotic state, he
thought of it as a very destructive force. And in fact,
(21:50):
if you ever pick up or thumb through his book
called The Red Book, which is a bunch of illustrations
by him but of his dreams, you'll see the snake
in there as this sort of destroyer or this this
menacing um symbolism in his own dreams. But I wanted
to bring that up because it's so close to what
we've talked about before, and it's this idea of thinking off.
(22:13):
We've discussed this in the Female Orgasm podcast, but it
was called the Orgasm Wars, and um, we talked about
this woman named Barbara Correlli's who claimed to have trained
herself to climax on demand, okay, without any sort of stimulation,
and uh, she's been thinking herself off for a number
of years and she actually demonstrated her ability to do
(22:34):
this when she went into an m R I and
then she came to climax several times while researchers at
Rutgers University studied her brain patterns and they saw, indeed
that it was matching the types of brain patterns that
you see in in orgasms people who actually have had
sex with each other and undergo m R at the
same time. It seems a little awkward, but UM, so
(22:57):
I bring this up because William Abroad also talks about
thinking off, but he also talks about this idea that, um,
the same thing is sometimes happening in yoga practitioners brains,
particularly when they're meditating, and meditation and yoga of corpse
go hand in hand. Yeah, And he he talks about
the Anonda Margot sect which was studied by James C.
(23:19):
Corby UM. This is a sect of UM yoga practitioners
and they underwent this this study at Stanford University, and
he had a control group of nonpractitioners all meditate, and
then he had the Anonda Market sect also meditating. And
just so you know, Anonda Market totally hardcore. We're talking
(23:39):
about three and a half hour long meditation sessions daily,
very rigorous. So what happened is that they had the
both of the groups. They had them um relaxed for
twenty minutes, and then they had them gives them attention
to their breathing for twenty minutes, and then twenty minutes
just for straight up meditation. So the cool thing about
(24:01):
this is that the control group that they show all
sorts of signs of classic relaxation, right for instance, their
blood pressure drops. But our friends over here, the are yogis,
are all sorts of crazy things are happening with them.
They're breathing really rapidly they begin to sweat. What they're
seeing the researchers realized, is this autonomous arousal very much
(24:26):
the same sort of thing that you would see with
someone who was approaching an orgasm. In fact, one of
the participants had a heartbeat of one and twenty beats
per minute, which broad says is very similar to frenzy
the lovers. Yeah, so there is an idea that through UM,
through meditation, but also through yoga like posts like cobra,
(24:50):
in which your pelvic region is on the floor you
place a lot of pressure there that this is stimulating
certain hormones in the body and you begin to get
this benefit of UM. I guess you could say, I
don't want to say I love cocktail of hormones surging
through your body, but there there's direct evidence that this
can actually increase, uh, your libido and there I mean,
(25:14):
and there's certain poses to write that I have been
shown to have a more of a link to to
the to the sexual side of yoga. Right, Oh, yeah, definitely,
I mean cobra. As I said, bow pose is another
one and without now Cobra for those that I don't know,
this is one where it's like you're you're lying on
your stomach and your hands to side here, and then
(25:35):
you sort of the front of you, your your torso
sort of rises up like a snake. Yeah, your hands
on your side and they're pushing your your upper torso
up and so you are putting a lot of pressure
in your pelvic region. But what they're also finding is
that one of the hormones that is taking up quite
a bit is testosterone and uh I and men and women.
And in fact, in one study they saw a woman's
(25:56):
testosterone go up by And this is incredible because heretofore
they had decided that yoga was lowering men's testoster room level.
And this was based on a study in which it
wasn't um yoga that was lowering the testosterone level. It
was this vegetarian diet that the practitioners were at the
same time, uh and they had a bunch of soy
(26:18):
in their diet and that was lowering lowering the testosterone.
So that's sort of a myth that broad bust here
and says no, like this, testosterone can actually increase your
libido as well, for both men and women. So I
also wanted to mention too that that broad says, there's
a clinical study of more than one men and women
whose self report their sex lives before and after they
undertook yoga in the study, and across the board, they
(26:41):
all reported increased arousal, better orgasms, and more overall satisfaction.
