Neo Tantra and Post-Neo Tantra

Osho coined the term "Neo Tantra" for a good portion of his teaching. There is much confusion as to what this actually means. Many of today's teachers of Tantra claim that this is the physical or sexual aspect of Tantra, or that Neo Tantra implies a focus on teaching tantric sexuality as opposed to teaching the spiritual or transformational meaning of what Tantra is. This is, in my opinion, totally incorrect and really not comprehensible as to why this is being done. When one reads Osho's writings about what he meant, what he taught, one gets a very clear picture that Neo Tantra is being misinterpreted.

Neo Tantra is also often referred to as "western tantra" or "modern tantra" as an expression of our modern times being pre-occupied with sexual matters. I understand Osho’s tantric teachings to actually pick us up where we are - with the human preoccupation with sexuality.

The sexual revolution was essentially about women becoming more open to sexual exploration. The discovery of the birth control pill in the fifties revolutionised sexuality by reducing fear of pregnancy which resulted in women beginning to feel more free about exploring their sexuality. The sixties and the hippy movement with it's "free love” philosophy, opened the doors for sexual exploration even more. As a woman, it was no longer necessary to be shameful about sexual escapades. Since then, it has been a slow movement towards what we have today, the signalisation of almost everything in life. The question is whether this serves us or not.

Tantra does not sexualise us, it picks us up where we are and that is with a huge preoccupation of sexuality that has not ended in spite of a deep shift into more esoteric and spiritual understandings of life that have emerged since then. And indeed, it cannot end because of its very nature and importance to our humanity and lives. So we need to take our pre-occupation with sex into account when our intention is to live more spiritually. Not doing so results in, for most of us, a separation of spirituality and sexuality and this, in end effect, inhibits our spiritual growth, let alone our physical pleasure.

How can we live a spiritual lifestyle and in the bedroom resort to animal nature and a testosterone driven, goal orientated sexuality? Spirituality that includes the body, our senses actually changes our experience of sexuality and gives it back the sacredness it was meant to have.

It was natural that after Osho made Tantra accessible to the West in the sixties and seventies by re-visiting the ancient texts and teaching them for a free-love inspired public, the emphasis would be on experiencing sexuality in all manner or ways, all the while getting rid of inhibitions, as well as guilt. A lot of the tantric work that began in the eighties and nineties focused on sexuality.

In latter years, a new tantric teaching is emerging out of the Neo-Tantra era. Tantra in the West is is no longer "just" about sexuality and although sexuality plays a large role, the emphasis is more on the spiritual aspects of our sexual energy. This Post-Neo Tantra is closer to what Osho actually taught - the transcendence from physical to spiritual and more about transcending sexuality. I personally think that the phase of an almost "free for all" in sexuality where anything goes is done. It is well done and now is the time to go further, but not back into suppression, which is sometimes the case. Having had enough of the sexualisation of Tantra, some schools feel the need to once again reject the sexual aspects of the work. This is unfortunate, it is a step backwards. What is needed is the integration of the polarities that Tantra places us in. Only when this integration has taken place, do we find the complete picture. Only then will we realise fully what it was that Osho actually gave us.

I share the following Osho quotes with you in an attempt to make clear what Osho meant and how the term Neo Tantra should be understood if used correctly. The quotes will also give the reader a good idea of what the path of Tantra in our day and age and in all cultures really is.

Osho quotes

"The first part has to be sex. The second part has to be love. The third part has to be prayer, and the fourth has to be transcendence. So from the gross to the subtle you move. And in the fourth, sex has to completely disappear, love too, prayer too. Make it absolutely silent, peaceful, meditative... not even a trace is left. These are the four stages of Neo-Tantra..."

"Sex is just the beginning, not the end But if you miss the beginning, You will miss the end also."

"If you remain aware you will come to know that sex is not just sex. Sex is the outermost layer, deep inside is the love, and even deeper is prayer, and deepest is God himself. Sex can become a cosmic experience. Then it is Tantra."

"This is tantra's proposition, that mind is nothing but subtle matter; it can be changed. And once you have a different mind you have a different world, because you look through the mind. The world you are seeing, you are seeing because of a particular mind."

"The moment you enter love, you enter a different person. And when you come out you will not be able to recognize your old face; it will not belong to you. A discontinuity will have happened. Now there is a gap, the old man is dead and the new man has come. That is what is known as rebirth - being twice-born."

"Tantra's contribution is the greatest, because it give you keys to transform the lowest into the highest. It gives you keys to transform mud into lotuses."

From the Prologue to Osho's book Sex Matters in answer to the question: "Why does the topic of sex make people so uncomfortable? Why is it such a taboo?"

"The simple reason is that people have been for centuries living a repressed sex life. They have been told by all the religious prophets and the messiahs and the saviors that sex it sin. To my understanding, sex is your only energy, it is life energy. What you do with it depends on you. It can become sin, and it can become also your highest peak of consciousness. It all depends on you how you use the energy.
There was a day when we had no idea how to use electricity. Electricity was available always - as lightning - and was killing people, but now it is your servant. It is doing everything that you want. Sex is bio- electricity. The question is how to use it. And the first principle is not to condemn it. The moment you condemn anything, you cannot use it. Sex should be accepted as a normal, natural thing in life - just as sleep, as hunger, as everything else. Furthermore, sex can be joined with meditation, and once sex can be joined with meditation its whole quality changes. Sex without meditation can only reproduce children. Sex with meditation can give you a new birth, can make you a new human being."

What is...?

Over this busy festive season, stop and ask yourself "What is...what is this moment, what is in this moment, what do I experience, perceive, realise?" We so seldom do this. Our lives are full, day for day, minute for minute...and moment for moment. Life is not slow. Work is not forgiving. Even our "play time", our relaxation time is full of doing. Full of appointments and activities. So much of modern spiritual talk is about "being in the moment: - but what does that mean. Osho puts it beautifully, simply in his answer to a student's question below. Such moments of conscious awareness are meditation. Pure meditation. Tantra uses the senses to be in the moment. Sight, smell, sound and touch. You can do it anywhere. At Christmas dinner with the family, on the beach, in the mountains, the desert...and even in a busy shopping mall. It only takes a moment!

I wish you all, dear students and friends of Tantra, many moments of such beauty and calm over Christmas and the drawing year -end.
Namaste
Leandra

In one of his lectures, Prabhati (a student of Osho) asked: "Beloved Master, What Is?"
Osho answerd":
Prabhati, there are two kinds of things in existence: one, that which can be explained; and the other, that which can only be experienced. The things that can be explained are mundane, ordinary, have no intrinsic value in them. And the things that cannot be explained are really significant, have intrinsic value. For example, sex can be explained, love cannot be explained. Hence, sex becomes a commodity - it can be sold, it can be purchased. Love is not a commodity; you cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it - there is no way. Sex can be explained because it is part of physiology. Love cannot be explained - it is part of your inner mystery.

Unless your sexuality rises and reaches to love it is mundane, it has nothing sacred about it. When your sex becomes love, then it is entering into a totally different dimension - the dimension of the mysterious and the miraculous. Now it is becoming religious, sacred, it is no longer profane. And there is an even higher stage of love - I call it prayer - which is absolutely unexplainable, which is absolutely ineffable. Nothing can be said about it.

When a disciple asked Jesus, "What is prayer?" Jesus fell on his knees and started praying. What else can you do? Prayer cannot be explained, nothing can be said about it, but it can be shown. What can you say about death, what can you say about life? Whatsoever you say will fall short; it cannot soar to the heights of life and death. Those are experiences.

What can you say about beauty? Even if the lake is full of beautiful lotuses and it is a full-moon night, and all is benediction, somebody can ask, "What is beauty?" What can you say? You can show! You can say, "This it it!" But he will say, "I am asking for a definition."

Rabindranath, one of the greatest poets of this country (India), was living on a small houseboat. He used to live for months together on that houseboat; he loved living on the houseboat. It was a full-moon night and he was reading in his room, a small cabin, just by a small candlelight, and he was reading about aesthetics - what is beauty? And the full moon outside, and the cuckoo calling from the distant shore, and the moon reflecting all over the lake, and the whole lake was silver...! It was a tremendously silent night, nobody around, except that cuckoo calling. Once in a while a bird would fly over the boat, or a fish would jump in the lake - and those sounds would deepen the silence even more. And he pondered over great books on aesthetics in search of the definition of what beauty is.

Tired, exhausted, in the middle of the night, he blew out the candle...and he was shocked, surprised. As he blew out the candle, the moon-rays entered through the window, through the door, inside the cabin. That pale light of the candle had been keeping the moon out. Suddenly, he heard the cuckoo calling from the distant shore.

Suddenly, he became aware of the tremendous silence, the depth of the silence surrounding the boat. A fish jumped, and he came out.... He had never seen such a beautiful night. A few white clouds floating in the sky, and the moon and the lake and the cuckoo calling...he was transported into another world.

He wrote in his diary, "I am foolish! I have been searching in books for what beauty is, and beauty was standing outside my door, knocking on my door! I was looking for beauty, searching for beauty, with a small candle, and the small candlelight was keeping the moonlight outside." He wrote in his diary, "It seems my small ego is keeping God out - the small ego, like a pale small candlelight, keeping the light of God outside. And he is waiting outside. All that I need to do is to close the books, blow out the candle of the ego and go out - AND SEE!"

