Naked Tantra Yoga

Kali is the incarnation of power and absolute love. In the Chudamani Tantra she says “I am Great Nature, consciousness, happiness, the quintessential.” The Mahanirvana Tantra tells us she is clothed in a blue blackness that consumes all colours and forms. Her nakedness then symbolises the ultimate truth, free of all illusions.

But Kali can be frightening. The Truth can be frightening. If nakedness symbolises liberation, then this can be frightening. And if Yoga is a process, as Patanjali says, in The Yoga Sutra, to connect to the True Self, bringing a union between individual and cosmic consciousness, this can be frightening.

Therefore, if we use tantric and yogic practices as a discipline to break the pattern of repetitive cycles of thought, to see and be seen in our True Nature, for Self-Realisation, this can be frightening. For who wants a multitude of people able to think outside their socially constructed patterns of thought? For this very reason Tantra has always sat outside traditional religion.

The Kaula Upanishad gives us a clear warning not to condemn other practices, but to take no vows, imposing no restrictions of ourself, for limiting ourself does not lead to freedom. This is expanded upon in the Kularnava Tantra where we are instructed to be pure of heart, supremely joyous, to play as a child, “with no image to defend, nothing to justify” as Daniel Odier puts it in Tantric Kali.

However, to take the Tantra Yoga path requires great courage as I noted in my Blog Tantra and the Courage to Walk Alone. But equally, as I wrote in Imagination and Shiva-linga, we do have the ability to break free from our reductive thinking pattern. But this requires shifting from our lower mind to higher mind; from survival and emotionalism that keeps us locked into fear based behaviour, to a place of wisdom.

This requires flowing against the dominant culture in society, as well as the dominant culture in the tantra yoga community in the West which tends to see everything in the light of sex (or sexual energy). The old question, can sex be spiritual? is as irrelevant as the question, is doing the dishes spiritual?

Tej Raina, in Trika: The Kashmir Saiva Essence, gives us a great analogy on this point. Making love, in Caitanyam-atma (in the awareness of our true essence) leads us to subsequently recognising pure awareness, the Parama-Siva. Without this level of awareness it would be like making love through an interpreter.

Self-realisation, liberation, our True Nature are to be in full awareness of oneness (Caitanyam-atma) in union with cosmic consciousness. Anything we do in that state of realisation is spiritual and worldly. Anything we do that is not in that state of realisation (in full awareness) is a manifestation of our worldly attributes only.

The question then is, have we let go of our attachment to the self, the ego, and recognised our True Nature, ‘I AM’?

Bringing it all together

So, do we need to practice tantra yoga in the nude, and does the ritual of undressing have a place in tantric practices?

No, we don’t need to. And yes, it has a place.

We practice in the nude because it allows us a symbolic gesture. We practice in the nude because it gives us a fleeting feeling of liberation, of what it might be like to be fully connected, fully aware. We practice in the nude because we are worldly manifestations engaged in worldly activities (that may or may not include sex) that we enjoy and that gives us pleasure “with no image to defend, nothing to justify.”

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Message me direct if you are interested in kundalini, tantra, yoga practices, or trauma-informed, spiritual, gay, behavioural coaching, Reiki or stress management robert.pinktantra@gmail.com

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