Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: You know we're in the studio here. We just recorded
Speaker 1: an episode on yoga and the benefits of yoga, the
Speaker 1: risk of yoga, a lot of the science that we
Speaker 1: find in yoga, and in that episode we refer out
Speaker 1: to an additional episode which we're recording now, Yoga Sex Magic,
Speaker 1: because there is a there's a lot to be said
Speaker 1: about about sex and yoga, about the sensual side of yoga,
Speaker 1: the sexual benefits of yoga and its roots in mysticism
Speaker 1: and UH central experience. And don't worry, we're not going
Speaker 1: to talk about stings sex life here, um, because he
Speaker 1: has often talked about tantra yoga right as being a
Speaker 1: part of his UH deal deal. Yeah, I was gonna
Speaker 1: say magic sauce, but that just doesn't sound right, Um,
Speaker 1: But we are going to talk about I guess some
Speaker 1: people would say it's yoga's dirty little secret, but the
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is is that it has its
Speaker 1: roots in tantric yoga, which is associated with sexuality. As
Speaker 1: you say, and celebrating sexuality and uh, and a lot
Speaker 1: of mysticism too. Yeah. So let's uh, let's let's let's
Speaker 1: run back the clock here. Let's let's discuss ancient history. Um. So,
Speaker 1: hindu Hinduism is the oldest of the dominant world religions
Speaker 1: today and arguably the most difficult to summarize. Okay, the
Speaker 1: roots of Hinduism stretch back a good five thousand years
Speaker 1: through the soil of human history. And that's the soil
Speaker 1: that's just right, with variations with with different important texts,
Speaker 1: poetic epics, sex diversions, uh, God's goddesses, religious rituals, it's
Speaker 1: just there. There is an entire rich culture there around Hinduism,
Speaker 1: and any attempts to summarize it or would be incomplete
Speaker 1: that it would be a podcast into itself. But it's
Speaker 1: very nature. What is it proposed to do. It aims
Speaker 1: to free the practitioner of Hinduism from something called the
Speaker 1: wheel of sam Sara. And I feel like I've mentioned
Speaker 1: this before in terms of Buddhism, and of course there's
Speaker 1: a lot of crossover between Hinduism and Budism. Sam Sara
Speaker 1: is the endless cycle of death and rebirth that sees
Speaker 1: the human um consciousness or soul flow and rise and
Speaker 1: fall through varieties of tragic, doomed, and ephemeral lives. It's
Speaker 1: the idea that it's not the sort of vague Western
Speaker 1: idea of of reincarnation where it's like, oh, I'm not
Speaker 1: really gonna die. I'm gonna come back as a cat
Speaker 1: or something that would be great. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: don't find some comfort in that thought. But the idea
Speaker 1: of sam Sara is more that I'm going to continue
Speaker 1: to live lives that are ultimately going to be filled
Speaker 1: with pain in one way, shape or another, even though
Speaker 1: even the loftier, more pleasant life that I of are
Speaker 1: going to end in death and may end up shooting
Speaker 1: me down to a lower level of existence. So I
Speaker 1: might be uh uh, and I'm borrowing more from the
Speaker 1: some of the Tibetan Buddhist ideas here, But I might
Speaker 1: live life as a demigod in the next life and
Speaker 1: everything it will be awesome, but I'll kind of be
Speaker 1: awful at the same time and earn myself a position
Speaker 1: in the lower hells in the life after that. So
Speaker 1: the idea is that you want to eventually rid yourself
Speaker 1: of this wheel. You know, it's kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of think of it this way. It's like
Speaker 1: the person who's in one bad relationship after the other
Speaker 1: and they desperately want to free themselves with that cycle
Speaker 1: and find a good relationship. That's kind of what we
Speaker 1: have here. And in that good relationship, that liberation from
Speaker 1: the wheel of sam sara is what Hindus call maksha,
Speaker 1: which means release or liberation. So this carnival ride sucks.
