What Is Tantra?
Sting on November 5, 2007. Image by Scott Ableman.
If you’re over the age of 40, you probably first heard about tantra in 1993, when Sting shared about having tantric sex for five hours in a drunken interview for Q Magazine.
Since then, Sting has clarified more about his sex life and spiritual practices with his wife, Trudie Styler, but the first impression has remained.
Many of us still think tantra is about sex for a long time, orgasm denial, creating a sexual connection beyond the physical, and even one-hour orgasms.
Some of us may know a bit more and associate tantra with energy exchange, breathwork, and chakras.
Tantra can be about all of these things and so much more.
What is Tantra?
At its core, tantra is a deep, radical, embodied, everyday awakening and liberation practice.
Tantra is a way of thinking, acting, and being in the world that requires a depth and consistency of practice to experience it in your bones. More than a belief system or a simple spiritual practice, tantra is a truth you embody with your whole body and mind with specific practices that support you to live it.
When & How Did Tantra Begin?
Tantra developed on the Indian subcontinent in about 500 AD and lasted through about 1500 AD. The teachings from this period are now referred to as classical tantra.
What is Classical Tantra?
Classical tantra is a weaving together of practices from many different spiritual traditions and teachings. This is one of the reasons why it’s so difficult to objectively define what tantra is. Every person practicing tantra has a unique experience based on their teacher, the lineage of their teacher, and the time and context in which they learn it.
In this early period, many different schools of tantra existed. Some of them were very conservative, resembling other mainstream Hindu and Buddhist traditions of the same time. Some of them were more radical with female gurus and a deeper focus on liberation, engagement in sexual practices, and even some blood rituals.
Read the British Museum’s short timeline of tantra alongside stolen tantric artifacts.
Two things distinguished tantra from everything else that was happening in classical India at that time:
The belief that everything has consciousness in it and there is no separation between divinity and materiality
An assertion that the world is real
Most of what is practiced now is called neo tantra.
What is Neo Tantra?
Neo tantra is a phrase used to designate practices and teachers that generally came about in the 1960s or later. Some were inspired by classical tantra and others had no exposure to classical tantra at all, very much like the ways in which yoga has been developed and practiced outside of India.
Practices of neo tantra often work with the body, humanity, and sexuality, as this is where people are seeking the most healing and connection.
How Is Tantra Practiced Today?
Given the rich and varied history of tantra, we can learn and explore it in any number of ways.
Understanding the basic philosophies, principles, and practices are essential before choosing a teacher or school to work with.
I learned and practiced these through Layla Martin, a white American woman, who was taught by Ma Ananda Sarita, a white English woman who for 17 years trained directly with Osho, an Indian guru. My tantric understandings start here, however problematic, and are informed by others like Lama Rod Owens, a Black queer Southern man formally trained in the Tibetan Buddhist and Tantric Buddhist lineage.
Three Core Tantric Philosophies
Tantra has three basic philosophies at the core of its long and rich history, traditions, and applications to everyday life.
Tantra is About Awakening
The first tantric philosophy is a focus on awakening.
This is when you wake up to a perspective that you are not your thoughts, you are not your emotions, you are not your body, or your past or your trauma. You are not even what you are raised to believe you are.
From a tantric perspective you are also all of those things, and who you are is not based on any of them exclusively.
Awakening is coming more and more into the idea that you are the presence and consciousness within you. You are the part of you who can witness your thoughts, emotions, body, and more.
This can be realized deeper and deeper through meditation, eating, solo sexual practices, partnered sex, or anything in life.
Tantra is About Liberation
Once we begin to awaken to who we truly are—not our minds, not our bodies—we can liberate ourselves from social conditioning and any ideas of ourselves that hold us back.
A second tantric philosophy is a focus on liberation.
We are brought up with all kinds of beliefs around right and wrong, good and bad, and these create discomfort, resistance, and fear that we live from unconsciously.
Liberation is the decision to be free of that which is not true to the truth of us.
We spend a lot of time and energy avoiding taboos and wrestling with beliefs about the world and ourselves.
The more we set down and break free from shame, judgement, fear, and guilt, the more we free up tremendous amounts of energy.
Liberation feels like being able to meet every moment with a sense of freshness and aliveness as our true selves.
Tantra is A Belief That Consciousness is in Everything
When we continue to practice witnessing and setting down everything we’ve been taught about who we are and what to believe, we can also see a third philosophy of tantra.
