So… What Is Tantra, Anyway?

You set foot at your first Tantra festival, and pretty quickly you may start wondering what exactly you have walked into. Someone is talking about energy, someone else is lying on a yoga mat breathing deeply, there is music coming from one room and laughter from another, and somewhere nearby people are having a very serious conversation about boundaries. Someone mentions Shiva and Shakti, someone else talks about the nervous system, and after a while a perfectly reasonable question may appear: okay, but what does all of this actually have to do with Tantra?