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Reading Room On the Relevance of Tantric Practices Barnaby B. Barratt and Marsha A. Rand The essay is under copyright – please contact Barnaby if you wish to reproduce or distribute it in any way. Contemporary Sexology, 41(2): 7-12, 2007 Published by the The contemporary popularization of “tantra” in western cultures has focused on some of its specific procedures for improving intimacy, enriching sexual satisfaction and enhancing orgasmic experience (Anand, 2003; Avinasha, 2003; Douglas, 1997; Sarita and Geho, 2001; Stubbs, 1999). However, “tantra” is actually a comprehensive spiritual path originating in the Hindu‑Jain‑Buddhist traditions, and most accurately viewed as way of living life in meditation (Feuerstein, 1998; Odier, 2001; Osho, 1976, 1978, Saraswati, 1984). As such, tantric practices are profoundly compatible, if not always identical, with the mystical spirituality found in Taoism, Sufism, and some aspects of Kabbala, as well as indigenous shamanic methods such as Chuluaqui‑Quodoushka (Barratt, 2006). In this respect, there is no sense in talking about some sort of “rapprochement” between contemporary sexology and tantric practice. The former, in its development as scientia sexualis (contrasted with ars amatoria), is mostly a discipline of techniques specifically addressing our sexual behaviors, defining these in a comparatively circumscribed manner and approaching them via a positivistic epistemology ‑‑ often with admirably palliative intent and liberalizing ambition. Tantra, however, could be said to embrace holistically the ecstatic poetics of being human, and focuses on our deepest longings for the divine. It is a “discipline” in an entirely different sense of the term – not an investigation of one topic among many, but rather a personalized spiritual training requiring that practitioners commit every aspect of their lives toward the process of their enlightening. There are a multitude of varieties of tantric practice, many of which do not involve any sexual activity, but all of which are intensely focused on the spiritual‑erotic dimensions of our humanity (Batchelor, 1987; Bharati, 1993; White 2000; Yeshe, 2001). Thus, there is no equivalence, or basic compatibility, between tantric practices and the enterprise of sexology. However, certain methods and procedures derived from tantric spiritual practices can perhaps be judiciously applied to the endeavor of enhancing erotic connections and healing sexual distress and disability. However, to apply tantric wisdom appropriately within professional sexology, there is a prerequisite: For tantric methodologies to be effective, participants need to be somewhat open to the experience of subtle energies within their embodiment. The entire venture of “vibrational healing” is increasingly recognized by the “new sciences” and by the general public, but still often dismissed as outside the purview of conventional science (Eden, Feinstein & Myss, 1999; Gerber, 2001). This is surely because there is a sense in which these energies are neither physical nor non‑physical (neither just “mental” nor merely material), and yet, in a profoundly esoteric sense, they are both. These energies have the ontological quality of a field of consciousness that pervades our being‑in‑the‑world, without ever being adequately captured within the static formations of our logical and rhetorical modes of representation. Prāna, the lifeforce, is an all‑embracing universe of intentionality. It is not just an imaginary projection, yet neither is it conventionally measurable or merely mechanical. In tantric practice, these energies are known to be the “spirit” that renders the divinity of being human. Participants who insist on remaining “in their head” (individuals who defensively curb the experiences of their embodiment to those that are ostensibly secured within the realm of ordinary narrative and referential cognition) will not be amenable to the opening of awareness offered by tantric practices, and may be better served with preparatory psychotherapy. If individuals are able to suspend the skepticism of the analytico‑referential or logical‑empiricist mindset (our “ego defensiveness”) to become vulnerable to the experience of the vibrational energies occurring within us all, then methods derived from tantra become available for a more expansive awareness of the universe as well as for personal healing. Tantra is spiritual practice and its distinctiveness is that ‑‑ requiring no belief or faith, but rather an openness to our embodied experiences – it invites each of us to realize our own divinity by attuning to our erotic energies. Although tantric traditions are diverse, these vibrational energies are usually brought into awareness by methods involving one or more of five modalities: Breath, Movement, Sound, Visualization, and Touch (tactile experience, sometimes including genital sexual activity, solo or partnered). (1) Affirming the Holistic Naturalness and Ethicality of Sexual Expression. Tantric practice invites us to redefine sexuality. Conventional science has defined “sexuality” in terms of anatomical structures, physiological functions, representational attitudes (“cognition” and “affect”), and measurable behavioral