Tantra Man Tantra Woman. Great name, great workshop.

And my third foray into Tantra with the School of Awakening since January. When I discover something that makes me zing I throw myself right into it. I couldn’t wait to get back to the impeccable surroundings of Croydon Hall for another dose of cosmic love.

This was the second time the School of Awakening has run this group. It was extended by a day, but even so it was jam packed with meditations and challenging, loving exercises, punctuated by more showers and tooth brushing than I usually manage in a month. That’s the thing about Tantra, you’ve got to be fresh, fresh, fresh; you never know when you might have to breathe on someone, or lovingly caress them.

I was both excited about and dreading the idea of intimate massage with men I had yet to meet. Please let George Clooney be there, I prayed. George wasn’t, but 26 luscious other people were.

If you’d been on my first workshop, you might have noticed I was constantly on the verge of tears. In my second, Sacred Sexuality, I was laughing like a hyena for much of it, but when it came to being comfy with being sexy, forget it. I was so uptight that when it came to a certain exercise involving a little bit of clothing removal, I managed to get through the whole thing without removing more than my cardy and one shoulder strap.

Suta and Sarita honouring the male and female

This time though I was far more at ease. Maybe because now I trusted Sarita and Suta (left). Maybe because they’d lined up a great team of assistants, some already familiar to me: Roxana, Shanti and Santoshi for the women, and Vince and Richard for the men. Maybe also because we women had an extra, gorgeous, gentle-voiced teacher, Verica. Lucky us.

I was back in the zone as soon as we’d introduced ourselves. Day one we spent doing exercises with the men, sharing about ourselves and some touch, and a sound meditation that took me to the other side of the universe and back.

For the next two and a half days we were with the women. I love being with women, discovering ourselves, each other and what being a sexual woman is all about. I can’t go into detail because that would spoil it for you, but if you’ve never spent time with your own sex doing Tantra then I highly recommend it.

The men and women came back together on day four in a ceremonial performance, which was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. I was too old, too fat, too not beautiful enough compared to all those luscious Tantrikas that surrounded me and seemed so at ease with themselves. In fact right up til the last moment I wasn’t sure I was going to do it, but I knew that if I didn’t I would regret it forever. So I did it. By the end of the night I had come a very long way from the cardy/shoulder strap scenario of my previous workshop, shedding shame and inhibition like an old skin to find a new glorious me underneath; that I liked much better.

Then the culmination of the workshop. Two intimate massages, each done with two men I barely knew. This was massage, not sex, but in a country where a normal massage leaves your knickers on and ignores your breasts, it was a challenge. It was a good job that by this stage in my Tantra journey I knew for sure that my yoni was pretty normal and maybe even pretty. The first massage was an incredibly powerful experience.  A feeling like I’ve never had before went up into my head and transported me somewhere that left me feeling like a 14 year old, innocent and very vulnerable; a feeling I never experienced as a teenager.

The impeccable surroundings of Croydon Hall

I went into a big crisis about massage two, hardly slept all night, needed help from my group of women to find me a man who I could feel safe with, and they rallied. I think up until then part of me, the bit that got trampled on as a kid in a dysfunctional family, didn’t believe that I would be supported, but as soon as I asked, I received. Thank you, women. And thank you to the man whom I did it with, a great big ride of healing and pleasure and then zonking out so completely that when I came to I felt like I’d been thousands of miles away for years and couldn’t believe I was still at Croydon Hall.

I floated home on a cloud of love for all the world, and am now plotting my next course.

Watch out for Catharine’s article on Tantra in the autumn issue of The Source magazine, the south-west’s magazine for all things eco and sustainable. Catharine is also a well-known Bristol columnist, and writes a regular blog on life, the universe and everything at http://catharinestott.wordpress.com/

One of my favourite topics is male and female energy – particularly how both have become out of balance in our times. This is a really urgent subject and I see us at the threshold of great transformation. I am doing my best to help support a positive transformation for individuals, relationships and society. As well as my passion for Tantra, my work with Uezu-San on our Aisho retreats brings the perfect balance of male and female, sun and moon, which has been so lacking in our culture for so long.

Power of the goddess

Anatolian (modern day Turkey) fertility goddess from 6000 BC

In ancient times, the mother goddess was the focal point for worship. In some cultures, it was not known that the man played an important role in the creation of new life. This gave women a very powerful position.

Unfortunately, she abused her power, offering men in human sacrifice, asking for him to castrate himself in order to serve in her temples, and so on. Finally men got sick and tired of this and grabbed the reins of power. What followed has been 2000 years of men abusing their power, and suppressing women through myriad ways. The most prevalent ways were to suppress her powerful orgasms, and to blot out the ancestral memory of her inherent gift of intuition. She was burned at the stake as a witch because she practiced intuitive healing and she was kept enchained by ownership through marriage.

