TANTRA

Tantra is not an everyday household word in most parts of the world. Yet, for those who have heard bits and pieces about it, the word invariably evokes a reaction. When I told friends about my latest writing assignment, I certainly received some raised eyebrows and a whispered, "Well...you'll let me know what you find out, won't you?"

Considering Tantra's reputation as an ancient practice that can awaken one's consciousness through sex, it is no wonder that my friends were curious. Couple this with claims to promote sensuality and creativity, release inhibitions, and break down self-imposed barriers and Tantra has my attention as well!

Historically, Tantra refers to sacred, 2000-year-old Hindu and Buddhist texts that provide lessons on subjects ranging from the sciences to spirituality and sexuality. In these ancient cultures, the sensual nature of spirituality was celebrated. Viewed as both a science and an art, sexuality was revered as a vehicle for spiritual advancement. One of the better known Hindu texts, the Kama Sutra, features teachings of sophisticated sexual techniques and positions.

Today in the West, Tantra is commonly associated with sex. It has become known as a way for couples to improve sexual skills and thereby heighten, intensify, and prolong sexual pleasure. In a course, one can certainly expect to learn advanced lovemaking techniques such as the art of kissing and touch, methods of pelvic movement, and internal muscular exercises. Instruction is also given about the male and female orgasm, including lessons on facilitating orgasms as well as how to give more pleasure with less effort.

Yet, the benefits of Tantra are not limited to perfecting explicitly erotic techniques. At its core, Tantra still remains a form of yoga and a spiritual path. Pursued in this way and with the right teachers, Tantra can become a powerful tool in building intimacy, communication, and passion between couples. In workshops, students learn meditations and breathing exercises to practice together. They are also taught about the chakras (the seven energy centers in the body) and how to move energy through them. In learning a very nurturing style of touch, couples begin helping one another to heal and awaken sexually as well as spiritually. Making love becomes a celebration of a very intimate connection.

Dr Johanina Wikoff, author of 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Kama Sutra', and psychologist who teaches couples about Tantra, says, "The main things that bring couples to me are low sexual desire, lack of sexual desire, changes in sexual desire, or discrepancies in the partners' desire for sexuality:" She sees issues with sexual desire purely as symptoms of deeper issues. Using an example of a relationship where the man is busy working all the time and the woman is craving, yet, not receiving attention, Dr. Wikoff says, "He may be trying to relate to her sexually and she may find herself turning off. It's not just about sex. Sex is a metaphor. Sex isn't just sex. It reflects everything in the relationship."

The study of Tantra can show couples how to face the "rest" of the relationship by teaching them how to connect and be present with one another. Toddie sighs, "I didn't have a clue that Tantra had to do with communication, connection, spirit and everything but just great sex. You learn Yoga, meditation, and, yes, some techniques and skills for improving things that you do sexually, but what tantra really is has nothing to do with how well you move your hands or your body, it has to do with how well you connect with the person you are with." Howard adds, "What we've learned, besides just making love, is how to take care of each other:"

Dr. Wikoff agrees, "Rather than wild sex in lots of positions, the emphasis of Tantra is on connection. It's not to say that sex can't become hot and passionate and intense. It can! It can also be sweet and tender and meditative. And all that comes through the connection that a couple learns by being present."

Caroline Muir adds, "I would say that most people don't fully understand how important love is in life, nor do they understand how to receive the love that is available in their personal relationships."

Ancient Tantra is a spiritual system in which sexual love is a sacrament. We are not teachers of ancient tantric traditions and rituals, but we have developed a system based on tantric philosophical concepts and techniques that we have found applicable in our life and in the lives of our students. It is a system that can elevate a couple’s relationship to the level of art.

Unfortunately, and contrary to what we would like to believe, we are not born naturally good at sex or at relationships. Few of us have benefited from a formal education in sexuality or sexual love. Even though we are children of the sexual revolution, we are still largely conditioned by belief systems that may have instilled in us guilt or fear or insecurity or sham. Such negative imprints, although they may reside quietly in the subconscious and cause only minor or occasional disturbances, rarely allow us to journey into the spiritual potential of sexual love. Tantra can help us do just that because a spiritual goal is as important to the tantric couple as their love.

In our workshops and seminars, we use techniques that we have developed from some of the ancient tantric lessons. These techniques are designed for the uninitiated, for the beginner. We share them with love and with deep respect for the potential for pleasure, for healing, and for the spiritual growth they can provide. We hope you will share with us our excitement over how extraordinarily well suited to our modern age and culture these ancient Eastern lessons are. They are important tools for today’s couples who are searching for a significantly different way of relating to each other, couples who want to sustain love and sexual passion for a lifetime together. Tantric sex does not promise instant results; it not a “one-minute” technique for achieving sexual prowess. But for couples who want to enrich their relationship, it can release a particular kind of energy that can bring about harmony between them and increase their sexual pleasure and intimacy. In sum, tantric sex can create an extraordinary partnership.