Tantra philosophy asserts there is consciousness in everything, and that consciousness is sacred and divine.
This means your mind and your thoughts are sacred, yes, and your body and every aspect of your body and what it can experience is also divine.
Every part of you is sacred, divine, and wise.
With wisdom being in every thing living and not living, seen and unseen, we have permission to fully inhabit our divinity in the unique way it expresses through us.
As we explore from this belief and experience, we realize everyone and everything is imperfectly perfect and interconnected through constant energy exchange.
Finally, a part of this philosophy is that within us and all things is not only the expression of divinity and connection to all that exists but also what’s called the “formless ground of being.”
If we are full consciousness and divinity, then within us is also the source of everything and nothing, like a fertile emptiness that is the start of the creation of everything.
Christopher Wallis teaches more about these three phases of classical Śaiva Tantra philosophy.
Three Core Tantric Principles
Whereas the tantric philosophies of awakening, liberation, and everything having consciousness are foundational beliefs, three basic tantric principles show how to apply these ideas to our lives.
What is Here is Everywhere & What is Everywhere is Also Here According To Tantra
One of my favorite yoga teachers would say, “You already are.”
Waking up to who you are and becoming liberated from cultural conditioning means you can access anything in the universe at any point.
You can personify any energy, vibration, pattern of consciousness, deity, or flavor of the universe at any time.
Different tantric practices make this more accessible and easier to activate within us. The possibilities are endless, because we can find everything inside of us somewhere.
Tantra’s Exploration of Chakras
Exploring chakras is a way of embodying that what is here is everywhere and what is everywhere is also within you.
In tantra, chakras are energy points within you that vibrate in certain ways and have certain qualities.
They also correlate with distinct parts of the body that are connected to various parts of the brain. When activating and strengthening the expression of each chakra and all of the chakras, we are also cultivating freedom and wholeness deepening to express ourselves.
Acknowledging and accepting all parts of ourselves through chakra work is healing, because it supports us to experience our divinity and sacredness as well as the beauty of all other human beings and life.
Tantra Recognizes Patterns of Consciousness As Important
While each chakra is a specific energy, vibration, and pattern of consciousness, tantra also asserts that the wisdom within everything also takes on certain patterns or meta-patterns.
To spend time with an archetype, we might focus on a force of nature like water, fire, earth, or air. We might bring attention to a deity of any culture or tradition. Studying beauty or pleasure or death and destruction to bring it alive within us and giving it permission to exist and take up space is a core tantric principle.
Three Core Tantric Practices
Though tantric principles are about how to apply tantric philosophies to life, tantric practices are what to do each day to embody them.
Tantric Practice of Being Conscious of Being Conscious
Tantra is an everyday practice of witnessing yourself and all life.
A core tantric practice is become more aware of the fact that you are aware. A meditation practice can help, but you don’t have to meditate to awaken to the truth of who you are.
Throughout the day while showering, eating, driving, and even while having sex, being conscious of being conscious helps you to slowly understand you are not your emotions. You are not your thoughts. You are not your body. You are the part of you who can witness these elements of you and everything around you.
Tantric Practice of Everyday Liberation
Tantra is also a daily noticing of what’s you and what’s not you.
Most of us are controlled by what is in our subconscious and unconscious, and that’s not the true us.
By continuously strengthening our witness consciousness, we begin to notice what is really us and what is limiting beliefs, culture conditioning, societal narratives, or anything that doesn’t make sense to the truth of who we are.
Curiosity and compassion support us to notice reactions and automations, so we can learn from them and eventually liberate ourselves from them. Thoughts, emotions, and sensations turn into our teachers.
A living, breathing liberation practice is about always moving deeper toward the things that are uncomfortable or that scare us and becoming more and more ourselves.
Tantric Practice of Recognizing The Divinity in You
If consciousness is in everything and what is everywhere is within us, we can begin to explore and accept ourselves as sacred.
Within us is wisdom that is everywhere, and we have access to it anytime we want.
It is a simple and profound practice to welcome and experience this as us also always being:
The seed of our soul essence or innermost self
Interconnected to the mycelium network of all nature and the whole field of energy
The fertile land ready to be seeded as the formless ground of being as well as the emptiness and darkness inside absolutely everything with yet to be awakened pure potential
We are wise, sacred, and divine.
