Can a workshop or retreat lead to lasting transformation?

I think there is a real risk of retreats becoming part of an addictive cycle of intense experiences. You go, you have a breakthrough, your ego dissolves, you receive important messages—and then you leave. Within hours, days, weeks, definitely months, most of us find that our old patterns have come back in.

So we pay for another retreat. Another fix.

The addictive cycle

You go to a retreat and you have this intense experience. Your ego dissolves. You receive really important messages, you have a taste of a different way of being.

And then you leave the retreat. Sometimes within hours, days, weeks, definitely months—most of us find that our old patterns have come back in. We’re back to feeling not so good. The issues in our lives haven’t changed.

We remember back to that beautiful experience where we felt so much better and really saw the light. And we say: “I know what I need. I need to pay more thousands for another retreat.”

We go back for another fix. And we repeat.

And it’s good if you’re a tantric facilitator isn’t it? More money. But is it leading to long-lasting transformation? No.

Why not?

Because of the interconnected nature of things. Because the zero point of trauma–by this I mean the starting point of the trauma that is affecting you–is not what happened to you. It did not begin with you. It began before you. It began around you. The zero point of trauma is your lineage and the cascading effects of everything that is and has gone on in the world existing within and impacting your body, our collective body.

The patterns that you are experiencing that are holding you back are relational, part of the society, the family—it’s a web.

And we cannot fix things as little individuals here without changing everything around you. Tantra was never meant as a self-development tool. Tantra is a web of meaning.

What actually works

Within that constraint, is it possible to use tantric techniques and tantric understandings to heal, to process your trauma, to see unhelpful patterns and to change them? Yes. Tantra can be a source of great healing and great transformation. And I have experienced that.

But to do that, you cannot just do a one-off retreat or workshop. As much as possible, you need to be integrated and to integrate yourself into a web of meaning that supports the process. Into community. Into regular practice. Into a fundamentally different way of understanding the world, where interconnectedness is felt not only understood.

I don’t think it is possible for this way of understanding the world to be the dominant way that the society we live in will understand the world.

Given the fundamentally individualistic society we live in, for Tantra and tantric practices to have a meaningful and transformative impact it is therefore important to practice Tantra in community. To practice with others on a regular basis, to create self-reinforcing relationships that can take you on a journey towards healing and our birthright—which is pleasure in our body—and to the true nature of our life energy, our Sexual Energy, which is a pathway to a connection with the vast intelligence we are part of. Towards purpose.

I am deeply grateful to this tradition and its ability to provide tools which support us to listen to our bodies, to love, to create meaning, to live gently and with beauty.