Polynesian Love: A Case Histoy

Slow Love ~ the Polyneaian way involves the heart, first of all, and also much generalized, whole-body touching, rather than an exclusive focus on the genitals, as the following case history, somewhat poetically rendered, describes:

Although her lover passed hours pressing into her soft petals with his tongue. . .

nothing.

Such loving left her more frustrated than having nothing at all. . .

Her lover determined that the lack in their love life was her lack.

He bought her a touch toy.

Tensing, she listened to its soft, insistent song.

Yet, still, after all . . .
the same results:

The more it sang and vibrated,

the more frustrated she became.

She longed to be loved fully, as the ocean forms fully around each longing shore.


And not only for the pleasure of her body.

She wanted to be accepted,

to rest firmly within the luminous heart of shared love.

She pressed the button again.

It stimulated and built up tension in her lower body.

Yet, those large, cresting waves never formed on the shore of her longing.

She felt sexually and humanly inadequate, as if her womanhood had been rejected.


She felt everything was her fault and that there was no hope for her to live a normal life.

This only led her boyfriend to demand more eros.

She yearned for a light and a flame to rise within her waking heart and into his waking heart, and engulf them.

He yearned only for more stimulation.

Thus, she learned stimulation's deep . . . .

silent melodies

its rhythms of insistence . . .

She yearned for their bodies to sing in the night,

to extinguish the stars with their song.

She dreamed in a blue reverie.

She traced with her fingers . . . the reflection of her own heart, in the mirror of he who ignored it. . .

Nourishing this longing . . . . . . she sustained herself . . .

Her body turned towards her own body . . . in the solitude of night . . .

Her body began singing . . .

Her body began singing her name, with love, from atop a high mountain . . .

She listened to the voice of her body, season after season . . . . . . hearing it in the music of the leaves and stars as she paced the cougar paths on the slopes of mountains . . .

She dreamed . . . her flesh is sand . . .luminous by night . . . cooled by mist . . .

She dreamed herself . . . a dark flower, folding into the petals of her own, soft heart . . .

With eyes still closed, she waited. . .

A mysterious voice whispered in her dreams . . .

whispering like an ocean forming around . . . filling. . . a shore . . .

Her lips . . .

her skin . . .

her dark river of hair. . .

transformed into a love letter of light and shadow . . . .

She began to sense something in the silence of her own longing . . .

In her dream she moved towards what she desired . . .like the moon.

The moon. . .

Who knows her own gaze . . .

Shines back from each pool in the river

Each pool falling

All the way to the sea.

Her moon hair. . .

became a net . . .

fishing for silences. . .

finning deeply in the current . . .

Silence . . .

She sailed soft moments into silkier silences . . .


The voice of her body sang:

I want to hold the whole weight of your heart all of your body and all the stars within you. . .

It sang listen, my lovely one . . .

between us a rhythm . . .

our hearts surging seaward . . .

The wings of small birds, carried her into her own heart . . .

A sigh slipped into her next breath . . .

Her lips sipped the sun and moon of her loneliness. . .


Whispered odes into the spirals of her hungry flesh

What she began to feel at that momemt . . . is older than everything. . . she floated toward the

seas of the waiting moon . . .

What she had learned in her dream, she now asked of her lover.

She wanted him to forget about sex and genitals for a while.

Simply massage my entire body, she whispered.

On alternate evenings, she would massage his entire body, without stimulating him.

Then they would embrace, silently.

They began to feel deep peace welling up within the countours of their flesh.

They began to feel currents of energy coursing between their hearts.

They felt streams of energy rushing luminous between every cell in their bodies.

After some months of such touching. . .

He entered her . . .

Their two boides joined like two dark waves in the night

And the fullness of love was their ocean . . .

Slow Love Fundamentals ~ Introduction

When European sailors first chanced upon the isles of Polynesia, they all remarked on the health, happiness and physical beauty of the Polynesians. Many of the attributes of early Polynesian culture contributed to their happiness. First, the Pacific islanders were body positive. While the Europeans had been spending centuries dwelling on the evils of the body and composing vast encycloypeias of the sins of the flesh, the Polynesians knew the human body to be beautiful and sex to be completely natural. To be sexually attractive was to exude more mana, or spiritual power.

In order to enhance beauty, the early Polynesians bathed frequently, dipping into fresh-water pools. After the bath men and women applied to their twany skin various combinations of herbs and scented oils to enhance beauty and allure, such as monoi oil: cooling coconut oil scented with calming sandalwood.

Also, Polynesians passed down sexual wisdom from one generation to the next, because they felt it was such an important area of life. Although sex was important, seeing a partially nude person was not automatically sexually stimulating. That is because the Polynesians were accustomed to partial nudity. After all, they needed to say cool in a warm climate. They also did not need to worry much about having sex: They suffered from no sexual diseases before they had contact with Europeans and if a woman became pregnant, the entire village would help raise the child.

All of these factors that gave rise to a relaxed state of loving in early Polynesia are no longer part of typical Polynesian life today, which has been so strongly influenced by Western customs.

