I was not often in the city in August. I was usually in the woods somewhere, either facilitating or participating in a workshop. I loved my long, warm workshop days. They were filled with the kind of fun and wonder you can only appreciate after too many adult years spent longing for the simple joys of summer camp. So, my workshops were actually summer camp for adults — adults who just happened to be captivated with sex, spirituality, and healing, that is. We held workshops on every imaginable New Age subject: Tantra, Taoism, Shamanism, erotic massage, breathwork, rebirthing, herbalism, Reiki, chanting, dancing, channeling, clairvoyance, clairsentience, and clairaudience. We may have been New Age, but we weren’t wimps. We were workshop warriors. There was nothing we wouldn’t look at, breathe through, chant out, process, or massage. We looked at our shame, our grief, our boundaries, our wounds, and our joy. We forgave, we accepted, we hugged, we orgasmed, we loved.
We lived intensely. We were grateful to be living at all.
Years of AIDS had taken their toll on all of us. We were gay, lesbian, queer, heterosexual, bisexual, two-spirit. (We weren’t yet transgendered — that wouldn’t come along for another five or ten years.) We were sex workers, artists, teachers, massage therapists, nurses, writers, accountants, marketing directors, corporate vice presidents, astronomers, and herpetologists. Some of us had been sexually abused; some of us hadn’t. Many of us were recovering or practicing Catholics. Most of us should have been dead by now. Some of us would be soon. What we shared was a longing to reclaim our spiritual and sexual selves from the Judeo-Christian scrap heap they had landed on when “sex equals death” became the new urban motto. Most of us had lost dozens, if not hundreds, of friends and coworkers to the AIDS epidemic. And they were still dying.
I had come to this New Age out of sheer desperation. The AIDS crisis had stripped away everything I thought I could take for granted in life: my friends, my sexual freedom, my sense of safety in the world. I needed help. I needed a space to grieve and to regain my strength. Most of all, I needed a new deity. I’d pretty much lived without one since I’d run screaming from Catholicism when I was fifteen. I needed a deity who was on my side, who loved and approved of the world my friends and I lived in. I needed a deity who was queer and weird and paradoxical and kind and funny and very, very sexual. Just like me.
This desire for deity was new for me. I’d always been interested in mysticism and sex, but I kept pretty quiet about both. When I told my mother I was no longer going to pretend to be a Catholic, she was horrified. She told me I couldn’t just resign. “You’ve been baptized!” Through her tears of anguish she warned, “You’ll go to hell!” Somewhere down deep I carried that message. If I was too mystical and too sexual, that big, angry, vengeful god I’d escaped from would spot me and there would be hell to pay. Literally.
So I downplayed both my sexuality and my spirituality for nearly twenty years. But the AIDS crisis forced me to confront both. In metaphysics, we say that no matter how bad things get, there is always something to be grateful for. I’m grateful to the AIDS crisis for Tantra.
In the course of my workshop summers, I became a Tantrika. (All that means is someone who practices Tantra.) To be precise, I didn’t actually become a Tantrika, I simply realized I had always been one. I didn’t need to convert to Tantra, and I didn’t need to find a church to do it in. All I needed were open eyes, deep breaths, and a sense of adventure. I didn’t need a new anthropomorphized deity at all; I simply needed a sex-positive spiritual practice. I became a Tantrika because it was both logical and practical. (I may be a Pisces, but I have Virgo rising.) Tantra took me up out of the grief and the pain and the helplessness to someplace powerful and ecstatic. Tantra made me clear and strong in the face of chaos. Tantra made me wet. Tantra cut through the crap. When I shared Tantra with others, it did the same for them. And now, after my ecstatic moment with the Cowboy, it seemed Tantra worked even in lap dancing parlors.
Although I learned Tantra in lovely, peaceful, wooded retreats, I don’t live in one. I have a penchant for big, boisterous, loud, overwhelming cities. I love my periodic retreats to the beach or the woods, but I can’t seem to stay away from the big city. Sadly, it’s very hard to do a three-day, under-the-stars, open-air Tantric ritual with a hot tub in New York City. It just doesn’t happen. So whenever I tried to create a ritual like that in New York, I would inevitably feel frustrated and stupid. There had to be a way to practice Tantra authentically, effectively, and ecstatically in environments of concrete and steel.
Before I could figure out how to practice Tantra in urban (and suburban) environs, I first had to ask, “What is the essence of Tantra?” I knew it wasn’t just about being in nature. Being in the midst of quiet woods or by a roaring ocean was healing and nurturing, but it wasn’t nature alone that produced the passion, creativity, and ecstatic peacefulness I had found in my workshops. Nature provided me the opportunity to slow down, breathe more deeply, drop my emotional armor, and simply be more conscious of the beauty in each moment of the day.
Consciousness. That was it! The difference between my ordinary urban life and my wooded Tantric retreats was consciousness. If I could be completely conscious and present in each moment, it wouldn’t matter whether I practiced Tantra in Bali or on the Bowery. Not only would location not matter, but neither would strict adherence to “traditional” Tantric practices. Anything I performed with complete consciousness would be completely alive, authentic, and transformative. It was this theory that launched my search for a new kind of Tantric practice. In the pages to come, I’m going to share with you what I found: a flexible, conscious, Urban Tantric practice that you can use, enjoy, exploit, adapt, expand, fold, spindle, or mutilate, as long as it works for you and brings you joy.
Part 1: Tantra: The Basics
Tantra teaches us that by embracing everything in life and delving into it totally, anything can be turned into a transformative, ultimately ecstatic, experience.
We’ll begin by looking at what Tantra is, what it is not, and what it can offer you sexually, spiritually, and in your everyday life. Then we’ll explore ecstasy. What is the difference between pleasure and ecstasy? Why is ecstasy important? Why might you want to prioritize the pursuit of ecstasy in your own life?
Next, I’ll ask you to change your mind about how sex works. I’ll introduce you to the energetic aspects of sex and give you some simple yet powerful tips on how to double your pleasure simply by changing the way you think and focus your attention.
Then I’ll move to the body. You’ll learn why breath, meditation, movement, and laughter are the building blocks of expanded orgasm, and you’ll learn how to use them to build your own sensual stairway to paradise. You’ll also learn the secrets of exquisite touch and how the way you touch can transform your relationships. Last, you’ll learn how to do all of this in the time you have available in your busy schedule.