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What Somatic Work and Tantra share, how they differ, and why I weave them together in practice

Two people walk into a room. One carries a neuroscience textbook, the other a lamp lit with sandalwood. They sit down, and realise they have been trying to describe the same thing.

This is how I think about Somatic work and Tantra.

01 — DEFINITIONS

What Are We Actually Talking About?

Somatic Work

The word soma comes from ancient Greek — it simply means “body.” Somatic practice is any modality grounded in the premise that the body is not a vehicle for the mind, but an intelligent system in its own right: a site of memory, emotion, and self-regulation. Somatic work includes approaches like Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine), Hakomi, the Feldenkrais Method, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and bodywork traditions like Sexological Bodywork. What unites them is an orientation toward sensation, present-moment awareness, and the nervous system as a gateway to healing.

Tantra

Tantra is considerably older and considerably more misunderstood. The Sanskrit word tantra derives from roots meaning “to weave” or “to extend.” Classical Tantra (emerging in India from approximately the 5th century CE) is a vast philosophical and ritual tradition spanning Shaivism, Shaktism, and Buddhist lineages — a path of working with the energies of embodied existence rather than transcending them. What reached the West, particularly since the 1960s, is a much-filtered version — sometimes called neo-Tantra — which emphasises breath, presence, sexual energy, and conscious touch as vehicles for awakening and healing.

“Both traditions treat the body as sacred ground — not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be entered with curiosity and care.”

02 — HISTORY

Where Did They Come From?

The Roots of Somatic Practice

Late 1800s: Pierre Janet in France and Wilhelm Reich in Vienna begin to notice that traumatic memory lives in posture, gesture, and breath — not only thought. Reich’s “character armour” concept would become foundational.

1930s–1960s: Moshe Feldenkrais, Ida Rolf, and Alexander Lowen (building on Reich) each develop body-centred approaches that challenge the Cartesian split between mind and flesh.

1970s–1980s: Peter Levine develops Somatic Experiencing after observing that animals in the wild discharge trauma through the body and rarely develop PTSD. Pat Ogden later creates Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. The somatic field begins to formalise.

1990s–present: Neuroscience catches up. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory provide scientific scaffolding for what body workers had always known. Sexological Bodywork (Joseph Kramer, 1990s California) brings somatic principles explicitly into the erotic field.

The Roots of Tantra

~5th–12th Century CE: Classical Tantric texts (Tantras and Agamas) emerge across India and Tibet. Rather than renouncing the body and its desires, Tantra proposes using them as fuel for awakening. Shiva and Shakti — pure consciousness and living energy — are understood as inseparable.

1800s: Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon) translates key Tantric texts into English, sparking Western scholarly interest. Simultaneously, Indian reform movements begin sanitising and spiritualising Tantra to make it palatable for colonial audiences.

1960s–1980s: The Human Potential Movement, Esalen Institute, and teachers like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) introduce Tantric ideas into Western therapy culture. “Neo-Tantra” emerges — less ritual, more relational; less metaphysics, more embodiment.

1990s–present: Tantra intersects with sex-positive therapy, bodywork, and trauma-informed approaches. Practitioners like Charles Muir, Margot Anand, and later the somatic sex education field begin bridging Tantric and therapeutic frameworks.

03 — COMMON GROUND

What They Share

Despite vastly different origins, somatic work and Tantra converge on several profound commitments:

The Body as the Primary Site of Transformation

Neither tradition asks you to think your way to healing. Both ask you to arrive — in sensation, in breath, in contact.

Presence as Practice

Both value the quality of attention brought to an experience above technique. A touch with full presence carries more than a perfect technique delivered from distance.

Breath as a Regulator and a Gateway

In somatic work, conscious breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system and supports titrated release. In Tantra, pranayama and conscious breath are among the oldest tools for moving energy and expanding awareness. The mechanism is different in language; the lived experience is remarkably similar.

Non-Pathologising Orientation

Both traditions resist the urge to fix or correct. Somatic work tracks “what is happening” rather than “what is wrong.” Tantra holds even shadow, pleasure, and difficulty as expressions of life-energy worthy of inclusion.

The Role of the Witness

A trained somatic practitioner and a Tantric facilitator both develop a quality of presence that holds space without merging — stable, attuned, non-reactive.

04 — DIFFERENCES

Where They Part Ways

These differences are not contradictions — they are complementary orientations. Understanding them helps you know which doorway serves you in a given moment.

Somatic Work: Rooted in Western psychology and neuroscience. Primarily speaks in terms of the nervous system, regulation, and capacity. Tends toward clinical frameworks with clear therapeutic goals. Focuses on resolving trauma and building window of tolerance. Touch is typically non-sexual and therapeutic. Measures progress through symptom reduction, regulation, and resilience.

Tantra: Rooted in Indian/Tibetan spiritual philosophy. Primarily speaks in terms of energy, polarity, Shakti, and awakening. Tends toward experiential, ritual, and devotional frames. Focuses on expanding aliveness and conscious relationship with desire. Touch may engage the full spectrum of sensation, including the erotic. Measures progress through depth of presence, openness, and embodied joy.

“Somatic work tends to ask: what does your nervous system need to feel safe? Tantra tends to ask: what does your life-force need in order to flow?”

05 — MY PRACTICE

How I Address What Your Body Actually Needs

I came to this work through the body — my own, first, and then others’. Over the years of training and practice in somatic tantra and sexological bodywork, I’ve stopped trying to keep these frameworks in separate drawers. They work together because they address the same reality: a body that is holding something, that needs something specific, that requires presence and skill to meet.

What a Session at Stanmore Relax Looks Like

Every body is different. Every session addresses what your body has brought into the room.

I start with breath and grounding — drawing from both Tantric pranayama and somatic regulation — because this is how your body begins to meet me and itself. This is the requirement before anything else.

Then I work with slow, attentive touch guided by somatic principles: tracking your responses, following your nervous system’s actual capacity, never forcing past the edges of what your body can currently manage.

I bring a Tantric quality of attention — treating your body as ground that deserves real engagement, with curiosity about what’s actually happening rather than an agenda for what should happen.

I create space for sensation to move, complete, and integrate — not suppressed or managed, but allowed to do its work.

If your body needs it, I work with the full energetic body, including areas of holding, blockage, or disconnection that conventional massage typically misses.

I close in a way that supports integration — not just relaxation, but the beginning of your body’s own understanding of what shifted.

The Framework

What matters is not which lineage a tool comes from, but whether it actually addresses what your body needs. The somatic framework keeps me grounded in your real capacity, your actual regulation, your genuine boundaries. The Tantric orientation keeps me in contact with aliveness itself — with your body’s actual intelligence and its need to move, to feel, to be met.

Together, they form what I call integrated bodywork — work that meets your body exactly where it is and addresses what it actually requires.

If Your Body Needs This

Most men who find their way to me are out of shape — not just muscularly, but somatically. Disconnected. Holding tension they’ve stopped noticing. Shaped by years of bracing, not arriving. Their nervous system has adapted to being unsafe in its own skin.

This is not a character flaw. It’s what happens to bodies in this world. It’s also why this work exists.

If your body needs addressing — if you’re tired of the disconnection, the tension, the sense that you’re not fully at home in your own skin — I’m here for that work. Sessions are available at my Stanmore location, with outcall across London.

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