What is Tantra?

What is Tantra to me?

Tantra to me is simply, yes to life!

Tantra embraces a big Y E S to life. Yet when most people hear about Tantra, they generally think about sexual techniques to prolong intercourse, sex or love-making. Tantra says yes to this, yet truly it is so much more than this. Tantra is a practice of expanding consciousness, it is a lifestyle or a way of life. How you do expand consciousness? By becoming more conscious of your primal sexual creative energy and how that then weaves, marries, merges with the energy all around you and plays with other peoples energy too. And you embrace all of this with a yes!

Tantra encourages you to go into the world, your daily life as a householder and embrace every aspect, the good and the bad, the dark and the light, the contractions and expansions of life’s journey. Tantra honours the paradox of opposites so you say yes to it all.  As a householder Tantra liberates the mundane, by giving you methods to practice, so you raise your energy. As this raises you say YES more and feel the Oneness wit everything.

When you say YES, you cultivate inner strength to go deeper. This helps you to weave everything together, which creates union, within you. Everything that arises within you, including how you react to it are all part of the process of weaving everything into the rich tapestry of your life. The literal meaning of Tantra is below, yet…

Tantra awakens the body through the senses. It uses the body as a compass to guide you on navigate you through the ups and downs of your life.   Tantra methods are like the map and each practice a signpost to take you deeper on your journey. For me this is a merging of your sexuality, your love and your spirituality. In this merging a marriage of sacred union alchemises. You can apply this to any aspect of your life. Tantra is a journey, a discovery of the mystery of life where you marry your ordinary life with your spiritual. and there within the space of this journey of discovery you touch the Divine, Source, God, Goddess, love or whatever you like to call it.

Difference between Tantra and Yoga

Tantra is different to traditional Yoga, in that traditional Yoga renounces everything so that you may connect with the Divine. The aim through the practices is to witness the body from the outside, tone down the desires, thoughts and distractions to ultimately achieve enlightenment. Not many of us can renounce work, relationship and living for this, so Tantra offers an ‘easier’ path to liberation, to spiritual evolution that embraces everyhting as part of the journey. I might add it’s not easy though…

Tantra is a potent practice that alchemises all that you live to liberate you.

What is Tantra meaning?

what is Tantra? : Tantra is many things, it’s way beyond the western idea it’s just all about sex, and there’s the paradox it is also about sex…..Yet the word sex doesn’t give justice to the expansiveness of Tantra sex. Tantra helps me to tap into my sexual creative energy, called shakti and use this energy as the rocket fuel for my life. this is where the confusion occurs re the sexual creative energy. Shakti is so potent she can create another human, so imagine harnessing this energy to create the life you want. Tantra honours your desires within the body, mind and soul.

Tantra is an art, a science, a system of practice or a spiritual practice that awakens and transforms you through the body. Tantra awakens your sexual creative energy, called Shakti, that arises from your creative sex centre of the 1st two chakras.

Tantra as a system of practice honours the union of the masculine – Shiva and feminine – Shakti, energies within you. I first came to Tantra through Honouring Shiva, in Kashmir Shaivism. Shiva is the masculine energy, the ground of your being, the indwelling Lord. this practice helped me to rest in the ground of my being, to say yes and then able to allow Shakti, this immense feminine power to move within me.  Now I practice Shaktism, honouring the Feminine, The Divine Mother or the Goddess.

Tantra is a way weaving together the more masculine aspect of meditation and witnessing and bring in that together with the feminine path of love and devotion. Where these to meet you experience the beauty of Tantra. You then apply this beauty to your love your relationships to expanded states of consciousness, to Kundalini awakening,  to sexuality or simple walking in nature,  your work  or everything in your life is a portal into an expansion of consciousness. 

How can you become one with the universe if you have a not experienced that oneness with in the portal of your body?  So sexuality is a way to experience is expanded consciousness through orgasm way you become one with the universe.

Tantra as a practice employs the principles of the tantras, involving mantras, meditation, yoga, and ritual. Tantra is a path to awakening or enlightenment and seeks to channel the divine energy of the macrocosm into the human microcosm.

What is Tantra and it’s etymology?

Tantra means system or method within the scriptures of  the Tantras.  If you break the word down Tan is weave or stretch or expand, and tra a tool or instrument, so tantra is  an instrument to expand and stretch yourself.

A Tantrika is a person who practices Tantra, and this means you weave all the aspects of yourself within the rich tapestry of life. It is quite normal for a Tantrika or someone on a spiritual path to bring the practices they embody spiritually into the bedroom so this is where Tantra and sex comes in. For me there is no separation between my spiritual life and my ordinary life or my sex life. all is One. And also there is no greater worship than that of two souls coming together in sacred sexuality where they merge and marry the God and the Goddess in ecstasy – believe me thisis sublime.

I practice Tantra using the different aspects of life for my spiritual evolution and this includes my sexuality. When you honour your sexuality, amplify it and use it for you spiritual evolution and your dreams, they are One.

For myself, I bring my yoga, my tantra into all areas of my life. So of course I bring my practices in to my love-making, honouring the divine within my husband and employing tantric techniques for a richer more embodied love making, that allows our two souls to meet and marry as one.

I’ll explore this in another blog..

for now that’s Tantra…