from sensuality to freedom
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Aruhea is a non-profit and independent network, based in Belgium, promoting tantra as a spiritual path and means of personal development, as well as humanistic psychology generally and a new vision of human relationships. We no longer organize workships but we support, promote and provide information on events organized by others which use contemporary methods including breathing exercises, interactions, touch and massage, and body-oriented techniques such as bioenergetics and yoga, all of which can be helpful on the tantric path (whether or not presented as such). Aruhea brings together an informal virtual community of people interested in tantra within and beyond Belgium, regardless of where they are following courses or practice. If you are interested, please sign up for our mailing list !
Aruhea is not affiliated with any particular school of tantra. We believe that teachers have an important role to play, but that dependence on gurus is ultimately an obstacle to spiritual enlightenment. In any field, a truly great teacher is always marked by the independence of spirit of those she or he has taught. Since tantra teaches that we already possess all that we need for enlightenment, a teacher only plays a supporting and facilitating role and technique is always subsidiary to authenticity and love.
What is tantra?
A pretty good and generally objective definition can be found on Wikipedia. Here we will try to summarize what it means for us.
Tantra is an ancient yet contemporary spiritual path which teaches us to embrace all of our feelings and sensations in the present moment. Sexuality plays an important role in tantric teaching and practice; however, tantra is much more than this. Many people are attracted to tantra because of its promises of a more fulfilled sexuality. Once they enter deeper into tantra, however, they discover that tantric sexuality is a glorious gateway to personal healing, love, transcendence and union. In tantra, all experience is valued and affirmed and once accepted joyfully it transforms us peacefully and without any effort of will.
For those not familiar with this type of work, we invite you to abandon possible fears and stereotypes – most of the work by teachers we know and all introductory sessions are carried out dressed and do not involve intimate touch. It’s really nothing to do with what some commercial organizations misleadingly portray as tantra. Of course at the deeper level it is still about sexuality, life energy and attraction, but in tantra we approach these themes through the body and everyday situations and you are free to take from it whatever you wish and may find.
The basic message of tantra is transformation through joyful acceptance. Instead of struggling against our feelings and emotions, we accept them for what they are and for what they teach us about ourselves and our relations to the world. Tantra is about overcoming false oppositions to find the fundamental unity of all creation. We recognize the divine in everything that is around us and within us. There are certainly a variety of streams within Western tantra, some of which appear to focus almost exclusively on sexuality, others of which are influenced by a variety of “New Age” ideas. However, since tantra teaches that we already possess everything necessary to our enlightenment, it is unsympathetic to hierarchies and claims of authority. No amount of rituals, slavishly followed, will ever lead to enlightenment, whilst many practices can be beneficial if pursued in the right spirit.
Tantra has numerous similarities to Zen Buddhism, but without the austere and ascetic tradition. It is a spirituality for those who never understood why a moment with their lover in a moonlit garden gave them more insight into the divine than years of Sunday school teachers. Or, for that matter, a smile from a child, a sunset, or a poem. By embracing everything that you have understood without ever needing to learn about it, a powerful transformation can begin in all areas of your life, a wonderful adventure deeper and deeper into Ecstasy.
Is it for me?
Couples or singles? Some people think that if they are single, tantra cannot be for them. This is partly because they wrongly believe that tantra is exclusively concerned with lovemaking, and partly because they are unused to the idea or afraid of the consequences of physical intimacy beyond a certain level outside a committed relationship. We believe that tantra is particularly valuable for singles and there is certainly no reason to wait until you are in a relationship. Tantra may help you to get into the right relationship, and make it work. You may also want to study tantra as a single, even if you are in a committed relationship. From our point of view this is perfectly fine – it’s up to you. As this can be a delicate matter though, we, or of course the workshop organizers, are also happy to discuss it with you. For most workshops, you certainly can also come as a couple and remain as a couple during the workshop.
