Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Tantra for Gay Men podcast, hosted by Jason and Ingo Tantra. Here we’re exploring spirituality and personal growth through the practice of tantra, the body, energy and sex.  Hello there, I’m Jason Tantra and welcome to episode 16 of the Tantra for Gay Men podcast where Ingo and I are talking about preparing for a tantric ritual.

We talk a lot about what ritual is as a solo practice, something done with other people. We talk about the divine and the sacred.  And listen all the way through because it’s one of those podcasts where we go down a certain track and we come all the way around some really good insights and ideas. We talk about the healing and surrender, um, rich, uh, retreat that we’re holding at the end of November, early December.

Um, yeah. So lots to listen to in this podcast. Take care. Enjoy. Hello beautiful Ingo, hello, my darling Jason guess where we are. We are in episode 16. Oh god We’ve come a long way haven’t we so we started  the beginning of this. No, when did we start? In January January to record our first podcast episode and now we are in September  we’ve come a long way haven’t we at this time of recording?

We’re coming to you from beautiful sunny, beautiful Benidorm. As I was saying, um, we were chatting the other day, weren’t we? We were like, after the festival, after the diploma weeks, after being in very spiritual places, I think one of the things that’s probably, I don’t know if it’s unique about us, but one of the features I think of you and me is that we love contrast.

Yeah, I was gonna say that. And we love totality. And for me, you know, when I look at the Osho’s teachings, Osho being the father of Tantra. He talks about living life in totality, being everywhere. And I think Benidorm is the Las Vegas of Europe. Yes, and people say like, Oh, Benidorm, that’s like unhinged Mediterranean partying or something like that.

And how can you like that? You are so spiritual. I’m like, This is spiritually in a certain kind of way, isn’t it? How many people from the north of England have we met that are liking our doggie? Dozens per day. And we have very, very interesting conversations.  So yes, we are recording this coming to you from where the sun is shining and yeah, beautiful days of recovery from our teaching summer.

And here we are with you today’s podcast. Should I tell you the theme? Yes! Today’s theme is preparing a tantric ritual. Preparing a tantric ritual. And one of the things, I don’t know if you want me to launch into that. Yes! Uh, yeah. It’s going to be an interesting one. Because I don’t think many people sit at home.

Thinking about creating a tantric ritual. Actually, I’d probably say it’s like 0. 0 percent of something.  But for me, there’s two aspects of ritual that I want to offer this podcast offer for us to talk about. One is about the early days of our relationship and our relationship with ritual.  And also in the past.

decades that we’ve been teaching, two decades that we’ve been teaching, what I’ve observed in rituals that we’ve created in Tantra.  And before I even step into those in depth and in detail, for me, ritual has a place If you would be classing yourself as a spiritual person, as somebody that’s practicing Tantra, that could either be a solo practice, or it could be a solo practice and practice with another person, maybe a partner, other persons.

And I think ritual,  The idea of ritual has a very sacred, divine, and special place in each of those descriptions that I’ve given. And for me, ritual is a way to, well I think one idea that occurs to me, ritual is one way of being that is outside the paradigm of your normal day to day self that is operating.

So for example, you know, I’m sure we could come up with a hundred different rituals, but like say you were doing a ritual of devotion to your tantric lover.  Devotion evokes a certain way of behaving, a certain way of being,  and that enables you to be something other than you that was, I don’t know, checking your emails, finishing work, shopping, doing your weekly shop.

So I think ritual can Gives an opportunity for you to experience yourself other than the way that you operate in your day to day.  May I before we really launch into this and I I think you have already you have already mentioned a few hallmarks of what ritual is but Would it be okay if I come up with?

With my concept of ritual what it is because uh, this was also something well ritual was something that changed my life especially  When it comes to sex and intimacy  and um so Uh now after after many years of tantra, I would say it’s it’s it’s the following thing in my mind And and in tantra as well  ritual Is  something by which we take something mundane  and put it into a ritual space.

So for example, we take sex and make a ritual out of it. And ritual space for me means three things.  It means, um, we are bringing an intention to it.  Second, we are bringing. Um awareness to it and consciousness in a certain kind of way to make things conscious in there that weren’t conscious previously  and the third one is that  we allow different spaces of alternative spaces of meaning Come on, which might be, you know, a little bit, you mentioned it already, which might be, um, a little bit difficult to understand if you haven’t really done it, let, let me, let me explain.

