Tantra yoga

Tantra yoga means the methods taught in the tantras, a large family of Indian religious texts. Those methods are mostly ritual, mantra, visualisation and meditation on the body as a map of the divine.

The name has picked up a very different meaning in the West, so start with what the word and the texts are.

What does the word tantra mean?

Tantra comes from the Sanskrit root tan, to stretch or to weave. A tantra was first a loom or the warp threads on it, and from there the word came to mean a framework, a system or a treatise. Some Sanskrit works on secular subjects are called tantras with no religious sense at all.

In the religious sense, the tantras are texts that present themselves as revealed teachings, usually as a dialogue between a deity and a disciple, often Shiva and Shakti.

Where does tantra come from?

Tantric texts appear from around the fifth or sixth century CE and multiply through the medieval period. They belong to several traditions at once:

• Shaiva tantras, centred on Shiva. Kashmir Shaivism produced the most famous philosophy in this line, with Abhinavagupta, around the tenth and eleventh centuries, and his work the Tantraloka.
• Shakta tantras, centred on Shakti, the divine feminine power worshipped as Devi in many forms.
• Vaishnava tantras, such as the Pancharatra texts, centred on Vishnu.
• Buddhist tantras, the basis of Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet and the Himalaya, such as the Guhyasamaja and Kalachakra tantras.
• Jain tantric practice, with its own mantras, diagrams and protective deities.

What these share is method more than belief. Initiation by a teacher, the use of mantra, the drawing of mandalas and yantras, circular diagrams of a divine realm, and the idea that the practitioner’s own body can be a place where the divine is met.

What do tantric practices involve?

The core practices are quite structured. They include daily ritual worship, the repetition of mantras, words and syllables used as a focus for the mind, hand gestures called mudras, and nyasa, placing syllables on parts of the body by touch and attention.

Tantra also gave yoga its picture of the subtle body: channels called nadis, and centres along the spine that later became the seven chakras. The idea of kundalini, a coiled power said to rise through those centres, comes from this setting too, and is described on the page about kundalini awakening in the tradition.

How is tantra connected to hatha yoga?

Closely. The hatha texts grew out of tantric circles, especially the Nath tradition associated with Gorakhnath. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, from around the fifteenth century, uses tantric language for its seals, locks and breath work, and describes the aim as raising kundalini. The page on hatha yoga, the body-centred practice follows that thread.

What are the common misconceptions about tantra?

The biggest one is that tantra is a set of sex techniques. A minority of tantric traditions did use transgressive rites, including the so-called five Ms, which listed wine, meat, fish, parched grain and sexual union. Even inside those traditions, many teachers read them symbolically. From the nineteenth century, Western writers seized on these rites, and twentieth-century neo-tantra built a modern practice around intimacy that has little in common with the texts.

A second misconception is that tantra is one religion. It is a style of practice found across Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. A third is that it is secret magic: it was taught after initiation, but much of it is now published and studied openly.

How does tantra show up in a modern yoga class?

More than most people realise. Chakra imagery, kundalini language, mudras, bija syllables and chanting all come from tantric sources. Swami Satyananda of the Bihar School drew on tantric nyasa when he shaped yoga nidra, guided rest lying down, in the twentieth century.

A class labelled “tantra yoga” can mean anything from chakra-themed hatha to modern couples workshops, so ask the teacher what it involves before you go.