By now, we’ve already established that there’s not a lot of sex in season 2 of Bridgerton. And people are disappointed—I get it! Fans expected to see Kate Sharma and Anthony Bridgerton go to town à la Simon and Daphne in season 1. But hear me out: Despite the decrease in intercourse, season 2 of Bridgerton is decidedly hotter than season 1. This is not a hot take, folks. There is no contest.
Go back and watch it again, and you’ll notice that in place of the P-in-V, there is a lot (a lot) of breathing. And no, not the kind of breathing you’re doing right now. Sensual breathing. Seductive breathing. The kind of breathing that feels like life or death—not just because if you don’t do it, you’ll probably pass out but because it’s the only way to control your desire. There’s also tons of intense eye contact, longing glances, sensual sniffing (yup), and gentle, so-subtle-it’s-barely-happening hand grazing.
Kate and Anthony’s relationship is a classic slow burn, but there’s another reason it’s so incredibly hot to watch: It’s ripe with Tantric energy. The bee sting moment, the shooting scene, the outdoor sex—they’re all tinged with Tantric elements. I’ll explain.
First, it’s important to understand Tantra.
You’ve probably come to understand Tantra as an ancient, spiritual type of sex that promises hours-long orgasms and helps you connect with your partner more intensely than ever before. But Tantra is so much more than just sex. It’s a way of life that emphasizes connection with the self in order to achieve enlightenment, or a higher state of being, and practitioners do this through many traditional ancient techniques, with sex being only one.
“Traditional, lineage-based Tantra is a spiritual science that has been present in India for thousands of years. Its purpose is enlightenment. It’s realization, it’s being in the human form and experiencing your ultimate nature at the same time,” says Devi Ward Erickson, founder of the Institute of Authentic Tantra Education. And while many might think that Tantra is just a bunch of positions and techniques that make sex super hot, they’re actually thinking about Neo-Tantra, or the Western world’s adaptation of Tantra, which hyper-fixates on the sexual element.
“Tantra is not just sexual,” says Abneet Kaur Sandhar, feminine embodiment coach and authentic lineage Indian Tantra teacher. “It’s about intimacy with the moment, with each other, with nature. And the Tantra that we often see in modern day has been very watered down and overly sexualized. It does not equal sex. It’s a way of life, and it’s intimacy with the life force that makes all things animate.”
Even though Tantra isn’t solely about sex, it’s still present, indirectly, in Bridgerton.
Lineage-based Tantra isn’t solely about sex, but sex can be a way to practice it. In order to use Tantric sex to achieve enlightenment and intimacy, you need to have a foundation of connection with your partner. And we can all probs agree that if there’s anything between Kanthony, it’s connection.
“Tantric practices build upon the basic mechanism of human connection,” says Ward Erickson. “So, when we’re talking about human Tantric intimacy, there are certain things that are just hardwired into the human design that facilitate connection. Eye contact signals to the autonomic nervous system that it’s safe to be there, and it stimulates oxytocin, the bonding hormone. So all that deep eye contact we see between Kate and Anthony is bonding. It creates a chemical, hormonal bond in both of their bodies, and that’s going to increase and intensify the more they do it.” Ya know, if they were a real couple actually using Tantra to connect—which Ward Erickson says makes their connection not quite Tantric, because they weren’t practicing it with intention, but it was definitely Tantric-adjacent.
“I didn’t see them consciously practicing Tantra, but from a coach’s point of view, I would say some of the ways they connected would be building blocks they could strengthen with additional actual Tantric practices,” says Ward Erickson. “What I saw was human connection, and there is no Tantra if there’s no connection.”
So, no. Kate and Anthony weren’t mindfully practicing Tantra. But…
Their intense connection and desire to be together resulted in several physical manifestations used in Tantra. Think about the scene in the library where they come face-to-face and almost kiss until Daphne walks in on them (“You vex me!”) or the hunting scene where Anthony tries to teach Kate how to shoot. “That heavy breathing and panting is an arousal breath,” says Ward Erickson. “So it’s a symptom of their arousal, but it’s also going to increase arousal in their body. That’s an element that, if done with mindfulness and intention, could be a Tantric practice.”
“There’s this incorporation of nature and the natural world in Bridgerton that I do find Tantric,” says Sandhar, pointing to the scene where Kate and Anthony have sex and he tells her that her scent reminds him of lilies. “They’re in this outside veranda and they’re about to make love, and the rain falls and it wakes him up—there’s a lot of sensuality with the natural world, and with subtlety, which I think maybe is the reason people just love watching—it’s highly sensual, highly nuanced, and people are eating it up.”
Also, remember when Kate walked into church and Anthony sniffed the air behind her? “They were like souls that were magnetized to each other. That sensuality tastes of Tantra,” says Ward Erickson. “It’s about having this relationship with all of our senses—all our experiences as human beings. They gave us kernels of that in a really beautiful and affirming way that could very well be part of Tantric practice.”
And then there’s the bee sting. Remember: Anthony watched his father die tragically from a bee sting, so when Kate got stung, he had what seemed like a panic attack, and Kate put his hand on her chest to show him she was “unharmed.” That, my friends, is Tantric.
“Hand-to-heart is a method that we teach,” says Ward Erickson. “If your partner is moving through a block or an emotion or they need some grounding, you put your hand over their heart center to help them ground and reconnect. It’s a somatic anchoring point, so she uses her body to help anchor him and co-regulate his nervous system as he was having that trauma response.”
Sandhar says the hand-to-heart method is one she also teaches her clients, especially those with male partners. “When you feel your masculine partner losing awareness and presence—because sometimes men can lose their alignment, they can lose their focus—the easiest thing a woman can do is just bring her hand down to his heart, and it anchors him back into his spine, into his heart, and you can re-polarize just like that.”
This also happens in another v important, v spicy scene: where Anthony goes down on Kate and puts his hand over her chest. “He’s pleasuring her Yoni and helping ground her in her body, anchoring her in her heart space with his hand over her heart,” says Ward Erickson.
And beyond being Tantric, it was also just kinky as hell.
Although Kate and Anthony’s connection didn’t result in any BDSM-style sex, the withholding of their desire for each other until it boils over in episode 7 does demonstrate some elements of traditional kink. It’s reflective of orgasm control—more commonly known as edging—when you bring yourself or your partner to the brink of orgasm and then stop just as they’re about to cum (aka withholding). So like, I’m not saying the creators of Bridgerton basically edged us all season until the very end by giving us all these almost-sex scenes between Kanthony and then ending them right as they got really steamy and breathy…but I’m not not saying that either.
Beyond that, says Ward Erickson, “there’s almost an element of sadomasochism. It’s like they get off on withholding pleasure from themselves. They were titillated by their need to fulfill their duty to their families.” And before they have sex, when Anthony tells Kate to “go inside” and she fires back with, “What did I tell you about you and your orders?”… “That’s some sub and dom power thing between them right there,” says Ward Erickson. “That power dynamic is sexy.”
So, in conclusion, dear reader…
Turn-ons are subjective. Some people prefer the very obvious, porn-adjacent fuckery between Daphne and Simon, and I do not blame you if that’s you! I too watched and rewatched for the same reasons you did. But quit saying season 2 was disappointing or sexless. It was satisfying in an entirely different way—one that, seemingly unintentionally, weaved in elements of one of the most ancient intimate practices in human history.
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