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Frank Answers About Yoga, Tantra, and Sex

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Question: There seems to be a conservative Christian reaction to the practice of yoga. It is accused not only of being an alien spirituality but some forms of esoteric yoga are viewed as being sexualized practices. I have practiced yoga but haven’t experienced anything sexual about it. Do you have any comments on these concerns?

Frank answers: The accusation that yoga contributes to sexual liberalism is not new. The widespread practice of postural yoga did emerge in the West at the same time as the sexual revolution in the 1960s. A sexualized Neo-Tantra practice took hold in New Age California, notoriously at the Esalen Institute, and the sensationalism of this practice cast its light on all emerging yoga practices.

Naked practice at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Esalen was the hotbed of the human potential movement that drew upon meditation, yoga, and Asian spiritualities, as interpreted by Americans. Many contemporary practices, from holotropic breathwork to ecstatic dance to somatic therapy were born in that cultural incubator.

I posted an article on the old Frank Answers blog in 2015 in response to the accusation of conservative Christian preachers that yoga has an alien character that makes it incompatible with the Christian faith and that it channels sexual energy. So I will simply republish that article here with a bit of additional editing.

To get a good statement of this conservative Christian view I went to Albert Mohler’s (in)famous blog article of September 20, 2010, “The Subtle Body—Should Christians Practice Yoga.” Moehler, then president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was reflecting on the content of Stefanie Syman’s book, The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, which had just been published (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). He wrote:

Syman describes yoga as a varied practice, but she makes clear that yoga cannot be fully extricated from its spiritual roots in Hinduism and Buddhism. She is also straightforward in explaining the role of sexual energy in virtually all forms of yoga and of ritualized sex in some yoga traditions. She also explains that yoga “is one of the first and most successful products of globalization, and it has augured a truly post-Christian, spiritually polyglot country.”

Moehler clarified his concern about the role of sexual energy in yoga when he wrote,

While most adherents of yoga avoid the more exotic forms of ritualized sex that are associated with tantric yoga, virtually all forms of yoga involve an emphasis on channeling sexual energy throughout the body as a means of spiritual enlightenment.”

Yoga Channeling Sexual Energy

I might have responded to Mohler’s 2010 article that I never heard any mention of sex in any yoga class I attended and I didn’t feel extra sexy for having practiced yoga. But a month or two after Moehler’s blog article appeared, I had a private session with a young male yoga teacher on how yoga improves one’s sexual performance.

I used to attend this yoga teacher’s vinyasa class at the local YMCA. As a young yoga teacher he was trying to get some classes going outside the Y (for extra income, I’m sure). One day he announced at the end of the class: “You know, we’re all adults living in the 21st century and we should be able to discuss the fact that yoga can be great for your sex life.” He said that he was offering a class in a venue outside the Y in which he would talk about how yoga helps with sex and show us some techniques.

It turned out that I was the only one who showed up for his class. He said that he was willing to give instruction one-on-one since I had already paid for the session, if that was OK with me. I’ll give this young man credit. That 27-year old yoga teacher gave a class on yoga for sex to this then-67-year old pastor. (Actually, I didn’t tell him my profession until the end of the session, after we had established a bond, and he asked what I did. Some unchurched or non-religious people get weird when they find out I’m a clergyman.)

What he said in our session made sense to me in terms of the physical techniques. Utilizing all the deep breathing, pelvic floor techniques, and relaxation you get from practicing yoga can probably give you better sexual performance.  He also claimed that yoga can help with premature ejaculation, improve the libido, and, of course, increase your stamina. Do lots of pelvic floor work. For example, move up and down in cobra pose. This places pressure and release on the pelvis not unlike having sex.

low cobra pose

For other poses with a pelvic thrust that are especially good, he recommended bridge, camel, and wheel.  Eagle pose squeezes the genitals. So does mula bandha (root lock) combined with butterfly or bound angle pose

backward bend
Camel pose

And don’t forget the breathing exercises (pranayama). One that I learned and practiced after participating in a course on “The Embodied History of Yoga” at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in 2015, co-taught by Professor David Gordon White and Yoganand Michael Carroll, is kapalabhati or “bellows breath.” It entails rapid breathing in and out through the nostrils down to the belly. A couple of minutes of this is both exhilarating and exhausting

My young yoga teacher testified that yoga has been good for his sex life. I advised him at the end of our session that if he does this session again with older men in the class, he might want to be aware of aging and medical conditions that affect sexual performance, such as the loss of testosterone or the effects of chemotherapy.