Prabhati, you ask me, "What is?" This...this-ness...this moment you are surrounded by the is. It is within you and without you. The chirping of the birds...and this silence...and you ask me what is?It is not a question that can be answered… We are here to experience something. All explanations about the mysteries of life are nothing but explaining away those things. The basic, root meaning of the word 'explanation' is 'to flatten a thing' - but to flatten a thing is to destroy it. If anybody could answer, "What is God? What is love? What is prayer? What is?" he would have flattened a beautiful, tremendously beautiful, incredible experience, into ugly words. All words are inadequate.Be and know! Be still and know! You are here not to learn more words; you are here to get deeper into silence. Use my words as hints towards a wordless existence. This is it! …

Feel this moment...in its totality, in all its dimensionality, and a great beauty will descend, a great beatitude, a great benediction will surround you; a grace, a very silent ecstasy will start rising in you…that is the only way to know it.”

From: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 2. by OSHO. Talks given from 01/07/79 to 10/07/79. English Discourse series.

Tantra and Sex - What It's Really about!

The most predominant misunderstanding about Tantra is that I encounter, is that it is all about sex. Well, not only sex, but having great sex, the best sex you can imagine, and hours of it with multiple orgasms. The reason for this seems to be the simple fact that sex rules our lives in one way or another. We either have a partner that wants too little of it...or one that wants too much, depending on the perspective from which we are viewing it of course. Or there is no partner in sight to experience either too little or too much, it is simply zero. Sometimes there is lots of it, with lots of partners, in lots of different situations – twosomes, threesomes, foursomes, orgies etc. And of course, there are great deviations from the “normal” variations of it, like BDSM etc. Then there are all sorts of sexual difficulties that can make our lives miserable – difficulty to orgasm or climaxing far too early, having too much or too little libido and funnily enough, this applies to both men and women, although we like to think it’s gender specific and applies to men only!

Here’s the thing: sex IS important. It is the most major energy force in our lives. We come from sex and in fact, the whole of life comes from sex. In Tantra we call sex our Life Force. And as you can imagine, when our Life Force depletes, a whole lot is pulled into a downward spiral with it.

Sexual energy is charged with an internal, mental and physical drive whether we like it or not. This in turn charged with hormones and endorphins etc., it is the single most naturally given drive we have. It is our creative energy, not only physically in the form of pro-creation, but our drive to complete ourselves, to be passionate about whatever it is we allow ourselves to be passionate about – our work, our relationships, our hobbies. Sigmund Freud discovered that it was possible to compensate desire by directing this energy into other passions and that if we don’t it sometimes finds its way into mentally unhealthy results.

So all in all, sex is worth thinking about! The thing is to get out of the habit of simply thinking about sex as sex only. Sex as sex only is just the physical act and that in itself is a pretty mundane activity. Tantra allows us look at everything else that sex is about, it gives more meaning to sex than we generally believe is possible.

The ancient Chinese realised the life force aspect of sexual energy and developed methods of cultivating sexual energy in the form of Taoism and taoist practices, just as the ancient people of India developed the deeply spiritual path of Tantra and tantric practices. Both cultures understood that sex was the very centre of life itself, and although the two paths differ tremendously, they do have in common that sexual energy is essential to our physical, emotional and spiritual well being in one way or another.

Whereas in China the emphasis seems to have been on the cultivation of sexual energy for physical well being and longevity, in India, being probably one of the most spiritually inclined countries in the world, it seems natural that the emphasis was on sex and spirituality, sex and the Divine, sex and enlightenment.

Valerie Brooks puts it beautifully in her book Tantric Awakening – A Woman’s Initiation into the Path of Ecstacy:
“Utilizing our most primitive, overwhelming desires for sexual encounter, tantra teaches transcendence of all desire. Tantra’s ultimate lesson is that all human desire carries at its source the singular desire for God. And even the desire for God is transcended once we understand that we are already there.”

Furthermore...
“Tantra allows anyone to experience the ecstatic, heavenly realm that saints through the ages have attempted to describe through poetry and metaphor. It’s nearly indescribable, because it’s beyond what we can mentally conceive.
...
“People become involved in tantra for various reasons. The practice of tantra can bring us many personal benefits, including improved relationships, emotional healing, physical health, longevity, happiness, wealth, and of course the obvious: an intensely satisfying sex life...But, regardless of diverse initial interests, to remain on this path all must have only agenda – a profound desire for oneness with whatever it is we call God.”
...
“Tantra has no text or manual on how to treat others. Yet the universal call for love within all great spiritual teachings can be embodied through tantric. Tantra calls our intellectual bluff. Tantra takes the theory of loving God to a practical level. Before we can love God, we must love others. Tantra asks us not to idealize love, or to love a concept, but rather to experience love. Tantra is about really loving others, here and now.”
...
“This does not mean that we need to have sex with everyone we want to love. Tantra is a tool that teaches us how to love unconditionally, in every area of our lives. Many people misunderstand how tantric relates to sex. Tantra uses sex only as a vehicle. In and of itself, sex is meaningless. Sex is a tool, like the flame of a candle in meditation or the beads used in prayer. No tool will bring us enlightenment unless we use it for that purpose. Tantra’s purpose is never about having sex. The purpose of tantric is not even to be a tantric. The purpose of tantric is, once again, love. Tantra holds sexuality in a context that is healing and positive, as an expression of God’s love.”
...
“Tantra might be a simple path, but it is not always easy. Many people who begin tantric, even with the best intentions, will fall off the path. Why is it so difficult to make love all the time? Practicing tantric is not like going to church for two hours a week. It will make us look at ourselves. It will ask us to change. It pushes buttons.”

Tantra has pushed my buttons and continues to do so. It has changed how I deal with things, how I deal with all aspects of my life and it continues to do so. It is fascinating and deeply rewarding, and I feel blessed to have gotten over my initial belief that it was all “just about sex”. Had this not been the case, and being the well brought up, sexually conservative South African that I was, I could never have embraced Tantra. I came to Tantra looking for God, or if you prefer, looking for life. I wanted more. I felt there was more. Most importantly, I wanted my frustration with life, my pain around love, my loneliness amidst friends, relatives and people in general to end.

I wanted life and I wanted it fulfilling, full and filled. I got it. I learnt to love myself in a way never before imagined, then I learnt to love others in a way never before achieved...and finally I learnt to love God, the Divine, Existence in a way never before experienced.

Tantra is not a religion. I did not have to adopt a belief system or adhere to doctrines. Tantra is a path, a method, a way of life. It has become my way of life.

Of her personal experience, Valerie Brooks’ writes:
“ In tantra I found a synergy between sexuality and spirituality, between tradition and spontaneity, between the communal and the subjective. It was like glue to me. It brought together all the seemingly irreconcilable pieces, merging the contradictory and disparate messages of religion, philosophy and literature. Tantra guided me inward, showing me that my darkest demons were illusions built of dust. In essence, it enabled me to become a completely different person.“

I too became a completely different person on my tantric journey. Not someone else, just the person I was always meant to be. I hope you enjoyed this read and that you not only have become interested in Valerie Brooks' book, but also in starting your journey with and on the path of Tantra.

Namaste,
Leandra

* all quotes from Tantric Awakening – A Woman’s Initiation into the Path of Ecstacy by Valerie Brooks (pages 11 – 14) ISBN -89281-096-5 (pbk)

Discovering Durga

One of the most invoked forms of the divine feminine is the Hindu goddess Durga. Ma Anand Leandra takes a closer look.

In this manifestation, the multi-armed deity who battles and conquers the mighty buffalo demon Mahisasura, is one of the most spectacular of all personifications of cosmic energy. With three-eyes and adorned with the crescent moon, her multiple arms holding various weapons, emblems, jewels, utensils, garlands and rosaries of beads, and seated on her lion or tiger vehicle, she seemingly has overwhelming omnipotence. Also known as the Divine Mother, she embodies all the other goddess incarnations including Kali (goddess of death and transformation), Lakshmi (goddess of spiritual and material abundance) and Sarasvati (goddess of wisdom and creativity).

According to the myth, demonic forces threatening to conquer the world and take down all who did not agree with their agenda, appeared in the form of Mahisasura, the mighty buffalo demon. When all the male divinities had tried everything they could to put an end to this threat, and after realising that their methods were only perpetuating the violence and with nothing left to do, they fused their energy together allowing Durga to emerge.

Although invoked by the merging of all the male god energies, Durga’s birth was not the result of the will of the gods, but, as with all her incarnations, was the result of her will to be in the world for the benefit of mankind. She chooses when and how to become active in the play of the goddess in the world.

Mahisasura symbolises, among other things, the elemental powers of brutish ignorance and an exaggerated ego-sense whose sole purpose is to dominate and control, destroying the balance of the universe. Durga, her tremendous power poised and ready for this ferocious battle, changes her form time and again, matching his changing forms, until finally she wins the battle by decapitating him.

Then, having completed what she set out to do, she disappears from the battlefield completely, but not before promising to nourish the world in times of need and to fearlessly annihilate all that is not truth, delivering all who call upon her from their enemies, and blessing them.

This disappearance of Durga after her victory expresses one of the deepest truths of the divine feminine: her action in the cosmic drama is without retentive, ego-seeking ambition. She did not remain to be hallowed and subjected to praise and adoration for her deed.

If Durga is understood as the wisdom of the heart, the buffalo demon is the symbol of ignorance, reactions and ego attachments. His constant changing form is symbolic of the ignorant mind continuously jumping from desire to desire, relating directly to our irrational behavior. The demon's uncontrollable rage, destroying everything in its path without regard for the consequences, is a fitting analogy for all the levels of destruction that we face today. This battle is symbolic of the universal war between knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, the oppressor and the oppressed.
This myth asks us to consider how we choose to express our anger. Will we poison our environment by being divisive, fearful, defensive and blaming? Or we will use our rage against the injustice and the polarities of separation in constructive ways? Will be contain the destructive force of our negative emotions: anger, jealousy, pride, greed and delusion over and over again, until such time as they are melted away and no longer exist?
Durga's story is a metaphor about the eternal cyclical repetition of the entire life process. The paradise which she restores on earth is temporary, and the battle between the order and chaos has to recur endlessly. On this battlefield, protagonist and antagonist take on the looks and qualities of the other over and over again, until the disguise of each is penetrated. When demon and goddess are reduced to their true nature, they are, in the last analysis, alike. Without the one we cannot perceive the other.