outcomes. However, if subtle energies pervade our embodiment, as well as the physicality of everything that is around us, then sexuality comes to be understood holistically, as the natural erotic expression of these energies in their inherently kinetic process – sexuality as our earthy nature in its divine motion. This radically shifts our understanding of the human erotic potential. The shift challenges allopathic and cognitive‑behavioral definitions that reduce human eroticism to a set of overt behaviors, along with the functioning of anatomical or physiological mechanisms with some attitudinal factors incorporated. For example, it challenges the view that the treatment of sexual distress should be authoritarian, objectifying, instrumental or manipulative, and goal‑oriented. Tantric practice focuses on our awareness of subtle energies that flow within and all around us; in a sense, this de‑emphasizes the role of anatomy, physiology, and the social or personal construction of mental representations. As such, tantra offers a quite different definition of the “sexual body,” our natural sensuality, as the ground and flow of our being‑in‑the‑world. The question relevant to the fulfillment of our erotic potential is whether these energies are flowing freely, or are hindered by attitudinal, emotional, and somatic blockages. An additional aspect to this “otherwise” definition of human sexuality is the revelation that the natural flow of our erotic exuberance has an inherent ethicality that transcends the moralizing “do/don’t” that we think of as sexual propriety. This radical notion of “natural ethicality” is largely beyond the scope of this article. (2) Overcoming Scripts of Shame/Guilt/Fear/Anxiety about Bodily Functioning. It is notoriously well known that tantric practices frequently transgress society’s rules and regulations about sexual conduct for the spiritual purpose of transcending our spiritual imprisonment in an over‑socialized ego. Tantric practice opens practitioners to ways of experiencing themselves and the world that are, in Nietzsche’s phrase, “beyond good and evil.” While respecting the sanctity of the incest taboo (as well as directing itself against all “sex acts” motivated by hostility or the “will to power” over others), tantric practices serve to release us from shame and guilt over our bodily functions and erotic aspirations. In short, tantra offers a variety of methods that facilitate our liberation from the internalized prohibitions that typically prevent us from fulfilling our erotic potential for joy, bliss and ecstasy. (3) Listening to the Polysexual “Voice” of our Embodiment. The modern “episteme” (which is the way of thinking and the codes of behavior that have governed western society since around the late 16th Century, and that is in the process of transitioning us into some sort of “postmodern” era) has trenchantly reinforced a mind/body dualism akin to the master/slave dialectic described in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The “mind” is held to be separate and apart from the “body,” governing the latter’s functions, until – of course – the “slave” fails to perform according to the will of the “master,” at which point the mind hates the body. Consider an everyday example. As sexologists we frequently encounter men who are enamored of their penis when it functions as they wish, but who become enraged at it when it fails to comply. The notion of listening to the “voice” of the penis, whenever it refuses to become erect, is a wisdom all but lost in our contemporary culture. Consequently, the tendency for men confronted with the non‑compliance of their genital organ is to proceed immediately to demand physical remedies that will coerce the penis into compliance. The penis is customarily treated not as a locus of energies that are an aspect of the body’s pervasive consciousness. Rather, it is treated as if it were a machine merely supposed to function at the behest of the man’s “secondary” or representational consciousness – the ambitions inscribed “in our heads.” Another commonplace example is the frequency with which women treat their vagina as if it were a foreign or outlying territory that is viewed either as a mute resource for the seduction of lovers, or as merely awaiting invasion by ‑‑ wanted or unwanted ‑‑ sexual partners. That the genital organ might have a “voice” of its own, and could be invited into a dialogue that would honor its own “wishes,” is – sadly – an experience missed by most women and female children in our contemporary culture. Tantric practice invites us to return to an altogether different understanding of the bodymind’s internal connectedness ‑‑ a holistic understanding in which it would make sense to engage in internal dialogues with all our bodily functions (not just the genitals). Such an understanding makes nonsense of our treatment of these functions as if they are slaves to our representational consciousness (until, of course, they “liberate” themselves from this enslavement, by breaking down, becoming diseased, or dying). Tantra offers us opportunities to (re)discover the radical power of indigenous healing practices in which the bodymind is appreciated as a holistic system of consciousness. With this appreciation, it makes sense