So one of the things I do want to point
out that broad points out is that when they are
conducting these um, these studies and this research, they are
they're very aware of creating really good solid studies, UM
(27:01):
at least now in trying to study this into earnest
And what I mean by that is that they're they're
looking at all the different ways in which people practice
yoga in their habits, and just like any sort of study,
you want to get a good rate of participation from
people who are healthy who um you know, are not
you know, seven yoga practitioners, so that they sway the results. UM.
(27:26):
So they're trying to get this idea, this baseline of like, Okay,
if average Joe walks into yoga class, what does that
mean in terms of average Joe's or average Jill's uh,
sexual proclivity um down the road. And so this is
really interesting data that's coming from this. And then he
does admit that there's not a ton of it. Again,
there's not people who have said, oh hey, we can
solve this whole viagra thing with just doing yoga, you know.
(27:50):
I mean that's not the claim that he's saying, but
he is pointing to a body of mounting evidence that
yoga very well could be um a sort of nature
is viagra. I also found it interesting in his book,
William Dave Brod goes into the the sexual aspects of
yoga by discussing various sex scandals that have arisen with
(28:14):
with yoga gurus. And the main ones who was talking
about are are some of the earlier U S dudes
who had large followings. Generally we're talking like guys in
the fifties sixties, and uh, and suddenly there are all
these charges that they have behaved inappropriately with the young
women or even not so young women under their charge. Well,
in Broad's point is like fifties sixties, I mean, okay,
(28:35):
first of all, there's there's this whole other issue of
power structure and taking advantage of someone. But also like
fifties sixties, these dudes aren't taking viagra. Like there's there's
a certain vitality here that he's saying that plays into um,
you know, practicing yoga. Yeah, and and you do see.
I mean actually there there have been recent scandals involving
yoga gurus as well, but uh, you can't look at
(28:59):
it just as yoga is the sexualizing thing and it
just turns men into monsters. Well, there have been some
female vous too that there have been charges against who
say that they are um taking advantage of their position
in order to to gain lovers and uh, sexual encounters.
(29:20):
But I mean, but that's what people, that's what especially
men do. I mean, it's it's like the President Clinton
thing all over again. You put a man in a
position of power and you put these impressionable young women
in his charge, especially if you have a mystic aspect there,
which is a largely unavoidable in a in a yoga setting. Well,
(29:41):
I think the problem is when your guru is saying that,
you know, you should practice abstinence is not doing the same.
So that's that's really what the issue is here. People
will say, well, you know, that's that's horribly hypocritical of you.
But I mean even the maharishi John Lennon said that, um,
the Rosemaries baby mia Faro that he had tried to
molest her, and so they actually that was one of
(30:03):
the reasons why they broke away from the maharishi because
they were like, dude, you're full of it, and being
full of it is is very again, very in touch
with some of the roots of yoga, because, as we
discussed in the other podcast, you go, you go back
in time and look at the look at the roots
of yoga, and you you find a lot of a
(30:23):
fair amount of deception of Charlatanism at times, I mean
outrageous claims that that yoga can make you live forever,
that can can defeat evil, and can cure diseases, things
that simply aren't so within the confines of scientific reality.
What I think is interesting, though, is this this again
when I say this mounting evidence, this data, that that
(30:46):
yoga can inform a person's um sexual identity, even like
there's there are some claims of neo tantrics that broad
talks about, this idea that people may begin to have
an alternative sexuality. We're off becomes the norm, so it
becomes kind of like an a sexuality that is um
(31:08):
that is inward looking. I mean, I mean it's just
mental masturbation really too. I mean that's that's really sort
of taking it down to a notch that it probably
doesn't deserve. But that's or maybe it does. But that's
sort of what we're talking about here, a certain a
sexuality like it's like more like a psycho masturbation really,
like think of it in terms of like not psycho
(31:31):
but psycho. Yeah. Yeah, So yeah, there you have it.
There's a nice little intro into the into the sexual
magical paths of cannibalistic path Now, if you're if you're
sitting there wondering, you're like, WHOA, I didn't turn into
this episode that was going to have contra and you
didn't give me a single um tip for tontric Sexum,
(31:52):
We're not going to do that. We're not gonna do it.