Symbolising our constant struggle with all the perceived polarities of human life (male and female, right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, pain and joy, love and hate etc), Durga’s story also represents constantly restoring paradise or bliss, until finally we are able to perceive and experience the ‘Oneness of All’ that is inherent in our spiritual nature.

When we reach the state in which all dualism has melted away, we understand that without the other we are not ourselves; when we exist together as one, I am in you and you are in me, only then are there no oppositions and no polarities, leaving only a ‘oneness in an eternal cycle of cosmic activity’.

Durga is a metaphor for the fiercely compassionate divine feminine aspect of our nature. It is our Durga nature that can and will finally free us from an afflicted ego and return us to the penetrating wisdom of divine love. She is the impenetrable place of calm within our hearts from which we are able to choose actions that promote harmony and unity over selfish, harmful acts. Formed out of the sum of all the divine masculine power, she is the ferocious feminine power that paves the way to understanding true oneness, free of all polarities. For men and women alike, it is the Durga within ourselves that paves the way to bliss.

Published in Odyssey Magazine August/September 2011

Speak to us of Love...

The Bridge, Aquarelle on paper by Leandra

Taken from the book "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran, these words describing the ups and downs of love are beautiful and deeply insightful.
I have quoted from The Prophet before here in my journal - in the article I wrote after my father passed away last year, I quoted a portion about death - and indeed, this is a book that has had much meaning to me since my student days when I was first introduced to Gibran's writings. It accompanied me in many roles of loving and living, being a wife and particularly a mother, with work and play and so many things along the path of practical human life.
This particular passage accompanied me very recently, offering me comfort, support and clarity at a time when loving seemed to be a deeply painful process. It helped give my pain direction and meaning, and as I slowly understood the full meaning of Gibran's words, it allowed love's warmth to once again surface in my soul, melting the pain into clear flowing water, rippling over cool earth stones, beautifully.
And so I share it with you all, with warm love in my heart, and a kiss upon my lips.
Namaste,
Leandra

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may would you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Thought his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as hi is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God.":
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips"

Proudly Lingam

Shakti-Shiva Energy (Aquarelle on paper) - Leandra

Proudly Lingam

Rigid
Stands in soldier-steady stance,
Preparing for a Tantric dance.
Sliding.
Oiled hot and stoked, stroked mildly;
And ever so often wildly.
Burning from all four watch-towers
He enters to the stage.
He's centre of the stage
And always by that stage
Proudly lingam.

Merry choice to be a boy.
Merry times to wind this toy.
Merry meet, my phallic friend,
So proudly, proudly lingam.

Justin-Dean Brown - May 2011

(Justin-Dean Brown is now co-perating with Ma Anand Leandra and is working from her premises in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Visit his website Thurisaz Cobra - Practical Pathways to Personal Power)

Starting points & finishing lines and the race in between...or what you’ve always wanted to know about orgasm.

Lingam - Aquarelle by Leandra

Part I - The truth about non-ejaculatory orgasm for men

Introduction

Orgasm is usually both the starting point and the finishing line of any sexual encounter. The starting point because, being the aim or goal of “normal” sex, it is generally what is on our minds as our intention when we start off with any sexual activity. The finishing line because, after orgasm there seems no where else to go, the goal having been reached.

But then, orgasm is so often a letdown. I used to think this was my issue with sexuality but today, from my many years of experience with students coming to Tantra Sacred Massage sessions, I know that most individuals feel this at some stage in their lives. This is particularly as one reaches the forties threshold or in terms of marriage and relationships, the eight to ten year threshold. Mind you, these are estimates and it can happen earlier and later, but invariably it does happen that sex becomes a bit mundane and the feeling that orgasm is not what it is made out to be grows.

Men particularly report that the nicest phase of sex is actually before orgasm, and they wish they could stay in this phase longer. The actual moment of orgasm is usually pretty quick both for men and women – although women do naturally experience a slightly longer orgasm compared to that of men. (I will go more into this in Part III of my article).

In addition, many individuals have some form of difficulty with orgasm itself – either it comes too soon or it does not come at all – both variations are difficult to live with and ruin full sexual satisfaction. So it is perhaps understandable that much of modern day tantric literature and content of Tantra websites worldwide, is filled with the promise of better orgasms – either longer, or deeper, or full body, or multi and for men, non-ejaculatory – and this accompanied by the hope of greater and more satisfying sex which in turn promises a happier and more fulfilling life.

Even without all this information, we seem to find ourselves racing after orgasm. In a sense, the event of Tantra becoming more centre stage worldwide has not done us a favour as the level of sexual expectation is now higher and more individuals are feeling the pressure of having to have more than just an “ordinary” orgasm. So it is understandable that learning to enhance orgasm is one of the main motivations for students coming to tantric massage sessions.

My personal quest on the subject of orgasm

When I came to Tantra, my motivation was to find meaning and healing in my life. I wanted my body, mind and spirit integrated and a way of life that would fulfil me. Basically I wanted my neediness to stop so that I could feel good about who I was and where I was in my life from my inner core, as opposed to having to rely on positive responses from others and situations, that would endorse the meaningfulness of my life and who I was.

Having better orgasms was something I never spoke to my teachers about. I did however ask about the non-ejaculatory orgasm for men, as I thought teaching men this technique would become an important part of my work, and to my astonishment, two of my three teachers told me “forget about non-ejaculatory orgasm, it is not important”! The fact that they were both male, seemed to place more weight on their statements, and thus I was influenced quite strongly in this respect.

After starting my tantric work, I intensified my reading of tantric literature and found that much of it was about methods to enhance orgasm. So it was natural for me to ask myself what the truth of the matter was...and thus began my research into the subject. In this series of articles about orgasm, I share my thoughts resulting from this research as well as from both my personal and work related experiences over the last 6 years or so.

The truth about non-ejaculatory orgasm for men

In almost all tantric literature on this subject, we find the claim that men need to learn and master the method and the practice of non-ejaculatory orgasm in order to contain their energy and experience their full sexual potential.

The reason given is that ejaculation depletes a man’s energy and that by not ejaculating he will contain his energy and be able to “last longer” (i.e. have longer erections, experience longer orgasms (generally called expanded orgasm), become multi-orgasmic (meaning being able to have a number of consecutive orgasms in a single session), and experience full body orgasms (meaning a special kind of orgasm that is felt throughout the body).

All this of course, will result in generally more fulfilling sex and by implication, a happier life. Sometimes one reads that non-ejaculation is the clue to tantric sex, the way to achieve more conscious and more spiritual sex.

Kegel Exercises

The method that is taught worldwide is relatively simple and within a few weeks of practice relatively easy to achieve. Men strengthen the pelvic muscles by training them with what is known as the Kegel exercises.

These exercises were developed and first published in 1948 by a Dr Kegel in order to assist with incontinence. For women they are extremely helpful for tightening the vaginal walls after childbirth, excellent for incontinence difficulties and also increase the experience of orgasm. They assist men with prostrate health, with bladder difficulties and it is said to assist with having stronger and longer lasting erections, thus being very beneficial to men suffering from pre-mature ejaculation.

The next step is to learn to contract the pelvic muscles just before or in the moment of orgasm and in so doing, close off the Vasa Deferentia or sperm ducts resulting in the ejaculate not reaching the tip of the penis to be excreted there. This then has generally been called the “non-ejaculatory orgasm”.

Why this is commonly called non-ejaculatory orgasm I do not know because an ejaculation does occur.

Retrograde ejaculation

What really happens is that contracting the muscles squeezes the sperm ducts closed causing a blockage. When the ejaculate reaches the blockage, it is subsequently pushed back and into the bladder where it quickly dissolves and is urinated out. While the semen are not excreted through the penis, they certainly leave the testicles and are excreted. Medically this is called a retrograde ejaculation, sometimes known as an in-ejaculation.

Retrograde ejaculation is medically speaking the sign of a blockage problem in the sperm ducts caused by infection or certain medications which is one of the main causes of male sterility. It is also the way ejaculation takes place when a prostrate operation has been performed.

Medical problems resulting from blocking the sperm ducts

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with strengthening the pelvic muscles, in fact this is a very healthy thing to do. For those of you who are interested in learning these, follow this link or Google ‘Kegel exercises” and you will find an abundance of info available on the web.

However, please do not use this as a general way of having orgasms guys. I will give you a different method, more natural method. There are a number of difficulties and dangers with this method of prolonging orgasm.Interestingly I have not found tantric literature that makes mention of a variety of medical difficulties that can result from repeated practice of this method.

It is not difficult to imagine that by doing this, pressure is placed on the sperm ducts which can result in irreparable damage being done. This is particularly important for men nearing and reaching their fifties. Apart from this, regular retrograde ejaculation can result in a further variety of medical problems which I won’t go into now.

Another important fact is that regular ejaculation is important for the health of the prostate gland and it used to be medical practice for men to have their prostrate glands “milked” regularly as a preventative measure for the development of cancer. This was a method of massaging the prostate gland to empty it of the colourless thin fluid that is produced there.