for us to engage in tender dialogues with our bodily functions and to listen to their “voice” – rather than to expect to control them cognitively. (4) Reintegrating Sexuality with Emotional‑Spiritual Connectedness. Tantra’s ontological shifting ‑‑ of the way in which we might orient ourselves to the “lived experience” of our own bodies – contributes also to a recognition and re‑experiencing of the primacy of our affective life, as well as its inherent association with both bodily experiences and spiritual origins. This is an insight unveiled in Freud’s earliest psychoanalytic formulations of libidinality, but conceptually obfuscated after about 1914 (except in the cosmology of Wilhelm Reich and the “radical leftwing” of psychoanalysis). The implications of tantra’s treatment of the holism of emotion, sensuality and spirit are threefold. First, when undertaken as an aspect of tantric practice, “sex acts” are always profoundly intimate on an emotional level. It is understood that the erotic energies circulated and shared in the course of these acts are actually transpersonal, rather than strictly interpersonal. Thus, even if the relationship between partners is seemingly casual – that is, no long‑term relational commitment is involved – the interaction is emotionally intense. Second, such “sex acts” are actually recruited in tantric practice as a mode of prayerfulness. The movement of subtle energies in the course of these acts is a sacrament. Put simply, in whatever form it is conducted (although there are exceptions concerning the way in which “sexuality” can be appropriated to our egotistic ambitions in acts of incestuous abuse, coercion and violence), sexuality is sacred. Third, in tantric sexuality, the inherency of passion and spiritual practice are celebrated. Tantra teaches that our erotic life and our emotional life are inseparably the consummate ground of our spiritual being. So sex – whether in an ongoing partnership, a casual encounter, or in groups – is always and only to be engaged with an “attitude” that is honoring and reverential. The relevance of this for professional sexology is evident. The tantric approach counters the common ailment in which “sex” is conducted under various conditions of dissociation both from the full sensual experience of our embodiment and from the passions of our emotional life. (5) Achieving Authenticity in Relationships. Tantric practice experiments with the erotic potential of our embodiment and makes the age‑old, yet revolutionary, discovery that the subtle sexual‑spiritual energies of our embodiment cannot lie. Consequently, intrinsic to tantric practice is a commitment to radical truthfulness, both in relation to oneself, and in relation to all others. This offers individuals and couples new ways of communicating that deepen empathy and understanding. It also creates challenges because we are so unaccustomed in this culture to being both candid and compassionate about many aspects of our interpersonal life, but perhaps especially about matters concerning our erotic desires. Radical truthfulness has, of course, to be matched by radical compassion. If partners are to be transparent to each other, then disclosure has to be met, not merely with “tolerance” that so often masks disapproval and rejection, but with the more radical nonviolence that Gandhi called ahimsā, an overarching capacity for love. Through tantric practice, we learn to live out of our “heartspace.” Sexologists have often observed that the relational stability of most marriages depends on a measure of deceit, rationalized as “privacy.” This may be correct. So it needs to be noted that entering tantric practice may initially destabilize the individual’s sense of emplacement within the universe, as well as the quality of prior relationships. In this sense, genuine tantric practice is not an “easy‑fix” for relationships suffering from superficiality and tedium. The fundamental authenticity to which tantra invites us is not only a spiritual blessing, it is radically challenging. (6) Growing beyond our Traumatic Histories. With its holistic approach to the sensuality of our embodiment, as well as its commitment to relational connections that are honoring and authentic, some tantric methods can be very beneficial to those who have become dissociated from their birthright to erotic pleasure. Sexologists well know how often abuse, as well as emotional or physical trauma, causes individuals to “close down” sexually and to dissociate from the sensual experiences of their embodiment. More generally, it is often recognized that there is a degree to which all of us, because of our socialization in an anti‑sexual and anti‑sensual culture, live under various conditions of alienation and estrangement from our erotic nature. We live, far too frequently, “in our heads” and pay little attention to the wisdom of our embodiment. Tantric practice works and plays to undo these effects. Not only does tantra offer procedures that both antedate and go far beyond the familiar procedures of “sensate focus,” it also offers methods of movement and meditation with the body that enable us to ground ourselves fully in the presence of our lived experience. These involve both letting‑go of somatic blockages and processes of emotional