What Is Tantra?
Hi, Im Holly Turiya, Tantric Sex, Love + Intimacy Coach, and in todays’s episode I want to share with you the answer to the most common question I receive?
What IS Tantra?
I could take 6 hours to fully answer this question because it’s so rich! But today, I want to simplify + distill this topic so it’s easy for you to understand!
Tantra is an ancient tradition from India that dates back to over 3,000 years ago.
It’s the original tree that birthed Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
A lot of ancient arts that you practice such as meditation, ecstatic dance, mantra and Goddess worship derive from the Tantric traditions.
In Sanskrit, which is the ancient Indian language, the word Tantra means “to weave”, and also “to expand + liberate.”
So from the roots of the word Tantra, we know it opens doors for us to weave or integrate.
So what are we weaving together?
Well, one of the core teachings of Tantric philosophy is that we live on a polarity planet.
There’s light + dark, up + down, compassion + greed, humility + royalty.
For everything we experience in life, there’s an opposing energy that has a polarized expression.
Think about the Yin Yang symbol, which is a Tantric + Taoist symbol.
This represents the polarity of life with the expression of masculine (Yang) and feminine (Yin).
This polarity that we experience in life is what keeps our world spinning.
These dual forces of masculine + feminine are the forces of nature, and when they come together, they create all life.
From new born babies, to blossoming flowers. Polarity + duality create everything in existence.
In the modern world, however, we’ve been torn by polarity.
We’ve been governed by ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in our human experience, causing us to split ourselves into two.
Our light side, which is the socially accepted “good” part of ourselves which we show to the world. The successful, beautiful, powerful parts.
And then on the polarized side of that, we have our shadow selves. The “bad” parts which we hide from the world. Our anger, lust, shame, and grief.
This splitting of our human experience causes us to be at war within ourselves - and thus, with each other.
Clouded by judgment, fear, or jealousy towards others, there’s less room for acceptance + love in our hearts for ourselves + others.
In Tantra, we ‘weave’ all aspects of life into our hearts with no judgment.
We integrate the shadow with the light, the highs with the lows, and welcome all emotions + experiences into our human experience as sacred teachers.
We do this by using the ancient Tantric practices of embodiment, emotional alchemy, and devotion, so that we can be deeply intimate with ourselves - and from that place, be deeply intimate with others.
I refer to Tantra as the path of AND. Through the Tantric lens, we do not have to choose between primal or pure. Between holy or human. Between spiritual or sexual.
We are both. And when we integrate all of ourselves into our embodiment + expression, we become fully empowered, fully expressed, and fully alive.
This is why Tantra includes practices like sacred sexuality, ecstatic dance, and pleasure.
Because these are practices that bring us deeply into our humanity.
Our wild, messy, primal humanity.
In Tantric philosophy - it’s within our humanity that we find our holy.
It’s through fully inhabiting our bodies that we open the gateways to the God or Goddess within.
It’s through expressing our emotional bodies - roaring our anger, moaning our pleasure, and wailing our grief - that we allow life itself to move through us.
Tantra connects us to the web of source + consciousness that dances through everything with breath, sound, movement, sensuality, and meditation.
And of course, our greatest source of primal energy is our sexual energy.
When we liberate our sexual energy through Tantric practice, we open the doors to embody our greatest potential.
We expand + liberate our truth, our purpose, our power and our love.
And you don’t have to renounce anything to access this.
You don’t need to sit on top of a mountain + remove yourself from the human experience.
Instead, Tantra invites you to bring the mountain to the marketplace.
To bring your spiritual practice + devotion to the most human of all experiences.
Your sex, your love, and your intimacy.
Tantra invites us to open our bodies, our senses, and our hearts to experience all that this life has to offer.
To not deny any part of ourselves or others.
To welcome it all, and to dance with the bittersweet symphony that life is.
So, if you want to learn more about Tantra, I invite you to download my free Everyday Ecstasy guide where I share ways to embody these ancient teachings in modern ways.
And if you want to journey deeper, I invite you book a free Desire Discovery Call with my so I can support you in creating the Sex, Love, and Intimacy that you deserve + desire!
It’s an honor to support your Tantric Awakening journey.
Your reclamation + liberation journey awaits!