Eruption of Emotions and Energy. What It’s Like to Experience a Tantric Massage

Sex or prostitution aside. What are tantric massages? Behind this presentational facade today, almost anything can be hidden. But I want to experience the best of real tantra. In Prague, there are reportedly only a few renowned places.
I go there, randomly in this order – Harmony Spa, Tantra Masáže Praha, and Arkaya – Body Center. For reports and subsequent interviews – who are the masseuses, what do they do with a naked body, how does their environment perceive it? I note, however, that the goal of tantric massages is not sexual gratification of the body.

A warning in advance: “You don’t know what you’re taking on,” one of the tantric women tells me during a phone call arranging the first massage and the subsequent interview, when she hears about my plan – three Mondays in a row, three locations, three different women and their long tantric massages. “You’ll see, this level of intimacy will trigger your inner processes,” she warns me.
And she is right. Based on my own experience, I gradually admit that tantric massages are not a business just because people are willing to pay several thousand crowns for one kind, caring treatment.

I write how I perceive it – as a heterosexual middle-aged man. With one change from the plan – after the massage, I am not able to immediately work and ask the women anything. A lot of work is done here with emotions – perhaps that’s why I literally experience a rethinking. It is like experiential rehabilitation of the inner self. That’s why I talk to the masseuses only after all the massages are finished.

Tantric massage

Tantric massage is a ritual based on tantric philosophy and principles. It is an invitation into a world of senses, care, beauty, and tenderness, and an exciting exploration of one’s own ecstatic experiences. Its form is not always firmly fixed – each masseur or masseuse slightly adapts it to their own approach, which is possible only with a good knowledge of tantric techniques and principles. In accordance with tantric teaching, tantric massage also involves developing and cultivating sexual energy, deepening the experience of pleasure, and releasing blocked energy. Tantric massage is therefore a healing massage.

The massage itself is a ritual, so it has a certain given form, but there is space within it for the individuality of both the receiver and the giver, for trusting intuition and the present moment.
The boundaries of tantric massage are also important and must be preserved. These include the absence of sex between the giver and the receiver or mutual exchange of caresses.
Source: tantramasaze.com

Monday No. 1 – Karolína, Harmony Spa

Two massage rooms in Asian style, one with a large bathtub, burning candles, calm meditative music. A charming woman with beautiful eyes opens the door, smiling, offering informal address. Karolína soon earns the nickname Wild Shamaness from me. She is kind and looks as good as in the photos – which will soon become completely irrelevant to me.

I enter a ground-floor space of a historic apartment building on the Prague riverbank near Vyšehrad. We sit in armchairs, I receive a theoretical briefing on what tantric massages are. Rules are observed here. And there are many of them. I decide to try to follow everything that each of the three masseuses suggests during the visits. I will be “just” the receiver.

Karolína

I’ll shorten it. I don’t touch the woman. On the contrary, I am supposed to keep my eyes closed for a stronger experience – what?! In the end, I am very glad that I followed exactly this. With Karolína, as she warns me in advance, I do not experience a direct lingam massage – that’s what the penis is called in tantric circles. Allegedly, in our culture it draws attention away from the holistic experience toward mere sexual arousal.

After the introductory theory, I go to the shower, I am to come in a lightly tied sarong, a scarf around my waist. I stand, Karolína opposite me. I look into her eyes before closing mine. And then it begins…
Breathing. Her breathing. I hear her hissing deep inhalations and exhalations, I gradually feel them through a “draft” on all parts of my body. I stand, then I am to lie down on my stomach on a large futon on the floor. The sarong disappears from my body, all thoughts of the outside world quickly disappear from my head. I feel touches on my body that are incredibly slow and gentle. I relax. I expect nothing. Karolína is sometimes like a butterfly on me, sometimes more firm, everything flows, she skips no part of my body. None. In retrospect, it fascinates me how a person can completely lose themselves.

Conversation No. 1: Karolína, 32, Harmony Spa

How long have you been practicing tantric massages?
For three or four years I’ve been practicing them in the way we do them in our studio, in the direction of neotantra, where tantra is connected with massage. Before that, I was interested only in the spiritual part of tantra, but also in shamanism and altered states of consciousness. Through Dark Eros and similar shadow themes, I gradually got into tantric massages.

How would you describe the Dark Eros area?
It’s a tantric direction heavily based on touch. It’s about learning that a certain type of touch feels good or doesn’t, you get to know yourself. At the first course, I realized how unaware I myself was in my body. How I wasn’t present with myself. I found that I was holding myself in an artificial prison of what I allow myself to experience and express. It was a big realization for me.

