What the tradition itself says
The word tantra is made of two roots. Tan means to expand, to stretch, to elaborate. Tra means to liberate, to release. Tantra is therefore a movement of expanding and coming free.
In Indian thought two roads once parted there. One said you had to withdraw from ordinary life to reach the deeper layers of your consciousness, and that became the way of yoga. The other said that the normal course of a human life is no obstacle, and that became tantra.
Swami Satyananda Saraswati sums the latter up like this: in tantra "neither food nor character, social nor marital status, stand in the way". Your food, your character, your marital status and your desires do not hold you back. You need no monastery to reach depth.
Later the tradition began reading its own rituals inwardly as well. The wine became the nectar that arises in your own body. The sacrifice of the animal became the taming of the animal in yourself. And maithuna, which literally means union, came to be understood as the union of individual consciousness with the whole.
That is the tantra I point to. A full path with teachers, initiations and practice that lasts a lifetime. I take a few things from it that you can use today, and the rest I leave to those who do stand in it.
An Introduction to Tantra Shastra, Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Yoga Magazine
Consecration, what you devote yourself to
What it means in tantra
In tantra, consecration is an act. The best known form is called nyasa, which means to lay down or to place. The practitioner touches the parts of his own body and speaks a mantra with every touch. In that way he places the divine in his body, part by part, until the body itself has become a dwelling. Old texts describe it as an act of taking refuge.
What sits inside that is an order. Before anything happens, what it is for is spoken first. The body is declared sacred before it is touched.
What I take from it
I use no mantras. What I take over is that order. First speak what it is for, and only then begin.
With me, consecration is the question of what you devote yourself to. What you give your life to, and whether you truly chose that. The answer that counts is the answer you still know at night, when nobody is watching.
Most people live without making that choice. They do what comes at them, and it all works out well enough. What is missing then is direction, and you notice it as a vague sense that something is beside the point while you cannot name what.
As soon as you have hold of that direction, something changes in how you go into the day. You say no more easily to what does not belong, and a full yes to what does.
That is why every workshop with me begins with a circle in which everyone speaks what they have come for. That is the first practice of the day.
David Deida's three stages
Consecration connects to what David Deida calls the third stage. He describes the development of the man in three stages, and it is a useful map for seeing where you stand yourself.
The first stage. Fixed roles. The man earns, the woman cares. You take your worth from what you have and how you look, and you use your partner to fill your own shortfall. When it chafes, it is negotiated with silence, money or sex.
The second stage. The reaction to that. Equality, independence, and the task of developing both sides in yourself. You take your worth from what you can do. What you lose along the way is the tension between two poles, and many people stay stuck here in endlessly improving themselves.
The third stage. You aim at your deepest purpose and you give what you have to give. Your partner is no longer a means to complete yourself; together you go somewhere you cannot reach alone. Things are spoken honestly, also when that is uncomfortable, and the relationship itself becomes a practice.
Consecration joins in there. The third stage begins with the question of what you devote yourself to, because without that direction everything falls back on what you need from each other.
I use this division as a map, not as a ladder on which you stand higher or lower. Other teachers describe the same movement in other words, and most people sit in different stages on different terrains at the same time.
Transfiguration, everything is connected
Transfiguration is the realisation that the separation between you and the rest is thinner than it seems. Non-dual living is what I call it: you stop dividing the world into what is yours and what is not.
It is also what maithuna is about. The union of one's own consciousness with the whole, and that begins with the people closest to you.
Your beloved as a doorway. When you look at your partner you usually see a history. Yesterday's dishes, last week's remark, the habits you know by heart. Transfiguration asks that you look through that layer and see the sacred that stands there too. The same person, seen with other eyes. Touch then becomes an encounter.
Caring for your communication. If everything hangs together, then every word carries, and so does careless speech. Saying what you mean, asking for what you need, and listening until you have truly heard the other: in my work that is a practice in itself. Consent lives on it. A yes you speak while you feel something else does more damage than a no ever does.
And beyond the relationship. What you learn with one person you carry to the rest. The attention with which you touch your beloved is the same attention with which you hold a conversation with a stranger. The intimacy differs, the stance stays the same.
The orgasmic state asks for surrender
There is a state in which your body feels more than it is used to. Rolling, warm, awake, from your crown to your toes. Tantra calls that an orgasmic state, and it reaches further than what happens in a few seconds.
What is remarkable about it is that you cannot fetch it. You cannot work towards it, cannot try harder, cannot learn the right technique for it. It shows itself the moment you stop steering.
That is why surrender is central to everything I do. Surrender asks that you feel safe enough to put control down for a while. It asks trust in the hands that hold you. And it asks that you know your own yes and your own no, because everything that follows rests on that.
Seen that way, safety is the instrument itself. A nervous system that is carried opens by itself. A nervous system on its guard closes, however much you want it otherwise.
That is also why I work without pain, with continuous check-ins, and why you may stop at any moment without having to explain it. Read how safety and consent are built in.
Where I learn
In tantra the teacher is the first and the most indispensable element. The tradition says that the student prepares himself and that the teacher appears as soon as he is ready. That is how it went with me.
My tantra teacher is Swami Anahata. He works from kashmiri tantra and brings Eastern mysticism together with Western research into the body and the nervous system. What I describe above comes largely from his teaching, and from the years in which I began practising it myself.
By now I also stand beside him in front of the group. Awakened Masculinity was the first we gave together, a programme for men about direction, presence and what it takes to give your gift.
With Martina Magdalena, another student from his line, I guide the four-day Tantra and Shibari, the path of trust and surrender, in Prague. She holds the tantra and the ritual, I bring the rope.
And where I stand myself
I am a small guide on a large path. What I am good at is helping you understand surrender, in your body and not in your head. That is one piece of tantra, and there is much more.
The rest of that path I leave open. I do not send you in a direction and I do not tell you who your next teacher should be. Whoever wants to go further goes further, and the tradition says that the teachers you then need show up as soon as you are ready for them. That is how it went with me.
Why I do this with rope
Shibari is for me the instrument that makes these three movements tangible.
Rope asks for devotion, because you cannot possibly be half present while you tie someone. Rope makes the connection visible, because every movement of the one arrives with the other. And rope gives your body something to surrender to that you can feel, that carries you, and that stays when your thoughts fall away.
You need to know nothing about tantra to begin. Most people who walk in here came for the rope and found the rest along the way. Read what shibari is.
Where you can begin
The free introduction. Three hours, no experience needed, the clothes stay on. The easiest way to feel how I work. To the free introduction.
Shibari meets Tantra. Five editions, each with its own theme: massage, surrender, shame, primal play, and the Bind Me Loose weekend. See the agenda.
A one to one session. Built around what you need, at your pace. More about the private session.
Together with your partner. For couples who want to know what happens when you dare to see each other anew. Shibari for couples.