Opening to Sacred Relationship
Tantra for Women Who Love Women
by Evalena Rose, M.A.

As the ancient arts of Tantra are being reintroduced, sacred love begins healing the results of millennia of repression of women and of sexuality. One finds Tantra in the mystery traditions of all great religions, with its focus on connection and intimacy. Too often, today's Tantric images show only women with men, and some teachings seem limited to sexual enhancement, rather than promoting deep connection. Actually, many examples of temple art survive that show women with women--paintings, tapestries, and friezes depicting women connecting in states of high sexual ecstasy.

As a spiritual path, Tantra offers much to women loving women, reawakening them to their Goddess energy, their exalted, transpersonal selves. In the centuries of repression, the open-hearted state necessary to ecstatic union has been lost. Perhaps also in defending roles/divisions of gay/straight, butch/femme, top/bottom, a wholeness has been lost. In creating separation, one may lose track of the fullness of Who We Really Are. In the first flush of romance, that wholeness is regained. Tantric arts keep bringing you back to it.

Tantra teaches us to embrace yin and yang, all aspects of maleness and femininity in each of us. In Tantric pujas (worshipful circles), we play with all manner of roles and relationships since freeing up role-bound behavior can liberate our erotic and sensual nature. The heart-centered connections surpass roles, while the energy-moving breath processes free up the life-force, the kundalini, to be available through all the chakras. It's free flow creates ecstatic states.

Having to set oneself against society and family in order to love your own gender may close channels needed for sexual completeness. Is this related to the infamous "Lesbian bed death?" Could the very defining of self as different hinder the open expression of love? Tantric practices, used regularly, reopen these channels, the very chakras through which kundalini flows to enliven the body. The flow of this life force activates blissful states and greater feelings of pleasure and joyousness, thus awakening new interest in erotic play.

When partners make love with all chakras open to each other, it becomes a play between their souls. Tantra drops goal-directedness in sex, and focuses on the joy of moving energy together and the affirmation of self that comes from seeing the Goddess in your partner and yourself. The drivenness to have an orgasm shifts as one develops the capacity for extended orgasmic states of union that meet deep needs for connection. Then, orgasms become a celebration of this union, and eventually become longer and higher than those created through tension and concerted effort. The certainty that love-making will result in feeling connected and treasured makes it easier to approach intimacy, even for women who've been sexually wounded. When touch is about closeness rather than performing, its safe to want to snuggle.

Obviously, these benefits are true for women loving men as well. Tantra encourages both partners to explore their inner male and inner female, seeking balance and wholeness. For formerly separatist women only now ready to befriend men or women wanting to re-initiate relationships with men, Tantra provides a safe ground. It gives you the skills to communicate your needs, and tools to command respect as an equal adventurer on the spiritual path of intimacy. Great healing of wounds between the sexes are common in the gentle processes of pujas made safe by the focus on heart connections.

Clear and open communication skills are always a part of creating healthy intimacy and therefore an essential part of Tantra. The best of recent tools to unravel power struggles with your partner are used along with sharing augmented by breathing. Boundaries are carefully worked with, since permission to say no and ask for what you want makes it safe to merge when you choose. One also learns to dance erotically for one's partner, and to heal each other through sacred touch, song and sounding. All of these techniques expand the space in which you and your partner can play, making of love a haven for healing.

Published in Sonoma County Women's Voices, November, 1997.