The Complete Idiot's Guide to Tantric SexA Personal Note About My Own Journey I am deeply grateful to everyone who has been part of my evolution at allstages of my life that has led to my latest reawakening into the more spiritualworld. I'm amazed to reflect on some events that happened decades ago andare manifesting lately, consistent with the path of tantra. Like my dearchildhood friend Rhea Ross insisting that I go with her to study yoga with SwamiSatchidananda and Swami Muktananda over 30 years ago, when doing so was avantgarde among people I knew. I've since visited the samadhis (graves) ofthese masters. Years ago too, spiritualist Judy Hevenly insisted I come with herto receive shaktipat from Gurumayi. And it was ages ago that I went to classeswith Mantak Chia, Chinese master of the Taoism of sex (now living and teachingin Thailand), which proved to be my introduction into this tantric path that Ihave so intensely studied in more recent years. Also many years ago, my friendLaurie Sue Brockway (a true goddess and now a minister who also works with theRed Cross, as I do, during emergency disasters) kept telling me how wejust have to go to California to take one of Charles Muir's workshops inthis terrific new thing called 'tantric sex.' I've sincebeen to many of Charles' seminars and his teacher trainings, and become agood friend of this gifted teacher. For years in between those early tastes of tantra and now, I followed a mosttraditional professional path as a senior research scientist at the New YorkState Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Medical School. I did work onschizophrenia, depression and cross-cultural psychotic disorders with abrilliant British psychiatrist, Dr. Barry Gurland. In the late 1960s and early1970s I became the protege of the first professionals working inwhat was then the new field of sex therapy, who were collaboratingwith the grandfather and grandmother of sex therapy,Masters and Johnson. This led to becoming one of the founders of the firstmedical-centered based organization of sex therapists; working on thesub-committee about sex for the American Psychiatric Association'sDiagnostic and Statistical Manual, led by the eminent Robert Spitzer; runningwomen's groups to teach women to have orgasm in 10 sessions with anotherpioneer in sexology, Dagmar O'Connor; and with my co- therapist and dearfriend Dr. Larry Sharpe, writing some of the first professional papers aboutdiagnosis, evaluation, and outcome of sex therapy. Along the way, I got my Ph.D.in clinical psychology at N.Y.U. and was fortunate to study The Psychologyof Love with my supervisor and his wife, Irv and Sue Sarnoff. The next phase of my work in the field of sex became more public as the hostof radio call-in advice shows. This started over 20 years ago, on WABC Radio,but some of you are most familiar with my national radio showLovePhones. Everyone has their favorites of the LovePhones radiocalls, and so many of them come alive in the stories in my book GenerationSex. I am forever grateful to everyone who shared their touchingstories-crying and laughing together-with my radio family,co-host Chris Jagger, Badger, Jimmy, Sam, and Steve Kingston who started itall. We talked about tantra on the radio years ago! How glad I am to have beenable to do that-to have everyone using terms like goddess andhonoring, and to have broken radio ground by having the first sacredspot massage and female ejaculation to happen on radio airwaves (by tantraexperts and friends Carla Tarantola and Sasha Lessin). A A(c) Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