Speaker 1: I want to get off of it. That's what That's
Speaker 1: what Hinduism that's ultimately trying to do UM and we
Speaker 1: might not do it in this lifetime or the next um,
Speaker 1: but we need a we need a game plan, right,
Speaker 1: so we get into something called trim Marga, which is
Speaker 1: the three path. So we have Karma marga the way
Speaker 1: of action, Jannana marga the way of knowledge, and Bakti
Speaker 1: marga the way of devotion. So this is where yoga
Speaker 1: gets involved here. Yoga means discipline uh or regime or yoke,
Speaker 1: and it derives from the Sanskrit route for yoke yoke,
Speaker 1: which also means union, you know, And we talked about
Speaker 1: this in the other podcast. This union between mind and body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Jesus sent our example again, instead of a
Speaker 1: mind riding the body, this man riding the horse. It
Speaker 1: is the man horse, it is the body. Uh, the
Speaker 1: body mind union. And this is where that intermingling of
Speaker 1: sexuality and spirituality happens as well. This is the same
Speaker 1: sort of yoke, and this is where we're really sort
Speaker 1: of driving the path toward tantra, right right. So within Hinduism,
Speaker 1: the word yoga is often used interchangeably with marga. It
Speaker 1: involves far more than just poses, and it includes meditation, fast, um,
Speaker 1: various asthetic practices, ethical behavior, you know, intense study in
Speaker 1: some cases, and and it's one of the six schools
Speaker 1: of Orthodox philosophy, and often just sort of a generic
Speaker 1: term for spiritual discipline. So just culturally, when you look
Speaker 1: at yoga in the East versus yoga in the West,
Speaker 1: there's there there are a number of differences that arise.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little about yoga in the path
Speaker 1: because they're really getting into the tantra thing. We have
Speaker 1: to again get into examples of of what is the
Speaker 1: the yogi of three years ago, like versus the yogi
Speaker 1: that you might find, Uh, you know in the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay area. Well, I mean even like in the
Speaker 1: eighteen thirties, Broad William Jobrad, who wrote the Science of Yoga,
Speaker 1: brings up Rama Kashna and this was one of Hindu
Speaker 1: Hinduism's great modern saints. Um, there's this idea that he
Speaker 1: was always in such a constant state of ecstasy. And
Speaker 1: we say ecstasy, we are sort of making a little
Speaker 1: uh hat tip here to orgasm as well. Um, or
Speaker 1: at least a sense of transcendence. Um. Well lepique more
Speaker 1: does the French say um, which is a little deaf
Speaker 1: right transcendence? And and again just to mention the body
Speaker 1: mind connection. And when we're talking about body and mind
Speaker 1: in a religious context, you can think of it, you know,
Speaker 1: body and spirit. And so something intense that happens in
Speaker 1: the body just by virtue of being intense has to
Speaker 1: have a connection to the spirit as well. So it
Speaker 1: would seem obvious then that an orgasm would be of
Speaker 1: interest to someone seeking to understand the mind. And you
Speaker 1: think it's weird that we're saying orgasm when we were
Speaker 1: talking about religion or just even meditating or being in
Speaker 1: a state of ecstasy without some sort of you know
Speaker 1: slap and tickle involved. Well, we're going to talk more
Speaker 1: about that slap and tickle. Yeah, you know, we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that later and connect at all.
Speaker 1: But um, I did want to bring up Rama Krishna
Speaker 1: because apparently he was in such a constant state of
Speaker 1: bliss that he had assystance to tell him when to
Speaker 1: eat and breathe. So this is this is intense stuff.
Speaker 1: There is this intermingling of these two concepts of sexuality
Speaker 1: and mysticism or um spirituality, and in Hinduism is that
Speaker 1: this is not unusual. We usually think about our more
Speaker 1: western religions and how these are mutually exclusive things, but
Speaker 1: this is not in some Eastern religions UM. And this
Speaker 1: is this idea too, that the spiritual energy UH lies
Speaker 1: dormant at the base of the spine until it was
Speaker 1: activated and channeled upward to the brain to produce enlightenment
Speaker 1: through the chakras, these various circles in the body through
Speaker 1: which the energy flows. Right, So the state of ecstasy
Speaker 1: turns out to be a state of enlightenment. So Yogi's
Speaker 1: and centuries passed. UH. We mentioned this a little bit
Speaker 1: in the other podcast about yoga. But um, they might
Speaker 1: be poly men who would legitimately give you a little
Speaker 1: more insight into the spirit. Yeah, they might be mystic
Speaker 1: carneys who would bury themselves alive for money. They might
Speaker 1: contort their nude ashmerrored bodies in the street. They might
Speaker 1: smoke dope and kidnap children. They might run protection rackets
Speaker 1: and uh and some were capable of supposedly uniting the
Speaker 1: male and female aspects of the universe through sexual sensation.
Speaker 1: So they really kind of ran the gambit from really
Speaker 1: holy to really uh skiez I mean it. I mean
Speaker 1: that That's one of the things that Broad really does
Speaker 1: a great job of pointing out is that yoga is
Speaker 1: especially historically so much broader than what you would encounter
Speaker 1: at the y m c A or the local yoga studio.
Speaker 1: It runs the gambit between like just total enlightenment and madness,
Speaker 1: between between physical health and debilitating or life threatening injury.
Speaker 1: And uh and I mean it's just it's just there's
Speaker 1: there's a rich world there and uh and and and
Speaker 1: out of that also comes this uh this uh subject
Speaker 1: of tantric yoga in tantra. Yeah, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring up half a yoga, which we all if you
Speaker 1: practice yoga. Um, this is a branch of tantra yoga.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little bit more about tantra yoga
Speaker 1: in a second Um. But the tan tric agenda again
Speaker 1: was reaching enlightenment as fast as you could. And William J.
Speaker 1: Broad brings up the fact that there's a fifteenth century
Speaker 1: book called half a Yoga Product car and it instructs
Speaker 1: and poses but also talks about stimulating genitals. Right again,
Speaker 1: in this this agenda to try to reach enlightenment, and
Speaker 1: one line from the book says, press the parent paraneum,
Speaker 1: that's an orogenous area between the genitals, known as the
Speaker 1: taint in some circles. Press the taint with the heel
Speaker 1: of the foot. It opens the doors of liberation. So
Speaker 1: I mean these this is a specific text telling people,
Speaker 1: you know, how to proceed in this path enlightenment, which
Speaker 1: has to do with sexuality. Yeah. And if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: hatha means violent and not in the sense that it
Speaker 1: is violent um yoga and that it's like you know,
Speaker 1: karate chaps and stuff, but more about the speed and
Speaker 1: the intensity of getting there. Right. This is a path
Speaker 1: to this enlightenment again, so tantra um sexy side of yoga,
Speaker 1: but also the sexy roots of yoga. Um. It rises
Speaker 1: to prominence within Hindu traditions in medieval India. So this
Speaker 1: is around the fifth century UM Common era, but it's
Speaker 1: root mysterious roots may go back even even farther into
Speaker 1: the past, into the practices and traditions of the Indus civilization,
Speaker 1: which would have been thirty three hundred to undred BC.
