When I was a child. My Anglo Indian, ‘Christian’ mother used to sing a song, I now know if was a mantra dedicated to ganpatti ; the elephant headed god whose puja she attended yearly when she lived in post independence India As I began my journey in adulthood uncovering my ancestoral connections to India and her vast Vedic spiritual traditions I discovered ganpatti was another name for Ganesha the genial elephant headed deity worshipped in many Hindu households for prosperity and wisdom,

Maybe you watch porn regularly. Maybe you’ve tried to stop and found yourself going back to it. Maybe you’re in a relationship but find yourself more easily turned on by a screen than by your partner. Or perhaps you can get hard and reach orgasm alone, but struggle to stay present, aroused or connected during real intimacy. Maybe porn is affecting your relationship, your desire for your partner, or the way you experience sex. There may be more going on than simply wanting sex.

The first time I came across the word Tantra, I was perhaps seventeen years old. As I remember it, I was at the Institute of Oriental Therapy in Portugal. Nobody around me was talking about Tantra then. There were no Tantra festivals, Instagram teachers or endless workshops promising sacred sexuality and ecstatic awakening. At least, not in my world.

Tantra is a mysterious tradition with the power to draw the seeker into the unknown — but what is it, actually? The topic is easy to get confused about, because the word “Tantra” is used to describe all sorts of things that aren’t Tantric at all — including the widely marketed term “Tantra Massage,” often used as a euphemism for sexual services.

Not long ago, on a walk with a dear friend, she described her experience of perimenopause to me. As she spoke it occurred to me that she wasn’t really describing hormones, and physical changes to her body. She was describing the loss of an identity. The loss of her identity without a clear picture of the woman she would become.

If you’ve spent years working as a Tantra massage therapist, you already know something many people never learn: that touch, presence, and breath can open doorways to healing that talk alone rarely reaches. That skill — the capacity to be fully present with another person’s body and energy — is not something somatic sexology replaces. It’s the ground it builds on.

When people think about improving their sex life, they usually look for techniques. They read books, watch videos, try new positions, or wonder if there’s some secret everyone else seems to know. But after working in this field for many years, I’ve found that the biggest shifts rarely come from learning more. They come from feeling more.

When I first heard the word “Tantra”, something stirred in me that I couldn’t quite explain. It wasn’t just curiosity — it was as if the very sound of the word carried a vibration that hinted at a world beyond the ordinary. A place more alive, more magical, and more real than anything I had encountered before.