In the new dawn which we can begin to sense on the horizon, men and women need to learn to live together as complementary opposites, gods and goddesses who are custodians of earth’s resources rather than her rapist. Tantra offers master keys for helping men and women to find that place of resonant fusion where opposites meet and merge. One of the important keys is to help men and women to live their true nature.

When a woman is in her natural flow and man is in his pillar of consciousness, there will be magnetic attraction. The bottom line is, we should not expect men to be like women, nor women to be like men, but rather, learn to respect and even cultivate our differences. We can learn from each other yet not be consumed by the other.

Containing the contradictions

Shiva, the fire of awareness

The secret of a powerful man is that he is a pillar of consciousness who is able to contain all the contradictions of life and remain centred. This begins by him accepting his power and his vulnerability together in the same moment. He accepts his animal instinct as well as his intellectual refinement. He is thus able to hold a woman who is the very embodiment of contradictions. She is Shakti, containing all the varied and liquid forms of feminine nature. Ruled by the moon, she changes with the ebb and flow of the tides. Her orgasm catapults her beyond mind, into transcendent reality. The greatest gift for the man happens when he is able to be the pure fire of awareness, Shiva, holding Shakti as she lets go into multi orgasmic splendour.

The secret of a powerful woman is that she is fully alive to her loving, devotional, emotional and psychic abilities. She is fluid like water, and is therefore able to accept change easily. Going with the flow, is the way of yin. She craves nothing so much as finding a man, or a god to whom she may abandon herself to in fullest surrender. Letting go and being possessed by the divine masculine is her deepest ecstasy. She is able to let go, because her throne is the heart, the seat of love. And every woman knows deep down, that God is love, and that love is God. Since the very essence of divinity finds its abode in her heart, she can afford to be sweet, giving and nurturing.

Now imagine for a moment what an amazing world we would be living in, if men and women lived their true opposite and yet complementary natures, with integrity. Imagine a politician who was in touch with his vulnerable inner child, while at the same time was able to remain rooted in his pillar of consciousness, nourished by deep meditation. Imagine a politician who was able to offer his beloved a night of multi orgasmic union, and was then able to give a speech to the nation on the necessity of caring for the earth as we would care for our own mother. He is both strong, and vulnerable, and this is what makes him eminently attractive. He has learned the art of loving a woman and this has ignited the desire to love and care for his country.

And imagine, how it would be, if a radiantly loving multi orgasmic woman were to work in a corporate setting, and had the power to run it her way. Her office is full of plants and flowers, she offers holistic healing to her workers, and her company has the feeling of a loving family. All her customers are encouraged to love and nurture themselves and she has a unique system of profit sharing and a clear intention to give back to the earth whatever has been borrowed. The building she works in has been designed to honour the undulating contours of nature, and is ecological and self sustaining.

Our deeper potentials

In our present time, it is unfortunate that men have forgotten their deeper potential. They tend to be either at the extreme of testosterone, going amok on a power crazed rape of the earth and her resources, or in the opposite extreme of feeling so deeply apologetic for being men that they become effeminate and cut off from their masculine resources. And women, ahh, sisters, how sad it is to see you turning your back on feminine grace and trying in vain to compete with men by acquiring masculine qualities! You will be able to help yourselves and the world much more, by opening up your true feminine glory. The Goddess is back, and this time, she seeks balance of the sexes. Like two banks of a river, we appear separate, and yet in the middle of the river of life, we meet, and experience being one in essence. How rich is the union of opposites!

Union of god and goddess

I see the future as that of love, joy and celebration. I sense that in the new dawn of humanity, Tantra will find its true place, offering as it does the alchemy for the meeting of sex, love and spirit. When our animal nature is recognized as divine, and when our spirituality is fully embodied, we will then know the fullness of our potential. We will discover wholeness, and healing. We will realize God as male and female in perfect union.

Love and blessings to you all,

Sarita x

If you would like to delve more deeply into experiencing your true masculine or feminine nature – and becoming part of the new dawn –Tantra-Man Tantra-Woman in June is the ideal group for you! It was designed by Sarita and the Tantra team specifically to address the imbalance in male and female energy in our times, and to help people relax into the gifts of their own sex, meeting the opposite sex from a place of empowerment and joy. Click here to start your path to fulfilment!

You can read the full text of this article in Kindred Spirit’s Mind Body Spirit festival special May/June edition – see: www.kindredspirit.co.uk.

Picture of Shiva copyright Kalyan

Picture of fertility goddess copyright Zigomar

These days there is such a sense of rapid change – sometimes unsettling, often inspiring, that calls for us to pay attention to the balance of activity and rest.

September brought an ‘Indian summer’ of some great beauty. I had a beautiful time on a six day silent retreat. It was so wonderful to slooow down, spend time without noise and be immersed in meditation – simply being with the breath, the senses.

