Conferences, qualifications and more...

I have been asked why I am not participating in the sacred sexual healers conference taking place in Johannesburg this weekend. Not wanting to undermine the efforts of the organisers, I have waited until now to answer this. Having come from a background of many years of professional, International and European conferences in the field of Psychotherapy and particularly Art Therapy, and being an organiser of some of these events, I do claim to know something about what such conferences can do and what they can't accomplish.

When I was contacted by the initiator of the conference, an American who has made it his purpose to come into our country which he has never visited in order to heal and bring sacred sexual healers together. He made contact with people here in South Africa via Facebook to find and motivate people to assist him in organising the conference. I had reason to question him at length, especially as his travels started after his first book had been published. I openly told him that it appeared to me to be more of a promotion for himself and his book than anything else. This particularly as all the money from the bookings to attend went to his account and the fact that he reserved the rights to record and film all of the talks for his use. I also found it strange that we, here in South Africa were supposed to host him and his crew along his journey through South Africa, setting up talks and workshops along the way without knowing him personally or his work, simply from his American website. As always with such conferences, the speakers pay the registration fee (which was quite high) in order to hold their talks, usual procedure in conference organising. The South African organiser in Johannesburg was to get a percentage of the intake after costs, but as no one knew just how many people would attend, I found this to be a tricky situation. He had tons of work to do marketing the conference, organising a venue and the catering as well as helpers during the actual conference.

In addition, the conference was aimed at professionals working in the field of sacred sexuality, Tantra etc. but at the same time was open to the general public. My personal thoughts on this are that the two do not combine. Wanting to raise consciousness among professionals and bring them together on the one hand and to inform the public on the other are two different things - the approach is or should be different and so should the content. I did suggest that he offer training through the already founded National Institute of Tantra South Africa (NITSA) if his aim was to raise consciousness among professionals especially as there is no training (other than what I have been offering on an individual basis) in South Africa by qualified trainers. Interestingly enough, he declined. His aim was to create a new African organisation that would in future continue holding these conferences on a yearly basis as he already does in Australia.

Now one of the difficulties is that those who practicing Tantra professionally in South Africa, some of whom are also training practitioners for this work, are either from the sex industry, from other massage modules, or have trained themselves through books and DVDs which are abundantly available on the web. All of these are not suitable as training in order to work with the public on such an intimate level. One teacher, who claims to be enlightened, has the particular form of teaching whereby he becomes the lover of the women he trains and the relationship is then their "training". That is if they appeal to him. Those that do not, well they don't have the "privilege" of having a sexual relationship with him! I have heard reports from some of the individuals concerned like "we had lots of sex" and jealousy amongst the women he trained as well the necessity to get over jealousy and the conditioning of monogamy. These are facts that I know from personal experience, not from hearsay. No where around the globe do tantric schools of note practice this. It is in fact highly questionable.

My motivation is to get a professional training program going here in South Africa, something I have been working on for a number of years - rather unsuccessfully I must say, owing to the challenges that our country brings with it. Our community is strongly conditioned by a very conservative upbringing, staunch Christianity and quite a large amount of fear about actually going into this work. This is no comparison to the situation in Europe, particularly Germany where I lived for 28 years, where training is lengthy, mostly over a period of years and with trainers who themselves have undergone such a teaching and process with their own teachers. This is still my aim and I hope to be able to materialise this later in 2010. Watch the website for information which should be available on the website early next year.

In order to do this work with a high standard of practice and also ethics, training needs to be intense, lengthy and given by a trained and experienced trainer. One of the most important aspects of this is the professional relationship with the trainer who often becomes a mentor, as is the case with my own trainers and those of Nidhana, Lisa and Flora as well as Nils (my visitors from U.K. and Germany this year) who all have had considerable training and mentoring over a period of many years, in order to become the professionals they have become. My own training is vast and covers many disciplines in the field of psychotherapy and artistic creativity before coming to Tantra. All these professional trainings play a role in how I work today.

I personally feel that in order to work with the public so emotionally and physically intimately, one needs a very high standard of ethics and a certain amount of psychotherapeutic training. This is necessary because it is so easy to be manipulative, transferring your personal beliefs, issues and feelings onto the client.

