Whether you’re looking to find true love, expand your empowerment, or dig deeper into your sexuality, a Tantric approach to coaching adds a layer of discovery and transcendence while “doing the work.”
If you’re reading this, you’ve heard the term Tantra or some rendition of what it means. You’re probably also familiar with coaching (if you’re still pulling up a blank, hold tight, I’ve got you!), and may have experienced some yourself as a client.
In this post I’ll discuss the following:
– What happens when you apply Tantra to coaching
– The benefits of pursuing this path
– What a Tantric approach to coaching is
– The 7 pillars of Tantra and how they work alongside coaching
And more!
––––––––––––
So what happens when you apply Tantra – a 5,000-year-old spiritual technology known to expand energy, liberate consciousness, and challenge the concept of reality – to modern-day coaching that deepens a person’s capacity to explore sex, experience deeper love, and have better relationships?
This is what you get:
A style of coaching that transforms lives by combining contemporary cutting-edge techniques and processes plus age-old mystical wisdom. Together, they slice through the clutter to form an alchemized coaching container to bring “bottom up” results; including a nervous system reset, dramatic mind-shift expansion and somatic experiencing for full-on holistic transformation and integration.
What draws people down this path? It can help you to:
- Add dimension to your sex life
- Know yourself better
- Feel empowered and confident
- Experience more self-love
- Confront past trauma safely from a space of acceptance and compassion
- Uncover the true meaning of sexuality and sensuality
- Unpack fears around intimacy, vulnerability, commitment, and connection
- Feel alive
- Feel liberated
- Open your heart
- Become better at relating
- Create a spiritual connection with yourself or with a partner
- Heal “separation” and inner splits and move towards wholeness
- Elevate consciousness
- Remember what it means to be human
This is where traditional spirituality has evolved to become trauma-informed and used as a lens to look horizontally at the world while simultaneously looking vertically at the physical level of awareness up towards higher states of consciousness. As above, so below.
It is a journey towards uniting, body, mind, and spirit while holding in sacred reverence the weaving of everything as divine – radical non-duality – on top of being a portal into deeper realizations, and self-love at the convergence of consciousness and energy where everything becomes one through divine connection and unwavering presence.
Whew! Still with me? I’ll break this down even further:
Masterful coaching through the lens of Tantra = Life-changing expansion, profound self-growth and big impact results.
What is a Tantric Approach to Coaching?
It’s simply about taking the basic elements that comprise Tantra and embedding them into coaching.
Imagine all of the aspects of coaching such as listening, intuition, and curiosity, but with the flavor of Tantra. This can take shape in many ways, like how the coaching container is designed, and held; how a person’s needs are met through ancient philosophy and teachings or how insights are shared through myths and stories.
If you’re a newbie or feel put off by the woo, this style of coaching can be made less spiritual to appeal to more secular folks too!
At its core, Tantra teaches union, presence, connection, desire and intimacy through your state of being and consciousness. By picking out fundamental pillars and applying them in a coaching container, you can embody the transmission and live out the essence of the spiritual teachings in a way that is approachable and immersive. The true teachings of Tantra are accessible to everyone, and every body.
It’s actually quite tangible and real and applies to life right now.
Think of it as an ice cream flavor.
Coaching is like a bowl of butterscotch ice cream. It has all the ingredients you’ve heard about and want to experience in coaching – transformation, expansion, and growth. Then when you apply Tantra, it’s like you’re adding flakes of sea salt on top of the bowl of ice cream to bring out a more complex flavor that becomes a richer, fuller more profound experience you’ve never had and will certainly want a second helping of!
Here are several pillars of Tantra that blow open the benefits of coaching – whether you eat ice cream or not!
Presence and Embodiment
Tantra emphasizes being present, in the moment and bringing awareness to your thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judgment. Instead, there’s an invitation for loving acceptance.
When you apply this aspect of Tantra to coaching, active listening deepens. Body language, tone, voice, attunement and resonance all become heightened. The coach becomes the embodiment of Shiva, the solid, grounded riverbed to the river and the client becomes Shakti, the energetic, everflowing river to the riverbed. This is a part of polarity.
The Path of Desire
In Tantra, desire is an aspect of your original essence leading you towards your destiny. Desires emerge as an impulse from within and as a key to self-realization. When you achieve a desire that motivates you rather than fills a void, you begin to answer the questions, “Why am I here?” and “What is my purpose?” and “How can I love and be loved more deeply?”
