Introduction to the Essence of Tantra

Essence of TantraI once asked my coach: “What is the essence of Tantra?”. He said: “Understanding. Your have to not only reach for certain sensations, but also understand the goal and the essence of what is going on”.
That is why we will start from the very outset to understand what is Tantra and how tantric practice can make your life better.

We do not get special esoteric knowledge in our schools about how a human being works, behaves and express their individuality in the outer world and therefore we will start with essential energy centres description.

  1. Instinctive
  2. Motive
  3. Sexual
  4. Emotional
  5. Intellectual

There are also two higher centres, which are not so obviously displayed in our normal life, but they are of a high importance for those, who crave for personal growth.

So what are these centres and how do they work?

Instinctive centre

Is responsible for all the natural body functions. The body of a human being is a complex biochemical system and the centre is the manager of the whole system, including the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste.

Instinctive centre is the only one that can not be controlled by a human being. Want to check? Try and hold your breath for 3 minutes. Although some Yoga practitioners achieve the level of managing the Instinctive centre.

Motive centre

Is also in charge of body. You can manage the motive centre, e.g. you can move your hand, stand up, bend over straighten back. You can lie on a sofa watching TV and having chips, can go for a walk to a forest, you can do fitness or go to a club to dance. Your motive centre is under your control. Professional sportsmen, dancers and alike have the most developed motive centre.

Emotional centre

Responsible for the whole palette of our feelings and emotions, that we experience throughout our life due to different reasons. Love, hatred, joy, suffering, gratitude and hurt,etc. There is a belief that we can not control our emotions and even on the contrary they control us. However we can develop our emotional centre, coach it the way we do with motive one, cultivating strong positive emotions on a constant basis. Tantra puts a lot of attention on developing our emotional centre.

Intellectual centre

Is responsible for our mental work: logic, memory, analysis, thinking, speech, information reception and transfer. Philosophers, scholars, strategists – these are all the types of people with highly developed intellectual centres. Tantric practice helps to develop intellectual centre in terms of thinking out-of-the-box and opens up the way to higher intellectual centre, but we will talk about it later.

Sexual centre

Is responsible for sexual function and your gender manifestation. If you are a woman then it displays beauty, grace, charm, feminity, susceptibility, if you are a man: responsibility, leadership, masculinity, action, i.e.all the qualities that make you a representative of your gender attracting the opposite sex. Sexual interest and sexual interaction are also controlled by this centre. However, reproduction is controlled by Instinctive centre! It is not always  easy to understand this difference, but we will gradually explain.