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Not a Book Review: Introductory Tantra Workshop by www.tantra.at

17.11.2009

(c) 2009 by Heidrun Beer

 

I went to an introductory Tantra workshop this Sunday.

All muscles still sore - they kept chasing us through the room dancing and also with a kind of meditation that I would rather call an aerobics workout :-))

Most interesting. It's not at all bawdy, quite to the contrary, very loving on a personal, not physical level. Yet, at the same time some very culturally oppressed body areas are confronted - so is one of the basic exercises done with the pelvis, and combined with the right breathing technique, as demonstrated by the coach, it reminded me of the lady faking an orgasm in "Harry and Sally" :-)

It was difficult as hell to combine all the required pelvic movements in the correct sequence, especially when the famous "PC muscle" (pubococcygeus muscle - best known to ladies who need to train it after giving birth) was later added to the combination.

One guy said he began to feel pleasure when he added the PC muscle to the exercise. What?? I was struggling to remember all the movements and keep them together with the visualization of energy moving up to the heart area. Later we had to sychronize ourselves with a partner doing that same exercise. One of my partners got into total ecstasy, he cried at the end. Again, what????? This is hard work!

There were two exercises that I really enjoyed. One was done with three people. One would play a flower's bud, and the other two the sun rays, whose job was to open the bud. They had to take all of 15 minutes to fully open the bud's body, which was curled up in a fetal position. Only the tiniest movements were allowed - all was done ever so slowly. Each of the three would be a bud once and a sun ray twice. A very loving drill.

The other one: for the first time ever the famous Eastern greeting "Namaste" was explained to me. But in Tantra it goes deeper than the greeting ritual (bow with folded hands) that we usually see. People who meet each other in a tantric encounter take the time to really establish eye contact, then they fold their hands and touch the heart area, and then, while holding eye contact, they slowly touch with their foreheads and say "Namaste", then they slowly separate again. This is done at the begin and end of their sharing whatever is shared, and indicates their entering a mutual space that is created by them only for this one encounter.

There are several translations of "Namaste" - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namaste - of which I like this one best: "The Divinity within me perceives and adores the Divinity within you."

It is called a heart-to-heart greeting, using the loving energy coming from the energetic center in the heart area (heart chakra). I realized that I had been using that all the time, only minus the ritual :-))

After the last exercise we were all instructed to get some rest, laying down on the floor, touching at least two others. This was incredibly peaceful, reminding me of cat or dog litters where the little ones sleep all cuddled together.

I was amazed that average Europeans could keep up with so much touch and intimacy (no "private" body parts were touched at this early stage) - but then who would book such a workshop? Of course they were pre-selected.