So all in all, I do not recommend this method or even regular non-ejaculation through any other method. And in fact, my experience shows that it is not preventing ejaculation that contains a man’s energy but they actual way he orgasms – whether he ejaculates or not!

How this method was assimilated into tantric teaching

The method of in-ejaculation comes from a completely different tradition to that of Tantra which originated in India. It goes back to ancient China and the Taoist tradition and was originally used as an ancient birth control practice. This makes sense as today we understand blockages of the sperm ducts to be one of the major causes for male infertility.

The Taoist also saw this as a way for males to contain their energy and prolong life. This results from the ancient belief that a man could run out of seminal fluid if he ejaculated too much in his life time and that his life would thus be shortened. Another Taoist belief was that if the man retained his sperm, he would retain the intelligence that made them and draw this up to his crown, thus increasing his intelligence. Today we know that these beliefs have no medical substance and that the male does not run out of seminal fluid through ejaculation.

As a side note, interestingly women were encouraged to have frequent secretion of female ejaculate as the belief was that it contained a vital substance from which her partner (the male) could derive energy and power!

Tantra is an ancient Indian tradition that emerged with or prior to Hinduism. In Tantra there is no ancient practice of this method and it certainly had nothing to do with tantric spiritual practice. As the knowledge of Tantra expanded to other countries it was assimilated into the traditional belief system and philosophies of those countries. Thus the development of Buddhist Tantra in Tibet and the incorporation of tantric practices into Taoist practice in China.

Tantra being the non-dogmatic system that it is, also appears to have over time, assimilated other practices and western Tantra (or Neo Tantra) seems to have merged two vastly different traditions. Taoism is concerned with the conservation of energy, Tantra is concerned with sexual energy being our life force and our senses being the door to being in the body and the “now”.

Tantra is concerned with the merging together of the sacred masculine and sacred feminine, the polarised male and female energy. In the traditional tantric understanding, it is in this union that enlightenment is made possible. Although this is mostly understood as the union between a male and a female, it can occur in a meditative way or self-loving rituals without a partner through the merging or balancing of the inner male and inner female energy.

One belief in the tantric system is that the male needs to unite with the female and needs to remain inside her as long as possible in oder to be able to absorb some of her vital life juices and energy, so necessary for men to attain an enlightened state of being.

Does then the non-ejaculatory orgasm exist in Tantra at all?

Yes, certainly, but at least as I teach it, it occurs in more natural way and is not as important as it’s made out to be. What is important, and much more important than ejaculation, is breath. It is the correct breathing technique that contains the energy in the body. As with any yoga practice, breath is the single most important aspect in Tantra and tantric work of any kind. The breathing technique, accompanied by full body relaxation as well as a specific muscular relaxation is what enhances orgasm and can lead to the experience of a true non-ejaculatory orgasm.

This is therefore what I teach. I teach men how to orgasm, how to change their orgasm into one that will contain their energy and in addition open the door to deep and spiritual experiences – and this independent of whether he is alone or with a partner.

The method is the same for men and women, just that women do it naturally and through understanding what they naturally do, they are able to do it more consciously thus enhancing their experience of orgasm.

It is also the method I teach to resolve all kinds of sexual difficulties, including premature ejaculation and difficulty in achieving orgasm.

What is the secret of tantric sex?

It is however, not beneficial in any way to chase the non-ejaculatory orgasm, just as Tantra teaches us not to chase the orgasm itself. Important is being in the moment of whatever you are doing without it having to lead anywhere. That really is the secret of tantric sex. Furthermore, it is a way of life. A way of living and experiencing each moment as it comes along and this way of life does not back away when things get sexual – on the contrary, this momentary experiencing continues throughout the sexual act.

I hope you enjoyed the article so far. I welcome your comments below!
Next month I will write about the real meaning of orgasm and finally I will give you the method I teach.

Warm autumn greetings
Leandra

Next articles:
Part II) The real meaning or orgasm
Part III) The Method to enhance orgasm

On being rock bottom...and just an ordinary woman!

After The Rain - Leandra (Dispersions paint on paper)

I recently watched a TV interview that Opera did with J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. Known in the USA as the first billionaire author, Rowling spoke about her life before and after her success and what motivated her. A lovely woman with a very interesting life, one of the things she said resonated with me particularly. After leaving Spain where she had been living with her first husband, she returned to the UK and found herself in the situation of being totally “rock bottom”, a single mother of a small child, pretty much penniless, alone and without work, the situation could have not been worse. She said that this “rock bottom” became her starting point....and I thought YES, this is what being rock bottom is about. It’s about starting points. To really appreciate being rock bottom, we need to recognise this!

Being rock bottom is always scary. It feels like having no way out. It feels like everything is against us, like there is nothing we can do and we feel very vulnerable. More often than not, it comes as a surprise, not being our own doing and is mostly accompanied by feelings of despair, helplessness and decapitating depression.

On being "rock bottom"...

I know this situation. I have been in it many times in my life for just as many reasons. The reasons were always good, very seldom was it my own doing, life seemed simply to be extremely unfair. I was after all a talented, hard working girl, always trying my best to do things right and yet, again and again, finding myself in personal “rock bottom” situations. It is only in retrospect that I recognise that these rock bottom periods were also always my starting points! Each time, as hitting rock bottom seemed to get worse and worse, more and more difficult to bear and less and less easy to move out of, the reward of having gone through it got better and better. My situation always improved as I was catapulted into making decisions that would force me to follow my dreams, believe in myself and become what I became for a while – until the next rock bottom hit.

My phases of happiness would last a while, until circumstances forced me to re-think my initial idea resulting finally, in making a new decision as I moved along my life path. All the time, it was the difficult times that were my motivation to move on, to change aspects of my life, and achieve even more than I already had. Life seems to be filled with these rock bottoms, but more importantly, it appears to me that they are there for a purpose - the purpose of continually pursuing happiness and satisfaction. After all, if we found ultimate happiness and satisfaction, what would motivate us further?

Looking back, I see that my curve of happiness went steadily upwards, my rock bottoms effectively pushing me to know myself and what makes me tick; to understand what I like and don’t like, what I do well with and not so well, and what motivates me – and “failure” always motivated me. Actually amazing actually is it not? Well, thinking about it...not really!

So what is failure?

Failure is really only the end of one thing and the beginning of another. It is like a doorway, a threshold, an opening to something new.

Theories of Creativity and Creative Problem Solving...

One of the subjects I taught ongoing art therapists in my training institute many years ago was Theories of Creativity.

Now this is interesting. Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that artistic creativity is nothing other than a constant problem solving process and that it is always a problem that motivates decisions for the artist: which materials to use for example and which format, what subject...and then where to start, what colours, how to use the brush etc., a series of never ending little problems which can feel quite daunting, followed by decisions or solutions. Well, possible solutions because every time these decisions would be followed by yet another small problem and another big decision! This, never ending, until the painting or art work is completed and then, finally, after completion, there would be the question of what next?

Theories of Creativity are very similar, if not the same, as Theories of Problem Solving and what is more, these are really the same theories used in business all over the world as well as in life in general. So looking a little closer at this, I want to share some thoughts on creative problem solving with you.

Firstly some definitions...

What is creativity?
There are a number of theories on creativity but what they have in common is that it is a destructive/constructive process that destroys old perceptions through new ones. All creativity involves combining and re-combining previously known elements into unique new configurations. This process is guided by the subconscious which is normally restrained, but during a creative process is far less restrained. In order to be creative, one has to be divergent, convergent, and evaluative and this is measured by the flexibility and fluency of our responses. One needs to be sensitive to what needs changing in order to redefine the information or the situation. And in the end, the success of any creative or problem solving process is based on the originality of the result or product. The product is always a transformation something known into something not previously known. This then leads to another definition..

What is creative problem solving?
Creative Problem Solving is the mental process of creating a solution to a problem. It is a special form of problem solving in which the solution is independently created rather than learned with assistance. To qualify as creative problem solving, the solution must either have value, clearly solve the stated problem, or be appreciated by someone, for whom the situation improves.

What about Artistic Creativity?
It is incorrect to think that while problem solving always involves creativity, artistic creativity does not involve problem solving. In the fields of music, poetry, writing and art for example, the artist is constantly solving problems: which color to use, which brush, which word or which theme to make use of? The artist is trying to create something that gets as close as possible to his/her deepest desire, his/her deepest thought or emotion. It also requires newness as a characteristic of what is created, something that will appeal to the artist. However, this does not necessarily imply that his/her creation has value or is appreciated by other people.

What constitutes a problem that requires solving?
The situation prior to the solution does not need to be labelled as a problem. Alternate labels include: a challenge, an opportunity, a situation which can be improved on, or in which there is room for improvement. Next, we need to have a closer look as the phases of creativity and creative problem solving.

Phases of Creativity and Creative Problem Solving Processes

Most theories on creativity define certain phases in a set order. Based on the work of various researchers, I have combined a number of these and defined 6 main phases to creativity and to creative problem solving. Each phase is clearly defined and is accompanied by different emotions.

Orientation Phase: recognising the fact of a problem that needs a solution

Preparation Phase: gathering information about the problem and converting a fuzzy or confused statement of the problem into a broad statement, one that is more suitable to idea finding.

Incubation Phase: almost like being pregnant with the problem. This is usually a sub-conscious phase - waiting for the solution or illumination to “come” while the old and the new stand side by side - the most difficult phase.

Illumination Phase: recognising the solution, what we call a “aha” moment, accompanied by good feelings of pending activity.

Implementation Phase: giving physical form to the idea or “aha” solution – a very active phase of putting the solution into practice.

Verification Phase: verifying the solution as we evaluating or judge the result as to its effectiveness.

