What is Tantra, really
Tantra often gets reduced to erotic massage, sex techniques or a punchline when it's so much more than that. Tantra allows for presence so men who want deeper intimacy in every sense of the word can cultivate it. Here's how it shows up in Matt's own training and in the work at Verosoul.
An ancient practice of presence, not a performance style
Tantra is a body of spiritual and physical practice with roots going back over a thousand years, built around one core idea: everything in you, body, breath, desire, emotion, spirit, is part of the same whole, and none of it needs to be split off or managed away to be considered acceptable.
Where a lot of us learned to treat the body as something to control, Tantra treats it as something to listen to. The practices, breathwork, movement, meditation, touch, ritual, are tools for getting present enough in your own skin to actually feel what's happening in a moment, instead of narrating it, performing it, or rushing past it.
Not just sex, though sex is welcome here too
Pop culture shrinks Tantra down to a genre: a set of positions or a way to "last longer." That's a small slice of a much bigger practice, and honestly, it misses the point.
Tantra is less about what you do with another person and more about how present you're willing to be while you do it.
The same skills that make Tantric touch meaningful (staying in your body, staying with your breath, not checking out the moment things get real) are exactly the skills that make eye contact with a friend feel different, that let you sit with grief without fixing it, that let you actually receive a compliment instead of deflecting it. Intimacy here means full-bodied presence with another person, sexual or not.
Where this training actually comes from
Matt has spent years studying Tantra as a practice and personal path to healing. Now, he translates tenets of the work as a way of holding space for other people's bodies and stories.
GAY-TANTRA®, under Armin Heining
A training program built specifically for men who love men, founded by Armin Heining in 1992 and rooted in the SkyDancing-Tantra lineage, weaving body work, meditation, and spiritual discipline together. Matt completed a wide range of courses through this program over several years, including body work, dynamic meditation, and an in-person Tantric Massage Training held in Arizona. This work created a foundation for Matt's personal Tantric journey.
Mentorship with Tantric Master TT Baum
A more intimate, one-on-one mentorship focused on weaving body, spirit, and the skill of holding space for a client in a way that's meaningful rather than clinical or performative. TT is a Sacred Intimate, Bondassage Certified Trainer, and founder of Integral Eros and the Intimacy Academy (2020 to 2024), as well as a longtime advocate for sex worker rights and activism. TT is currently on sabbatical, but his wisdom continues to inspire Matt in all the work he does.
Supervision with Joe Doherty, MSW, PhD
Joe Doherty, MSW, PhD, spent 40 years as a psychotherapist and 30 years supervising other clinicians, with a Master's from Smith College and a PhD dissertation on the non-dualism of shamanic psychotherapy. His own Tantra lineage runs through five years with Body Electric in Portland, five years facilitating Men Massaging Men groups, and six years training under Marc Peridis, the Orgasmic Shaman, alongside 20 years as an Iyengar yoga instructor, 15 of them teaching men's Tantric naked yoga. He's also an ordained Shamanic Minister and breathwork facilitator. Matt now meets with Joe regularly to receive unbiased and grounded supervision to ensure Matt consistently provides effective coaching, with a Tantric twist.
Ongoing self-study and practice
Ongoing personal meditation practice integrating mind, body, and spirit with eros. Matt treats Tantra as a living practice rather than something learned once and shelved.
How this actually shows up in the work
Verosoul doesn't teach Tantra as a religion or ask anyone to adopt a belief system. It's used as a set of tools inside the Eros pillar, the part of the Verosoul Method focused on relationships, sensuality, and embodiment.
In practice, that means breathwork, sensory awareness, and body-based exercises that help a client come back into a body they may have spent years disconnected from, whether that disconnection shows up as low self-esteem, performance anxiety, numbness during intimacy, or simply never having been taught that pleasure is allowed to be theirs.
None of it is mandatory, and none of it is pushed on anyone who isn't interested. It's offered the way the rest of Verosoul is offered: grounded, sex-positive, without shame, and paced to where a client actually is.
Once the practices are integrated for a client, they can use them the next time they're really listening to someone, really tasting a meal, or really in their body during sex instead of being stuck in their head.
Curious what this could look like for you?
Come Home is Verosoul's 1:1 container where this work goes deepest. Book a free 30 minute consult call and let's talk it through.