Tantra. There are so many myths, so many legends, so many ideas about it …
What is Tantra about?
A short history of Tantra
Tantra is a complex spiritual practice with origins in India, Kashmir and Tibet. It is said to facilitate enlightenment and potentially be able to liberate you from the cycle of existence. In our culture, a suitable image for what Tantra means could be to finally stand face to face with God, to become one with Him and with everything that is. And for this to happen, you don’t even have to wait until after Armageddon, but instead, if you are lucky, it could happen now, in this lifetime.
Tantra, if you take it seriously, is a very quick path to enlightenment, but it can also be a fierce one at times. On the tantric path, your Higher Self, the universe, whatever you may want to call it, will confront you again and again with your shadows as well as your desires. Sometimes these confrontations may seem relentless, sometimes loving, but no matter what – all of these situations are possibilities for you to grow and become more yourself.
We find tantric and sexual magic elements in almost all cultures, such as the Tao of East Asia, the ancient Greek cult of Dionysus or the modern Ordo Templis Orientis in Europe, Quodoushka and the Kabbalah in the Middle East, the cult of Isis in Egypt, voodoo and shamanic traditions in South America and the Caribbean. The tantric teachings have a long tradition that can be scientifically traced: the original Tantric Buddhist texts have been preserved in the seclusion of the high plateau of Tibet for over 1400 years.
Tantra today
Especially in the West, tantra is often thought to be solely about sexuality. However, it’s not primarily about reaching multiple orgasms, because even these will come to an end. Sure, when we work with tantric-sexual practices, not only will our concentration and energy level be raised, but also our capacity for ecstasy. And yet, the aim is to use this powerful creative force to fuel our spiritual transformation.
Tantra is also a means of realizing that nothing matters as much as we sometimes think it does. This notion can be felt clearer through meditation, mental training and physical rituals. Tantra can help establish a connection between very different people who might have nothing to say to each other in everyday life. Tantra creates resonance. And it reminds us that when we connect our hearts, we are all one. It doesn’t matter what we have done or not done in the past, nor how old or how young we are, nor whether we have a doctorate or not. Only love matters.
Tantra at YouMeUnity and Love & Freedom
The essence of the tantric teachings taught by YouMeUnity and Love & Freedom Tantra is that we ourselves, as well as everything else in this universe, are a manifestation of the Divine. From a tantric perspective, it is our destiny to recognize our inherent divinity and to merge with divine consciousness through intense physical, emotional and spiritual experiences. And thus Tantra teaches us to see ourselves as part of the whole and reminds us to take our needs seriously. Tantra also teaches us to cling less, flow more and tap fully into the present moment.
What is it that might lead you to become a participant at a seminar by YouMeUnity / Love & Freedom Tantra?
For many, the longing to become enlightened and a deep yearning to live sexuality in a fulfilling way are key. The first crucial step on this path is to feel yourself. People with strong empathic qualities in particular tend to ignore their own boundaries and desires in favour of those of others. Communicating clearly, i.e. allowing yourself to consciously and clearly say “No!” or “Yes!”, can be very empowering. Especially when you are not judged for standing up for yourself, but rather possibly even receive thanks and recognition for that.
For some, it may first be important to allow being touched in the heart or on the skin again, for example after traumatic experiences or intense, challenging break-ups. In a safe space created by us you can see and feel that your boundaries are respected and that your tenderness and gentleness are wanted and enjoyed by another person.
Others participants, on the other hand, may feel starved after a long, often unwanted sexual abstinence and attend a seminar with a desire to touch somebody else’s skin again. For these people, learning to relax is important, just like recognizing their own suppressed need for emotional intimacy. Their learning may be to leave their perceived lack behind and focus instead on self-love. This is a rewarding, but not an easy task. Especially if they had hoped tantra would mean wild sex for them and had disregarded the chances to heal available for themselves and others.
It is not always easy to view all of your inner processes and those of others respectfully and allow them to be integrated into your system, but with a little support it works surprisingly well for many.
How will you be feeling after a session?
What you can learn and try out at the YouMeUnity and Love & Freedom Tantra Events will help you live the kind of relationship with yourself and others that you have always been searching for: respectful, authentic, magical, genuine, unadulterated, sometimes frightening, but always eventually ending with a sigh of relief. The tantric field of experimentation, which we will make tangible for you, allows you to open your heart more and more and steer yourself deeper and deeper into your innermost being, until you reach the place where your true self has been hiding for so long.
