The Many Faces of Tantra: Paths That Nourish the Hungry Spirit
“Being porous, receiving Life without references, navigating life–death spirals, creating and letting go is inevitably daring and uncertain.”
— komala lyra
In a world longing for love, meaning, and the sacred aliveness of lived experience, Tantra whispers its ancient truths. Not merely a practice of sexuality, Tantra is a spiritual path—one that uses the body as a portal to the Divine and offers countless entry points for our own hungry souls. Below, I share the variant lineages and teachers whose teachings have woven into my process. May you find your own threads of resonance, and discover Tantra as a way of living, loving, and being.
A Ghost’s Hunger—and the Whisper of Tantra
I’ve known what it is to feel empty: a head and a tongue to consume, and no body to hold the feast. The world feels like a formless pit—never full, always craving more. In dystopian tales, salvation comes as a whisper on the wind: a secret remembered in ceremony, dream, or an ancient text. For me, Tantra has been that whisper since my early twenties—a golden thread guiding me deeper into Spirit and Love.
In sanskrit, “Tan” signifies expansion, an opening of energy beyond its usual confines. “Tra” is a tool for liberation, focusing and channeling that expanded energy toward freedom. Thus, Tantra is a path of expansion into freedom, a path of devotion and a full-bodied living of “yes”.
Walking a path such as this, where every sensation, relationship, and breath is raw material for awakening, leaves no room for the hungry ghost as life is the altar and feast upon which the Tatrika dines.
The many faces of Tantra: Pleasure, rage, joy, anger are all acts of aliveness that Tantra embraces and honors. Not to be indulged in, but to be experienced and exhausted.
Kashmiri Shaivism Roots: Daniel Odier’s Path of Total Love
Daniel Odier is a Tantric master who was initiated in a lineage known as Kashmiri Shaivism by Tantrika in the Himalayan forest referred to as Lalita Devi in 1975. Odier has since written many books on the subject, opened school and continues to share his transmissions today. According to Odier, Tantra is first and foremost a path of total love that leads to the freedom to be. Cornerstones to his views:
Non-Dual Doorways: Every mundane moment and ecstatic rush becomes sacred, operating from a non-dual philosophy that merges experience into oneness.
Passion Over Denial: Human impulse is fuel, not obstacle, to dissolving ego. All desires are sacred impulses from the should to be experienced and exhausted.
Weaving Dualities: Light/dark, mind/body, sacred/profane unite into wholeness and emerging from the non-dual realms in which, once experienced, these polarities dissolve back into.
Odier’s teachings remind us that Tantra need not reject the world—it transforms every sensation into material for awakening.
Embodied Lineage: Komala Lyra’s Sacred Aliveness
Komala Lyra is an Osho initiate, former ISTA faculty facilitator, Ayurvedic practitioner and Tantrika in devotion for the vast majority of her life. She approaches Tantra not as an abstract philosophy but as a living, embodied lineage. She weaves tantra as the thread that she calls her “portal to body and spirit as one” and knows the practice as:
Devotional Flow: The body dances through every impulse, inviting awe as prayer.
Ayurveda–Yoga–Tantra Integration: Grounding esoteric practice in elemental rhythms.
Radical Inclusion: What patriarchy shames—desire, pleasure, rage—becomes our keys to communion.
Spontaneous Alchemy: Fearless, wild, unpredictable devotion to the pulse of life.
For Komala, Tantra is a living lineage where devotion and spontaneity coexist in a continuous dance of awakening.
Healing Science: Dr. Bharat Vaidya’s “Science of Union”
Dr. Bharat Vaidya is a Vaidya of Ayurvedic Medicine from a long lineage of Ayurvedans, M.D. of OB/Gyn and PhD of Human Sexuality. For Dr. Vaidya, Tantra is ultimately the “science of union” rooted in the indestructible, inseparable dance of Shiva (pure consciousness) and Shakti (dynamic energy). His main principles of Tantra is:
Shiva + Shakti: Two primal forces whose equilibrium underpins Ayurveda, Yoga, and Tantra and whose perfect equilibrium underlies all creation.
The Most Ancient Alchemical Path: the serpents of transformation, Ida + Pingala, coil around Sushumna to ignite Kundalini Shakti which is the living fire of transformation and ultimate healing force which can initiate restoration on quantum, energetic and physical levels.
Modern Alchemy: Osho & John Wineland
Osho’s Total Aliveness: Tantra as freedom from all constructs, including doctrines and rituals in favor of the ecstatic and emergent potentiality of “a total orgasm of the whole being” available moment-to-moment. Tantra becomes a radical alchemy in which body, breath, and relationship turn the mundane into luminous, ecstatic meditation. For Osho, Tantra is the “path of royalty”—the art of being so fully present that every sensation and encounter opens a doorway into the divine.
Wineland’s Radical Yes-ness & Relational Polarity: Embracing every sensation, from grief to pleasure, as fuel for deeper intimacy. Saying “Yes” to whatever arises—a living, embodied alchemy arises to transform every edge into deeper freedom, connection, and love.Wineland sees relational polarity as the essential dance of masculine and feminine energies whose dynamic tension—embraced with embodied presence—becomes the vital spark for profound intimacy and alchemical transformation.
The Bandhas & Chakras of the Body
Bandhas lock the energy in the body creating containers which you can use to invigorate the centers of the body and push awareness and intention into.
Weaving Your Own Understanding
Feel Your Breath: Notice how simple the breath moves energy.
Engage the Bandhas: Learn to engage Mula and Uddiyana Bandha to refine lower centers, inviting upward flow.
Revere Your Own Touch: Create an intimate practice with the sensation of your own touch upon your own skin. Play with the quality of firmness or depth.
Listen to Sensation: Tightness, tremor, heat— treat them as sacred data guiding you deeper into presence.
Tantra as Way of Living
Tantra reveals itself in infinite forms—Kashmiri Shaivism, neo-Tantric devotion, body-based healing science—yet all point to one truth: our bodies are the gateways to the Divine. As a spiritually starved population, we each get to choose the lineage, the flavor, the teacher that calls us home. Listen for the whisper. Follow the thread. And may your own Tantra become the path that feeds your hungry spirit.
“Tantra is the oldest alchemical path: learning to balance these energies so our ‘prime atom’ may manifest its fullest harmony.”
—Dr. Bharat Vaidya
with Heart,
Sabrina dokas
Resources & Suggested “Dig-deeper’s”
Dr. Bharat Vaidya, “Shiva & Shakti— The Most Ancient Healing Belief”, 2021
Osho, “Tantra: The Supreme Understanding”, Watkins Media, 1975
John Wineland, Visit Website
Komala Lyra, “Intimacy: Ayurveda & Relationships”, Balboa Press, 2025. Visit Website