The fundamentals presented below, however, can help both Polynesians and non-Polynesians to rediscover a sense of peace and ease that is so essential to soulful loving.

Slow Love Fundamentals 1 : The Breath Ocean

You can improve your sexual relationship as well as all your other relationships quite simply. In fact the method is so simple that it is not a method at all, and so most people overlook it. They feel they must do something. This is why there are so many books on how to sexually stimulate your partner. However, all these overlook the most fundamental aspect of your loving--yourself.

You can share with your partner only what you are. If your body and mind are full of stress and pressures, then you may just exploit sex as an attempt to escape from them.

It is important to ask yourself, what do I bring to my partner? Are my body, mind, heart and spirit in a state of harmony with each other? Or are they filled with conflict, doubt and stress?

I started off saying that we can quite simply improve our ability to relate. It is so simple that if you saw someone doing it, it would look as if they are doing almost nothing. If you see someone breathing, it does not look very flashy. Like sex, it is a completely natural act. Yet, if you pay attention to the ocean of breathing, to the waves of breathing, you will automatically begin to feel harmony between body, mind, heart and spirit.

This is because the energy within your breath harmonizes all these different aspects of your being. This energy, or mana, or what the Chinese call qi, the Japanese call ki and the Indians call prana, is very powerful. If you can learn how to increase this energy within yourself and then learn how to circulate it, you will vastly improve your entire life, not only your sexual relationships.

This is why the Chinese have for centuries practiced qi gong exercises and taiji. These slow movements, done along with deep breathing, allow the breath energy to permeate the entire being. The same can be felt during hula practice or walking meditation or the practice of pranayama.

Or, simply sitting still regularly with your attention on your waves of breathing, as they rise and fall quite naturally, will allow you to discover deeper and deeper levels of the ocean of breath energy. When you become aware of this ocean of breath energy and can feel it begining to fill and circulate within yourself, then you have this beautiful energy to share with your sexual partner in an intimate embrace.

One of the meanings of the word Aloha is to allow more fully sacred breathing. More on this in another post.

Slow Love Fundamentals 2: Aloha

Aloha, spiritually, means alo (sharing, coming together) in ha (sacred breath, the breath of spirit). Every wave of the infinite ocean of breath can take us to an inner stillness that is sacred. Each breath can connect our body, heart, mind, and soul. By riding the waves of our breathing with our heartfelt attention, we can increase our mana or spiritual power. It is the same as increasing our qi (chi) or our prana.

The breath energy has different levels, each one nested more deeply within the others. The outermost sheath is the vital breath, which nourishes the body. A more subtle sheath is the breath that nourishes the mind. And even more subtle than this is the breath that connects the heart to the soul. In this post we will discuss the vital breath that nourishes the body.

In many traditions, this is accomplished through deep, heartfelt breathing. If you are practicing the ancient Chinese practice of qi gong work, or pranayama breathing, which is part of the yoga system, or if you perform hula, then you are breathing deeply while moving the body gently. Done regularly, these practices increase the amount of breath energy that bathes each cell in the body. Because you are not exerting the muscles, you build up a surplus of breath energy.

The best time to take in breath energy is early in the morning, between 2 am and 6 am. In India this sacred hour just before dawn is considered to be a time when the flow of prana in the environment is extremely powerful. Breathing in that supercharged air is tremendously nurturing to every particle of our being. In order to be awake and alert that early in the morning, one needs to retire early in the evening, certainly before 10 pm. In our next posts we will focus on techniques that can be used to flood our cells with this powerful, early morning breath energy. It you can enjoy such techniques with your partner, you will both be building a subtle but strong foundation for deepening your relasionship on all levels.

(photo credit: Tim McKenna www.tim-mckenna.com)

Slow Love Fundamentals 3: Slow Dancing

We can tap into tremendous flows of powerful energy that surge through our environment early every morning in the hour before dawn. By paying attention to this ocean of breath energy, by learning how to swim in it, you are increasing your power to relate to your partner's energy field. You may notice that if you go to the beach early in the morning, a breeze is flowing down the canyons and valleys towards the waves, causing the fonds of the palm trees to sway and swim in its current. This early morning air is laden with the oxygen and scents and essences of the millions of herbs and plants that thrive in the canyons. One of the most powerful practices is to increase our mana by taking in this pre-dawn morning air. This can be done through moving slowly and with awareness. Qi gong (Chi gong) exercises, although not Polynesian, can help us accomplish the goal of increasing our mana. The more simple the dance, the more awareness we can bring to it. Like hula, not only do these practices augment health and longevity, making our body more supple and strong, they also unfold within us the ability to move with awareness. If we perform these exercises daily, we will find ourselves moving more gracefully and with more presence in our everyday lives. With continuted practice we will learn to sense energy flows and fields within our own body, and then, naturally we will have gained the ability to connect with our partner on profound levels of harmonious energy flows. These qi gong dances work so wonderfully because the movements are almost effortless. We are not consuming much breath energy while we are doing them, yet we are filling the body with breath energy and circulating it.

