Understanding Tantra
Tantra: its history, its teachings and its practice today
A fuller explanation of what Tantra is, where it comes from, and how contemporary Neo Tantra draws on its principles.
Understanding Tantra
Body, mind and soul, woven together
The Sanskrit word tantra is often connected with weaving, with the threads of a loom. It is a fitting image. Across many Tantric teachings, the body, the mind and the spirit are not treated as separate parts of us to be managed one at a time. They are understood as threads of a single experience of being alive.
Tantric practices use conscious breath, meditation, awareness, sensation and connection to bring those threads into greater harmony. The breath links body and mind. Awareness allows us to notice what we feel. Sensation brings us back into the present, where life is actually happening.
Much of the time the mind is occupied elsewhere: with memories, with expectations, with fears, and with the constant effort to understand or control what we are experiencing. Tantra does not ask you to fight that or to force the mind into silence. It invites you to experience life more directly, through the breath and the body, so that thinking no longer has to be the whole of your experience.
Seen this way, Tantra is not simply a massage, a sexual experience or a set of techniques. It can be a way of relating to life, to ourselves and to the present moment.
“You can't create yourself; you already are yourself.”
Tantra is
- Becoming aware of the present moment
- Feeling rather than constantly analysing
- Meditation and conscious breathing
- Bringing body, mind and spirit into harmony
- Reconnecting with who you already are
Tantra is not
- The same thing as sex, genital touch or massage
- About achieving an erection, orgasm or ejaculation
- Performing for another person
- Forcing the mind to become silent or forcing a spiritual experience
- A religion, or becoming someone else
Historical Tantra and Neo Tantra
Historically, Tantra is not one tradition but many. Tantric schools developed over centuries within Hindu and Buddhist cultures, with their own lineages, rituals, mantra, meditation and philosophy. Most of those traditions did not involve massage, and it would be wrong to suggest that they all involved sexual practice.
Neo Tantra is a contemporary approach, developed largely in the West, which draws on Tantric principles such as breath, awareness, life force and the union of feminine and masculine energies, and applies them to the body, intimacy and everyday life. Neo Tantra Massage is one particular application of those principles. It is not the definition of Tantra itself. Spiritual Tantra is a separate, meditative experience and is not a massage.
The deeper dimensions of Tantra
Stillness, movement and the energy of life
In some Tantric traditions, Shiva represents consciousness, stillness and awareness, while Shakti represents the creative movement of life, energy and expression. The Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine are not simply descriptions of women and men. They are qualities within us all, and Tantra explores their relationship and their union.
Many Tantric teachings speak of a life force moving through all things, known as prana or Shakti, and of subtle channels through which it flows. Breath is one of the most direct ways to feel it. These are spiritual teachings and symbols rather than scientific facts, and you do not need to share them to explore Tantra.
Tantra is not simply something you come to experience for a few hours. The awareness you explore can continue into everyday life: in how you breathe, how you notice your body, and how you meet the people around you.
“The experience doesn't end. At the end, it really begins.”
Consent and boundaries
“The intention is to reconnect with yourself, not to create an intimate relationship with the person guiding the experience.”
Questions about touch, arousal and boundaries are natural, and you are welcome to ask them. Nothing about them is embarrassing to me.
A Tantric experience with me is an agreed, professional arrangement. Its form, its boundaries and any touch are discussed beforehand, and consent can be withdrawn at any time. That is quite different from a personal or romantic relationship, where two people meet each other's needs. Here, the whole of the space is for you and your own experience, and the relationship does not continue beyond it.
Tantra does not see sexuality as separate from the whole of who you are. A deeper sexuality is found by working with the whole person, so that connection deepens in every area of life: how you connect with yourself, with others and with everything around you. In this way, Tantra becomes a way of life, of presence, of feeling and of breathing life in.
In Neo Tantra Massage, intimate touch is only included where it forms part of the chosen offering and has been explicitly agreed. Arousal, erection or ejaculation can be involuntary responses. They are met without judgement, they are not the purpose or a measure of success, and they do not change the agreed boundaries.
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You do not need to know exactly what you are looking for. A complimentary, informal introductory discussion offers an opportunity to ask questions and explore whether an experience feels appropriate for you.
Appointments, availability and deposits are currently managed on my existing booking system.
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- Telephone
- 07352 779439
- Based in
- Greater Manchester, on the Lancashire border