Pelvic exercises for men and women, whether in yoga or in physical training, and being in good physical shape generally, can undoubtedly have a positive impact on sexual performance. With regard to Albert Moehler’s concern, these practices don’t depend on invoking spiritual energy to channel sexual energy—unless you give credence to the Tantric subtle body.

The Origin and Spread of Tantra

Tantra as we know it entered India in the fourth century, perhaps from Persia, and became a dominant village religion during the middle ages. It was primarily concerned with fertility and the powers of life. Sexual rituals are usually a part of fertility cults and they were a part of what became Tantra. Only centuries later did Tantra become an esoteric practice.

The Tantras are actually texts that “weave together” (which is what tantra means) spiritual and mundane ideas.  It was not a system complete in itself but it influenced popular Hinduism, Buddhist traditions in India and Tibet, Jainism, Islam in India, Sikhism, Kashmirian Shivaism, and Taoism in China.

The Tantra movement emphasized the body as a microcosm of the universe and the abode of divinity, especially the divine feminine. Because it was anti-ascetic it rejected orthodox Brahmanism.  It embraced the realities of everyday life, including diet and sex.  Every woman became an incarnation of the goddess Shakti. Men, too, had this divine feminine within them  because the power of Shakti (energy) was seen as residing in the body whereas the masculine Shiva (consciousness) was outside the body. The influential historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, wrote that “In tantrism, the human body acquires an importance it had never before attained in the spiritual history of India” (Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1958, 2009, p. 227).

buddha shakti yab yum
Figurine of Buddha and Shakti in Yab Yum pose.

In India, Tantra contributed to the development of Hatha Yoga, which is the most commonly practiced form of yoga in the world today. “Ha” is Sanskrit for sun and “tha”’ is moon. Embedded in Hatha yoga is the idea of the union of opposites, overcoming the dualism of solar and lunar energies, the masculine and feminine aspects of the self, the duality of mind and body, even bringing together the divine and the human.

shiva-shakti union

Historic Tantra

Before there were yogis practicing Hatha Yoga as we know it, there was the virile hero who offered himself in sacrifice to hungry dakinis or yoginis (female demons and witches, respectively) by lying in fields or on mounds or in cremation grounds. The blood-thirsty dakinis or yoginis would fly down to eat him. He bought them off with his life-giving semen in exchange for their menstrual fluids (each empowering the other). His reward was being carried off by a dakini to their coven where he became a consort (daka).

It’s important to understand that the sexualized rituals did not have to do with copulating but with collecting and consuming sexual fluids, which could be exchanged orally or through upward genital extraction (upward suction).

yoginis and virile yogi
Yoginis exchanging bodily fluids with the virile hero

Suctioning vagina fluid up through the penis or retaining semen would require a lot of practice and use of upward draw of the internal organs of the body. This is where pulling up the lower internal organs and holding them with the abdominal lock (uddiyana bandha) would be helpful. But for semen retention right at the point of ejaculation and orgasm? That would require initiation by a guru and plenty of practice! It was definitely not a practice for beginners. (See below)

