will explore. It’s all about being spontaneous and playing together, as well as nurturing a sense of your spiritual connection. Tantric practices are a way of finding or creating a path together that is filled with a sense of the sacred.
The key practice is to see your lover as truly divine.
When you accept that your lover is divine you can use the model of a divine relationship as an inspired template for your own. Even if you don’t manage this challenging task you can experience a lot of joy and pleasure trying. And usually your sex-life improves greatly.
I was dissatisfied with my sex life before starting on the Tantra training. I felt that the full potential of my capacity for sexual pleasure had barely been explored, and that traditional sex therapy and self-help approaches had nothing to offer me. It wasn’t that I had a sexual ‘problem’, or that I couldn’t reach orgasm, but I felt a deep post-coital emptiness in spite of the love I felt for my partner. The models in our culture for a satisfying sexual relationship have more to do with ideas of stress-release and notching up orgasms than they do with our deepest desires for connection and intimacy. When I embarked on my first Tantra weekend workshop I had no idea that Tantric ideas and practices would resonate so strongly with me – it seemed like good fun at the time, and after several years of doing Egyptian dance, I wasn’t shy about dancing and ‘getting in touch with the sensual goddess within’.
But by the end of a weekend of ritual exercises, and yogic breathing with my partner I was on a literal high for the whole of the next week – it was so intense I wasn’t sure I could put my serious hat back on and lecture abroad as I was scheduled to do.
As we drove back to London, through the spectacular fireworks of November 5th, I was filled with exuberance and an excitement with the discovery that getting in touch with my own passion could fire up my passion for life. My Tantric journey is not completed yet, and hopefully never will be. Working on a Tantric relationship, and incorporating Tantra into daily life are challenges that make life both more joyful, and more meaningful.
‘Bliss is my very nature I need not do anything nor strive for anything to secure it.’
A Rishi’s perspective translated by Deepak Chopra
The first half of this book describes traditional Tantra as it has been practised by different groups in India over thousands of years. It looks at how Tantric teachings have been interpreted and how contemporary Tantra trainings in the West use some of these teachings. Contemporary trainings, such as the SkyDancing training I did, developed by Margo Anand in the US, are more properly neo-Tantra. They don’t expect us to become familiar with the whole body of esoteric teachings of Tantra, but selectively take some of the practices and blend them with psychotherapeutic body work approaches to fit our current needs. In this sense, they can be considered a preparation for Tantra proper.
The book goes on to explore how the new forms of Tantra apply Tantric principles to contemporary life. I’ve quoted people who are on Tantra trainings to give you the flavour of what it means to real people, and how it influences the way they feel about themselves and their relationships. I’ve tried to weave a path between traditional Indian forms of Tantra, explaining some of the deep-rooted philosophy out of which these ideas and practices spring, and the ways in which Tantra can be applied to your life today.
The second half of the book provides you with meditations and exercises in the art of sexuality, which can enrich your relationship, and harmonize the energies between you and your partner. Use the structures and exercises suggested here to inspire you, change them to suit your own particular needs, and then let go of them. Otherwise the techniques themselves become just one more barrier to experiencing the flow of energy in all its power and simplicity.
The exercises may seem at times simple and at other times too complex, but if you enter into them with a spirit of adventure, accepting that whether you find them easy or difficult you will learn about yourself and your relationship, you will gain a lot.
If you get stuck, or find it difficult to create a safe space in which to do Tantric work, you may want to contact one of the many Tantra training courses available, which you can attend either as a single person, or in a couple. Check the resources section at the back of this book to find out about established trainings.
This book will enable you to taste what Tantra has to offer for you and your relationships, and gives you tools you can work with effectively on your own. The basic exercises can be used by single people, as well as couples. Although the exercises are geared towards heterosexual couples, they can be used just as easily by homosexual couples, since all couples can experiment with playing with the different masculine and feminine energies described by Tantra.
It doesn’t matter if you’re not interested in pursuing the philosophy behind Tantra, because these techniques will help you at whatever level you choose to take them on. If you just want to spice up your relationship, they will help you do that. If you want to follow Tantra as a spiritual path, this book will give you some insight into what that might involve, and encourage you to find your own personal teacher.
This book is also a very practical how-to manual, and regardless of whether you believe in any of the philosophical points of Tantra, these exercises will help you enter the realm of divine sex.
Tantra is a path of sensual celebration as a spiritual discipline, which uses the erotic charge of sex to help us to connect with the divine. It is this openness to sexuality as a means of spiritual development that has led to Tantra’s current popularity in the West – where we tend to focus on sex and self-development rather than the more radical message of transcendence.
The essence of Tantra is a relishing of earthly experience for the experience of divine bliss it can bring us. Sexual pleasure is used as a gateway to divine bliss, and sexual relationship is considered one of the fastest ways of reaching enlightenment. It’s certainly the most enjoyable!
If your passion for life has been stifled within a stagnating relationship, an over-focus on mundane necessities or too much work, Tantra can help you to regain your zest for life, as well as take your relationship to new levels of love and connection. Tantra is a potent means of transforming your relationship – although, if your relationship has cracks in it, putting more energy into it will only expose the weaknesses! Tantra can make your relationship more alive and vibrant, more fun and sensual, and move you out of stagnation by showing you where and how to put energy in. The starting point of this process is to reaffirm the place of spirit in your life, and embrace spirituality in your sexual relationship.
Essentially, Tantra encourages you to honour your relationship as a mirror of the divine relationship between Shakti and Shiva, the primordial couple in Hinduism, and to honour your partner as a mirror
