What I Learned in Tantra School
I can remember dreaming about being in India all my memorable life. The pull I started feeling in the last few months was so dense, I couldn’t turn my head to it if I tried. I came here alone, with no intention but to let go and let everything else happen for me. I remember in the last year or so leading up to this journey telling people that I was looking for a tantra school in India and the faces I received were of pure horrification due to some schools' seedy reputation.
As I landed in Rishikesh on my 27th birthday, with no idea of my purpose except the indescribable pull to the area, I was brought straight to a poster reading Tantra School, and my whole being tingled with knowing.
Tantra is not what the greater public believes it, most people see it as a different way to have sex and an excuse to go to an orgy or sleep with more people. They are gravely mistaken. Tantra is a practice of using your erotic energy as a safe vessel of creation. It is deepening our understanding of self, physical and beyond.
Tantra doesn’t speak to the mind - the mind is too limited, it speaks to energies. In Tantra we move the erotic, life force energy from the root chakra, upwards. The difference between raw sexuality and the erotic energy is that raw sexuality CAN be limited with the ego, and is based on instinct, while the erotic energy is connected to the heart, it is elevated, pure, and releases inner freedom. In tantra, we take the raw sexuality and transform it into pure eros, then into spiritual energy. This is what happens when we move our erotic energy up the chakras, where each chakra has a different energetic effect.
You see, by just having this simple understanding you can recognise that it is far more than just an excuse to have sex with a lot of people, or that it is even about sex itself. To enter into a tantric practice, you must have a meditation practice. To dive deep into tantra, there are tools like having a strong hatha yoga practice, and daily meditation routine. Because tantra is not about sex, it is about getting closer to unconditional love, to unattachment, to creation.
To begin, if you don’t already have a meditation practice, my recommendation is to sit or lay down in a safe environment, on your own. Take as long as you need to look inward, and feel the energies that move through your body; starting at the root chakra, and slowly working up to the crown chakra, acknowledging anywhere that feels stuck, or more alive etc. From here, you have just begun a really powerful practice to dive deeper in a personal or partnered tantric understanding of your body and energy!
And remember that this is all for reaching higher states of love, that's it :)
