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
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