After many years of learning, working, and traveling together, Barbara and I came to a fork in the road of our collaboration. We had followed our muses, and our bliss, and arrived at a place where we had magically traded lives; I became the theater person, and Barbara became the sex person. Barbara went on to develop new and different kinds of sexuality workshops, collaborating with the extremely gifted master teacher of touch, Chester Mainard. She then fell in love with and taught some great workshops with Kate Bornstein, the visionary author, performer, activist, and “gender outlaw,” who inspired Barbara to pioneer new sex education that went beyond the gender binary.
Barbara created Urban Tantra: a fresh, new, inclusive, smart, hip, bold, very fun cutting-edge version of Tantra. She has taken it across the United States, and to many other countries, and her teachings have reached new, diverse audiences looking for transformative experiences designed for out-of-the-box personalities and lifestyles. Today Barbara is a world-class sex expert and educator, and Urban Tantra has made the world a more sexually satisfied, ecstatic, enlightened, and inclusive place.
So dear reader, you are in excellent hands. As you now begin your Urban Tantra journey, know that you are welcome here, whether you and/or your partner are inexperienced or experienced, young or old, trans or cis, differently abled, pierced or tattooed or not, or interested in kink or not. It doesn’t matter where you live, who you are, or what you do. You belong here if you want to be here. Barbara thinks you are perfect and sexy exactly as you are, and she will teach you delightful, yummy new things to help you live your life ever more deliciously and meaningfully. Happy trails!
Introduction to the New Edition
As I began the first draft of the first edition of Urban Tantra, I wrote, “I want a revolution!” Not only did I want a revolution in cultural attitudes about sexuality and spirituality, but I also wanted a revolution in Tantra: the only spiritual practice I’d ever found that welcomed sexuality as a path to spiritual freedom. I wanted that revolution. Then and there.
Now it’s eleven years later, and that revolution is well under way. I looked around the graduation circle at my most recent Urban Tantra Professional Training Program, and saw: a transgender professional dominatrix, a cisgender male medical doctor, a gay male sacred intimate, a nurse, an escort, a relationship coach, a social worker working with indigenous peoples, several sex educators, several more Tantra teachers, two yoga instructors, a performance artist, and an ordained minister. One-third of the group were people of color. We ranged in ages from early twenties to late sixties. We loved, cried, howled with laughter, felt deeply, experienced life-changing “ah-hah” moments, and supported and shared love with each other for an entire week. These were beautiful, brave, passionate explorers — and now they were my colleagues and friends. I initially wrote Urban Tantra because it was the book I had always wanted to read but could never find. I knew there were fierce, loving, spiritually minded, erotically focused people in the world who wanted that book, too. I wanted to meet them. To play with them. To work with them. To learn from them. And here they were. I wrote it, and they came. My dream come true.
So many of my Urban Tantric dreams have come true since 2007. The phrase conscious sexuality is now common. Sacred sex has expanded to embrace all sorts of different beliefs and practices. The field of sexuality education has exploded, providing resources to people of all races, religions, and cultural backgrounds. BDSM was taken off the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders list as of 2013, making it a consensual choice, not a mental illness. Non-monogamous relationships came out of the closet and invited us all to take a fresh look at how we create and maintain relationships. And then there was gender. Oh my! In recent years, the twin explosions of gender identities and trans rights initiatives have changed everything, opening a box of unlimited gender opportunities that can never be closed. Today, Urban Tantra is a global movement. The Urban Tantra Professional Training Program alone has graduated hundreds of practitioners from twenty-six countries, and they, in turn, are taking the practice into corners of the world I’d never dreamed it would go.
I got my revolution. Big time.
Now that we’re post-revolution, it’s time for Urban Tantra to grow into a new era. I’ve made revisions, updates, and additions to this edition, not only to bring Urban Tantra up to date, but also to cast my gaze toward the future. I have always regarded Urban Tantra as an ever-evolving practice. Where might we go next? What might Urban Tantra become next? This revised edition is a step into that future.
As often happens in revolutions, when someone raises a flag, everyone else who’s been longing for a revolution runs over to introduce themselves and ask how they can help. That’s just what happened in 2007, when the first edition of Urban Tantra was published. Everyone who had felt shut out of other schools of Tantra discovered a flag under which they could rally. We first gathered online and then in person — from all around the world.
In this revised edition, I’m extending an invitation to even more inclusivity. I offer practices and suggestions for people in multi-partner relationships. The number of people openly practicing consensual non-monogamy has grown enormously. Over the past decade, I’ve developed Tantra workshops for triads, quads, and more. In this edition, I suggest ways in which partner Tantra can include more than one partner.
Many schools of Tantra have become more inclusive, and so groups of people with common interests and identities have formed their own Tantric groups or incorporated Tantric principles and practices into existing organizations and schools of thought. Gay Tantra, Dark Tantra, Pagan Tantra, Queer Tantra, and Women’s Tantra are just a few of the new flavors of Tantra. I find inspiration in the many creative expressions of Tantra blooming around the planet and I hope this new edition of Urban Tantra can, in turn, inspire them.
I have also been inspired by the rise of the asexuality movement. An asexual is someone who either does not experience sexual attraction, or experiences attraction but feels no need to act out that attraction sexually. Lack of sexual interest and/or desire is commonly pathologized in our culture. I applaud asexuals and aromantics (people who experience little or no romantic attraction to others) for refusing to be pathologized. And it turns out that an increasing number of asexuals and aromantics are becoming drawn to Tantra. In this edition, I point out practices that allow people with different sexual and romantic affinities to find ways of relating, running energy, and creating connection and intimacy that do not have to include sex and/or romance.
The relationship between Tantra and BDSM — considered radical and heretical when I first wrote about it — is now common practice. The explosion caused by the book Fifty Shades of Grey catapulted BDSM above ground and into the middle class. Those BDSM practitioners who had always played with a Tantric touch now had a name for the energy play they had long enjoyed. Tantrikas who liked things a little more physically or emotionally intense had permission to go there. Some Tantric practitioners are now combining elements of power and intense sensation with traditional Tantra in a variation sometimes referred to as Dark Tantra. Longtime BDSM players are coming out of the closet as spiritual seekers and creating scenes intentionally designed to welcome god/goddess/universe/all-that-is into their dungeons. Communities in which kinky people and Tantrikas meet, mingle, and play together are growing and can now be found all over the world.