The legend of the virile hero becoming a consort (daka) of dakinis and receiving powers from them became the basis of Tantra or Kaula rituals. As David Gordon White wrote, “Kaula practitioners were primarily concerned with this-worldly powers (siddhis) and bodily immortality (jivanmukti), with the enjoyment (bhukti) of said powers and immortality taking precedence over any ideal of consciousness raising or disembodied liberation from cyclic rebirth (mukti), embraced by the more conventional Tantric practitioners” (David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini:  “Tantric Sex” in its South Asian Contexts [Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003], 10). The fact that kings became patrons of and perhaps even participants in Tantric rituals and built temples in which to enact them indicates that worldly powers and blessings were expected from the successful encounter, not just spiritual enlightenment

Yogini_temple_Bhedaghat
Yogini temple at Behdathat, India. It is a circular structure enclosing a large open field. The heroes could lie in the open field waiting for the yoginis to swoop down on them. After a successful encounter they could fly away with the yoginis.

Sublimation of Tantric Practice

So how did Tantra become a quest for spiritual enlightenment? According to White, it was through a process of sublimation (see Kiss of the Yogini, chapter 8). Respectable householders desired to participate in the nocturnal Tantric rites, and as a result the rites were sanitized and spiritualized between the tenth and twelfth centuries. The fierce yoginis were internalized in the energies of the chakras of Hatha yoga. The goddess Shakti was represented as the coiled serpent (kundalini) located within the base of the pelvis. She was waiting to be awakened and sent soaring through the chakras to unite with Shiva outside the body (just above the crown of the head), resulting in a union of energy and consciousness. This was the experience of enlightenment. It was pursued by creating vibrations (spanda) through the chanting of mantras as well as breathing exercises. Practices were developed to awaken the kundalini at the base of the pelvic area (perineum) and sent the energy (Shakti) upward through a series of chakras at the pelvis, sacrum, navel, heart, throat, third eye, and to Shiva above the crown of the head. This joined energy with consciousness and it is the subtle body Syman referenced in the title of her book.

This is a map of the seven chakras. Some systems include twelve or more chakras. Modern yoga has given the chakras psychological meanings, as indicated on this chart.

The modern Kundalini Yoga, branded by Yogi Bhajan in his “Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization (3HO) in 1968, tries to hasten the process of moving energy up the chakras through chanting (mantras), breath work (pranayama) connected with vigorous movement (kriyas), muscular locks (bandhas), and hand positions (mudras). Although a Kundalini Yoga class might initially resemble a typical Hatha Yoga class with asanas and meditation, the practice includes a variety of other elements to encourage the awakening of the Kundalini energy and it can be pretty vigorous, as I can attest from having done such a class in its full version. It was very vigorous.

kundalini yoga class-Crown of Eternity
Kundalini brand yoga class

In historic Tantra the novice or initiate needed a guru or master to guide him through the process of awakening the kundalini. The ritual process was exceedingly complicated. (See the description in Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom [Princeton University Press, 1958), 219–27.) The result was what White calls the “masculinization of Tantric initiation” in which the male guru essentially replaced the female yogini. The whole practice was countered the purity constraints of High Hinduism (Brahmanism). Prohibited foods (e.g., meat, wine, fish, parched grain) and bodily fluids (e.g. vaginal fluids and semen) were consumed. This was to effect a breakthrough of consciousness rather than to experience transformation by consumption of the substances themselves. The doing of the earlier, sexually raw Tantric rites was subsumed under gnosis (knowledge) in the quest for enlightenment. The gnostic character of esoteric tantra lent itself to the New Age quest for spiritual (and sexual!) freedom.

Consuming sexual fluids — figures on an Indian temple. Note the male represented as a horned god.

New Age Neo-Tantra interpreted the infamous last of the five Ms (maithuna) as sexual intercourse. Originally it was not sexual intercourse as an end in itself. The object was to obtain and consume the sexual fluids. Tantric adepts practiced coitus reservatus (ejaculation control) in order not to ejaculate but to reverse the flow of the semen from out of the body to up into the body while also sucking the vaginal fluids of the woman into his body through the penis. The life forces were thus retained and the body’s energy was not lost. This technique was/is not learned without a guide (a guru) and it was practiced and controlled within ritualized sex. Some of the early New Age gurus like Charles Muir, the founder of the Neo-Tantra movement in the U.S., held workshops to teach the techniques of ejaculation control not so much to retain the semen in one’s body as to produce bigger and better orgasms.

