Tantra Blog

2010-03-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

What it Tantric Orgasm?

In conventional sexual encounter, orgasm tends to be the goal. For many men, achieving ejaculatory orgasm is their only goal. For many women, pleasing the man by making him 'come' is the only purpose of sex. When the man becomes a little more conscious, he gets focused on the woman's orgasm. The flipside is that the woman's orgasm can very easily now become the goal.

In both cases - man's ejaculatory orgasm, and woman's vaginal or clitoral orgasm, the emphasis is on genital release. In order for this release to happen, a huge amount of tension is built up in the body through accelerated movement and breath, and through body tension. Genital orgasm can make you feel like you touch God - just for a second.

That second is a premonition of the real thing.

What is happening in genital orgasm is a stirring of the base chakra, the first point where our sexual energy gets awakened. In Tantra, our sexual energy is called Kundalini. Kundalini is our vital life force, or sexual energy, which lies coiled up at the base of the spine like a snake. This snake stays asleep, perhaps our whole lives long, until one day the process of our awakening begins.

This awakening happens when we start to ask the big questions in life: What is my life really about? Who am I? How do I find the divine in everything? How to live unconditionally? These questions become intentions that start to direct your life force.

In the body, the direction that our life force wants to go, is up. When the kundalini energy awakens at the base of the spine, it slowly starts to uncoil and rise up in front of the spine, through energy centers called Chakras.

A big part of the work of Tantra is assisting you with unblocking the chakras, which are the gateways through which this energy - our sexual energy - moves. When the gateways are blocked, the energy doesn't move up any higher. The opening of the chakras requires the willingness to feel everything that we have suppressed so far.

When the sexual energy moves up the chakras, it does so through a central channel that in Sanskrit is called the shushumna. In Tantra we affectionately call this channel the hollow flute, because when it opens, the song of spirit starts to play through us. The movement of our sexual energy becomes a dance of the divine. As our sexual energy moves up, it radically opens our hearts, and eventually moves through the crown of the head so that we experience our infinite oneness with all that is. This can happen as you work with your own sexual energy, and also during lovemaking with a partner.

The awakening of sexual energy as a spiritual force in the body is what we call Tantric of kundalini orgasm. It is a subtle - and sometimes huge - rippling of electromagnetic energy up the body, from the perineum at the base of the body all the way out through the crown of the head. When kundalini moves through us, we surrender completely to what is. Emotions may move through - we welcome them and don't identify with them. The body may be still or thrown around in wild abandon. We can never predict. In the middle of the orgasm, is infinite silence. We come to meet ourselves as who we really are. There is no greater peace than this. No greater bliss. The question, of course, is: (as you know by now if you have been following my postings) How much bliss can you stand? Are you willing to let the ecstatic truth of who you really are shatter all the hard treasured perceptions you have been holding on to? Think about it. Because this is what will happen.

With love
Shakti

2010-02-15T11:02:00.000-08:00

One partner or many partners? My view on relationship

There is a collective perception that Tantrikas support multiple partnership. In this blog article, I quote an eloquently phrased question on this theme that has recently come my way, and share with you my response.

The Question

"I have a question that came up; your group is emphasizing as it were having several partners...I'm curious about how woman deals with it, (having more than one partner at the same time) from my understanding is that woman can only give herself "fully" (& even this is rare...) to the "One" (in or via a male-body), when she has more than one lover she becomes divided & often confused - She is already the "Many" that's why she's looking for the One! ... can I ask you how was your process, development in this? & how do you see it now?"

My response

The number of partners a person has is not at all key to Tantric practice. As Tantrikas, we do not advocate or reject monogamy, polyamory, celibacy or any other form of relationship. In fact, our focus is not on relationship as such. Our focus is on awareness. We support whatever assists you in moving through illusion and closer to a true knowing of who you really are. Along the way, we support you in the gradual opening of the heart into unconditional love.This often means being taken into experiences where your heart contracts and has not been able to stay open.

Tantra is a practice of non-duality; Advaita. This means that we recognize the dualities or polarities that form and sustain our ego identities, and we find ways to help people break the gridlock that these fixed positions can create. I say "we" but more accurately my experience is that existence decides what experiences sincere seekers of truth will have. What makes us unique perhaps, is that we don't take sides in the game of "good" and "evil" in people's minds. We are as happy to guide people into the mud as into the stars. We smell the scent of truth and follow that in you.

Now on my personal experience. As my desire to live in truth grew, life presented me with potent opportunities to feel what I had suppressed in the areas of love, intimacy and sexuality. I have had to sit in the fire of my own ego's polarity patterns, which were deeply felt and embedded in the body. Some of these were:
trust - betrayal
acceptance - rejection
being special - being invisible
belonging - abandonment.

This is the theory. The practice looked like years of intense processing, crying, screaming, feeling physical and emotional pain beyond what I thought humanly possible, and often staying away from other people because I knew they would feel overwhelmed by the intensity of my experience. What was happening, in essence, was that the states that I had been suppressing all my life - trying not to feel - like the feelings associated with betrayal - had a chance to be deeply felt through my nervous system and emotional body.

As I allowed the feeling and processed the dualities, patterns would start to fall away of their own accord. It took hard work and commitment in the face of what appeared like total madness at times. But the patterns changed, and keep changing. The effect is that I am less trapped in webs of unconscious patterning, and more available to see and feel the real of what is here.

As a Tantrika, I understand (in my nervous system and in my bones) that my sexuality belongs to the Divine - existence - all that is. If there is going to be any possession or belonging involved in my sexuality, it is this: My sexuality belongs to the Tao, presence, the Self. It is a gateway to the Divine. It does not ring true for me to think of partnership with another person in possession terms. I know this statement gets read as a rejection of monogamy and marriage; it is not. It is perhaps an embracing of the core dream held in monogamy: Pure presence, commitment to what is, right now, total devotion to the One as embodied by the person I am with right now.

Yes, the feminine in me (and for sure in women I have worked with) delights in the one-pointed focus of Shiva lingam - the masculine principle - rising up in us. Yes we are looking for presence in the masculine. We feel in the masculine the potential to be the rock of pure presence, and we support that movement in the men in our lives. But in Tantric practice, this encounter with the masculine principle happens strongly within us as well.

Do I get confused when men in my world get interested in every woman who walks past? I do not get confused, because my sense of myself is not dependent on the feedback I get from men. If I see this pattern externally and I feel an emotional response, I will look in the mirror and ask: What is happening in my inner relationship that encourages my inner masculine to be flighty and lacking deep presence?

Having said that, there have been profound moments in my life where I have seen lovers move in attraction towards another woman or women. I have experienced partners move into a relating with someone else that I could feel was going to go very deep. I have felt all the feelings that have come up for me in the moment as this reality arose - strong sensations in the body, rapidly moving emotions. And I have experienced extraordinary turn-arounds in my experience, to where I could deeply share in and support the ecstasy that was now flowing between these two people. Isn't it strange how, in our conditioned idea of love and relationship, we vehemently resist other relatings that are clearly bringing our partners great joy and experience that will deepen their awareness?

If there is going to be presence between two people, it will be there because it is there - not because they are following external rules or guidelines to keep them with each other.

The deepest commitment that I can offer you is to be totally present, right here, right now, with the fullness of who I am. Relationship is a space in which we can practice presence and all the challenges that that brings. If my attention is flitting about all over the show while I am with you, this is a sign that there is something happening in my inner life that is calling for attention - and I have been resisting. I would like to sit with this and become quiet with myself, giving myself time to feel and perceive what is being covered up by endless distractions.

You ask me how it is for me as a woman to have more than one partner, and what my experience has been around that. My honest response is that it is not important to me whether I have one, many or no sexual partners at any given time. What I am following all the time, is presence and truth. Remember that my sexuality belongs to the Divine. I follow the Divine as s/he manifests in this moment, as an energy formation that is receptive to presence, depth of presence. Often that means sitting in silence. I am single a lot of the time. Sometimes I have one partner, and sometimes several. I do not particularly keep track of the numbers and configurations; for me this would feel like the ocean counting the waves and measuring its reality by how many there are.

As I write this, I realize that my experience has perhaps got not so much to do with being a woman. I am man and woman, living with great delight in a female body. The processing I have done through relationship has been invaluable in supporting this inner marriage and in clearing layers of collective female unconscious patterning that would otherwise have directed my experience of this moment.

If you would like to join us in a workshopping of this theme, please join Stephen and myself next Monday night 22 February 7 - 10pm; cost R350. Bookings at shakti@shakti.co.za by Friday latest.

2010-02-02T00:22:00.000-08:00

Personal love up the Chakras

This article is an exploration of personal love-attraction as it moves up the chakras. My focus here will be on the healthy impulse of attraction in each chakra.