release. The surfacing of memories and feelings – sometimes gradually but often abruptly and dramatically – as a result of coming to live in our erotic embodiment is a regular, and occasionally very disruptive, aspect of tantric practice. These challenges and disruptions are, so to speak, the sacrifice that tantric practitioners make for the benefit of their erotic rehabilitation and their spiritual enlightening. (7) Expanding our Erotic Potential beyond Penile/Vaginal/Anal/Oral Encounters. As sexologists, we routinely encounter the frequency with which the sexual life of individuals is dominated by an almost exclusive focus on a particular repertoire of activities, with the possibility of other pleasures being suppressed or repressed. For example, we address heterosexual couples whose partnered lives consist of penile‑vaginal intercourse and little else – such that, when medical difficulties make this form of sexuality problematic, their sexual partnering terminates altogether; gay men who are similarly over‑focused on anal intromission; and lesbian partners for whom genital activity has ceased to entertain them. Tantric practice stands firmly – although controversially – on the experience of the erotic potential of human beings as universally and inherently polysexual (Barratt, 2005). We are all born exquisitely sensual organisms, with a vast capacity for pleasure, and a miraculous potential to open ourselves to the divine. Typically, our socialization results in the suppression and repression of our erotic nature, such that we become “civilized adults” who have effectively lost much of the capacity for pleasure that we might have had. (8) Supporting the Sexuality of Minors. As mentioned, the distinctiveness of tantric spirituality is that it accesses the divine within the present, lived experience of our erotic embodiment. As Saraha, the 9th Century tantric adept, expressed: “Within my body are all the sacred places of the world, and the most profound pilgrimage I can ever make is within my own body.” This is the experiential finding of genuine tantric practice. “God” is to be accessed within us, within the ever‑present subtle erotic flow of our embodiment, “the still small voice,” of our erotic energies. In this context, it makes no sense that adults seek to curb the sensual and sexual expressions of childhood and adolescence. Children have their own modes of erotic celebration, which need to be acknowledged, honored and supported – for these modes of sensual and sexual expression furnish their own connection with their divinity. While children and adolescents need to be protected (both from the anti‑sexual designs of predators, and from the malice of those who would allow our youth to endanger themselves out of ignorance), the adult world also needs to revere their erotic natures. The spiritual perspectives of tantric practice and the reasoning of sexological science surely come together in this conviction. (9) Celebrating Sexuality/Sensuality in all its Diverse Modalities. We cannot gloss over the fact that many tantric lineages have evolved in sociocultural contexts that are homophobic as well as patriarchal, and have been tainted by these environments. So it needs to be stressed that tantric practice is not just for young adults, not just for the buffed and beautiful, not just for heterosexuals, not just for the able‑bodied, and decisively not for those who wish to perpetuate male‑domination. Indeed, the very nature of tantric experience, as we have indicated above, is a celebration of the divine polysexuality, the erotic plurivocality, of being human. Tantric practice embraces all ways of honoring the flow of erotic energies within our human embodiment. Contrary to the impression given in some of its historical teachings as well as its current popular texts, the work and play of tantric spirituality is as much available to gays and lesbians as it is to those constrained within the “straight” paradigm. Moreover, despite some historical deviations from its critique of patriarchal domination, tantric practice is a resolute return to female sensibilities. Its transmission has almost always been led by feminine insight. This is, we believe, why the blossoming of tantric spirituality today in the west – when the modern episteme of domination, conquest and possession is crumbling – is so timely and such a blessing. (10) Enhancing Orgasmicity. The popularization of “tantra” in the late 20th Century – with the current spate of best-selling books, commercial videos, magazine articles and workshops – emphasizes tantra’s enrichment of our sexual satisfactions. For those who are psychologically ready and who have adequate preparation, tantric methods – of breathing, movement, sound, visualization and touch – can readily be applied to the project of enhancing orgasmicity. Indeed, tantric practice offers clinical and educational sexology at least three rather remarkable insights about the nature of orgasm. First and foremost, orgasming is a special process of releasing the naturally occurring subtle energy flows within our embodiment (usually accompanied by the various neurophysiological effects documented by conventional science). Second, orgasming can occur anywhere within our embodiment, and in no sense