How To Cultivate Light And Dark Sexual Energy (To Give You An Edge)
You absolutely need both to have the sex life you deserve.
courtesy of the author Five years ago I went to my first ever sex party in a “dungeon” in San Francisco. It was intense and surprising and definitely not what you’d expect. But before I tell you that story, I need to tell you something very important (and some very personal things about myself).
This is what an analog sound wave looks like (like a sound wave from an old school vinyl record):
And this is what a digital sound wave looks like (like one you would see from an MP3 that you throw on your iPod):
When they create an MP3 from a vinyl record, they chop off the highs and the lows and then compress what’s leftover. So the sound that you’re left with lacks a lot of the soul and the fullness that the original, vinyl recording once had.
This is also what society encourages us to do in our sex lives. I believe that we are taught to live in the safe, light side of our sexuality versus the full spectrum of our authentic sexual selves.
We’re taught from a young age that boys are supposed to like these things and girls are supposed to like these other things, but not TOO much because then they’ll be labeled as easy, slutty, or worse.
We learn that certain positions are acceptable. That specific sexual acts are too taboo or strange. And that this is how long you’re supposed to last, and this is the number of times that you’re each supposed to climax.
Essentially, through social conditioning, we are handed a sexual script of what we are allowed to like and anything that deviates outside of that is unacceptable and severely frowned upon.
I should know. I lived the first twenty years of my life living in this compressed, limited version of my full sexuality.
When I was a young lad, I was pretty girl crazy.
I had a girlfriend in pre-school.
I had girlfriends I would talk to on the phone for hours at a time (even while doing front flips on trampolines).
And I even had a couple of girlfriends that I dated for multiple years during high school and university.
I was the perfect made-for-TV boyfriend.
I made my girlfriend's dinners all the time. I was an amazing listener. I would bring them flowers unexpectedly. I was also very giving sexually. I was highly unconcerned with my own needs and was hyper-focused on making sure that they were always sexually satisfied with me.
But if and when my girlfriends broke up with me, they all seemed to have the same excuse. They all told me that our “spark had died,” which I never really understood.
The tipping point, for me, came when I had my first adult relationship. We had a whirlwind romance and I was head over heels in love with her. I adored her and knew that I wanted to marry her. At the end of our year-long relationship, she broke up with me. And as she was breaking up with me, she said something that stuck with me.
Like the others before her, she said that she was breaking up with me because, again, “the spark had died.” But she was one of those people who wanted you to understand why she was dumping you, which was fortunate for my growth, although I appreciated it a lot less at the moment.
She told me that I was too nice, that I was too passive, too accommodating to her needs, and that, ultimately, I was a pushover. I was destroyed by this. All I ever wanted was to be a “good” boyfriend, but it was that exact part of me that was the reason I was losing the love of my life.
I thought to myself, “I’m never going to let anyone make me feel this way again.” And so, the pendulum swung. I went to the extreme opposite way of being in my relationships.
Instead of loving with total vulnerability and openness, I closed off to women completely and (like many other men over the past two decades) dove headfirst into the pick-up artist community.
I almost didn’t include this photo. But it’s just too good not to share with the world.
I studied (and eventually taught) cold approach pick-up, which is where you literally approach women in the street and get their phone numbers within a matter of minutes. And I got pretty good at it, too.
For most people, including myself at the time, the pick-up has nothing to do with the women themselves, and everything to do with feeling more powerful and in control.
For the first time in my life, I was allowing myself to be selfish, in my relationships and in bed. I became more aware of my sexual desires and specific turn-ons that I’d neglected in the past. And women started responding to me more powerfully than they ever had. Which, as you can imagine, just made my ego even bigger.
I was having the best sex of my life and I wanted to explore sexuality even more. In fact, I became a full-time student of sexuality.
I read every book that I could find on Tantra, Taoist sexual philosophy, and sexual energy. I went to dozens of live events and workshops on human sexuality. I hired coaches and mentors to help me along in my journey of sexual self-discovery.
Up until this point, I was exploring my sexuality in a way that was largely selfish at the expense of my partners. But through my self-education, I learned that there’s a way to be selfish in bed that’s mutually beneficial to everyone involved.
One of my lightbulb moments came to me when one of my personal mentors gave me the insight that while my light energy was superbly intact, my darker sexual energy was almost non-existent. Or, to put it in even more clear, real-world terms, I had been perceived as extremely safe to the women I pursued, but I didn’t have much of a sexual edge.