Why did you decide to start giving tantric massages to people?
It came gradually. I invested my energy and money into self-discovery, spent more and more time on it, until I slowly moved into massages. Today I perceive it this way – whoever comes here also comes to tell me something about myself. We heal each other in the process.

You breathed very noticeably during the massage, is that something you always do?
It’s different every time, depending on how the process leads me. I don’t really know it consciously. I just know that breathing helps me a lot, it guides me.

What experiences do you have with men who expect something erotic or sexual?
I have such experiences from the past, but it’s simple. I devote a lot of attention to the conversation before the massage – that’s the alpha and omega. Trust is created there if we are to enter the massage. If we have different intentions, people leave, because we know it doesn’t make sense for either side. I don’t want people to come for an erotic experience, because sexual arousal then becomes a tool of manipulation.

Do you have a husband or partner, and what does he think about this work?
I have a partner, and through our shared life he gradually came to understand that there is nothing to fear. We are honest with each other, and when he needs to ask something, he gets the answers. A previous partner moved in tantric circles with me, but even so, after about half a year we had to sit down and clarify some things. For example, that I have firm boundaries. And that nothing wrong is happening here.

Monday No. 2 – Alena, Tantra Masáže Praha

It feels spacious here. Alena opens the door – her guiding quality is elemental energy and expressive joy of life. Later, I come up with a nickname – Rapids in the Clouds, because she is gentle, yet I also experience her great physical strength. Behind the last door of the salon in a Smíchov apartment building is a large room with dim lighting, candles, and a large corner bathtub. Armchairs, a massage futon on the floor, lots of various tools around. “What tea would you like?” she asks joyfully. Everything she does is joyful. She laughs often.

We drink and talk for almost half an hour. “If you need contact, touch me, but don’t be active,” Alena specifies the rules of touch, adding that it must be outside intimate zones. Centers of this type are not “fondling booths” – the important thing is that the client is here in the role of the receiver.

I choose an orange sarong, tie it around my waist, otherwise I am naked. Soon I will be without it anyway. Alena checks in advance how I feel about nudity, what is possible.

Alena

I’m a bit like in a dream. As if I feel through my body that I can switch off, that I really don’t have to do anything. And that’s what I manage for the next three hours. The massage is at times dynamic, muscular, releasing, like an oil Thai massage, at the same time nurturing and sensual. I often laugh, shake, almost float. Really. This woman, half a head shorter than me, already during the introductory standing ritual almost fully lifts my 110 kilos of living weight. At first I don’t believe it, when she draws me onto herself like a bow, opens my arms, and a moment later I am… Yes, I am an airplane. Nothing is a problem here.

Alena has quiet inhalations, but each exhalation sounds quite intense, as if something exciting is happening to her. Into the bathtub she gradually pours and sprinkles a jug of milk, fragrant oil, large salt crystals, red rose petals, orange slices… She sits behind me, I find myself embraced by her whole body.

I feel her palms, whole arms, and other parts of her body. She stretches my body gently and strongly, circles my torso in the water as if effortlessly. In retrospect, I don’t understand how she does it. She turns me onto my side, fingers glide over my lower back and all around. I feel so much that with my eyes closed I perceive rose petals tapping against me on the surface and her sliding and colliding breath. I am intoxicated. A bewitching of the senses.

I myself hiss on the inhale, I don’t know why, my tongue always rolls itself, lips form an O. It happens on its own. I don’t deal with it, I’m just recalling it now. Alena then dries me with a towel, I am to lie on the futon on my back, then on my stomach, then again on my back. But between the turns, whole ages pass. Alena uses strength, physical strength, which she knows how to direct and soften, she glides body on body. At times she is a waterfall, other times a wild rapid, then a gentle stream, only to erupt like a geyser and surprise me with something.

And still that breathing, the pronounced exhalations that in another type of salon might be considered lascivious. Here they are enlivening, awakening, returning me to my own reality. Through breathing meditations I can reach similar states on my own, but here I don’t have to do anything. It happens on its own through the massage. At times I feel the need to touch Alena with my palms, I try lightly. It’s not it – touch distracts attention from my inner experience, similar to open eyes. I don’t want that.

