*chuckle* right, did you slog through all that and not understand half the words? I thought you might do. I read through it again myself, blinked, then chuckled and thought "Yeah, like that will make sense to anyone who doesn't practice!"

Right, so let me try and break things down at least to terms one may be able to understand -

Most of the unpronouncable words are from yoga, various postures used in yoga - now, for those who have no idea, yoga is not even remotely about flexibility, but about what is going on in the mind and the spirit. Like just about everything it manages to pick up on, Western Thought completely missed the point and just started putting yoga in trendy workshops as a "get fit" campaign.

People who focus solely upon the tantric-sexual bit of Vama Marga are called (with a fair bit of disdain and derision) "neo-tantrics". This is usually said to rhyme with "scum". While I understand the sentiment of the followers of Yet Another Paradigm to Be Misunderstood By The Western Mind, and I know how frelling annoying it is, I refuse to believe neo-Tantra is invalid. True, it is not true vamamarga, it is not TRUE tantra as practiced in India since time out of mind, but I don't believe it any less powerful or any less valid. Unfortunately, like anything else, it can be abused, and the combination of neo-tantra and vama-marga can be disasterous if you're not applying a very BIG dose of humility somewhere.

For Neo-tantra, I would strongly suggest reading Osho's work - he was a bit of a heretic in his day. www.osho.com/ Like any new-thinker of the "old guard ways" he took a lot of shit for what he was saying. Some people believe he was truly enlightened. Others believe he was a quack. I'm not going to say one way or another, let each decide how they wish to proceed in life. However, I WILL state that I do intend on the more vama-marga/neo-tantra path - with help from friends and teachers I know who have done the same. It's something I'd incorporate into my Tribe in some way or another, so expect to see it here from time to time.

However, for the complete novice I'd like to give some cautions:

Tantra isn't for wimps. It really isn't something you just pick up and put down now and again. You LIVE it. It is part of you, part of life, part of everything. Expect everything about you to change. This can be TRICKY AS HELL if you're in a relationship with someone, because you're changing, and they're probably not changing that much at all. It can spell the end of a relationship. Your best bet? Practice together, talk about it, and communicate.

Tantric sex may sound cool, but it's just the icing on the cake. Anyone can hold off an orgasm. It takes someone with dedication and practice to be able to tie everything together, body, mind and spirit. Indeed, if you're just "into" tantra for the sake of getting a prolonged shag, you're completely and totally missing the point.

If you meet Shakti on the road, kill her - there are so many Shakti/Shiva types out there claiming to be "tantric healers" who are, in all honesty, nothing more than prostitutes, or people from "institutes" who are in reality nothing more than scam artists. It's hard to tell what's what. In the UK, the Skydancing Tantra group is run by someone who studied directly under Osho - so that's a good start. But in the US it may be harder to winnow through the chaff.

Tantra/Neo-Tantra; Woman, Know Your Place - most neo-tantrics will train a woman for free or give her a big discount. Why? Because according to tantra, women are the Priestesses and healers. It is through woman than man is able to achieve enlightenment...and the planet is sorely off balance because women have forgotten their power. As a result, most true teachers of tantra really want to show women what they can. Women are very very hard to convince to work in tantra, because it feels too much like being a "sacred prostitute" and there's that ingrained fear of being a "bad woman" - also of being pawed at by loads of men one doesn't know. I can't count how many workshops I've wanted to attend, and then were cancelled because there were loads of men, yet no women signed up! I know some incredibly kinky, and supposedly sexually "liberated" women and sistahs, and the very idea of going to a tantra workshop or doing anything tantra related tends to make them cringe, and most of them can't verbalise why - or they try to and it just sounds completely lame, even to themselves.

I don't want to turn this into a tantra-discussion group, as I'm no great teacher myself - but feel free to ask questions or fire off ideas and I'll try not to muddy the waters overmuch!