And then we are once again very possibly at the new beginning of yet another "problem" that needs solving, and another possible "rock bottom" in life.

The time between the Verification Phase and a new Orientation Phase may be immediate and it may be years. One solution invariably leads to another decision making or problem solving process sooner or later and the process starts again.

Of these phases, the second one, the Incubation Phase, is the most difficult to endure. You know something needs changing because you have recognised the problem. Possible solutions come and go as the mind goes overtime thinking things through, going around and around in a seemingly never ending spiral, backwards and forwards. Emotions run haywire and self-esteem seems not to exist as the actual decision, the final solution seems not to completely emerge.

This phase is ended by the long awaited for “aha” moment which is nothing else than “knowing” - knowing what to do next, bringing relief to the turmoil. Emotions cool down as the mind slows down, as it is now able to think: “I am able to do something...this is what I can do!”

Once again, this is very interesting as, while realising the solution to a problem, there is no certainty about the outcome – ever. Yet we feel relieved because we can finally go into action.

Putting the solution into practice is the real hard work which still has to subsequently be verified as to whether the solution was that good - and this always results in a new problem. Why? Because there is never a totally final solution to anything. If there were, we would no longer exist. We would no longer have anything to live for, anything to work towards - and as humans, we need this “needing” something to work towards. Our striving is always to get better, be better, better the situation, better something in our lives. And that is the very purpose of evolution itself.

The real problem to any problem

The real problem to any problem is having a never ending variety of choices. Some choices are perceived, some are not. And then not knowing which choice to make, or being fearful it may be the wrong one, which inhibits creative flow in any area of work or life. This is as true for artists as it is for work situations and indeed is applicable to all aspects of life. And is life itself not a series of problems that need to be solved, whether we realise this or not? We do it all the time. Perhaps we are aware of this process and perhaps not. We are however in this process constantly. In business as well as in play, in relationships and in aloneness, in all phases of life we proceed from one such situation to another.

A personal account of my recent “rock bottom”

I was in this predicament last year for months on end when my life was impacted by difficulties and problems after the passing of my father, and I hit aall time heavy “rock bottom”. My perceived family structure disintegrated into a continuum of total confusion as trusted family structures broke down, leaving my life in total disarray. What is more, the story reads like a Hollywood thriller/drama in an antagonist play, this being a play in which the antagonist takes over the role of the protagonist in determining the unfolding drama.

The protagonist: the CEO of the large welfare organisation which my parents had begun when I was just 10 years old. She had enjoyed a particularly close relationship with my father with whom she worked together very closely. My 90 year old mother did not particularly like her and after my father’s passing, found herself totally dependent on the CEO’s decision as to where and how she would continue to live. After the CEO invited herself to our family funeral she topped this by standing up suddenly as the main speaker, catapulting my mother into a mentally confused, almost paranoid state of being.

The antagonist: my brother, a drug addict from an early age and now chronically alcoholic, saw this as his chance of consolidating his lifestyle, and removed my mother from her protected place of residence with all the care she needed, and refused to tell anyone to where he was taking her. This resulted in my mother being missing for some weeks. The difficulty was, she went willingly - in her mind, she was fleeing from the clutches of the CEO and she did not comprehend the consequences of such a move. His motivation, being what he was, was obviously to secure her money and her furniture.

The police, family courts and lawyers all had their hands tied. A High Court Order placing my mother under curatorship, allowing them to become active, would take months and cost a fortune, and what is more, may not even have been successful – my mom is charming with outsiders to the family and could easily have convinced the court that she was in her right mind – thus we had been warned by social workers and the psychiatrist I consulted.

The actors: My self, my sister and my nephew. Before the removal of my mom, I had exposed my brother to her when I found valuable small items of furniture missing and her bank card as well as drugs in his possession. She however did not want to believe me resulting in a breakdown of communication between her and myself.

Then too, the communication between my sister and myself broke down as each of us, still trying to come to terms with our father’s passing, hurting and emotional, were overwhelmed by the things we had to deal with.

Finally, the CEO informed me that my father’s firearms had been collected by my brother from their place of safe keeping with the “permission” of our mother, who thought she was preventing the CEO getting her hands on them, and my life was subsequently so seriously and evidently threatened, as to warrant a police protection order which, a few weeks later after the court hearing, resulted in a permanent warrant for the arrest for my brother.

At the handing over of the firearms to the police, it became apparent that one firearm was missing. The the police investigated my brother for some weeks claiming they were going to arrest and charge him with illegal possession of firearms as well as the loss (or illegal sale) of one of them. This however reached a dead end after my brother befriended the investigating officer and the investigation was stalled and finally stopped.

In the mean time, my brother’s son, whose legal guardian I am and who had been living with me since he was 8, became seriously ill with stomach ulcers (at age 14!) and was in and out of hospital during end of year school exams.

The story then nears an ending, two months later, with my brother deserting my mother during a drunken orgy and disappearing. After two days of being totally alone, her landlord finally managed, through the police, to get the details to contact my sister and myself, resulting in the communication between my sister and myself beginning anew, and we were finally able to get our mother out of town and to a safe place.

During all this, I spent many fearful nights of anxiety - the threat to my life in itself was no easy task to deal with, let alone the fear of what was to happen to my mother. I wept tears to fill barrels of rain water tanks as, in all this, I had no idea what to do or where to turn. All the official places of assistance offered no further help. Family members and long standing family friends became very quiet as they withdrew, one after the other, equally overwhelmed by the events and obviously not wanting to get involved.

Nights and days of de-capitulating depression resulted, draining all energy out of my being and leaving me just barely functioning at times. At the same time, understandably, I was hardly in a position to work effectively let alone at all - and after a total of 5 months of this drama and hardly earning anything while at the same time spending more on various consultations etc. as well as the repeated hospitalisation of my nephew, serious financial difficulties followed. It was horrendous.

For weeks on end, I found myself just reacting to the occurrences with no creativity, in fact no life force, flowing through me at all. The phrase “just an ordinary family” often came to my mind, and for the first time, I felt sympathy and understanding for families whose stories filtered into in the media from time to time. These stories of individuals in malfunctioning families had previously appeared unrealistic to me. Now I knew, they too, were just also just ordinary people in ordinary families going about an ordinary life - until the structures in place break down, seemingly out of the blue and nothing, absolutely nothing, seems ordinary any more.

I knew something had to change. I needed something to change. My nephew needed something to change. Something had to give and I did not want it to be our mental, emotional and physical health. This recognition ended my Orientation Phase and set off the Preparation Phase as my mind, at last, became more active trying to think of ways out.

After mentally playing with a number of solutions, including fleeing the country and returning to Germany, the answer arose. Thus, finally, my Incubation Phase set in. It came slowly, almost ghostlike until the solution was “suddenly” there and I could, once again, become active. On a short trip to Cape Town, two close friends sat patiently one afternoon listening to the pros and cons of my solution to this dillema, and by the end of the day I had my “aha” moment and the Illumination Phase was finally there: the decision to move to Cape Town had been made! I felt almost instantaneously relieved and catapulted out of everything that had immobilised me for months.

It had not been an easy decision to take. I have a large beautiful house on the Indian Ocean coast south of Durban which I absolutely loved, three adorable Jack Russell’s (who by the way, were my only warmth and comfort for most of those months), my nephew was in a boarding school not too far away....never the less, it felt good to be going into the active Implementation Phase. Within a few short months of pretty hectic planning, after the school year had ended and my facilitation at the 3-week International Tantra Teacher Training in the Northern Drakensberg was over, my nephew and I arrived in Cape Town early this year - with five suitcases and 25 kilos overweight - finally leaving everything behind.

Now, just on two months into Cape Town living, the Verification Phase to my personal rock bottom solution is feeling very good. The grass is green, the sky is blue, flowers are blooming and the sun is shining – and how it has been shining in Cape Town this summer! My heart is open and warm and I feel pretty “normal” in my life again. I function once again as accostomed, full of creativity and activity, once again enjoying my life in spite of tons of things to attend to as we settle down.

Life now continues in a more "normal" way. I would never had made this decision had not the circumstances last year forced me into action. There is still much to be achieved (my Jack Russels have yet to join me in Cape Town, my house in KZN has to be organised and prepared to go onto the market (which granted still has to revive), new jobs for my beloved domestic workers who had been with me for so long need to be found, much of my moms' furniture has to be divided amongst family members - the list is still endless. But I am now in a position to tackle these tasks, one after the other, and I know, I really do know, that all this will subsequently fall into place slowly.

I sleep well once again and what is more, I have been able to read a couple of novels as well as to write again! New Durga Tantra School retreats are planned and soon, next week actually, Ines, one of the tantric massage practitioners from Germany that I met on the International Tantra Teacher Training, will arrive to spend two months with me, furthering her training and sharing her work with many of my students. My nephew is well settled into his new Cape Town school, now no longer a boarder - this was part of our solution plan - and is laughing and joking and his usual self again. The transisition to becoming a real mum once again, after years of not having this role, has been gentle and actually quite easy, and I find myself enjoying all the cooking, washing of school uniforms and the overseeing of homework involved in the life of a now 15 year old boy. Life is good to both of us!

No doubt, life in Cape Town life will present smaller and perhaps even bigger situations for similar problem solving processes. When it does, would this mean the original decision was a mistake? Not at all! It would simply mean that the circle of life continues as it always does. It presents us with various situations that stretch us, sometimes beyond our wildest dreams. The stretching will result in new endings presenting new beginnings once again.

Why am I relating this piece of my personal life to you, the reader?