In New Age practice  the essence of Tantra is connection between couples. When we connect to the other in Tantra the effect is not only to relinquish the barriers between two individuals for sexual purposes but also is a way of connecting deeper to our own bodies and to witness how allowing another’s energy to impact us can profoundly shift our own life force and cultivate feelings of wellbeing. 

Neo-Tantra Sex Workshops

Your ordinary yoga class doesn’t necessarily promote sex (although the sexual energy is there in the body, isn’t it?). But Tantra historically has and does. The temple frescos on Indian temples show not only ejaculation control, but also ordinary copulation and masturbation. One would get the impression that India was awash in sex and this was undoubtedly the reason Hindu Brahmans taught and practiced renunciation of material reality (considered an illusion), including those five-Ms, in order to obtain enlightenment.

Tantra’s metaphysics, on the other hand, regarded the world as real and the body as a microcosm of the world. Whatever was in the cosmos was in the body. Tantra’s theology of the divinity within the body made the idea of transgressing these forbidden fruits plausible. As George Feuerstein wrote, “If the world is in essence divine, so must be the body. If we must honor the world as a creation or an aspect of divine Power (Shakti), we must likewise honor the body” (Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy [Boston and London: Shambhala, 1998] , p. 53). The body’s needs, including for food and sex, are sanctified in Tantric rituals.

2_Erotic_Kama_statues_of_Khajuraho_Hindu_Temple_de_Lakshmana_Khajurâho_India_2013
Erotic Kama statues in Khajuraho Hindu Temple at Lakshmana Khajurâho, India. The couple in the middle are copulating and the man and the woman next to them are masturbating.

It is not surprising that what Feuerstein called “Neo-Tantra” dipped into the Tantra tradition to develop a ritualization of sex aimed not so much at producing sexual pyrotechnics as simply increasing intimacy between couples in a culture that has lost this, especially because of toxic masculinity. Tantra, which honors the divine feminine, has become the basis of modern sex therapy.

tantra journey

I’ve never experienced a Tantra sex workshop, but I interviewed a respected yoga teacher who has conducted such workshops for couples. He told me that many couples attend looking to improve their lovemaking, which they usually identify with ejaculation and orgasm. One of the important aspects of Neo-Tantra workshops is to separate sexual intimacy from ejaculation. In fact, many ancient people believed that ejaculation is a loss of one’s life force and should be saved for procreation. Ancient yogis worked on achieving orgasm without ejaculation. Tantric workshops therefore work on intimacy and prolonging sexual pleasure without rushing to ejaculation. The processes used in the workshops usually build up sexual energy.

To slow down the rush to the finish line my friend begins with the couples clothed, holding hands, and making eye contact.

tantra couples workshop

Some simple partner poses might be used to build trust and excitement, such as this partner side twist. Partner poses can also be fun and help the couple just to enjoy playing together. This couple is pulling each other into a twist.

couples yoga side twist

A sensual massage is part of a Tantra workshop. It is important for the partners to experience touching each other. One partner massages the other partner face up and then they change places. This may be done clothed or naked. One possible massage approach my friend has used is to follow the chakras up the torso using different movements and intensities for each one, sometimes with the hand of the massager hovering just above the body of the recipient of the massage.

tantra-massage

Showing honor to the lingam (penis) and yoni (vulva) is a touch that connects with medieval Tantra, as I will discuss below.

sexual-tantra

Part of a tantra couples experience may be a sacred tantric ritual in which the yoni or female vulva is worshiped. This ritual of yoni puja originated in India thousands of years ago. There are various forms in which this ritual can be performed — by a couple alone or in a group. 