First chakra (perineum/root of the body): Your relationship is infused with vitality. The procreative impulse is strong. There is heated passion between you, fiery attraction. You feel grounded in this relationship.

Second chakra (just under navel): The relationship gives you a sense of belonging, comfort, loyalty to yourself, and gentleness.

Third chakra (solar plexus): You are in this relationship out of pure delight and personal attraction, rather than out of a sense that society or your tribe will approve. You feel expansive, strong in your sense of self and a flow of healthy personal power in your relating.

Fourth chakra (heart): Your loving is an expression of unconditional love; you both have the capacity to hold your hearts that open. Your love for all that is expands through your loving of each other. You are gateways for each other towards the awakening of the heart. The sensation in your lovemaking is that your heart expands tremendously.

Fifth chakra (throat): Your loving is a co-creating with the divine. Your desire is beyond personal will, and at the same time you are willing to become tremendous forces of awakening in the world.

Sixth chakra (third eye): Your relating becomes a psychic sharing involving sense perception beyond ordinary everyday awareness. You listen into the sound of silence and smell states of consciousness. Your energetic form becomes fluid and attachment to your manifest shape drops away.

Seventh chakra (crown): Your lovemaking becomes a melting with the divine - all that is. Sexual energy begins in the base of the body, and moves all the way up through the crown of your head. In this the 'self' disappears; you know for sure, experientally, that you are one with all that is.

With love, as with all good things, it is good to start at the bottom and work your way up. Aspiring to a seventh chakra relationship when you don't have your rooting in the world strong, is asking for disaster and mega-illusion. Life will naturally move through you in this way; just let your ego get out the way of the process.

2010-01-28T21:41:00.000-08:00

The kiss - why not to, and how to

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news: Tantra doesn't like kissing - or at least not kissing as it is generally done. Here I shall explain to you why, and then bring the good news: There are some potent alternatives.

The problem with kissing

Boy meets girl (or girl meets girl/boy meets boy): If there is sexual alchemy, two things tend to happen. The masculine (in men or women) goes into sexual excitement and starts to work out a plan to get to base 1. Kissing has, in his experience, good direction to aim in. Why so? Because as the masculine experiences sexual excitement as first response, so the first response of the feminine (in men or women) when she feels attraction, is to enter romantic fantasy.

Kissing supports romantic fantasy. It happens close to the brain, and puts you into a light - or sometimes heavy - trance - that supports the building of ideas and fantasies. Check for yourself. Does that feel true? You are literally stimulating the brain as the main organ of sex. This is a wonderful idea of building sexual illusion. A deep kiss is likely to make the feminine feel that she is loved. Unfortunately this feeling is the result of chemicals released in the brain only. Fortunately for the masculine, however, this illusion of love that the woman now feels is going to make her willing to enter base 1. The sexual excitement builds.

It is important at this point to distinguish between love, excitement and romantic fantasy. Love, the way Tantra understands it, is pure presence - no story, no expectation, no projection. Kissing early on in sexual connection, is a pretty full-proof way to trigger the brain's projective mechanisms. The result is so much less of a chance to connect with the real of this moment.

How then to go about the kiss?

Save the kiss for later. First get the whole body involved. Love all of her/him. Meet in presence. Breathe together. Explore each other in conscious touch. Try a full-body melting hug. That will communicate something of the real of embodied love.

Kiss the body. The mouth can be a wonderful lover, for sure. You can use your lips and your tongue to love his/her whole body - starting with the big toe (unbearably delicious) and moving all the way up to the nape of the neck.

Kiss on the mouth - later. Kiss lightly, preferably not french kissing. French kissing is an imitation of penetration. Don't substitute - go for the real thing. Once you have really made love, engage the kiss by all means.

Tongue on upper palate. Keep your tongue on your upper palate while making love. This encourages sexual energy to rise, from the genitals, all the way up the spine, through the brain and the mid brow-point and coming to rest on the palate. The upper palate is the point where the upward and downward flow of sexual energy connect. From here the sexual energy flows down the back of the throat, through the heart and comes to rest in the belly as life force or vitality. If you cycle your sexual energy like this, you are more likely to experience full body orgasm, and the man is less likely to ejaculate (and thus lose his sexual energy.)

Tip pushing up on palate. If you like the penetrative feeling of french kissing, here is a potent alternative. When your sexual energy is high, arch your tongue backwards, and push it up against the upper palate, as though you want to penetrate the palate. Look into the third eye. Squeeze your PC muscles, and pull up the sexual energy.

Bite the upper lip. The upper lip in a woman is directly connected to her clitoris. In love play, experiment with lightly biting/chewing her upper lip. Wait for the woman to be very relaxed and receptive before trying this. Personally, I prefer this move to direct clitoral finger stimulation, which tends to be too harsh on the highly sensitive nerve endings of the clitoris.

Curling tongues. Ok, if you have to do the French kiss thing, then put it to good use. The Taoist way is thus: Curl your tongues around each other, and hold them like this while you cycle your sexual energy in the microcosmic orbit (see tongue on upper palate.)

Let the sounds come out. Kissing is engaging the throat and mouth area. Perhaps this part of your body wants to be more expressive in lovemaking. Let the sounds come out!

Sucking nipples or penis. French kissing has a sucking quality which draws on our earliest, infant memories of belonging and nurturing. It can be really healing and integrating for a man to take time - a good half hour a day - to suck his lover's nipples, almost the way a baby does it. Women, you can suck the penis. Take all your attention and presence into this act. Make it an act of pure devotion.

2009-12-13T03:34:00.000-08:00

The victim-rescuer-predator triangle

Much of the work of Tantra is about uncovering and integrating what has been lying hidden in the unconscious. The unconscious is where we store all suppressed experience, which includes all experiences that were too much for us to feel to their depths at the time of their happening. This can be anything from rape to the first time our mothers decided not to breast feed us any more. If the feelings that came up as a consequence of the incident were too much for you to deal with at the time, they would have been stored in the unconscious. Feelings only move through once they have been felt.

Why are we interested in integrating matter from the subconscious? Tantra is about your awakening - waking up to the truth of who you really are. On the way there, we get to face all illusions we have been holding on to. Repressed experience that is held in the unconscious becomes like a grid or a filter through which all of our life experiences get perceived - without us consciously knowing about this. We might see the signs - for instance, that we keep repeating the same patterns in relationship. But the cause is not visible to us. Unconscious patterns shape our sense of who we are from a place where we do not see this happening.

Much of Tantric technique is focused on enabling what has been hidden from you to become accessible and integrated. For more on this, see my article on sexual healing. A significant pattern that gets revealed when the unconscious gets integrated is that, somewhere along the line, we have felt like we were victims. It is about this that I want to write here.

Victim, rescuer, tyrant

A victim is someone who feels, or perceives themselves to be, helpless or having no control over the experiences which s/he is 'forced' to have. We have all felt like victims at some point in our lives. Here are some key principles for understanding how victimhood works.

If you have felt like a victim somewhere in your life, you have most likely also identified yourself with the rescuer role. In fact, 'victims' can become intensely identified with the rescuer role. Here is an example. If your experience of relationship has been that women get attracted to you because you can 'rescue' them in some way, then chances are that somewhere in your life, you have probably been feeling like a victim. We project the victim role out on to others, because we find it too difficult to deal with in ourselves.

Where there is a victim, there is also a tyrant or a perpetrator - the one or the collective that makes the victim a victim through their actions. This one we tend to project out strongest. So guess what that says about the tyrant? If you regard yourself as a victim, somewhere in your psyche there lurks a tyrant/abuser. The stronger you identify with the victim, the stronger the abuser in you could potentially be.

If your strongest identification is with the rescuer - often also called the healer - then have a good look too to see where the victim and the abuser in you are hiding away.

The victim, the rescuer and the abuser form a triangle. If you identify with one of those roles, the other two will be strong archetypes in your living as well. Most likely, unconsciously so.

Power in the victim triangle

I know about all of this from personal experience of course. For much of the first half of my adulthood I was in the rescuer role. My uncovering of how this process played off in me took place over many years. An incident that shattered the illusions I were still holding on to was the following. For a good four years in my life, I was put in a situation where I had to assess the impact of proposed golf estate developments on vulnerable local communities who lived in the areas where the estates would be built.

Initially, I identified two clear polarities in the roles. There were the greedy go-getters - the developers who would do anything to get their multi millon rand developments approved - and the needy children - the vulnerable communities whom the developers tried to bribe by promising them houses. Leslie Temple-Thurston (see corelight.org) was guiding her students through processing these polarities at the same time that I was in the thick of it.

