Have you ever wondered if there's something more to sex than what you've experienced? Something deeper, more connected, and profoundly satisfying? Tantric sex offers exactly that—a pathway to experiencing sexuality not as a performance or transaction, but as a vehicle for profound connection with yourself and your partner. In this guide, we'll explore what tantric sex truly is and how you can begin incorporating these ancient practices into your intimate life.
Prioritize connection over pleasure
Free yourself from conditioning
Move as one being
Release shame through openness
Access your Erotic mind
Tantric sex is fundamentally about liberating the sex impulse from specific conditioning and using it as a vehicle to transport us to the present moment with another human being. Many of us use what could be a rocket ship like a tricycle—we go from the garage to the driveway and consider it done, while the Erotic is inviting us to the outer edges of the known universe.
At its core, tantric sex calms the mind, silencing its constant chatter, cravings, and fears. It tunes us into the instinctive pulse and rhythms our own lives emerged from. This alignment allows the rational mind to rest, moving away from external survival instincts and back to a state where natural care occurs effortlessly.
The journey of tantric sex begins with acknowledging that the physical experience is merely the foundation. Just as we rock a baby to sleep, mimicking the comforting rhythm of the heartbeat they once were close to, the physical act of sex tunes into the instinctive pulse that formed us. When we align with these rhythms, we move with them like a mother instinctively rocking her child, their heartbeats synchronizing to an underlying universal rhythm.
Have you noticed how fear often interrupts intimacy? In tantric practice, when fear arises—expressed either by freezing or overdriving—the key is to listen. We can either focus inward or direct our attention outward until an entire soundscape opens before us. The rhythm itself will move us. The more we tune in, the more power it has. We may feel awkward at first, but soon enough we feel it coming up through our feet, lubricating our bones and muscles.
When I first began studying tantric traditions, I was struck by their incredible historical depth and cultural richness. The practices we might explore in a modern bedroom have roots stretching back thousands of years across multiple Asian spiritual traditions. This historical context isn't just academically interesting—it helps us understand the profound intentions behind these practices and approach them with appropriate respect.
Tantra emerged as a spiritual movement around the 5th century CE, though its roots reach back much earlier. It developed as a countercultural response to mainstream religious practices in both Hinduism and Buddhism, which often emphasized world-renunciation and strict asceticism. In contrast, tantric practitioners proposed that the physical world—including the human body and its desires—could be vehicles for spiritual awakening rather than obstacles to overcome.
This revolutionary perspective is captured in one of tantra's most fundamental principles: that samsara (the world of form) and nirvana (enlightenment) are ultimately one reality viewed from different perspectives. Rather than rejecting worldly experience in pursuit of spiritual transcendence, tantric practitioners sought to transform ordinary experiences—including sexual pleasure—into paths of awakening and liberation.
Across these diverse traditions, tantric practices were typically transmitted directly from teacher to student through initiation lineages. Sacred texts called tantras contained teachings, but these were often deliberately obscure, using symbolic language that required a teacher's interpretation. This system of transmission protected esoteric practices from misuse while ensuring students received proper preparation and context.
Today's tantric sex practices often blend traditional elements with modern understanding of psychology, anatomy, and relationships. While some purists might argue that modern tantric sex has strayed too far from its roots, others see this evolution as making these powerful practices more accessible and relevant to contemporary lives.
Understanding this rich cultural heritage helps us approach tantric sex with appropriate respect and appreciation. These aren't trendy techniques invented by modern sex therapists—they're time-tested approaches to intimacy that have helped countless people across centuries connect more deeply with themselves and their partners.
When we engage in tantric sex, we open channels within ourselves that most of us never knew existed. One profound benefit is the liberation from our conditioning around sex—all those beliefs and thoughts that have accumulated over our lifetime.
Tantric sex teaches us that the solution is always connection. Where there is a desire to close or block, our power allows us the volition to practice opening further, drawing in, inviting, and seeing what happens. This is particularly powerful for women, who are trained to block or hit, but not to absorb and convert energy.
Another remarkable benefit is the development of our sensing organ. When we have our sensing organ awake with another who also has their sensing organ awake, we feel our whole body alive and electric. We feel our sensing extending beyond our physical form to meet the other person. We sense their strength, light, darkness, power, hunger, and reception.
