Tantra

A scream from within… from a place so deep inside each of us that it’s impossible to trace. A repeated sigh spinning with feelings. Gripping arms, air, desire. Bites, trembling. Trembling and relief.

“It’s important to open up everything that’s trapped in the body”

Dhyan Raghu

Why can’t I experience pleasure? How can I get rid of depression? Why do I have problems with the person to whom I’ve been married for years? How I can replace aggressiveness with affection? Why can’t I express my feelings? Why do I repeat patterns in my relationships? Can I develop sociability? Why do I eroticize everyday situations and, still, can’t find love?

These questions are welcomed at Tantra rituals and treatments, a spiritual stream that reworks the body’s energy and deals directly with sexuality – a rare thing, given how often subjects relating to this matter are banished from places of philosophy and faith. In this branch, which has its origins in India and brings to surface discourses and practices from ancient matriarchal societies and by Indian master Osho, sex and orgasm and freedom aren’t taboo.

“The person who feels their sexual chakra,

feels their autonomy, feels their freedom and

won’t be subject

to certain deprivations and exploitations.”

Dhyan Raghu

The University For A New Human Sexuality (Universidade da Nova Sexualidade Humana) in Brazil, also known as the Metamorphosis Center (Centro Metamorfose), has been developing work on Tantric Therapies since 1996: dozens of therapists trained all over the country and involved in meetings and speeches aiming to regain Tantra’s original role, regain our humanity.

“Tantra doesn’t program you,

it deprograms you.

Basically, it tries to cleanse you.

Once you’re cleansed,

there’s room to reorganize yourself.”

Dhyan Raghu

A philosophy, instead of a religion, that accepts itself as mutant and contradictory as the human being: as its reflection, not is remedy. It dialogues with Yoga exercises and Buddhist messages, but reinvents itself with the intention of constantly making room within each individual. The chosen method,  Deva Nishok, has its goal set in awakening the body’s senses. Thus massages, breathing exercises, and meetings such as The Path of Love (O Caminho do Amor) were created.

“Love is the best cure

humanity can put forth”

Dhyan Raghu

Constantly dancing, since it is by moving that spaces are created between and within bodies, a group of people treads The Path of Love in a three-day-long experience. Immersed and yielded, they are stimulated to releasing repressed emotions and manipulating their vibrational states. All chakras are engaged on this path, which is actually a journey from mind to heart.

“We don’t want eroticism.

The way we see it, eroticism is a poor thing,

Something that stimulates fantasy

instead of reality”

Dhyan Raghu

Unlike what most may think upon first glance, The Path of Love isn’t a collective sexual practice: Tantra engages individual sensations, not someone else’s image. Throughout the days, an experiential narrative unfolds from each being’s story: first, a presentation; then, muscular burst exercises alternating coordinated and chaotic breathing; conversation circles; bodily stimulus in contact with others, and water, and earth.

“When you open up your body,

energy is released with more ease.

Laughter is released with more ease,

crying is released with more ease”

Dhyan Raghu

Laughter, at first ridicule but enjoyable after some rendition… Humility. For those who represent a situation of pain or hurt, foot washing is offered. Two people join their legs in the shape of a butterfly and perform exercises and breathing patterns that engage all the sexual energy concentrated in the pelvic muscles: an experience with spiritual orgasm that teaches you to regain contained pleasures, without performing the act again. Not covered by clothes, but covered with courage – and mud – the bodies surrender to the ground and to their most primal feelings.

Awake to themselves, they allow their expressions to be invaded by the feelings stemming from each stimulus, which seem to be tools for their passage. Cries and moans are like sublime stories that had been kept secret in a body masked by a society that teaches us to hide. An exorcism of stories created from memories open the frontiers to regaining perception of all the feelings in the body.