I discovered through my processing that the needy child and the greedy go-getter both exist very much in me as well. I started to own the anger that that the oppressor-oppressed relationship evoked in me as my own anger and vented the anger in my car and in my home. I took responsibility for what I was seeing happening out there. I owned both sides of the polarities in myself. I also saw that I was putting myself in the third position - that of the rescuer. In taking responsibility and facing my own internal reality, I got in touch with my authentic power.

I also started seeing very clearly how the power dynamic between victim, rescuer and predator works. The biggest shock for me was to realize how the vulnerable communities were using their victimhood to manipulate everyone around them. One particular community I worked in made this abundantly clear to me. Every leader amongst them had developed his/her own strategy for maximizing the leverage they could get out of their historical victimhood. As a result, a fierce competition developed between them all that became a terrifying maze for anyone wanting to engage with them.

The question I want to ask you is: how do you use your victimhood to gain power and control?

Identifying your type

Let's unpack that question step by step. First, the question is: what kind of victim are you? What kind of predator? And what type of rescuer? To find the answers to these questions, we have to stalk ourselves a little - get into the blind spots of how we perceive ourselves. Why bother? Because in seeing honestly how we have manipulated power, we get to our authentic power. What helps me to stalk myself is to be playful about it. I identify the characters/caricatures inside me. Here are a few examples of types. Do any of these fit you? Any others you can add?

The predator/tyrant

The greedy go-getter
The judge
The manipulator
The righteous one
The sadist
The rapist
The stalker
The bureaucrat
The avenger
The critic

The victim

The needy child
The damsel in distress
The disenfranchised one
The slighted one
The abandoned child
The betrayed lover
The slave
The martyr
The sacrificed one
The masochist
The retarded one
The rescuer

The rescuer role deserves some more elaboration. Some sub-archetypes of the rescuer are:

The healer
The mediator
The community worker
The campaigner
The donor
The problem solver
The mother/father
The teacher
The soldier/guard/policeman

You can see that many occupations and social roles relate to the rescuer archetype and its sub-archetypes. Examples are doctors, nurses, social workers, community workers, councilors, social workers, development workers, parents, housekeepers, conflict resolution specialists, human rights and environmental activists, soldiers, guards and policemen, and of course teachers.

When in balance, each of these healing/giving roles are a beautiful expression of our creativity. However, the rescuer role is the one in which we most easily hide our embeddedness in victim triangle. Being a rescuer looks like a noble role to have, and it is one in which we can maintain our dignity and moral high ground. However, the rescuer role easily turns sour, and then the experience becomes something like the following:

The exhausted healer
The anxious mediator
The self-sacrificing community worker
The angry campaigner
The resentful donor
The hyperactive problem solver
The drained mother/father
The over-extended teacher
The wounded guard, soldier or policeman

Do any of these feel familiar? Then it is time to have a good look at what you are doing, and more specifically, why you choose to play your role in a way that it gets out of balance for you.

How the one becomes the other

By now I am sure you have noticed how any position in the victim triangle - victim, rescuer and tyrant - relates to the other two. Here are some examples. It is well known that people who abuse their children or wives, or who abuse alcohol, have often grown up in homes with abusive or substance abusing parents. A man who grew up with abusive parents may have coped as a child by adopting a rescuing position in relation to this sister. If he doesn't resolve the unconscious victim triangle in him self, his rescuing of his sister may become an insistent habit towards woman which could become highly manipulative and disempowering towards women around him. He may be so determined to find the victim in women that he would unconsciously turn them into victims.

The social/environmental activist can end up using the same strategies - the same weapons - as the developers whom they regard as the enemy. They become predators just as much as rescuers. The drained mother/father can keep her/his children emotionally codependent by holding them responsible for the lack of energy that s/he feels.
Breaking the cycle

The first step in breaking the cycle is to do some honest self reflection. Stalk yourself. Discover what you have been hiding from yourself. The role you are most likely to be aware of in yourself is that of the rescuer. The key question for the rescuer is:

1. What is in it for you?

Look at the emotional benefits you get from playing the rescuer. Perhaps being the rescuer is your attempt to avoid being in a position where you may feel rejected, abandoned or betrayed. More importantly, and more difficult to acknowledge to ourselves: The rescuer position comes with power and status. Rescuers are esteemed and given special privileges. They get access where others won't be allowed in.

The same question of course applies to the other roles.

What is in it for you?

If you were orphaned or raped or abused and your identity has become attached to this experience, ask yourself: What is in it for me? Why am I holding on to this experience and this role? Why do I choose to stay identified with it? Begin by identifying how as victim you also play the tyrant and the rescuer. Then have a good look at what the victim role gives you. Being a victim implies that you have no choice, no power and no control over your experience. Where and why are you choosing to hide your personal power from yourself? Is it more comfortable for you to be pitied by others than to stand on your own two feet? Are you attached to the manipulative privileges of the victim?

If your main identification is with a position in which you have all the power - the tyrant role - you probably feel repulsed by or irritated with anyone who is identified with the victim role. You may even feel that they deserve what they get. The question again is: What is in it for you? Are you perhaps hiding some traces of the victim in you by projecting the victim out there? This brings me to the second step in breaking the victim cycle:
2. Watch your projections

A projection is an experience or trait that we see in others but which actually resides in us. By their nature, projections are often external reflections or aspects of our own psyches that are unconscious to us. We are not consciously aware of those facets of our beings, or we are in denial about them. The projections you really need to look at will be in your face. You will notice them as patterns in the people who are in your life, or they will be unavoidably visible to you in your relationships with significant others. Begin with your parents: Which qualities do they have that really annoy you? Have a good look where you are hiding those qualities in yourself.

If you tend to see victims, rescuers or predators/tyrants out there, have a look to see where they reside in you. If you need to see healers all the time or need to have a teacher for everything, the same may apply.
3. Dreams and fantasies

Your dreams and your erotic fantasies can help you become conscious of the victim/rescuer/predator types that you unconsciously or consciously identify with.

4. Act them out

A wonderful way of bringing consciousness to your victim-predator-rescuer roles is to act them out in a playful way. The best way to do this is with partners who also want to explore and play. During the four years that I was in the thick of exploring this material, I wanted to experience my killer instinct. I had a friend who wanted to feel her prey character. We got together and each made a mask - she made a prey mask, and I made a victim masks. As soon as we put on our masks, the fun began. I started chasing her about the house with a huge, roaring voice. She hid under the tables and chairs and her voice became queeky and pleading. The secret of course is to stay in the play-acting. The exercise is about exploring and experiencing your own dynamics, not about harming another. Which brings me to the next important step.

5. Feel your emotions

Emotions will come up when the victim triangle in your becomes conscious - most likely feelings you have been trying to avoid all your life. The most painful aspect of our feelings (as with anything) is our attempt at avoiding them. Make a practice of noticing when an emotion comes up for you, and allowing yourself to feel the emotion. When emotions are deeply felt, you own them. When anger comes up, go to your room or get in your car and vent the anger. DON'T vent the anger at other people. Doing that doesn't help you to integrate the old emotion. It just makes more.
6. Accept your power

Find where you are hiding your personal power from yourself. Accept your power. Live it consciously. And live your gratitude for the gifts that you got from the experience that made you feel like a victim.

7. Who would I be without my story?

Next, consider this question of Byron Katie's: Who would you be without your story? Could you think of your past differently? Could you imagine an authentic identity for yourself that is not woven around your victimhood, not even in the subtlest ways? Could you even just creatively, playfully, explore different possibilities? Having said this, I do believe that it is important to feel the emotions to their depth first - imagining yourself without your story should be the result of deep integration, not mental avoidance strategies for what has to be felt.

8. 100% responsibility and no control whatsoever

Finally, consider the truth of this: Life happens to you, from moment to moment. Your ego structure can do everything in its capacity to help you maintain control and to get to experience life as you will it. But this is never possible. The reason is that the ego is an illusion. And you are not separate from the flow of existence. What is going to happen, will happen.

What you do have though, is 100% responsibility - the ability to respond. Your experience of life will be determined by how you choose to respond to what happens to you. Isn't that beautiful?

2009-10-21T02:03:00.001-07:00

Inner and outer heat in Tantra
Copyright Shakti Malan

In Tantric lovemaking, an extraordinary movement of inner and outer heat occurs. This heat and what accompanies it, is what I call dragon's nectar - the theme of my upcoming retreat in the Drakensberg. I will attempt to give you a sense of the experience of this heat here, as well as some information on how this energy has been perceived in Tantric mystery traditions.

Building a bonfire

In ordinary/unconscous lovemaking, what effectively happens is that suppressed energies build up to an involuntary crescendo of contraction and drivenness. The heart rate increases rapidly, as do body movements and organ pulsation. We race towards peak orgasm. And then we collapse in exhaustion. This is like building a huge bonfire - putting all the logs on at the same time - and enjoying the short ecstasy of heat before the logs burn out.

