It’s so much more than sex and yoga
THE British Museum has unveiled plans for a Tantra exhibition – insisting it will be about more than sex and yoga.
Curators said Tantra is associated with sex in the West, with rock star Sting’s comments about seven-hour lovemaking sessions partly to blame.
The Fields Of Gold singer has previously spoken of his penchant for the ancient art of tantric sex.
But Tantra is more than these “salacious stereotypes” – it is a misunderstood “radical philosophy”, according to experts.
Tantra explores “female power, gender fluidity, religious pluralism, mindfulness and well-being,” museum director Hartwig Fischer said.
And sexual “freedom and sexual rites” are just “one strand of this rich philosophical tradition”.
Objects on display will include a 9th century temple relief depicting the goddess
Chamunda dancing on a corpse, which embodies the human ego.
Many artefacts challenge conventional images of womanhood as passive and docile. Some of the earliest surviving sacred instructional texts, called Tantras and dating from the 12th century, will be on show.