An important prerequisite for worshiping the yoni is the purification of the mind from worldly ideas about yoni, the female genitalia, and from shame and guilt about the genitals that most of us carry. In the yoni puja ritual one might express reverence in front of the mystery of Shakti the divine mother, or simply the wonder of the feminine, divine or human. A yoni massage will be a slow exploration of the body, finally coming to rest on the female genitals.

The couple’s tantra workshop may also include a lingam (penis) massage that gives honor to the male sex organ. Again, there would be a slow massage of the whole body before massaging the male sex organ.

Let me add that as a practice in increasing intimacy between couples (especially marrital partners), this kind of Neo-Tantra workshop has a lot to commend it to Christians. Protestant teaching has especially condoned pleasuring each other in the marriage relationship as part of the divine gift of sex and as a way to show love (including erotic love) to your spouse. Many people, Christians especially, need encouragement in giving sexual pleasure to their partner and receiving sexual pleasure in turn.

Gay Tantra

The gay world has latched onto tantra as a way to expand sexual experience and generate mystical states. Tantra couples workshops have been held for same-sex couples just as for heterosexual couples. The German tantra teacher Armin Heining has conducted tantra massage sessions for gay men around the world. Men wear sarongs throughout the experience until they are actually giving each other a tantric massage.

The sessions employ some of the same bonding techniques as heterosexual tantra sex workshops. There is no rush to the genitals, but rather a slow build up of sexual energy. In actual Tantra, the massage is to bring the partner to the height of sexual arousal, but then through bandhas and breathing techniques to distribute sexual energry throughout the body. Ejaculation may happen, but it is not the actual object of tantra massage.

Tantra sexuality workshops for gay men cover a wide array of topics related to body, mind, and spirit. As in workshops offered to heterosexual couples, participants are in a safe, supportive, and non-judgmental environment.  Practices will include meditation, conscious breathing, healing touch, massage and body work leading to heightening sexual energy and increased sense of intimacy.

A variant of tantra workshops involving group activities is provided by the Body Electric School of Massage, created by former Jesuit Joseph Kramer. It offers Body Erotic weekend workshops to show men a different way to experience sexual arousal. They teach participants how to experience nudity, mutual touching, and arousal without the anxiety or compulsion to practice intercourse (anal for men) and achieve orgasm.  The participants are taught to relax and allow the gathering sexual energy to suffuse through the whole body. Usually at the end of a session there is a group pile on as all the bodies become one, building up a powerful amount of sexual energy.

Pile on at the end of Brandon Anthony’s men’s yoga class in Seattle

It’s All in the Breath

I mentioned the connection between Tantra and the Hatha Yoga practiced in most yoga classes. A tantra practice included in Hatha yoga is breath work (pranayama). In fact, in Tantra workshops the breathing exercises alter the body chemistry enough to prevent ejaculation so that sexual energy can build up in the body.  A concluding practice might be the “big draw” of breath (inhaling), which is held by clenching the whole body and holding the breath until you need to let it go in a big explosion of exhaling. The exhale could be considered a kind of spiritual orgasm.

A related practice is inhaling while sitting, holding the breath, and then blowing it out incrementally through the mouth as you fold over your legs. These tantra practices can be done in an ordinary yoga class (I have experienced them) and they are not practiced to lead to an orgasm.  When all is said and done, orgasm is not the purpose of Tantra ancient or modern. The purpose of tantric practice is building up and retaining  energy, including sexual energy.

Criticism of Neo-Tantra by Scholars

Tantra scholars are very critical of Neo-Tantric sex workshops. Having surveyed Neo-Tantra publications, the eminent yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein concluded: “Their main error is to confuse Tantric bliss (ananda, maha-sukha) with ordinary orgasmic pleasure” (see Georg Feuerstein, Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy, xiv). Tantric bliss is achieved in the unity of being—the union of the self with the cosmos—, not in bigger and better orgasms.

