What is neo tantra?

Most of you who are reading this article are probably already aware of tantric massage, if not then how the Hellman’s Mustard did you get here?

However, one part of the tantric philosophy you may not be too familiar with is neo tantra. As the first part of the phrase may adhere too, neo tantra is essentially the Western interpretation of the tantric Hindu philosophy and culture.

Its main focus differs from the original and focuses mainly on sexuality. However, practitioners of neo Tantra will still regularly refer to the ancient Indian text of traditional eastern tantra.

East Heads West

As the tantric movement moved into the West, many of the traditional parts of the culture and religion were dropped and the main focus became on the sexual side. During the 1960’s when many young people travelled to India seeking adventure and enlightenment, they came in contact with tantra.

The philosophy started to fuse with the idea of free love which was promoted by the Hippy movement in America, and soon the spiritual side of tantra was overshadowed by the sexual part of the concept as the two separate cultures merged.

As this new fusion of ideas mixed many people in the west simply saw tantra as a guide to extended sexual gratification, and this is what has now become known as neo tantra.

Many people who have observed the growth of the offshoot say it is because neo tantra offers a more acceptable way of exploring one’s sexuality without feeling bad.

Much of this has come from Western religions who see sex as something wicked that must only be done to procreate and not for reasons of fun or certainly not used for an spiritual progression.

This comes across to many as repressive, so the movement of neo tantra offers many people a reason to use sex as a way to fight against this repression and as method to gain greater insight into a more spiritual world. It is from this fusion that the modern version of tantric massage came into being.

The story that keeps on developing

These days, when people search for an erotic massage they often put tantric massage into Google to see what comes up.

Because people use this phrase to search, all the practitioners, whether they actually offer authentic tantric massage or not, start using this phrase to describe any kind of erotic massage.

However there is a big difference between a body to body massage with a happy ending compared to an original tantra massage given by a masseuse who has been trained in this art form.

The whole story of how the term tantra split off into different branches with different meanings is a classic example of how humans move around, swap and even fuse ideas. There is of course nothing wrong with this and to some degree is to be expected.

People always like to chose the best parts of a religion, economic theory, music genre and forget the rest.

In fact, as we will discuss in a future blog post, if people want to use tantra as a guide to having great sex then we think this is brilliant, but just recognise that true tantra is more about spirituality than fantastic sex.