Speaker 1: So UM. The idea here is that the beliefs were
Speaker 1: present in this earlier culture than they go underground for
Speaker 1: thousands of years and then they evolve back up into
Speaker 1: into practice in eastern and southern India. And Tantra is
Speaker 1: based on the Sanskrit word meaning that which extends knowledge.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's the stated purpose of tantra isn't sexual
Speaker 1: bliss in and of itself or but rather spiritual bliss
Speaker 1: and enlightenment and ultimately uh moksha that we were talking
Speaker 1: about early. Ultimately the idea is to uh find liberation
Speaker 1: from this endless wheel of suffering. And I'm here's the
Speaker 1: other thing about tantra is that it does not subscribe
Speaker 1: to the cast system. So and it was free then
Speaker 1: of the Brahmin priest that we're ruling over women's democratizing
Speaker 1: sexuality but also spirituality. So it had a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were very interested in being a part of it. Um.
Speaker 1: The I guess you would say the problem mom or
Speaker 1: as William Jay Broad puts it, is that eventually the
Speaker 1: h it becomes so associated with with sex that's sort
Speaker 1: of overshadowed by this and and people begin to think
Speaker 1: of it as okay, well it's not just you know
Speaker 1: this spiritual awareness or enlightenment. But you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people are getting kind of randy here, yeah now,
Speaker 1: and and and you know, squirreling away from the path.
Speaker 1: Yeah now, now, why are they getting randy? Or what
Speaker 1: is the stated reason? Well, historically you had right handed
Speaker 1: tantra and you had left handed tantra and uh, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't have anything to do with like right or
Speaker 1: left handed being bad or one being dirty. That has
Speaker 1: to do with like the position of God and goddess
Speaker 1: um in a typical iconography. But right handed guy tantra
Speaker 1: was more traditional and in terms of like worshiping the goddess,
Speaker 1: whereas left handed tantra involved the ritual use of taboo
Speaker 1: items in Hinduism specifically these five ms. You had Masma
Speaker 1: which is eat uh, nazia no mean mazia, fish, mudra,
Speaker 1: parched grain which was seen as an aphrodisiac, h Maja
Speaker 1: which is wine, and then mathuna ritual sexual intercourse. So
Speaker 1: what you would have happened is you would have this
Speaker 1: this group of individuals and uh and generally these are
Speaker 1: people that already have some exposure to to yoga or
Speaker 1: do yoga principles. This is not just random people on
Speaker 1: the street. They come into a sacred space in the
Speaker 1: presence of you know, some sort of a guru or
Speaker 1: an adept, and it will be in on on an
Speaker 1: auspicious to day. You know, that's something that lines up um,
Speaker 1: you know, numerologically important in m in the tradition. And
Speaker 1: you'll have male and female participants who were called tanto
Speaker 1: riquez ritually bathe, dress and generally you know, doll up
Speaker 1: and purify through uh meditation and reciting mantras, and then
Speaker 1: they form into male and female couples. Then they they
Speaker 1: consume these various things ritually, have a little meat, a
Speaker 1: little fish, a little parched grain, a little wine, and
Speaker 1: then they will they will unite sexually say, and then
Speaker 1: it becomes a key party. Well, no, I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean that can certainly that can be the the charge.
Speaker 1: But it's not just like, all right, we're done with
Speaker 1: the We're done with the meat and the fish. Let's
Speaker 1: let's get down to business. There's also a lot of
Speaker 1: the mantras continue and the meditative aspects um uh continue
Speaker 1: and U and the in fact, it's the pronunciation of
Speaker 1: the mantras. Uh supposedly turns the female partner into an
Speaker 1: embodiment of the goddess and the male becomes an embodiment
Speaker 1: of the gods. So on a mythic level, they're enacting
Speaker 1: the cosmological union of Shiva and shotkey of Deva and
Speaker 1: Devi and uh. It takes on this larger cosmic proportion.
Speaker 1: And and again it involves you know, intense meditation, intricate
Speaker 1: yogurt postures, the visualization of these yantras, which are kind
Speaker 1: of like a mandala that represents divine female energy, kind
Speaker 1: of this um geometric design that you envision in your
Speaker 1: head um and the attempt to stay immobile and to
Speaker 1: facilitate mental processes in the prevention or delay of orgasm. Well,
Speaker 1: and and this is something we'll talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit to this delay of orgasm, which is also um
Speaker 1: extending the Enlightenment period right this ecstasy. So this is
Speaker 1: when I brought up staying. I brought up this idea
Speaker 1: that you could do breathwork, you could do meditation in
Speaker 1: order to um, to stave off the inevitable yea, before
Speaker 1: you get that lapite mort um. And they're generally talking
Speaker 1: not about like imagine a race course with a start
Speaker 1: in the finish line, with the finish line being orgasm.