I wish to inspire you to think of life along these terms. I would like to motivate you to use this pattern, this interface for your own creative problem solving processes when you have situations requiring radical change...and I hope to instil in you a feeling of everything being in perfect order when things appear to go terribly wrong in your life.

I have always known this basic fact of life and have always reacted in this way, intuitively, instinctively. My instinct was always to survive and to do this well. What Tantra has given me however, is the insight to understand these processes like never before and the strength to experience what has to be experienced, even more fully than ever before.

Taking up the path of Tantra, I have a science, a method and a way of life that supports me all the way. More particularly, I have the knowledge that I can make something out of any situation, even the worst situation imaginable.

Tantra has given me the wisdom to know that I am not a victim of circumstances. I am perhaps an executor of circumstances, but never a victim. How do I feel in my life since coming to Tantra? I feel simply human and I love my life. Just an ordinary woman in an ordinary life, I can create something that will solve anything...and so can you!

Much love and inspiration to you all...
Leandra

"The story of our life is, in the end, not our life. It is our story"
(From the movie Americano)

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
Robert Frost

The Way Home...Relationships & Sexuality - A Tantric Perspective

( Painting by Leandra - Watercolor Pencils on paper)

This article was published in Odyssey Magazine (August/September 2010).

Although we are living in the age of sexual liberation, it is rare to find people enjoying a fulfilling sexuality. We have been led to believe that spirituality and sexuality are divided, and struggle to find meaning in our sexuality. The sexual revolution of the sixties has in fact, led to marketing life's most intimate moments, resulting in floods of images that appear to have liberated us from conventional norms but in fact, have simply created a new cliché

The pressures of a busy and stressful modern life, the challenge of on-going relationships and marriage as well as bringing up children within full working lives, presents an enormous strain on individuals and couples. Intimacy is often reduced to having sex as a kind of sleeping pill at night, resulting in a quick release of tension and a general feeling of emptiness. The principles of our performance-oriented society have forced their way into the bedroom resulting in more and more men and women experiencing sexual difficulties. Literature teaching sexual techniques and a variety of sexual positions or sexual diversions, do not seem to hold the key to sexual or relationship fulfillment. We seem to chase one thrill after the other, one orgasm after the other or for that matter, one sexual escapade after the other without actually finding what we are looking for.

The result is intimacy that is not uplifting and lacking in real joy or any form of spirituality and the fulfillment of our hearts’ desires remains elusive. Over and above this, many adults are burdened with sexually repressive conditioning from childhood, education, religion, and in South Africa, we know too well that even politics can play a huge role in how we think and feel and with whom we engage sexually.

Whether we live in a relationship, alone or in varying relationships, our lives seem so often to be accompanied by loneliness and a lack of love. Most individuals seem to be longing for an affirmation of self in a partner, while yearning for vitality and a form of sexuality that affirms the unity of body and soul.

Despite the fact that Tantra is thousands of years old, it presents us with a very real possibility to transcend these difficulties arising from this very modern situation. Tantra cultivates, deepens and spiritualises human nature without presenting it as imperfect or repressing any aspect of it.

Tantric literature on the market today however, is often in the form of sex manuals, promising bigger and better orgasms and more sexual satisfaction, whereas Tantra is actually so much more. Tantra is a non-dogmatic spiritual path, a teaching of non-judgmental, absolute and unconditional love. It teaches meditation in the most physical moments of human experience, positively encompassing and influencing all aspects of life and particularly relationships of all kinds.

An ever-expanding system that has matured through the ages, Tantra is an art, a method and a science, an outlook and a way of life that teaches us how to open our hearts, how to embrace our emotionality and sexuality, enabling us to celebrate the whole of life, and recognising the Divine essence within all beings. Tantra is in effect an experiential path of transformation.

In contrast to traditional psychotherapy, esoteric and other healing modes, Tantra uses the body and its physical expression to work on blockages in the subconscious, embracing the sexual emotionally, physically and spiritually, and thus doing, satisfying and amplifying the human soul. Most of us, have forgotten how to connect and live from a place of being whole and perfect already. Tantra shows us the way back home.

Tantra trains the body to improve its capacity for the flow of life energy, giving the mind a higher ability to concentrate, and the soul ease and lightness. Rather than concentrating on the heights of physical pleasure alone, Tantra details the mental states to be achieved during sexual activity enabling us to bridge the gap of sexuality and spirituality.

Each human being is understood as a reflection of the entire cosmos. By entering inside one's own subjective being with a witnessing consciousness, all aspects of the body, mind and emotions are revealed in their refined potential. With the whole person being accepted as divine, each aspect of being human can become a door to expanded consciousness. Tantra teaches how to embrace our whole experience of human existence, including sexuality, and in so doing experience something of who we really are and our relationship to the Divine.

Central to Tantra is the understanding that sexual energy is our life force, and that the universe, and humans as individuals, are all filled with the same energy. Sexual energy is reclaimed as sacred, healing the split between body and spirit. Any repression of this energy leaves us unbalanced and damaged. Trauma, (grief, pain, embarrassment, physical or emotional abuse etc.) stored in our body as a body memory results in blockages or limitations which continue throughout our lives, reducing our emotional and physical well-being, inhibiting our flow of energy and limiting a full expression of life and sexuality. Tantra can be seen as a reconciliation of sexuality and spirituality.

In its very essence Tantra is the yoga of presence, of becoming aware or conscious of “what is” in the body at any given moment. This includes our emotions and thoughts as we learn to accept whatever is arising in the moment without judgment.

The refined potential of every human being is Divine, and Tantra shows you how to experience this divineness in a busy life through a new understanding of how to cultivate male and female energy and use it to our best potential. The very basic and single most important aspect of tantric sexuality and meditation is breath, which is fundamental to our very being. With the conscious use of breath during the sexual union it becomes the highest prayer, the closest humans can get to being and feeling Divine. What is more, in the very moment of orgasm, something unique and profound occurs: we drop personal identity, all that we identify as “the me” in our lives and become, for some few moments, the Divine essence that we truly are. Orgasm is the simplest way of dropping our ego’s - all it takes to experience this, is conscious awareness of that very moment. In this space, be it with a partner or alone, we merge with Consciousness and experience Bliss. Once experienced, we no longer seek that great orgasm for the sake of it, we no longer seek perpetual sexual escapades that leave us empty. We seek only to “Be”, in the moment, pure, simple, just who we really are.

The eastern Mystic Osho once said” Sex is just the beginning, not the end, but if you miss the beginning, you will miss the end also". In order to have fulfilling relationships we need a fulfilling sexuality, and more so, we need the reconciliation of sexuality and spirituality. It is the separation of the two that predicts frustration, dooming the very relationships we hold so high, to become simply getting through life’s turmoil’s, with little of the peace of being that we long for.

A tantric journey, both for individuals and couples, offers a wonderful answer to all of this. It takes courage to go this route, but it is rewarding in a very real sense, not just sexually. There is an abundance of literature on the market available as a guide, however the best way of experiencing Tantra and starting this journey, is with a dedicated and genuine teacher, teaching from the heart and with love, who will guide you in either individual sessions or in residential retreats. The reward for both individuals and couples is great.

You can begin right where you now are, and what is more, there is nothing you have to believe in, no dogma to be accepted, in order to experience the benefits of Tantra.

Ma Anand Leandra (September 2010)

"The first part has to be sex.
The second part has to be love.
The third part has to be prayer, and the fourth has to be transcendence.
So from the gross to the subtle you move.
And in the fourth, sex has to completely disappear, love too, prayer too.
Make it absolutely silent, peaceful, meditative...
not even a trace is left.
These are the four stages of Neo-Tantra...”
Osho

Life is the rose in my heart...

Life is the rose in my heart.
Life is the scent of roses radiating through me.

Life is the sun in my in breast making the rose bloom.

Life is the rain on my skin nourishing the blossom.

Life is the wind in my soul chasing the clouds away.

Life is the storm in my mind bringing new clarity.

Life is the fire in my yoni burning the old and growing the new.

Life is the love in my heart,
blossoming like a rose and filling space with it's beauty and fragrance.

Life is the air that breathes me and the power that carries me.

Life is the love flowing through my heart making me all that I am.

Life is all that I am:
Beloved heart forever glowing, Beloved rose forever blooming.

Poem & both paintings by Ma Anand Leandra
(Aquarell on paper)

Follow up on my last blog re tantric massage training...

Hi everyone,
I just heard about the latest training method for tantra massage: teach yourself, give a friend (who is a regular massage therapist) a massage and receive one from him and get him to give you a certificate! So beware when you read "I am currently in training". Ask who the trainer is, what his/her background is and just how many hours training is taking place. If you don't, you may find yourself getting a tantric massage by such a "trained & certified" practitioner.

This is by the way the training that the person I described in my previous blog who works in Bryanston, Johannesburg is undergoing. She had 9 hours of a 60 hour training with me before she broke the training off and started advertising tantric massage on her website. She also advertises on her website that she is currently in training and will soon be receiving her certificate.

I don't mind what people do, but I do mind when clients are conned into believing someone is trained and certified in any massage, let alone tantric massage. And remember, tantric massage is not any massage, slightly changed to be more sensual with the added benifit of a "happy end". That is sensual massage or erotic massage, and no matter how good it is, it is not, cannot be tantric massage.
Make sure you get the real deal when seeking tantric massage - and ask yourself, what the worth of a practitioner is who advertises like this.
Do I have a chip on my shoulder? Probably, but I think it is a good one!

Warm greetings
Leandra

What does spring have to do with tantric massage?

The last time I wrote in my journal, winter was coming alive and this time it is spring's turn to peek-a-boo at us as the last cold days slowly recede.