Physiologically what happens here is that the sympathetic nervous system - our fight and flight response - goes into overdrive. This can be very exilirating, a bit like the adrenalin rush we get from extreme sports.

But that fire burns out pretty quickly. It is like one big fiery roar from our inner dragon - impressive, volumous, short lived, and it leaves a trail of destruction in its passing. You may get tired or suspicious of this kind of sexual expression at some point. Good. Now it is important to realize that the trouble is not the fire. The fire is needed. Without the dragon there is no dragons nectar. What needs to change is the way we build the fire.

Stay at the beginning

In the Vigyam Bhairav Tantra, Shiva says: "At the start of sexual union, keep attentive to the fire in the beginning, and, so continuing, avoid the embers at the end."(verse 42)

The art is to learn to build that fire slowly, consciously, with full awareness and clear intent.

Inner heat and the feminine

"In order to allow for the birth of the [ultimate dakini, the wisdom that realizes emptiness], one must eliminate the gross forms of consciousness
by means of the inner heat (tummo) practice that is a particular form of bliss.
This bliss is the means of eliminating coarse consciousness:
therefore, the inner heat represents a meaning of dakini"

- HIS HOLINESS THE FOURTEENTH DALAI LAMA

This quote comes from a beautiful book by Judith Simmer-brown called Dakini's Warm breath. She describes that in Tibetan Tantric practice, it is understood that the subtle body has three main channels: the non-dual central channel (called the shushumna in Sanskrit) and the two flanking channels. One of these channels is regarded as feminine and is governed by the fire element and the sun. The vital breath of the feminine is warm. The other is regarded as masculine and is governed by the moon and the water element. The vital breath of the masculine is cool.

The focal center of the cool masculine breath is the head, and the center of the warm feminine breath is the navel. Tibetan Tantric practice brings the energy of the icy father down to the navel to be melted by the fiery mother. In that way, the energy of the flanking channels gets united in the central channel. From this comes a great centered stillness and inner heat.

The inner heat is associated with the quality of bodhichitta. Bodhichitta refers to the awakened mind that aspires to liberate all sentient beings. When the vital breaths get united in the center, we live in unity consciousness. There is a quality of bliss associated with this state. But even greater bliss is that of the bodhichitta, who desires to share her bliss with others. This is an essential quality of the dakini.

The inner fire in the belly burns up all states and experiences that keep us from living in pure presence. Therefore, the dakini takes great delight in pulling the practitioner into this fire, even if the burning feels to the recipient like a cruel and heartless act. Dakini knows that true love can burn, to the core.

Outer heat and the masculine

In his fascinating book The Hero: Manhood and Power, John Nash writes about the cultivation of heat by the masculine. Nash is of the opinion that men have also encountered this heat in a very masculine activity - "its awesome power arising within himself, spontaneously, time and time again, through dangerous and exhilirating exertions of another kind - the perils of the hunt."

He also writes that, since ancient times, humanity has understood the sacredness of the feminine because of her ability to birth, without any attempt to 'make' this happen. The masculine, on the other hand, has had to prove his virility by conquering and mastering powers in nature far exceeding his own.

He talks specifically about practices to cultivate the mystic heat. One example is sweat lodges, a heat ceremony from the South American Shamanic tradition designed specifically to help men access the altered states of consciousness that women naturally have access to, especially during menstruation. Nash also refers to certain forms of yoga that raise the metabolic heat of male practitioners to excessive, unnatural degrees. He refers to the Tibetan practice of 'tummo', "'heat-yoga so intense that the monk with his naked body dries blanket after blanket that has been soaked in an icy mountain torrent."

Tummo is the practice that the Dalai Lama referred to in the above quote as a core expression of the dakini in a seeker. The extreme yoga Nash refers to here is a practice using determination, discipline and will power to invoke this fire in celibate practice. But then the Dalai Lama's quote refers to dual cultivation - in this case specifically with the dakini or feminine as embodiment of the wisdom principle. In Tibetan Tantric practice, the monk would deepen his meditation and strengthen his tummo practice until he reached a certain level of realization or awakening. Then his master would introduce him to the dakini who would take him through the final stages.

Ultimately, it is the merging of the feminine (dakini) and masculine energies that take the seeker into the central channel where the inner heat is experienced, and we live in unity consciousness. We all have both masculine and feminine principles inside us. The ultimate merging happens when masculine and feminine merges inside us. In that sense, Tantric practice supports a seeker, no matter what your sexual orientation is. When two men or two women come together in Tantric practice, one will adopt the feminine and one the masculine principle.

The rippling fire of Tantra - my experience

I have had the rare privilege in my lifetime to experience what happens when the masculine and feminine come together in pure presence in Tantric lovemaking. It has left me with a clear realization as to why the Hindu gods are always depicted as being blue. There is a fire that starts to ripple over a person's skin when s/he practices Tantric lovemaking - and takes time about it. This fire is cool, it is spread out all over the body, and for me, its colour is distinctly blue.

Building the slow fire

Tantric lovemaking builds a slow, shimmering, delicious fire. At times, yes, we welcome and build the hot fire of the dragon's breath, of wild passion and roaring delight. But the quality of the meeting is guided mostly by the feminine - receptivity, relaxation, openness to the moment, to the greater flow of what is. The feminine moves like wind and water, dissolving, flowing, folding. The masculine, enveloped by the caress of the feminine, holds one pointed focus. He is the rock. He holds stillness, but without contraction or force. He surrenders into pure presence.

In this space of pure presence, time and space lose their usual hold on us. The moment becomes eternity. Eight hours pass in one timeless flow of the moment. Slowly, deeply, your energy builds, and so too the levels of bliss you can stand. Bodies lose their familiar appearance. You come to experience, beyond doubt, that we are not as solid and fixed a we are. And that, in fact, there is no separation at all. It is this state of subtle, seamless bliss which I call the dragon's nectar.

To be available to this quality of lovemaking takes some preparation, some unlearning of old conditioning, and some sharpening of presence. It takes the willingness to face, and embrace, the erotic impulses you have suppressed. It takes the laying aside of body armoring that keeps you from being fully responsive in your body. It takes deep presence in breath and sensation. It takes a bump-up in your level of openness to sensory impulses. It takes huge expansion of your heart capacity.

Dragon's Nectar, my Tantra retreat in the Drakensberg 20 - 25 November, is designed to support you in exactly this journey. For details, see http://totalitytherapy.com/events/2009/07/dragons-nectar-tantra-intensive-retreat.html. It's time to step into the fire - and say yes!

"Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for the second time in the history of the world, men will have discovered fire!" – Theilard de Chardin

What is Tantra?

2009-10-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

Tantra is an ancient mystery tradition which is available to us today in a new way. What distinguishes Tantra is its totality as a path of awareness - it demands total presence in every dimension of our human experience - including our sexuality. Tantra takes us beyond the dualities that keep us in ego-limitation. It is for people who are asking the big questions of life:
Who am I?
What is real love - and can I live that love?

The fire of Tantra burns away our illusions, burns away whatever keeps us in separation. The question that guides the work is: How much bliss can you stand? The misunderstanding of the West is that Tantra is some new/rediscovered pleasure drug. The reality is: Your capacity for bliss is directly correlated to the depth of your capacity for experience. Depth means the degree to which you can be present - feel deeply - whatever arises in your experience. In so doing, even our sadness, anger and depression becomes spaces filled with unconditional love. That is the true meaning of bliss.

What lies beyond projection?

2009-07-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

I am currently teaching a course called "The Soulmate Within" in which we are exploring the qualities of our inner masculine and feminine, and the meeting of the two. One of the tools we are using is to have a good look at our projections - especially at what we see in those people who are closest to us - that may be holding up a mirror for us of what we are not (yet) seeing in ourselves.

One of the participants wrote to me:

"A question... What happens when you stop projecting (or come close)? Is it possible to not be a mirror? What is that state of being? i.e. what are we moving towards?"

This is a good question, and I answer it here. Yes, it is possible not to live in projection at all. This is called the state of enlightenment. During the journey towards realizing your true self, as one with everything, you will be gradually dropping polarities and illusions that keep you from seeing things for what they are. The masculine-feminine split and our perception of the separation between lover and beloved, is a primary duality that keeps us from total presence. As we peel away the layers of illusion held in this duality, it becomes more and more of a lived realization and a daily reality for us that our soulmates are within - that everything we need is already one with us. The more we live in this realization, the more fulfilled we are. Our relationships can then become a place of overflow. From here, I can love you because it is lovely for me to do so - my fountain overflows. I no longer love you because you are mine or you fulfil my needs (or even my shadow needs). This is a very different way of being in relationship to the previous one. Osho calls it relating rather than being in relationship. There is a quality of intimacy that becomes available to us as a general texture of life, rather than as something reserved for that one special one who is "ours" (in other words, whom we project all our desires on to.)

