What is tantra?

A little of both, and that honest answer is one you rarely hear. In the tradition, tantra is barely sexual: sexual practices are rare there and reserved for initiates. Religious-studies scholar Hugh Urban described how the Western picture of tantra as a sexual doctrine grew mostly out of projection.

So this is not an initiates’ practice from a monastery. It is bodywork that uses the slow, conscious attention of tantra, and where eroticism simply belongs. Touch can be sensual and sexual energy plays a part.

What it is not: a massage with an endpoint. Coming is not a goal and not a finish. It is about feeling consciously, and that is something other than a happy ending with a spiritual name wrapped around it.

A yoni massage is a tantric massage of the female genitals, focused on deep relaxation and on feeling again what is there. Yoni is the Sanskrit word used for the vulva in tantric texts.

Coming is not the goal. It may happen and no one makes a fuss about it, but the moment it becomes a goal the whole massage changes: then you start performing, and performing is exactly what falls away here.

In practice many women notice something other than what they expected. Not arousal, but that somewhere something let go that had been stuck for years. Sometimes tears come with it, and that is normal too.

What happens is up to you, and you may say it is enough at any moment.

Then stay with the curious part for a while and let the booking rest. You do not have to commit to anything to ask questions: a message or a call costs you nothing and ties you to nothing. You may also write three times and then still decide it is not for you.

Most women who eventually come sat with the doubt for weeks first. Some spent months on this page before they sent anything, and almost everyone says afterward that the run-up was the hardest part.

Do you want an in-between step: a phone call or a coffee date where nothing else happens. After that you know more than all the pages on this site can tell you.

Yes, and especially then. Tantra is not about how you look but about what you feel, and there is no moment where you are judged. That is not politeness: if you are busy with how you are lying there, you do not relax, and then nothing happens either.

You decide yourself what you keep on. A share of the women who come stay partly dressed, certainly the first time, and that changes nothing about what the massage does. The light can stay low, a blanket can go over you.

That shame usually fades within the first half hour, roughly the moment you notice that nothing is expected of you.

Yes, and the reason is that nothing has to come back from you. You do not have to join in and you do not have to respond. You do not have to be nice, and you do not have to show that you like it either. That makes it one of the few places where you can practice touch without something being expected of you right away.

That difference is bigger than it sounds. With touch at home or on a date there is always a second layer running along: what does this mean, what does he want, what will I have to do next. That layer falls away here.

We begin slowly and with much more time than you are used to. What is and is not allowed, we say out loud beforehand, and you may change it along the way.

Yes, and usually it turns out to still be there. Sensuality rarely disappears; it gets buried under work, caring for others, a relationship where it became routine, and years in which no one asked after it.

What a tantra session does is take the time that needs. Not half an hour between two other things, but hours in which nothing has to be finished and no one wants anything from you. For many women that alone is the unfamiliar part.

What often happens is that it does not come back as arousal but as attention: you notice again what you feel, where it is pleasant and where it is not. The rest usually follows on its own from there.

Often it can, and usually not in the way you expect. One session does not repair years and I am not going to claim it does. What it does do is break the pattern where the same thing always happens in the same order, usually at the same time.

For many couples that is enough to get curious about each other again. You see each other once in a situation that is new for both of you, and that works differently than spending another conversation on it.

What matters more beforehand than the session itself: that you both want it. One who comes along to please the other, I notice within ten minutes, and then I simply name it. More about that on Couples.

Definitely, and at that age it often works better than it did at thirty. Tantra asks for no flexibility and no fitness. It does not ask for a particular body either. It asks for time and attention, and that is exactly what you have now and did not have before.

Women over sixty are less busy with how they are doing it. That saves half the resistance that younger women bring along, and it usually makes the session deeper instead of more careful.

Is something physical going on, an operation, pain, less feeling or dryness, say so beforehand. That is no objection, it only changes how we go about it.

Yes, fully. Do you want to keep your underwear on the first time, then that is fine. Getting fully undressed is never required, and certainly not the moment you walk in because it is supposedly part of the deal.

In practice that often changes on its own during the session, and just as often it does not. Both are good. Your boundaries set the massage, not the other way around, and I am not going to check halfway through whether it can happen after all.

The same goes for me: whether I massage clothed or undressed is up to you. Do you find that hard to say, then just choose beforehand and message it. Then the conversation does not have to be about it anymore.

The difference is in the goal, not in the touch. An erotic massage is aimed at arousal and release, usually with coming as the endpoint. Everything around it is build-up toward that moment.

A tantra massage uses sexual energy to get somewhere else instead: slower, more conscious, and without a finish. The orgasm is not a goal and the session has not failed if it does not happen. In practice it therefore lasts longer and less happens per minute.

