Video Transcript:

Hello I’m Jason Tantra and welcome to my video this time. What I’m going to talk to you about this time is about what it is to work as a Tantric practitioner.

For me, what I mean by a Tantric practitioner is somebody that works with ‘clients’ where clients are paying ‘money’ for a session or an appointment where you are offering them ‘Tantra’. For me I would say 90% of my clients that I receive on a 1 to 1 basis are coming to experience Tantric massage, and 5% are coming to explore my Tantric BDSM fusion sessions and also people are coming to see me for Tantric rituals.

I get quite a lot of requests from you about what it is to be a Tantric practitioner and in this video I just wanted to talk a little bit more in depth about what it entails, things to consider, how you get set up and kind of and all those different things.

I’ve been working as a Tantric practitioner for 10 years and would you believe I’ve taught over 10,000 men in my workshops and my 1 to 1s. For me one of the really simple things that I advocate is, if you look on my Tantra4GayMen website you’ll see that I have a code of ethics and if you come to see me at a workshop or my festival or my diploma event, one of my ethics is about ‘do no harm to people’. What that means is that if I’m teaching a workshop or an event or a festival , I’m in the role of facilitator, I’m in the role of teacher so I’m not getting involved.

The difference for me in my role as a practitioner is that I am involved, I am bringing myself personally to this experience with another person and for me that’s the difference between the two. In my role as a Tantric practitioner, I’m bringing my human self, I’m bringing the part of me that’s present on a day to day, I’m bringing the human part of myself.

When I’m in a teaching role it’s like I’m in service to the group, I’m holding that as a teacher and as a facilitator and that’s what I should do. But as a practitioner I’m actually involved in the process, I’m actually in there with my clients and I’m sharing the experience with them.

For me the reason why I work as a Tantric practitioner, especially in my massage work is because I want to offer my clients my intention, the reason why I’m doing it is to offer them a felt experience of bliss and a felt experience of ecstasy – my intention is that they would have an experience greater than who they were when they came into the room – that they would have an experience that was more profound, more ecstatic, more blissful than maybe they’ve ever experienced in their life.

One of the things I hear quite often from my clients in my 1 to 1 sessions is ‘oh my god Jason I didn’t realize that my my body could do that, I’ve never had that, what on earth was that?’. For me what I’m doing is the intention that they have an experience of bliss or ecstasy and I’m using Tantric techniques and practices that I’ve learned over 2.5 decades and bringing those all to this session to meet that intention.

Whenever I’m working as a Tantric practitioner, it’s always about being clear what it is you’re offering your clients – that would be the first thing I’d say.

Now I just happen to use sexual energy as the place to get to that blissful and ecstatic place. Other spiritual practices use other methods but what I really love about Tantra is that it uses the body to have these profound experiences of bliss and ecstasy and remember I was saying I want to have a felt experience, I really want them to feel it in the body and I really want to have that experience in the body so that it’s not just a mental concept but it’s something that they’ve really deeply and truly felt.

Now in my 10,000 clients over the last decade, it would be fair to say that I’ve had every type of man walk into my room – every shape, every size, every color, every permutation, every variety – and I just don’t know who’s walking in my door from one client to the next, I get the email and I arrange the session and I just don’t know who it is that’s arriving.

One of the things I find quite funny is what I call my gaydar voice, when you meet somebody for the first time you already have a yes/no fantasy about whether you might fancy that person or not and if you do fancy that person you kind of have this ‘this is gonna be a good session’… and I have to tell you with my experience, you just have to put that with all of its love and intention into the dustbin because I think some of the mistakes that practitioners and massage thereapists can make, especially when working with sexual energy is that they’re using it as a mechanism to fulfill their own needs and for me my clients are paying money and they are coming to see me and actually they’re asking for a set amount of time for me to be available to them for their needs and their intention.

For me, the minute I bring in my own needs or my own wants, I’ve lost sight of my client and I’ve lost sight of being in service to them and then the session can become about my needs and not about my client’s needs.

I’ve been on the receiving end of this – one of the things I advocate as a practitioner is to go and see other practitioners, go and see other masseurs and go and see what feels right and what doesn’t feel right because then you’ll learn about your own practice and you’ll be able to add much more into your repertoire of what you’re doing.

When I’ve been in those sessions where the masseur has made the session about their needs, actually I don’t feel good as a client. I don’t feel met, I don’t feel seen, I feel like I’m following their agenda and not mine and it does feel great, it feels really yucky and really horrible. So for me when you’re working as a Tantric practitioner you are in service to that person that is coming to see you, your only reason for being there is for that person.

One of my other top tips working as a practitioner is to make sure that you get your own sexual needs and your own other needs for love and connection and intimacy, that you’re getting those met elsewhere. Because again what can happen is if they’re not being met elsewhere, you could fall into the trap of making the session about your needs and then you lose your clients because you’re not being with them and not being present.