Judge not a Dakini by her appearance

2009-05-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

In his lovely book The Quiet Girl, Peter Hoeg's main character travels alongside a powerful nun that he calls the Blue Lady. He describes her ages as maybe 70, maybe 270. He is shocked when, at the end of the the tale, she puts her arms around one of the main male characters. And then his thoughts are:

"She could have had anyone. She could have had one of the fourteen-year-old boys. Under slightly different circumstances, she could perhaps have had him, Kasper Krone."

What struck me when I read this, was that the Blue Lady was in fact an under cover Dakini. And that, despite her clearly advanced age, her powers, including her sexual prowess, had not diminished - in fact it had grown. But this one would only know if you had eyes to see.

I sometimes get asked for a photo by prospective clients. I may still put up photos at some stage, but for now my view is this: What are you likely to see in a photo? If I had sent you an image of the Blue Lady, would you have come for a session? Of course you would, if you could see like Kasper Krone. But he had to experience her first before he could see. Really see.

As with the Blue Lady, I have found that my image - what I look like - can change quite radically depending on what is of use for clients to experience at any given point. Which includes, of course, the necessary degrees of beauty and grace.

Sessions Questions and Answers

2009-03-15T07:00:00.001-07:00

More on how sessions work: See http://www.totalitytherapy.com

What happens in a first session?

The first session is an opportunity for us to meet, for me to identify what would be most useful for you right now, and to introduce some catalytic factors. Meeting involves a discussion of your personal journey and your sexual history. While we talk, I am listening to your words but also sensing what is happening in your physical and energy bodies. From there I may take you into an activity that can catalyze the area of your awareness that is priority at the time. This may involve movement, sound, breath work and touch.

Naked or not?

I may give you the option at some point to be naked if I feel that nakedness would be supportive to the work. Please note however that this is not the place to come if you are looking for titilation.

How many sessions are required?

My advice is that you take it one session at a time. For some people, one session catalyzes as much as they need for this lifetime. Some people come for a regular session once every two weeks or once a month. The choice is yours.

How long will it take to learn Tantra?

This is a lifelong learning program, if you want to give it dimensions.I could answer the question with another: How long does it take to drop all the illusions standing in the way of full presence?

In my experience, Tantric awareness deepens rapidly in people, particularly if you come for regular sessions or start participating in other activities.

Can I come without a partner?

You can certainly learn Tantra on your own. If you are in a relationship, you are welcome to come with your partner or on your own. If you come on your own, the awareness that you gain, will benefit your relationship, in that it will increase the general level of awareness around.

Should I be scared?

Yes. This could change your life.

Do you work with men and women?

Yes. I have a male colleague who assists me in working with women if the woman requests this. I do group work with men and women, and also with women only. My colleague may soon be starting some work with men only.

Will Tantra cure premature ejaculation?

Tantra is not a medical or therapeutic discipline, it is an awareness practice aimed at your awakening. The suppressions in your sexuality which get expressed in sexual functioning will drop away smoothly as a consequence of the work. But this is not the first aim.

Tantra with or without a partner?

2009-03-08T04:34:00.001-07:00

At our recent Tantra Girls' Night Out evening, women asked me questions about what happens in Tantra workshops where there are both men and women present. The concern that they expressed was that, if they come without a partner, they may have to be intimate with strange men beyond what they are comfortable with. I appreciate the question and respond here; the writing is applicable for both men and women.

Modalities
The main modalities in my Tantra workshops are

breath
sound and
movement

Exercises

The main types of exercises that occur in my workshops are:

active meditations
guided breath meditations
partner meditations using the above modalities
dance and movement
roleplay and dialogue
conscious touch (this will usually be specified).

Partner work

On my workshops and retreats, you will be working with different partners during one event. The women choose who they want to partner with. Partner work usually takes the form of meditations, so the process is guided and very conscious. Couples have said to me in the past that they wished they had done the work with different partners. The reason for this is that you get to know your own energy by working with different partners. If you are working with your lover only, part of your experience will be influenced by the projections and associations that you already have with this person. Exercises are structured in such a way as to bring more awareness rather than drawing you into the unconscious associations and dynamics that are often there in our relationship play.

Nakedness

Nakedness is usually not required in workshops, though in some workshops nakedness is an option. There are advanced workshops where nakedness is required, but you will only be invited to these when we feel you are ready.

The choice is yours

Our approach in the Advait Tantraschool is to create opportunities and then be guided by the level at which you feel comfortable to engage them. At all times, we encourage you to follow your bliss; go according to what feels good for you. Also, in Tantra the woman is always the decisionmaker, and we structure exercises as such.

Intimacy

My work is an encouragement to intimacy, in the sense of an opening to feel what is real for you in the moment. Tantra is about totality, it is not about hiding from your feelings. But here too you have a conscious space to learn to discern what is real, and what is fantasy or projection. If you would rather protect yourself from feeliings, then Tantra may not be for you. If you are ready to be fully present in your life, and to feel the rich complexity of that, then I would encourage you to come explore.

Sweet Prince(ss)

2009-03-02T08:33:00.001-08:00

"Sweet Princess, while being caressed, enter everlasting life" - Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

This is a verse that I love to use. Andries du Toit, who loves that I use it, wrote the following exquisite poem, which I have to share with you.

To a guide

“Sweet Princess —”

I say the name: ancient words, anonymous.

One man’s name for

one unknown woman, lost in the drift of years.

Someone’s heart was pierced. Someone

met one day a shy-bold curious glance;

or saw her naked back

golden in the sunlit water; or saw

all in a moment, in the fierce ecstatic dance,

her graceful dusty feet, the hollow of her throat, sweat on her skin;

or someone heard, once

— just once —

a woman’s voice

a throaty chuckle in another room

behind a paper screen.

We don’t know what happened, or who

fell in love with whom.

We know that matter yearned for matter, that a body

found itself unfinished, opened: found itself

mortal, undone, bereft —

and found that longing sweet.

They are gone now, dust, forgotten. But

that sweetness lives. That sudden opening,

that being-lost, still speaks. Words

are a channel. So are bodies. Today

one specific body, one woman, one mortal self

awakes, finds courage, enters the dance. The heart

welcomes the heart. Life

caresses life. One broken body —

particular and frail, unfinished, beautiful —

opens to itself. Invites delight. Becomes

Sweet Princess: Universal. Mortal. Tender. Brave. Beloved.

- Andries, 28 February 2009, flight SA 208, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

Inner masculine and feminine

2009-03-01T11:07:00.000-08:00

The following is a conversation that I had with a friend recently about the relationship between the masculine and feminine in me. I found it insightful and decided to share it with you, as this is a theme that is very close to my heart and also an important one in Tantra.

Friend: When you talk about the inner marriage.. what do you feel the masculine in isolation to essentially be and the essentially feminine?

Shakti:
My feminine is intuitive... she feels life around her... she is directed by the heart. She feels the bigger space. her desires and motivations come from deep inside, and are a response to all she receives through her perception. She is receptive and perceptive in the subtle realms.

My masculine is directed and focused... he can do great things, overcome obstacles, build things, make plans and execute them... he has one pointed focus and goal oriented. He functions best when he is guided by the feminine. When they work together, they are a magnificent team. He can really make things happen - but when he doesn't have her direction, he becomes an ambitious, driven bastard

If my feminine isn't clear about what she wants, or she doesn't clearly ask my masculine what she wants him to do, she becomes weak and self doubting

But if she trusts her inner knowing, then the impossible becomes possible. My masculine is really cool - if she dares to have big wishes, he will do his best to make them come true

My masculine is the one who enjoys pitching the tent, collecting the firewood, bundubashing a path. My feminine is the one who enjoys the view. Without her enjoyment, all his effort would be pointless. Without his effort, she would not be able to enjoy

Friend:
What is your feeling when you have gone to far in the direction of the masculine...what happens to your awareness?

Shakti:

Yes, an interesting experience. It feels like this. My masculine gets driven, competitive, goal oriented, starts to compare himself to others, and conjures up all sorts of imaginary goals.

My feminine feels that she is alone - I feel lonely and feel that men have never been there for me - she starts to doubt herself and become insecure, she tries to win the masculine back but feels it's hopeless.

The masculine on the other hand is not really satisfied either. actually not at all, although he seems to be running the show. Because he doesn't actually want to run the show. He gets confused if he doesn't have the direction of the feminine. So net result is that he loses his desire to live, actually. It starts to all feel futile and empty

Friend:
OK. And what happens to the quality of your awareness when it goes like that?