From a Tantric Buddhist point of view, your Buddha nature is merely hidden under all the veils and onion layers that you have been imposing on yourself over the years. Together with you, we remove these layers and invite your beautiful inner light to show itself more on the outside and shine. And this radiance goes far beyond the physical. Because you are naturally powerful, present and beautiful, no matter which body you have chosen in this life.
Allow yourself to be authentic and playfully present at YouMeUnity and Love & Freedom Tantra. Just like our feline friends – who, by the way, have inspired us on one of our three most important rules. You can find out what these are at Tantra for Young Parents, the Tantra Experience Days, Tantra Retreats, Tantra Annual Trainings and at our ConsciousTouch events. 🙂
We are looking forward to seeing you!
FAQ about Tantra
Questions, questions, questions
You don’t have to be perfect to face tantric encounters. With us, you have the opportunity to show yourself just the way you are, including anything and everything that makes you you. 🙂 All you need to do is be willing to open your heart so that you can – at least for a moment – feel accepted or even loved unconditionally just the way you are. And you can allow yourself this even if you are afraid of not being enough. Because that is exactly what the magic of the tantric field is about: You let go of everything, flow with the present moment and open up – simply because you know that you are safe and that nothing can happen to you.
And, oh look at you: You can suddenly stand up straight, embrace all of the qualities that belong to you, even the ones you didn’t normally like about yourself. By daring to talk openly about your perceived shortcomings and deficiencies, you create a bond with the other people in the room. Why? Because we are all carrying every conceivable character trait within us, both the “good” and the “bad” ones. If you show yourself with what you struggle with in everyday life, you will energetically attract people who resonate with that. This resonance makes you feel that you belong and your openness strengthens the tantric field of love created by us and the other participants.
And this is exactly what helps you to remember, even after a session is over, that this deep love is possible and available to you. Always and at any time. You carry it within you and don’t need anyone else to give it to you. We and the people you meet in a tantric setting are only there to be your mirror during a session and to remind you of this.
And the more you discover this love within yourself, the more you attract other people into your life who will also reflect this unconditional love to you, even outside of our Tantra Events.
(You can find out more about how you can strengthen your self-love in Joy’s latest book“Feeling Loved” – in German only, for the moment).
Perhaps this Tantra-Mutmach podcast with Joy and HerzBauchBindung will also help you.
Everything is allowed and nothing has to happen. For us, Tantra is like the world in miniature: What is important to you right now is like compressed and packed into a single experience of a session. With our help, you can face what is important to you right now so that you can let go of what no longer serves you and discover new qualities in yourself.
We offer you the opportunity to explore yourself, your sexuality and your connection to the Divine in a safe environment. It is crucial that you keep observing yourself and questioning your actions in order to become clear about your desires, wishes and boundaries. Together as a group we make ourselves available to the power of universal love: In the learning field we have created, you can experience what it feels like to be seen solely through the eyes of love.
Perhaps you will be given a genuine hug that you will never forget, a hug that will open hidden doors within you and facilitate deep healing and enhance self-love, self-acceptance and a deeper connection to spirituality.
You may also surprise yourself by uttering a genuine “Yes!” to an almost complete stranger and, to your own astonishment, fully surrender to this encounter. And maybe you will thus be experiencing an ecstasy you have never felt before.
Everything may and nothing must!
If you want to know how we work, take a look at this interview with the online magazine Watson.
Yes. After all, that’s exactly what a tantric experimental field is for: to give you the possibililty to overcome your fears. When it comes to boundaries, simply put, three categories of people are entangled with each other:
- Those who are afraid of overstepping boundaries,
- those who are afraid that their own boundaries will not be respected,
- and those who believe that border fences are only there to be leaped over.
Now all three types of humans will have a chance to face up to this and learn to dance together, energetically, verbally, non-verbally, all of it.
If you’re one of those people who are afraid of being perceived as overbearing, i.e. someone who plays a more active role and has occasionally unintentionally overstepped the boundaries of a counterpart, the ideal situation is that the other side either says “No!” to your suggestion from the outset or “This far is fine, but no further, please!”. You can smile, say “Thank you for your no!” and the dance can continue, with the same partner or a different one.