Do stay critical about the word. “Tantra massage” is also used as a tidy wrapper for the first kind. So always ask what concretely happens and whether coming is the endpoint; from the answer you hear right away where you are landing.

That depends on what you find comfortable. Whether I massage clothed or naked is up to you, and you may change your mind about that halfway through too.

A session lasts a few hours in practice. That is not a commercial choice but a necessary one: under two hours it gets rushed, and rushing is exactly what takes the effect away. So count on an afternoon rather than an hour.

Your partner may be there, and even help massage if you both want that. It does ask that we talk through beforehand who does what, because otherwise it turns into a negotiation halfway while you are lying down. So agree that beforehand, not on the spot.

No, and it is more common than you think. During a session all sorts of things can come loose: crying, trembling, sometimes laughing. Stuck tension and emotions you have long tucked away are finally allowed out.

That is not discomfort that startles me and it is not something we have to fix. Often it is exactly what it is about, and afterward women call that part the most valuable of the whole session.

What happens then is up to you: keep going, pause for a moment, or say nothing about it. I am not going to ask where it comes from unless you want that yourself. And if a dip still comes a day later, you may message me.

Yes, and that combination is exactly the intention. Safe sits in the agreements: we talk through beforehand what does and does not happen, you keep on what you want to keep on, and you can stop at any moment without a word being said about it.

Exciting sits in not knowing what is coming within those agreed boundaries. That is a very different kind of excitement than the uncertainty of “what am I getting into”, and it is the only kind that feels good.

That you have never done it before is actually more of an advantage. You have nothing to unlearn and no expectation of how it is supposed to go.

Yes, and for many women that is the real effect, even if they came for something else. Tantra works slowly, and it is that slowness that makes you notice when something is pleasant and when it tips over.

In daily life you usually run past that. It goes too fast, or you only notice afterward, or you say nothing because the mood would change. Here there is time to notice it in the moment itself.

And because nothing is expected of you, voicing it costs nothing either. If you say halfway through that something does not feel good, nothing else changes about the session or the mood. That is usually the new experience.

Yes, and that is deliberately part of the session if you want it. Tuning your breathing to each other, touching slower than you are used to, and taking turns giving and receiving without it running straight on to sex.

They are simple things. They sound almost too simple to do anything, and yet at home they never happen on their own, because there is always something else and because no one starts the conversation.

What turns out to stick most is not a technique but a tempo. Couples who do this more often say afterward that they started going slower rather than that they started trying something new.

That depends on where you want to go, not on what is better. If it is about relaxation and feeling your body again, then the gender of the person massaging often matters little.

If something is going on around men, trust, rejection, an experience you carry with you, then a man can be exactly what makes the difference, because you then go through that experience again in a setting where nothing is expected of you and where you decide when it stops.

And if you are in doubt: that is information in itself. Call first. From how such a conversation goes you notice more about whether it clicks than from any consideration beforehand.

For women who want contact with their own body again, for whatever reason. That is a broad group, and that is not an evasive answer but the reality.

Women who have not been touched in years. Women who are starting over after a divorce or a loss and do not know how. Women who never learned to relax under touch because something was always expected of them. And women who are simply curious, which is a perfectly valid reason.

For whom it is less suitable: someone looking for something that has to be quick, or someone who is really looking for a solution to something a therapist would serve better. I will just say so then.

Because otherwise your body does not join in. As long as there is tension somewhere about what is going to happen, your system stays on guard and at most you feel that someone is touching you.

Relaxation is not a side effect of tantra. Without relaxation simply nothing happens, and then you have had an expensive massage. That is also why the pre-talk is there and why I keep asking about what you do not want: every point you are unsure about otherwise keeps running along the whole session.

That is why everything may be asked beforehand, however small. Where we are, who is there, what I am wearing, how long it takes, how you stop.

No, you do not have to believe in anything. You feel the relaxation of a tantra massage even without assuming anything about energy channels or chakras.

Those words are a language to describe what your body experiences: calm, tingling, a wave that runs through you. That it is named this way is historical. The Sanskrit word tantra literally means weave, and the idea is that loose threads together form one whole. You may also just call it your nervous system.

I do not make you believe anything for it to work. If an explanation gets in your way, we leave it out and you simply feel what you feel.

The massage does not go ahead the moment you want that, full stop. A yes may always turn into a no, halfway through too, without a reason too, and then I stop right away. You do not have to explain what changed and you do not have to make up for it afterward.

On my side there are also moments where I do not begin: if you are heavily under the influence, if I notice you are doing it for someone else, or if the conversation beforehand simply does not add up. That is no judgment of you.

Stopping costs you only the costs already made. That is not up for negotiation and it does not need an awkward conversation on top of it.