WHAT Is TANTRA?
What is tantra?
Today is the day.
You’ve spent seemingly a lifetime on the road over the past few months, hours at the gym each week, a substantial portion of your paycheck on bodywork and PT, and embarrassingly close to the remainder on the best gear and footwear you could find. Barely having slept the night prior, you show up to race day. Nervous with anticipation, you line up with the other athletes at your allotted start time. You have your fuel and hydration strategy, your intended pace group, and a stellar motivational playlist. The artificial starting pistol shot resounds through the speaker system and you find yourself barelling forward amidst a mass of people. As everyone begins to spread out, a fork in the road appears and a slight panic ensues. There are no barricades or marked paths. spectators are cheering from all of the sidewalks and oddly their presence doesn’t give any real indication of the appropriate direction. Some of the runners stop altogether, looking to each other for answers or consulting their phones for relevant information, while others appear unfazed, unironically maintaining pace despite running in the opposite direction from their peers. You slow down and consider, “Is this what it all comes down to?” You feel you have to make a choice that you feel potentially precludes you from reaching your desired destination. After all of that effort and preparation, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The binary nature of the moment feels ridiculous, preemptively disappointing, and oddly poetic.*
In life, and especially in modernity, we are presented with a seemingly endless array of choices while at the same time, we are told we should aspire to a certain level of success. We inherit the idea that safety lies within our bank account balance or the external appearance of our relationships, and that we should be ok if we meet that standard or that we will be ok once we do. In either case, the pressure to control outcomes is immense. Choose incorrectly and you may never arrive despite your best efforts. Sometimes when you have finally arrived at the desired destination, you take in the view for a moment only to realize that in actuality things feel very different from how we thought they would be. How is anyone supposed to maintain peace and sense of power if the point of existence feels like a moving target?
An opposite method has evolved. If you give up your worldly aspirations and possessions, remain celibate, and isolate yourself so that you are never confronted with anything that may significantly disturb your ultra groomed mental garden of tranquility, you will most definitely reach your mountaintop and be lauded by your community. You too have arrived. However, if your mental patterns continue to result in undesirable states or behaviors, then clearly you should take another workshop, give up coffee, and most definitely, given that you are a fraud on the path to ascension, you should continue to seek more answers from those who appear more enlightened. You can mostly sit with yourself quietly, but only to the extent that you feel you are meeting the metrics for spiritual performance. When confronted with your own shortcomings, you feel immense shame, blame others, dissociate, or distract yourself with more personal development podcasts.
Both strategies fail to engage with life on the “horizontal” plane, in the words of yogi and author Mark Whitwell. The implication is that where you are is rarely, if ever, good enough, by either the standards of internal perfectionism or external aspirations. Again in the words of Mark, “The framework of the modern world is, ‘There is a problem.’” While it is true that we may encounter problems, by perpetuating resistance to what is, we inadvertently guard ourselves from the full experience of reality. If our worldview is inaccurate, how can we judge ourselves (or others) for missing the mark?
Tantra: An Ancient Solution
What is tantra? Very simply, a tantra is “a device for expansion,” according to Sanskrit scholar Christopher “Hareesh” Wallis. Certain tenets exist in order for something to be accurately described as “tantric” according to historical standards. Without spending too much time on those details, many of them are complementary to what we know today as a yoga practice that reaches beyond asana (postures), and do not require the participant to renounce participation in worldly activities. Furthermore, there exists two schools of tantric tradition: dualism and nondualism. A dualist Tantrika sees themselves as a separate entity from the divine and practices in order to receive access. A nondualist Tantrika sees themselves as one facet of the expression of universal consciousness, with everything else also being an expression of that. Their practice is about increasing capacity and honing the tools of their perception in order to receive that reality with more accuracy, which results in a deeper felt sense of experiencing.
More recently in the West, these traditions have been reframed with a strong emphasis on sacred sexuality. While it’s true that yes, a tantric practice can most certainly lead to more pleasure in the bedroom, limiting the application of these teachings in an effort to achieve physical bliss is the equivalent of having a car but only using it to drive to the mailbox. The truest aim of the tantric practice is really about learning to embrace the totality of all things- nuanced, paradoxical, uncomfortable, and orgasmic. If we can maintain a sense of equanimity, no matter which road we wind up taking, we are certainly more likely to simultaneously make informed choices and experience more peace regardless of the path that we choose.
During the last quarter of 2024, I had the immense privilege to take Christine Marie Mason’s Living Tantra course. I had not planned at all to do this and had actually signed up to complete a business training at the same time, but I was sold during an extremely intimate experience of a free Zoom info session. I did not expect the depth of connection that transpired in a setting that is normally very transactional, even if ultimately inspiring. It is a far reach to be able to connect with vulnerability over the internet in a time of so much noise, and I am super grateful that the actual class continued to pull at this thread. Everyone who attended had profound PRESENCE, which felt like such a gift to behold in comparison to many online trainings where people visibly multitask, dissociate, or simply do not attend live. The other attendees had clearly gone deep in their own journeys, and yet we all were very real in our curiosity to explore further. Some of the reading and many of the practices were already part of my personal repertoire, but I was so inspired by this course that I felt I had to create something for my own community to experience in real life.
I am single. I have many friends who are navigating the world of dating which I believe we should not gaslight ourselves into saying that this is an easy and straightforward time on this planet to make quality longevity-minded connections. I also have friends in all sorts of different relationships, all an evolutionary dance. The underlying commonality is choice. We choose to swipe left or swipe right. We choose to go on a third date. We choose to stay in the relationship or we choose to leave. The way in which any one of us arrives at any of these conclusions, is deeply informed by our life experiences and the way in which we perceive the future will unfold.
To me, the practice of tantra has been very much in the style of “hygiene,” as described by Christine. In the way of tantra, it’s twofold: how can we use our tools accurately to achieve a desired outcome if those tools have not been serviced? And, how can we perceive information correctly to make sound choices if our lenses are tainted? The tantric practice is about keeping your side of the street clean so that when you encounter an alternative expression of the universal divine consciousness, you can recognize it for what it is by what it brings up in YOU. With consistency, we can certainly begin to see the fruits of our practice manifest in an external way. Of course, it can be easier to do that if we limit our interactions with others, and yet, I feel it is equally important to refine ourselves in the context of relationships. What another person is or does may bring something out in me that I would not have otherwise experienced.
Thus, I have created emBODY with this exploration in mind. My intention is that this format creates a safe and approachable context to experience what it is like to move from the experience of self-witnessing into the space of witnessing what we perceive to be outside of ourselves. Are you able to experience self or other without an immediate need to change things? Sometimes we do need to course-correct or make adjustments, but until we are able to receive the present moment in totality and with accuracy, we may not be able to effectively make those changes. On the other hand, sometimes, we may realize that despite our initial reactivity, we may not need to do anything at all. The practices offered will be multi-faceted but straightforward and ultimately nourishing.
I am so excited to share this offering with you and I hope that you will join us for this in person series at MAST.
*This analogy was inspired by and expounds upon Christopher “Hareesh” Wallis’s description of tantra in his book, Tantra Illuminated, which is excellent on Audible.