In other cases, however, misunderstandings can occur, especially if the boundaries were not noticable, which may mean that they were not clearly expressed or you did not realize them. If you’ve gone too far, you can apologize and let yourself be maneuvered out of the other person’s intimate space again without getting angry at them.
And in an emergency, you will also have to put up with the other person showing their teeth or even scratching and biting you (according to one of the cat rules we hinted at before) …
As a rather delicate being, it is not any easier, perhaps even quite the opposite: feeling, openly communicating and then also doing what you really want and refraining from doing what you don’t want is something that unobtrusive, empathic people often didn’t learn in their childhood. Nevertheless, it will become easier for you with time the more you can feel that you are allowed to say “No!” and “Yes!” and that you are loved and respected no matter what answer you may choose.
Your clear instruction “Please don’t just trample over the flowerbeds around my house, but rather stop in front of them first and ask me if I would like to invite you!” also helps people with a tendency to trespass behave in a civilized and careful manner. They will also be able to appreciate and love themselves more because you are helping them to recognize your limits. This is not so easy for many, because your boundary is not a barbed wire fence, but rather as delicate and vulnerable as you are.
In this way, after some practice, you will gain more and more clarity and see that this attitude will require fewer and fewer words over time. Because clarity is an attitude to life. The clearer you are, verbally, physically and energetically, the easier it is for the other person and the safer it is for you.
And yet you can still practise getting your hackles up, baring your teeth and, on occasions when someone simply can’t or won’t understand you, scratch and bite. This is helpful for you and also for the other person.
By the way, unclear situations can easily arise if only an implied or very quiet “no” is uttered, or even if one person “freezes” as a result of a post-traumatic reaction and hopes that this “non-reaction” will be understood as a “no” by the other person. It helps to speak about this before you start practicing together and to inform the otheras clearly and honestly as possible about your current development construction sites. And if you’re not sure whether you want something or not in a specific situation, it’s okay to press the pause button and reflect in peace before you decide how to proceed. If you need support, we are here for you.
Of course, we can’t take away your fears without your help, but we can reassure you that all of these inhibitions and states of being are completely normal. It is important that everyone helps each other be their best selves and does not reject themselves because of any imperfections.
Of course. Most of our workshops are open to everyone. Exception: workshops that are explicitly advertised for couples. But even then, as a single person you still have the opportunity to take part by teaming up with someone of the opposite sex from your circle of friends/acquaintances. You can then perform together as a practice pair.
A practicing couple is an association of a man and a woman who come together as a couple to practice tantric exercises for a certain period of time.
Yes, of course you can. You can take advantage of couple protection at all our events, i.e. you can do all tantric exercises exclusively with each other.
At the same time, you can also change your mind at any time and open up to others. Or you can do it one way on one day and another way on another, depending on your current need for closeness or desire for freedom. The important thing is that you are in agreement. 🙂
Normally in German. But as soon as someone from another country comes along who doesn’t understand German, Joy, lovingly supported by Thomas, is more than happy to go back to her original profession: we then simply hold our seminars bilingually (German and English).
No, we do not offer tantric massages.
At some of our seminars and events, you can learn tantric healing massages and other massage techniques together with other participants.
We currently have an online course, Tantra for Young Parents – with the option to experience us live in Heidelberg on 2 days a year. You can read all about our Tantra training for parents here.
Otherwise, you have the option of booking us for individual sessions. This is also possible online. You can find the information here.
Double Check
You've come to the right place if ...
- you are ready to take off your masks and show yourself to the world as you really are
- you are ready to explore all sides of yourself and others, even those you have avoided in the past
- naked people are just as okay for you as when someone stays fully clothed
- you can respect your own boundaries and those of others
- you love touch and sensuality or would like to open up more to them
- you are looking for a booster for your spiritual growth
- strong emotions are weighing you down and you are ready to take a closer look at them
- you are not just thinking about how to get physical as fast as possible
- you want to view your own actions and those of others in a more neutral and non-judgmental way
- you are open or want to become more open to everything that is important for you right now
- you want to combine spirituality and ecstasy
How you can experience Tantra at YouMeUnity
You can experience tantra in its purest form during our annual trainings and seminars, at Tantra for Young Parents, the Tantra Experience Days, retreats, as a taster at our ConsciousTouch events and a delicate taste of it at all our events. Because we are Tantra and embody the tantric way of life in everything we do.
