1. An Intro to Tantra

Transcript

Episode 1 Tantra, a Spiritual Tradition So warm welcome to this little introduction journey into the vast field of Tantra. Let's start our journey together by dropping into beautiful stillness. So wherever you are, if you're standing, take a seat and just allow yourself to drop anything that you're holding onto, your phone or any drink or whatever you're holding in your hand.

Just allow yourself to find a comfortable seat. Allow your eyes to gently close. And let's take a deep long inhale together.

And exhale. Sigh out, drop everything, drop your shoulders, inhale, deep, long, smooth breath all the way down into your belly, filling your belly. And exhale.

Release it out, let it out. Feel yourself become a little bit more comfortable and at ease. One more time, inhale together, long, smooth breath in through the nose.

And hold for just one little second, holding that energy in you and then exhale, drop it out, exhale it out. Just allowing yourself to come into stillness. Feel the thoughts begin to smooth out.

Feel the body relaxing. Maybe some of the muscles in your back and your shoulders relaxing. See if you can find some stillness just here for one little moment.

Okay, so open your eyes and welcome back. My name is Fia Agoo and for the past four years, I've been practicing together with my dear, lovely partner, Filip Agoo, embodied healing sexual practices, embracing us into a very sweet and intimate and healing relationship. It has been a journey filled with insights and it is with love and compassion I share these practices with you.

I'm by no means an expert, nor do I hold in my hands any degree as my knowledge and understanding of Tantra has come through different teachers at different teacher trainings, workshops, online trainings and just even meeting people along the road and of course my insatiable search for knowledge. So let's start by asking the question what Tantra actually is. You might already have an idea formed in your mind and I would say it's not an easy question to answer.

Tantra is a complex subject and defining it seems to shift as one deepens one's practice. One day you define and believe Tantra to be one thing, only for the next day it will have shape-shift into a complete new set of dynamics and meanings attached to it. This ever-changing quality of Tantra is probably what makes it such an intriguing and powerful path.

As time passes through different seasons so does the definition of Tantra as it is being practiced by more and more and new practitioners all over the world. According to one of my teachers and Sanskrit scholar and Tantra practitioner Christopher D. Wallace, the Sanskrit word Tantra originally meant simply a system of spiritual practices articulated within a specific sacred text.

In his book Tantra Illuminated, The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition, Wallace refers to the early Tantric text known as the Kamika Tantra and points out that the Sanskrit root of the word tan and tra actually means the spreading of wisdom, tan, which saves, tra, us from suffering. Modern-day Tantra teachers have also translated the word Tantra as a technique, technology, the loom which weaves, or to expand and liberate. And although these modern-day interpretations aren't, according to Wallace, actually found in the original Tantric text, they are nevertheless legitimate translations of the Sanskrit word and are very much in line with the spirit of Tantra.

So it could be closely understood to mean the weaving together of wisdom in order to expand and liberate. Here is an ancient explanation of Tantra as given by the Tantric scholar and guru named Ramakanta who lived around a thousand years ago. A Tantra is a divinely revealed body of teachings explaining what is necessary and what is a hindrance in the practice of the worship of God, the divine.

These teachings are given to those qualified to pursue both the higher and the lower aims of human existence. Then we have some definitions by more contemporary teachers and gurus. Tantra relaxes the body, opens the heart, and brings the mind into clear focus.

Quote by Margo Anand. Tantra is a systematic way of transforming and transmuting our dualistic tendencies. Quote by Sally Kempton.

The Tantric way is open to all the richness of human nature, which it accepts without a single restriction. It is probably the only spiritual path that excludes nothing and no one. Quote by Daniel Oudier.

Unlike sexuality, which tends to find release at the lower end of the energy system, Tantra is about building our energies to the fountainhead of the uppermost dimension of the energy system. Quote by Sadhguru. In short, Tantra is a complete system or path of yoga which integrates every aspect of human experience and uses the body, the senses, the emotions, the heart, and the mind to achieve a state of integrated wholeness, a state of divine consciousness.

But wait! What about sex? Isn't Tantra all about sex, erotica, and better orgasms? In Western culture, popular Tantra has become almost synonymous with sex and erotic massages.

There is some debate about exactly how prevalent and important sex has been in the history of Tantra, as there is merely no mention of sexual practices in the early Tantric texts. This has led many practitioners of Tantra to negate its correlation with sex. Although the writings from the ancient traditions of Tantra have survived, they are inconclusive about the use of explicit sexual practices, and actually most of the texts haven't even been translated from the ancient vibrational sound language of Sanskrit to English.

What the Tantric texts definitely reveals is the union of the divine masculine and feminine energies, a conversation between Shiva and Shakti. In the third episode, we will dive deeper into this divine meeting so that you get to know the story in depth. In the modern Tantric communities worldwide, the practice has come to be split into two directions when it comes to sex.

One direction leads down the path of working with the sexual energy internally, also known as White Tantra. The other path, or Red Tantra, expands further to use physical and energetic contact between partners to awaken, stimulate, and elevate the sexual life force energy, known as Kundalini, to expand into a deeper contact with our higher self, to reach higher or rather broader realms of consciousness. Those who are more aligned with White Tantra could in a sense be regarded more traditionalist, staying true to the original teachings as found in the old Tantric scriptures.

Red Tantra and its cathartic embrace of sexuality perhaps reflects the spiritual and psychological needs of many people in today's modern society, releasing deep subconscious blocks and heals the body and mind and soul. What links both paths and what lies at the core of the Tantric practices, however, is to awaken the Kundalini energy as a primary goal. This includes working with the body and mind in different ways, and includes practices such as pranayama, mudras, mantras, meditation, and other yogic purification practices.

These rituals aim first and foremost to heal the polarization, sort of the split inside ourselves causing us to see the world in opposites, that in turn causes us to suffer feelings of separation toward the outer world. And secondly, to understand and evenly merge into consciousness, liberating the practitioner from the gross, the dense, and the physical level of existence. It's a journey of moving from a contracted state of mind, really deep and dense, to an expanded sense of opportunity and freedom.

You might have sensed it yourself. When you feel low, you get contracted, everything gets heavy, and then all of a sudden things releases and you feel light and uplifted and high vibration. So coming back to the subject of sex and how it relates to Tantra.

In traditional religions, sexuality has not only been not embraced, it has been actively suppressed. Unlike these duality-based spirituality, where the human and the divine are separated, Tantra holds that both the body and the soul is made of the divine and thus embraces all of our bodily desires. It is, in other words, understandable that in these modern times, we seek sexual healing within the realms of what Tantra has to offer.

To become more conscious of our sexual energies and our need to heal from the conditioning and trauma of unhealthy experiences with sex is becoming a yearning for more and more people young as old, male as female, spiritual as well as non-spiritual. So the more modern take on Tantra that welcomes the sexual healing practices is labeled Neo-Tantra. It provides the possibility of a healthy self-healing path to integrate sexual energy with spirituality.

Neo-Tantra allows us to rethink what sex is and how sexual energy relates to spiritual growth. Or rather, it allows us to rethink what fertility is. By that said, it is no wonder it challenges the status quo, explores the forbidden and breaks many taboos which leads to many thinking that Tantra is all about sex positions and orgasms.