c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The Tantras, Sanskrit texts that date back more than 1,000 years, urge adherents to indulge their desires in order to transcend them. Xlandia’s interpretation is to sprawl her clients out on a massage table and tickle their “sacred spot” with feathers and furs.

Tantra has long been a buzzword in America’s New Age mega-market. But the popularity of private “Tantric healers” like Xlandia, who charge hundreds of dollars per hour for quasi-spiritual erotic experiences, has reached a new level in recent years. There are 48 such “healers” who advertise at goddesstemple.com, one of many Tantric sex sites. Most of them post semi-nude photos of themselves in erotic yoga postures. Some say they get as many as 100 calls per day.

“It’s really beginning to flower,” said Chandra Devi, one of the healers at goddesstemple.com who estimated that 600 people view her ad per day. “People are tired of living in a prison of superstitious morality.”

These spiritual vixens probably fit most Americans’ concept of Tantra: a form of eroticism that has something to do with sexual temple carvings in India or the Kama Sutra. But experts say the popular American notion of Tantra falls far from the philosophy’s true origins, and many academics decry the sex-centered commercialism of Western “neo-Tantra.”

“I don’t know why they have to call it Tantra,” said Robert Thurman, a professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University. “That’s what people are upset about. There is a place for hedonism in this world. Why do they have to make it a spiritual thing?”

Tibetan Buddhists use the term Tantra in referring to certain practices and deities from Vajrayana Buddhism. For them, Tantra describes the fastest approach to enlightenment, a method that employs magical mantras and visualizations. Even the sexual images seen in Tibetan paintings are to be visualized rather than emulated in the physical, with the exception of the most elite yogis.

In some obscure “left-handed” or “dark” Tantra cults in India, yogis actually practice sexual copulation, along with taking drugs and drinking wine, as a way to merge with the divine. But in these sects, Tantric sex is only a small part of the larger tradition that includes purification, initiation, meditation and deity worship. The sexual practices are transmitted from teacher to student in secret and given only to those with the correct disposition.

In America, however, Tantric sex, like yoga, has been extracted from its highly ritualized form and taught through how-to videos and expensive workshops. The teachings usually focus on worshipping the feminine power and, for men, learning to withhold ejaculation.

In the late 1990s, the Wall Street Journal estimated that the American Tantric sex market was raking in tens of millions of dollars annually, and that was when private Tantric healers were just gaining momentum. With the proliferation of the Internet, private “Tantrikas” can be found in almost any major U.S. city today.

What goes on behind the curtain in these private sessions varies. One of the healers at goddesstemple.com did admit to having intercourse with her clients, or “yab-yum” in Sanskrit. But the others interviewed said they provide only sexual coaching and healing through mutual or one-way massage.

Willow, a 64-year-old “Tantrika” in Nashville, Tenn., said she simulates Tantric sex by putting a cloth between her and her client. Xlandia, in Los Angeles, said she prefers to finish off her sessions with a “hot oral massage.”

“After that most people go into such a relaxed state, they’re in total bliss,” Xlandia said.

Tantra has always been a controversial topic, even in India. But the American breed has intensified the debate about what’s spiritual and what’s not, or for some, what’s legal and what’s not.

Some sex-crimes experts complain that Tantric healing is a crafty form of prostitution. Several Tantric practitioners have been found guilty of sexual abuse, the most well-known being an Edmonds, Wash., hypnotherapist and Tantra apostle who was found guilty on four counts of rape. He had been telling his students that having sex with him was mandatory for healing.

Bill Nelson, director of the Freedom and Justice Center, a nonprofit prostitution research center in Minneapolis, said it is hard to say if Tantric healers who offer interactive sexual teachings are breaking the law.

“Whether or not this is illegal depends on the state,” Nelson said. “But sex is sex.”

Tantric healers, however, argue that “left-handed” Tantric practitioners have always been criticized by “right-handed” yogis in India.

“It’s the same debate that has gone on for centuries,” said Devi, who has a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies and has studied Sanskrit. “The right hand has always criticized the left and the left has always been out there breaking all the rules.”

Devi, who started her own Tantric training program called the Mindbliss School, has integrated her background in classical Hindu yoga, American neo-Tantra and Western eroticism. Having dabbled in explicitly hedonistic sex circles before finding Tantra, she resents critics who say there is no difference.

“Tantra is not about unbridled hedonism,” she said over a sushi lunch in Manhattan. “It’s about responsible pleasure and consensual ecstasy.”

The certified massage therapist admitted that what she teaches to the public for money is a watered-down version of true Tantra, which she practices on her own time and teaches for free to a select few. But she said that even the diluted version can be very helpful. Many of her clients, she said, have recovered from sexual dysfunction through her teachings.

“It’s important that people know there are different levels of Tantra,” Devi said. “What works for one person may not work for the other. Different strokes for different folks.”

MO/PH END RNS

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for photos of Tantric practitioners, some of whom criticize the sexual approach of “Tantric healers.”