Everyday Tantra: How to Experience Your Own Ecstatic Energy

What is ‘Tantra’?

Unfortunately  the word ‘Tantra’ has mistakenly been associated with wild oil parties, bizarre sexual practices and orgasm marathons. Tantra is actually a spiritual path which includes sexuality as a doorway to enlightenment. The essence of Tantric teachings encourage the choosing of what gives you pleasure and joy and allowing that to lead you to greater connection with Spirit. Neither a philosophy nor a belief system—Tantra offers meditation techniques utilizing the five senses, breath, sound and movement to awaken one’s inner flow of aliveness. Tantra is a way of looking at life as it is and leaving behind the mind with all its judgments, distortions and distractions.  By simply encountering life face to face and saying “yes”, Tantra allows contradictions, opposites and paradoxes and provides a way to go beyond them to a place of resolution and total acceptance. Tantra is a path of inclusivity, continuity and wholeness.  It teaches how to master desires by diving into them rather than by avoiding and resisting them.  In Tantra both pleasure and pain become doorways to growth and intimacy.

The word “tantra” is Sanskrit and among its many meanings are: “methods of going beyond”, “expanding” and my favorite from Tantric Love by Sarita and Geho: “transformation of poison into nectar”. Tantra promises both the inner experiencing of ecstasy and the outer enrichment of relationships with others and the world. 

Given these choices—what would you choose:

Presence-----------Absence
Spaciousness------Narrow-mindedness
Openness----------Closure
Aliveness-----------Numbness
Intimacy-----------Alienation

To open the door to  Tantra is to choose to move towards a life of presence, spaciousness, openness, intimacy  and aliveness.

What is ‘Everyday Tantra’?

It is the moment-to-moment  practicing of the art of awakening one’s own ecstatic energy especially in those situations where a habitual pattern would be to shutdown, to contract and to withdraw from life. Tantric practices are stress-busters and self-esteem boosters.  They train you to stay present and are empowering, centering and  grounding.

My first personal taste of Tantra came in 2001 when I participated in a two day introductory course called “Be Fully Alive” led by Dawn Cartwright.  That  workshop transformed my life by allowing me to step out of my ‘little life box’.  I enjoyed pleasurable feelings of sweet bliss for  hours after the  guided breathwork on day one.  However, by the second day my resistance was so intense I questioned my ability to let go of my Catholic conditionings and to embrace a fuller experiencing of my own life energy. “Is it really o.k. to feel such good sensations and to awaken my own juicy aliveness?”  Well, having traveled this path since then,  I can definitely answer “yes!”  Whatever old reservations and fears  I formerly held have dissolved through experiencing the practical, profound and fulfilling practices of everyday tantra.

How can I  begin to practice Tantra?

Tantric teachings are traditionally taught in secret by a teacher to a select and usually small number of adepts or students.  The teachings of the ancient Tantric masters  have been imparted in person for thousands of years. The 5000-year-old Vigyan Bhairav Tantra  is a sacred text which is full of wise sermons called “sutras” which lead the adept into deep meditation experiences.

Today there are many books and resources used  by a variety of Tantra teachers who lead classes, workshops and teacher trainings. Because Tantra does not offer a structured belief system or a philosophy, it is the student’s responsibility  to experiment with these meditation  methods and to discover what works for them  through trial and error.

Finding the teacher who is right for you is a personal process similar to finding the appropriate health practitioner or counselor to assist in your growth and evolution. It is important to find a teacher whose energy resonates with you and whose experiences you value.  In the meantime,  I  offer you a simple yet effective daily practice to go ahead with on your own.

Belly Breathing While Driving

I have chosen the everyday activity of driving because it continually and constantly presents opportunities for moment-to-moment practicing of tantric breath meditation techniques.

Let’s say you are driving the 405 freeway southbound and someone just cut you off—your neck and shoulder tension just skyrocketed,  constricting your blood flow--creating unwelcome physical tightness, emotional upset and a slew of mental negative self-talk runs through your mind and to top all that off--you are barely breathing.

TANTRIC PRACTICE:

1] PAUSE—this may feel completely foreign to you—just take a moment and

2] BREATHE IN through your nose, deeply into your lower belly letting it rise

3]  BREATHE OUT through your mouth, slowly and making a sound like “aauugghh”

REPEAT all 3 steps until your neck, shoulders and back totally relax and you are present and centered.