Perhaps most profound is the ability to experience unconditional pleasure—not dependent on a specific type of partner, situation, or technique. Through tantric practice, we develop the feminine quality to draw the brilliance and beauty from anyone and to equally bestow radiance on everyone. We work through the spots where we put conditions on that process and where we rely on the world of appearances or others to do it for us.
Tantric sex operates within what can be called the Erotic Order—a framework for understanding desire and connection. On this path, what moves us and what we are moved by is desire. Desire is the fuel, movement, and aim of this realm. Yet there are various gradations of desire we must understand: fixation, wanting, true desire, and possession.
Fixation is an imposter of desire, rooted in a lack of power and marked by a feeling of the mind being gripped. No space exists between wanting and having. Fixation locks onto an object and creates suffering.
Wanting carries meager power, not dynamic enough to bring us into an Erotic state. The tension of wanting is temporarily relieved by having, but falls into diminishing returns.
True desire is the energy that flows in the gap between having and wanting. It can only be accessed by approval of what is. True desire is not as interested in the outcome as it is in being connected through the energy of desire itself.
Possession is when a well-formed desire swallows us whole—it's no longer us having desire but desire having us. This is the equivalent to being inside of Eros, where the only desire that exists is to be an aspect of life playing in and with life.
As we progress in tantric practice, we move from fixation toward true desire and eventually possession, creating a radical activation where power is turned on and effort transforms into effortlessness.
Preparing for tantric sex begins with understanding that opening our sexuality means opening to a certain level of uncertainty and insecurity. Here, we uncover our underlying beliefs about power. Many of us fear that expressing power will cause harm, lead to rejection, or result in losing control.
Before engaging in tantric practice, take time to examine your expectations. In the arena of sex and power, we typically have high expectations but limited skill. We expect our partners to know what we want, to handle our fear and excitement, to know our boundaries, and not to have their own drives. All these expectations are usually unspoken.
To prepare properly, begin by making physical contact that aligns with the Erotic approach. Your hands may feel like they extend out much farther than your skin. Notice that there is a sensation different from regular physical touch by orders of magnitude. You can sense a field that extends beyond your physical body, like static electricity lifting hair from your scalp.
Let your hand be moved by sensation rather than by your rational mind. As if your hand can inhale, draw in the magnetism and sensation of your partner. Do this for your own enjoyment, the way you might run your hand over velvet for the sensation you feel, not for how you're making the fabric feel.
To practice the art of tantric sex, first shake your mind and senses free of anything that has accumulated. This can be challenging because making love can feel so meaningful that we want to reassure ourselves that we know what we're doing to cover our fundamental insecurity. But that insecurity is sex itself—the substance we are working with. Feel it. Turn into it.
Begin by focusing on detail. Every detail matters. Scent is often best to start with because it's not as potentially arousing as sight. Focus simply on your breath and what enters with each inhale. Notice whether the scent is sharp or soft, spicy or flowery. Note how the scent creates sensations throughout your body.
Next, take note of the sensations in your body—the beating of your heart, the feeling as blood moves to your hands and extremities, the heaviness or weightiness, the feeling of your skin. You are beginning to move into the Erotic mind, from stasis to process. The tightness of insecurity should start opening, and from behind it, you'll feel movement.
A pause is always good. Take an inhale and release an exhale. Notice your hands and how hot or cold they feel. There will be a slight percolating sensation that may almost have you rise up out of your body. The instruction then is to come down into your body by focusing on where your body makes contact with the ground or bed.
If you keep allowing yourself to be carried down, you'll reach a place where the energy is neutral yet bright, alive, and electric. You'll likely feel a jolt—the feeling that an internal light has been turned on. This is the body electric, the demarcation between the physical act of having sex and the experience of making love.
In tantric sex, we aim to create what's called the "Erotic Room"—a space where each of us can come out, roam free, and be known. This room exists in other domains, like meditation and prayer, but what makes it spectacular in Eros is that we inhabit it with another person.
The fully realized expression of this room is as though we've entered a populated interior world where we know all the characters with depth, love, reverence, and familiarity—both those emanating from ourselves and from our partner. There's the experience of, "Oh, there you are," or "Oh, that's you" across your partner's face.
From here, complementary aspects will emerge from each person and meet. There will be a sense that they have always known each other—a deep familiarity. An aspect from each will connect with the other and will, in a sense, take over. It will feel as if love is being made through you rather than you making love.
