Overview
Initially, the reason to consider working with sexuality as part of a spiritual practice is to reduce any constrictions to the free flow of your life force. Often trauma or societal related constrictions can be directly accessed with sexual healing work. Generally, this is much more effective than other means, it is especially more effective than talk therapy.
Welcoming Sexuality
Sexuality can also be used as a tool in transcending the ego. In fact, if sexuality is ignored it can hinder our spiritual movement. Our spiritual progress can be undermined by our suppressed desires and emotional needs.
When the lower chakras are open and flowing, we create a stable base and have access to a grounded energy that can support connecting with deep and subtle states. By engaging sexual energies consciously, as fully as we are able, we weaken the ego’s control on us. It can release us from our chattering mind by intensifying and circulating the erotic energies that flow around, within and through us.
Staying Present, Quiet Mind
Sexuality helps to focus on the present moment, and to become more aware and mindful. It awakens and mobilizes the lifeforce within. It can be a portal into a meditative and prayerful state. As our attention drops more into the present, we are able to widen our awareness. With practice, the ecstasy that is generated can be used to expand beyond the individual, feeling into the oneness of all.
How we access sexual energies – whether by the gaze of our eyes, the caress of our voice, or the gentleness of tender touching, is irrelevant. What matters is the spiritual momentum of these activities. Working with sexual energy – whether alone, with a stranger, with a partner we believe we know well, or with the trees, the skies, the mountains and the oceans – is always consensual, mutual, wholly present, ethical, and expressive of the oneness of all.
Types of Sessions
Broadly, there are three ways to work with sexuality: healing, ecstatic, and awakening. Generally, we first focus on healing. Healing sessions focus on removing blockages to the natural flow of our energy. Ecstatic sessions focus on increasing the capacity for bliss and ecstasy. And, awakening sessions focus on cultivating a deep observer and moving into the space of no mind.
Referring to the “Model for Awakening” (see Spiritual Cross Training paper) may be helpful in understand the primary focus of each type of tantra session:
Healing sessions have the effect of reducing the thickness of the egoic/identity barrier. Dissolving energetic blockages and fixed behavior and emotional patterns.
Ecstatic sessions open our channels to the flow of bliss and as a result tend to make the egoic/identity barrier more permeable and easier to move through it.
Awakening sessions are about dropping into a deep witness consciousness and resting in stillness without or with minimal thought or internal commentary.
Sometimes a session will impact multiple areas of our ego or identity, this is always welcomed, but generally the focus we have going into a session is where most of the movement will occur.
What a Typical Session Looks Like
In general, all types of session follow a roughly similar sequence:
Check In.
Creating Sacred Space.
Stating Desires, Fears, and Boundaries
A Preliminary Connecting Process or Exercise.
The main work or practiced for the session. This will vary depending on the type of session.
Closing Connection Process.
Debriefing or Summarizing and Integrating Process.
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