Tantra invites you to return to the body! But how important is that?

We live in a society that has lost its body. It is curious to see that we are both obsessed with aesthetics and health - appearance and functioning - and disconnected from the body that pulsates and feels. Our relationship with the body that feels is one of hatred or ignorance, or a combination of the two. In this difficult relationship there is an enormous influence of culture, family, religious paths and the educational system. We live under the aegis of a patriarchal model, strongly supported by the protagonism of the mind and man over the supposed "antagonistic forces". The mind is more important than the body, just as man is more important than nature. Thus, in our historical-civilizing movement, we repress and suppress the feminine, including confidence in the senses, in the human instinct, in intuition. Just as nature is seen as chaotic and dangerous if left unchecked, as women are seen, the patriarchal model translates feelings as a sign of weakness and vulnerability, almost a distraction. And, especially in the West, with the predominance of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a spiritual vision that treats the body as a source of sin and an enemy to the elevation of the spirit predominates. Finally, we incorporate a world view based on scientific knowledge, which despises what is not observable or measurable. In this way we lose the sacred aspect of the body and replace it with the understanding of the "well-functioning machine, whose parts can be replaced, but which eventually wear out and end". In other words, we created a cultural context that combines the predominance of the mind over the body, that blames the body for worldly desires and sin, and that despises the subtle, the mysterious, the abstract. In fact, we created a huge problem for human beings and their real need for self-knowledge, based on the fact that we are induced to disconnect from our bodies.

The framework of knowledge in psychology and anthropology says that the body expresses the way in which a person experiences himself and lives in the world. Therefore, we must recognize that our body expression is shaped by past events and, mainly, by the interpretations that we outline from them. All experiences count, and the most significant ones certainly produced energy signatures in our body, precisely because of our inability to vent their expressions and resulting feelings. Freud says that "in the unconscious nothing ends, nothing is passed or forgotten". Psychoanalysis states that unresolved emotions will penetrate behavior, manifesting themselves in different ways, such as in dreams, thoughts, games, physical symptoms and relationship patterns. 
Thus, we have an account that does not close: while the current cultural model induces us to disconnect from the body that feels, it is clear that we are thus moving away from any and all possibility of building a healthy ego development. As long as we stay away from body awareness, we will not be able to deal with the muscle armor resulting from our need to defend ourselves from emotions, difficult memories, trauma and stress. Thus, the demands of family, society and religions will predominate over our real demands for self-acceptance, self-knowledge and personal development. Wilheim Reich and his followers gave us the opportunity to understand that when we turn off the tap of difficult feelings - pain, anger, fear - we are also turning off the tap of pleasure, courage, joy and love. In other words, we are turning off the tap of life, of vitality, of being here and belonging to this existence.

In defending ourselves from emotions, we tighten our muscles and, above all, we condition ourselves to be in a state of struggle, of readiness, of control. Thus, we lose even more the condition of trusting in the abundance of existence, in the perfection of universal consciousness, in the supreme architecture that organizes and makes available everything we need to live in harmony and in peace. We cannot: we must be ready for the fight!

Tantra is a path of personal development that has always followed paths opposite to this view presented above. The tantric tradition values ​​the body, human energy, human senses and, above all, the sacred marriage between male and female, in us, in relationships with others, with nature and with existence. The tantric scriptures present a view of life as something special that takes place in the here and now - unlike the view of life as a preliminary that prepares you for the kingdom of heaven, where there, yes, the whole existence will finally make sense. The various facets of the Tantric tradition converge in saying that Tantric practices are relevant to all those who seek to cultivate self-knowledge and are sincerely engaged in the task of spiritual evolution.

But Western society in general still confuses tantra with sex. It just impoverishes what is the essence of Tantra. Tantra is a state of connection with our higher consciousness, and tantric practice the way that brings us into contact with the divine essence, something that we have already experienced and that is available in us. For Tantra, the world is not an external reality imposed on us, but an experience of co-creation - the world is both external and internal. If we stick to the idea of ​​victims of a reality over which we have no power to transform, we are condemning ourselves to the constant suffering of those who are only recipients of the designs of external forces, and we only reinforce the importance of the state of "permanent struggle". The world in the Tantric view is part of our state of consciousness.

For Tantra, the search consists of living an experience of transcendence, with the human body as the main "vehicle" to make this new state possible. But transcendence of what, exactly? The verb transcend means to overcome something, to go beyond some limit. A good way to interpret this state of transcendence has to do with the idea of ​​the cycles of existence. While in the Western Cartesian tradition the passage of time is seen as a linear experience that links the past to the future, the tantric approach views it as an interesting creation and recreation of cycles. The existence and the universe for Tantra seems to pulse in cycles of expansion, contraction and relaxation. Especially, at each cycle the human being provides himself with opportunities for learning and expanding consciousness.

Breathing cycles are good examples, as are meditative and orgasmic experiences. Weddings, relationships, projects, courses, among other examples, are happening all the time with us. But, in our disconnection with the body and with self-knowledge based on the flow of feelings and energetic expression, we neglect the potential for renewal and deepening that these cycles offer. In particular, we identify with the emotional reactions and attitudes resulting from the experiences in these cycles. Thus, many of us bring limiting understandings such as: "every man (woman) is the same", "I prefer to be alone", "I can't be successful", "I don't deserve to be loved" , "I am not able", "my body is not able to bring me to orgasm", "sex is dirty" and so on. They are nothing less than identifications of our ego, which remove a good part of our ability to understand the self-responsibility we have with the creation of our realities. Tantra, in essence, is an invitation to transcend these limiting identifications of the ego, to transcend the self-imposed boundaries between what is material and what is divine, between what is inferior and what is superior, right and wrong, clear and dark; transcend dualities and recognize them as aspects of the same energy.

Tantra is the way to celebrate existence, to accept our condition as beings in constant evolution and an unwavering commitment to self-knowledge. Tantra is the realization here and now of all human potential. For Tantra, life experience takes place in a state of relaxation, not in struggle. In the struggle, the energetic movement ceases and the human being stiffens. It goes against life. Life for Tantra is movement, it is a constant flow, just as the waters move towards the ocean, in certain moments in a more chaotic flow, in others more contemplative and serene.

For this realization, we need to return to the body, recognizing it as the sacred instrument of connection with the various possibilities that abundant existence offers us. When we are fully aware of our body and our emotions, we will definitely have created the best conditions for making autonomous and healthy choices in our life and creating and maintaining healthy relationships that deepen intimacy.

This movement back to the body cannot be done directly by the mind, it is not the best agent for that. That is, turning to the body cannot be done from an intellectual, theoretical and scientific movement. In fact, it cannot be done without the role of body energy. It is the link between all these possibilities, it is the continuum that connects the dimensions, the mundane and the spiritual, the mind and emotions.

For this reason, tantric practices involve the awakening of body energy. At the heart of Tantra is the search for a meditative state, that is, the realization of the sharing of the protagonism of existence between all the control centers, instead of just the mind. In meditation we create experiences of connection with the silence of our guts, with the power of our chakras and, in short, we reduce the power of influence of the limiting identifications of our ego - hence the idea of ​​transcendence that I mentioned above. In Tantra breathing, meditation and energetic movement are powerful instruments for the expansion of being.
Tantra takes place in the here and now!