In Isis Phoenix's fully-clothed tantra workshops, the focus is on conjuring energetic components of orgasm via the conscious use of breath, PC-muscle squeezes and visualizations. “I teach you how to breathe, to make noise, and how to move erotic energy out from the tips of your fingers to the edge of your toes.”

For those who have a bit more spare change, Phoenix leads solo and partner-based sessions starting at $200 an hour, which includes tantric-massage lessons.

“Most of the people [coming to me] are on pleasure starvation,” Phoenix says. A lot of women come in because they’re having difficulty if not impossibility achieving orgasm; men come in with erectile dysfunctions. When they come in and are taught just how to breathe ... a touch on the arm can create an expanded, energetic orgasmic state.”

“In Western forms of sexuality, sex is something we do. In eastern forms, it’s something we allow. We open up and allow more and more in,” says Barbara Carellas, the sex educator who started exploring tantric 20 years ago in the wake of the ‘80s AIDS crisis. “Physical genitals are less important. They’re certainly there but they’re not the only path to an ecstatic high.” Besides being cheaper (a typical class will run you $30-50-ish), there are other benefits to the group setting. For starters, everybody becomes everybody else’s teachers, learning through observing and communicating new experiences they’re having as they happen.

For couples looking to spice up their ho-hum sex life and want something a little more interpersonal, and longer, Carellas offers weekend workshops, which average $300-500 a person, though she prefers teaching stuff that couples can “take home” that night and test out immediately.

Those who want more in-depth, long-term instruction might want to check out the lessons offered by married tantric-sex educators Mark Michaels and Patricia Johnson. The couple, who met at one of Mark’s tantric-sex workshops ten years ago, offer private and group instruction in the New York area, and a 14-week online course, “Tantra for Erotic Empowerment" for those pressed for time.

“I got into tantra and my whole world changed,” says Michaels, who met his wife at a lecture he was teaching in New York in 1999. “It’s so free of the bullshit that most people are taught to do when dating.”

Michaels also debunks other myths about tantra, namely that it’s for middle-age hetero couples who dance around and wear funny clothes, only practicing techniques on special weeklong retreats.

“Most of the students have been in a relationship for a while and are in their 30s and 40s, though students in their late teens through early 80s have been known to attend,” Michaels says. As for the stereotypical retreat model, Michaels and Johnson prefer teaching classes (of around two hours each) that people learn from and can then go home with, including special techniques for increasing intimacy-building energy, and expanding consciousness

The couple also takes part in an invite-only “pleasure salon,” which takes place once a month at a bar downtown (the couple asked that interested participants e-mail them through their Web site). If that’s not enough, Michaels teaches single classes on erogenous zones to everyone from the BDSM community to swingers groups and ordinary working folks for those who can’t shell out $300 for the 14-lesson class.

But as with everything else, improving your pleasure and expanding your sexuality takes time; the couple suggests tantra students practice techniques for at least 20 minues a day. The rewards are well worth it.

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