Um,  so sex, for example, for me personally, when I, uh, before I, um, met Tantra,  sex often was something that.  You know that I was stumbling into Basically something not very planned Something. Oh now it’s coming up. What do I really want? I don’t know. So let’s just let’s just see what comes up Let’s just see what the other person does but not very Neither planned nor with a clear intention nor with much.

Um Awareness to it and then  what I learned in tantra is You That if you bring an intention to this and there can there can be many intention as you said and we can we can We can go into there Into that Uh much more. So for example, what is the intention of my sex today? Do I want to bring that other person maximum pleasure?

Do I want to bring myself maximum pleasure?  Do I want to let steam off? Do I want You To do I need to be held?  You know these these are already so many different intentions that you could go into that and  What would be some spiritual intentions that you would add into that because everything you named there was about pleasure for either the other person or or myself What would be other, this, these are intentions that could just be for my mundane sex uhhuh to make a ritual.

This is not tantra. Yes. This is basically ritualized sex. Mm-Hmm. Um, but this is something to ritualize your sex is something that you learn when you first start to do tantra. Mm-Hmm. . And then as almost like a second layer on top of that. Mm-Hmm. . You, uh, this is the aspect of, uh, the, the meaning.  Um is about learning that sex in that ritualized context can have many more meanings and many more functions Than normal mundane sex.

For example, it can be used for to enter meditative states to enter spiritual states and so on and so forth, but again Uh, if you want to do that, you don’t want to stumble into, into sex and just do whatever comes up. You want to have a clear intention. You want that to be very, very conscious. And you want to, to, to, uh, to steer your sex into, um,  towards that, what you want to reach by that intention.

Do you see what I mean?  I’m still not clear about the intention around  for me  Tantra is about  Using sex and sexual energy as a way to contact the divine Yes, and what I mean by contacting the divine It’s about Stepping out of the you the you that has sex in the way that you normally have sex The stepping out of the you that is operating at a certain functional level and Enabling yourself to be that that exists beyond those personas.

Yes  beyond ego  Yes, and but but how does this  How does this come together with ritual because ritual is a mechanism  It’s like the engine, the cogs of the wheel that are operating that create the experience for you to experience that. So what I mean by that is, imagine you were just, I don’t know, jacking off with another guy, okay?

And you’re there just wanking or jerking off and you’re just doing that.  If, say you were doing it, doing a tantric ritual, actually it might be that you’re looking into the, your partner’s eyes, and maybe you’re touching him and he’s touching you, and there’s something else that occurs between you, something that is very intimate, something that is very special, something that is beyond just pleasure grabbing, there’s something shared.

And also I’m curious around how that can become something divine, how that can become something sacred, something spiritual. I think we are, we are completely on the same page. Okay. It’s just that I want to, to, to basically take those of you dear listeners who, you know, who haven’t heard of Tantra and what it is.

Is a ritual and and and I say you you very you start by taking sex in this case  And by putting an intention to it and this intention as as you say Can be spiritual  But it could also be non spiritual. It could be for example, um, just honoring your partner and just for it to be that and that would be a ritual as well.

So you’re basically elevating something that has many aspects of unconscious behavior to it to something  That has a clear intention and we are working towards that that goal  As you’re saying that one of the things then that occurs to me Say that you’re in a relationship Actually, what you might do is use ritual as a way On a friday night exactly as a way to Put aside the parts of you in relationship that are doing the day to day stuff in the world and to create another place Where you can both actually meet where you can create a place where the two of you are in ritual Experiencing each other beyond the ways that you do on a functional day to day that could be For deeper intimacy that could be to emotionally reset the relationship And it could also be that there’s like a sacred journeying together into different spiritual experiences Exactly.

And then this uh, this is something You know that we have recommended this to people who come to us, for example, saying, Oh God,  we have been married. We are a couple. We, um, we’re, our sex life has somehow faltered. We are bogged down in work. And, and as you say, um, it’s the first thing to bring sex back in your life, for example, it’s through ritual is through.

Consciously making a space and consciously saying these two hours for example on a friday evening. They are just for us Therefore our intimacy for our sex and the intention And we will work towards that intention is to bring intimacy back. And this is basically I I feel how ritual can very very basically, but powerfully  work already towards bringing your sex life to another level.