Shakti:
It clouds over and becomes confused. it hardens and becomes less sensitive

Friend:
less connected to beauty and god...

less connected to the subtle

Shakti: yes exactly

Friend:
less connected to the causal

Shakti: Yes

Friend: At the mercy of causality instead of behind it

Shakti: Yes, but still the masculine will believe that if he just tries harder he will be in control

Friend:Sticky awareness.. get attached to stuff and aversive to stuff..

Shakti: Yes very sticky

Friend: Is there such a thing as going to far into the feminine in your view?

Shakti: For sure. Years ago my feminine was running the show and didn't want to know about the masculine. That''s no use. It makes her hard, and she can't really live her full beauty in the world, because the masculine is not there to actualize it

Friend: So becomes dreamy self-obsessive like?

Shakti: :Yes... or insecure and insubstantial.

I think masculine on his own can be as self-obsessive as feminine, though feminine is likely to be more internal with the obsession - self analysis - whereas masculine obsessiveness is focused on changing the external.

Friend: Does the masculine have a role to play in the subtle, in meditations etc?

Shakti:

Yes he has.
When the masculine's will is following the feminine's receptivity, then you can enter the realm of choiceless choice - which is real meditation. It takes attention and an aligned will to drop thoughts in stead of following them

It takes a very strong willingness - masculine presence - to enter formlessness. The masculine has to trust the feminine there, else the feminine on her own can just fall into depression when she meets undifferentiated space

In the beginning with meditation, it is useful to have some focus - such as the breath, or the bindu - for your awareness. This focus is held by the masclune, so that the feminine can relax into formlessness, into the subtle.

In time, that changes so that the masculine develops the will to also drop focus and still stay present and fully there

For me it's like this: In stead of focusing on something, I sense the places where my will is creating a "self", and identity, a boundary between me and existence. And I very gently - very gently - just drop that insistence. Then meditation happens.

The masculine has to really cooperate and trust the feminine to go there.

So, I would say that the inner marriage is essential for real meditation to happen.

Energetically, if I am either in masculine or in feminine and the relationship is not strong, I will be pulled into the ida or pingala (the masculine or feminine energy streams) in my awareness in stead of resting in the shushumna (the central energy channel of subtle awareness.)

Reflections on Conscious Sexuality Retreat

2009-01-19T02:28:00.000-08:00

This is what retreatants had to say about the Conscious Sexuality Retreat:

"Thank you for a great and unforgettable week-end.It take courage to open oneself up,and initially I was a bit scared/curious .But the reward is great.It was a beautifull experience.It was also great to have met you."

"Shakti, how can words ever express what a gift You are to this planet!! The entire weekend was beyond anything I could ever have imagined! From the very beginning, I already felt incredibly blessed & safe to be working in your sacred space. Even the questions which were asked via email before our arrival were beautifully sensitive and deep, and I found myself falling into truth then already. The way in which you designed the workshop was simply profound...it felt like I was melting ever deeper with each day's meditation...melting and opening and soaring in a bliss that I have never previously experienced to this degree.

Your workshop is definitely for real lovers of Truth - and this I could tell from the moment we began. Some people are seeking, some are wanting more physical pleasures and tangible ways to enjoy 'sex'....to those I would say beware - your workshop is not about this. For me, it was about realizing the truth of my own inner beauty and divinity, opening into my goddess nature, surrending into the bliss that is always here.... and simply falling in love with myself! It was like a tender kiss from the Beloved Infinite! Delisciously indescribable!

Thank you for opening your heart so wide that you could hold the space for each participant to surrender as much as possible!

I truly honour the Light & the Life within you!"

" Why did I only discover you in my mid-forties? ... There is this report of some other man who attended a tantra workshop in his forties who immediately booked his twenty-something son for the next retreat, not wanting him to spend much of his adult life stumbling about and only using his sexual energy in shallow ways. This is EXACTLY how I feel: if only if I had known earlier... but I am still so very glad to have attended at all. The workshop opened up an entirely new, immensely deeper dimension to my (our:) sexual experiences.

I came to the workshop from a meditation background but wanting to experience my sexual activities at a deeper, more satisfying level. (I have never done anything related to tantra before in my life.) Well, I find what I was looking for and much, much more. The retreat combines meditations and sensual exercises - always at a gentle level without pushing participants into areas they don't want to go. Being a teacher myself, I was particularly impressed how you (Shakti) was constantly aware of every individual's particular state of readiness throughout the workshop. You ever so gently took each of us on our own path and gave individual guidance whenever we were ready to go on to the next level. Sometimes it was as little as a little touch or nudge, or a few words. Other times, it was taking some time to have a longer or deeper conversation. For me, the culmination and critical turn-around (catalyst?) in the weekend were the two evening talks. After being prepared throughout the day with the different exercises, my heart, mind and body were so open to your deep and caring wisdom. My lovemaking can never be the same again. And a lot of what happened that weekend has spilled over into the rest of my life: my interactions with others have got a much more sensual, caring undertone to them. THANK YOU!"

"The sensual beauty I experienced on this workshop opened my awareness to a world that I didn't know existed."

Where are all the men?

2009-01-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

I often hear women in conversation asking, with a touch of hopelessness, where all the conscious men are (and if there are any.) The answer is: They are busy doing Tantra! I have twice as many women as men on my mailing list, but nevertheless the men equal, and often outnumber, the women who actually come to events. Such beautiful men. I am just now coming from a Blissdance class where I had the privilege to witness the presence and sensitivity with which these men meet themselves, each other and especially, women. So now you know, women, where to go look!

Integrating masculine feminine

2008-11-25T01:32:00.000-08:00

Question:
I have a question on the ´total integration´of the feminine and the masculine within. Do you experience that total integration within yourself ? - and how does that feel ? How do I know when that is happening ?

Shakti:
The journey of male-female integration is a central direction of Tantra. This is a major polarity in our psyches; its integration drops many veils of illusion, and brings us much closer to awakening. I have had a very long road with this integration - fascinating it has been, but considerable in extent! It started with an intense exploration of both my masculine and my feminine. The first phase or my exploration of the masculine happened in my twenties. It was not conscious, but still very valuable. In this time, I was "being a woman in a man's world" (exploring my inner masculine) - building a respectable profession and completing my Ph.D. My thirties took me into a deep immersion into the lateral, unknown, intuitive spaces of the feminine. I spent large chunks of time living in nature, listening to my own creative impulses, to my body and to my emotions. It was scary, but exquisite.

Then I had another year or two of consciously exploring both masculine and feminine archetypes with a group of friends. We met weekly, did shamanic journeys, made collages, masks, did dances, acted out our discoveries, dreamt them, lived them... in short, the process delightfully look over our lives!

The next step was my meeting with Rahasya, and the beginning of the integration between the masculine and feminine in me. This has been a fascinating process with many tales to tell. I'll share a highlight, and a turning point.

When my grandfather died earlier this year, the sadness would just not leave me. One day, when I listened into my own feeling, I realised that I was sad not only because of his death, but because of something in me. With the passing of my grandfather, the patriarchal imperative in my bloodline had passed away, and I had the opportunity to step through a doorway. My feminine was asking of my masculine to relate to her in a new way. He had been very supportive to her (I had been in a career as a corporate consultant that provided well for me financially). But what she really wanted is that he support her in expressing what SHE loves and desires (the corporate world was very masculine in orientation). So, we had the inner conversation and he agreed. (Once the masculine knows what is expected of him, he is more than willing to go there!)

Within a month the whole direction of my life had changed, and I became a fultime Tantrika! All the male dimensions of my life (structure, organising, bringing in the money etc) have so far been beautifully taken care of. And my inner woman is flying!

So, the first step is to become aware of the masculine and the feminine in you - what their voices and their positions are currently. Some assistance with this can be very helpful. The truth is that these two are constantly relating in you, and you will understand your own and other's responses to situations much better when you see things on this level...

On sessions

2008-09-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

So some of what I write about on this site sounds sexy, even kinky, I know. Just a warning before you decide to contact me. Tantra is for seekers, people who are asking the big questions in life, like: What is the truth? How can I live in unconditional love? How can I crack through all illusions that keep me tied to false ideas of who I am? If your aim in life is security, stability and getting your needs met, Tantra may be a very bad idea for you. It has consequences which will upset those goals.

So if you were thinking of contacting me because you are looking for

sensual massage, erotic massage, tantric massage, sex or any other need fulfillment/ instant gratification
kama sutra let's pep up our sex life
relationship quick fixes
a kinky adventure
a solution to premature ejaculation
then please be so kind as to keep looking.

It is not that Tantra does not include all of the above, just that Tantra is a vehicle designed specifically for seekers. And please, don't try to convince me or yourself, for that matter, that you could be interested in meditation, etc. if that was the price you had to pay for having the above needs met.

