Osho Leela Tantra Festival – Aug 11 – Debs G

I started thinking about trying out tantra when I began seeing a couple who’d done quite a lot of sexual healing work, but didn’t really pursue it until Faerie recommended the Festival and I was awarded one of the bursaries. In the run up to “tantra camp” (as I couldn’t help calling it) I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive. I was brought up a Christian (I am, in fact, a vicar’s daughter) but am resolutely non-spiritual these days, so my initial concern was that I’d find all the long hugging and namaste-ing and, uh, hippy bullshit a bit much. It was a real relief on the first night to find that the Osho Leela community members who’d done most of the organising had a sense of humour, and brought a light touch even to the things they clearly took seriously.

As it turned out, the basics came to me very easily. Once I’d let go of the “spent my gap yah in India” association, I found that saying namaste and bowing felt respectful and oddly moving. I’ve always been pretty good with eye contact, and it only took about half a day before gazing at someone directly without politely averting my eyes after a few seconds felt quite natural. And once I realised that the long hugging was actually optional, that a namaste would do just as well, and that each hug only had to last as long as you wanted it to, I got quite comfortable with spending 30 seconds in a stranger’s arms listening to their breathing. Since nobody was telling me what any of this had to mean to me, just doing a whole load of objectively quite ridiculous things was surprisingly unproblematic. It sometimes felt a bit like church, but mostly like doing drama games, and the link between theatre and tantra was explicitly recognised in one of the best workshops of the week, John Cremer’s session on improvised comedy. Not only did this session provide some welcome light relief, but it highlighted how much of tantra is a form of improvisation: being truly present in the moment and giving yourself up to whatever happens, even if it’s going to make you look ridiculous.

There were many moments over the week where I found myself thinking, this is probably the silliest thing I’ve ever done, but then remembered that I like directing operas, and nothing is sillier than opera. (Or more glorious, obv.)

So by the end of the first day I’d stopped thinking that my difficulty with tantra would be whether it was #magicorbullshit, (the hashtag I initially put on my tweets) – I’d enjoyed the first few workshops, liked my tantra camp family, and nobody seemed to be insisting I start believing in some kind of Spirit. Instead, I’d found a whole other problem: I’d realised that this was one of the most heterosexual spaces I’d been in a long time. The tantrikas confused me – they didn’t have the same boundaries as straight women, but in some ways the boundary was more immovable because of it. My next set of tweets adopted the hashtag #toogayfortantra?

The second day was “gender day”, when the men went off to roar and shout, while the women did cathartic crying over their wounded yonis. (I’m oversimplifying and being a bit flippant – I can see that for a lot of straight people who’ve had bad relationships and bad sex this stuff is really important and healing, but I’ve mostly had good relationships and good sex with both genders so it’s not very relevant to me.) If these had been the only options on the table I would have found the whole day quite alienating, but fortunately the wonderful Rebecca Lowrie had organised a third “meta” space for anyone who didn’t feel quite so straight/cis at that moment. The meta group was pretty amazing – not so much personally, because I’ve spent much of my life analysing my gender identity, but for some of the people who came it was the first time in their whole lives they’d ever expressed a sense of not conforming to the stereotypes imposed on them, both by society at large, but also by the tantric community because the practice is taught in such a heteronormative way. The metas were the rebels for the day, and the fact that even a marginally gender-queer space was available had big repercussions for the next three days. (In the final ritual on the Saturday I took the option of having a brown dot on my face and being “in my Shiva”, pairing with women in the exercises which were gender specific.) I was immensely grateful to Rebecca for holding a space like that which not only made me feel at home, but gave voice to a lot of other people’s views.

In general, the Festival didn’t contain much of the practice/technique element I guess I’d hoped for, but I also realised quickly it wouldn’t really have been the right place for me to learn. (I.e. I need a queer tantra school.) There was a lot of personal development work which, to be honest, I’m not especially in need of, primarily because I’m younger than most people who get into tantra and life hasn’t scarred me yet. But I did like the social dynamics, and the high-octane non-verbal communication – at the end looking round the 250 people there I had a clear memory of about 80 of them, which is an awful lot of people to pay attention to over 5 days.

The most amazing thing was actually right at the end, when I’d packed up my stuff and everyone was leaving. I went and sat quietly on my own for about five minutes and afterwards found that my mind was totally blank – without realising it, tantra camp had taught me to meditate. I think tantra definitely has something to offer me and my ilk, and I met some really excellent people, so I’m glad I went – even though I probably was a bit too gay for that kind of space. I’m now hoping to get involved with some of the queer tantra stuff coming up with Rebecca and SP, which I probably wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t gone to the Festival, so thanks so much to for giving me the opportunity to go.

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Rebecca Lowrie is running a workshop on Exploring Gender at Sacred Pleasures on Saturday 1st October. More information >>