What is Tantra, actually?

In this course, we’ll be exploring what Tantra actually is—and crucially, what it is not. At a time when everything seems branded as Tantra or a Temple, and spiritual language risks becoming debased as a marketing gimmick, we’re going to take a meaningful—and controversial—look at tantric principles.

We begin with FOUNDATIONS—the core principles that define what Tantra actually is. These aren’t abstract concepts. They’re lived understandings that inform everything that follows.

The body is the path

There’s a key line in the tantras: “What is elsewhere is here and what is not here is nowhere.”

This means everything exists in the body, through the body, is the body. All time, all space. All your pain, all the pain of your family, grandparents, of their grandparents, of your entire lineage. All the pain of society, of the world—what’s going on in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine. And all the love. All the love of your friends, family, community, every moment of ecstatic bliss and joy, every moment of meaning and creation in all time and all space. Every moment. Every thing. Is here in your body. And if it is not, it is nowhere.

Unlike traditions where the body is seen as a barrier to Enlightenment, Tantra believes that in this dualistic existence, in this incarnation the path is through the body.

Beyond language

Tantra is a teaching of something beyond language, without language. It is a non-linguistic modality. A good Tantra teacher will share only in words what is needed to enter a practice with the right attitude and the right technique—and then the lesson is always in the meditation itself, in the practice itself.

Sexual energy as life energy

Sexual Energy is understood to be life energy. This is the energy that births everything from cells to stars. It is the act of manifestation, of creation. These words did not exist and they are birthed, they are manifested, they are created from formlessness to form. This is an act and ability of sexual energy.

Health, vitality, and the ability to connect to the vast intelligence of the world in which we move is when this energy can circulate around our body. To do that, we need to remove blocks in the body that prevent this—blocks caused by stored trauma, repressed emotion, and physical tension.

In short: Tantra offers techniques to release trauma from the body and to work with our Sexual Energy so we are able to experience a sense of interconnectedness, connecting with a vast wisdom so we can create and manifest in accordance with the laws and movements of reality.