Neotantra

What is neotantra?

Neotantra is the Western, twentieth-century reinterpretation of tantra, built around sexuality and personal experience. It borrows images and words from classical Indian tantra but leaves out most of the wider religious and ritual context. It is the form most Western tantra courses and tantra massages offer.

What neotantra looks like in practice

A neotantra session or course is about slowing down. Breathing, eye contact, slow touch and attention to the energy in the body take center stage, often without orgasm as the goal. A recognizable example is the slow massage that comes from this corner, such as the lingam massage, where the touch is deliberately kept separate from performing or coming. Where classical tantra takes in a whole system of scriptures, deities and rituals, the neotantric practice mainly picks out the physical and the meditative.

Where neotantra comes from

Neotantra is younger than it looks, and you can date its rise fairly well. Around 1900, the work of the British orientalist Sir John Woodroffe, who published under the pen name Arthur Avalon, opened Western interest in tantric and yogic practices. In 1905 the American Pierre Bernard founded the Tantrik Order of America, one of the first attempts to bring tantra onto American soil. The big growth came later. According to the English-language encyclopedia, interest in tantric practice in Western culture has grown sharply since the 1960s and became identified there with its sexual methods. In those 1960s and 1970s the Indian teacher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho, gave neotantra a large audience by combining tantra with breathing techniques and body work.

Why people are drawn to neotantra

The appeal lies in the promise that sex can be more than an act: attention, slowing down, connection, and no performance. For anyone used to sex that heads straight for an orgasm, neotantra opens a different experience, one where the process itself is the point. For a couple it can be a way to break the routine and take time for each other again. What neotantra is not: a guaranteed spiritual breakthrough or an ancient secret technique. Anyone who expects that ends up disappointed, and that is exactly what the criticism is about.

Classical tantra and neotantra are not the same

“Neotantra is just the modern name for age-old tantra.” Not really. Classical tantra is a complex Indian system of philosophy, ritual and meditation, of which sexuality is only a small and often symbolic part. Neotantra lifted that one aspect out and made it the core.

“More neotantra means more spiritual depth.” The religious scholar Georg Feuerstein, who coined the term neo-tantrism, warns against exactly this. Neotantric literature, he argues, confuses tantric bliss with plain orgasmic pleasure and wraps physical needs in an aura of spirituality. The cultural historian Hugh Urban argues more broadly that the Western image of tantra is largely a modern construction, shaped by imagination and marketing.

What I notice about it

In the brochures neotantra sounds like age-old wisdom, and in practice it is something from yesterday. I’m Victor, a gigolo, and what I do is neotantra, the part that is about attention and pace. What I run into most is that people expect it to be floaty, when at its core it is actually very concrete: breathing slower, really looking, having nothing to prove. That it is not a thousand-year-old technique makes it more approachable for most people, not worth less.

More reading on neotantra

• Tantra gives the older tradition neotantra draws on, and why the two are not the same.
• Lingam massage and erotic massage show what the neotantric approach looks like physically.
• The encyclopedia entry on neotantra gives the overview of the Western practitioners and the criticism.

Where this fits on my site

If the neotantric approach appeals to you, attention and pace over performance, that is exactly what I work with. What that means concretely and how such a booking goes is on the page what is tantra. This glossary page only gives the origin and the boundaries, and you can always ask something first.

Sources

• Neotantra. English-language encyclopedia. Provides the Sanskrit form navatantra from nava “new”, the role of Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon) and Pierre Bernard with the Tantrik Order of America from 1905, the strong growth since the 1960s where the practice became identified with its sexual methods, and the role of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho).
• Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy (book). Georg Feuerstein, Shambhala, 1998. Provides the term neo-tantrism and the criticism that neotantric literature confuses tantric bliss with plain orgasmic pleasure and wraps physical needs in an aura of spirituality.
• Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion (book). Hugh B. Urban, University of California Press, 2003. Provides the argument that the Western image of tantra is largely a modern construction, shaped by imagination, colonial scholarship and marketing.

Related terms

• Tantra. The older Indian tradition neotantra draws on, and which is much broader than the sexual part.
• Lingam massage. The slow massage of the penis that comes from the neotantric corner.
• Erotic massage. The broader practice the neotantric approach leans on.
• Sexual response cycle. The phase model that the deliberate slowing acts on in practice.
• Consent. The agreement that is the starting point in every form of touch.