Ep. 110: Love, Sex... & Tantra?

[00:02] Episode Preview: Sting and Tantric Sex

Ep. 110: Love, Sex... & Tantra?

Host: Dr. Kanwal Bawa | Guest: Michelle Alva | Runtime: 19:47 | Published: January 9, 2024

Dr. Bawa: Wasn't it Sting, the singer who talked about having tantric sex that lasts four hours or so?

Michelle Alva: So many orgasms, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bawa: But if you're limp, how are you inside the vagina?

Michelle Alva: A man is not limp. He's expanded. He's on. It's like a generator. And so he can have orgasms. Yeah. Ten out of ten is ejaculation. So Sting can have orgasms and be at a seven out of ten and not ejaculate.

Dr. Bawa: He later clarified that seven hours would include dinner and a movie.

[00:30] Welcome: Love, Sex... & Tantra?

Dr. Bawa: Welcome to America's number one sexuality podcast, Dr. Sex Fairy. I am Dr. Kanwal Bawa, America's favorite sex doctor, and I am here to transform your life. If you are watching this on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe to this channel and show me the love with likes, shares, and comments. Also subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave me a five-star review.

Dr. Bawa: Today we are going to explore the topic of love, sex, and tantra. It is fascinating because all three can exist independently. You can love someone but not enjoy sex with them. You may enjoy sex with them but not feel connected on a deeper level. You may love them and feel a deep connection, but sex is a letdown. In an ideal world, you have all three in one place with one person.

Dr. Bawa: Our guest today is Michelle Alva, certified tantra and yoga teacher. Michelle received her degree in physical therapy 28 years ago and is also a certified hypnotist, an NLP, or neurolinguistic programming, practitioner. Welcome to the Dr. Sex Fairy Podcast, Michelle. It's lovely to have you here.

Michelle Alva: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

Dr. Bawa: Well, let's start with the most basic question. What is tantra?

[02:12] What Is Tantra?

Michelle Alva: Tantra is a way of being where we're embracing all of our emotions, our sensations through our five senses, and it awakens us to the sixth sense—to feeling that ecstatic, energetic vibrancy that is our natural state of being.

Dr. Bawa: And why is tantra good for us?

[02:32] Why Tantra? What Is Tantric Sex?

Michelle Alva: Because we are naturally tantric. We are so much more than just these physical bodies. We're these energetic beings. Just like when we're children, we all naturally feel this curiosity, like the animals in the jungle, the way that nature is. There's this prana, this life force. And tantra teaches us how to access this other radiance, this joie de vivre that we are, and it's very healing. And we get to experience more of the richness of life.

Michelle Alva: Tantric sex is conscious sex, heart-connected sex, where we know how to also harness our sexual energy while we're making love. So tantric sex opens the heart. It also helps all the different organs in the body to heal. And it's done in a way where you could do this by yourself or with a partner, helping yourself to integrate all of who you are into the act of sex.

[03:36] Sting, Orgasms and Ejaculation

Dr. Bawa: Wasn't it Sting, the singer who talked about having tantric sex that lasts four hours or something?

Michelle Alva: So many orgasms, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bawa: But if you're limp, how are you inside the vagina?

Michelle Alva: A man is not limp. He's expanded. He's on. It's like a generator. And so he can have orgasms. Yeah. Ten out of ten is ejaculation. So Sting can have orgasms and be at a seven out of ten and not ejaculate.

Dr. Bawa: He later clarified that seven hours would include dinner and a movie.

[04:09] Semen Retention and Expanding Sexual Energy

Michelle Alva: Yeah, well, there's a lot of misunderstanding with tantric sex. What I do is I teach men that ejaculation and orgasm are two separate events because some men think that when they have an orgasm, they ejaculate, and that's all they can have. So a tantric man knows how to extend the time between orgasm and ejaculation. And men can have eight to ten, twelve orgasms before they ejaculate. Men learn semen retention. They learn how to expand their sexual energy.

Michelle Alva: A lot of men don't know how to breathe and expand that energy. So in tantric sex, a man knows how to breathe with his diaphragm. He knows how to breathe and expand his energy with this intention of expanding to his heart. So I say, “Get your heart on before you get your hard-on.” And the heart is what gives the blood supply to the penis. So men learn how to have a heart-connected sexual experience with themselves.

[05:15] Harnessing Sexual Energy Beyond Penetration

Michelle Alva: And you don't even have to be touched to have this experience. Men can learn how to harness their energy. And so it's not just with penetration that men can have this experience. They can also have it through their prostate, through prostate massage, or meditative breathing practices. So a man feels like a king. He starts to feel that he's more in command of his sexual energy.

Michelle Alva: Some men have sex and they're struggling to not ejaculate. They make these faces, they hold their breath, and they don't want to come. And so a tantric man harnesses it, expands it. He knows how to stop and slow down when he's inside his goddess. He knows how to pause and hold and then reconnect himself so that he can be more in control and not just lose his ejaculation.

