A Weekend of Tantra Yoga Can Change Your Life

I recently had the honor and privilege to facilitate a weekend Sky Dancing Tantra Yoga retreat at the beautiful Sky Wood Temple, a private residence nestled in the hills of Woodside overlooking Palo Alto, with a swimming pool, hot tub, gardens, hiking paths, and chickens roaming around! The fact that it occurred over a powerful new moon during an Indian Summer weekend heightened the experience.

Sixteen beautiful gods and goddesses came together from all over the Bay area

We ranged in age from our 20s to our 50’s, couples and singles, scientists, CEOs, techies, healers, lawyers, and working moms.  Some of us were experienced Tantra Yoga practitioners, some had never had a Tantra Yoga  class before.  We all signed up for different reasons; to connect more with our partners, to explore our sexuality, to heal from past wounds, to find our balance.  We were there to experience, to learn, to share, to be present and to open ourselves up to the possibilities.

Understanding and honoring our Tantra Yoga boundaries

In our first exercise I watched as men and women felt into what their boundary was with each other, how it differed from person to person, and from gender to gender.  So many women literally fell into each other’s arms and many of the men kept a healthy distance from each other.   The very first night we shared intimate details about ourselves with strangers, answering questions about how we liked to be loved and what held us back sexually…and so the journey of opening began.

Creating Intimacy with Ourselves and Others

During our first active Osho meditation of intense breathing into our chakras (energy centers), we began the process of unfolding, of peeling back the layers that hold us back from being intimate with ourselves and others.  We learned how to connect with ourselves sexually through breath, sound, and movement and the importance of the PC muscle.  We played with our energy fields and found out that energy does follow intention. Experiencing being in other people’s energy fields was fascinating and moving an energy ball around the room like a ping pong game was fun!

By the end of our Saturday morning session I saw the energy in the group shift.  Strangers less than 12 hours ago were bonding, men were hugging men, we were hanging out naked in the hot tub, having deep conversations, and comforting each other when emotions came up.

Emotions Come Up in Tantra Yoga Weekends

We open up old wounds as we shed some of our outer shell and get more in touch with what we are feeling in our bodies.  For some the flood gates opened, for others it was a quiet contemplation, a questioning of what is.  We struggled to understand what we wanted from our lives, our relationships, our connection to our spirituality and sexuality.  We even triggered each other and just like any family gathering, we had our moments of disagreement and even conflict.

Strangers No More

As the weekend progressed we danced together, we fed each other in a sumptuous sensual feast, we created a cacophony of sound on Tibetan bowls under the full moon.  Strangers no more, we allowed ourselves to become truly vulnerable and shared what was really important to us in intimate relationships and how we bring the divine masculine and feminine into our lives.

At the end of the weekend, during our appreciation puja, we had to literally peel ourselves away from each other.  In our closing circle we shared about how the weekend allowed us to come out of our shyness, provided a safe space to have difficult conversations with partners, helped us to heal our broken hearts, allowed us to claim our power, taught us about vulnerability and taking risks.

In the great Tantra tradition, a group of 16 individual strands of people, emotions, energy, sexuality, were weaved together to create Oneness with each other and the Universe…