Speaker 1: The idea is not to slam on the brakes before
Speaker 1: you get to the orgasm, but to slow things down
Speaker 1: to the point to where you're in a continuous, in
Speaker 1: a continuous state of the almost crossing the line. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. In the West, tantra really becomes
Speaker 1: synonymous with sexual debauchery. And this is where Broad in
Speaker 1: his book says Tantra reaches a natier with um, an
Speaker 1: alleged cannibal sect of Yogi's the a Gory who quote
Speaker 1: eate the flesh of human skulls, drank urine liquor from
Speaker 1: human souls, lived in cremation grounds and dunghills, and defiled
Speaker 1: all social social convention supposedly to court public disapproval as
Speaker 1: tests a humility. And none of those things are wrong
Speaker 1: in and of themselves. But I mean now I mean that,
Speaker 1: I mean there are you could you know, drinking urine,
Speaker 1: drinking like or even drinking from human skulls. I mean
Speaker 1: that's you see, these things occur in various traditions. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem is is that India in nineteen twenties starts
Speaker 1: to realize that you know, they have a political agenda
Speaker 1: right there. They want to become independent, um, they want
Speaker 1: to rise up. So they can't really have this whole
Speaker 1: light cannibalist yoga sect representing them because what's coming out
Speaker 1: of India, Um, you know, one of the exports we
Speaker 1: see is this idea of yoga. So it sort of
Speaker 1: gets this history of the sexuality particularly gets whitewashed because
Speaker 1: you have um Indian nationalists like Gunang we talked about.
Speaker 1: This is someone who really started to try to research
Speaker 1: yoga in earnest in the nine twenties, and he began
Speaker 1: to distinguish half a yoga from tantra, sanitizing yoga's association
Speaker 1: with its roots. But the interesting thing here is that
Speaker 1: you end up engaging in the duality of oh, there's
Speaker 1: the good, there's the good yoga, and then there's the
Speaker 1: bad yoga. It's like the here's the here's the the
Speaker 1: law abiding yoga, and here's the road yoga. But and actually,
Speaker 1: when we talk about the road yoga to we're talking
Speaker 1: about something called kundalini, So we talk about contra yoga tantra.
Speaker 1: This is one of the branches Kundalinia is practiced today.
Speaker 1: Although as far as I've never been to some sort
Speaker 1: of orgiastic class in it, I've just been We've talked
Speaker 1: about the metaphors of the snake and the energy cooling
Speaker 1: up through the spine. Yeah. Well, um, it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: when you look into like why are they engaging? Why
Speaker 1: would a ton trick um yoga prented practitioner engage in
Speaker 1: the consumption of these five ms? And you know what
Speaker 1: does it all get down to. Aside from just this
Speaker 1: idea of well, let's use sexual sensation body sensation to
Speaker 1: to you know, channel the spirit. Um, it's this idea
Speaker 1: too that you have these things that are forbidden, their taboo, right,
Speaker 1: So there you're human, these temptations are going to be there.
Speaker 1: These things are there in your life. So you can
Speaker 1: either run from them, um and try to deny them,
Speaker 1: or you can take them and try to do something
Speaker 1: spiritually beneficial with them. So that's that's part of it,
Speaker 1: taking these negatives or potential negatives and spinning them into
Speaker 1: a spiritual positive. So you're saying with within the Hindu
Speaker 1: tradition that that not one thing is entirely good or bad.
Speaker 1: Everything everyone contains both. Yeah, because on one on one
Speaker 1: level again the direction of otherwise dangerous desires into acts
Speaker 1: of devotion. And then there's this idea too that it
Speaker 1: awakens participants to the non duality of the world. Okay,
Speaker 1: the idea, there's this important idea in Hinduism. The world
Speaker 1: is a single, indivisible reality uh known as Brahmin. And
Speaker 1: to see it uh and to see the world as
Speaker 1: anything else than that, to see it as anything that's
Speaker 1: divided and composed of parts, is illusion. And you want
Speaker 1: to see through that illusion and see that a glimpse
Speaker 1: and understand experience the reality of Brahmen. So if you
Speaker 1: see the world as oh, eliminates good and wine is bad, uh,
Speaker 1: you know are not. No, sex is great and sex
Speaker 1: is bad. And destructive. Then you're you're seeing a divided
Speaker 1: vision of the world, and you're not going to sing
Speaker 1: brahmin or or even yoga yoke right, the union of union.
Speaker 1: It's not about division. So I find that that very fascinating. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a wonderful context to talk
Speaker 1: about this. Um, we should take a break. When we
Speaker 1: get back, we're gonna get down to the science of
Speaker 1: sex and yoga, or as I like to call it,
Speaker 1: the yoga beast with two backs. Yes, so, UM going
Speaker 1: to pigeon post, listen to this message. And when we
Speaker 1: get back, look all right, we're back in. Come out
Speaker 1: of pigeons and go back into child's post. So let's
Speaker 1: let's continue. We've we've covered a lot of ground already
Speaker 1: talking about the the roots of yoga, the basics of Hinduism, Uh, Tantra,
Speaker 1: the five ends, why you should do them, um, what
Speaker 1: spiritual good they can do in the long run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about Cundolini for a second, because
Speaker 1: we talked about this. We're talking about tantra, its role
Speaker 1: in tantra, the idea of the snake coiling at the
Speaker 1: base of the spine, this energy that rises up um
Speaker 1: and and actually cundalini um is sanscrit for coiled or
Speaker 1: she who is coiled, and it really is a metaphor
Speaker 1: of rebirth because of it's the snake's ability to to
Speaker 1: shed its own skin, right, and it has a high
Speaker 1: status in Hinduism. Um. But I wanted to mention that
Speaker 1: Swiss psychiatrist Carl Young was really intrigued by Kundalini and
Speaker 1: he wrote of a twenty five year old woman whose
Speaker 1: symptoms included a wave of physical turmoil that rose from
Speaker 1: her paraneum. Would you call it the taint to her uterus,
Speaker 1: to her bladder and then eventually to the crown of
Speaker 1: her head? Okay, this is classic Kundalini imagery right here.