After that I was at a Chateau in France for a week with Sarita and the Tantra team from the School of Awakening. We were held among the wooded hills with an impressive vista. It was exciting, hard work and fun to get together. The time was focused on learning and developing a little known method of Tantric massage from Kashmir, and also crafting a transformational new group process Tantra Man-Tantra Woman, which will be unveiled at Croydon Hall this week.

After many years as a massage professional with experience in dozens of methods, it was a very pleasant surprise to experience something new and really quite wonderful. The massage techniques were a joy to share and practice – they are very sensual and powerful – I will certainly be adding them to my menu of individual sessions and look forward to teaching them to others.

I also particularly enjoyed working with Shiva and Sangeet to create the part of the group where the men will all be together away from the women. After choosing Tantric precepts that we felt are essential, we developed the key practices and some dynamic rituals that will really help foster key qualities in a ‘Tantric Man’.

Working with these themes has really fired me up for the upcoming series of Tantra evenings for men in Bristol. I feel that this kind of gathering – where men can offer each other support and inspiration, move and express themselves in an authentic, conscious way and learn with and from each other – is what many men (and the women in their lives!) are really hungry for. I am really looking forward to stepping into a ’space’ with men and the distinct flavour, the particular atmosphere that emerges there.

Recently I have noticed a subtle change in some of the men’s events – a greater ease and willingness in connecting with other men. It will be interesting to see how widespread these shifts become through the wider society (and not just those who have been ‘working on themselves’). It could be that the times are calling for such an evolution. Who will be a part of the wave?

Namaste,

Suta

www.chooseblissnow.co.uk

Intrepid School of Awakening organisers Sidika, Malika and Tanja went to an international marketing seminar (recommended by ‘finger on the pulse’ Supragya, co-director of the school) in London earlier this month. We were hoping to hone our marketing skills to spread the word of Tantra to the world – but were expecting a hard hitting, business-like three days. Imagine our surprise, when the very first speaker, the free speaking (and rather sexy) Aussie, Kerwin Rae, spent the first hour of his presentation talking about meditation, alchemy and Tantra!! Kerwin is not only a multi-millionaire internet businessman, who started his business career selling horse manure (though he used a different term….) to his neighbours, but he is also a seasoned meditator and Tantrika.

Despite his millions and worldly success, there came a time in his life when he felt a deep emptiness, and set off on a year-long spiritual search. This took him from the heights of Machu Picchu, to the stillness of Vipassana, and then into Tantric techniques. He began to use this ancient knowledge, not only to deepen his inner world, but also to revolutionise his business life.

With the help of his business bible, “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill (the only book which never leaves his bed side) he began to use sexual energy to create wealth, and now advises his clients to do the same. Now he says he barely has to think of something before it becomes manifest in the world.

“Think and Grow Rich” was written over 70 years ago, and in it, reporter Napoleon Hill interviewed the wealthiest industrialists of the time, to find out their habits, their mindset and the secrets of their success. Chapter XI, which he said was the most important, is titled “The Mystery of Sex Transmutation”. It talks about how a build up of sexual energy, channeled not to orgasm, but focused through the mind with intention, can be used to create in the world, inspire genius, and manifest incredible financial wealth.

Normally when we feel sexual tension, we want to release it in some way – through sex, self-pleasuring or fantasy. But now Kerwin was explaining how through using Kundalini breathing – up the spine and down the front – propagating the sexual energy, then focusing it through the mind with conscious intent, anything can be created. So tension in the body – sexual or emotional – can be used as fuel to create whatever we want! This is what ‘in/tension’ is really all about!

Kerwin spoke eloquently on quantum physics, and its idea that various possibilities can take form at any time, they are just waiting for a conscious intention. The power that drives that conscious intention and focuses it through the mind is the strongest energy on the planet – sex!

Traditionally, circulation of sexual energy has been used to become closer to spirit and develop the inner world, but through intention and focus, it can be used to develop the outer world, in a balanced and satisfying way. We were very excited to learn that becoming more tantrically adept can help create wealth in the world!!

If you want to find out more about these ideas, check out “Think and Grow Rich” on Amazon.

And if you want to start building up your own sexual tension and transmuting it, why not come along to ‘Tantra Man, Tantra Woman‘  this October? Men and women will be separated into their own sex at the beginning of the five days, so they can really embody their male and female essence – creating a very strong sexual polarity – really building up that aforementioned tension -before coming together. Imagine it now, that moment when they meet, the possibilities, the intentions they might have – what could you create with that?!?! Explosive or what…….?!

Sidika, Malika and Tanja had their brains blown at the Ultimate Marketing Seminar, presented by Christopher Howard Training and thinkBiG Education, at the London Earls Court Ibis Hotel.