If there is no event that appeals to you at the moment, but you urgently feel the need to engage with tantra, you can also ask us for an individual session.
How Tantra became part of our lives
Thomas
I have been researching the connection between spirituality and sexuality since the 1990s. From the very beginning, I was also interested in combining Christian and pagan experiences with Western sex magic.
My spiritual search led me to my first annual training and two further years as an assistant at BeFree-Tantra via an advertisement in a German psychology magazine. In 2004 I came into contact with Tibetan Tantric Buddhism and led my first Tantra group.
10 years later, during my second longer professional stay in India, I co-founded the Love and Freedom Foundation New Delhi and subsequently established Love & Freedom Tantra here in the West. I offer sessions, retreats and festivals with a lot of enthusiasm guiding me.
In 2019, for example, I organized the first “Summer of Love & Freedom” festival in commemoration of Woodstock that had taken place 50 years earlier. I like to enrich the lives of my friends, participants and cooperation partners through my being. And since summer 2022, my life has been enriched, stirred up and lovingly filled with light by my wife and “Tantric Dakini” Joy.
For me, Tantra is the method for getting a person who is physically active and conditioned to skin contact to meditate and work energetically for the benefit of all beings ;).
Experiencing ecstasy and feeling connected to the Divine is exactly what fascinates me.
Joy
I was tantric for many years without being aware of it. And yet I was afraid to consciously open up to the tantric field. But it lured and called me again and again. The universe even had to use a trick: One of my soul brothers signed us up together for a Cacao Ceremony in Heidelberg. The organizer was Thomas. It was only when I was there that I fully realized that this Cacao Ceremony was very different from the ones I was familiar with, because it combined Cacao with Tantra …
With a pounding heart, my friend at my side as support and full trust that the universe would know what it was doing, I spontaneously decided to accept the challenge and threw myself into the world of Tantra as a participant with my whole being. And guess what? I very quickly found the home I had always been searching for.
I understood that my initial fear had been nothing more than the knowledge hidden deep inside of me that Tantra is my passion, my calling. Why the caveat beforehand? I guess because sometimes we are all afraid of our own magnitude. Even me. 🙂
I have a gift for being natural when I connect with people in the tantric field. My big heart will always guide me and I have come to realize that I can spread and be love just by being me. This way, I can also make myself available to higher realms as a body medium. I will allow unconditional love to flow through me and my empathy for everyone and everything is one of my most important sources of inspiration.
YouMeUnity
As YouMeUnity we are offering to accompany you during your journey to yourself. We enjoy it so much to see people arrive at their innermost core. In doing so they are getting ready to embrace one or several relationships that can last and that are honest, deeper than ever before and 100 % heart-open. Such a secure bonding includes honest and appreciative communication, an open heart and a readiness in everyone involved to fully love themselves – and by doing so, learning to love everyone and everything on this beautiful planet, too. Self-confidence, courage, authenticity and embracing what is are also part of this – as well as accepting everything about yourself, even those character traits that you are not particularly proud of. And, of course everything that reminds you of your innate Buddha within yourself.
If you are not 100% sure,
then this is not the right thing to do
If there is anything that makes you feel uncomfortable in connection with Tantra, we invite you to take a closer look:
Is it simply a shying away from new challenges, a restlessness that you know from experience will subside when you open up to a new topic that moves you? Then we salute you (that’s how I, Joy, felt before my first Tantra Weekend Workshop, which turned my life completely upside down).
Or is it a strong, deeper-seated fear that makes you feel like you were disrespecting yourself if you were to enter a tantric setting at this point in time? Then take it easy and slow down, even though you may already hear the call.
If you would like to open up to our approach to Tantra, but are looking for a slower, more gentle way, we invite you to familiarize yourself with our beginner events(Soul Sounds, Waves of Eternity or our evening version of ConsciousTouch). Alternatively, you can take the direct route via a custom-tailored one-to-one session with us.
If you are unsure and would like our advice, just get in touch!