Urban Tantra - guides to a better sex by Celestial Arts - review by leatherlover

This book is written by Barbara Carrellas, and according to the book, she is an author, sex educator, and a theater artist. She has been on HBO's Real Sex a couple of times, and she lives in New York City. She has also written Luxurious Loving: Tantric Inspirations for Passion and Pleasure. At the beginning of the book, she discusses how this book was imagined in Australia, and how "it is much easier to explore sex in a country founded by convicts than one founded by puritans." This is the first time I have heard of this author. I enjoyed her writing style, but I had more of a problem with the subject matter.

There is a lot of good information in this book. The author discusses about where Tantra came about some, but she mostly tries to apply it to people in today's society. She understands that you are rushed with all the duties of your 9-5 job and family, but she teaches you how to do most things in both the normal version and a compressed version. She really caught my attention at the beginning of the book in her prelude, but once I got to the main chapters, she starts to loose me. Between my lack of time, and my limited free time with my wife when I am home, I just don't see us being able to read through the rest of the book anytime soon, and then being able to apply what we read.

One really good part of the book was a little mini quiz asking you to use your different senses to identify things. The 5 groupings of things she wanted you to imaging are sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Some of them were, what does coffee smell like, taste burnt toast, and hear a dog barking in the distance. Reading this section allowed myself to identify with being a very visual person, which I am, and to identify my wife as being a very physical contact sort of person. This then allows us to tailor our love making and attention to each other, so we can satisfy each other better. Where as I love to see her in lingerie, she really enjoys a nice massage and me touching her while we make love.

Barbara has laid out the book into 5 different parts; Tantra: The Basics, Tantra for One: Unleashing Your Orgasmic Energy, Tantra for Two: A Tantric Ritual, Tantra for the Adventurous, and Tantra: The Next Dimension.
Included in these sections are descriptions of the Chakras, how to touch, breath and energy orgasms, setting the stage for your Tantra, massages, Tantric BDSM, and so much more. The book also includes acknowledgements, a foreword by Annie Sprinkle, Prelude, Introduction, the 5 parts, references, resources, index, and a short page about the author.

This is a very nice book published by Celestial Arts. It is not small at 9 by 7.5 inches, but it is light weight, and it is paperback. The front has Urban Tantra in big letters, with "sacred sex for the twenty-first century" underneath in smaller text. There is also a picture of someone's back, sitting down, showing their full buttocks up to almost their neck. There is a large tattoo on this person's lower back. I liked the layout of the book, but being 288 pages long, and being so large, it isn't a fast read by any means. There are also hand drawn pictures throughout the book, some showing different positions, others showing where the certain chakras circulate throughout your body.

My wife surprised me by recommending that I find a book on Tantra. Usually I am the one who asks that we try something new, but I was not complaining one bit. Some parts of this book make me wonder, "can that really happen?", but I have been keeping an open mind and continuing to read it with my wife. We moved from Virginia to Georgia 6 months ago, and I made the mistake of requesting this book just a little bit before that move. We were reading it together, but since we have moved, our time together is even more limited. This book has sat for a few months now not even being looked out, just tucked away in a drawer. I eventually pulled it out again to read it myself, to at least be able to finish this review. Right now in our lives, we barely have time for a quickie, let alone Tantra. There are a few good tips in the book, but we are not going to be practicing Tantra anytime soon.