According to the Tibetan healing tradition, our internal environment is an expression of the five elements. All illness and dysfunction result from an imbalance in one or more of these five elements. So, let’s look at this in terms of healing sexuality in the world today. We can see a multitude of external examples of imbalance, whether it’s climate change or chaotic weather patterns, or even people killing each other.

Many cultures on this planet have teachings regarding the elements. Although subtle variations exist, these teachings explain that the same planet’s five elements make up our physical essence. Our bodies are a combination of the five elements, and the Tibetan five elements are Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space.

One of the fundamental and profound teachings of Tantric Buddhism is that the body is a Buddha, and this means that all wisdom, power, and knowledge are inherent in the physical form. So, we don’t need to go anywhere to realize enlightenment. What we need to do is get in the body to realize our true nature and to start healing sexuality. We are born Buddhas. We are born realized, but we have obscurations that cloud our perception, and a lot of those observations are cultural conditioning and the fact that we’re raised traumatized.

This planet is traumatized, and trauma begets trauma. It reinforces itself; it replicates itself. So part of what we’re doing with the modality of Tantra and the five elements, particularly, we are applying tools to clear the pathways, to clear the energy body, to clear the physical body, to clear the consciousness itself, to clear our ability to correctly and accurately perceive our universe as a Buddha realm. As a world, as a planet of bliss and joy, to be able to perceive ourselves as wisdom beings incarnated and to be able to perceive each other as family.

The five-elements practices, specifically the five-element tantric practices, are a way of healing and balancing the elemental energies within our bodies and our own energy body, emotions, and psyche. And when we create and cultivate balance here, it can’t help but be reflected in our external environment to help with healing sexuality.

In the teachings of Buddhism, there’s a saying that goes: “inside-outside= same.” So, it kind of falls under this understanding of mirror-like wisdom. Meaning, what’s going on inside of me is going to be reflected externally. A very tangible example of this is, when we’re having a bad day, everything’s crappy. It doesn’t matter if you wake up and you’re feeling irritated and frustrated or imbalanced internally; then, if you stub your toe, it’s the end of the world. It’s on those days where it seems like everything’s going wrong; you can see a very clear example of what’s going on internally that can color the perception of the external world.

Conversely, being in love and having a fantastic day and feeling on cloud nine, the slightest thing will roll off like water off a duck’s back. That’s because when everything’s good inside, everything that happens externally is perceived through the lenses of good as well. So that’s a very tangible way of understanding “inside-outside same,” we’re always living that, but we’re just not always aware of it.

The beautiful thing about the five-element tantric practices specifically is that they give us a vehicle for working with this elemental energy in our bodies and our consciousness. By working with this elemental energy, it begins to reverse, antidote, or dissolve some of the toxic emotions that we may feel on a day-to-day basis. As this occurs, we become more peaceful. We become more balanced, we become healthier, we become more open, and we become more joyful and begin healing sexuality.

Sexual wounds are a state of imbalance within, and how would you apply the five elements to heal that? One of the great things about the five-element tantric practices is that they can apply to everything. Once you have a firm foundation in the five elements, as a meditative experience, as a form of yoga, and energy body yoga, then you can apply them to the process of healing sexuality.

Once you’ve cultivated the ability to do that in sitting meditation, then you’ve cultivated the ability to apply it to your sexuality. Because as we know, sexual energy is very volcanic. It’s a very volatile, dynamic energy, and if we can’t be present outside of our sexual experience, how can we expect to be present inside our sexual experience? The first step is to cultivate that ability to be present, relaxed, aware and focused, and then we can apply that to every activity in our life, including healing sexuality.

It takes some time to develop your capacity; you have to cultivate your body’s ability to be present. Being relaxed, aware, and having the ability to focus, to be able to practice Tantra. In the Tibetan tradition, the word tantra means to weave light and sound with form. So Tantra refers to a particular style of yoga. Other people have different definitions of the word Tantra. It’s one of those words that has a multitude of meetings traditionally, but in this Tibetan healing tradition specifically, it means to weave light and sound with form.

Ultimately the Tibetan tradition teaches that every orgasm is a glimpse of enlightenment. The moving pranas or winds in the genitals, which are your downward voiding winds at the moment of orgasm, brush that central channel, and we get a glimpse or a taste of enlightenment. The problem for many people when they’re untrained is that glimpse is all they get. It’s there, and it’s gone. It’s 10 seconds, it’s like a genital sneeze, that’s it, and yet that genital sneeze, that bliss, that openness, that ecstasy, that is a glimpse of our true nature. That is our birthright. That is the state that we are meant to function as human beings. Imagine our planet if we all felt that inner bliss and ecstasy on a day-to-day basis, outside of sexual intimacy. There wouldn’t be any wars once we begin healing sexuality.

Imagine a whole different level of evolution when people are connected to their life force energy in a beautiful, healthy way and cultivating that orgasmic flow? So, it’s not that peak and then, coming down, it’s rather more like a valley orgasm that is just there for you to ride the waves. We do have the capacity to tap into that flow and live like that.

With tantric practices such as breathing, relaxing, understanding how the nervous system works, and how the sexual anatomy functions, we gain the ability to harness and extend that portal of connection. We cultivate the ability to taste and access this bliss over and over and over again. We learn how to extend that peak of pleasure and bliss to last for 30 seconds, two minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, and longer. So, when people are untrained or not sexually experienced, they are straining really hard to get to this peak, you have a little explosion, and then it’s over.

With Tantra, when we are relaxed and open, then we hit a peak and rest there. We hit another peak, and we rest there, and again we hit another peak, and we rest there until we’re finally flying in ecstatic bliss. We never come down when we stop making love, or we stop flying in bliss, we just come to a gentle rest, but all of those bliss chemicals are still flooding our bloodstream. They stay in the body, and then when we get up the next day, we utilize all of that energy, all of that bliss.

So, it’s like, our sexuality is regenerative; it’s a way of cultivating energy and power and healing and bliss anytime we choose to. We are then taking all of that good energy and bringing it out into the world.

Integrating and incorporating our sexuality into this healing process is huge because many spiritual traditions teach that sex and enlightenment are two separate things and that you can’t have them together. So there is a separation between sexuality and our spirituality, a separation between our humanity and spirituality. Yet, the teachings of Buddhism tell us that you cannot be a fully integrated human being if you have not cultivated, explored, and acknowledged your sexuality. It’s such a core component of our humanity; it’s where we come from and how we all got here. So, if there’s a version or shadow or wounding around our sexuality, it’s not full realization. It’s not full enlightenment. It cannot be; you cannot be fully enlightened if you’re not fully human.

Listen to the Podcast:

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This blog was written from the I Rise Sexual Healing Summit session with Devi.

Devi Ward Erickson is the Founder of the Institute of Authentic Tantra Education, the first and only government accredited professional training institute using the Tibetan Five Element Tantric practices for holistic sexual healing. Devi is an ACS Certified Sexologist, Certified Tantric Healer, Certified Reiki Practitioner, Certified Meditation Instructor, an accomplished practitioner of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, and has been teaching meditation and personal growth workshops for over 17 years. She is an author and Host of Sex is Medicine with Devi Ward Podcast on Itunes and tunein.com.

She has been featured as a Tantra and Female Sexuality Expert in countless articles and over 30 different radio and television networks world-wide including Playboy Radio, Men’s Health Magazine, CBS, NBC and Rogers TV and the movie Sexology with Gabrielle Anwar and Catherine Oxenberg.