Have you noticed the first new fresh leaves appearing on some shrubs or emerging buds on otherwise empty branches...dainty, translucent light green against the dark green of winter ever greens? Oh how I love the contrasting colours as the cold yields to the arrival of the warmer season allowing the new and the old to stand adjunct each other. There is no other season that shows so clearly that everything in life is a continual process of death and new birth.


Theories on Creativity & Problem Solving are a bit like spring

Is it not like this when we make changes in our lives? The old is still apparent while the new is emerging, and we have a chance to look at both, a chance to re-visit what we are leaving behind while embracing that which is new. It is, to me, awe inspiring and quite amaizing. It is also extremely difficult. In theories of creativity and problem solving, this is recognised as the emotionally most uncomfortable phase. It is the so-called “Incubation Phase”. The creative solution or answer is not quite clear and the old and the new stand side by side. Thoughts and reasoning, accompanied by the respective attached emotions, sway back and forth until such time as what is called “illumination” is experienced. This is sometimes called an “ah-hah experience”.


But more about this in another journal entry, what is relevant here, is the fact that creativity can be defined quite simply as the ability to look at one thing and see another.


There are a number of different theories on creativity, but what they have in common is that, it is seen to be a destructive/constructive process during which old perceptions are destroyed and replaced by new ones, and that the process is guided by the subconscious, which normally is restrained, but during a creative process needs to be, and usually is, far less restrained.

Creative or problem solving processes

A creative process involves combining and recombining previously known elements into new, unique configurations. In order to be creative, one has to be divergent, convergent, and evaluative, and this is measured by the flexibility and fluency of our responses. One needs to be sensitive to what needs changing, in order to redefine the information or the situation. And in the end, the success of any creative or problem solving process is based on the originality of the result or product. The product is always a transformation of something known into something not previously known.


Spring symbolises or rather epitomises this process. Although the process of a particular flower springing forth form a closed bud is well known to us, each flower is, each and every time, completely unique.

Spring in terms of personal changes


For us, spring is often a time when, coming out of the cold, withdrawn winter days, we feel new life emerging as we become more active and begin to put plans and ideas, pondered on during the less energetic winter months, into action. This is often when the new feels ready to come alive, ready to be born, ready to be implemented, and also a time when we ourselves feel ready to finally give birth to something new in our lives.


It is not surprising to me that, in my life, this is exactly what is happening. I have come out of a long period of trying to do something which would just not materialise. Accompanied by feelings of despondence and perseverance, of hope and disappointment, of trust and disbelief, with spring emerging, finally all my efforts appear to have formed a new bud, and the blossom is slowly beginning to break through.

First of all I want to share with you that which is old and withered and receding in a sense, and then I will also share with you the new, a tender bud ready to burst into life, a new creation  - something about my personal destructive/constructive process. And in sharing this I hope to offer an answer to the question: what makes a tantric massage practitioner real?

Finding women to work with


It has been a very long and difficult journey trying to find women to train in tantric massage. Those of you who have followed my journal since 2008 will know this. Time and time again, I had so much hope and put in so much effort, and each time it would not materialise the way I had envisaged. Left, right and centre, the women changed their minds, often even before the training started. There seem to be many reasons for this, the main one was always their fear of the intimate, sexual aspect of the work.

Over time, I have had to recognise however, it was also the way I was going about things that was causing me difficulties. I was offering the training free of charge, and I was too trusting - so I have been told by those who know me well – and the combination of the two would not, could not work.

Tantra Sacred Massage training program


So early this year, I changed this, set up a detailed 60 hour training program for a nominal fee. It was neatly designed to include practical and theoretical work as well as an "on the job" internship in my Tantra Sacred Massage practice, culminating finally in Practical’s, whereby the student would work with clients under my before-and-after supervision. These sessions were to be documented, and finally there would be an oral exam on the basis of this documentation. A certificate and membership in NITSA (National Institute of Tantra, South Africa) would complete the process. And in addition, there would be an abundance of work in my Tantra Sacred Massage practice. The new practitioner would work in my set up premises, with no personal cost involved except their transport to get there. I also I enlisted a corporate lawyer who set up a written agreement covering the training as well as the subsequent work and I finally, would continue to mentor the new practitioner.


The standards for training in Germany, where my own training was, are extremely high, resulting also in a high financial investment. I had tried to formulate a program that suited the particular situation in South Africa: lack of funds for a many people struggling to make a living and very short yearly leave. I was offering the minimum amount of time and costs for a maximum amount of good training, plus guaranteed work after training - what I was offering felt good and really and fair and I thought it would work well.


So what happened?

The first candidate...
was a 34 year old woman from my home village on the Durban South Coast. She and her partner were naturists and she already ran a small tantric massage practice from her home. Her “training” had been with a fellow naturist, a professional massage therapist who had adapted his work to include sensual massage. The issues with the intimate nature of the work that I had had in the past would not feature here.


Her training with me went very well - as long as we were working together. Then shortly after my dad became seriously ill, I asked her to go to Johannesburg to take the already fully booked massage sessions on her own, avoiding having to cancel them – and this is when everything began to go horribly wrong.


She missed bookings, I received reports that she was late, that the room was totally unprepared and cold, that she was even speaking badly about me and that on one occasion, she was busy massaging a friend when the booked student arrived. Our communication seemed to have broken down as she did not take my calls or answer my SMS.


Only when her boyfriend let something slip in a conversation with me, did I begin to understand: she had been advertising erotic massages with “happy endings” secretly on a website using nude photos of herself to animate people to book! I needed to protect myself and my work and booked an immediate flight to Johannesburg. Ten minutes before I even arrived at my garden cottage in Greenside, she had left, on foot, suitcase and all.


The second candidate...
was a holistic massage practitioner based in Johannesburg. As she had an 8 year old daughter, she wanted to combine a beach holiday with her daughter with the start of the training, and so we arranged for her to begin her training during the school holidays. I generously took them both into my home for 10 days as she had no money to finance accommodation – I know, same story, I was too trusting - and thus we began the training.


I arranged a meeting with the lawyer who set up the agreement, and when she asked for some changes to be made, I readily agreed. Part of the discussion (and the agreement) was the fact that she would not offer tantric massage from her holistic massage practice. This would have defeated the purpose of taking her into my practice. She had no problem in agreeing to keep her holistic massage practice and my tantric massage practice completely separate.


Now this 47 year old woman had absolutely no prior experience with Tantra, she had indeed never even read a book about Tantra and knew very little what it was about. I felt however, that the training would give her all she needed to get started and that my continued mentorship would do the rest. She had told me that she offered "happy endings" for certain clients, and so it again appeared that the intimacy problems of previous candidates would not feature here. I could not have been further from the truth!


The training began with my giving her a very first experience of a tantric massage. It remained incomplete as she refused to receive the yoni massage. We discussed her fears at length, and agreed that we would take the time she needed to get accustomed to the idea of the yoni massage.


We then used the 4-handed massage on a client who offered to be the guinea-pig for her first training session. She however felt nauseous when I was giving the lingam massage and later told me that, this was how she always felt when she gave her "happy endings". The reason for this, so she told me, was the fact that she had worked as a prostitute in her twenties and had learnt to shut down her emotions. She further told me, that she had been sexually molested by her father as a child and had received no therapy for this. I explained that it was here that she learnt to shut down her emotions, and she had never learnt to recover them. Again we agreed that we would take all the time she needed for her to heal these wounds, and indeed, a tantric process was ideal. I undertook to work carefully and gently, her personal healing was paramount to her working with clients professionally with Tantra Sacred Massage.


Another piece of information she gave me was why she gave some clients “happy endings” in her holistic massage practice, although doing this made her feel sick: she was not getting many bookings, she desperately needed the cash, and the “happy endings” meant “they (the clients) will come back. I do it for the money”.


By the time she left, she had had a wonderful free holiday with her daughter and we had completed only 9 training hours. She had not received or given a yoni massage, she had not given or learnt to give the lingam massage. She did experience half a tantric massage, and had experienced my work in two massage sessions. After her nausea during the first session however, I had to ask her to leave the room before I gave the lingam massage in the second session - my student from Germany was well experienced in receiving tantric massages and had paid for his session, I was not going to compromise his experience as a result of her inhibitions. .


She also had also, as all my student do, had a brief introduction to the basic tantric breathing technique, which she was to practice on a daily basis before we would continue the training in Johannesburg three weeks later. Finally I loaned her some good tantric reading material and she returned to Johannesburg.


Again, immediately after her leaving, the communication broke down. After a few days, I visited her website and guess what? She was advertising tantric massage as a service for a fee. When I dared to mention to her "you're not supposed to be doing this..." she exploded, highly dramatic, and after a series of erratic and very rude SMS, claiming amongst other things, that I had a control problem, and that I must be a very unhappy person, she refused to take my calls. Needless to say, she also refused to pay the final training instalment, nor did she sign the agreement - and I struggled to get my books back.


A short while later, her website boasted testimonials from more than satisfied clients raving about her “magic”, about being elevated 6cm above the table, about feeling relaxed to the extent it was like they were “drugged”, about her “magical” fingertips and the fact that she breathed with them throughout the session....and wow, wow, wow! Her website now offers "Transforming Tantric Massage" given by a "Tantriker" and the list of similar testimonials gets longer and longer.


The description of what tantric massage is and does is mostly about the “power” her clients are able feel after undergoing one of her tantric massages, plus a whole lot of other stuff, taken from the books I loaned her and from information I had so freely given her, mostly taken totally out of context – for anyone who has experienced the “real thing” it would be very clear that she really has no idea, but I assume it sounds good to the unknowledgeable reader.


I'm going to end my account of the story here, the rest is irrelevant.