So whatever fantasy you have about them as they come in the door, dump that in the bin. What happens as I start connecting with that person, it’s like something else takes over – the the spiritual part of me comes in, my heart opens and I’m kind of making myself available to take them on this journey to bliss and to ecstasy.

The other thing that I sometimes get is ‘how do you work with clients that you don’t find attractive and you’re working intimately with their sexual energy?’. One of the things that I’ve learned over the years, and it’s kind of a contradiction to what we have in mainstream culture, is it’s not actually the physical attributes of somebody that makes them sexy, it’s their ability to be open, to be in the session that I’m offering them – that’s what can make it a really good session and that’s what can make them sexy.

That for me has been a headfuck, it’s been confusing because sometimes I’ve had this gorgeous person in my room can’t wait to do the session, and yet they’ve been so repressed in their energy and experience that they’ve haven’t been able to experience any of it and it has been really hard work.

I’ve also had other clients where they’re totally in the experience, and their sexual energy is coming up, they’re making noises, they’re exploding – it feels like you’re flying and just like the best – and then you kind of forget whether you find them sexy.

So I think that’s one of the other things I would say, never have any perception of how the client is going to be when they’re stood in front of you.

Now on the odd occasion I have had the time where I’m standing in front of a client and I’m just like I’m not sure I can do this, really not sure I can do this. I’ve got some feeling of rejection coming up, I just don’t want to touch them, they feel repulsive to me – and I rarely get this – and it helps to remind me of a very valuable lesson.

I’ve talked to many escorts over the years – and they get burn out, they get cynical, they get clamped down, and they’re just focused on the money. For me once that starts to happen, it’s time to do something else, doing this work is just not worth the money. It’s not worth putting yourself through the mental torture of basically prostituting yourself, basically giving yourself up in a way that doesn’t feel good to you.

If you have any of those feelings when you’re working with sex and sexual energy, it’s time to stop that and go and do something else. For me when I get the client that I feel deeply challenged, I’m a human being and I have years of conditioning and years of ways of how I am, and I’ve been working on myself all through 2.5 decades, and I’m still working on myself. When I have that client in front of me that I perceive that I’m feeling difficult with, the thing that I’ve learned to do is to come back to love. Actually all of my sessions that I offer are coming from a place of love. I believe, and I have to believe this because I can’t come up with any other option, I have to believe that love is the only way through anything.

When I have a client stood in front of me that I believe I’m going to feel challenged by, I have to come back into my heart because that’s the place from where I’m going to be able to offer this person a Tantric experience that is sexual, that is spiritual, and predominantly coming from my heart, that’s what moves me into being much more open and much more flexible.

The other thing that I do is I find something that I love about that person, and it could be a certain feature on their body, it could be the certain way that they’ve said something, or the certain way that they are, but I find something that I can love about them. What I find is when I have that it just kind of melts me and I’m much more open and I’m much more expanded and I am much more able to to offer something.

The other thing in these sessions is, if you’ve ever had an erotic massage, where they’re doing their Swedish and then they bring you off at the end, that’s not a bad experience, but that’s not what I’m offering. What makes me different as a Tantric practitioner is that I am bringing myself, my experience, to being really present with the person that’s in front of me. That quality is what makes it a very deep and profound session, whereas if you’re following a set of techniques and bringing them off at the end that for me can feel slightly robotic and doesn’t feel like it has any connection.

What I’m choosing to do in my sessions, and as I choose to train Tantric practitioners I’m actually teaching the how to be with clients, how to have a set of skills and techniques they can bring to a session. They’re actually coming from their heart and it actually means something that the connection you have with that person has a meaning has a line; whereas if you’re just following a set of techniques, that’s the road to burnout and that’s the road to not feelings very fulfilled in what you’re doing.

I always say to my clients that there’s never two sessions that I do ever the same, because what I’m listening for and what I’m watching for is what’s unique, what’s going on between us. Certainly no two sessions are the same. I do find this work quite tiring, it takes a lot actually being present with somebody for two hours. I find that I can meet in one appointment a day because I’ve also built an emotional connection with my client as well. Doing one per day feels good, because it means I can hold that energy, hold that person for the time that I’ve done that session.

I could talk so much more about being a Tantric practitioner but I just wanted to give you some initial thoughts of things to consider now. I’ve trained hundreds of Tantra practitioners so if you’re kind of feeling ‘that sounds intriguing, I’d love to learn more,’ I can actually train you. At the moment I’m offering that on a one-to-one basis, and I also offer training one day trainings or two-day training days to help you start learning Tantric methodologies to offer clients. I’ve got a wealth of experience that I share with you in those training days. In 2019 I’m launching my first Tantric practitioner training. Today I just wanted to start opening the conversation about what it is to be a Tantric practitioner, and share some things to consider.