I have experienced this first hand with a number of those individuals who claim to be teachers of Tantra, and these experiences have not been good. On the contrary, I have had my boundaries ignored and found that I was I was labelled and neatly put away into judgmental drawers when I protested. If I didn't feel I had an issue to overcome with a certain theme (for example monogamy) I would be labelled as being defensive. I generally found the way women in training were treated to be undignified and abusive. I also know this first hand from my experience with South African trainers/facilitators. One example is the fact that personal details from the sessions was openly discussed amongst others involved with the same trainer. These individuals then knew details about me before they had met me. Now, I don't have anything to hide, but I do expect personal details to be respected. I want to choose what I share with others and not have this done for me without me knowing. Does that make me "conditioned", un-open, afraid, nervous or hung-up or stressful? No it does not. It should be common practice to protect the individual in a respectful way.

I cannot claim to know that this has all led to no good for the others who are convinced that it is all part of the process. Some of the women mentioned seem to have thrived. Some men too. I do however claim to know that it did not work for me. I have a background of high standards of professionalism and ethics and I will keep these for the simple reason that they have served me personally as well as my work well. I feel that individuals coming to sessions are owed proper training and an ethical attitude without manipulation, without rejection, without labels. I also noticed that many of these practitioners spin some form of “spiritual jargon", the meaning of which, for the most part, remains illusive to most of us. All this does, is serve an affected hierarchy between practitioner or teacher and the individual or client. Spirituality need not be taught in strange terms!

What does it mean, for example, to be there for someone "in my totality"? Do you know what is meant? I don't! I can imagine what is meant but until I experience it I cannot know how this feels or what it does to me. So why not say for example, "I will go as far as to have sex with you if necessary" instead rather than talking in vague terms that can result if confusion in the minds of those seeking help?

Getting back to answering the question as to why I did not participate in the conference, I also recall very much the atmosphere of the many conferences I had participated in professionally a number of years before. Most of the time, these conferences had nothing to do with bridging gaps bringing the professionals from different schools together. Far more they were about show casing your own work and criticising the work of others. I had had my fair share of that already and did not feel called to be a part of a conference which to me appeared to be confusing in a number of ways: who is it really aimed for and what are the goals?

I did not want my name, the name of my practice (Tantra Sacred Massage) and the name of my school (The School of Durga Tantra) to be associated with a lack of professionalism and misleading concepts. Strong attitude? Yes, but not to the exclusion of what I would like to call real practitioners and real teachers as well as honest down to earth teachings. I have shown my openness towards other teachings and other practices with the four professionals I invited to join me in the work here in South Africa this last year. I embraced their way of working, we shared with each other and it has been a fruitful journey for all concerned.

Of course there are other ways of teaching Tantra to the way I teach it. Wonderful other ways. Ways that are professional, where people's yearning for Truth, for a better life, for touch, love and care is not misused.

Tantra is an ever evolving and non-dogmatic teaching and will always be open to misuse as a result, thus a word of advice to those seeking a teacher or wanting tantric sessions:

Always look on the website whether there is any mention of their own teachers. I often find that on these websites there is often mention of many teachers without names - as in the case of the American who organised the conference - or of book authors being named as teachers, and participation in a seminar or two leads to the claim to have undergone training with facilitating professional. Ask yourself, where does the teaching come from and what background do these teachers have? Attending workshops, and even more, attending many workshops by many teachers is certainly not training. We live in a day and age of workshop junkies assimilating a variety of stuff as they go along. That is fine if the individual wants to do that. It may or may not be beneficial to them personally. I do not see it as fine if this is used as a "qualification" to become a practitioner or teacher with the aim of serving others. I wrote this somewhere before and I say it again: just because we all eat and enjoy food does not make us all five star cooks! All those coming from a good qualifying background for tantric work are proud to mention their teachers and give them credit. So look for names, schools etc., and check up on these.

Another thing to look for when it comes to Tantra is some mention of love. Unconditional Love is the core of Tantra, which means you are welcomed and accepted as you are in a totally non-judgmental way. It does not mean that you have to go through feelings of rejection. It does not mean that you have to have sex to time and time again in the name of teaching, or that you are abused and hurt in pretty much usual relationship games in the name of training. Sexuality is easy to misuse. We all have sex, but having sex (and perhaps even being good at it) does not make us all teachers of Sacred Sexuality. There is much more to becoming a professional in the field of Tantra than that.

You can also check to see if teaching "the spiritual truth" is claimed. What is that, spiritual truth? Indeed, how do they claim to know it? In other words, be alert when seeing guidance in matters of sexuality and/or Tantra and do not be blinded by false claims.

I hope you find this helpful. My aim is not to be derogatory but to inform and protect the public from having similar experiences to mine and also others who have taken me into their confidence about their own abuse in the name of teaching. If you feel strongly about this either way, I would be happy to hear from you. I am always ready for new input and also correction if you find my attitude inappropriate.

Warm greetings
Leandra