reflections on our tantramassage retreat by Eva Hanson / see also sexual-culture.org

so, here i am now: lying naked in the sun under an apple tree by the pool. thinking about sex & revolution. all i hear is the wind in the trees & birdsong, occasionally some donkey or peacock announces their existence. & there comes the happy puppy, enthusiastically biting me in the nipple - again. this is much nicer than i thought.

i got invited to this "Tantramassage Retreat"- that kind of thing i thought i would never participate in. it seems bizarre & entirely inappropriate to me to just hop on an airplane in order to become a tourist in another country, then drive in a car for hours to get to a remote place where other people work for my comfort, then swim in a pool & shower 3 times a day on average, ... all for the purpose of practicing forms of advanced sexuality & enjoy myself.

don't get me wrong: i highly value beauty, relaxation & well-being. it ́s my job. you might even consider me a sophisticated hedonist or even a pleasure activist. but i cannot help but question this kind of activity.

also, i'm all but comfortable staying in somewhat random places with somewhat random people, being told when to do what for several days.

& that's exactly why I went, with all the ambivalence, criticism & discomfort.

i went because this is the only tantramassage teaching event i know of that questions the very thing it is doing while doing it, along with the respective mindsets & attitudes. i went because i finally get to discuss with like-minded people some things i really care about, namely:

why, from a certain perspective, this is all bullshit - a symptom (or a product) of an ignorant, naive, narcissistic culture of the self. the sense of self which our whole corrupt society is based on & which capitalism & consumer culture are happily & extensively feeding on. how it is born out of a century-long process of spiritual stultification & stupefying hedonism.

& why, at the same time, it is wonderful & sublime. perhaps even subversive & revolutionary.

it is also my first experience in this kind of setting where i am not expected to participate in everything that ́s offered, having to get up too early in order to be exposed to intense experiences all day long with too short breaks, way into the night. i am not given creepy-long hugs by half-strangers without my permission. i am not being told that my resistance to certain exercises is just intellectual bypassing that i need to overcome. no regular endless sharing circles (thank god!). i am not considered cold & distant because i feel no need to turn my insides out at any given moment, on the contrary: i am explicitly invited not to be authentic all the time, to act & play instead.

well. but what are we doing here?

we practice touch & sensual exploration with minimal input & guidance, play with a multitude of different metaphors for what we are doing & enjoy endless new ways of touch & pleasure.

we challenge our need & strategies to pleasure & please. we struggle with our own freedom & responsibility.

we think about names for our genitals (my favorites: The Wet Curls & The Venerable Monosyllable).

we hug, kiss, caress, tickle, slap, bind, squeeze, move each other.

we take a lot of notes.

we hold cherry stone spitting contests.

we knock on heavens door.

we stretch & sweat & explore different ways of breathing for different purposes.

we share 3 meals a day.

we get inspired by puppies ("this is how life should be!").

giggling, we take pleasure in our own embarrassment.

we say "ohhh yeah "a lot of times.

we are pleasured by our facilitators with sex-political manifestos or improvised body- made soundscapes while massaging each other.

we treat anuses like mouths & mouths like anuses.

we dance in the moonlight.

we braid each others hair & paint each others nails.

we communicate our boundaries very well.

we find our center. loose it again. find it again.

we share each others stories & wisdom.

we fuck up sometimes & practice how to stumble more (or less) gracefully.

we look like angels sometimes, blissed-out & serene.

we invent a sex-positive water-ballet ritual.

we turn into fantastical animals for a while.

we're getting used to the peacocks answering from afar our squeaking, moaning, chuckling, barking, cackling, screaming, sighing, & all the other funny sounds we make.

we do weightlifting with very heavy cocks.

we talk about cultural appropriation, gender & queerness, inclusivity, about power imbalances (also between practitioners & clients, facilitators & participants), about sex-work & what it's like to sell tantramassage as a service to strangers.

we ask ourselves what the rebellious point is in this practice (to be continued!).

we have lengthy conversations about truth & doubt, about the knowing & the unknown, about ambivalence & uncertainty.

we wrestle with the concepts of spiritually & sexuality & how they are related.

we discuss the human condition while getting appropriately drunk on wine.

this is called TWAPOS. Tantra - With a Pinch of Salt

the idea: to declutter this sensual, luxurious practice - to dust it off & remove all that's overcome & redundant.

first: the cluster of wishy-washy new age concepts like chakras, energy, & gender polarities as well as annoying practices like inordinately intimate/intimidating eye- gazing & spiritually molesting attempts at "healing".

second: the omnipresent psychological mindset that tries to tell us what we are (an assemblage of traumas, trigger-points, shadows, mirrors, blockages, processes, ...) & what to do (heal, grow, expand, develop our full potential, find our true self, ...) finally: the conservative way of teaching it in the form of precomposed massage structures, the dogmas around rules, principles & dynamics of touch & the contemporary, somewhat cowardly attempt at making tantramassage as safe & harmless as possible.