Through the lens of Tantra in coaching, the container between coach and client is opened up by getting super clear on the desire (or goal or end result) of the work to be done. Through an inquiry process, the desire is agreed upon and acts as a North Star to stick to for the duration of the sessions together.
Conscious Breathwork
Breathing techniques are a key part of Tantra. A slowed-down, mindful, and simple breath allows the outer world to dissolve while the inner world comes online. This is where inner whispers can be heard, and the reasoning, logical prefrontal cortex part of the brain can temporarily go on standby.
Using the breath to enhance the quality of coaching allows clients to begin to connect to their bodies. Deep and conscious breathing works to relax and open access to some of the furthest reaches of the psyche and nervous system. Using the three key tools – breath, sound and movement – you begin to experience a deeper bodily sensation of energetic flow that helps to open up pleasure AND move through pain.
Connection and Intimacy
Tantra asks you to first connect with who you are before opening a connection to others. Intimacy, vulnerability and allowing yourself to see and be seen create meaningful connections. By feeling your feelings, you can learn to navigate your inner world with more authority and compassion. Processing emotions – the pleasant and unpleasant – paves the way for a deeper human understanding of what it means to be alive which is the secret to intimacy and orgasmic experiencing.
As the client, coaching requires us to come home to ourselves first. Coaching is intimate, period. The way you show up and give yourself will be in exact proportion to what you get out of it. To achieve integration, you must pull up, get clear, accept and learn to love and connect with all pieces of who you are in a meaningful way. This is intimacy – into-me-see – that starts inside of you and eventually spills into other parts of your life.
Sensual Pleasure
Unlike other philosophies, Tantra celebrates the body and the senses. Although it’s not all about sex, and sexual pleasure (Tantra is about consciousness) there is the invitation to bring that awareness into sexuality. Mindful pleasure with others or as a solo practice is physical, as well as emotional and intellectual with how it’s articulated and used, like communicating desires and boundaries, and exploring touch and practising consent.
Sex, love and relationship coaching transmitted with the flavor and teachings of Tantra becomes a revolutionary way of understanding how pleasure can be used to expand and heal. By slowing down pleasure, inviting curiosity and allowing the body to naturally soften helps clients understand the power of sensuality. This is where pleasure can become a healing modality, empowerment tool and means of deeper connection working from the inside out.
Energy and Chakras
Tantra incorporates the idea of energy centers in the body known as chakras, spinning coloured wheels of energy that represent different energy bodies starting at the perineum and building up towards the crown. Tapping into these centers helps pinpoint where you are in your mental, physical, spiritual and emotional well-being.
In a coaching session, chakra theory helps harness your energy and move through blocks. To help release stagnant energy that can interrupt the inner flow, somatically “dropping-in” helps you to feel into your body and experience new sensations and a mindset shift. It’s usually this new frame of reference that dismantles old coping mechanisms and works to release energy and create flow towards something more rewarding.
Self-Love and Empowerment
Tantra is a practice of self-discovery and empowerment. It’s a teaching that enables you to confront yourself and meet, greet and invite different parts of who you are with loving acceptance – even the shadows and icky bits. When you shine a light on the darker sides of who you are, you begin to see what needs your love the most.
Through coaching, these pieces of you are invited to sit at the table. They each have a voice and are data-rich with things to say and express. In the coaching container, you get the opportunity to give these parts a say and choose which ones get to be in the driver’s – or passenger – seat.
It’s common for the following questions to come up: “What does your inner child need today?” or “How does your grief want to move through you?” or “What is this pit in your stomach trying to say?”
By allowing pieces of you to come online, you can begin to integrate them into your being without them running your life! Instead, your parts become your allies and work to increase confidence and cultivate self-love.
Now that there’s a little less mystery around Tantra and you can see how you don’t have to be a guru or master to access these teachings, how do you think you’ll begin to incorporate it into your life? Does it feel out of reach for you, easier to understand or something you want to know more about?
Work with me to incorporate some of the fundamental teachings of Tantra that have been so transformative for me into your own sex, love and dating life, in an approachable, digestible and life-changing way. Learn how you can deepen your self-love, sensuality and empowerment in a container that combines new and old-world teachings for effective results that impact the quality of how you relate and date.
Book a Discovery Call or follow me on Instagram @alexalynncoaching