But you are in luck because if you go to
how Stuff Works and you type in tantra or tontric
into the search bar, you will find a Discovery Health
article written by the staff of Discovery Health that goes
into some of the specific specifics of modern tantric recommendations,
like they're not really telling you like how what order
(32:14):
to eat your fish and meat and wine or any
of that. But but some some recommendations and I talk
about the slap and tickle and one of them, at
least the definition of some of the things they talk
about are very sort of straightforward, kind of more you know,
like they're some of the tips are based and like
brings some eroticism into your into your sex life for
a light of candle, look into her eyes, that kind
(32:36):
of thing, and where you're kind of like that doesn't
really seem all that mystical. That's just kind of I
mean to some people, that's new information now. But there
there is one that I believe that's the discovery health.
If I think if you put tantra in there, it
will it actually talks about the mechanics of it and
when we're talking about drawing out the ecstasy part of it, Yeah,
(32:56):
and it gets into it gets into breathing, and it
gets into this idea again yoga means yoke and union
and uh. And so when you you take these yoga, uh,
these these yoga principles into the bedroom, you're you're dealing
with situation of people coming together being aware of their
their own breaths and in their own bodies and what
they're doing uh, and then using that information to slow
(33:20):
things down as they approach the precipice of of of orgasm. There,
so that's out a little death, a little bit assances
ectas to I know, just the in French fancy. Yeah.
So so look that up if you want some more
information on that. Um, if you want to know more
about the science of yoga, check and are And also
(33:42):
if you want to hear more just about Julian eyes
thoughts on yoga and or and and and I'll check
out the other episode that we did call the Science
of down Dog. Check out the book The Science of
Yoga by William J. Broad It's excellent. We can't recommend
that highly enough. And if you want to know a
little more about Hindu tradition, was a great book by
Mark W. Muse that's m U. E. S. S. E.
(34:04):
Called The Hindu Traditions a concise introduction and it's just
a really good, like well laying out illustrated guide to
generally what Hindu ritual consists of. It's a great book.
I have a recommend that as well. So let's call
the robot over here alright. Listener by the name of
Peter writes and it says, Hello, Robert and Julie. Was
(34:25):
just listening to your podcast about life in microgravity. One
thing that got me thinking, uh was the off topic
comment about sour dough. How did we end up talking
about sour dough? We talked. We talked about how people
living off Earth would only visit us when they needed
to come back and get genetic material, and that we
would be like the sour dough bread in San Francisco
that provides the mother dough for sour bread. Sour dough bread, okay,
(34:50):
at least well Peter goes on. He says, a sour
dough mother can be simply created by mixing flour and
water in a bowl and letting natural yeasts in the
atmosphere start the fermentation. As this can take a while,
most breadmasters keep the original pot alive by simply adding
more flour and water to the bowl once they have
removed enough for the current batch of bread. Enjoying listening
to your podcast as I am having to lie flat
(35:11):
with my eyes pointed at the floor to aid my
detached retina to recover, share and enjoy. Peter, who's in
the Plymouth few K Yeah, I feel like I saw
an article on some sort of service like if you
can't um soup up your bread or feed it, someone
will for you. I don't like the baby, said your mother. Yeah, mother,
(35:32):
mother bread all right. We also heard from Zach Zack
right soon and says, hi, I just finished listening to
your Planetary Internet episode and had some thoughts on the
speed of light the legs, specifically in sci fi. In
the majority of sci fi I have watched or red
that deals with interstellar travel, uh, neglect's interstellar communications and
that they are either not a major plot point or
(35:53):
a magically instantaneous uh example Injur's game and uh and
then he got it goes on to say, one series
where this is addressed, however, is done in the Doom universe.
A large number of communications are carried out by actual
physical messengers, writing on starships and delivering the message directly.