We lie next to each other for a while. Occasionally I open my eyes, look into hers. We intertwine our fingers, I feel stroking on my face, gentle, caring, yet sensual, not cheap or vulgar. That’s not here – neither shame nor lust, no desire to achieve anything, let alone orgasm. Interesting. My body occasionally jerks in release. It’s like a mini volcano in the center of my belly, from which an eruption then spreads through the body from the inside. This is how I imagine electroshock.

I burst out laughing. Alena is an element. She grabs me by the hips and in an instant turns me into a male earthquake, until the first heated lava stone flies off my back. I feel hot towels on my skin, oil. And the massage! I experience a lingam massage. At times I exhale deeply – I’ve experienced a lot in my life, but it’s as if my body wants to be fully saturated with gentleness and slowness. I feel vibrations, light pleasant sensations. No targeted direction toward a so-called happy end described in erotic massages that often hide behind tantra.

We kneel facing each other – that was my request – we look into each other’s eyes, hold hands. We talk for a while longer. Relaxation. Mint tea, grape balls crunch intensely between my teeth.

The entire following week I am energized. I exercise every morning, effortlessly, looking forward to it.

Conversation No. 2: Alena, 30, Tantra Masáže Praha

How did you get into tantric massages and how long have you been practicing them?
I’ve been practicing massages for four and a half years and I got into them through tantric philosophy about six years ago. Everyone talked about massages, but tantra interested me primarily as a lifestyle. I devoted myself to meditation, working with my body, practicing yoga…

How did your close environment react when you started with massages?
I sometimes had concerns about how someone would accept this information. But people around me perceive that I’m devoted to something that fulfills me. And that it’s not something they originally imagined.

And your parents?
My mom knows and she’s enthusiastic about it. We talk a lot about tantra. She was even here in the studio about a month ago with her friend. I massaged the friend and my colleague massaged my mom.

What is the difference between tantric and erotic massage?
In tantric massage it’s not just about sexuality. Emotionality is important, but also spirituality.

I was surprised by the high degree of emotional closeness.
It’s important to create all these connections, to experience closeness of souls through them. What we do here can be called sacred sexuality. We invite not only the bodily aspects of a person into the space, but also spirit and soul, what transcends us. It’s hard to talk about, which is why it’s experiential.

What are the basic boundaries you set for massage clients?
It’s important that the client remains in the receiving role. And above all – that they focus on themselves. In tantric massage it’s not about our connection at all, even though physical contact occurs to some extent. It’s like meditation, awareness of what’s happening here and now. When we have a lot of energy but little awareness, chaos arises. On the other hand – awareness without energy is a corpse. Similarly, tantric massage requires choosing the right balance.

Monday No. 3 – Stáňa, Arkaya – Body Center

Palms smoothly glide over naked male and female bodies – on a large screen above the reception. The bright entrance room visually pampers, soft carpets, a decorative mirror, a glass chandelier… In Vinohrady, Stáňa greets me with a smile – a tall, slender, mature woman, whom I soon internally nickname the Experienced Sorceress. “Be your own master here, allow any sounds and movements, even a headstand,” she says toward the end of our introductory talk in a friendly spirit. Again, she first explains the rules, we clarify ideas and possibilities.

We move from light into the dimness of one of the rooms. Muted, earthy colors are illuminated by lamps and candles, my feet sink into a fluffy carpet. There is a massage table in the space. Nearby I see not only fur gloves, but also whips. Later, when I lie on my stomach, through the reflection of a large mirror with a massive decorative frame I can see my lying body and the body of the masseuse, who is wearing a white scarf artfully tied around her waist. Using the eyes is unnecessary, though – it distracts me from my own experience. Everything comes to me through Stáňa.

Stáňa

She plays music, calm, not ethnic, at one point a beautiful piano sounds. I am given time for a shower, and once I am half-dressed in a sarong around my waist, I am to slightly open the door. She comes in. I stand in the opening ritual, Stáňa calmly breathing opposite me. I pant as if I had run upstairs – it happens by itself, the body wants oxygen. Stáňa’s presence is confirmed by her soothing, introductory, releasing touches. She audibly tunes into my breathing rhythm. Then we actively breathe together, holding breath, uááá!

At the end of the opening part, I am stroked with the sarong, my own, so I am already standing naked. It feels natural. Like at home in the bathroom. Being without shame.

I lie down on the massage table on my stomach. I experience care through stroking. When hot towels or oil come, I don’t know exactly. I perceive shock-like tremors of my body, hissing breath, I am fully myself, the masseuse is… Where is she? I open my eyes, look into the mirror. I see the reflection of my body and the concentration of the woman above me. She is massaging a lying figure – I feel a certain mismatch between what I see and what I feel.

