Three groups that expand the exploration
There seems to be no end to the creativity of humans when it comes to inventing more sorts of Tantra – and a good thing it is! Our roving reporter noticed brochures for these online, and, with the permission of the group leaders, we’re quoting from them.
Pineal Tantra: a one-week retreat
Swami Beebopananda (really! That’s the name he wanted, so it was given to him!), who lives on the Isle of Man, has announced the inaugural group in a new discipline: Pineal Tantra. He explains it thusly: “Love relationships are now recognised as inefficient, unhealthy, and essentially traumatic. So much suffering happens in the name of love… and yet we all long for a fulfilling relationship with someone.
This longing is actually archaic, left over from lives as swans or wolves. As consciousness-seeking humans, we will do away with that old-fashioned dream, embarking on an inner journey of discovery. Special sounds and specially-designed Thankas, meditations, pineal massage, and micro-dosing with cactus-thorn tinctures (“to drive away the dreams”) help us to enter the exciting, sensuous realm within our own third eye. Come alone or with a partner, but you’ll leave so fulfilled within yourself that you’ll forget his or her name.
“The venue is a medium-sized rock in the Irish Sea, lapped by the Pictish surf, where we have built a beautiful octagonal temple on stilts. Cleansed by sea winds, it is an ideal location to whip away the burdens of the world forever, as you undertake this essential journey to find the inner lover.
“There will also be hot-tubbing, seabird guano painting, wild swimming, and kelp-gathering; the kelp being used in our healthy meals and in craftwork. Our gathering is timed for the full moon, to allow for a special Silent Pineal Moon Bath, where the moon gazes into your forehead with all her light (cloud cover permitting).
“There will be an upright piano at the temple, made from Irish azalea wood. We will first do a ritual where we create biodegradable effigies of any toxic exes and cast them into the crashing surf, to be harmlessly melted away in the timeless action of water and stone. Then, to celebrate, and ground ourselves before ascending to the third eye, we’ll dance to ragtime and bebop, played by Beebopananda himself.”
All relationship is abuse.”
– Swami Beebopananda
More on: www.onelittlerockbebo.com
Next, we go to an even more exotic location for a different kind of Tantra; one more geared to togetherness. The leaders for the group below are Shadeen and Deva Crystal, from Canada.
Inuit Tantra: a month-long spring retreat
“During the long dark winters of the far north, native peoples have had ample time to develop beautiful methods for slow love. We will gather in a huge, surprisingly-warm igloo near the northern shore of Canada’s Hudson Bay. You and your partner will be issued faux-fur mukluks, parka, trousers, mittens, socks, and undergarments, and a double sleeping bag made of faux bearskin. Light will be provided by cruelty-free soya candles, and music will be made by our own musicians, using traditional instruments constructed with vegan materials. Meditate in the endless night, with no pressure of time – as the sun barely rises before it sets again, you never have to get up to go to work… You and your beloved can gaze into each other’s eyes and souls forever as you relax, relax, relax…
“There will be breaks for delicious meals of vegan blubber, plant-based seal, and frozen cloudberries, accompanied by a hot lichen-based broth.
“As the short days lengthen, the surrounding ice and snow will start to melt. We thus get a lesson in Impermanence and Change: the loving night seemed to go on forever, but now things are different. We will leave the igloo to view the detritus left about that had been covered by snow: plastic bottles, broken snowmobiles, dog faeces and polar bear scat. We will do eye-gazing outside, holding the thought that the other, too, will one day change, and we may be left with revealed difficulties that we then have to deal with.
“This lesson of impermanence will be doubly valuable if, as sometimes happens (increasingly, actually), the ice on which the igloo stands breaks off from the mainland and floats away… Be sure to bring a notebook and pen, and a waterproof document envelope for them. Journaling will help with all that might arise in you.”
Book at: www.inuittantra/brrrr.com
And now, we go down to Australia to meet Shari and Shabash, for
Blissful-Insect Tantra
“We all know that bees are heroes, feeding us and giving the flowers a reason to bloom. In an increasingly unnatural world, they go on labouring, season in and season out. What is not so generally known is that their very vibration, the very hum of their hive, is immensely nourishing and relaxing for the human organism. In this retreat we get the full benefit of those vibrations by lying with our partner in special chambers constructed over beehives. The chambers are made of indigenous woods, harvested from the bush, that have fallen off the plants on their own. They are naturally fragrant. There are windows with netting, so that the chambers are entirely safe from ants, wasps, and the like.
“Resting together in the chamber or engaging in love play there will completely re-set the nervous system of your connection. A relationship has, we have discovered, its own nervous system, and it needs to be soothed and supported just as does any single person’s.
“Next, we move to Cicada Tantra. These amazing creatures spend 7 years underground, and then emerge and fly… to live just three days. Thus they are a metaphor for ‘living in the moment’, something we all need more of; particularly in relationship where ‘old habit kills’. Science now knows that the sound of the cicada, like that of the purr of a cat, is very good for us; its vibration is exactly in accordance with that of our own lymphatic flow, as well as, like bees’, providing nervous system release. So, listening to cicadas brings us into a state of summer well-being and flow, and healthy bliss. When we translate that to the health of the couple… you can see the benefits.
“We will meet in a remote location in the Australian Bush, and stay in cabins made of bushwood. We’ll have an Aboriginal shaman on site, and will eat delicious food grown or foraged nearby. (For the brave, there are mealy-grubs and other interesting local foods!) In case of fire, a helicopter will be on call to fetch us. It will also deliver water, and once a day provide a mass shower by pouring water down on us from the sky.
“Come and let the wild insects of the bush wipe the city from you with their special frequency. We will have honey spa treatments, rituals with honey, and relationship counselling by certified beekeepers. Whilst every night, all night, the cicadas will wipe our nervous and lymphatic systems clean and re-install peace and harmony… also with each other.”
For booking: www.honeydoandyoutoo.com
Compiled by Madhuri – Featured image by Mariela Ferbo on Unsplash
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