Speaker 1: And so he found it really curious that instead of
Speaker 1: her fearing um what was happening these physical manifestations, she
Speaker 1: actually really enjoyed it, and he came to understand it
Speaker 1: though in terms of of an induced psychotic state, he
Speaker 1: thought of it as a very destructive force. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if you ever pick up or thumb through his book
Speaker 1: called The Red Book, which is a bunch of illustrations
Speaker 1: by him but of his dreams, you'll see the snake
Speaker 1: in there as this sort of destroyer or this this
Speaker 1: menacing um symbolism in his own dreams. But I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring that up because it's so close to what
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, and it's this idea of thinking off.
Speaker 1: We've discussed this in the Female Orgasm podcast, but it
Speaker 1: was called the Orgasm Wars, and um, we talked about
Speaker 1: this woman named Barbara Correlli's who claimed to have trained
Speaker 1: herself to climax on demand, okay, without any sort of stimulation,
Speaker 1: and uh, she's been thinking herself off for a number
Speaker 1: of years and she actually demonstrated her ability to do
Speaker 1: this when she went into an m R I and
Speaker 1: then she came to climax several times while researchers at
Speaker 1: Rutgers University studied her brain patterns and they saw, indeed
Speaker 1: that it was matching the types of brain patterns that
Speaker 1: you see in in orgasms people who actually have had
Speaker 1: sex with each other and undergo m R at the
Speaker 1: same time. It seems a little awkward, but UM, so
Speaker 1: I bring this up because William Abroad also talks about
Speaker 1: thinking off, but he also talks about this idea that, um,
Speaker 1: the same thing is sometimes happening in yoga practitioners brains,
Speaker 1: particularly when they're meditating, and meditation and yoga of corpse
Speaker 1: go hand in hand. Yeah, And he he talks about
Speaker 1: the Anonda Margot sect which was studied by James C.
Speaker 1: Corby UM. This is a sect of UM yoga practitioners
Speaker 1: and they underwent this this study at Stanford University, and
Speaker 1: he had a control group of nonpractitioners all meditate, and
Speaker 1: then he had the Anonda Market sect also meditating. And
Speaker 1: just so you know, Anonda Market totally hardcore. We're talking
Speaker 1: about three and a half hour long meditation sessions daily,
Speaker 1: very rigorous. So what happened is that they had the
Speaker 1: both of the groups. They had them um relaxed for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, and then they had them gives them attention
Speaker 1: to their breathing for twenty minutes, and then twenty minutes
Speaker 1: just for straight up meditation. So the cool thing about
Speaker 1: this is that the control group that they show all
Speaker 1: sorts of signs of classic relaxation, right for instance, their
Speaker 1: blood pressure drops. But our friends over here, the are yogis,
Speaker 1: are all sorts of crazy things are happening with them.
Speaker 1: They're breathing really rapidly they begin to sweat. What they're
Speaker 1: seeing the researchers realized, is this autonomous arousal very much
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing that you would see with
Speaker 1: someone who was approaching an orgasm. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the participants had a heartbeat of one and twenty beats
Speaker 1: per minute, which broad says is very similar to frenzy
Speaker 1: the lovers. Yeah, so there is an idea that through UM,
Speaker 1: through meditation, but also through yoga like posts like cobra,
Speaker 1: in which your pelvic region is on the floor you
Speaker 1: place a lot of pressure there that this is stimulating
Speaker 1: certain hormones in the body and you begin to get
Speaker 1: this benefit of UM. I guess you could say, I
Speaker 1: don't want to say I love cocktail of hormones surging
Speaker 1: through your body, but there there's direct evidence that this
Speaker 1: can actually increase, uh, your libido and there I mean,
Speaker 1: and there's certain poses to write that I have been
Speaker 1: shown to have a more of a link to to
Speaker 1: the to the sexual side of yoga. Right, Oh, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: I mean cobra. As I said, bow pose is another
Speaker 1: one and without now Cobra for those that I don't know,
Speaker 1: this is one where it's like you're you're lying on
Speaker 1: your stomach and your hands to side here, and then
Speaker 1: you sort of the front of you, your your torso
Speaker 1: sort of rises up like a snake. Yeah, your hands
Speaker 1: on your side and they're pushing your your upper torso
Speaker 1: up and so you are putting a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: in your pelvic region. But what they're also finding is
Speaker 1: that one of the hormones that is taking up quite
Speaker 1: a bit is testosterone and uh I and men and women.
Speaker 1: And in fact, in one study they saw a woman's
Speaker 1: testosterone go up by And this is incredible because heretofore
Speaker 1: they had decided that yoga was lowering men's testoster room level.