My body jerks again on its own. I’m not having a seizure, though it might look like it. I don’t deal with it. Again comes the previously agreed offer to use a tool known as a whip. “Am I really doing this?!” flashes through my head, but despite total uncertainty I say yes. Whack! I grip the table with my palms. I am interested in my awakening anger, I want to roar at the whole world. Suddenly, the whips disappear, replaced by gentleness upon gentleness. A huge contrast, astonishment. If I hadn’t had my eyes closed, they would have popped out in surprise. “This is what I wanted to show you,” Stáňa smiles.

An offer of prostate massage comes. That is my biggest contemplation. I don’t want to. But I go into it, I am here also as an explorer – I am writing a report. After a while, I feel that this is not my path inward. And that I will never be a smuggler either. “I won’t torture you,” Stáňa says after what feels like an endless moment.

I am already lying on my back. Blissful. I am covered with hot towels. Magnificent! I breathe, calm again, at times my body jerks in release. I feel her hands in my groin, then on my chest, and back again. Circular movements. Drawn-out movements. Inhale! Air goes deep into the belly. I perceive my integrity, the whole body, surface and interior, body awareness. I am in a whirl of wilderness, breathing like a demon.

I can’t keep up with perceiving everything that’s happening to me – I open my eyes to understand the execution of a wondrous spiral movement. I close them again. The more I breathe, the more the masseuse breathes. Five inhales and exhales, then an inhale and tightening all the muscles in the body as much as possible. Twice in a row. The second time I hold the tension like never before. I shake, sweat pours from me. Falling onto my back, release. Stáňa encourages me to experience the power. I growl. I roar. Why? I don’t know – I’ve already been an airplane. I clench my hands like the claws of a beast. Release. I return to reality without having left it. Calm. We talk. What was that again? I smile.

The following week after the massage, I am full of emotions. Every morning I eagerly exercise, I feel the need to put things in order.

Conversation No. 3: Stáňa, 51, Arkaya – Body Center

How long have you been practicing these massages and what was your path to them?
I’ve been massaging for about ten years, and during that time more than a thousand people have certainly passed through my hands. I come from a Christian family, and through my desire for higher knowledge I somewhat broke the original concept.

Why?
It was important for me to find out why I feel the way I feel. Because of my upbringing, I had dogmas absorbed in my body that sexuality is bad. I had a completely blocked flow of energy in this area, and as a result my heart could not be nourished. I needed to decipher it, and I gradually got to tantra through working with inner energy. With my husband – now my ex-husband – we were looking for how to improve our relationship, we started to explore tantra.

What did you do before?
I worked in the economic field, accounting, paperwork… It stopped making sense to me, so I quit. I began to feel the principle of the feminine soul. I no longer wanted to achieve performance. When I saw an ad looking for tantric masseuses, I went to try it, and immediately felt like a fish in water. I don’t even consider massages to be work – it’s like fulfilling my calling.

Do you remember your first client?
Yes, and in retrospect I would apologize to him in my mind. Back then I had a tendency to mainly do the massage well. Which is actually wrong. When I teach clients tantric massage today, I mainly tell them: Stop having any expectations that it must turn out “somehow”. That takes an enormous amount of energy.

Why is the opening ritual important and what happens during the massage?
During the introduction, the client breathes beautifully, we attune. Then they don’t go into anything forcefully, but naturally. Breath, sound, and movement help them get into their depth. Different types of touch serve this purpose.

I was also struck by the contrast in touch styles.
Contrast, in my opinion, helps the body open better. With you, I consulted whether we could use greater contrast with the use of whips so that you would perceive more.

It was part of your offer beyond the usual framework. And then suddenly the gentlest stroking came, and that contrast was amazing.
It is letting go of control and self-control. We often use contrast between flow and stopping. Slowness and speed. Firmness and gentleness. There are also techniques using shock and surprise, but we don’t work with those.

And what is this work like financially?
Ideally, a masseuse should not be financially dependent only on income from massages, so that she doesn’t have to do them with clenched teeth or in fatigue. With massages I am to help open your energy, bring you into your full experience without expectations. Precisely the feeling of surrendering control is probably the most for people. That’s why entrepreneurs and people who are used to being goal-oriented often come. For at least a moment, they can just receive.

2 November 2022

Author of the article: JAN DAVID

Source: https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/magazin-zivotni-styl-erupce-emoci-a-energie-jake-to-je-zazit-tantrickou-masaz-218265