If you rely solely on the mainstream media for your information, you might believe that tantra is simply a hedonistic sexual practice where yoga meets black magic. A tiny part of that is true, and yet there is so much more to tantra beyond such cliches.
So what is Tantric massage?
Most men who find their way to tantric massage with me, arrive with a picture already in their heads: candles, incense, a sensual massage with a happy ending, and something vaguely exotic attached to it. Some of that picture is true, but that superficial outline misses the point.
Back in the 90s, Sting famously talked about his seven hour tantric sex sessions with wife Trudie Styler. In reality, he’d said it as a joke in response to Bob Geldof - who was interviewing him at the time - who had said he was ‘a 3-minute man’. And while Sting later went on to explain that yoga had indeed lengthened his intimacy sessions, he also revealed that the seven hours included dinner, a movie, candles, massage, tea and a chat.
Nevertheless, it played into the convenient pigeonhole that tabloid newspapers in particular had created for anything vaguely spiritual and non-Western. New age gobbledygook for modern hippies. Tantra was seen as a sexual taboo born of the occult.
The reality is that tantric massage is not merely a massage with a little Tantra sprinkled on top. Tantra is the main event - with or without massage. But to truly understand what that means, it helps to know what Tantra actually is, and where it came from.
The origins of tantra
The word tantra comes from a Sanskrit root meaning to stretch, or to weave. Translated as ‘the warp of the loom’ it was seen as the threads that hold everything else together. It viewed the universe as an interconnected entity where everything is interwoven.
I love this meaning, because weaving is exactly what Tantra does. It weaves together what most spiritual paths keep apart: body and spirit, desire and awakening, the ordinary and the sacred.
Tantric texts began appearing in India around the fifth and sixth centuries. They did not come from one single religion, they combined Hindu, Buddhist and Jain lineages, each quite different, and sharing a method rather than a belief.
Many spiritual paths of the time viewed the body and the senses as obstacles to be transcended. Tantra took the opposite view. Everything - the body included - is consciousness expressing itself; so nothing needs to be rejected and anything can become a portal to the divine under the right circumstances.
Contrary to its modern reputation, Tantra was not a fringe movement. For centuries it was a mainstream practice. Kings sponsored tantric rituals, temples were built to tantric designs, and it spread as far as Nepal, Tibet and Southeast Asia. Much of what the Western world now practise as yoga - including the chakras and breathwork - grew out of tantric circles.
How tantra became a byword for sex
Across most of Tantra, sex barely features. Sexual rites did exist in some lineages, mostly the transgressive schools, where breaking taboos was a way of dissolving the ordinary sense of self.
But when Tantra reached the West in the twentieth century, largely through the 1960s counterculture movement and a later movement known as Neo-Tantra, the West took the part it was hungriest for: Sex. And as sex became the headline, much of the wider framework of initiation, daily practice, sound and mantra, fell away.
Neo-Tantra is not to be dismissed. It gave many people permission to experience pleasure without shame, and I value that sexual liberation, but to be clear, Tantra is not the same thing as sacred sexuality, but sexuality - held consciously - has its place within it.
Even before the 1960s and free love being embraced, the reputation for sex and black magic had already been cultivated, largely from British colonial writers and reform movements who branded tantra as obscene and drove it underground. There was a similar reaction from the mainstream to the Neo-Tantra movement. And then Sting gave the conservative press a more modern opportunity to dust off the ridicule all over again.
Practice not theory
Tantra was never learned from books. That’s not just a metaphor for the need of action over theory - many texts were deliberately written in coded language so they couldn't be practised without a teacher.
Initiation was a requisite, and the transmission from teacher to student was the way in. Tantra has always passed from person-to-person, body-to-body. Touch is the oldest form in which it has ever been taught - and it remains that way today.
For me, Tantra is not simply a technique I use at work - it’s a way of life. When men ask me what it is, I tell them simply: touch, breath, sound and awareness, used as vehicles for awakening.
What men find when they experience tantric massage
In my sessions, massage and Tantra are not separate things - neither are tantric and erotic massage. I work with sexual energy, and as such, it would be a little prudish to do that while avoiding the body's main sexual centre. Consensual genital touch is part of the work.
What makes it specifically tantric though, is not the touch itself, but what happens around that touch.
Most men arrive stuck in their heads. When I ask them what they're feeling, they don't always know. They tend to describe a form of numbness; a body they live in, but they struggle to name what they actually feel. Years of performing, controlling and holding it all together have taught them to manage the body rather than inhabit it.
That same conditioning shows up in arousal. Most men have been taught, without ever choosing it, to meet arousal in their bodies by holding their breath, keeping the voice inside, and tensing up. That concentrates the energy at the genitals and keeps it there, where it builds quickly and overwhelms them. Instead, I invite men to do the opposite: breathe, make sound, relax and become liberated to enjoy the experience more fully and without reserve. When the body relaxes and the voice opens, the energy stops pooling in one place and begins to move through the whole body. A recent client described the feeling afterwards as if he floated through the whole next day.
It’s not always easy. Breath and sound, having been dormant for so long, can feel strange to use in front of another. When I began this practice, my body did the same thing: I clenched. Letting go took time and attention, and it still asks for both. If you find that hard, you're not doing it wrong, you’re simply meeting your conditioning. I create an environment and the conditions where letting go becomes possible.
The moment just before orgasm is one that I hold with particular reverence. It is a moment of vulnerability; a threshold where profound transformation can occur. It is also where - when slowed down - many men can observe for the first time, that orgasm and ejaculation are not the same thing. They are separate processes, and with practice they can be experienced separately.
Tantra tradition has long taught the importance of the conservation of sexual essence, and I do teach ejaculation control. But I don't treat it as a rule - there is a place for ejaculation too. What matters is the awareness of the possibility, and then control can become a choice.
Initiatory experiences can also happen in a single session, but they can't be promised. My role is to channel energy; I don't direct what it does. The teacher opens the door, and how far a man is willing to step through it is his choice: how much can he let himself breathe, make sound, and surrender? What arises once he does is not something either of us can control. When initiation comes, it is often spontaneous. It can be profound - and I feel blessed to watch in awe as a man reclaims his power and confidence.
Tantric massage takes men beyond pleasure
The man on my massage table is not just a passive recipient, but a participant in his own awakening. No one can breathe or make sound for you. What my tantric massage offers is a way back in. Not a performance and not a goal to reach, but a return to feeling.
The result is an experience beyond pleasure.
‘Beyond pleasure’ does not mean the absence of pleasure. It means pleasure that has somewhere to go. Once you understand the power of that embodied pleasure, you can then use it in many aspects of daily life, not just sexually.
That is when you realise that tantra goes way beyond sexual release. That is when you discover the art of tantric living.