[06:15] Lasting Longer and Giving Women Time to Build Arousal

Michelle Alva: A lot of men who have a very quick ejaculation haven't mastered their heart-sex ecstatic connection. And so with a man who is more in command, women feel safer. Women feel that he's very much in his masculine. It's very sexy to have an experience with a tantric man, as opposed to someone who's nervous or afraid that they're going to ejaculate.

Michelle Alva: And men do last longer so that women can have time to actually build up their sexual energy to be able to orgasm. But if your partner has an ejaculation two minutes after you've been penetrated, that doesn't really give women the time physiologically that's normal for them. Some women need 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes to just be more relaxed and build up their sexual energy. So learning tantra makes everyone feel more fulfilled, feel more intimate and connected. And it's not just about the physical. It's about the heart and connecting to your heart yourself. So getting massive heart-ons is a part of tantric sex.

[07:30] Dr. Bawa: Physical Dysfunction Still Matters

Dr. Bawa: I like the concept of getting your heart on before your hard-on, but we have to be very realistic. It's putting a lot of pressure on men the way you just said it, because if they are unable to last more than two minutes, it's not just because they're not conscious or evolved human beings. Sometimes they have physical dysfunction, and you could be as evolved as you want to be, but until you fix the physical dysfunction, it doesn't matter if you get your heart on—you are not going to get your hard-on.

Dr. Bawa: So I think we have to pepper this with the caveat that if you have physical problems and you're not able to get your erection, you can't just sit and breathe away and hope that somehow magically your erection is going to come back. Because, yes, I understand your concept of a tantric man being a more evolved man, more conscious, and I'm all for that. But you have to be very careful because we don't want to sound judgmental against men who simply aren't able to perform, no matter how hard they want to perform.

[08:32] Tantra, Presence and the Role of the Heart

Michelle Alva: Well, I have witnessed miracles with my clients, and that's why I do what I do. Teaching men how to be in their heart, that is a practice in and of itself. And it's not about expectations. It's not about the end goal. Tantra is not about becoming a tantric man. Tantra is about having an experience with yourself in the present moment and showing up with your heart there.

Michelle Alva: So I'm not making a judgment. I'm just explaining what tantra and tantric men are able to do. And it's a practice and it's a life experience that is not just in sex. Living a tantric life is about being forgiving. It's about being compassionate. It's about learning how to accept yourself. So that's the part where people get confused. There's a philosophy with tantra. There are beliefs and ways of thinking where you see yourself as so much more than an erection, even.

[09:35] Acceptance, Connection and “Miracles”

Michelle Alva: So in tantra, there are no expectations. It's about experiencing yourself from this perspective of connectedness. And the more you just experience that, all of a sudden, miraculously, things do happen. So there's so much more that we are. And the penis is just a wise counselor. I feel a lot of times it is a blessing for people to have these dysfunctions because they wake themselves up to other aspects of themselves.

Michelle Alva: And yes, of course, people can benefit from learning tantra, and in addition, thank God you're around to help people physically. However, I think we don't realize how much our heart does make a difference and that connection with ourselves, and what miracles can happen when we do get our heart on.

[10:24] Science, Blood Flow and Tantric Massage

Dr. Bawa: I'm a believer in miracles, but I also am a believer in science. And I can't imagine that if a man has massive blockages in his genitalia, in his vasculature, that just believing and getting, I guess, more connected with one's heart and one's mind is going to somehow miraculously get blood flowing where it doesn't flow. What exactly is tantric massage?

Michelle Alva: Tantric massage is a person that is connected to their heart, their sexuality, and their ecstatic energy, placing their hands on another person and massaging them from that place of connectedness. And it does include the whole body. And the purpose of it is to awaken us that we are more than just these physical bodies, and it's meant to help expand your ability to feel your energetic field, your vibrancy.

[11:20] Yoni and Lingam Massage

Michelle Alva: And it also includes yoni massage, which refers to the female genitalia—the vulva, the vagina, the G-spot, the cervix, the outer and the inner parts of the woman's sexual anatomy. And also for the man, lingam massage, which is the genitals, the external genitalia of a man. And so when we start to massage those parts of the body, there are a lot of pleasure nerves in our sexual organs, and then start to breathe and stroke up the body to the heart, people learn how to connect their sex with their heart.

Michelle Alva: A lot of us have baggage that we're holding in our hearts. There are people who have a lot of resentment, or we've had a broken heart, and so we struggle even just breathing connectedly with our diaphragm. And so tantric massage teaches you how to be accepting and receiving of your whole self and connected to your heart and your sex and your energetic vibrancy.

[12:22] Couples Meditation and Eye Gazing

Dr. Bawa: So you work with couples and individuals. How does meditation as a couple work?

Michelle Alva: Well, meditation is being present and that one focus. So there are many different types of meditation, but there are different tantric couples practices like eye gazing. We could be looking at each other, and I'm putting my hand over your heart, and my partner's putting their hand on their heart, and we're just presencing.

Michelle Alva: A lot of us don't know how to be present. We're always on our phone, or we're always thinking about the future or the past. And so this forces people to be here now. And this present moment is the only thing that we have. So many of us are living for the future. We want that success. We want all those goals to be achieved. Well, yes, that is important. We don't just want to be bums lying down and doing nothing. But a lot of times we're missing the magic of the moment. We're missing the intimacy that we could be having with our partner.