I had read about this concept in my studying of Taoist sexual philosophy, but it had never become as clear in any other moment until this one.
Before we go any further I think it’s worth mentioning how I define light sexual energy and dark sexual energy. Here are some traits that I think describe each one with accuracy.
- Light sexual energy: playful, explorative, passive, curious, loving
- Dark sexual energy: dominant, in control, selfish, aggressive
Or, to put it in a more relatable way, light sexual energy is the side of you that wants to leave the lights on, have three-hour Tantric sex in the missionary position, while maintaining eye contact with your partner and syncing up your breathing. While dark sexual energy is the side of you that wants to take your partner and ravish them against a brick wall.
I wasn’t connecting with women sexually like I wanted to because I wasn’t 100 percent connected to the full spectrum of my own sexuality. The path was laid out ahead of me. I knew that in order to feel like a fully integrated sexual person, I would have to cultivate the darker side of my sexuality.
So I started spending a lot of time at kink and fetish events, BDSM clubs, and pansexual play parties. I knew that for me to feel fully at ease with myself, I had to immerse myself in this seemingly taboo sexual underworld.
Between living in Vancouver and San Francisco (arguably the two best cities in Canada and the US to explore the full spectrum of your sexuality), I felt like I was earning a degree in dark sexual energy.
I was polyamorous for a few years; I regularly left my sexual partners with enthusiastically consensual bruises, hand prints, and bite marks, and I felt like an entirely reinvented person.
When I was in my light phase, my bedside table drawer was filled with massage oil, sex dice, and a feather. When I was in my pick-up years I didn’t care to have anything but condoms on my bedside table, and now, in my dark phase, my bedside table drawer was filled with rope, wrist restraints, and floggers.
During this phase of my life, not only did women stop seeing me as passive, I started to get consistent feedback along the lines of “Woah, you’re a little intense aren’t you?” It was feedback that I relished since it was such a stark contrast to what I had become accustomed to.
My first time walking into a pansexual play party was intimidating at first but ultimately felt surprisingly normal and relaxing.
I expected to see wall to wall people who were tied up, being spanked mercilessly, and while things along those lines may have made up 5 percent of the crowd in attendance, it was mainly just average looking couples who were hanging out, conversing with each other, and loving and cuddling their significant others nonchalantly.
But after a few years of this phase of embodying my darker sexual energy, I realized that the pendulum swing had started to overstay its welcome in my life.
I had learned the lessons that I needed to learn from each stage of my journey. I learned the value of being a caring and accommodating boyfriend, how to develop courage and self-confidence through my pick-up years, and how to explore my sexuality in its entirety through my darker BDSM/poly years.
This brings me to today. I am now navigating the journey of integrating both my light side and my dark side, being able to step into one or the other as each moment calls for it.
While I don’t believe that every person needs to live right smack dab in the middle of light and dark sexual energy, I do believe that it’s advantageous for every person (regardless of gender or orientation) to at least dipping their toe in both ways of being just to see what they feel like. When two intimate partners are able to simultaneously switch roles between their own internal masculine and feminine, light and dark sexual energies, some serious magic comes out of it.
And men and women have both their light and their dark sexual energy suppressed and shamed in different ways.
Men: be too passive or gentle and you’re labeled as a “pussy” or not manly enough; be too dominant or aggressive and you’re being creepy (although the darker side of the spectrum is definitely more societally encouraged in terms of stereotypical masculine sexuality).
Women: be too curious and explorative and you’re a tease; be too selfish and dominant and you’re a slut. Society loves to tell women, “How dare you enjoy sex with your body?!”
But I digress... So, men, if you’re looking to get more in touch with your sexual light side, try any of the following.
How To Cultivate Light Sexual Energy
1. Try extended, cyclical sexual play.
To tap into the explorative nature of the light side, practice extending your sexual play by a few hours. And by extending your sexual play by a few hours I don’t mean you need to be able to go for hours of non-stop penetrative sex (because this would be fairly exhausting for both you and your partner).
Instead of the quick, linear A–B–C–D formulaic way of predictable lovemaking, make a night of it with your partner and see if you can let it all just be a big sexy pile of energy exchanging. Mix it up. Forget the order of things, and just enjoy yourselves.
Remember, sex is about feeling, not about performing.
2. Sync up your breathing (during any sexual play).
The light side of your sexuality is all about rapport and sameness (whereas the darker side is more about momentarily breaking rapport and being more different in your energies).