In this room, the understanding that emerges could not be accessed any other way. You see your many selves in their natural habitat where everything is beautiful, powerful, potent, and meaningful—a relief from the awkward qualities they possess in other contexts. The work is not to make ourselves into anything, but to put ourselves in a place where we can reveal the beauty we already are.
Understanding tantric sex requires knowing the three aspects of mind involved: the body-mind (Erotic impulse), the tumescent mind, and the Erotic mind, which is the combination of both.
Eros, seated in the body, is the impulse toward pleasure, nourishment, and connection—the source of psychic energy or power. Its focus is on principles rather than consequences, aiming toward unfiltered authenticity.
The tumescent mind communicates what's appropriate and keeps us in line through prohibition and rules. It acts as a parental authority, promising safety through moral shoulds and should nots. It focuses on risks and consequences. Its demand for obedience is so great that it hijacks the rewards system entirely.
The Erotic mind is the union of the tumescent mind and the body-mind—the seat of consciousness and organizing aspect of how we see, what we feel and think. There's an optimal place for action when the Erotic mind is both nourished from the Erotic impulse and directed with the underlying injunctions of the tumescent mind.
When these aspects are in harmony, psychic energy is liberated and a sense of transcendence occurs. There's timelessness and access to a voice that seems to know and guide, beyond the criticisms of the tumescent mind. This voice feels original, calm, even humorous.
When practicing tantric sex, we aim to open every channel. Each person we engage with has a particular channel that draws out their essence. When we find that channel, we open that location within ourselves to fully experience it. Some common locations include:
Bodies move in synchrony, almost like two eels moving in unison, with a smooth quality and physicality. The feeling is one of movement, close to wrestling or paired dance.
This pulls from pools of shame and uses that as material for connection. Both partners reveal what they conceal in everyday life. Various identities rise to the surface, often associated with positions of power, submission, and dominance.
This feels drenched in sweet connective love, drawing forth the heart and yearning with a sense of being perfectly met by your partner.
A type of frolic where what awakens in both partners is the desire to see if connection can be maintained as channels switch, with an explorative quality.
A type where it feels as if both partners are possessed by something deeper, something from beyond their own bodies or consciousness. Both can let go entirely without fear that the other cannot handle themselves.
The essence of tantric sex is liberation—freeing ourselves from the filters, beliefs, and patterns that have limited our experience of sexuality and connection. As we practice, we develop the capacity to be channels through which deeper forces move. We become lightning rods for energy that can manifest as heat, light, and fire.
The process isn't always easy. At points in your journey, you'll encounter resistance, usually as anxious "What if?" questions: What if you cannot make it through insecurity? What if you get too excited too fast? What if you experience a thought or feeling you cannot move beyond?
The response is to be steady, kind, direct, and without aggression. The temptation will be to meet internal opposition with an aggressive stance or to threaten to shut down if things don't open. Instead, become softer. This is challenging because we're trained to view sex as less than sacred, so it won't give up its power on demand. It will only open to genuine kindness and appreciation.
Show up. Be kind. Don't posture. The feel-good of endorphins alone is a sorry consolation prize compared to what lies beyond the gateways that can open. You can do this daily, showing up for what's inside this experience, whether you feel ugly or beautiful, sad or bored. What lies inside tantric sex will come to trust you, and when it does, for every move you make in its direction, it will reveal doorways unimagined.
Tantric sex offers an approach to sexuality that goes beyond the superficial—beyond the leopard-print unitards, the teddies, vibrators, and whips that constitute what we might call "sexual materialism." Instead, it invites us into the realm of true power, freedom, and authenticity of sexuality.
If you've spent your life viewing sexuality as a means to an end—a way to get a partner, pleasure, or power—tantric sex invites you to reconsider. What if sex could be a pathway to spiritual awakening? What if it could liberate you from the mind that keeps track, compares, and believes we are powerless?
When you step onto this path, you'll discover that your relationship with sex mirrors your relationship with power. The questions around sex ultimately become questions about what you want your relationship to power to be. Will you hope for it and yearn for it? Judge it and feel cheated? Demand it through victimhood? Or will you honor it and commit to discovering its virtuous expression?
The choice is yours. The doorway is open. Tantric sex awaits as a practice that can show you the way home to yourself—to a self that is whole, connected, and alive with the pulse of true desire.