[13:30] Slowing Down and “Smelling the Roses”

Michelle Alva: And so something as simple as looking at each other during a meal, tasting your food—it doesn't just have to be with your partner—smelling your food, just stopping to smell the roses. When was the last time we just smelled our partner or just hugged our partner and allowed ourselves to feel that connection? And so tantra teaches us to slow down. It teaches us to really embrace our humanity, which I feel so many of us are on that hamster wheel going, going, going, doing, doing, doing.

Michelle Alva: And of course we are, because that's what I feel modern world and culture is like. We feel like, “I can't just sit here and smell the roses. I'm not being productive enough.” And so tantra brings us back to that pure essence of that innocence. And from that place, we get these inspirations.

[14:20] Finding Mindfulness in Modern Life

Dr. Bawa: Stress levels are so high in society that I often talk to my patients about how they need to relax into it, that they need to connect outside the bedroom to really have that explosive sex in the bedroom. And so there's a happy medium where, of course, it's nice to stop and smell the roses, but modern-day life is that you have to work. You sometimes work late, and you have children and they have sports activities and all of that.

Dr. Bawa: So I think somewhere one has to find that mindfulness in the midst of the chaos, because not everyone will have the luxury to just stop and take a break. I think we have to take maybe mini breaks as we go along our day to find that inner peace and balance.

[15:04] Mini Tantric Rituals for Stress

Michelle Alva: Well, I teach a lot for people to expand their breath and feel expansive. So if you think about chronic stress, that's tension. The muscles contract. Those actin and myosin fibers shorten. So many of us have jaw tension, TMJ, neck tension, shoulder tension, low back tension. Basically, because of our thoughts, we perceive our lives as stressful.

Michelle Alva: And so just opening your mouth, taking a deep breath in, lengthening our jaw, or looking up, or opening our arms throughout the day—you can do this if no one's in the elevator and you're going up to the 20th floor, or just in between doorways. You can stretch your chest, take one deep breath, two deep breaths, or even just put your hands behind your hips and take a long inhalation throughout your day.

[16:00] Turning the Mundane Into Magic

Michelle Alva: This is how I bring these practical everyday practices in. We could be doing the laundry, and we just put the laundry into the dryer and stop, stay there, do three deep breaths. So when I'm doing my laundry, I take long, deep breaths. When I'm at a red light, I think about something that I love about myself or something I'm grateful for, and I take a deep breath in. So every red light, we could just breathe. We can have these rituals.

Michelle Alva: Or whenever you wash your hands after going to the bathroom, look at yourself in the mirror. Tell yourself, “I love you. We're going to get through this.” So those are the mini breaks throughout the day where we can turn the mundane into magic using these tantric rituals.

[16:48] Where to Find Michelle Alva

Dr. Bawa: So, Michelle, how can people find you?

Michelle Alva: Well, I recommend going to Michelle Alva TV, and that's Michelle with two L's. And Alva, A-L-V-A, stands for Amplify Love, Vibrate Abundance, which, when we connect to tantric practices, we remember that our nature is to be abundant.

Michelle Alva: I was just in Costa Rica yesterday at the Align to Love retreat that I was facilitating, and it was so lush. There were so many fruits on the trees and birds singing, and I was in the jungle. And it's very different than downtown Miami, where there's so much cement and there are hardly any trees. Well, that's a jungle too. It's a different kind of jungle. And I was so inspired by all the little sounds of the birds. And that to me is not a mistake that I'm here today to remind us to go outside.

[17:45] Free Meditations and Align to Love

Michelle Alva: I have all these free meditations on my YouTube channel, Michelle Alva TV, and I have a website, MichelleAlva.com, so people can learn more about tantra. I have many videos and guided meditations, and I just made this Align to Love meditation that pretty much summarizes how to de-stress, how to reduce the feeling of anxiety, and reset your autonomic nervous system so it amplifies your vagus nerve tone and teaches people how to reset throughout the day. And I even have a five-minute meditation for the people that don't have a lot of time.

[18:18] Closing Conversation

Dr. Bawa: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the Dr. Sex Fairy Podcast. It's wonderful having you.

Michelle Alva: Thank you for all you do to help us get more connected to our sexuality, to our physical bodies. And I'm really grateful for you because you are a person that I feel is helping men and women to connect in a way that many people don't understand is important to connect also. So thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

[18:43] Recorded Outro

Dr. Bawa: And there you have it, folks. We have delved deep into the realm of love, sex, and tantra with our guest, Michelle Alva. Remember, love, sex, and connection are complex facets of our lives, and they can exist both separately and together. It is all about finding that perfect balance.

Dr. Bawa: If you found today's episode insightful and eye-opening, be sure to hit that subscribe button on my YouTube channel, Dr. Sex Fairy, and on your favorite podcast platform, whether it is Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or elsewhere. Stay tuned for more fascinating discussions on matters of the heart and soul, penises and vaginas, and more.

Dr. Bawa: Thank you for joining me today, and may your life be filled with love, passion, connection, and profound pleasure. Until next time.