Tantra is NOT sex!

I need to set the record straight. There is confusion in our modern society. People hear the word “Tantra” and assume it means sex. Classical Tantra is not sex!

Classical Tantra (specifically Nondual Śaiva Tantra) is an ancient, world-embracing Indian spiritual tradition designed to help practitioners realise divinity within everyday life rather than renouncing the world.

See, not sex.

Admittedly there is a tiny sacred sexual element, but when sexual union is mentioned in ancient texts (and very rarely so), it is never treated as a casual or recreational practice. In face any sexual rites mentioned in these texts were highly taboo and performed only after years of strict purification.

Thus sex rites were not performed for romantic intimacy, pleasure, or procreation. Instead, they were highly structured, transgressive rituals meant to shatter the practitioner's ego and societal conditioning.

The practice was treated as a highly rigorous meditation. The partners did not view each other as ordinary human beings; they viewed one another as living embodiments of Shiva (pure consciousness, the divine masculine) and Shakti (divine energy, the divine feminine). The physical act was therefore an externalisation of cosmic union. 

The sexual energy generated was intentionally redirected upward through the subtle body, dissolving the illusion of separate ego, and instead triggering higher states of consciousness. 

This, in quite some contrast to Neo-Tantra, which is often marketed as a way to prolong physical pleasure, achieve multiple orgasms, or deepen romantic intimacy. In many ways this just feeds more of the illusion and keeps us stuck in patterns of desire and aversion – “I like this”, “I don’t like that”, and the negative impact this has on our state of mind, let alone our energy body.

We have to be so careful these days with the volume of information available to us online. Much of it is false and merely feeds the illusion rather than freeing us from it.

Real Tantra is NOT sex.

I just feel I need to put that out there because we are living in an increasingly illusionary and false reality.

Because sadly, what we know of Tantra today, is often devoid of its classical roots and is actually Neo Tantra which developed as a transnational movement over the 20th century as ancient Eastern concepts merged with Western psychology, the sexual revolution, and the Human Potential Movement. 

There were two main pivotal figures who shaped and popularised it including an American businessman and occultist named Pierre Bernard who laid the groundwork for Neo-Tantra in the West. In 1905, he founded the Tantrik Order of America in San Francisco, stripping away much of the rigorous ritual, mantra, and deity yoga of Classical Tantra, instead marketing a highly sensualised, fitness-oriented version of the practice to wealthy Americans.

He is widely credited with establishing the persistent Western stereotype that Tantra is primarily about "sacred sexuality". 

This was compounded by Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whom many of you will know as Osho, who, in 1968, gave a controversial lecture series in India titled "From Sex to Superconsciousness". 

Osho taught that sexual energy should not be repressed or filled with shame. Instead, he argued that by bringing conscious awareness to sexual energy, it could be transformed into higher states of spiritual meditation (Samadhi). 

At his ashram in Pune, India, Osho combined traditional yogic techniques with Western psychotherapy, bio-energetics, and encounter groups. He is widely considered the true architect of Neo-Tantra as a spiritual practice.

But this is not classical Tantra.

This is NOT the Tantra I practice or share with my students. It is NOT Tantra in its purity.

A few years ago I undertook an online ‘Tantra’ course with Shakti Tantra. It was helpful in that it gave me to drop deeper into myself through its various practices, in addition to my usual daily practice, and this felt nurturing and healing. It was also lovely to be guided by someone else, and just be able to immerse from the comfort of my own home.

But I struggle with groups, especially online, as I have a tendency to pick up other people’s energies. And I became frustrated with the sharing, because it felt forced (we all had to talk and share our experiences) and I quickly realised that not all the ladies were or had been doing work on themselves, which meant lots of victimhood and I’ll admit it, I got bored.

Still I learned some new practices, I felt greater appreciation for myself, my sacral chakra felt more vibrant, but there was something that just wasn’t sitting right. The ladies holding the space felt it too, as they never offered the course online again. In short, there seemed to be quite a lot of spiritual bypassing and quite a bit of confusion about the nature of Tantra.

If I’m honest I was alarmed at times. Some felt that S&M - sadomasochism, a term that describes the combination of sadism (deriving pleasure from inflicting pain or humiliation) and masochism (deriving pleasure from experiencing pain or humiliation) – was Tantra.

Others talked of visiting The Torture Garden - Europe's largest and most famous alternative fetish and BDSM (an acronym that serves as an umbrella term for a wide variety of consensual, alternative sexual practices, role-playing, and relationship dynamics) club, founded in London in 1990. The institution enforces a strict dress code, where your outfit must heavily feature alternative, fetish, or fantasy elements, no street, casual or party wear. There’s even fully equipped BDSM dungeons. The mind boggles at such a thought. This too, the ladies labelled Tantra.