What’s in it for women? Many workshops do not involve intimate touch in any case, and for those that do, we would say the following: Both giving and receiving touch can have a powerful effect on women. Tantra is a means to discover and live the authentic you, without any prescriptions. It can heal the scars left by past relationships or from experiences in childhood and leave you free of fears, joyful to embrace the future. It can help you recover your femininity and self-confidence in your personal and professional life and identify and achieve your goals. It can help you accept, love and feel comfortable in your body, leading to improved physical and psychic health. It can heal your sexuality, help you recover genital sensitivity (even without direct touch) and improve your orgasmic potential. It may lead to better empathy with others and improve family relationships, both with your own parents and helping you to be a better, more loving parent yourself. It may help you to take more distance from certain circumstances in your life, while remaining compassionate; and it may help you to understand and use your own feminine energy to help and heal others.
What’s in it for couples? Firstly, couples are composed of two individuals. Therefore, all the individual benefits apply ! Stronger individuals make for stronger couples. Tantra can also help you improve the communication in your relationship, deepen respect and love, break free of sexual and other routines, and heal jealousy and sexual obsessions. Since in tantra our natural drives are respected and honored for what they teach us about ourselves, they do not become obsessions and obstacles to growth as a couple, but can give us life and energy, independently of whether we act on them or not.
And for men? The changes tantra can achieve in a man’s life are the most profound but the least expected. This is because most men start from a less natural starting point than women. Tantra helps men to escape from socially-determined images of their relationship to women, often based on domination and self-satisfaction, in order to understand and receive from them much more deeply than men usually believe is possible. Tantra can also heal men in the same way it heals women, though this may take more time. It can help with sexual problems such as premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction, if these are not due to physiological causes. It can overcome sexual obsessions and allow you to nourish and conserve your life energy and channel it for personal and professional success. Lastly (to appeal to some more traditional male concerns) it can and almost certainly will make you a better lover and better able to establish satisfying relations with women.
And for the world around me? Because tantra affirms and values what is often suppressed, perverted or trivialized, it undoubtedly has a social dimension. We do not have a political agenda but we would not like to give the impression that tantra only achieves selfish aims. On the contrary, it may energize you in a wide range of ways to achieve many positive changes not only in your own life, but also in the world around you.
Finally, a disclaimer. Whilst tantra can be a path to healing, it is not a substitute for therapy in cases where the latter is required. Tantric practitioners in most cases do not offer treatment for any medical or psychological problem or offer any guarantees of particular outcomes and you participate in events on your own responsibility.
Other questions
Are you some kind of sect? No! Sects are about power and control, which are then taken to extremes. These are elements you find in much human experience, whether it be religion, at the workplace, in the home. And because it is human nature, in some strands of tantra (or things that call themselves “tantra”) you can also have this problem. This is a principal reason why we set up Aruhea, in order to give people access to reliable information about what to expect and providers in whom we have confidence. Power and control are alien to the tantric goals of respect, freedom and love. Any attempts of this kind should always ring alarm bells.
Are you New Age wierdos? Hopefully not 
This is the second reason we established Aruhea. We often find tantra mixed with different “new age” traditions. Some of these are also of value and we are not against them. But typically this creates a lot of confusion in the minds of people interested in tantra and turns them off – frequently rightly. We are not interested in “the occult” and we do not have anything to do with divination, tarot, astrology, faith healers etc. We certainly feel, on the other hand, that there is or may be value in yoga, reiki, tai chi, other forms of massage, meditation of course, and basically anything that approaches the body and soul in a natural and respectful way. Elements from these traditions often find their way naturally into tantra, even if in terms of philosophy there may be differences. If you believe in those other things, that’s fine too but we will not be presenting them to you. We are not very conventional, perhaps… but we live a normal life and have normal friends and feel very much a part of mainstream society. No-one ever said we were weirdos, but maybe they are just being polite ! 
Anyway you can judge for yourselves
Are you, as they say in French, “des obsédés sexuels”? Unlike many people, we are not obsessed by denying or circumscribing our sexuality. Sexuality is a fundamental and important part of beng human. Some people see it as a gateway to depravity; we see it as a gateway to our higher self. No-one would equate enjoying good food with culinary obsession, even if obesity is a real problem in today’s affluent societies. We feel the same way about sex. Many religions in their quest for salvation deny this aspect of human experience. We affirm it, but it is not the final goal of our spirit or the sum total of what is good. Beyond nature, food, relationships, care and sex is the experience of ecstasy which feeds us as loving beings, and this is the platform from which our lives can be meaningful, enriching ourselves and society. Thus, within tantra, sexuality takes on a moral and transcendental meaning which is entirely logical and consistent with our human experience, yet rarely glimpsed or imagined possible by those who are afraid of opening themselves to its power, or who are unable to do so.
