The Sacred Corridor
In my Tantric practice, something I try to do daily, I put an emphasis on engaging in a dialogue between my second and fourth chakras: my heart and my cock—my love center and my pleasure center. In Western life and practice, especially for men, these two essential parts of our being are often separated, even isolated. You’ve surely heard the expression, “my cock has a mind of its own.” This is a glib way of shirking the responsibility of owning a penis. It isolates our genitals from any emotional connection and, perhaps, any responsibility for our sexual actions. An attitude of separating heart and cock is also an effective way to keep ourselves from being vulnerable. If it’s all about cock, we avoid potential heartache. If it’s just about cock, I won’t get hurt.
On my journey of truly connecting my whole body in everything I do, the biggest challenge has been fully accepting the sacred nature of cock pleasure, incorporating it completely with what I traditionally called my ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, my ‘mind’ and my ‘heart’. Those divisions, I’ve discovered over the years, are arbitrary and, for me, false. They are constructs of Western thought and practice that the broad culture demanded I accept as fact and that I’ve finally realized were a dangerous fiction. Dangerous because living with that sense of separation in my being, living with a sense that my ‘body’ must constantly be at war with my ‘soul’, keeps us from being fully human. It becomes a blockage in trying to live a full and joyful life. Western religion is a key player in promoting this constant battle, this fiction, and many of us do hard internal work to overcome the trauma that it has wielded on our holy Erotic Bodies.
One way forward, a step towards wholeness, is opening up a conversation between our heart and our cock. The very concept of having a ‘conversation’ between two parts of our body may seem completely foreign to you. So, it might be easier for you to think of this practice as making a connection between those two parts of our bodies, and the connection is created by our breath which of course connects everything in our being. Before I knew that this was a common Tantric practice, I became aware of a blockage between those two parts of my body located in my third chakra, my solar plexus, on the left side of my torso and just below my heart. I noticed it in receiving erotic massage as well as in my self-pleasuring. It was diagnosed by a colleague as the location of my sexual repression. After many years of religious practice, having fully engaged in a lifelong battle between my ‘body’ and my ‘soul’, her assessment rang true. After much internal effort and whole-body awareness, I was able to break down the blockage and eventually open myself to the potential for full erotic bliss.
I call the connection between my heart and my cock the Sacred Corridor and my practice involves enlivening and engaging that part of my body. It goes through the third chakra which is the location of my body’s experience of power as well as its shadow, the experience of vulnerability. The Sacred Corridor was the location of my personal blockage and opening that area up was a big step in my sexual growth. It involved mindful meditation, self-massage, self-touch, and intentional touch from others. It also involved a determined recognition that it was a holy and sacred practice. It is now a daily practice and I can’t imagine beginning my day in any other way.
It's a simple technique. I begin as if I’m entering a yoga session, sometimes in a seated position with one of my heels gently placed against my perineum, just beneath my genitals. After a few moments of mindful relaxation, I begin to breathe, but I visualize the breath coming from the lowest part of my torso, from my root. I engage my PC muscle (flexing that muscle that constricts the flow of urine) to initiate the breath as I begin to breathe. Then I notice the breath rise up in my body, through my genitals, into my respiratory diaphragm, noticing it fill my stomach, and then finally expand into my heart. Expelling the breath begins with the release of the PC muscle and then I notice as the breath moves back down into the lower chakras. In order to concentrate the movement of breath from my cock to my heart, I’ll hold both of those parts of my body, placing my right hand underneath my balls and my left hand on my heart.
Once this process has been initiated, my only job is to notice what comes up while I’m making this connection through my Sacred Corridor. Sometimes the process evolves into a beautiful act of self-pleasuring. Sometimes I notice an emotion, which can often be simply a feeling of gratitude. But sometimes I’ll notice pain or grief, an experience just as powerful and meaningful as pleasure. Or I’ll just concentrate on the bliss that breath can bring when it is centered on a dialogue between my heart center and my pleasure center. It can be the beginning of a prayerful meditation, or it can be a way of setting an intention for the upcoming day. It is always a beautiful practice and I’ve discovered many wonderful things about myself while engaging in it.
Honor your Sacred Corridor. Acknowledge it, notice it. It can be a gateway to self-knowledge and erotic bliss.