Couples today are looking for a commitment from each other, but a special kind of commitment—one that contains a spiritual as well as a physical element and emotional and psychological aspects as well as material ones. Now, as we approach the turning of another century, men and women seem to want

to face life together. This may be the start of the “we” generation, a generation that desires an end to the battle of the sexes and the beginning of a new form of relationship in which partners work together as a team to satisfy needs, uplift one another, and journey together toward personal growth and sexual and spiritual fulfillment.

A passionate partnership not only needs the nourishment sexual energy provides, it also needs maintenance--conscious maintenance. We believe that as much care, thoughtfulness, and attention should be paid to a relationship as to a career, a family, or a cause. Unfortunately, this is not a popular concept. More popular, but less realistic, is the theory that love, having visited itself upon us, is here to stay; that a relationship, once established, will operate on automatic, will be self-sustaining, and will not interfere with the partners getting on with their individual lives. Furthermore, couples expect their relationship to augment and complement them professionally, creatively, socially, and economically. That’s a lot to ask of a coupledom; but in fact a loving relationship can provide nourishment in all areas of life. It can generate energy enough not only for itself but

also for work, family, friends, and hobbies. But this doesn’t happen by magic. A relationship is like a garden. If it’s not watered, weeded, pruned, fertilized --cared for--its yield suffers. If it’s untended, it goes to seed. One of the main reasons relationships deteriorate is that the partners neglect them.

Men and women today look for similar things in a relationship and they desire them to similar degrees. We want psychological security from one another; we want to be able to trust one another; we want to support one another, emotionally as much as economically; we want to share similar experiences, to be playmates as well as responsible partners; we want to improve ourselves through our relationship and we hope that the relationship will improve with us; and truly, we want to love one another for a lifetime together.

The fact that a couple shares similar goals for their relationship bodes well for them because it signifies the couple’s appreciation for their partnership as an entity in and of itself. It focuses them on it as separate from us, and this point of view is crucial to the health and well-being of the partnership.

However, while men and women may not be so different in what they want for themselves as a couple, we know from our seminars that they are very different when it comes to what they want--in fact, need—for themselves as sexual individuals in the relationship. We have different desires, men and women—they are physiological, basic to our male and female natures. They seem, if not opposite to one another, at least not conjunct. How can these differences be reconciled?

The solution we teach in our seminars and workshops is based in part on the tantric “lifestyle” that was designed centuries ago specifically for householders – that is couples. The tantric texts are explicit on how the differences between the sexes can be used as a positive force in partnership, how the proper combination of these differences can produce a near-alchemical reaction, an ether in which everything flourishes, in which the garden of your relationship bursts with color and new life and growth, and you and your beloved thrive.

The tantric goal is to achieve a state where opposites cease to exist, where yin and yang are in perfect balance and duality is eclipsed. On a spiritual level this condition is considered a state of bliss, of ecstasy, of Unity. On a worldly plane, the goal is the same—tantric partners want to fit together as neatly as yin and yang. They seek a perfect balance where their differences are complementary. They aim for an ecstatic combination—the experience of bliss, love and Unity—in their relationship.

When partners are healers to each other, when they create light inside each other as a kind of radiation therapy for pain or fear or distrust, they make a profound connection. This connection involves two forms of energy: the energy of intimacy and the energy of sexual passion. These are the two main ingredients in tantric loving.

Today, men and women can learn to teach each other, and Tantra can help them. They might consider Tantra as a kind of extension course – a master class in love and relationship. In this continuing education, they guide each other, and the experience can be extremely powerful. Tantric lovemaking promotes health and vitality, and both the man and the woman benefit physically.

Psychologically, too, Tantra is a healing art. Tantric practices can discharge the negative power infusing the second chakra (the energy center for the genitals), and in so doing make enormous resources of positive energy available to all areas of life, not just the sexual. You will discover an energy you never knew you had, a creative energy that will refresh your mind, replenish your stamina, and restore your enthusiasm.

Lovemaking in the tantric sense, conscious lovemaking, does not come naturally; it must be learned, and couples must learn it together. They must be teachers, one to the other, and pupils of one another as well. Tantra is most explicit in its instructions for carrying out this education in the art of lovemaking, a multimedia art that combines increased consciousness with the five physical senses, as well as the more ethereal psychic and spiritual senses, to compose its dance of love.