Tantra Ripped My Heart Out And Opened It

Tantra ripped my heart out and opened it,

And then it forced me to finally learn to take care of myself.

Like most people,

I thought of Tantra as being all about sex,

Orgies,

Mad people and cults.

All I could feel when I heard this word was fear,

Shame and disgust,

And I would not even allow myself to think any further.

Just this reaction tells a lot about who I was before I let myself investigate what Tantra really is.

And,

Spoiler alert,

It's not all about sex.

It's about feeling,

Feeling everything,

The light and the dark,

The good and the bad,

The grief and the love,

The fear and the ecstasy.

And honestly,

I had done a pretty good job to numb all of this out and just be somewhere on a flat line in the middle of them all.

But that came at a price.

My life looked great from the outside,

But all I could think about was how do I get out of this prison that I created for myself.

It was a prison I created in my mind and my body and nervous system were too scared to walk out of the door that was wide open.

It seemed just so much safer to stay.

And then,

I went to my first Tantra workshop and my life changed forever.

But before I continue this story,

I want to make sure we are on the same page about what Tantra actually is.

Tantra is perhaps the most misunderstood spiritual tradition in the West.

At its core,

Tantra is a radically life-affirming spiritual path.

While many spiritual traditions teach us to transcend the body,

Deny our desires or escape the material world,

Tantra says the opposite.

The divine is not separate from the world,

It manifests through it.

Tantra affirms both the light and the dark.

It finds devotion and reverence in all aspects of life,

Including the challenging,

The messy,

The forbidden.

Where other paths see obstacles to avoid,

Tantra sees gateways to awakening.

And many people's gateway to awakening is sexuality,

Because this is where the deepest fears and conditioning live.

Tantra recognizes the body as a sacred temple for transformation.

And this is exactly what it did for me.

From hating my body,

Denying it and not feeling it at all,

My body became my temple for transformation.

The way I grew up,

Everything that was going on in the body was shameful,

Undesired or scary.

And what is the easiest thing to do in that case?

Nama.

I numbed out my sense of hunger through an eating disorder,

My sense of tiredness through coffee,

My sense of pain through painkillers,

And my sense of shame through alcohol.

This is what I learned growing up.

And this is what my body did to protect me.

But numbing the bad feelings also comes with numbing the good.

The good feelings like joy,

Ecstasy,

Pleasure,

Happiness,

Desire and feeling alive.

And when I was in my first Tantra worship,

That pushed me completely to the edges of my own comfort with simple exercises like eye gazing and fingertip touching.

I felt the good for the first time in decades.

In that moment,

I knew that this is going to change my life.

But I also,

But also that it's not going to be a walk in the park.

That moment I experienced in that workshop was a high I never experienced with any of the drugs I ever took.

I felt completely connected to everyone in the room,

To God,

Myself and every single cell in my body.

I felt energy rushing through me that lasted for hours and let me feel more blissful than I ever felt for the next few days.

At the same time,

I remember the fear I felt walking into that space.

It's not rational that I felt that way,

But my whole system was on high alert.

Today I know that this was the moment where I opened my heart for the first time since I was a child.

And to a traumatized nervous system this is scary as fuck.

I had no choice but to let go of control,

Fully be in the present moment and to trust that I'm gonna be okay.

Something I haven't been able to do my whole adult life.

This is what opened the door to exploring the light and the dark,

Because something inside of me knew it would be worth it.

From that night on I went to so many more workshops,

Retreats,

Trainings,

Temple nights and dates.

In many of these experiences I bravely opened my heart to strangers.

Sometimes I got hurt,

Sometimes my nervous system put me back into numbness and sometimes I felt even more alive than in that first workshop.

I learned to feel my emotions,

I tried my heart out for days and nights on end about things that had nothing to do with the present moment.

I punched pillows and screamed at people I haven't seen in years.

I allowed myself to feel it all.

I broke open.

My heart was aching for weeks,

Not just emotionally but physically.

It was painful and sometimes I thought it would never end.

Sometimes I went too far and sometimes I judged myself for not going far enough.

But I finally felt alive again.

However,

After a while I realized that I got stuck in seeking more and more of this while still feeling unsafe in daily life.

In my relationships,

In my work,

In my finances,

I had no trust that I would be able to take care of myself in any of these areas.

Somehow I felt like I didn't have my own back.

It felt as if I was split in half.

This version of me that suddenly felt so alive and full of energy and the other,

Much younger half that was not catching up was asking for attention.

She was reminding me more and more that I left her behind and I could not ignore her anymore.

I would go to a training,

Push myself to go deeper and try my heart out the next day.

Judging myself that I still wasn't healed enough,

That something was inherently wrong with me and that I was broken.

I thought the only way to get through that was to push harder.

This is what has always worked for me.

I was proud of how much I could push myself and people were impressed.

It was my source of love and external validation.

It had provided me with an impressive resume and a life and career many people envy,

But also with a lot of emptiness and I didn't want that anymore.

And suddenly I saw that this old way of doing things would not get me any further.

Whose love was I even trying to get?

Who did I want to impress?

And in that moment I realized the only love that is important right now is the love I can give to myself,

Something I have never really done.

So I took some time and I asked this little girl inside of me what she wants and she told me to stop,

To stop pushing forward and instead take her by the hand and take care of her.

So I did and I felt all her fears and was crying all her tears.

And then I finally took time to integrate and process everything.

I stopped going to retreat and started to create safety in myself through self-compassion,

Setting boundaries and taking care of myself first.

I showed her how much we have grown,

How far we have come and what we are capable of.

Now we both know we are finally living the life we always dreamed of and we have each other's back no matter what.

This is how I truly learned to take care of myself,

Not through pushing,

Not through control,

Not through achievement or external safety,

But by allowing all parts of me to be seen and valued and to listen even when it's not what I was hoping to hear.