FOUNDATIONS | SACRED SEXUALITY
Making Love – The Tantric View
Tantra sees lovemaking very differently to how most of us learned it. This guide is a good place to start.
LEA BURRI — Founder & RETREAT FACILITATOR
June 12, 2026 · 6 min read
3-Part Series
TANTRIC SEXUALITY
Part 1 of 3
PART 1
MAKING LOVE: THE TANTRIC VIEW
On sexual energy, what the ancient traditions actually taught.
PART 2
TANTRIC SEXUALITY FOR THE MAN
How men can cultivate sexual energy consciously and move beyond habit.
PART 3
TANTRIC SEXUALITY FOR THE WOMAN
The feminine relationship to sexual energy, pleasure, and embodied presence.
In this article
We don't talk about sex the way it deserves to be talked about.
Not really. We talk around it, in therapy, in magazines, in conversations with friends. And our current age tends to reduce it to performance, to pleasing ourselves or the other. It can feel almost mechanical. But honestly, how could we know any better? It is not taught to us in school. Our parents usually don't give us the details. And so the first and often only education most of us receive about sex comes from porn. You see the problem.
And yet there are people who studied sex, not in a mechanical form, but as lovemaking, as the art of connecting two into one. These come from a different tradition than the one we inherited in the West. A much older one. And it begins with a completely different premise: that the energy moving through you when you feel desire is the same force that moves through everything alive.
This guide is an invitation to look at that tradition, honestly, without mysticism for its own sake, and to feel where it lands in you.
2. FIVE Tantric Truths About Sexual Energy
01
Sexual energy is a life force, not just a reproductive one. From a Tantric perspective, it is the fundamental spark that animates the body and the most potent resource we carry.
02
You can feel it. You probably already have. Think of a moment of genuine creative inspiration, a surge of aliveness after cold water, or the electricity before a first kiss. That charge is not separate from sexual energy. In Tantric understanding, it is the same current moving through different channels.
03
Everything is polarity. Including you. Tantra sees the entire universe as the dance between two opposing forces: masculine and feminine, Shiva and Shakti, light and dark. You feel this in your body every time you are drawn to another person. That pull is not random chemistry. It is the cosmos expressing itself through you.
04
This energy can be refined or lost. When cultivated consciously, sexual energy becomes spiritual fuel. When expelled habitually and unconsciously, it leaves the body depleted rather than renewed.
05
A Tantric orgasm is not a release. It is a return. Rather than energy leaving the body, it revitalises every cell: the difference between a wave crashing and a wave that carries you somewhere.
3. Ancient Sexuality vs. Modern Sex
Ancient View: Sexual union is the physical expression of a cosmic polarity seeking balance. The goal is not release. It is oneness. Energy cultivated, circulated, and returned.
Modern View: Sex is a biological drive, a script shaped by culture and, increasingly, by what we first watched on a screen. The body is a means to gratification.
"The question is not whether sex is sacred. The question is whether you are present enough to feel that it is."
4. A practicE: notice what happens after SEX
Practice this week
Here is something worth simply noticing. After sex, or after ejaculation specifically, there is often a particular feeling. A tiredness. A turning inward. Sometimes a subtle distance from your partner. A wish to sleep, not to touch. This is not a flaw. It is information.
In Tantric teaching, this is sometimes called the "little death," a temporary crash that follows when energy leaves the body rather than circulating through it. It is the energetic opposite of what conscious, cultivated sexuality can feel like: expanded, connected, revitalised rather than emptied.
Do you experience this? Try to watch consciously next time. Before, during, and for the hour afterward, simply notice. Your body will tell you something your mind may not have thought to ask.
5. tantra is not about better sex
When most people hear "Tantra," they imagine something exotic, a collection of techniques designed to make sex more interesting, more intense, more something. The Kama Sutra. Permission to explore. A licence for more.
This is a misunderstanding. Sex is only about 5% of Tantra. And even those 5% go far beyond "trying new positions" or spicing things up. The real teaching asks something much quieter and much more radical: presence.
It asks you to treat the body, yours and another's, as a site of genuine encounter. It asks you to question the assumption, reinforced by modern culture, that male orgasm and ejaculation are the same thing. They are not. That distinction alone opens an entirely different relationship to sexual energy.
Through the Tantric teachings we begin to learn a new way of encounter, one not shaped by porn, but passed down by those who approached this sacred act as a means of exploring the universe itself. Tantra opens your eyes to how much you have already been feeling, how much you may not yet have named, and how much more is possible.
1. Opening: Presence & Breath
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01
Sexual energy is a life force, not just a reproductive one. From a Tantric perspective, it is the fundamental spark that animates the body and the most potent resource we carry.
02
You can feel it. You probably already have. Think of a moment of genuine creative inspiration, a surge of aliveness after cold water, or the electricity before a first kiss. That charge is not separate from sexual energy. In Tantric understanding, it is the same current moving through different channels.
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- Gentle breath practice
- Grounding exercise
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Practice this week
Sit quietly for 10 minutes each morning and track sensations.
WRITTEN BY
ANGEL DE LA PAZ
Angel is a Tantra guide, retreat facilitator, and the founder of Tantra Ritual. His work weaves together sacred sexuality, somatic healing, and heart-centered embodiment to help others reclaim intimacy, power, and presence. With roots in both modern practice and ancient traditions, Angel creates spaces that are tender, transformative, and deeply grounded. Whether through retreats, workshops, or one-on-one guidance, he invites others into a path of connection–within themselves, with others, and with the sacred.
WRITTEN BY
LEA BURRI
Lea is the founder of Tantra Ritual and facilitator of sacred intimacy and embodiment retreats across Mexico, Guatemala and Europe. Her work draws on Tantric teachings, Ayurveda, conscious touch and somatic practices to help people reconnect with their bodies and deepen their capacity for intimacy.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Common Questions About Tantra and Sacred Sexuality
WHAT IS TANTRA, REALLY?
Tantra is an ancient spiritual tradition that views the body, sexuality, and life force energy as pathways to awakening, not obstacles to it. It is far broader than the Western popular understanding, which tends to reduce it to sexual technique. In Tantric philosophy, sexual energy is the same force that animates all of life, and learning to work with it consciously is a profound spiritual practice.
IS TANTRA THE SAME AS TANTRIC SEX?
No. Tantric sex is a small subset of Tantra. The broader tradition encompasses yoga, meditation, breathwork, ritual, mantra, and a complete philosophy of consciousness. Sexuality is addressed within Tantra because it is one of the most potent expressions of life force energy, but it is not the primary focus.
CAN TANTRA HELP WITH INTIMACY IN A RELATIONSHIP?
Yes. Tantric practices cultivate presence, emotional openness, and a deeper awareness of the body, all of which support more genuine intimacy. Many couples find that Tantra helps them move beyond habitual patterns and reconnect in a more conscious, heart-centered way.
continue the Series
TANTRIC SEXUALITY
Part 1 of 3
PART 1
MAKING LOVE: THE TANTRIC VIEW
On sexual energy, what the ancient traditions actually taught.
PART 2
TANTRIC SEXUALITY FOR THE MAN
How men can cultivate sexual energy consciously and move beyond habit.
PART 3
TANTRIC SEXUALITY FOR THE WOMAN
The feminine relationship to sexual energy, pleasure, and embodied presence.
NEXT IN SERIES · NO. 2 OF 3
TANTRIC SEXUALITY FOR THE MAN
