04/09/2024
Ta**ra Yoga and Core Wounds
The Power and Risks of Ta**ra
Ta**ra is one of the most powerful and intriguing practices in the realm of spiritual exercises, but it also comes with more obstacles and dangers compared to more conventional paths. In this post, I want to address the impact of core wounds on those who follow the ta***ic spiritual path.
Healing Through Awareness
A correct approach to core wounds can transform ta***ic practice into a powerful healing tool. However, ignoring these wounds can deepen the trauma and cause harm to the practitioner and even to others.
Understanding Core Wounds
Core wounds are defined as deep emotional injuries usually created in childhood that affect one’s self-perception and behavior in adulthood. Core wounds are not always conscious but tend to influence especially close and significant areas, particularly our relationships and overall dynamics with the world.
Examples of Core Wounds
For example, a person with low self-esteem from childhood may not progress professionally despite being highly talented, and someone who feels emotional coldness and alienation due to neglectful parenting might struggle with empathetic communication with others, leading to a bleak view of life.
Personal Experience
Personally, I transitioned from a religious-nationalist background and returned to secular life in my early twenties. Living in a world with explicit and implicit messages against s*xuality and romantic relationships, along with tendencies towards emotional and s*xual repression, led me to a state of low self-esteem and emotional difficulties in relating to women. One could say that my core wounds were a deep sense of worthlessness and feelings of rejection.
Navigating Deep Suffering
I remember, especially in the early years, how present my core wounds were in my life and practice, and I sometimes had to navigate through deep states of suffering. The more intense and profound the practice, the healing processes take a very long time.
Seeking Spiritual Practice
Everyone has their own story, and many of us carry core wounds into adulthood, which sometimes drive us to seek spiritual practices or paths to alleviate the pain.
Avoidance and Ta**ra
It is not uncommon for men who have experienced failure or frustration in relationships with women to turn to ta***ic practice to compensate for these deficiencies. They may see ta***ic practice as a way to fill the void left by past experiences, often driven by a need to overcome feelings of failure and lack experienced earlier in life.
Examples Among Men and Women
Another common example among men is the need to develop strong s*xual power as a way to compensate for feelings of inadequacy in their masculinity.
A very typical example among women is those who come to ta***ic practice seeking to resolve emotional and s*xual issues arising from s*xual trauma. They look for healing in a place where s*xuality is more open, but sometimes these encounters lead to the opposite effect.
Destructive Outcomes
Especially in workshops that encourage s*xual freedom, it is not uncommon for a man with insensitivity driven by his personal wounds to harm a woman seeking healing. Of course, there are also plenty of examples of men being hurt by women.
Avoidance of Core Issues
A common scenario is practitioners entering practices while experiencing emotional or s*xual dryness in their relationships. Instead of deeply exploring the reasons behind this dryness or disconnection, they seek to relive experiences through ta**ra workshops.
These cases do not represent core wounds, but they are also a form of avoidance of directly addressing the heart of the issue. It is essentially an attempt to circumvent the problem through spiritual practice.
Special Attention in Ta***ic Practice
These processes are very common regardless of the ta***ic world, but when it comes to ta***ic practice (whether s*xual or not), special attention is required. Ta***ic practice can provide a lot of power to the practitioner and tends to open emotional Pandora's boxes, sometimes leading to the flooding of deeply buried issues.
The Risk of Painful Energy
When a practitioner or their teacher is not aware of core wounds and their impact, what can happen is that the painful energy arising from these wounds does not undergo healing but instead becomes the driving force.
Viewing the World Through Wounds
When a person views the world and others from their wounded and incomplete place, they essentially see the world through lenses that cannot contain others; instead, they may view others as objects to help them escape their own suffering.
Awareness and Connection
When a person is driven by their internal wound and is unaware of it, the tendency is to be focused on oneself and one’s pain, lacking the genuine ability to see and connect with the needs of others.
Healing Through Conscious Awareness
When the expression of the internal wound is conscious and contained, the pain ceases to be the driving force, and healthier aspects of the psyche become the driving force through which we meet the world.
Managing Desires
For example, if a man arrives with a sense of failure with women, it is quite possible that when he receives the power derived from ta***ic practice, he may want to use that power to become a womanizer to fill the void created in earlier stages of his development.
However, if he is aware of this need, he can contain his desire without acting out destructively and even involve his partner in the practice, in a group, or with the teacher as part of the healing process.
Neutralizing Destructive Energy
This process of awareness will neutralize the destructive aspect of the energy, allowing him to meet others from a more vulnerable place, which, though harder to contain, leads to healing and an authentic, deep connection with others.
Acceptance and Healing
When internal acceptance without judgment occurs, a process of healing and release from that painful place begins. Healing can be a long process, but once there is higher awareness of the internal processes, they cease to be destructive energy harming the practitioner and those around them.
The Path to Healthy Relationships
Awareness with non-judgmental self-acceptance is a key to healing and building a healthy relationship with the world.
Monogamy vs. Polyamory
In the previous example, many women who have experienced s*xual trauma and thus issues with s*xual functioning may end up in a situation where they have s*xual encounters with many men in ta**ra workshops.
Sometimes this comes with ideas like "experiencing freedom" or "living life to the fullest," but on a deeper level, they are trying to heal the emotional wound in a destructive manner that exacerbates the wound further.
True Healing Through Intimacy
Understanding the internal wound, it is important to recognize that healing does not come through random s*xual encounters based on momentary excitement. Instead, true healing can come from deep processes a woman goes through with herself and sometimes through an intimate relationship with a man who can understand and contain her from a loving place.
Personal Belief and Practice
This allows for internal acceptance of painful processes and helps in building a deep and committed relationship that supports the healing process.
Personally, I believe that women who have experienced s*xual trauma will gain much more benefit from monogamous relationships rather than polyamorous ones.
The Role of the Teacher
When a teacher understands the deep motivation and wounds of the practitioner, it allows for recognizing and containing the issue, so it does not become a driving force for the practice but rather the practice becomes the tool for healing it.
The Necessity of Addressing Core Wounds
Addressing core wounds is a painful and challenging process, but it is necessary when we seek profound internal healing.
The Critical Importance of Self-Understanding
When we enter the realm of ta***ic practice, understanding ourselves deeply becomes much more critical. It can sometimes determine whether the practice becomes a tool for healing or a harmful weapon directed against ourselves and others.
Evaluating Motivations
I think it is important that before teachers allow students to enter ta***ic practice, they deeply examine their internal motivation for engaging in the practice.
Sometimes ta***ic practice can be a tool for healing, and sometimes other practices or therapeutic methods may be more effective.
Choosing the Right Path
When the practitioner understands on a deeper level what they are searching for, they are better able to assess whether they want to engage in powerful ta***ic practices or if it might be better to pursue a different path.
Personal Journey and Growth
For me personally, the practice of ta**ra yoga and meditation has been a crucial part of my journey to address and release my core wounds. Despite the challenges, internal healing has come over time and made this path a powerful and beneficial tool in my life.