One of the most simple qi gong dances for swimming in this ocean of pre-dawn air is Swimming Dragon. One could also think of it as Swaying Palm Tree.

The link for Swimming Dargon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncHziAUvM8I

Slow Love Fundamentals 4: Harmonizing Ao and Po

Myths from early Polynesia tell of Ao and Po, the primordial male and female energies of the universe. Ao is masculine, light, and day and Po is feminine, dark, and night. One way to unite these solar and lunar energies within yourself is through the wonderful practice of alternate nostril breathing. You will take in the most beautiful energy if you do so at the time of day when the day and night energies are in balance, the pivot point between day and night that is just before dawn. At that time, the energy in the atmostphere is neither too light nor too dark. It is balanced.

Simply sit with back straight, but comfortable. (a) Press on the outside of your left nostril with the middle and ring fingers of your right hand. (b) Exhale gently and naturally. (c) Inhale naturally through your right nostril. (d) At the end of inhalation press with the thumb of your right hand on the outside of your right nostril. (e) Exhale naturally through your left nostril, and then (e) inhale through the left nostril. At the end of the inhalation, go tack to (a) press again on the outside of your left nostril with the middle and ring fingers of your right hand and exhale. . . . and so on.

Please do not strain or hold your breath, but breathe easily, gently and naturally. This breathing seems quite simple, but is powerful. It will gently help to harmonize the right and left hemispheres of your brain, relax your nervous system, and help bring about unity of body, mind, heart and spirit.

Once you and your honey begin to feel this harmony within youselves, you can share this beautiful energy with each other.

Honeymoon season is upon us, reminding us that Polynesia, long a port of call for surfers, sailors and snowbirds, has long beckoned as a Shangri-la for lovebirds. Ever since the first European sailors ventured into the balmy blue latitudes of the South Pacific, viewed the jagged and massive slopes of a volcanic summit gradually emerge above the horizon, slipped through a pass in the reef into the calm of a lagoon, and viewed brown, mostly bare bodies on the shore moving in long sensuous gaits, visitors have been entranced with the winsome charms of the Polynesians. In this way, romance became associated with white sandy beaches and swaying palms, so, naturally the South Pacific soon became a hub for honeymooners.

After the reception, honeymooners remove their wedding attire, pack their bags, hop on a flight to Honolulu, and soon find themselves passionately embracing in paradise. However, there is only one problem: When they pack their bags they often slip in a copy of the ancient Indian Kama Sutra, one of those ancient Chinese pillow books, a Japanese bride’s book, or the teachings of the latest love guru MD on the New York Times best-seller list.

It seems that whenever lovers have escaped to the land of Aloha, they have never packed a love guide of South Sea sensual secrets. This is because such wisdom was never written down in traditional Polynesia, but conveyed orally from generation to generation, whispered as softly as trade winds blowing in over the reef and fanning the palms. In fact, if you examine all love manuals written in the history of the human race, you will find that they were written by people dwelling in more temperate climates, who wear a lot of clothing most of the time. Those peoples living in cultures near the tropics, however, traditionally had no need of protecting themselves against the cold, and often went about nearly naked. Although the early Polynesians wrote no pillow books, they have much to teach to lovers about the intelligent use of the sense of touch and the peace this brings to heart and mind.

In the old days, before adopting Western attire, Polynesian women held and caressed their children both day and night against their bodies. The infant, constantly in touch with mother’s body, soon began to use subtle nuances of touch to communicate with mother and other caregivers, signaling his or her wants: hold me, feed me, set me down, stimulate me, leave me alone, and so on. Children raised in such an environment of loving and communicative touching develop mentally and physically much differently than children deprived of such touching. As children from a touch-intensive environment mature into adults, the warm and enveloping universe of touching they knew as children is translated into their romantic life. The Polynesian way of loving is about playing in the blissful zone between stimulation and stillness.

Some aboriginal South Sea cultures thought of sex like waves in the ocean. The waves are the stimulating part and the ocean is the stillness lovers feel in their hearts when in a deep embrace. The teachings of South Seas sensuality pay close attention to the oceanic part of loving, yielding a more prolonged and more profound union. This oceanic element can be fathomed through attention to the three oceans: touching, breath, and the heart. Some pointers:
1. Prolong the time spent in full-body contact with your lover, just resting or sleeping in each other’s arms, even on days when you are not actively “making love.” This will give you a basis of deep peace that will carry over into your lovemaking. Your lovemaking will then ride the waves of this deep ocean of peace.
2. The magical energy in the breath connects the body, the heart and the spirit. Sit and meditate on the waves of breathing as they rise and fall. Soon you will find there is a vast ocean of spirit deep within the waves of the ocean of breathing.
3. Pay attention to your lover’s thoughts and feelings, every day. If you mirror your honey’s feelings and thoughts by repeating them back, your lover will feel he or she is really being listened to. The ocean of the heart will expand.
Simply by paying attention to these three oceans, lovers can discover more Aloha within their relationships and enjoy a more oceanic union.