Tantra for Creative Energy: Tapping into your body’s energy for artistsic purpose.

This week’s guest post is by the energetic Danette Relic, life coach at The Drawing Board and hostess of creative self expression workshops. She’ll be teaching us about something I know very little about — Tantra — and how it connects to Creativity. I know you’re already intrigued. So Danette, take it away…

Tantra and Your Creative Energy
by Danette Relic

Let me guess, you hear Tantra and you think, 8-hour romp in the sheets with Sting.  Yes? But what is Tantra? What is Art?

Since beginning my studies of Tantra, I have learned that there is so very much more to learn.  The discussion of what Tantra is seems to resemble a beautifully tangled garden; there are theories about the initial source of growth, about all the influences that have shaped it’s development, and even those who identify which parts of the garden are valuable and which parts are weeds that have invaded it along the way. 

For the purpose of giving you a sense of Tantra before going on, I like these three points taken from a list of what Tantra is, from the book Tantra for Erotic Empowerment: the key to enriching your sexual life by Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson. 

* Tantra is an ancient tradition that recognizes sexual energy as a source of personal and spiritual empowerment.  This sets it apart from most Western traditions and helps explain why most Westerners have reduced it to its sexual elements alone.

 * Tantra is the magic of transforming your consciousness and thereby transforming your entire being.  Your body is the most powerful tool for bringing about this transformation.

 * Tantra is the discipline of becoming yourself completely.  In the end, there is nothing at all to do.

Trying to find one complete definition for Tantra seems to be a lot like trying to answer the question, What is Art?

 Which makes sense to me, because I see Tantra and Art, or specifically, Tantra and Creativity, to be curiously linked up.  I’ve noticed them at parties, huddled together on the sofa, or giggling by the punch bowl in some secret exchange.  Of course they are.  Sexuality and Creativity splash around in the same orange chakra, the sacral chakra, located just below your navel.

There are 3 aspects of Tantra that also serve as juicy connectors for creative energy: Senses, Pleasure, and Self-Expression.

Senses: The Language of Experience

The senses are your gateway to the world around you.  There are limitless experiences at our fingertips (tips of our tongues, tips of our noses, space just outside our ears) all the time, right now.  It is like a river we can dip into at any time, a radio that we can tune into and tune out of as we please.  What do you use most often?  Which sense do you often leave out?

When it comes to Tantra, the senses are how we can experience the sacred through the physical.  The connection to sexual practices are obvious, but what about creativity?

Consider your senses as an infinite bank of ideas.  The senses spark the imagination, memory, story and sensation.  The smell of crayons.  The exact colour of the tile in your first lover’s bathroom.  The song that takes your breath away.  The taste of tears.  The sensation of a wet bathing suit as it pulls away from your body.  These are all entry points to your own creative mind-body connection.  Your senses contain the beginnings of poems, stories, sculptures, drawings, colours, dances and songs.  Imagine what creative responses are possible using just your senses as a springboard?

Pleasure: What Lights You Up?

 Never mind what looks good, what feels good?

Tantra has a lovely relationship with pleasure.  Unlike many spiritual practices, Tantra embraces pleasure, including sexual pleasure, as a sacred gift.  Again, I don’t think I need to point out how pleasure and sexual practices might be a good fit.  Now, how about your creative practice?

Close your eyes and move crayons across the page until you find the way that gives your arm the most pleasure.  Seek the joy of repetitive motions, peeling of tissue, the coolness of clay, the satisfaction of big messy gestures or tiny intricate tasks using beads or precision markings.  What process brings you the most pleasure, if the end result would never be seen by anyone?

Materials, movements, images, colours, ideas…find the ones that light you up and make you feel good.  Let pleasure be your only compass as you create.  What do you notice?

Self-Expression: You are Naturally Creative

 This is a belief I hold strongly: we are all naturally creative beings.  If you are looking for proof, watch children for any length of time.  We all started there, singing and drawing and making believe.  There was no shame in showing our voices to the world.

In Tantra, as you pay intimate attention to your senses and pleasure, you also open yourself to the experience of being at one with sensation, a channel for the energy to move through, like sound moves through a drum.  In sexual practices, self-expression is the glorious way we respond to pleasure, with breath and sound and movement.

You are the instrument, for sensation, for pleasure, for creative energy to bloom through.  It’s as natural as taking in a breath.  Inhale air from the world around you, feel it flow and change temperature inside you, then release it, without judging it, back into the world, as something new.

I hesitate to extend this example with water, but bear with me for a second.  Aside from the first thing you are thinking of, the water you put into your body moves back out into the world through your sweat and tears, expressions of joy, sorrow, dance, hard work and lovemaking. 

Here is the connection to creativity: once you have taken in through your senses and discovered where pleasure resonates for you, you can release this beauty back out into the world, in whatever form you feel most drawn to.

Only you can create art from your own experience.  You are a unique creation yourself, and your voice is the only one that can tell your story.  

You get to show the world how beautiful it is, just by being you and loving the sacredness of being alive.

Wait, am I talking about Tantra or Creativity? 

They both sound delicious.

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Tags: Guest Posts, on art, Train with Magpie Girl |