On the "tradition" of Tantra massage (OR Eva puts it best)
When we first started our retreat“TANTRA WITH A PINCH OF SALT”, or >> TWAPOS for short, and posted it on Facebook (because back then, the way to announce you’d started something was to create a Facebook event), a neighbor messaged me saying:
“You know this isn’t real tantra, don’t you?”
This neighbor was an Osho sannyasin. She still did his >>Dynamic Meditation in the mornings in our apartment building in Prenzlauer Berg. If you haven’t tried it, it really is quite an experience, especially if you have loud speakers and absolutely no neighbors.
I would have thought it obvious that our TWAPOS offering isn’t trying to be The Real Tantra: the clue is in the name—Tantra With A Pinch Of Salt. But evidently, a pinch of salt isn’t enough. We considered updating the phrase and changing it to “a punch,” but we haven’t gone that far—yet.
We believe this is a topic worthy enough of our attention to dedicate one evening of every retreat to a presentation specifically addressing these questions: What is The Real Tantra? (Can’t resist a link >>here.) Is there such a thing? What is the tradition of tantra massage? Where does it actually come from? And therefore, how can we best engage with “it” respectfully while upholding a queer, contemporary, somatic approach that respectfully engages with us and with you?
Without getting bogged down in the details and history—which are expertly and far more eloquently addressed in the articles I link at the end of this text and explored interactively during our discussions at the retreat—here are some key points to note. Tantra encompasses a number of qualities we value: slow, conscious, holistic, ritualistic, sexual, and spiritual. It encompasses all of these and more, without explicitly naming any single one. Why is this even necessary? Eva Hanson puts it best: “The ‘tantra’ in tantra massage is an attempt to underpin a practice for which there were no role models and no words in our culture—a culture where spirituality had long been conceived of as devoid of lust and covetousness, where idleness and hedonism were frowned upon—and which therefore knew no sexual arts.” Wow! Glorious!
Tantra is also not just one thing. It is inherentlydiverse, recorded in a multitude of texts written in ancient languages such as Sanskrit—some of which have been translated, many of which have not, and many of which were translated at the turn of the 20th century by conservative, bigoted, racist, or all-of-the-above academics who heavily edited them according to what they and their patrons deemed useful, acceptable, or appropriate at the time. There is no single book, as we Judeo-Christians might be accustomed to, and therein lies both a complexity and a freedom; this lack of definition leads to an openness of interpretation and a space in which to interpret one’s own relationship to this form of spirituality.
But let’s try to get more specific, just for fun. To go deeper down the rabbit hole, another neighbor might have said:
“You know, this isn’t real neo-tantra.”
Because, oddly enough, Neo-Tantra is also the "Real Tantra" my Facebook friend was referring to—Osho, Agama, Margot Anand, Daniel Odier (a few more rabbit holes for your Google/YouTube searches) all teach Neo-Tantra: modern, often Western adaptations of traditional Tantra (whatever that is), typically emphasizing sexuality, personal empowerment, and spiritual awakening. But is Neo-Tantra The Real Tantra? Now I get to quote Julio: “The early erotic-occult variants of Tantra can be described as a sexualization of rituals; Neo-Tantra would then be the opposite: the ritualization of sex.”
Additionally, all this fuss about what’s Real and what’s Not (ironic in a discourse about a tradition or path where reality is a play of energy and consciousness, but I’ll leave that thread for now) misses the point, because while we use “the T word,” we aren’t actually aiming to find “The Truth” behind “the T word.” We are interested in what happens to a body—or to two, or three—when tantra massage is in the room. We are interested in finding out what your tantra massage looks like, what you do with bodies and oil and the permission to touch or be touched everywhere, leaving nothing out. We do use ‘the T word’ in the title and we are very open to discussion about ‘the T word’ and again, Eva says it best: “Tantra massage irritates and polarizes for a reason. In my eyes, it is precisely these reasons that make the discourse about it so interesting.” We’d love to engage with you about it too. How?
There are already some great articles online about this. Please read >>this one by Eva Hanson, and >>the article she links to by Julio Lambing.
OTHER RESOURCES TO READ:
David White: Kiss of the Yogini
Margot Anand: The Art of Sexual Ecstasy
Barbara Carrellas: Urban Tantra
Christopher Wallis: Tantra Illuminated