What IS Tantric Touch?

What makes Tantric Touch different to other kinds of touch?

Tantric touch is often spoken about as if it is something mysterious and special and that’s because it really is special!

Here we seek to explain how it differs from any other type of touch or massage you might receive.

Tantric Touch challenges our conditioning around pleasure

For a start tantric touch is different from others because it involves touch for purely for pleasure. Most touch we experience is for nurturing, comforting, playing or fixing sore muscles. Many of us still have negative conditioning around pleasure and this in itself takes receiving (and giving) touch for pleasure to a whole new place. For those of us who can recall being told not to touch ourselves in ways that felt good and usually “down there” by  agitated grownups who, would immediately tell us this was on a good day,  best to be kept private or on a bad day, we are bad or dirty for doing it. Yet how many of us continued to touch ourselves (albeit furtively) just because it felt good? When we did it was with associated guilt or shame, forever linking these two feelings with pleasure and creating much confusion in our psyche.

Some of us carry beliefs from religious, cultural or societal conditioning about pleasure not only being wrong or sinful, but it can also have scary consequences like pregnancy, disease, getting addicted or being labelled “a slut”. Or we may have been told we have to earn our rewards, or that somehow WE don’t deserve pleasure or even that it is better to give than receive.

So the very idea of receiving touch simply for pleasure can bring up any of this subconscious conditioning, leaving us deliciously excited or nervous and embarrassed. Tantric touch can be a deeply healing and loving experience, simply by the very fact that it challenges these parts that we hold in shadow.

Tantric Touch can involve our ‘Sexy bits’

In most kinds of therapeutic touch or massage the breasts and genitals are appropriately kept covered and separate. In Tantric touch these intimate parts of us are not seen as separate from the rest of the body and may be included (though this is not required), as Tantra is about moving beyond duality into union. This inclusion brings up even deeper layers of childhood conditioning for healing as mentioned above. Having said that Conscious Tantric touch can be totally delicious simply on someone’s face, shoulders, arm or leg!

There is an exchange of energy

In Tantra it is believed that we are not solid beings but vibrating energy bodies. Tantric Touch activates this energy and as it moves in the body it feels like pleasure. This energy (sex or spirit) moves between the giver and receiver so that neither one feels like they’re actually giving or receiving. The boundaries between them can become blurred, the connection deep and expanded.

We are more aware of ourselves

Tantric touch is touch without agenda, other than to be experienced fully. There is no focus on performance or orgasm, even if genitals are included. Both giver and receiver are fully in the moment and open to whatever happens. There is more space to feel pleasure, emotion, love, everything because all is welcome. In this space more thoughts can arise leading us to a greater awareness of Self, of what is going on under our surface. The challenge is to accept and let go of anything that is blocking us from being fully present.

We are not used to feeling extended pleasure

In Tantric touch there is more space for pleasure to arise without judgement. Most of the pleasure we feel either feels time limited, guilty and short lived. Or we have the desire DO something with the pleasure, to take it to some sort of completion, either orgasm or intercourse. In Tantric touch we breathe into the sensation of pleasure and enjoy it for what it is and that is all, knowing the pleasure in itself is healing, opening and nurturing in itself. We can choose to expand and prolong pleasure by surrendering deeper into our pleasure but never withholding it. This leads to an incredible sense of freedom and heightened states of feeling, connection and awareness.

We need to be fully connected to ourselves

Much regular touch is focussed on giving and receiving. In Tantric touch the focus is on ourselves as much as the other. We are fully present in the moment, breathing into our own heart and body without expectation, allowing the touch to flow rather than be technique based. The more present we are in ourselves, the more our partner will feel held and safe to surrender. Only then are we  fully present with the other and simply exploring their body rather than trying to control or manipulate it.

The receiving is active

The receiver is not passively lying there being touched. They seek to open themselves to the touch by being in the moment, letting go of thoughts, of tension, resistance and any closedness in their hearts, mind and body. It is a surrender of their mind into their heart, body and soul. If emotions are felt they are received and honoured as much as pleasure.

The touch is conscious

Before touch is entered into there is a discussion and agreement about entering into this space of connection together. There is a focus on creating an atmosphere of safety and respect, with time and physical boundaries clear and without the use of ‘energetic consent’ ie. this is where the giver ‘senses’ the receiver wants something and gives or even takes without asking. This is too open to misinterpretation, if in doubt ask. Communication is vital for both partners. Remember that eye contact is a beautiful part of communication and is also a pathway for energy exchange so include plenty of it!

General Guidelines for Tantric Touch:

1. Begin by centreing into your own body, mind and heart, for the more centred you are the better it will be for both giver and receiver.

2. Pay attention to what your hands do as your palms and tips of your fingers are energy giving centres. Connect the energy circuit, allowing energy to move by having both hands, or some fingers from each of your hands on your partner’s body at the same time (a little like plugging the electrical cord into the socket). Move your heart energy through your hands as you touch. You can imagine this energy as a white light coming from your heart down through your arms and into your hands. Play with this, and remember where the mind (consciousness) goes the energy follows.

3. Give and receive with your touch by moving your hands at a pressure and speed that creates a tingling between your hand and your partner’s skin. Experiment to get the touch right. If it feels good to you then it will likely feel good to them.

4. Bring more consciousness into your touch. Let your hands energetically grow- visualize the light extending beyond your hands and fingers and into your partner’s body.

5. Run energy (or light) from your right hand through your partner into your left hand, then up through your heart and out your right hand, creating a circuit of energy. Giving your mind something to focus on stops it from wandering, increasing your level of presence, and ultimately the enjoyment of both giver and receiver.

6. Bring feeling and emotion into your touch: love, nurturing, compassion, as well as passion. Touch all chakras, front and back.

7. Any movement or touch, even greatly pleasurable ones, will lose its sensitivity if repeated continually. When you find a good area, leave it….and visit it often. Branch outward from it to another area. Unless it is just prior to orgasm then stay consistent and see what happens.

8. Always remember it is the brain which experiences the pleasure. The best techniques will give deeper results as the mind/body connection is opened. Each of the touch modalities has its Yin (soft) and Yang (firm) expression. Use both! The brain picks up more information, energy and healing when a yin stroke is followed by a yang one or vice versa.

9. As you touch them invite your partner to breathe in as if they are breathing in from a pool of love just beyond their feet, up through their body and out the top of their head. Then to breathe out from the pool of love just beyond their head down and out their feet. This washes their whole body with love.

 10.     Modalities:

Static touch (not moving) can be exquisite.

Moving touch, short strokes, circles, long strokes, spirals, sideway strokes and triangles.

Vibrating

Scratching.

Tapping/slapping.

Squeezing, including kneading and pinching.

Vary speed, depth, pressure and firmness of each touch, starting with light and slow.

Always check in continually as to how the receiver is enjoying a particular touch.
If they aren’t, don’t take it personally, just move on to something else.

For more on Tantric Touch click here