Remember that I am a Dakini. We chop off heads if we need to. As one of my clients said recently: Underneath that lovely exterior there is steel. And he meant steel blade. For more on dakini's, see http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/dakini/

What Women Want - A Tantric Perspective

2008-08-11T04:01:00.000-07:00

Tantra is a path of Awakening to the full truth of who we are. Put in a different way, it is a journey to becoming fully present, in every moment, while being in the body. As you may have noticed, it is not that easy to just “be present”, no matter how much you use your will. The reason is that there are unconscious patterns in the way of our being present.

The unconscious patterning

Women have unconscious patterns as much as men. So, in answering the question: What do women want? – this is where we can start. For all of us, men and women, our eroticism will draw us to what we are yet to discover, integrate or accept about ourselves. What we haven’t accepted in ourselves, we tend to project out onto a potential partner. Please note that, while I at times use heterosexual examples here, the same principles apply for lesbian relationships, as we all have both a masculine and feminine aspect in ourselves.

This is how this plays out when women’s unconscious desires get expressed through erotic attraction:

The rich partner and the gorgeous hunk: Some women will be attracted to any sign that a man will be a good provider that will take care of all their survival needs (these may include diamonds in her unconscious beliefs!) Physical strength and beauty can also be a symbol of the man’s ability to provide.
A partner with social status: If a woman is attached to the view of her tribe/family/culture, she will look for a mate that enhances her status, or at least be acceptable, in the collective.
Personal power – the suit, the job, the fast car, the large penis: Since our culture has for so long given power mostly to men, women are used to looking for power through their men. The external symbols are a representation of personal power. This is why men who play The Game will do everything in their ability to appear as the Alpha Male
The daddy/rescuer: When women have hurts or repressions from the past in the arena of love and belonging, they will look for a partner to fulfill these needs and make them feel loved at last.
The wild, artistic one: If a woman will not allow herself to express her impulses freely, she will be attracted to partners that are comfortable to do so.
The intellectual: Some women are attracted to signs of intelligence and mental flexibility in men. The Mating Mind is a book that holds the position that, in modern times, intellectual ability can be a stronger sign of partner suitability for women than physical strength, etc. Those who are most intelligent and creative, are likely to be the best providers.
The guru: If a woman does not own her own divinity completely, she may be looking for a partner that can be her superior teacher, her God that she can look up to at all times.

The wonderful thing about relationships and erotic attraction is, or course, that they give us and opportunity to see, and come to own, what we have been unconscious of in ourselves. This is another way of saying that there is nothing “wrong” with following an attraction based on any of the above criteria. It just helps immensely if you can see your own eroticism and start to work with it consciously.

Women being masculine

As I mentioned earlier, we all have both a masculine and feminine aspect in us. Women have grown up in a world that is largely still dominated by male tendencies. This can be so even if you have grown up with lesbian parents. Why so?

We as women have wanted to occupy our rightful place next to men. For many women, that has meant living mostly through our masculine in a tough, competitive world. It is not that easy to switch off that persona when we get to the beloved in the bedroom.
Our fathers were our heroes: Since for most women our fathers are the first men in our lives many women spend their lives unconsciously trying to be like their fathers or to please their fathers – though other men who come to represent them.
The world teaches us to make love the masculine way. Most women have learnt about sex from male lovers, who were mostly also unconscious of what they were doing. In addition, the media culture that we live in, portrays women’s sexuality in a way that is actually not very feminine at all. Models often look like young boys. Porn stars and sexy models adopt poses that may appeal superficially to the male mind, but that actually speak very little about the authentic feminine. Even articles on sex and lovemaking are often focused on conventional male approaches to sex.

Presence for the man

As we start to consciously embrace our sexuality, we can come to pure presence. From this place, I propose, the feminine in us wants a whole different set of things from the man.

Worship the goddess

In Tantra, women are believed to be the ones that can lead men into their transcendence through conscious lovemaking. This means that you will do well to listen, to tune into her body, to follow her even in the subtlest of movements.

Give your full presence to your beloved: Drink her in with all your senses. Adore her being, adore her body, worship her breasts and her vagina.
Go subtle: Women’s bodies, if they are just in pure presence, respond to the subtle. Touch her lightly, with full awareness. Explore touch that is as light as a feather, perhaps just one fingernail running up her body. Subtle touch around the breasts and the nipples build arousal and helps the woman to open up. Inside the vagina too, subtle sensation is preferable. Yes, go for deep penetration by all means, but go slow, only as deep as she is comfortable, and stay there in the depths for a while. Here both of you can feel the subtle exchange between the walls of the penis and the vagina. This can be a beautiful and also very healing experience.

Be the rock

In traditional Tantric imagery, the man is the rock, and the woman is the wind and the water. Again I remind you that ultimately we are looking for the marriage of the masculine and feminine in ourselves, so it is not essential to be exploring this with a partner of the opposite gender. Here I am speaking of the male principle. Being the rock means the following:

Stay present: The deeper dream behind what people perceive to be Alpha Male qualities, is that women are looking to see if a man can stay present. If you are interested in a woman, stay present with her, even if she appears not to be interested. It takes courage to do this. The rock must be willing to be battered by the waves and the wind, and still to stay put. It must also be willing for the woman to appear in all her unpredictable wildness, and to take him on the ride of his life.
Go slow: The conditioned male impulse is to rush sexual engagement towards an end point. There are a number of unconscious reasons for this. The first is that men’s first sexual experiences – especially masturbation – were often rushed and rough. As the penis gets treated roughly over a lifetime, it becomes desensitized. It takes practice and presence to become aware again of subtle sensations. It takes going slowly, being attentive. The second reason why men tend to rush is that the procreative urge wants men to ejaculate as fast as possible and as often as possible. As you well know, we human beings are unique in that we have the capacity to make love for pure pleasure, and also simply for the ecstatic bliss of experiencing oneness with everything. If you want to support this capacity in your partner, I suggest you go slow in lovemaking. Explore her whole body. Take your time about it. Penetrate only when her juices are flowing. And do so slowly, slowly, very slowly.

Relax: Traditional sexual exchange is actually a contraction of muscles towards an explosive release, followed by exhaustion. Try approaching lovemaking with deep relaxation. When sexual energy starts to build on your body during penetration, relax your bum. If you don’t, you will have no option but to ejaculate.

One pointed focus: At some point in penetration, the woman will want to play around you like the wind and the water. Keep your attention focused one pointedly in the penis now. Breathe deeply. Remember to relax, as ejaculation will result in a loss of energy and the end of the play. If you can stay focused, the woman will take you into ecstatic heights that are hard to describe – you have to experience them.

Presence for the woman

What do women want in their own sexual experience? Here are some ideas as to how the deep feminine moves in us:

Heightened energy in the breasts: The breasts are women’s positive magnetic pole in the body. We give through our breasts, and through our hearts. When women become aware of the subtle sensations in our breasts, and especially in our nipples, this brings a whole new relationship to your sexuality.
Opening up, relaxing, receiving: Women’s negative, receptive pole is the vagina or yoni. In its highest potential, the vagina opens up, receives, and draws energy up the body. Women are often conditioned to contract the vagina around the penis to speed up ejaculatory orgasm. This, sadly, can also be a way for women to get over what they essentially experience as an unpleasant experience. If the vagina actually does not want the penis, it will contract and push the penis outward. When the vagina is open, just in pure presence, and when the required healing has been done, the woman can feel herself opening, relaxing and opening more as the man slowly enters her. The sensation is like that of a rose of which the petals slowly start to open, row upon row upon row, taking in more and more of what is given. It is possible to take the sexual energy that enters the body through the vagina all the way into the heart, and eventually out the crown of the head like a golden shower.
Moving like wind and water: Conventionally, women tend to move like men in sexual intercourse – backwards and forwards in repetitive motion. This will quickly result in ejaculatory orgasm, as the vagina presses up against the scrotum. While this can be a fun way to activate basic sexual energy, women’s bodies eventually want to start moving more like the wind and the water – in round, swaying circles, in spirals, in unpredictable, flowing shapes. What happens if a woman allows this movement is that the sexual energy starts to rise up her body, taking her into an ecstatic experience that Tantrika’s call skydancing. Typically, this happens when the woman is sitting on top of the man, with him holding one pointed focus, lying still, relaxing his bum, while she allows the energy to sway her into the beyond. A male lover who has learnt to tune into the energy movement in his partner’s body will be taken along by this movement, ecstatically, and often to a place of profound stillness.

The Touch of Woman: Exploring Sisterhood

2008-07-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

In ancient and contemporary Eastern societies, it is considered part of Tantric practice for women to touch and to be with each other in sensual ways. It is such a common fantasy for women that I work with to be with another woman, that I have decided to start creating some opportunities for this exploration. I am calling this journey The Touch of Woman, and it will begin with a series of gatherings for you. Later on I am planning a naked dance celebration for women with my colleague Shima; more about this in time.