Congratulations! You have just taken a first mini-step forward along the Tantric path.  You are moving from constriction to freedom from narrowness to openness, from congestion to flow.  Reward yourself by putting on some great music…perhaps you want to engage in a bit of Pelvic Rocking by arching your back and inhaling then flattening your back against your carseat and exhaling to the beat.  By  doing that Universal Action of Love you are engaging your life energy and letting it flow!  Do you even care if you are cut off by another driver when you are ‘rocking on’ with yourself and experiencing the blissful flow of ecstatic energy waves!  You are tuned into your own aliveness channel and no one can change the channel except you.  Now you are in the driver’s seat riding that vitalizing energy wave and loving your life more fully.

I chose driving because it is an activity during which a myriad of physical, emotional and mental reactions may arise. By pausing and breathing you are infusing the tense situation with awareness and then engaging in full-body breathing.  Now you can enjoy living while driving !  This tantric practice takes willingness and courage to dive in and surrender by embodying the breath, sound and rocking movements to remind yourself to flow with life rather than to fight it. Welcome to Everyday Tantra!

I have designed a TANTRA grid to describe the essential activities of this practical art of full-bodied living:

T rusting your body’s wisdom.
A wakening your senses.
N oticing your breathing.
T uning into your ecstasy channel.
R elaxing and feeling the energy flow!
A ccessing your ALIVENESS!!!

Trusting your body’s wisdom allows you to scan your interior landscape and to notice ‘what is present’? …tightness, fullness, aching, ease, constriction, openness…The sweeping of your inward glance yields specific information.  Can you bring pure attention to what is without mental judgments, distortions or drama stories?  Saying “yes” to what is there, simply facing what is arising whatever emotion, sensation, feeling presents without criticism, judgment or evaluation—this is Tantra: encountering what is face to face as it is.

Awakening your senses means tasting, touching, smelling, hearing and seeing with heightened sensory awareness.  What is it like for you to really use your senses as doorways to be more fully present?  What is it like to really taste a strawberry and savor its juiciness, breathe in its fruity flavor, feel its texture on your tongue—the gritty skin and the succulent center, to allow the juice to slip and slide all around the inside of  your mouth?

Noticing your breathing means paying conscious attention to how you are or are not breathing. It is important to begin to  become conscious of your breath many times a day rather than to practice for long periods of time.  Think of this as a ‘mini-practice’ done for 10 – 30 seconds at a time before returning to your habitual way of automatic breathing.  This can then become a pause button which gently intervenes in your habitual life…soon breathing becomes so pleasurable that the practice becomes effortless.

According to Daniel Odier in his book DESIRE, “the effects of conscious breathing are extraordinary:

Decrease in stress
Development of sensory sensitivity
More regular sleep
General equilibrium of the body
Regular blood & lymph flow
Calmness
Improved mental capacity
Mini-rests distilled over the whole of the day
Improved concentration
More precise physical movements
Feelings of plenitude and joy

Once conscious breathing replaces automatic breathing, you will feel a complete change in your way of experiencing the world.  Fears and anxieties about relationships with others will disappear; you will have a profound feeling of being connected to the earth.

Tuning into your ecstasy channel means accessing your own “Doctor FeelGood”.

I firmly believe each of us holds the keys to our own success and fulfillment.  By setting an intention to go within to drink from your inner wellspring of joy and life-force you free yourself to embody wholeness.  You need nothing outside of yourself to free your energy.  This tantric activity enlivens you and through practicing it you reinforce the access pathways which over time become the chosen ones. Transforming old habits into new ways of being with yourself and expanding your capacity to experience pleasure can be a fun road to travel!

Relaxing and feeling the flow of energy is my favorite treat. It is the vitalizing flow of life energy which really nurtures and nourishes me. This is currently my main practice.

After being in India for 3 weeks practicing tantric meditation several times a day—a new way of experiencing myself was firmly established.  Now back in Los Angeles, I find myself driving slower, breathing deeper and my toleration of stress, tension and tightening up is so low that I go into red alert when my stress thermometer begins rising.  As quickly as possible, I catch myself and begin consciously relaxing my body.  I am soon gifted with that welcome sensation of tingling, aliveness and energy which once again flow throughout my entire body.

Accessing your aliveness is the gift of being alive in your body temple and honoring who you are in each and every moment.  This is truly what practicing Everyday Tantra is all about…experiencing, embodying and expressing your own ecstatic energy.  It is all yours for the tasting, sensing and knowing.  This is the path to greater intimacy with yourself and others.  It is a path of pleasures both dark and light.  It is a path beyond duality, beyond rigid mindsets, beyond your ideas of bliss, beyond your ideas of right and wrong…it is a field full of passion and playfulness and purpose beyond your wildest dreams…come… I will meet you there.