To boost up your light sexual energy, sync up your breathing during cuddling, foreplay, sex, or anything else you do with your partner. The more connected you feel to each other, the more your light side is in the driver’s seat.
3. Spoil your partner.
The light side is much more concerned with giving than taking. Give your partner what I call a spoiling session. A spoiling session is an extended period of time where you do whatever your partner wants you to do for their pleasure. This could range from a back massage to extended oral sex, or a new or unique style of lovemaking.
Whatever pleases your partner, do that, and do it for an extended period of time.
And if you’re looking to get more in touch with your sexual dark side, try any of the following four tips.
How To Cultivate Dark Sexual Energy
1. Lift really heavy things.
I’ve worked with hundreds of men over the past decade on cultivating the darker side of their sexuality, and for some of my clients who feel especially closed off to their sexuality (on any side of the spectrum), this is often the exercise that I have them start off with in order to reconnect with their inner beast.
One of the fastest ways to reconnect with your internal beast is to do a heavily weighted compound exercise that firmly reawakens you into your body. In order of efficacy for this particular emotional result, I would say that some of the best ones to start off with are squats, bench presses, or deadlifts.
When you’re mid-squat with anywhere from 100 to 250 pounds straddling your shoulders and you can see your face in the mirror with a look of determined anger during the most challenging part of your lift, that’s the entry point to the darker, beast energy that I’m talking about.
2. Try out light bondage and/or physical power play.
Once you’ve tapped into what your internal beast feels like, it’s time to start translating a piece of that energy dynamic into your sexual play. One of the fastest ways to add some sexual polarity to your bedroom play is, to begin with some light dominance, bondage, or wrestling-style physical power play.
You can feel free to warn your partner ahead of time that you’ll be wanting to try it out. There’s something very instantly polarizing about holding your partner's wrists/hands/arms down that adds new, sexy energy to your dynamic.
3. Observe what you think about right before you orgasm.
If you aren’t sure about what kinds of darker things you would want to try out in the bedroom, one of the best internal litmus tests is to pay attention to what your mind thinks about right before you orgasm. It’s usually the least politically correct (and most erotic) thing that crosses our minds from 5 seconds to 30 seconds before we climax.
So what do you think about right before you climax? Whatever it is, it probably holds clues to some of your darker turn-ons that might be worth exploring in real life with an equally excited partner.
4. If you are in a relationship, practice explicitly asking for what you want.
Another real-world example of how you can boost your ability to inhabit your darker sexual self is to be more assertive with your desires in your sex life. While this can be quite challenging for a lot of people, practicing explicitly asking for what you want can feel very empowering.
It can be as direct as coming up behind your lover, grabbing their bum, and whispering in their ear, “Baby, I’m feeling really turned on right now. How about you take off your pants and I f*ck you on the couch.” Or as indirect as, “How do you feel about playing around tonight? I’m feeling kind of frisky and I’d love to try out a few new things with you.”
Generally, the more detailed you are with your requests, the more polarized/charged/sexy it comes across. Said in another way, it’s hotter (mid-sex session) to say, “Touch/Grab/Lick my nipples/balls/ass, I’m about to cum,” than to say “Hey, if you don’t mind too much, would you mind doing that thing we talked about earlier?”
If you have a loving and supportive partner who wants you to have an amazingly awesome sexual experience, it’s probably for the best that you’re as clear and direct as possible.
Is Dark Sexual Energy or Light Sexual Energy Better Than The Other?
There’s a difference between dark sexual energy and light sexual energy, and we all have access to both of these energies inside each and every one of us. Neither is more wrong or right than the other. You don’t need to be “balanced” or favor one over the other. You can have both, moment to moment, and it will change often.
Throughout my journey, I also realized that the light side of the sexual energy is more YOU or WE focused, while the dark sexual energy is more ME focused. One is more giving and/or connection-focused, and the other is more about exploring the self or the healthy element of selfishness in your sexual desire.
Giving is normal and healthy. Being selfish is normal and healthy. Because selfish doesn’t mean “I win, and therefore you must lose,” but rather, “I want to make sure that I am having a good time, and we can both be concerned for your pleasure as well.”
I think that being in touch with both sides of these energies is vital to a thriving love and sex life because sometimes you want your partner to lovingly hold your face in their hands while they make love to you, and other times you want them to get that look in their eye, take you, and have their way with you while they watch your reflection in the bedroom mirror.
Sex and relationship coach Jordan Gray helps people remove their emotional blocks and maintain thriving intimate relationships. You can see more of his writing at JordanGrayConsulting.com.
All photos: Author