And then, as you say, rightly, then at some point, the question is what now? And, and, and what about now? Tantra in there. That’s that’s the next level. So to speak. It doesn’t make sense. And for me, as you’re saying that some ideas of what that might look like.  I think there’s something about preparation and discussion and deciding what that ritual looks like.

So it could be, okay, we’re going to engage our sexual energy, but we’re both going to choose not to come for one hour. And actually in that hour we’re going to maybe start off with a bath together And we’re going to do a bath ritual like a bath massage Maybe different accoutrements  that you can buy to bath and then maybe we’re going to do some massage together And then we’re going to do some joint cocktails massage together with the intention of building a closeness and intimacy.

So these are like practical things that you can do. To be honest, at some level, it doesn’t actually matter what you do as long as it supports you getting into that intention of greater connection together. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So as we’re talking about ritual, I think one of the things that I’m reminded of Ingo is when we first got together.

And you would fly in on a friday evening or I would fly into you on a friday evening We would have late friday evening All day saturday  all day sunday to about four o’clock Before we then had to make the journey home. Those were the days Yeah, and I think we lived like that probably for about two years Every other weekend something like that.

Yeah, and for me what was incredibly powerful at that time what I remember. I don’t know what your experience was. One is that just feels incredibly special because I think we were at an incredibly special part in our life and, you know, Tantra was very important to both of us at that point.  And we would spend days in ritual and there was also something around, you know, I remember buying an inflatable jacuzzi in the garden for us to carry on our ritual in there.

We would use the bath. Do you remember the bath? We would use that. We would have massage place in our temple. We’d create a temple with an altar. Do you remember when we had the altar by the fireplace?  We would bring in food in different ways. Either I would cook or we would, we would buy in food or even go out for food.

But there was just something about that quality of presence. I think because when I first met you,  Um, and you still, you were even more than that. But at that point you were so incredibly precious to me.  And I think there was also a level of preciousness because of the long distance ness of the relationship.

Because we only had like three days every, no, two and a half days. every two weeks or something, yeah. But there was also something for me about the  the fact of the distance between us that made the time that we were together so much more valuable and so much more precious that when we both got together with that joint intention, that created an additional dynamic to that preciousness.

And that’s sake and for me then that sacredness and You know, I remember Very very prolonged states with you Um, I would be so moved by what we shared That that it was it was it was like my whole world. I don’t know how else to describe it.  Yeah, I remember we  I I think we were in a really really special.

Um, Those were really special years because a we were You  Our relationship was quite new.  B we weren’t together all the time. So we were like, okay, let’s really go to, to use that time to the max. And C we had just, we were both in Tantra training. That means we had, I think we had a huge, um, toolkit of what to do.

And we were just. Basically made aware of the importance of ritual and what you can do with it And I don’t think we saw it like that at that time, but now by hindsight, I would actually say we almost had  a very long list of intentions of things we wanted to work on through being together and that often like sprang from  You know where we were at in our everyday life, for example, okay, we really need a weekend where it’s all about it Just soothing or something like that or we need to weekend where we really we were both you know where we are both really horny and we want to to to to to see where we can push that or then the next weekend was  Meditative, you know some meditative something something I also remember one thing in the practices is that the, the, the experiences that we would have would take us into different realms, different states of consciousness.

I mean, it just felt like a dream that time that we had together. Yeah. It, it felt otherworldly.  Well, um,  that is the. The other, uh,  layer  that came in at that time, didn’t it? That’s, you know,  all of you, uh, dear listeners, you, you know, if you have listened to this before, you know why I, at least, um, in Tantra is, and that’s because of this otherworldly, uh,  Mind altering,  uh, spiritually opening quality of, of, uh, of, uh, of,  of sex that can be opened via tantric techniques.

And of course,  once you are in that tantric training, everything in sex becomes like that. So these rituals usually were obviously not just soothing, but then it, it opened up deeper and deeper. And I remember one weekend that was.  You know, I’m  On the, I think on the, on the surface, it was all about, Oh God,  I feel done from this week’s work.

I need something soothing. But once we started soothing, then it opened up layers and layers into what can soothing your soul really mean in a, in a, in a much, much deeper, almost meditative level and all of that. Do you remember? Yeah. And so what I’m saying is that each of these.  Intentions they once you really go in and put them into a ritual they open up up deeper and deeper layers Yes, you’re being so to speak  Do you remember at the time we also were part of a peer group?