My thoughts on this...


My shock about this is not so much about what happened to me – I have learnt so much from this experience that my profit is great. Far more, I am absolutely devastated by the fact that I made this possible.


Putting untrained, inexperienced people on the market, people who use Tantra as a quick fix to cash inflow problems, goes against everything I stand for, against what the path of Tantra is, against my professionalism, against my effort to offer South Africans practitioners who are not only well trained, but who have overcome their own personal issues around sexuality.


I don't doubt for one second that her clients are happy with what she does and if the testimonials are real, that they really feel she is some kind of very special massage practitioner. But is this tantric massage? That is the real question here.


Tantric Massage Training...


So obviously, if I am implying that it is not, what then is real tantric massage, what is a gifted tantric massage practitioner and last but not least, what is a real tantriker?


First of all, going by the training offered in Germany, which probably has one of the longest tantric traditions in the western world (dating back to the seventies), certainly boasts one of the largest tantric communities with an abundance of tantric schools and tantric massage practices, extensive training is necessary.


Nidhana from the UK, Lisa and Nils Kreidner from Germany, who all, on my invitation, worked with me here in South Africa, have had extensive training lasting literally years. The same applies to my own training. In addition we all have intensive professionally related trainings that impact directly on the work we now do.
Read more about their trainings go to the previous blog article or click on this link: http://leandrasjournal.blogspot.com/2010/08/tantra-training.html

We all come from, and have, different traditions, but the one thing we have in common, is extensive training, all of which started with many, many personal receiving, healing sessions with a qualified and experienced trainer.


We also have in common that we love and respect our trainers for what they gave us. We show them our recognition by naming them on our websites and sharing anecdotes from our own training in the work and amongst each other. We all have a very real sense of gratitude towards these trainers and have a connection with them, years after training. We would not dream of disowning our trainers, or of doing them wrong or showing them disrespect. This does not mean we agree with everything they do and say, the difference is that, as tantrics, we know how valuable these differences are.


To quote Nils Kreidner:


"The secret to authentic charisma lies in the ability to courageously and openly speak and live your truth and at the same time to absolutely welcome the truths of your fellow human beings, to actually fall in love with their different perspective and diversity."


Another thing we have in common is, we got over inhibitions, conditioning, trauma, sexual hurt, and inner fears, and to at least some extent our egos or "sense of valuable self" during our extensive spiritual trainings. We all are today, emotionally and sexually well adapted and open individuals, genuinely warm, loving and joyous in our lives, which we live to the full in one or other way. We all do not need to be praised into the heavens by our clients and indeed, the kind of praise on the above mentioned website, would be an indication that we are doing something very wrong! I tell my students "this is not about anything I do and I don't want you to be dependent on my massages. I want to give you the tools to understand that what you experience is all within you...all I offer you is the key to open closed doors and discover who and what you really are".


Oh yes, we all receive deep gratitude and warmth from our students, and are even deeply loved. This however, is not for how well we touch their bodies, but for how we touch their hearts and for how our work impacts positively on their lives.


Perhaps then, we are not the "real thing..."? I don’t think so!


What is genuine tantric practice..?


Tantra is NEVER about the practitioner and what their fingers, hands or bodies can do. It is never about having to go back to that particular person because of the magic they make possible. It is never about ego. Never! Real tantric work is always very modest, and it has to be if the spiritual process we have undergone has gone to the core of our being. We are not perfect human beings - we do however certainly aspire to live the perfection that we know we fundamentally are. We come from a place of perfection, and the objective of human life is to overcome the experience of separateness our humanity leaves us in, and reconnect with a deeply rooted experience of our real, spiritual nature.


One of the main informative Hinduism websites explains this what a tantric process is beautifully:


"Tantra itself means "to weave, to expand, and to spread", and according to tantrik masters, the fabric of life can provide true and ever-lasting fulfilment only when all the threads are woven according to the pattern designated by nature. When we are born, life naturally forms itself around that pattern. But as we grow, our ignorance, desire, attachment, fear, and false images of others and ourselves tangle and tear the threads, disfiguring the fabric. Tantra "sadhana" or practice reweaves the fabric, and restores the original pattern. This path is systematic and comprehensive."


Read more: http://hinduism.about.com/od/tantra/a/what_is_tantra.htm)


The article further makes clear that today in both the West and East, "a large number of tantrik enthusiasts mistakenly identify Tantra as the yoga of sex, magic, witchcraft, seduction, and an amalgam of techniques for influencing the minds of others".




Tantra "training" via DVD's, books and the internet...


There are a number of untrained people offering sensual massage under the banner of tantra massage in South Africa and many more world wide who have learnt by watching DVD's and reading books.


In the day of DVD's and the internet as well as an abundance of literature, I think we could agree that professionalism, in any area of life, still requires personal teaching and that at it's best modern technowledgy is befincial when it comes to easily accessible information. It does not make us professionals - and this applies to any training what so ever.


Tantric massage given by an untrained practitioner is, at its worst, manipulation, often to the extent that the client becomes dependant on the “blissful feeling” energy the practitioner is able to induce. At its best, it is a very good erotic massage.


I do have an issue with manipulation.I do not have an issue with good erotic massage. It is a useful service. But it can at the very most, bring temporary relief to symptoms of aloneness and create a "blissful feeling".


Had my teachers simply assisted me in having a "blissful feeling" with them, I would not have had the deeply mystical and transforming experiences that led to where I am today in my life. Had they not instilled in me that they were not teaching me anything, but only helping me to unlock that which was hidden inside of my being, I would probably still want to sit in their shadows, "feeling blissful" in their presence - and I would still be living from a space of personal trauma, fear and neediness, still looking for fulfilment outside of my being.


What then is the real thing?


Tantra is a spiritual teaching, uplifting the lives of those who are living with emotional pain and limiting conditioning, and for those who sincerely seek more meaning to life. This is what genuine tantric teachers and massage practitioners do. This is what Tantra is about. And it takes a genuine, real life teacher trainer or or guru to teach the teachers. Just because we all like to eat good tasty food, does not make us all five star cooks! Just because we all have sex, does not make us experts in sexual matters. On the contrary, the untrained and unmentored practitioner of Tantra can do a whole lot wrong. At its best, it can give people a good feeling, at its worst it can actually hurt and harm.
Thus my account of the old and dying branches of winter ends. I now I want to share the spring buds appearing on the dried out branches of my being.


The third candidate...
was a young 27 year old woman from Cape Town. She already had a tantric massage practice in Cape Town for some years and wanted to further her training with me. Her original training took place in South Africa, but with a visiting Ayurvedic and tantric practitioner from India, on his frequent private visits to family here in South Africa.


We connected in a deep way. Her understanding of Tantra was already very good, her work very real, I felt her passion easily, and so we quickly planned the future of our connection with each other...only to run into having to confront some of our deepest fears!


The difference here was: we were both willing and able to face them. In this particular destruction/ construction process we feared what we were giving up, afraid of what we would lose, protecive of what we has already achieved. We struggled to believe what we would gain, at times not wanting to see the added value we would give to each other if we put our work together. We battled with this over a period of about two intensive, deeply emotional months. Communication did not break down - it persevered in one way or another, until finally, the fears receded. The bud of this process finally emerged and and now it is spring time and the blossom is slowly breaking the bud open to show something of the beauty it will become.


I share this with you all just as it is right now. There is no promise of success, just the promise of the process and both of us going with it to where ever it takes us.


Samantha is working in Cape Town


So with great joy, I welcome Samantha from Lila Tantra to Tantra Sacred Massage. As of today, yes, this very day, she and I are entering a trial period of working together, and I have taken on the task of mentoring her. The difference in our ages makes this actually quite easy for us- we are mother and daughter, but also sisters, friends and fellow tantrics. And what is more, we are both students and teachers of each other, as is fitting for a true teacher/student relationship.


Samantha is a true tantric. She lives the life right down to the core of her being, as I do. Tantra is not something she only does when she is working, it is the way she lives, the way she connects with people, the way she treats those close to her, the way she deals with difficulties, the way she loves!


To become what is sometimes called a "tantriker" takes years. It does not meal sexually open, it does not mean earning hard cash through tantric massages, it does not mean DVD’s have been watched and books read. It means we have gone through an intense process that took years, during which we transformed to be who we are today.


Samantha and I are excited and you will, no doubt, see where this takes us and where it takes tantric massage in South Africa. We are both passionate about putting the real thing out there and our hope is that we will, eventually, find others to share this wonderful work with us.


Read more about Samantha on the Tantra Sacred Massage website: http://www.tantra-massage.co.za/pages/about-samantha.php


And what about future massage trainings...?


I will no longer offer training on a one-on-one basis. I will no longer take untrained people into practical work with my students. What I now will be offering, is a training program in the form of a series of residential weekends. The successful participation of these, will open the door to working with real clients – than and only then. This is the result of my destructive/constructive process as far as the training goes.


The first weekend will take place in the Western Cape in November and in the Northern Drakensberg early next year: A Taste Of Eros I- Tantric Touch & Massage Retreat. The first two weekends are open to all; the last two are for those wanting a professional qualification.


Read about this on the Durga Tantra Website: http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/pages/retreat-schedule/taste-of-eros---massage.php


These are not the only buds growing on my tree of life at the moment. There are many more in my personal spring. I share these with you now, and some of the others, I will share these with you at a later stage.


Thank you for reading this lengthy journal posting. I hope it offers you some insight into what makes a real tantric massage practitioner. I hope that ir helps you make a more educated choice when you surf the net looking for tantric massage and tantric teachings. If this is the case, my posting has served its purpose.


Namaste
Leandra