Tantra. What is it, and why do we hear so much about its mysteries?

The word, "Tantra," says Caroline Muir, translates from the Hindu as "expansive weaving." She explains, "Tantra weaves our spiritual selves and our physical, or sexual selves."

Caroline Muir has been teaching Tantra for about 12 years, and her husband Charles Muir for about 18 years. They lead weekend workshops throughout the United States. Their path to Tantra began with hatha yoga. A former student of Oriental massage, Charles had been studying yoga since 1965 and became a teacher. He met his wife when she became his student. During his work as a teacher of meditation and yoga, he realized, he says, "Sometimes in sexual situations I would lose my center. I would see my thoughts of anxiety, of tension, of fantasy, suddenly my mind wandering. I would be coming from a much lower level of evolution than I was in the rest of my life."

Through his own experiences and studies in Tantra, he learned, he says, "If you bring consciousness and love to the bedroom along with your body, which most people hardly even bring, and shine who you are there, something big can happen. And what happens is the consciousness of sexuality aligns with the rest of your consciousness."

This integration brings tremendous benefits to Tantra’s practitioners he says. "Sexual energy is both the fuel of enlightenment and a creative force. The physical practices of Tantra also create a tremendous energetic bonding between partners."

Adds Caroline, "What happens is love actually starts to take place in the bedroom. People have sex, and they seldom really make more love happen.

For many people, the sexual act is goal-oriented. And then it’s over. The Muirs are teaching people, in Charles’ words, "to practice love. If we can get them into the bedroom practicing the techniques of conscious love and playing with this energy in a way that elevates them, then we’ve done our job. This is an art form that everyone gets better at through practice. It is a national crime that the average couple has sex only once or twice a week but rarely drinks from the renewing well of sexual love."

In their workshops, the Muirs teach how to join sexual energy to someone else in a healing and awakening way," using the breath and focus and orgasm and "another feeling friend," as Caroline Muir describes the sexual partner.

Sounds great, but many people, including monogamous couples, are afraid, she adds. "The average monogamous couple is not going to go study Tantra if they have to take off their clothes," she points out. "So we make it very safe for them."

Tantra for men is very different than Tantra for women. "The teachings for the men are to conserve energy," says Caroline. "For the women the teachings are to learn more easily release...and to surrender to their sexual energy. This is what gives them higher and higher states of creativity and access to their highest spiritual power."

And how does it happen? The Muirs introduce their students to balancing their own male and female energies and awakening their consciousness and their kundalini (the spirit which resides at the base of the spine). "When kundalini awakens and ascends the spine, it brings about enlightenment," Caroline says.

They also teach ways to increase energetic flow and pleasure, ways to increase intimacy and ways to increase focus. Touching, kissing, control of the sexual organs, ways to increase passion "allow the body to become an instrument of love," Caroline says. "But these are not enough to carry a couple to the high octave that Tantra is meant to be. To do that we must learn to increase our ability to be intimate." The Muirs teach techniques that enable their students to heal emotionally and connect with their partners deeply. They also teach techniques to quiet the mind. "The tendency of the mind to wander, daydream, fantasize and worry often short-circuits sexual energy," says Charles.

Tantric practice takes one beyond sexuality, however. Charles says it’s another step on the path toward wholeness. "We’re moving energy, and we’re releasing hormones, and we’re releasing blocked energy patterns," he says. The result can be healing and therapeutic. Explains Caroline, "Students learn to think differently about the potential of their sexuality and how it affects them in their path."

She adds, "I always say to our students that one great truth about Tantra is that it will guide you more deeply into the truth, whatever that is for you."