Yeah that as well And we would, um, create weekend. I think we do like once every six months. It felt like that once. I think it was even more in its heyday, something like three times per year. And one of one couple would take responsibility for the practice for that weekend. And I remember that we took everything we shared into the group experience and created group rituals and group practices.

And again,  What i’m wanting to say here is that ritual isn’t just about a couple Although it can be really useful tool for a couple can also be really useful as a group practice And um, we haven’t even touched on solo practice, which I would like to do later but where I thought we may be usefully go now is talking about ritual in the tantra that we’ve taught over the last 19 years because  i’ve seen ritual in in different aspects.

So, you know, typically, generally, if we’re teaching a Tantra week or a Tantra weekend, you know, the first evening, isn’t it? Or the first introductory session is about meeting other people. And it’s about seeing who’s in the room, seeing how you feel. I guess it’s also about feeling safe. You know, do I feel safe here?

Can I, can I be vulnerable here? Can I bring all parts of myself, my erotic self? And we’ve also Offered our students  often quite complex rituals So there’s a couple that i’m reminded of one is, you know um a cathartic healing anal massage  as a process to Kind of clear out all of the energy all of the clogs in the energy And to kind of liberate and feel free free using the energy Anal massage as the technique, but actually having it held and guided as something about the The practice of ritual the intention of ritual that goes beyond the techniques that creates experiences That people would perceive as being profound.

Well, I think um  When we create these rituals for others as ritual holders, there’s an additional.  Um, You  That’s an additional layer to it, which is.  The container that can hold the depth of the intention like as you mentioned, for example If we create a ritual in which we use Sexual energy in this case the energy created through anal massage Where we use sexual energy Energy to flush through,  let’s say, emotional blocks that someone may be experiencing to, to, to, to take these into a kind of flushing through slash catharsis kind of thing  that is a ritual that needs a container in which everything that comes up will be held, so to speak.

And, and, and that’s. In that situation, we offer that as ritual leaders. And for me, the most important thing in there is  that, um,  the ritual holder has really, really gone far with that ritual. And I think what we, what we,  what we create there as a container is.  It’s like a space of permission You can really explore yourself here, but you will be totally held Because we have been there we know uh the the the the power of these techniques that we are going to use and we can We can basically create this container in which you can feel safe to to explore  Parts of yourself that you haven’t seen yet and you will be held in that well and often and frequently things come up for people Yeah, that could be new realizations.

It could be a previous trauma that is ready to be addressed exactly, it could be a new paradigm of Experiencing something like completely like wow  It could be many many things. Yeah, and that but but for these things to occur Mm hmm It needs to to have a strong enough container because uh what you mentioned, um, what these things have in common for people is  It’s an unknown part of themselves.

Yes a partly known part of themselves that comes into um into awareness You know like states of mind that they didn’t know that That they didn’t know before but it’s within their personal potential. Yes, so  And, and I feel for the system to let go into that unknown and, and bring that up into, um,  Into, uh, awareness  there needs to be you as a person need to feel safe and held in that strong container.

And this brings us back to the question of ritual because that’s, that’s the other aspect. It’s a strong health aspect. Container and for me as you’re talking what I’m reminded of then is ritual another way for saying it’s like a stage Like a play without any script to play out And all that’s playing out is what’s really going on in the moment and nobody knows where that’s going Nobody knows what’s gonna happen It’s it’s it’s like the now is happening on stage being witnessed being held and for me You I think one thing that we haven’t yet touched upon is what I would call the mystical aspects of of ritual Because there’s sometimes like what I felt between you and I what I’ve witnessed in group rituals There is often a something else That happens and I think you touched on this when you said it’s like the unconscious parts of self being played out  there’s The parts of you that you know that are there happening and at some point there’s like something else that kicks in That can take it in in literally any direction.

I Love the way when you said there is no script to be played out Yes, but what the ritual has is a it has a container. Yes container meaning a space where  All of you as the participant of ritual can feel safe and can feel permission  To let go into whatever happens It has intention  and then we can throw ourselves into that  and you know, I think I feel one of the very important things is that in tantra we uh, what we believe in tantra is  that You We as our full potential are so, so, so much more than we are aware of.

