The Art of Sexual Ecstasy and Empowered Living
by Evalena Rose, M. A.

Tantra is a Sanskrit name for a system of spiritual advancement, a deep mystical path that goes back millennia to the Vedas. Tantra is a broad weaving together of varied spiritual and romantic arts with the purpose of celebrating the sacredness in all of life. This spiritual path uses sensual and sexual practices to elevate consciousness and move toward enlightenment.

Tantra weaves together ancient practices from many wisdom traditions that access our Inner Lover, circulate orgasmic energy through our chakras to energize and vitalize the body and to reach enlightened states. Its basic tenet is that all emanates from the One Being, exists within that One Being, and is pervaded by It. It sees God/Goddess as Love, Lover, and Beloved, as Spirit that moves through us. It teaches the joys of living in our body as a temple, a vessel for the Divine and a reverence for all of life.

Most people have experienced the kind of "essence to essence" connection that exists in the throes of first love, melting into each other's eyes and hearts as time disappears. Tantra uses the power of moving kundalini in the body to activate those kinds of altered states in which ecstasy evolves out of being immersed in the moment and the contact it offers. It provides the opportunity to experience another at so deep a level that personality falls away and magic ensues. Opening one's heart, letting another see you and know you, are the keys to true intimacy and joyful relationships.

“White Tantra” teaches practices people can do alone, with Spirit, leading to orgasmic bliss just through breathing and movement exercises similar to yoga. One learns to allow the sexual energy of the universe to run through one's body. Red Tantra takes these energies into practices with a partner, creating deep communion. When blended with lovemaking, these practices encourage full body orgasms, and extended orgasms leading to ecstatic states.

"In the moment of orgasm we receive a glimpse of god and goddess, and a longing for love which never ends is awakened. Sex whets our appetite. Yet sex and love are only the beginning of the ultimate love affair. Tantra shows us a BIG LOVE, a love which vibrates with the hum of the infinite. This LOVE has no beginning, no end, no object. This is a vast love which never dies."
Johanina Wikoff, Tantra teacher

Tantra is an approach to life that employs a relaxed and flexible body, an open heart, a peaceful mind, and an aware sensuality that engages with life in a full-bodied way. Since sex holds such potential for opening our being to mystical experiences of ecstasy, Tantra teaches the cultivation of sexual love as an art, as a skillful spiritual practice that makes human sexuality and erotic union a form of worship and meditation. We move directly through the pleasure of the senses to spiritual liberation.

Cultivating ecstatic states of consciousness and learning how to integrate them into our lives can have profoundly healing effects. For 23 years, I've done therapy and hands on healing with people, often with women healing from abuse and addiction. Healing emotional wounds of the past can be amazingly transformative, yet it has an upper limit because it focuses on problems and pains. Tantra focuses on the sacred and joyous dimensions we've lost and helps us restore our wholeness and become sovereign in our bodies. One learns to bring the pleasure to the pain, which often melts away the past in deep states of surrender to what is.

Tantra is best taught, as in ancient times, in temples created with great care and thoughtfulness for honoring and maintaining the sacred. These temples are served by "dakinis", sexual healers who are women of passion profoundly devoted to spiritual awakenings. They assist new initiates in understanding their power as women and activating their own life force. In our workshops, experienced "tantrikas" serve as assistants to support each woman in finding her own way to sexual aliveness and fulfillment.

“Truly, at the peak of orgasm, we pierce through the illusion of fragmentation and separation, and glimpse the unity and interconnectedness of all being. And through the other (our partner) we fall in love with life." Margo Anand, Tantra teacher, dakini.

Tantra combines deep states of relaxation in the body with states of high arousal. It views full body orgasm as an energy event where the practices activate the flow of kundalini through the central channel, the Inner Flute. This makes prana, your very life force, available as a resource to enhance health, open to higher ways of being, and heal wounds.

"Sex in Tantra aims to heighten and prolong the magical connection that develops between (lovers) when they are lost in the ecstasy of love. We have not been trained in the skills required to expand that fleeting moment into a sustainable state. We are now finding . . . specific techniques that have been developed for achieving and controlling these states. After being suppressed for nearly a thousand years these methods are now being rediscovered and made available in books, videos and workshops."
Adapted from Ancient Secrets of Sexual Ecstasy, a video produced by Tantra.com

We reclaim these wonderful tools of peace, power and transformation. Skills of advanced forms of love are one of the most appropriate areas for human exploration in our uncertain times. Love is so kind to our environment, and unlike many other forms of gratification, is free of cost, and leads to the opposite of violence and war. "In an age of divorce and sexually transmitted diseases we need nothing more than to form stronger and more lasting bonds of love. Tantra lights the way." (from Tantra.com)

Enjoy!