Chapter from the book, Eat Chocolate Naked©

Spend a Few Minutes Kissing Every Day
       by Camae Johnson

"Away with your fictions of flimsy romance;
Those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove!
Give me the mild beam of the soul breathing
Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love."

Lord Byron

What happens to kissing? One minute, it’s the most exciting thing in our lives, the best and most passionate way to get close to our new lover. The next minute, it’s relegated to a few perfunctory pecks we give each other in the brief moments immediately preceding sex. What happens to kissing? Why does it get so unfairly demoted, and why do so many people believe it would take a miracle to revive real, passionate kissing in our relationships?

Cherie Byrd just may have the answers. As the owner of a Seattle school that offers classes in kissing and Tantric energy, Cherie spends a lot of time teaching couples how to bring back kissing and take their relationships to new levels.

I wanted to learn more about Cherie’s class. I was pretty intrigued, seeing an ad for "Kissing School." Cherie invited me and my husband to participate in a day-long class or get some private couple’s counseling. I was trying to decide which would be more embarrassing; a class where dozens of couples spend seven hours kissing in front of each other, or getting privately critiqued on my kissing style. In the end, I opted to just interrogate Cherie on the importance and basics of kissing.

"Remember how much fun it was to make out in high school?" Cherie asks. "Go there. It’s simply allowing it to be there, without permitting other expectations to enter in. It’s about kissing and not starting to think, ok--now I need to start moving on to second base."

Some experts I’ve talked to believe that a couple will report feeling much more closeness if they just spend a minimum of ten minutes a week kissing. It is, after all, ten minutes more than many couples spend kissing. But Cherie would like to see couples spend several minutes a day doing it.

It doesn’t have to be uninterrupted kissing. Just a few minutes here and there. Do it while you’re cooking dinner! After you’ve chopped the vegetables, spend ten minutes in the kitchen kissing passionately. I promise you that your dinner will taste much better if you do!"

Cherie believes that people have a tendency to isolate kissing in their lives, and that’s where they go wrong. If we make fiery kissing a part of our everyday lives, it will become second nature and will never stale.

Many women believe it wouldn’t be easy to get their men to buy into "just kissing" for several minutes a day (or a week, for that matter).

"Ask for a gift of ten minutes of red-hot kissing. It will always be more important to women than to men, but men have a feminine, sensual side too. If you ask for that gift, they’ll give it to you."

Why do women crave it more than men? Perhaps we crave true intimacy more, and there’s no doubt that really great kissing is a path to intimacy.

"The real problem is, we don’t know how to be intimate. To feel vulnerable and naked is a sacred experience that’s not taught. It’s not modeled, and the only place we ever see it is in the movies."

What’s so magical and romantic about kissing? Cherie teaches couples that while our anatomy has created this profound possibility for powerful sensation, with countless nerve endings around the mouth and tongue--it’s ultimately important on a spiritual level.

"What you really want to do when you’re kissing your lover is to kiss a little bit of their soul. I teach people to pay attention to their breathing. If you’re taking deep breaths while kissing, there’s a flow that opens between you, an energetic flow.

"This is the call to intimacy. When the walls come down, and you start to experience your lover directly and deeply. It’s what we’re all looking for.

Think about how you could bring more kissing into your relationship. Spending several minutes a day kissing your mate may seem impossible to squeeze in. You may want to start with Cherie’s advice about bringing it into your life, rather than setting aside some time for mandatory kissing. For some couples, though, ten minutes of scheduled kissing would be a radical improvement from what’s (not) happening now.

At the very least, shift your thinking so that you’re consciously honoring this thing that happens between us called a kiss. It’s not just for kids and young lovers. It’s for anyone who wants to reach a deeper union with the one they love.

Bringing kissing back is guaranteed to improve the intimacy and bring back the romance.