What about privacy? Aruhea will use your information only for our own mailings, from which you can opt out at any time. We will not share your information with anyone else without your permission.
What type of tantra do you support? We can only answer this by referring to the teachers we know and recommend. Birgit and Ilka have studied tantra notably with Advaita Maria Bach in Wiesbaden. Denisa and Richard teach the tantra massage ritual which was originally developed by the German “Diamond Lotus” school. This is the ritual which is at the base of most commercially available tantra massage in the German-speaking world. In terms of our approach to tantra, however, neither they nor Aruhea is particularly affiliated to this school. Denisa and Richard originally studied SkyDancing Tantra with John Hawken (the Margot Anand stream) and have also studied with David Deida and at the Omega Institute in New York. Dawn Cartwright studied with Margo Anand, the author of “The Art of Sexual Ecstasy” for 5 years and was licensed to teach the SkyDancing Tantra method in 1998. She has subsequently developed her own style of tantra which draws on several sources.
Is it necessary to be naked during workshops? Most tantra workshops do not involve or require nudity. Being naked in massage workshops, for giving and receiving the massage, is optional: participants do what they are comfortable with. However, our experience shows that nakedness is usually much less of a problem than people think it is going to be, because they usually don’t realize how safe and sacred a space it is possible to create during the workshops and so that comes as a pleasant surprise. In practice most people find they are comfortable with nudity once they have got used to the atmosphere. Obviously, it is only during the giving and receiving of massages that nudity is usual. Outside of the workshop room, participants normally wear light clothes, and also when sharing, watching demonstrations and so on.
I am a woman and I am worried about the attitude and motivation of the men that come to tantra workshops, should I be? Of course it is never possible to guarantee the motivation 100% and anyway, everyone’s motivations in coming to a workshop are mixed, this is not necessarily wrong provided they are prepared for those motivations to be reexamined and transformed. However, the teachers we recommend make every effort to ensure that those who come to the workshop, especially but not only men, will contribute to a pleasant atmosphere for everyone else. It is extremely rare that there are any problems and if there were any, they would always find a quick solution to them. In any case you are never forced to do an exercise with someone and there is really nothing to worry about – on the contrary, we would expect that you will be able to open up and enjoy the experience even if it may be challenging in a good sense that promotes spiritual growth and healing.
Testimonials
“Coming from a somewhat more ‘non-physical’ realm of spirituality, I was always highly suspicious of ‘tantra’. But my experience in last weekend’s workshop proved me wrong, and I am very happy about that! It is about love, the opening of the heart, about celebrating our body, and ultimately about freedom.”
“Thank you for all that you did to make such a deep, moving, beautiful and powerful workshop happen. It was really something special and an amazing healing experience … deeply transformational”.
“I am going to tell you how wonderful the weekend was: I am still glowing!!! I received so much respect, I didn’t have to keep up any guard at all. I am looking forward to meeting the people again! And also to meeting new people in new workshops and other settings.“
“Thank you for the weekend, it was pure magic! Both of us are really happy, just overwhelmed by it! Hopefully one or both of us can have the opportunity to participate in whatever is planned for the next time.”
“It was a very precious weekend for me and i really feel refreshed and strong”
“Thank you again for organizing the workshop this weekend. This was a very powerful, transformational experience for me on many levels.”
“Thanks again for organising this wonderful weekend. It’s been a real pleasure.”
“Thanks again for organizing this great workshop. It’s been an experience that’s hard to put into words. “
“When I spotted your ad, I knew this course was just what I needed, and I haven’t been disappointed. I’ve met some normal, friendly people and learnt a great deal. I have always been a rather reserved person. If I can do it, anyone can!”
Hi,
I´m looking for a place in Madrid. Could you recommend one?
Thanks and regards,
Gaulus
http://www.elartedeltantra.com/ – based in Barcelona but he sometimes does workshops in Madrid. Otherwise, no, I never found anything there (despite looking).