Tantra Sexuality: Weaving Spirit and Sex
Sit or lay down, with your partner or with yourself. And breathe. A deep, abdominal breath. And do it again. And just by breathing, you have the foundation of improving your sexual experience through tantra sexuality.
An area of interest of mine for some time now has been sex and spirituality, and how to gain a deeper experience of our spirituality, sensuality, and sexuality through the practice of a variety of techniques, and an area of increasing interest of mine has been tantric sexuality.
My colleagues at the Southwest Sexual Health Alliance invited Sally Valentine, PhD, LCSW to present to therapists on deepening the tantric awareness of practitioners and I want to share a little about the day.
So what is Tantra?
“Tantra is where sex is transformed into Love and Love is transformed into the Higher Self” Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, OSHO
“Tantra is the weaving of spirit and sex. Through an awareness and consciousness of our energies we are able to shift our energy throughout our bodies, which can enhance our depth of connection with ourselves and our partner. Tantra partnering includes honest communication, eye gazing, and fully tapping into our senses by means of touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, and hearing. Practices of tantra include fully breathing, breathwork, visualization, and meditation” (Valentine Counseling, 2017)
A lot of the work I do in my practice weaves tantra naturally into couples and intimacy work, but to break it down to the average person, tantra involves four basic principles and four levels:
The four basic tantric principles that I weave into my work as an online sex therapist include:
1. Presence: Being in the moment, this moment
2. Open-Heart: Free of Judgment, unconditional Love
3. Reveres Sex: Vehicle for Higher Consciousness
4. Reveres the Body as Sacred and Divine
Tantra Practice has Four Levels
1. Body/physical: Tune into the senses/embrace the body
2. Mind/mental: Overcome old beliefs/shame
3. Heart/emotional: Let go of fear, open up to trust, giving, and receiving
4. Soul/Spiritual: Activate energy, experience of Self/Spirit
The four levels of tantric practice is exactly what we address in sex therapy at SexTherapy-Online. All these areas are attended to. I often get the question- What is Sex Therapy? What does it look like?. My answer can vary but you’ll usually hear me say something like “All my clients come to me for a sexual issue, but it is rarely ever really just about sex. It’s about life. Sex is just what brought you to me. Life is what we will work on”. These four levels are exactly what we address in therapy. We will address all of these areas.
Why Tantra?
Tantra is a change agent and can facilitate sexual healing and enhance emotional, sexual, and spiritual intimacy. Tantra promotes healthy communication, honors the self and others, and explores how attitudes and beliefs of sexuality affect sexual satisfaction. Tantra promotes change by increasing awareness in energy through meditation, eye gazing, and breath work.
“Tantra is a mode of sexual healing and sexual healing takes place when the individual experiences safety and validation for their experiences. Sexual education may enhance understanding of what had occurred. Healthy sexual communication enables one to reach into greater levels of intimacy and increase sexual self-esteem. This may be facilitated by psychotherapy, personal growth programs, and spiritual practices, such as tantra. Some tantric practices that facilitate sexual heal thing and enhancement of emotional, sexual, and spiritual intimacy are (but not limited to)” (Valentine, 2017):
– honoring self and others
– sacred space
– healthy communication
– breathing
– energy awareness
– eye gazing
– heart connection
– meditation
One of the first and most basic components of of Tantra is Tantric breathing and is fundamental to a lot of our therapeutic work. It might be annoying when someone says “Take a Deep Breath”, but there is science behind why that works.
Tantric Breathing Yogic Breath
Tantric yoga breath reduces anxiety and mental stress, strengthens cardiovascular system and stimulates the nervous system, improves oxygenation (allowing the lungs to work at full capacity, increasing the amount of oxygen in the blood), helps expel toxins from the body and improves stamina and vitality. Below you will find some instructions on the tantric yogic breath.
“Take a full breath. Breathe from your belly, concentrating on filing your lungs completely up. Place your hands over your belly and feel your belly expand on inhalation and return back to normal when you exhale. This is both mechanical (movement of their body) and visual, imagine that you are breathing all the way down to your perineum, knees, floor, etc. Start with 2 minutes increase over time.” (Valentine, 2017)
It might seem silly, but sometimes we need to start our sessions with some deep breathing to change the way our body interacts with our systems. Deep breathing provides your body what it needs.
Just as important to the practice of tantra that breath is, eye gazing is also another fundamental exercise.
Eye Gazing
Eye gazing is when you face another and look into each others eyes softly and connected and lovingly. The importance of eye gazing is that it facilitates deeper intimate connection, increases oxytocin, decreases anxiety, in some case may increase anxiety (due to vulnerability, threatened, shyness, intrusive feelings), and may illicit emotions of joy, sadness, calm, and loss. Here are some instructions below:
“Face each other and look/gaze into each other’s eyes, softly and lovingly. (Is natural in ‘new’ love but wanes over time). Poet, Rumi, calls it ‘consciousness of union’. See/feel the depth and uniqueness of your partner. Notice what feelings come up, notice what thoughts comes, notice your bodily sensations. Allow yourself to be present and just ‘be’.” (Valentine, 2017)
Sexual Energy
Sexual energy is life force energy and sexual energy is innocent. When sexual energy is open: it flows and increases vitality, creativity, healthy boundaries, passion, and sense of well being. When sexual energy is blocked or closed: one may experience rigidity in the body, pain, emotional distance, and distress. Tantra is about weaving sexual energy within oneself and others.
Sex is sacred. Sex is spiritual. Sex is being connected to oneself and others. If anything you read interests you, feel free to reach out to me via the form below or give me a call and we can set up an appointment to begin your tantric journey.