need it be dependent either on the quantity of stimulation applied to the body’s surfaces, or on any activity of the genitals. Indeed, constriction of orgasmic momentum within the genitals is often a means by which somatically and emotionally blocked individuals prevent their own potential movement into full‑bodied orgasming. Third, most of us are profoundly frightened of our orgasmic potential. In our experience with tantric practices, it is very evident that there is a sense in which the processes of healing our alienation and estrangement from our sexual‑spiritual embodiment are comparatively simple – but overcoming our fearful resistances to such healing is markedly challenging. In short, we are all conditioned to fear our own potential for joy, bliss and ecstasy. Many modes of tantra find the “energy map” of chakras (as well as nadis and bindus) helpful in the healing process of becoming aware of blockages and resistances in the flow of our subtle energies. Of interest to sexology is the fact that certain obstructions are routinely observed in tantric practice. For example, men who ejaculate but are minimally orgasmic are often found to allow energy to flow up to their “power chakra” (the solar plexus) but not into their “heart chakra,” which might precipitate greater emotional engagement. Women who become “vibrator dependent,” requiring quantities of stimulation to the clitoral glans in order to achieve an orgasmic spasm, are often found to be blocked in their “flow chakra” (lower navel), such that energy is prevented from flowing freely into their power or voice chakras. While we must be wary of these generalizations they serve to hint at how much tantric practitioners might contribute to the knowledge of sexological professionals. * * * We are only beginning to appreciate the wealth of insight and wisdom that the ancient practices of tantra can offer contemporary sexology. As authors of this brief article, we would be pleased to provide suggestions for further reading or study of tantric practice. Unlike the quotidian preoccupations of sexology, tantra is a way of living spiritually in an all‑embracing practice of meditation. Borrowing Goodchild’s words, to embark on the tantric path we need only “remember that human life is but one expression of an all‑pervading lifeforce in a multidimensional vibratory universe, held together, as the ancients knew, by cosmogonic Love.” References Anand, M. (2003). The New Art of Sexual Ecstasy. New York: HarperCollins. Barratt, B. B. (2004). The Way of the BodyPrayerPath: Erotic Freedom and Spiritual Enlightenment. Philadelphia: Xlibris. Barratt, B. B. (2005). Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom. Philadelphia: Xlibris. Barratt, B. B. (2006). What is Tantric Practice? Philadelphia: Xlibris. Batchelor, S. (ed., 1987). The Jewel in the Lotus: A Guide to the Buddhist Traditions of Tibet. London, UK: Wisdom Publications. Bharati, A. (1993). Tantric Traditions. Delhi, India: Hindustan Publishing Company. Douglas, N. (1997). Spiritual Sex: Secrets of Tantra from the Ice Age to the New Millennium. New York: Simon & Schuster. Eden, D., Feinstein, D., & Myss, C. (1999). Energy Medicine. New York: Tarcher/Putnam. Feuerstein, G. (1998). Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy. Boston: Shambhala. Gerber, R. (2001). Vibrational Medicine. Rochester, VT: Bear & Company. Goodchild, V. (2001). Eros and Chaos: The Sacred Mysteries and the Dark Shadows of Love. York Beach, ME: Nicolas‑Hays. Odier, D. (2001). Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2001. Osho [Rajneesh, B. S.]. (1976). Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Osho [Rajneesh, B. S.]. (1976). The Tantra Experience: Discourses on the Royal Song of Saraha (2 volumes). Cologne, Germany: Rebel Publishing Company. Saraswati, S. S. (2003). Kundalini Tantra. Munger, India: Yoga Publications Trust. Sarita, M. A., & Geho, S. A. (2001). Tantric Love. New York: Simon & Schuster. Stubbs, K. R. (1999). The Essential Tantra: A Modern Guide to Sacred Sexuality. New York: Tarcher/Putnam. White, D. G. (ed., 2000). Tantra in Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yeshe, L. (2001). Introduction to Tantra. Boston: Wisdom. * * * Barnaby B. Barratt, PhD, DHS is a tantric facilitator as well as a certified psychoanalyst and a sexuality Educator and sex therapist, certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists. He is the immediate past President of AASECT, and author of The Way of the BodyPrayerPath (Xlibris, 2004), Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom (Xlibris, 2005), as well as What is Tantric Practice? (Xlibris, 2006). Marsha A. Rand, MS is a tantric facilitator and shamanic practitioner, as well as an AASECT certified sex therapist. She conducts shamanic journeys and energy healings, as well as offering verbal psychotherapy. She currently lives and practices in Prescott, Arizona. Barratt and Rand founded and currently work with the Center for Tantric Spirituality (see www.CenterForTantricSpirituality.org). If you are interested in receiving a full annotated bibliography of English-language books on tantra, please contact them. USPS Address: P.O. Box 10937, Prescott, Arizona 86304-0937.
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