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What's the secret to keeping a long marriage happy and sexually ecstatic?

When the latest issue of People magazine asked Rita Wilson this question, the actress (who has been married to multiple-Oscar-winner Tom Hanks for 11 years) replied, "You gotta talk, you gotta listen, you gotta laugh. And ... you gotta have lots of tantric yoga sex!"

Perhaps it's amusing to picture her Forrest-Gumpish husband tangled in sacred coital union for hours, but Hollywood-watchers who admire the Hanks-Wilson union as one of the most joyous star marriages will undoubtedly take notice. Tantric sex classes, offered nationwide through the Learning Annex and other numerous alternative adult-education organizations, may find their enrollment rosters swelling.

The 2,000-year-old Buddhist and Hindu techniques enjoyed by Hanks, Wilson and other "tantrika" practitioners espouse a radically different approach to bedroom-romping than Western linear, product-oriented models. Tantra seeks to "prolong the act of making love and to channel, rather than dissipate, potent orgasmic energies," claims Nitya Lacroix, author of "The Art of Tantric Sex," on her tantra.com Web site. "There is no goal in Tantra, only the present moment of perfect and harmonious union."

Hanks and Wilson aren't the first celebrities to reveal themselves as Tantra devotees. Jazz-rock star Sting, who is married to actress-producer Trudie Styler, "boasted that he could make love for more than five hours at a time," claims a Sept. 21 article in the Newcastle Chronicle and Journal. Speaking with more modesty and reverence in the Oct. 1 New York Post, the ex-Police man also noted that "tantric sex is an opportunity to give devotion. It is the thing that human beings do together that gives them the most joy. It creates life. It's a chance to give thanks to your partner. It is a very powerful thing."

Who's next, we wonder? Will Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver soon tout Tantra? Maybe "Viagra" Bob and Elizabeth Dole? Will Tantra instructors replace marriage counselors?

Probably not. But in today's fast-paced world where knowledge systems often arrive and disappear quickly, it's comforting to observe an ancient body of wisdom that lingers on and on, on and on and on and on and on ...
salon.com | Nov. 3, 1999

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