So what, what I think. I am it’s just the tip of a little iceberg. Yeah what I really am Well, of course from a spiritual perspective is, you know, the universe everything Um, but there is just so much more that is only possible Partly known that is unknown that is, you know, depending on what kind of language you use, you could say, uh, that there are parts that are, you know, in the subconscious, there are parts that are collective, subconscious, personal, subconscious, things like that,  but in order to Let this material come up and, and be experienced so that we experience, wow, we can’t, we are not just who we think we are.

We are much, much more than that. And that happens, I feel, when  A rich, a good ritual happens in which three things come together. The container. Yes. You can see if it feels safe. Yeah. The intention, i. e. where are we headed? Plus, uh, the right combination of technique that, that brings this, that has the potential basically to bring these, these, these things up.

And as you said,  when these things come together,  then what you’re falling into, what, what, what you. What comes up into your awareness  ideally are things that you didn’t know about yourself.  Before and these things indeed as you say they have no script these processes you know, the the ritual is the the the the again the container to To to have a safe exploration of these processes.

That’s how I see it And that for me is where the magical and the mystical can come in. Yeah I don’t know if we’ve talked about this about what I call the three relationships of tantra  um for me  You know, there’s three relationships there’s what’s happening with you  So and we’ll talk about like solo Practice in a moment because I think that has its place and then I think that there’s then what’s happening between me and others So, how are we relating what’s happening in our connection together?

Yeah And then I think there’s also then what’s happening in me in together But then in the wider the relationship with the divine with the mystical and when those all kick in together it’s It has the potential for profound  experiences that leave people in awe for decades, quite frankly. I know at the end of our ecstasy and orgasm diploma week, there is a ritual that we do.

that has not yet let us down  and defies all logic.  And if we could convey to people that there was a universal orgasm to be experienced by every participant and that there’s just a something that happens that I can’t my logical mind can’t explain, um It feels like a miracle it I don’t know how else to say it.

Yeah, absolutely. And and here this this thing is that uh people Really really feel that they have accessed something completely new something completely unknown about themselves it’s like this feeling like  seeing for the first time. Almost. Um, and that is something, that is something that we are working towards in Tantra.

Yeah. Yeah, completely, completely. I want to come back for a moment, um, just to talk about solo practice. Because, um, some People listening to this, you know, may not have a partner to practice with, may not have be ready or feel ready to say, participate in a group or maybe doing both, but also want to focus on solo practice.

I feel one of the reasons why you might create tantric rituals and, you know, the immediate one that comes to mind is self pleasuring, learning to get into a multi orgasmic state.  Um, the different you could argue that some of the Osho active meditations are also rituals within themselves for me  at a solo level that helps the individual kind of prepare the soil, prepare the land for experience.

And what I mean by that is if you’re doing a solo, say you’re doing a solo self pleasuring multi orgasmic ritual, what you’re doing in there is you’re starting a ritual.  Aside from the experience, you’re starting to learn about yourself. You’re starting to learn about your body. You’re starting to learn about different sensations.

Maybe, you know, the sex that you’ve had, or the connections you’ve had with other people, have been a certain way. And yet, when you’re in solo practice, You know, there’s, you’re, you’re experiencing yourself differently. Also, so I’m trying to say two things at once here. Also, like, you know, typically in our community, people use porn if they’re on their own as a way to be in their erotic energy.

And whilst there is a porn ritual to be made, I know, and, and that’s another topic. But actually, if you’re not using porn, you’re not using other people. You’re really on your own with your body. I don’t know that that happens for many people very often, if ever. No porn, no other person, just myself. And then that creates for me the start of a tantric spiritual journey, because what your first lesson, the first port of call is to understand your body, understand its sensations, understand your relationship, and develop your Um energetic body develop your orgasmic energy to be in multi orgasmic states Those are all things that need to happen on your own  Well, this is uh, this is this aspect that I mentioned in the beginning.

It’s like You you do a ritual that might on the surface be Be for a very kind of simple intention. Let’s say  I want to become multi orgasmic. I want to, you know, to to to improve my orgasm or how I stay hard or whatever it is. Yes. And okay, then you take some of those tantric techniques that work with that and then within the ritual you actually realize.

That these things do a lot more. Yes techniques do a lot more than then then Then you thought in the sense of you mentioned the three relationships. Oh, wow This is not just teaching me about How to last longer or something like that. It’s actually teaching me about my relationship to myself and to my sexual energy It’s teaching me about how I have been Been in terms of having sex with others and, and is that something I want to continue this way?

