As I was on twatter building my collection for my last story, I couldn’t help but notice what else was in the utterly astroturfed “trending,” section.
Well consider me intrigued.
When Shakespeare said “the eyes are the windows to your soul”, he was probably inspired by the ancient art of soul gazing. Otherwise known as tantric eye gazing, it’s the first step into an objectively healthier relationship with intimacy and pleasure. If you practice eye gazing enough times, you can actually start to see and feel glimpses of your partner’s soul (speaking from experience),
You… have actual experience seeing someone’s soul. For some strange reason I find this very hard to believe. But these are the people calling us Science! denying bigots for not supporting Pfizer’s quest for $100 billion in Covid-19 profits, so what do I know?
and sex can become an otherworldly, spiritual journey. Fancy trying it out? We spoke to experts in the tantric arts about how the super-easy practice of soul gazing can help us access the nourishing beauty of making love.
Experts in “tantric arts”? I’m sorry, am I the stupid one for asking for some credentials here? What exactly makes someone an expert in the benefits of staring into someones eyes when you have sex? I’m getting this weird feeling that there was no study done on this.
The practice of tantra (meaning “to weave” or “loop” in Sanskrit) emerged in the first millennium (within the years 1-1000 AD) and is credited with the traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism in India. Tantra is a general tradition that includes meditative practices meant to centre us in the present moment and reconnect us with our bodies. This includes yoga, meditation, breath work, and mantras, but it can also be used to improve our experience with sensuality, intimacy, pleasure, and relationships (including friendships). Soul gazing is a first step into the practice of tantra and involves being able to look into another person’s eyes without feeling too awkward and looking away. “Even though it can be confronting, eye gazing helps boost our confidence, improves self-esteem, and develops self-awareness,” Aysha Bell, transformational healer, yoga teacher, and tantra coach with over 10 years of experience, tells POPSUGAR. “It’s an opportunity to become present and experience the true essence of another.”
Right. So nobody did a study to actually find out the benefits of staring into someones eyes. We just have to take the word of a “transformational healer.”
When we no longer feel awkward, we start to introduce trust, vulnerability, and patience into our sexual journey. When we are fully comfortable being vulnerable with our partner (and ourselves), we become fully open to experience our own pleasure. We become better at listening to what our body wants, reading our partner’s body without judgment or expectation, and communicating our needs from a place of complete love and acceptance. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Certified sexologist Madalaine Munro tells POPSUGAR that through the gazing, “‘self-other merging’ can take place, which can create connection and a feeling of ‘oneness’ between us and another.” Eye gazing can help you connect with someone beyond words and sit with your own emotions as a meditative practice. You are encouraged to move away from goal-oriented intimacy and embrace experience-orientated intimacy. Munro also shares that “with long-term partners, we can fall into the same routines for intimacy and pleasure, so soul gazing can support knowing your partner in a different way and cultivate a new form of intimacy between you.”
Here’s the thing. I don’t even disagree with the general gist of what they’re saying. Everyone who has ever had a (good) intimate sexual relationship can tell you what a powerfully entrancing experience that staring into their eyes can be. Of course this is a bonding experience. But I wouldn’t dress it up with all these gay terms. Or put two lesbians in my cover shot.
Their idiotic terms of “goal oriented intimacy,” and “experience oriented intimacy,” obfuscate a very important message that young people need to hear. A pornographic, checkbox-oriented thinking is incredibly weird and offputting in real life. People, especially young men, are encouraged to think of sex as “getting” something. In reality, when you’re with someone you are very attracted to, the mere act of standing closer to them, and feeling their body heat, listening to the sound of them breathing, can be the most enjoyable and intimate experience, despite you not “getting,” some sort of checkbox feature to brag about to your friends.
One of the least talked about aspects of the societal harm of pornography is the false expectations for sex put on young people with no real experiences to teach them otherwise. Couple this with the extreme sexual nervousness of young people, combined with a culture that glorifies non-intimate sexuality, and you have a recipe for disaster.
But of course, that’s why you’ll see these types of articles with lesbians on the cover. You can’t have a real critique of society, it has to be ghey in some way.
Pornographer (((Larry Flynt)))
To be otherwise would be Uppity Goyism.
Thank you for implicitly drawing a distinction between science and Science! — their perversion of the term really bothers me. A lot. Like makes me wanna fedpost levels of bother.