Tantra – Connecting Deeply with Your Partner

The below interview with Somananda was printed in a Slovenian magazine “Slovenian woman” in February 2016. Here you can read the full translation of this article into English.

Original text: Andreja Paljevec
Photos: Nataša Možina
Translation: Jana Braniselj
English editing: Lori Doyle

Love is what eternally makes the world go ’round. As Yoga and Tantra teaches us, love is indeed like a muscle – the more you train it, the stronger it becomes. The more love you give others, the more love you cultivate inside yourself, and the greater your capacity for love becomes.

Tantra helps us grow and mature to understand that as human beings we can love differently than the ways and patterns we have observed in our families or the media. If a couple can understand and experience the real nature of love, an eternal love emerges that helps them overcome all challenges.

Love shows us how to surpass all of our problems, supporting and feeding us while pointing the way towards bliss, says Somananda, a Tantra teacher from Estonia. He has found a path of unconditional love in Tantra.

After studying and practicing law in Israel, in 1999 he journeyed to India on a spiritual quest, and there he met his many gurus. He relocated to Thailand after some time, where he lived for several years. In 2008 Somananda began teaching Yoga throughout Europe, eventually finding his way to Estonia. The country had a big impact on him for many reasons, but in particular because he met his wife, Liisa, there. Together they now give workshops, retreats, and trainings worldwide. A growing number of Slovenians are now among their students, proving that interest in Tantra is on the rise in Slovenia.

Why did you choose the path of Tantra?

“I didn’t choose it”, Somananda says. “Rather, the path chose me”. Somananda has written a book, Tantra: Sex for the Soul, in which he explains how, at the age of 26, he was a lawyer who found spirituality while trying to help cure his ill father with alternative medicine. Soon after that he discovered Yoga and learned that there was much more to it then what the average person understands – a vast realm of teachings and techniques that transform practitioners in profound ways.

After three years of practicing Yoga in Israel he made the life-changing decision to resign from his job, sell his car, and go to India, realizing that, “it was pointless to be a rich lawyer with a dead soul”. In India he searched unsuccessfully for a truly authentic Yoga teacher – until the day he found his own guru.

Somananda began practicing under his teacher’s guidance and got great results, becoming a Yoga teacher after only a few months. His teacher was also a tantric master and so in tandem with Yoga, Somananda began his study and practice of Tantra as well.

In fact, he says, Yoga is primarily derived from Tantra, although this is little known in the West. Following many years of study and practice, Somananda has become a renowned Tantra and Yoga teacher himself.

“Most people think Tantra is just another style of exotic sex. But in fact only 5 percent of Tantra deals with sexuality.”

~Somananda

Tantric sex

Tantric sex cannot be compared with ordinary sex because it is in an extraordinary class by itself. Ordinary sex is unconscious, resembling the instinctual mating of animals, even though two good lovers may be involved.

Tantric sex includes the understanding and perception of universal energies, as well as the ability to move them, all done with full consciousness and sacred intentions.

Men and women can easily learn how to experience very long orgasms which last 5 to 30 minutes – not 20 seconds as is the usual orgasmic standard fare (if it is experienced at all).

The tantric orgasm is a very blissful, joyful experience that dramatically heals the body, unites partners, and rejuvenates relationships.

Incredible tantric results

In Tantra a man grows very strong energetically, reaching the ability to control his sexual energy, experience multiple orgasms without diminishing his energy or virility, and make love without limits.

Women, despite the widespread social emphasis given to their more common difficulties with orgasm, have a great natural affinity with Tantra and can achieve very deep, powerful, and transcendent levels of orgasm, which are beyond description, as well as intense multi-orgasmic states. Tantra believes this is woman’s natural birthright – often hidden under layers of trauma and shame, among other obstacles. Tantra has exceptional healing potential in this regard.

Such incredible tantric results last as long as you live your life harmoniously, Somananda emphasizes. If someone comes to Tantra just for fun, it is the same as getting drunk or high on drugs, living with impurities and without the right alignment for this essentially spiritually based practice. If a man with a healthy lifestyle lives a moderate, harmonious life without stealing or cheating on his partner, listening all the while to his heart and soul, Tantra will help him and everything in his life will change positively, he said.

Only 5% of Tantra deals with sexuality

Somananda says that most people think Tantra is just another style of exotic sex. But in fact only 5 percent of Tantra deals with sexuality. The remainder is focused in attaining higher levels of consciousness, practicing different types of meditation, studying the cosmic powers of the universe, using visualization techniques, and much more.

Conserving the vital force

In Ayurveda it is known that by having sex often we exhaust ojas (an energy in its subtle form, which each of us has in a small quantity) and, as a result, different diseases can occur, in particular diseases of the nervous system which have consequences for us as we grow older. Somananda comments: “This is true, but with Tantra, if it is authentic, there are no such problems”.

He continues, “during tantric sex we do not lose energy at all. Men learn how to orgasm without ejaculation, and neither men nor women lose ojas. On the contrary, they are preserving their ojas, which keeps them very healthy, vital, and strong until old age. There are no negative effects because tantric sexuality is practiced in a spiritual, harmonious way that improves health”.

How to keep the passion fiery and alive?

In Tantra there is a topic called the polarity of energies, explains Somananda. If a man and woman deplete their ojas, exhausting their energy and vitality, this also has ramifications for the relationship.

As a result of such loss, their yin and yang energies don’t maintain polarity, or a certain polar magnetism, which is the basis for attraction.

At times like this you’ll see your lover more as a business partner, sister, brother, or platonic friend and won’t understand where attraction went – or in fact, whether it disappeared all together. 

Tantra of Relationships

Part of Tantra Sexuality Module

Learn more

Jealousy in Tantra

From a tantric point of view true love emerges when one is able to overcome the trappings of the ego and learn how to avoid jealousy. There are techniques in Yoga and Tantra that help us achieve this.

We all want love, but unfortunately our ego constantly interferes. And it is also true that today, people do not distinguish between sex, lust, and love. In relationships, when desire fades and ego and jealousy come to the forefront, people begin to have problems with possessiveness and, ultimately, to treat other human beings as property.

Love is not a business deal, it is a state of being that is both beautiful and deep.

Unconditional love

Love is when you love someone no matter what. A partner does not need to justify her lovability, even when she acts a little bit stupidly, does something to make her lover angry, or even suddenly claims she no longer loves her man. Still he loves her – this is true love. However, it is also an opportunity for the ego to create trouble for us because, honestly, many people are not really capable of unconditional love – including often even married partners.

Love is not a business deal, it is a state of being that is both beautiful and deep. But it requires us to be brave, confident, compassionate, and devoted to one another. When you love in this way, you build your love muscle until your big heart wants to love the other, and love, and love, until you realize Love is your natural state…and you begin to live in that place nonstop. Tantra can take you there.