Is that something I want to improve? And in the very end, then these techniques will also obviously, uh, yeah, open up their more spiritual, um, effects, you know, relationship with the cosmos. For me, it also shows you.  Where you may have stuff to look at where there’s certain problems certain issues, maybe some shame is coming up For example, you know, um, I know one ritual that we used to do in our early teaching days  Was being witnessed pleasuring yourself in front of 20 other people  And that would be hugely challenging, and no surprise why, because, you know, their people were just confronted with showing their erotic energy to a crowd of conscious people.

If you were in a bathhouse, um, I know people have no issue at all showing their sexual energy to 20 other people because, but in a tantric ritual, suddenly, you know, it’s, you’re being observed, you’re being held, you’re being seen, you’re being witnessed. And I think ritual is enables many for you to experience yourself many different ways and to learn and to grow and to see where you need to make some improvements or changes.

So again, like the quality of sex that you may have, maybe, you know, you’re never able to look at anybody in the eye or you’re not able to connect more deeply. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  A tantric sex ritual with another partner helps you explore how to to relearn those things that we were never taught. Like you look at our sex education as men who love men, the only format we’ve got is porn.

And whilst porn is doing a really good job at arousing people, I’m not sure that it’s showing people how to have really good tantric rituals, how to have really deep, good, intimate connections with people.  Yeah, absolutely.  So I, I think we’ve. Been kind of quite a way around This topic of ritual and I wondered whether it was worth starting to maybe summarize some parts of that so We started the conversation You wanted to jump in at the beginning to talk about Yeah, we started  We started with the kind of, you know, definition of ritual in a tantric context.

What are its elements? We talked about intention. Yes. We talked about a container. Yes. We talked about awareness. as elements of the ritual and um, also the techniques you wanna wanna try out in if if the  In a more specifically tantric context. Yes That’s that was the first one that’s like setting the stage for what a ritual is And then we talked a little bit about our relationship and how ritual was a really important part of our relationship in the formative years of our relationship and And then we talked about that in a group setting and we talked about like group rituals in our Tantra trainings and starting to touch into the divine, to the mystical.

And we, uh, divine mystical, we talked about how, um, ritual space can be a specific thing that can basically, um,  Give you the space and the permission for the parts of you that you don’t know yet that are unknown to you  including the spiritual parts of you where you are one with everything, um for those parts to actually come up and to To be experienced and then we talked about solo tantric ritual practice And how that can help you so it feels like we’ve gone a really way around i’m aware That what we’re saying is probably Not for the person first thinking about starting tantra And so I wondered whether in our last minutes, we might, okay, so having heard about the potentiality, what’s some of the very practical ways that somebody could start a tantric ritual, um, maybe from the different perspectives that we’ve talked about?

Like, how do we make this accessible, what we’re saying?  I I think  When I think about how I how I started tantra myself you need a little bit of pinpointing. Okay, so uh what we can offer The the first thing coming to mind if dear reader you have never done anything like this and don’t know where to start  But maybe joining us for something like a weekend would be too much We’ve got our online ashram.

We have in which Um, you know, you can learn the techniques and we also hold online group rituals in there in which In in these life classes, basically it’s possible to experience what it feels like and what it is like and if you experience that several times online with others You got an idea also You you you learn how to hold that for yourself.

You learn how to hold that for other people Your partner if you have one and things like that I also think reading books can be useful to give you information and there’s articles online Yes  But I would actually rather start practically Yeah, um in in this yes So what you’re saying is our ashram is one way to do that.

Yes That’s the lowest threshold or attending like a weekend or if you’re in a city like local events have a look and so what you’re looking to do is start collecting ideas of certain types of practices for example like a multi orgasmic practice or you’re looking to learn say different  meditations like the chakra breathing meditation and then And adding in a sexual energy, that’s also a beautiful ritual practice in itself.

So I guess what you’re saying is learn Tantra. Yes. Learn the techniques of Tantra. Uh, you, you need, if you want to hold that for yourself or for someone else, you, you need to be  at least a little bit solid in the techniques and you need to have experienced the way.  Something like this is held and the best way is to be participant in a ritual and see how the ritual holder holds that it’s actually quite simple, but You need to experience it in my opinion I also think other avenues because you can’t the other avenues of exploration Are around, you know, maybe learning how to do a bath massage learning how to do some body massage exactly learning how to do some different types So it’s like you’re building up a repertoire yeah of Um,  different practices and techniques and then,  you know, you’re then starting to design that ritual.

