Sex

Sex educator Barbara Carrellas is writhing around on a padded mat, heaving and convulsing, giggling and groaning, jerking and tensing, until her tattooed feet stiffen with delight.

Circled around her are 20 awe-struck strangers and one seeing-eye dog, all transfixed by a spectacle that seems part religious experience, part epileptic seizure, all ecstasy. It’s what is known as the Firebreath Orgasm — an explosive, solitary experience channeled up along the chakras through a combination of breath work and mental energy that seems to rival the intensity of childbirth, if childbirth was pleasurable for your vagina.

“Practice this and you can become as big a breath slut as I am,” jokes Carrellas, the author of Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century.

I am here at Somerville’s Yoga in the Square partly to educate readers, but more to figure out how to get off during a particularly crippling dry spell. “Can you really reach ecstasy simply by breathing?” the class description asks. I’m hoping so. In this economy, who can afford batteries?

Carrellas steers us through a series of steps that includes yawning, deep breathing, Kegeling, undulating our hips, and directing all our energy into one pinky finger.

“Now imagine doing this with a cock or a clit!” she says of our now-throbbing extremity.

Then we’re asked to act the vocal part of every character in our own dream orgy. As everyone else moans in pleasure, I’m reduced to near silence, stuck wondering whether Penelope Cruz would groan in Spanish and in what key Lenny Kravitz might climax. Meanwhile, the louder howlers in the room are beginning to crescendo into a cacophonous roar as Carrellas screams “Cum shot!”

Finally, we are ready to practice the Firebreath Orgasm, which culminates with the crucial “clench and hold” — a tightening of every muscle in the body, with special emphasis on the butt, abs, and PC muscles. Imagine someone in a sexy state of rigor mortis, and you’ve got a good sense of the clench and hold.

“This is going to be like a sex party without the sex,” whispers the woman beside me as we recline on our mats and close our eyes. Carrellas cues the stereo, and Télépopmusik’s “Breathe” starts to thump from the speakers.

I’m feeling grossly unprepared, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be outdone by a guide dog. I writhe and gyrate and try to imagine my breath traveling from my pelvic region into my heart and then on to my head. More likely, I look like my mother, panting and gasping for air as she works out on her rusty Health Rider. Though Carrellas has directed us to focus on our individual experience, I’m distracted by the salacious soundtrack that has erupted around me.

As we head down the final stretch, I take the requisite 30 quick breaths, followed by three deep inhalations, holding the last in. Then I squeeze every muscle taut and stiffen my body like a board. After our respective climaxes, the gasps, shrieks, moans, and yelps eventually subside into silence.

“Whatever just happened to you is amazing,” Carrellas assures us.

I’m not quite sure what happened to me. I know my arms went numb — an apparent side effect of intense breath work that doesn’t involve cigarettes. I tingled a bit here and there. I fretted over the whereabouts of that dog. And I generally got stuck in the clutter of my own head, which is all too often what hangs us up in life and in bed. In either arena, the best advice is often that offered by Carrellas: just breathe.

If that doesn’t work, try a vigorous bike ride on a bumpy road without underpants.