Speaker 1: And this was based on a study in which it
Speaker 1: wasn't um yoga that was lowering the testosterone level. It
Speaker 1: was this vegetarian diet that the practitioners were at the
Speaker 1: same time, uh and they had a bunch of soy
Speaker 1: in their diet and that was lowering lowering the testosterone.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of a myth that broad bust here
Speaker 1: and says no, like this, testosterone can actually increase your
Speaker 1: libido as well, for both men and women. So I
Speaker 1: also wanted to mention too that that broad says, there's
Speaker 1: a clinical study of more than one men and women
Speaker 1: whose self report their sex lives before and after they
Speaker 1: undertook yoga in the study, and across the board, they
Speaker 1: all reported increased arousal, better orgasms, and more overall satisfaction.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I do want to point
Speaker 1: out that broad points out is that when they are
Speaker 1: conducting these um, these studies and this research, they are
Speaker 1: they're very aware of creating really good solid studies, UM
Speaker 1: at least now in trying to study this into earnest
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is that they're they're
Speaker 1: looking at all the different ways in which people practice
Speaker 1: yoga in their habits, and just like any sort of study,
Speaker 1: you want to get a good rate of participation from
Speaker 1: people who are healthy who um you know, are not
Speaker 1: you know, seven yoga practitioners, so that they sway the results. UM.
Speaker 1: So they're trying to get this idea, this baseline of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if average Joe walks into yoga class, what does that
Speaker 1: mean in terms of average Joe's or average Jill's uh,
Speaker 1: sexual proclivity um down the road. And so this is
Speaker 1: really interesting data that's coming from this. And then he
Speaker 1: does admit that there's not a ton of it. Again,
Speaker 1: there's not people who have said, oh hey, we can
Speaker 1: solve this whole viagra thing with just doing yoga, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean that's not the claim that he's saying, but
Speaker 1: he is pointing to a body of mounting evidence that
Speaker 1: yoga very well could be um a sort of nature
Speaker 1: is viagra. I also found it interesting in his book,
Speaker 1: William Dave Brod goes into the the sexual aspects of
Speaker 1: yoga by discussing various sex scandals that have arisen with
Speaker 1: with yoga gurus. And the main ones who was talking
Speaker 1: about are are some of the earlier U S dudes
Speaker 1: who had large followings. Generally we're talking like guys in
Speaker 1: the fifties sixties, and uh, and suddenly there are all
Speaker 1: these charges that they have behaved inappropriately with the young
Speaker 1: women or even not so young women under their charge. Well,
Speaker 1: in Broad's point is like fifties sixties, I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: first of all, there's there's this whole other issue of
Speaker 1: power structure and taking advantage of someone. But also like
Speaker 1: fifties sixties, these dudes aren't taking viagra. Like there's there's
Speaker 1: a certain vitality here that he's saying that plays into um,
Speaker 1: you know, practicing yoga. Yeah, and and you do see.
Speaker 1: I mean actually there there have been recent scandals involving
Speaker 1: yoga gurus as well, but uh, you can't look at
Speaker 1: it just as yoga is the sexualizing thing and it
Speaker 1: just turns men into monsters. Well, there have been some
Speaker 1: female vous too that there have been charges against who
Speaker 1: say that they are um taking advantage of their position
Speaker 1: in order to to gain lovers and uh, sexual encounters.
Speaker 1: But I mean, but that's what people, that's what especially
Speaker 1: men do. I mean, it's it's like the President Clinton
Speaker 1: thing all over again. You put a man in a
Speaker 1: position of power and you put these impressionable young women
Speaker 1: in his charge, especially if you have a mystic aspect there,
Speaker 1: which is a largely unavoidable in a in a yoga setting. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the problem is when your guru is saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, you should practice abstinence is not doing the same.
Speaker 1: So that's that's really what the issue is here. People
Speaker 1: will say, well, you know, that's that's horribly hypocritical of you.
Speaker 1: But I mean even the maharishi John Lennon said that, um,
Speaker 1: the Rosemaries baby mia Faro that he had tried to
Speaker 1: molest her, and so they actually that was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why they broke away from the maharishi because
Speaker 1: they were like, dude, you're full of it, and being
Speaker 1: full of it is is very again, very in touch
Speaker 1: with some of the roots of yoga, because, as we
Speaker 1: discussed in the other podcast, you go, you go back
Speaker 1: in time and look at the look at the roots
Speaker 1: of yoga, and you you find a lot of a
Speaker 1: fair amount of deception of Charlatanism at times, I mean
Speaker 1: outrageous claims that that yoga can make you live forever,
Speaker 1: that can can defeat evil, and can cure diseases, things
Speaker 1: that simply aren't so within the confines of scientific reality.
Speaker 1: What I think is interesting, though, is this this again
Speaker 1: when I say this mounting evidence, this data, that that
Speaker 1: yoga can inform a person's um sexual identity, even like
Speaker 1: there's there are some claims of neo tantrics that broad
Speaker 1: talks about, this idea that people may begin to have
Speaker 1: an alternative sexuality. We're off becomes the norm, so it
Speaker 1: becomes kind of like an a sexuality that is um
Speaker 1: that is inward looking. I mean, I mean it's just
Speaker 1: mental masturbation really too. I mean that's that's really sort
Speaker 1: of taking it down to a notch that it probably
Speaker 1: doesn't deserve. But that's or maybe it does. But that's
Speaker 1: sort of what we're talking about here, a certain a
Speaker 1: sexuality like it's like more like a psycho masturbation really,
Speaker 1: like think of it in terms of like not psycho
Speaker 1: but psycho. Yeah. Yeah, So yeah, there you have it.