Aren’t you? You’re sort of like, maybe it’s with the partner. Why don’t we do a ritual on Friday and talking about what that might mean. And actually at the end of the day, the other thing I would say is it doesn’t necessarily matter what you do, but coming back to what you were saying, Ingo, about intention, as long as it’s fulfilling the intention.

So the intention could be. We’re gonna have some time together some intimate time together where the telly is not on the phones are off and we’re just really connecting with each other and We’re going to create some ideas around what we could do together and share together there Yeah, and and that’s something if you if you have not done tantra before you could even start It at this kind of  mundane Level you could for example say You  What is it that my partner and I enjoy?

We enjoy a bath together or we would enjoy, uh, swapping massage, for example, and then say, okay  Uh, the very very simple way of doing a ritual is for example, uh to say Let’s swap a massage.  Let’s say half an hour this way half an hour the other way We’re gonna prepare the room. We’re gonna have nice candles incense, whatever And then it’s half an hour this way around where I am just looking after you And then half an hour the other way around very very very simple or the same thing of bothering someone and and and massaging them in there and and  That could that could be a really really simple beautiful thing to start off  So we’ve talked a lot about tantric  rituals how to prepare one what they are different thoughts Um different ways to create them um  I think what we’re saying in essence is experience, you know, get some experience of tantra to then help you learn and cultivate what you might bring into a tantric ritual.

Learn about the tantra mechanics, tantra technologies, how those practices work. Does this work to enable you to, I guess, build a repertoire and, and create different, different types of rituals? I think there’s a huge amount of creativity and possibility that can be created in, in tantric rituals as well.

Mm-Hmm.  . Um, yeah, I think it’s kind of a huge area of, um, exploration.  I wanted to, as we kind of bring this to a close, just to, um, talk about, um,  our retreat that we’ve got coming up called Healing and Surrender, and in there, it also has, um,  um, um, um, Rituals. Rituals. Yes. Actually that’s quite a few different rituals.

Some that are quite exploratory.  Yeah. Some, some of them really, really push it, but in a really good way. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s called Healing and Surrender. It starts, um, is it Saturday? It starts on the 30th, Saturday, the 30th of November. Is it a Saturday? Yes. Yeah. And finishes Friday, the 6th of December. Yes.

And as we’re recording this, um, there’s  Literally two or three places still left like that. It’s like an an amazing group is coming together It’s it’s really going to be powerful It’s in just outside glastonbury in the uk easy to get to from the usa and europe flying to london One and a half hour train and then a short taxi ride So it’s very easy to get to and the theme is healing and surrender we use ritual As a process of healing we use anal massage as a process of healing Um and real catharsis and it can really give people a huge amount of rejuvenation And then we deeply and profoundly look at the topic of surrender Um, in a way that’s relevant to a men who loves men community very, um, little bit controversial, little bit unexpected, exciting, profound.

Oh my God. Wow. Moments. Yeah. Really. Um, yeah. If you’re looking to jump in  and really want to learn about Tantra, this would be, um, definitely one retreat that we would recommend. recommend to you.  Okay, Ingo, thank you so much. Thank you so much. That’s been a very good exploration of ritual. Um, I love the way with this podcast actually, the way that we’ve probably tackled it from a very different angle than, than I thought we were going to.

We’ve kind of gone all the way around. So, um, I really hope dear listeners that’s been of service to you. and gives you some ideas.  We’re going to see you in the next podcast, which is going to be talking about how tantra can improve your sex life. Ingo and I are going to be talking about that in the next one.

Okay, Ingo, thank you. Lots of love to you. Lots of love, my darling. See you on the next podcast. Bye, baby. Bye, dear listeners. Bye bye.  Hello there. So I hope you really enjoyed this episode and I hope you found it really enlightening all about tantric rituals. I If you’d like to find out about the healing and surrender retreat, you can do that at our website, tantra4gaymen.

com. And if you’re interested in the ashram that we spoke about, community. tantra4gaymen.  com.  As we said, next podcast that we’re doing is all about how tantra can improve your sex life. So that will be another great informative episode for you. Yeah, thank you for listening. Thank you for being with us and excited to see you next time.

Take care. Bye.

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