These were the best examples of communications sci fi that
I could think up with think of. Thanks for the
(36:15):
great podcast. Um so so yeah, that's and I've forgotten
about that detail from the Don universe. But they didn't
have the means to actually send the data, but they
had the means to send the ships. So they just
include an actual courier on board. We also heard from
listener Jim Jim Wrightson and says, uh and he's referring
(36:38):
to the zero G episode of micro Gravity and talking
about movies with zero G in space. He says, Robert
and Julie, you mentioned that two thousand and one was
the only space movie that you knew of that maintains
zero G. I thought of three More two thousand and ten,
a sequel to two thousand and one. It's kind of
obvious now, I guess had zero G as well, but
there are some scenes where it's not quite obvious whether
you're in part of the ship that zero G or
(37:00):
using rotational gravity. Apollo thirteen had zero G for a
historical reasons. They voto set on the Vomit Comet and
film several scenes in actual zero G. I heard the
stars say that they spent a lot of time on
the ends of the booms being moved around to simulate
visual zero G drift in close ups. They just swayed
back and forth. So yeah, I kind of forgot about it.
(37:20):
Paul of thirteens so historically based Mission to Mars maintain
zero G as well. They even fluff out the female
stars hairs that would happen in zero G, and I
legit only forgot about that one. And then he goes
on to say, I'm guessing studios avoid zero G because
it has to be very expensive and complicated to film
it convincingly. Assuming artificial gravity has got to solve a
(37:41):
lot of logistical problems. So so yeah, there's a there
a few there that I've forgotten about. Yeah, that's just
made me realize how surreal it must be to be
an actor. Sometimes like camer to deliver my lines. If
I'm as sway back and forth, just very slightly in
front of a green screen talking to a puppet that's
(38:01):
not a puppet that will be added sat with c
g I later, but right now is just a stick
with the word alien written N. Yeah, that I have
to in my mind imagine this monster with vagina dentata
coming at me. You know. I actually rewatched part of
two thousand and one is Space outosey Um last week,
and it's kind of heartbreaking because on one level, this
(38:24):
is not this is a vision of the twenty century,
but it's not the twenty century that actually happened, and
it's it's beautiful and stunning and uh, and then the
other side is we don't actually make movies like this
century either, So I was kind of torn as too
as to which was sadder. Like the scenes with the
monkeys and two thousand and one, those are the best
(38:46):
best scenes I've seen in cinema that features monkeys, like
and I'm counting real monkeys, Like it's better than than
than any film with Clint Eastwood or you know, at anything,
And it featured actual acting chumps, better than that, better
than anything I've seen with c G I. Monkeys in
the best monkey costumes ever employed in a motion picture. Like,
(39:07):
those scenes are just fabulous. They're perfect and and just
and just the visual the nash of that film is
just just wondrous. It is it is. I'm sorry, it
is it is. You just brought up the Clint Eastwood
and I'm imagining him in a truck going down in
the highway with his friend. It should deduce is one
(39:29):
of those suits. I mean, it's just I could go
on and actually there was some really good Facebook discussion
on this topic. Yeah, yeah, I brought it up on
Facebook yesterday. Anyway, if you haven't seen two thousand and one,
do yourself a favor because it's great. Anyway, at this
that point, we should probably move on and close out
this podcast, I know, and I just want to say
no mistake, no mistake. Yeah, um, but we do have
(39:54):
to keep talking because yeah, I know. We also have
to point out that, hey, you can get in touch
with us. You can join you on Facebook conversations with
this about um, how awesome two thousand and one is,
or what kind of yoga you prefer. Um, you can
find us on Facebook we are stuff to blow your mind.
You can find us on Twitter where we are blow
the mind. And and definitely we would love to hear
from any of you guys that are yoga practitioners. Uh,
(40:17):
let us know what effect has had on your life. Um,
if you are not a yoga practitioner and you're trying
it out or or your your new Twitter you're interested
in giving it a go, we'd love to hear from
you about that topic as well. Yeah, and also would
love to know if anybody's ever had any like huge breakthroughs,
revelations or even like some you know, sort of surreal
(40:38):
thoughts and chevas knowing at the end when they're resting,
because it's a great fertile time for for the mind.
So I have chevasna visions um fairly regularly. I forget
there's there's actually a term for it for those visions,
but I can't remember what they are. Yes, very cool stuff,
so it kind of reminds me of lucid dreaming in
a way. Um. You can also send us your thoughts
(40:59):
via email and you can do that and blow the
mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
M
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.