Speaker 1: There's a nice little intro into the into the sexual
Speaker 1: magical paths of cannibalistic path Now, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: sitting there wondering, you're like, WHOA, I didn't turn into
Speaker 1: this episode that was going to have contra and you
Speaker 1: didn't give me a single um tip for tontric Sexum,
Speaker 1: We're not going to do that. We're not gonna do it.
Speaker 1: But you are in luck because if you go to
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and you type in tantra or tontric
Speaker 1: into the search bar, you will find a Discovery Health
Speaker 1: article written by the staff of Discovery Health that goes
Speaker 1: into some of the specific specifics of modern tantric recommendations,
Speaker 1: like they're not really telling you like how what order
Speaker 1: to eat your fish and meat and wine or any
Speaker 1: of that. But but some some recommendations and I talk
Speaker 1: about the slap and tickle and one of them, at
Speaker 1: least the definition of some of the things they talk
Speaker 1: about are very sort of straightforward, kind of more you know,
Speaker 1: like they're some of the tips are based and like
Speaker 1: brings some eroticism into your into your sex life for
Speaker 1: a light of candle, look into her eyes, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and where you're kind of like that doesn't
Speaker 1: really seem all that mystical. That's just kind of I
Speaker 1: mean to some people, that's new information now. But there
Speaker 1: there is one that I believe that's the discovery health.
Speaker 1: If I think if you put tantra in there, it
Speaker 1: will it actually talks about the mechanics of it and
Speaker 1: when we're talking about drawing out the ecstasy part of it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it gets into it gets into breathing, and it
Speaker 1: gets into this idea again yoga means yoke and union
Speaker 1: and uh. And so when you you take these yoga, uh,
Speaker 1: these these yoga principles into the bedroom, you're you're dealing
Speaker 1: with situation of people coming together being aware of their
Speaker 1: their own breaths and in their own bodies and what
Speaker 1: they're doing uh, and then using that information to slow
Speaker 1: things down as they approach the precipice of of of orgasm. There,
Speaker 1: so that's out a little death, a little bit assances
Speaker 1: ectas to I know, just the in French fancy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so look that up if you want some more
Speaker 1: information on that. Um, if you want to know more
Speaker 1: about the science of yoga, check and are And also
Speaker 1: if you want to hear more just about Julian eyes
Speaker 1: thoughts on yoga and or and and and I'll check
Speaker 1: out the other episode that we did call the Science
Speaker 1: of down Dog. Check out the book The Science of
Speaker 1: Yoga by William J. Broad It's excellent. We can't recommend
Speaker 1: that highly enough. And if you want to know a
Speaker 1: little more about Hindu tradition, was a great book by
Speaker 1: Mark W. Muse that's m U. E. S. S. E.
Speaker 1: Called The Hindu Traditions a concise introduction and it's just
Speaker 1: a really good, like well laying out illustrated guide to
Speaker 1: generally what Hindu ritual consists of. It's a great book.
Speaker 1: I have a recommend that as well. So let's call
Speaker 1: the robot over here alright. Listener by the name of
Speaker 1: Peter writes and it says, Hello, Robert and Julie. Was
Speaker 1: just listening to your podcast about life in microgravity. One
Speaker 1: thing that got me thinking, uh was the off topic
Speaker 1: comment about sour dough. How did we end up talking
Speaker 1: about sour dough? We talked. We talked about how people
Speaker 1: living off Earth would only visit us when they needed
Speaker 1: to come back and get genetic material, and that we
Speaker 1: would be like the sour dough bread in San Francisco
Speaker 1: that provides the mother dough for sour bread. Sour dough bread, okay,
Speaker 1: at least well Peter goes on. He says, a sour
Speaker 1: dough mother can be simply created by mixing flour and
Speaker 1: water in a bowl and letting natural yeasts in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere start the fermentation. As this can take a while,
Speaker 1: most breadmasters keep the original pot alive by simply adding
Speaker 1: more flour and water to the bowl once they have
Speaker 1: removed enough for the current batch of bread. Enjoying listening
Speaker 1: to your podcast as I am having to lie flat
Speaker 1: with my eyes pointed at the floor to aid my
Speaker 1: detached retina to recover, share and enjoy. Peter, who's in
Speaker 1: the Plymouth few K Yeah, I feel like I saw
Speaker 1: an article on some sort of service like if you
Speaker 1: can't um soup up your bread or feed it, someone
Speaker 1: will for you. I don't like the baby, said your mother. Yeah, mother,
Speaker 1: mother bread all right. We also heard from Zach Zack
Speaker 1: right soon and says, hi, I just finished listening to
Speaker 1: your Planetary Internet episode and had some thoughts on the
Speaker 1: speed of light the legs, specifically in sci fi. In
Speaker 1: the majority of sci fi I have watched or red
Speaker 1: that deals with interstellar travel, uh, neglect's interstellar communications and
Speaker 1: that they are either not a major plot point or
Speaker 1: a magically instantaneous uh example Injur's game and uh and
Speaker 1: then he got it goes on to say, one series
Speaker 1: where this is addressed, however, is done in the Doom universe.
Speaker 1: A large number of communications are carried out by actual
Speaker 1: physical messengers, writing on starships and delivering the message directly.
