My Mother Asked, What is Tantra and How Can it Help Me Live a More Delicious Lifestyle?

Uh-oh! A question a tantric practitioner dreads coming from their mama. Or maybe it was just me. Anyhow, I took a deep breath and answered like this:

Tantra is not what you may have seen on HBO Real Sex. It is not a freaky sex cult or a religion. It is not Kama Sutra. Tantra is a spiritual path, a set of practices, and a way of living in authenticity--learning to fully accept what is good, bad, cute, and ugly about yourself. It is also about recognizing responsible pleasure as your birthright, not as a sin.

Each one of us has a physical body and an energy body. The energy body has been known and documented by ancient yogis for centuries but only recently discovered by modern scientists and quantum physicists. The practices of Tantra help us to detect these extremely subtle but important energies and move them throughout the body for certain purposes. This Universal energy (also called spirit, life force, chi, prana, creative energy, or sexual energy) originates at the root chakra, which just so happens to be located at the genital area. However, root energy is not actually sexual energy itself. It is sort of mixed in with the sexual energy and for that reason, it is most easily detected through sexual awareness because it is the strongest energy that we over-stimulated humans are able detect prior to becoming sensitized to super-subtle energies.

Tantric practices consist mainly of work with the chakras (internal energy vortexes along the spinal column) and the feminine/masculine polarities within each of us. Much like in a Hatha yoga class, the work includes meditation, conscious breathing, and mantra (voice), as well as exercises for emotional release. Visualize the chakras as water wheels that spin around as the water drops onto the paddles. Imagine the feminine energy as the stream of water moving up from the root chakra to the crown chakra, where it is then transformed into masculine energy that moves down from the crown chakra to the root. These energies must be free flowing for physical and emotional well-being. If the energies are obstructed or unbalanced, the result is physical ailments and emotional turbulence. Tantra is a wholesome way to maintain optimum health and emotional stability.

A tantric lifestyle is one that is focused on being in the present moment and not being attached to past dramas or future anxieties. Many spiritual paths consist of preparing for death so that the adherents will go to Heaven. Tantra teaches us that Heaven is here and now. A tantric lifestyle is one that instead prepares us for the divine presence in the body here and now by cleansing physically, emotionally, and mentally. It is essentially a celebration of maintaining the body-temple through sensuality and honoring and respecting the mind, body, and spirit equally.

Tantric Arts are enjoyed in a tantric lifestyle as a method of staying present and a way of connecting with your creativity in a way that helps to literally bring the spirits up. Tantric Arts refers to any artistic endeavors that can be used to cultivate spiritual development through creative expression and awareness of the senses. The term comes from the classic sixty-four tantric arts of which mastery was required of ancient Indian Dakinis, or tantric priestesses. Today, Tantric Arts encompasses all fine arts and humanities (such as dance, painting, poetry and prose, calligraphy, and design), gardening, decorating, lovemaking, food preparation and enjoyment, massage, aromatherapy, ayurvedic science...etc, or whatever brings you closer to your Heaven, your Divine Essence, your Beauty. Whew, and that was it.