To this end, we discuss the history of tantra from medieval india & the first reception of tantric texts in the 19th century, all the way through a weird & twisted reinterpretation process strongly influenced by Aleister Crowley, Wilhelm Reich & Osho, to the invention of tantramassage in the 1970s, presumably by Andro. we trace back the inbuilt ideas of "sacred sexuality", "sexual revolution" & "happiness", which is to be achieved through self-actualization & pleasure.

& then, we physically & practically approach this thing that doesn't even seem to have the right name anymore in a highly experimental & free-flow approach...

but what are we left with then?

an advanced form of ritualized sexuality - an empty container that we can fill with whatever we want. actually, even the shape of the container is up to us. we can choose the rules & boundaries & form of the ritual. it ́s purpose is not to make the massage spiritual, but to distinguish our activity from normal everyday life & sexual routines & to help us find our way into the kind of mindset we need to do what we want to do.

what mindset?

i have thought about this a whole lot in my almost 10 years of professional tantramassage practice. what i came up with are long lists of values & attitudes: to me, tantramassage is the embodied expression of a life philosophy & a way to practice, to incorporate it. i thought about it to be a form of intimate anarchism, a way to find that place inside us from where we can reverse all brainwashing & find true sovereignty. i was pretty sure i had figured it all out.

& I took it very seriously.

to me, the tantra massage used to be a highly sophisticated & elaborate art form, a composition of skillful touch, like a piece of music. something you have to learn & practice for a long time in order for it to be an experience as graceful, pleasurable & safe as possible.

this experimental approach here is completely new to me & in the beginning it felt considerably wrong: what about symmetry?? what about the waves of arousal? what about all the fine techniques & choreographies i have learned & developed? what about harmony, balance, flow? how can that work if i never know what i will do next??

& this whole idea of exploring what i'm interested in instead of trying to please - wtf? can ́t wrap my mind around it. it feels like i ́m unlearning a language in a few days. but it feels so good. in the giving as well as the receiving mode.

then, a few days into the retreat, i watch our collective attempt at re-cluttering tantramassage with awe: the idea was to fill this sweetest form of manipulation with new meaning by inventing new stories about how it evolved, what myth it recreates or how it works as a magical ritual. but instead of smoking heads & deep philosophical discussions i mostly saw colorful pictures & heard a lot of laughter. the results were spontaneous, creative & humoristic to the point of nonsense. & i asked myself: is this, in fact, the whole point? that we don ́t have to figure this out at all?

& how do we - how do i - deal with this immense freedom - the freedom to not know what i am doing?

it slowly dawns on me that i am resisting the one fact i can be certain about: that i have no fucking clue anyway. not what i am doing here. not what happens next. not how this all will fit together in the end, or what effects it will have.

& that's fine.

& if i still consider tantramassage a microcosm that represents the whole, this also means that we can learn to be comfortable with the big open questions as well: what the human condition is, what this life is all about, how we deal with our biological as well as spiritual nature ... with the reality that human existence is tragic, comic & magic. all at the same time.

so - why not find joy in walking on ever-shifting ground?

human beings are by nature very much uncomfortable with uncertainty, ambivalence & contradiction. hence our endless, inventive, & utterly futile attempts at control & systematization.

& hence the value of practicing in such a concrete, physical form in order to then, maybe, develop a new way of living out of it.

that's it: the way of the toddler (or the puppy):

a way of strolling or wandering around with the assumption that life is all about play & curiosity, about trial & error, about spontaneous & inventive solutions, about stumbling & getting up again. when we manage to stop taking ourselves too seriously, self-doubt, fear of failure & frustration become easier to bear. we might develop a whole new kind of confidence through the repeated experience that we can deal with so much more than we thought if we stay flexible & learn to improvise. if we learn to trust our inborn intuition & competence.

we can let ourselves let go of the ambition to do it "right", or gracefully, or in a way that makes sense. accepting our own emergent nature means that we have more freedom than we can make use of at any given moment: if we give ourselves permission to be expressive, we can decide in what way we want to approach & answer the world: as a dancer? as a sculptor? as a magician? as a cat? as an alien?

yes, it might be awkward sometimes. it might resemble a slapstick performance. but so what?

there would be so much more to say... there are so many more layers to it.

it's no coincidence that we care for the tantra massage a lot & that we find it so interesting, even after many years of practice.

but it's hard to put a finger on it. the more we think about it, the more mysterious & complex it seems to be.

Eva Hanson holding a lecture at TWAPOS. Photo: Matís d'Arc

for now, i choose to be content with a profound & unexpected sense of approval & satisfaction:

despite myself & despite my ever-questioning nature, i am sitting here collecting moment after moment of extraordinary beauty (in lack of a better word). you know - the kind of occurrence where you have an undeconstructable feeling of "oh yeah. this is goodrightmeaningfulimportant". i see intelligence & creativity combined, bubbling out of human beings in all kinds of ways. moments of innocent playfulness, rawness & tenderness. pure joy.

i don't know why, but this is how life should be - some of the time, at least.

The next Tantra - With a Pinch of Salt will happen in >> July 2023

Tantric massage: Decluttering, Recluttering & Beyond - A TWAPOS experience

Workshopsexuality. Part IV

Salt With A Pinch Of Tantra