On tantric touch, the workshop, and of course festive greetings....

On tantric touch, the tantric touch workshop with Ron Solo...and of course festive greetings!


The countdown to the Tantric Touch Workshop on 31st December has started! Bookings are coming in and it looks like a number of very interesting people will be there. I am so looking forward to it for a number of reasons. Ron Solo and I will be working together for the first time, it is the first time I will be working in the lovely new Marquee space and it is the first time that a tantric touch workshop like this is being held at the Marquee and in fact, in SA! So, a lot of firsts to end off the year as you can see!

Touch is so important. Read the article below written by Klaus Smedts, my Tantra massage trainer in Germany. It's about the relationship between the lack of touch and rising aggression in the American culture.  We touch too little. Today children are touched less, particularly in the USA where there is so much stress about issues around child misuse. Understandable, but when parents become over careful, children get too little touching love.

Just think of it: our skin is our largest organ. It is the barrier between us and the outside world. It is our protection, but also our source of connecting to others. If we really mean the hugs we give our family and friends, the quality of this connecting would be very different to what we usually experience.

In our workshop we will be working with this – different kinds of touching, tantric touching, simply connecting to others through touch. Touch should always be totally loving. It can become sensual in the right situations and ultimately it can become sexual with our chosen partners.

In Tantra massage I often work with feathers and silk cloth as well as my hands and body. It gives the skin different sensations and a general sensitizing. I also use the cloth to “blow” the energy over the body, creating a soft, flowing breeze over the skin. Clients, who have experienced this, describe it as something very wonderful. Many have visions of waves or being in nature, it connects our selves to our inner being in a special, sensual way. It is extremely relaxing.

I remember my mom doing this with us on hot, humid Durban summer nights when we could not sleep. She would come into our room and then give alternatively give my sister and I some of this soft wind with the sheet. It was beautiful, comforting, cooling, gentle and loving.

We will endeavour to teach this soft, loving and very tantric touch in our workshop. If we could all learn to touch in this way, we will all become better people. It is a touching of the skin, the body and the heart. When we touch someone’s heart we open them to transformation. My Tantra massage training did that for me and my life has blossomed into being blissful all day, every day, and all the time. Klaus's touch, his total acceptance of who I was at the time, his love opened my heart. In the first instance, it opened my heart for myself - I began to experience who I was in a new way and was surprised to find that I liked what I found. Then it opened my heart for others. I stopped expecting the other to be as I wanted them to be and began to accept who they were. Again, I was surprised to find who easy this was once I had accepted myself. This acceptance then grew into this blissful feeling about life in general. I began to see the little things around me, things I had not noticed in such a deep way before.

Just a few days ago in my village now filled with Christmas holiday makers from Mpumalanga and Gauteng, a bakkie of young people drove down my street with loud throbbing music emanating from inside. Outside the youngsters were standing up, allowing the wind to blow directly into their faces filled with smiles and laughter. Tears popped into my eyes. I was joyful about their happiness, about the fun they were having. I smiled softly as I remembered how it would have been before I came to Tantra: I would have felt aggravated about the noise. I would have thought how irresponsible this is - someone could fall off if the bakkie had to stop suddenly. Now, I had a sense of their joy and it made me feel joyful. What a difference loving myself makes to how I perceive others.

I wish you all a wonderful festive season – enjoy the gatherings, the chatting and the fun, and please do not forget to impart love to all of those that you meet.

I look forward to next year and all the new things that Tantra Sacred Massage and The School of Durga Tantra South Africa has in stall – and there is much to come.

I send you all my love,
Namaste
Leandra

A school journal message from Klaus on The Failing Sense of Touch and the rise of Aggression.

"....today something completely different. Some days ago I read an article, which made me think. In this article, Martin Grunewald, a researcher of the sense of touch and director of the haptic laboratory of the University of Leipzig, Germany says: "Humans can be born blind or deaf into this world, but if their sense of touch is not available and does not function, they are not able to physically exist.”

If science knows such facts why do so many humans resist touch? We have all experienced this resistance to touch: someone approaches you, your neighbour, your college, someone you know who does not belong to your immediate circle of close friends…attempt to embrace this person, it would be considered totally inappropriate. Even simple "handshaking" has already almost become almost extinct. One nods briefly with head, muttering some kind of quick greeting, instead of honestly and clearly wishing the person a good day.
In the USA this is extreme - all form of physical contact being avoided for fear of accusations of sexual harassment.

Charles Spencer, psychologist at the Oxford University, wrote about this in 2005, after his research into the deterioration of the sense of touch. The result of this research and his summery was: increasing aggressiveness and physical force results directly to the deterioration of the sense of tough. This can be noticed by anyone occasionally watching the news or reading a newspaper.

To this, I say NO, and will rather continue to embrace, touch, caress and experience other human individuals on all sensory levels…and time and time again experience the miracle of how simple it is to make a stranger happy.

It is so simple!

All love - Love all
Klaus"