I am convinced that at the heart, women’s attraction to the touch of other women is a desire to deepen our own bodily understanding and awareness of what it means to be a woman. In Tantric practice, the sensual togetherness of women is called Sisterhood or Sapphism. The Sakhi or sister/ girl friend is related to Shakti, the female power principle, the raw energy of Tantra. Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger have a beautiful description of Sisterhood and Sapphism in Sexual Secrets. The Alchemy of Ecstasy (2000). They describe how the sensual or even sexual togetherness of women is an established practice in many indigenous and oriental cultures. So for instance the thirteenth century Arab historian Abd-al-Latif al-Baghdadi writes: “The woman who has not tasted repeatedly of the delights of another woman’s body does not exist in our lands.”

Interestingly, sisterhood and Sapphism is not regarded in the Tantric tradition as an expression of homosexual identity. Rather, it is a gateway for the exploration of the feminine. In ancient Oriental Tantric traditions, young people who were coming to age were lead through a Tantric ritual that had the following stages:

1. Self loving – all the initiates are given space and time to explore their own bodies
2. Loving the same gender – getting to know your own body and sexuality better through meeting and exploring with other women, if you are a woman (and the same for young men)
3. Gentle exploration with the opposite gender – this is always done with plenty of time, before the next stage.
4. Penetrative sexual encounter then only follows.

In Western culture, we have little respect for phase 1, and phase 2 is still held as kinky and taboo. At the same time, of course, it is not at all uncommon for women in the West to have sexual encounters with each other.

I believe that, through a slow, gentle and progressive exploration, there is deep wisdom and insight to be gained from women coming together to touch and honour each other. It is a strong passion for me, that we as women get to know the power of female sexuality. We know so little about it. I can tell you about it, but it would be so much more effective to show you. And we can show each other.

As with all my work, the pace of these encounters will be guided by the participants – by what you are willing for, and by where you are in yourself at the time of the meeting.

In the first years of my work with women on sexuality, there was a lot of exploration around the role of the Women’s Union – that tendency that we have as women to judge and criticize each other, especially for anything that seems out of the ordinary in our sexuality. It is time now for the next step: Beyond the Woman’s Union, and into the meeting of Sisterhood. It is time that we start nurturing and caring for each other.

If you are interested in hearing about these events, contact me and I'll keep you informed!

Tantra and the Chakras

2008-04-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

Tantra is a practice that cultivates awareness of our oneness with existence through sexual awakening. This happens through the opening of the chakras or energy centers in the body. Typically in sexual encounter, we send our sexual energy outwards. We may experience deep bliss for a while, but generally this does not last. With Tantric awareness, our sexual vitality starts to move up our bodies like a snake that uncoils, from the root or base of the body all the way up through the crown. Sexual energy moves from the first chakra up. This process is often known at the Uncoiling of the Snake (sexual energy or kundalini).

First Chakra (root)

For many of us, sexual energy or life force is blocked at the base chakra. This happens when we are motivated in our decisions by issues of survival, or by an unwillingness to be in the body. When the first chakra clears, we open to the pulsating power of the earth that rises up through us and initiates our own flow. I have seen in myself and so many others how our estrangement from the earth and the natural world estranges us from the grace of our own bodies. When we get immersed in the mud of her body, mother earth, we find ourselves again, in all our delicious juiciness. Opening the first chakra is really about incarnating, about deciding to be in this body, here, now, fully. In order to get there, we also embrace death as a natural part of this body’s journey. Once we have accepted our death, we can be fully alive.

Second Chakra (sacral)

The second chakra area (the belly) is where we hold our experience of being loved by others. Our primary love relationships typically are with our families (our tribes) and our lovers. Our tribes and our experiences with lovers often shape our notion of what is possible in love and sex. In exploring the second chakra, we look at how both our sexual ideals and our repressions have been shaped by our tribal loyalties. We also unravel how our love relationships have created our sense of who we are in sex and love. Through awareness, we bring healing and the possibility that we may feel well loved, always.

For so many of us, the restrictions, inhibitions and phobias of our tribes have heavily prejudiced us against the natural flow of our sexual bliss. Before we can release these restrictions, we have to bring them to awareness, find and own them in our bodies. We also look at the sexual dreams held by our tribes. Each lover who has touched us has become part of the landscape of our bodies. Opening the second chakra requires taking time to see and celebrate this landscape, and then allow it to change, to resonate with our current truth, with who we most authentically can be now, in our relating, through our sexual flow. The key to unlocking this chakra to allow spontaneous creativity. Sexual and creative energies are one and the same thing. When we unlock the one, we open the other.

Third Chakra (solar plexus)

In today’s world, so much of our experience of our own sexuality is entangled in issues of power. We give away our personal power in relationships, we allow ourselves to be dominated, we lose our sense of self, and we become manipulators. The worldwide interest in S&M is a reflection of our desperate need to engage and resolve the power struggles that weave into our experience of the sexual. Many of us have lost our sexual power through abuse, perpetrated on us, often during childhood.

When the third chakra opens up, we learn to distinguish in our bodies the impulses of pleasure and pain, and we begin to follow pleasure without needing pain. We face our projections and our fantasies in technicolour and integrate them back into our wholeness. Then we are able to choose out of fondness and personal choice.

Fourth Chakra (heart)

Our experience of ourselves as sexual beings has so much to do with what happens in our hearts. One of the main aims of Tanta is to let the energy rise up to the heart. Once sexual energy enters the heart, magic happens. But the power of this meeting also exposes the wounding of our hearts and the sadness that we have carried for so long. This is one of the reasons why we prevent ourselves from making the connection between love and sexuality. We fear the pain of the broken heart that may follow when sexual encounter leads us to deep love. The other reason is that we believe, deep down, that love is good and sex is bad. But the heart has no fire if we do not allow it to be fed by our sexual energy.

The fourth chakra opens when we hold in tenderness whatever the stories are that our hearts are carrying, and we nurture them through creativity and sharing. It is quite likely that this journey will take us back to our infancy, to our first experiences of love and love lost. We hold each other in the postures and songs that the child needs in order to feel deeply, to bring to awareness the wounding, and to release the pain. And then we celebrate the beauty of the heart willing to stand naked and to tremble in the glory of sun and moon. When the heart is open, it fills up, and it flows over, irresistibly.

Fifth Chakra (throat)

As the kundalini or sexual energy starts to rise through and beyond the heart, our world becomes very whole. Our insistence on seeing and experiencing ourselves as separate from the divine dissipates. We enter the place that is called the “choiceless choice”. In this place of paradox, two actions come together. We take responsibility for our lives and express what we want. And at the same time, we surrender our will to that of existence, the tao, the inner divine. We engage the blockages that keep us from expressing and living our truth as sexual beings. We explore what surrender to the divine means in our sexuality. This is an initiation into some of the ancient mysteries of Tanta, the art of sacred sexuality.

Sixth Chakra (third eye)

Have you ever during sexual encounter found yourself hearing, seeing or feeling things that seem to be not from this ordinary world? You may have felt your eyes blinded by light, seen visions or a dissolving of form, heard a ringing in your ears, or felt an intense movement of energy up your spine. These are some of the expressions of the energy released through the third eye chakra.

It has taken me many years to realize that I have since childhood had extrasensory abilities. Because these were not recognized in my culture, I denied their existence and they became dormant. The third eye chakra is the energy centers where all the abilities originate that heighten our awareness – our intuitive knowing, our ability to “see” beyond what the physical eyes can see (clairvoyance), to hear into the unheard and to feel from inside what is true. For me, the reclaiming of these abilities has been linked to the opening of my sexual energy flow or kundalini, and the allowing of the transcendent force that this energy holds.

Seventh Chakra (crown)

To say I Am That is to claim your divinity. To claim your divinity is to see that you are one with all that is. This is the ultimate goal of Tanta – a total dissolution of the sense of a personal self and the awakening to the cosmic Self.

For so long, humanity has held that sex and spirit belong in two opposite categories – profane and sacred, demonic and divine, defiled and pure. There are many reasons why we have kept this separation in place, and many of these reasons we will have worked through in the courses preceding this one. But now we have come to the ultimate reason, which is that the full embracing and allowing of the kundalini, our sexual energy, through our bodies, leads to a merging with all that is. If you have ever had a split second of this experience in sexual encounter, you will know that its impact is irreversible. It breaks the illusion of separation from God and defies all beliefs we have held about our personal limitations.

“Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for the second time in the history of the world, men will have discovered fire!” – Theilard de Chardin

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2008-04-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

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