 is the sizes. That's what they were created for. So if the woman was very small and the man was much bigger, there are a bunch of positions where the woman's legs are kept as wide apart as possible. If it was the other way around that the woman was very big and the man is much smaller, then there are all these positions where the woman is actually curled up or where her legs are as tightly put together. So either on her side or where you link the thighs and you will actually be able to pulse at the same time so that it contracted the size of the vulva. If of course the vulva was very big and the man was very small, then you resorted to the little armor I was telling you about, the dildos that you had to learn how to make. So what was interesting is that now there's lots of different positions and over time these positions have been changed a little bit. They morphed because you have to remember that furniture morphed. So in yeah, two thousand years ago if I said there was a sitting position it was more than likely you were sitting on a mattress on the floor or a cushion on the floor. Five hundred years later maybe there's a bench. Another five hundred years later you have a chair. So the positions have changed slightly because of the change in furniture. But it's not just the positions, he actually doesn't just give you the structure, the architecture of the positions. It's also about the emotions behind it. So suppose you have according to the Kamsutra again let me tell you this is a really really unusual idea and most people are like no. The best lover is your longest standing lover. That's the best sex. So he doesn't say that you should change lovers and move on etc. He says that the best sex you can have is with the person that you have had in your life for the longest time. And I say this to various people sometimes you know who are about my kind of age and I'm pretty old I'm 57 now and you think I've been married for like 35 years and people are like are you kidding me there's nothing left there. That's the whole point. When there's the least amount of excitement it takes so much longer to arouse yourself to that point that you actually feel all the little steps of arousal. When you see somebody that you fancy that pants off you're up there that quickly and you're finished with it that quickly. It doesn't fit in with his agenda or pleasure because the idea is that every little bit has to come alive and make you feel like you're tingling. You have to be able to feel the little bits because that's where the pleasure actually lies. So the idea is that suppose you're married to somebody who is okay you've had the person in your life for a long time. Let's say okay let's start with this one. He's very good looking, he's very nice, he's very kind, he's very cultured, he's all of those things and he's very good at foreplay. But he doesn't have enough energy to actually get it up and have sex with you properly last long enough. So there is a position for that. It's called the cobra. I will go into this one position and I won't bother with the others but I haven't actually included the positions in the book because I found that that needed a much deeper study. It's not something you can do in one short chapter. This book has a lot of very short chapters. So in the cobra the idea is that the woman gets herself addressed. She gets it. So again this was something that they believed in that when you were going to have sex it wasn't okay to turn the lights off or wash my makeup off you know let me get back into bed now and no you got dressed for it and there were 16 different things ornaments and makeup and hair and perfume that you actually put on because you acknowledge this is something very special that you were going to do. So she gets herself all dressed up. She feeds him with all the nice things but not too much because you never have food before sex. According to the Kamsutra the meal has to be had afterwards. Before sex you just have little tiny bits to eat because the body can only deal with either sending energy to digest your food or sending energy down to the genitals and it will automatically go to digest the food. It won't go for the other thing. So yeah so she gets him all. She gets herself all dressed up. She feeds him with just the right amount of stuff. She does all the right things and then because you know she starts to actually pleasure him. She starts to kiss him. She starts to do all the right things and then when she feels that his excitement is getting over there and very likely to finish very quickly she retreats. So that retreat is called the cobra. She retreats and curls herself up in the pillows and does not allow him any access to her vulva and apparently that pulling back at that point instead of letting it come to its natural conclusion and sort of dying away it actually makes the energy go up a little bit. Now I haven't tried it personally but I would imagine that it would work. Either way this was the idea behind it that there was a certain emotion behind it. There were places, there were opportunities, there were times, there were things that would happen. It even goes so far as to say that there was, do you know that we had something called therapeutic sex where you could use certain sexual positions to cure chronic illnesses? Yeah, now you're all here. Including things like gastric wind. So you can actually get rid of wind. So this is again something that doesn't get practiced in India anymore. It's still very big in China or in some parts China. I actually had to go up into the hills to find a couple who treat people with therapeutic sex. So the woman has sex with the man and the man has sex with the woman. So the couples that come they actually treat them with therapeutic sex. There are different positions. My favorite one is actually where it's, I think they talk about stress relief and the reason I'm talking about the stress relief one is because it just explains certain things. So in the stress relief one they say that the woman, her stress collects over here. So when a woman is stressed and the stress builds up it is a lot of pain in this region and lower backache. For a man the stress seems to collect in the neck and shoulders. That's where they will have the pain. So this is okay. Therapeutic sex depends on thrusting. It's an art. Thrusting is an art. You have to practice the art of thrusting. Get it absolutely right and flow it. We have a chapter in thrusting you can practice. It's very good actually to understand how to do that. And therapeutic sex depends on how long you can hold a position. Okay because it's very very slow. And for stress busting one you have the woman lying flat on her back and the man has to kneel. Okay and sorry and she has a rectangular cushion under her bottom. So the different shapes of cushion will change the angle at which the energy will flow into you. In case you're wondering how therapeutic sex what it is I was saying to you earlier that if you think about raising your sexual energy if you have a bottle and you turn that bottle you fill it up with water and you turn it in whichever way the liquid would flow in that direction. That's how therapeutic sex works. You raise your sexual energy and then depending on which way you put your body and how you thrust and you use your breath and you use your thrust to move that energy around to specific parts of your body. That's what the basis of it. So in this one you have your rectangular cushion under your bottom then you have the man kneeling in front of her on the floor which is why the bed had to be a certain height. You know I said to you the first part of the book was all about how to decorate your house and what all to do. So there are eight different types of cushions and so on and so forth. Anyway because the man has to be as straight as possible because that's when his energy will flow up and down. The woman has to be as flat as possible because that's when her energy will flow up and down up here and I don't remember how many thrusts there are but at some stage you read that up and I told that it's very very useful and very good for you. So yes so positions actually had a huge amount of importance but not for the reasons that we think it is. There are a couple of them that I don't understand how. I mean all of this sounds very good and it sounds very good of like yeah it makes a lot of sense but there are a couple of positions that I truly don't understand. There's one in particular where the man lies flat on his back. The woman sits on top of him she penetrates and then she goes round and round. I have no idea why. It's been it's been a 10 long years of studying this. There are a lot of things I still haven't discovered what they mean. There's another one which is I've never known anybody who's been able to do this. So you have the sitting positions. The man is sitting. The woman sits on his lap, penetrates and then he somehow manages to flip around so that she's facing the other way but they have not broken contact. That has to take a lot of doing. A lot of yoga. And then if you're really really really good at what you're doing then the man also flips around. I think in this case he's on the he's on his all fours on the ground and she's on top of him. I don't know I've been trying to work this out.