Moreover, one must be properly initiated into Tantra if one expects to receive enlightenment, and lineages of teachers are not intact. (Lineage has been important to yoga, kind of like apostolic succession in some Christian traditions.) Mircea Eliade, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on yoga after spending time in India studying with DasGupta at the University of Calcutta and in Swami Sivananda’s ashram in the early 1930s, insisted that no one could experience Tantric initiation without being guided by a guru (see Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, pp. 206-7).

So then, to the question, “does it matter?”

All this history raises several questions. (Isn’t that the purpose of studying history?) First, is there some validity to the Tantric subtle body even if it was discerned only when the earlier rites were internalized? Chinese medicine, for example, has a similar subtle body in its meridian system, which is used to good effect in acupuncture. Would this development of Tantra not be comparable to the development of doctrine in Christian theology or other religious systems?

Second, is Neo-Tantra a legitimate development in the evolving history of Tantra? By way of comparison, millions of yoga students around the world are practicing some form of Hatha Yoga that many of their teachers now know was influenced by the modern Northern European physical culture movement as appropriated by gurus like Krishnamacharya, who synthesized it with medieval Hatha traditions that were known to them.

Modern postural yoga is not the practice of Patanjali’s oft-cited Yoga Sutras. Patanjali gives little attention to postural yoga and a lot of attention to meditation and supernatural practices. Yet very few students stop practicing yoga even though its roots in classical yoga traditions are tenuous. Yet however tenuous, there are still some connections to be discerned. And in the meantime all kinds of new styles of yoga are emerging in the twenty-first century. So, too, some new applications of ancient Tantra have been made in the modern West and imported back into India. Yoga, with roots in ancient India, is a global phenomenon today.

Third, is there not still some connection between ancient Kaula rituals and Neo-Tantra? If there is, it would have to be in its focus on sexuality, because that’s what made Tantra distinct from other popular religious expressions (bhakti) in India. And it would have to take seriously the body as the location of interaction with divinity.

Orthodox Christianity also affirms that in Holy Baptism the body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit and that in Holy Communion we receive the body and blood of Christ into our bodies. Through these means of grace Christians believe there is a union of the divine and the human, of Christ and the disciple. So at least the idea of the possibility of divinity dwelling within the human body is not incompatible with Christianity’s incarnational theology. In a sense Tantra itself is a theological system with an incarnational (in the flesh) emphasis.

Fourth, if Neo-Tantra practitioners have developed some skills in helping couples become more open to each other, and even more adventurous with each other, more comfortable with intimacy (especially for men), is it not serving a worthy purpose in the modern world with its fracturing lifestyles in which we are overworked and tired and feel like sex is a duty or else abandon it altogether? My friend who has done tantric couples workshops told me that he works on intimacy rather than successful ejaculations and big orgasms.

Sexuality grounded in love for the partner, and commitment and openness to growth in that relationship, can deepen and strengthen the connection between them and intensify their sense of oneness as a couple. Sex can vary with the fluctuations in our lives, but that is no reason to lose a sense of intimacy.

That said, we also need to consider the bias against the goodness of sex that has existed in Christianity, especially in America. Sex was tolerated in historic Christianity for the purpose of procreation, not for pleasure.  The sheer normality of sex in human life has frightened overly-spiritualized Christians even within the bonds of marriage and family. There are a lot of barriers  to the joy in the gift of sex that need to be broken down.  The Neo-Tantra sexual workshops certainly help to do that.

Yoga is not primarily about sex, but it can have an impact on a healthy sexual life. The genitals are also a part of our bodies, and they can be stimulated by sensations created by breathing and postures. These sensations can be noted when they arise, and then you move on. Maybe yoga teachers should point this out to their students. As my young male yoga teacher said, “Surely in the twenty-first century we can admit that yoga has something to teach us about sexual health.”

Pastor Frank Senn

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Gerald L. Austin

    I was pleased to see that you included some very nice pictures of nude couples. Thank you.

  2. Frank Senn

    Harold Koenig

    It’s such a relief to have a discussion of this without either pearl-clutching or mindless approval.

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