But this is not Tantra.

And certainly not the Tantra I practise, nor an approach to sex or life I seek.

Underpinning classical Tantra as with classical Yoga, is ahimsa, roughly translated as do no harm.

Now I’ve never been to The Torture Gardens, nor engaged in BDSM, but the names imply a certain harm.

To me sex has always been sacred, intimate.

There were times, admittedly, in my earlier twenties, where my insecurity and my need to be loved, got in the way of my values and inherent knowing about the sacredness of life, and I lived with shame for many years after sexual encounters, which laid heavily on my mind, and in my body for that matter.

Yoga helped heal much of this, and I was able to reframe these experiences as part of life’s rich tapestry and the fun and frolicking of youth.

But once I had found my way back to my sacred womb, I knew without doubt that I wouldn’t sacrifice it again.

Now I have no issue with any of you engaging in any sort of practice, S&M, BDSM and probably a whole heap of other ancronyms that my innocence knows nothing about, but please don’t name it Tantra, because it isn’t.

And it concerned me that these women were labelling their sexual frolicking as Tantra because it is this kind of association, which gives Tantra bad press.

Tantra embodies non-harm.

And any sort of Tantric sexual practice is carried out after a period of some purification, with strict rules and a purely sacred approach. Not to liberate through wearing certain clothes or being tied up, or whatever floats your boat in the name of Tantric sex.

And if I’m honest the name The Torture Garden, kind of doesn’t sound aligned with ahimsa and non-harm. Just saying.

In classical dualistic systems – think Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras or Western religions – non-harm is often taught as a commandment: “You must not harm others because it is bad or creates bad karma.” 

However in non-dual Classical Tantra, non-harm is a logical consequence of our awakening. If everything and everyone—including our enemy, a stranger, or an animal—is actually an extension of our own deepest consciousness, harming another is literally harming ourself.

Classical Tantra places massive emphasis on the subtle body, the mind, and emotional processing. Therefore, the practice of non-harm begins internally.

Many spiritual paths, and even in other yogic lineages, people are taught that we should suppress our desires, crush our ego and punish our body through extreme asceticism, or the repeated practice of sun salutations and down ward facing dog, and in rooms where it is too hot to breathe. Tantra views this as violence.

Furthermore, instead of fighting or hating negative emotions (like anger, jealousy, or fear), Classical Tantra teaches practitioners to meet these states with spacious, non-judgmental awareness. We do not conquer our emotions through force; we integrate them through compassion

Thus, from the Tantric perspective, the whole spectrum of the human experience is embraced as equally valid and divine, that painful experiences are not wrong, bad, or something we “shouldn’t” be having.

Furthermore, because Classical Tantra was practised in the ‘householder’ tradition, of which I am one, and no doubt you too, meaning we live normal lives, have jobs, raise families and pay taxes, non-harm has to be practical. When we step off our mat, our realisation of inter-connectedness and oneness must manifest as active kindness, healthy boundaries and a refusal to engage in any form of cruelty.

So how is Classical Tantra different from other forms of yoga/spirituality then?

Tantra is intended and designed for us householders (i.e. not monks, nuns, or renunciates);

Tantra’s goal/orientation is non-transcendentalist (i.e. stay in the body);

Tantra embraces the body-mind on the spiritual path;

In fact, Tantra embraces every part of the human experience;

Tantra’s goal and end-point is embodied liberation (not spiritual bypassing or disassociation);

Tantra fully integrates the mystical (the hidden reality) and the material (the physical world), the transcendent (the divine is outside, above and independent of this material universe, like God looking down from heaven) and the immanent (the divine is woven into the fabric of the universe, divinity lives inside us and everything around us).

Classical Tantra therefore lead us to embrace of the whole of reality as it is - right now - and with compassion too. This doesn’t mean that we have to agree with everything. It doesn’t mean we have to love and enjoy it either. But from this perspective, we can allow everything to have the right to be, without making it wrong for existing.

As practitioners we are encouraged to utilise our discernment as a guide to what ideas we trust and what actions we might take as we walk this path.

Including using this discernment when in sexual union with others.

There. I hope that’s cleared up any confusion.

So I think we’re clear now, classical Tantra is not about sex.

It is a path of non-harming, as well as a path to freedom and liberation  - but it does demand this discernment and freedom from the confusion of Neo-Tantra.