Speaker 1: These were the best examples of communications sci fi that
Speaker 1: I could think up with think of. Thanks for the
Speaker 1: great podcast. Um so so yeah, that's and I've forgotten
Speaker 1: about that detail from the Don universe. But they didn't
Speaker 1: have the means to actually send the data, but they
Speaker 1: had the means to send the ships. So they just
Speaker 1: include an actual courier on board. We also heard from
Speaker 1: listener Jim Jim Wrightson and says, uh and he's referring
Speaker 1: to the zero G episode of micro Gravity and talking
Speaker 1: about movies with zero G in space. He says, Robert
Speaker 1: and Julie, you mentioned that two thousand and one was
Speaker 1: the only space movie that you knew of that maintains
Speaker 1: zero G. I thought of three More two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: a sequel to two thousand and one. It's kind of
Speaker 1: obvious now, I guess had zero G as well, but
Speaker 1: there are some scenes where it's not quite obvious whether
Speaker 1: you're in part of the ship that zero G or
Speaker 1: using rotational gravity. Apollo thirteen had zero G for a
Speaker 1: historical reasons. They voto set on the Vomit Comet and
Speaker 1: film several scenes in actual zero G. I heard the
Speaker 1: stars say that they spent a lot of time on
Speaker 1: the ends of the booms being moved around to simulate
Speaker 1: visual zero G drift in close ups. They just swayed
Speaker 1: back and forth. So yeah, I kind of forgot about it.
Speaker 1: Paul of thirteens so historically based Mission to Mars maintain
Speaker 1: zero G as well. They even fluff out the female
Speaker 1: stars hairs that would happen in zero G, and I
Speaker 1: legit only forgot about that one. And then he goes
Speaker 1: on to say, I'm guessing studios avoid zero G because
Speaker 1: it has to be very expensive and complicated to film
Speaker 1: it convincingly. Assuming artificial gravity has got to solve a
Speaker 1: lot of logistical problems. So so yeah, there's a there
Speaker 1: a few there that I've forgotten about. Yeah, that's just
Speaker 1: made me realize how surreal it must be to be
Speaker 1: an actor. Sometimes like camer to deliver my lines. If
Speaker 1: I'm as sway back and forth, just very slightly in
Speaker 1: front of a green screen talking to a puppet that's
Speaker 1: not a puppet that will be added sat with c
Speaker 1: g I later, but right now is just a stick
Speaker 1: with the word alien written N. Yeah, that I have
Speaker 1: to in my mind imagine this monster with vagina dentata
Speaker 1: coming at me. You know. I actually rewatched part of
Speaker 1: two thousand and one is Space outosey Um last week,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of heartbreaking because on one level, this
Speaker 1: is not this is a vision of the twenty century,
Speaker 1: but it's not the twenty century that actually happened, and
Speaker 1: it's it's beautiful and stunning and uh, and then the
Speaker 1: other side is we don't actually make movies like this
Speaker 1: century either, So I was kind of torn as too
Speaker 1: as to which was sadder. Like the scenes with the
Speaker 1: monkeys and two thousand and one, those are the best
Speaker 1: best scenes I've seen in cinema that features monkeys, like
Speaker 1: and I'm counting real monkeys, Like it's better than than
Speaker 1: than any film with Clint Eastwood or you know, at anything,
Speaker 1: And it featured actual acting chumps, better than that, better
Speaker 1: than anything I've seen with c G I. Monkeys in
Speaker 1: the best monkey costumes ever employed in a motion picture. Like,
Speaker 1: those scenes are just fabulous. They're perfect and and just
Speaker 1: and just the visual the nash of that film is
Speaker 1: just just wondrous. It is it is. I'm sorry, it
Speaker 1: is it is. You just brought up the Clint Eastwood
Speaker 1: and I'm imagining him in a truck going down in
Speaker 1: the highway with his friend. It should deduce is one
Speaker 1: of those suits. I mean, it's just I could go
Speaker 1: on and actually there was some really good Facebook discussion
Speaker 1: on this topic. Yeah, yeah, I brought it up on
Speaker 1: Facebook yesterday. Anyway, if you haven't seen two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: do yourself a favor because it's great. Anyway, at this
Speaker 1: that point, we should probably move on and close out
Speaker 1: this podcast, I know, and I just want to say
Speaker 1: no mistake, no mistake. Yeah, um, but we do have
Speaker 1: to keep talking because yeah, I know. We also have
Speaker 1: to point out that, hey, you can get in touch
Speaker 1: with us. You can join you on Facebook conversations with
Speaker 1: this about um, how awesome two thousand and one is,
Speaker 1: or what kind of yoga you prefer. Um, you can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook we are stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter where we are blow
Speaker 1: the mind. And and definitely we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from any of you guys that are yoga practitioners. Uh,
Speaker 1: let us know what effect has had on your life. Um,
Speaker 1: if you are not a yoga practitioner and you're trying
Speaker 1: it out or or your your new Twitter you're interested
Speaker 1: in giving it a go, we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: you about that topic as well. Yeah, and also would
Speaker 1: love to know if anybody's ever had any like huge breakthroughs,
Speaker 1: revelations or even like some you know, sort of surreal
Speaker 1: thoughts and chevas knowing at the end when they're resting,
Speaker 1: because it's a great fertile time for for the mind.
Speaker 1: So I have chevasna visions um fairly regularly. I forget
Speaker 1: there's there's actually a term for it for those visions,
Speaker 1: but I can't remember what they are. Yes, very cool stuff,
Speaker 1: so it kind of reminds me of lucid dreaming in
Speaker 1: a way. Um. You can also send us your thoughts
Speaker 1: via email and you can do that and blow the
Speaker 1: mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: M