Tantra, Women and Sexual Healing

Today's women carry the traumatic imprints of millennia of injury and humiliation on a cellular level in their wombs and bodies. These memories are reaffirmed as women experience painful childbirth, abortions, forceful sex and unfulfilled, incomplete orgasms. Most women choose to compromise their vast potential by remaining in a state of denial about their own sexual needs, wants and desires. Conditioned by the media to feel insecure about their bodies and to compete with their sisters for available men, women feel disenfranchised and seldom realize their full sexual prowess.

How do we, as women, reclaim our sexual power?

The first step is to stop denying and to inform ourselves as to what has happened to women- how we have lost our power to patriarchal religions that deny both our sexuality and our spirituality. Since our sexuality and spirituality are inextricably connected, denying either of them denies our wholeness. Such denial leaves us fragmented beings searching for an identity which doesn't lie in the inaccurate models of a male dominated, sexually repressive culture. The only models of women that the patriarchal religions have provided for both men and women are those of the virgin-mother or the whore.

In order to enshrine these inadequate and inaccurate models, the patriarchal religions have had to demonize women, considering our basic spiritual natures synonymous with sin. Also, they have attempted to eradicate feminine mystery religions. The sacred, mystical feminine spirituality and its religious expressions were banished by these patriarchs, leaving the woman reduced to slavery. They were at the mercy of misogyny in all aspects of social life. Such atrocities as the witch burnings ordered by the highest priests were unbridled attempts to destroy the divine feminine. In its place we have been expected to identify with either the demonized whore or the sacred but asexual virgin-mother.

Having seen with clear eyes what has happened to us as women, we may come to better understand why we are still deeply conditioned because of what it still culturally means to be in a woman's body. The second crucial step is to recognize that our sacred sexuality is what has been lost, and the experience of ourselves as the sacred embodiment of the divine feminine. By coming together in sacred circle, we can tap into our collective unconscious as women. By thus recognizing our feminine power and its richness within ourselves, we can begin to redefine the male/female paradigm and go beyond the prevalent and limited dualistic view of form and gender.

In seeking to reconcile sexuality and spirituality, male and female, light and darkness while embracing all aspects of myself I found an ancient non-dualistic path which became my life's journey. This path is known as Tantra.

Life's greatest adventure

There is no single school of Tantra to which I can credit the levels of initiation I have received in this lifetime. My greatest teacher has been life. The constant thread has been my deep commitment to free my Self while healing the deep wound of abandonment I experienced as an orphan and later on as an adopted child. Romantic love has been an essential theme in my life. I kept opening and closing my heart, perpetuating my deep pattern of abandonment until I no longer needed to reenact it. Finally I could separate "my story" from who I truly am, that which has remained untouched.

I am not suggesting here that all wounds need to be healed before one realizes this liberation because it is not required. What is important is that sufficient energy and attention are being liberated through the healing/ spiritual journey for consciousness to be free. Therefore I can't emphasize enough how strongly I feel about healing emotional wounds as an essential part of the Tantric work.

Here is how it all started

I was abandoned at birth and spent the beginning of my life in an orphanage. The separation from my mother was traumatic and set the stage for a deep spiritual quest to find out who I am. My life became a powerful healing journey.

My first true initiation into Tantrism began at a nontraditional Tantric ashram, in India in the late seventies. A series of intense initiations there, including major illnesses, transformed my life forever.

At that stage, I started to awaken to my powerful gift as a healer. At the ashram I received a special facilitator's training in Breath Therapy/Rebirthing. It is then that I had a glimpse of the sexual healing work I would be doing later on. That training immediately took me back to my core issue of abandonment. Intense catharsis started to release me from a very rigid, sexually oppressive and dysfunctional Catholic upbringing.

Letting go of this extra psycho-emotional baggage prepared me to experience mahamudra samadhi, a deep merging with all that is, for the first time in my life. I then experienced my heart opening through sex with a partner and I felt totally ecstatic.

Although I recognized my ecstatic nature through lovemaking, I later realized that my "ground of being" could not rely on life's external circumstances to realize itself as consciousness. This level of realization was a spiritual break-through and the culmination of a long Self-investigation .I came to realize that I am that love which I was - seeking to find outside of myself. How that experience permeated my body-mind-spirit simply cannot be put in words.

My deep call is to initiate other women into the unfolding mysteries of our feminine power

Every step on the journey is important. Awakening to my "shakti energy," my feminine power, has been such an important one. I have come to realize that, as women, we are all embodiments of the divine feminine. My deep call is to initiate other women into the unfolding mysteries of our feminine power.

In 1981, after India, I started teaching Breath Therapy/Rebirthing workshops. Eighteen years and many powerful Tantric initiations, teachers and lovers later, this vision has unfolded into what is my work today. I have worked with thousands of men and women as instructor, sexual healer, sacred priestess and facilitator of sacred spaces where intense healing takes place.

For the sake of women's sexual fulfillment I have designed a "Sexercise" training for men

It dawned on me years before I really began working with women that men have never had proper sexual training and therefore needed to be trained. When the average man's sexual performance is reduced to a few minutes of intercourse before he ejaculates - need we say how inhibiting it is to the woman -whose body from a tantric point of view is the source of unlimited sexual ecstasy? Is it so surprising that such a high rate of women complain about lack of sexual desire?

Designing and teaching a men's personal sexual training program has been my way of addressing this situation and my personal contribution to world peace! In it, I use basic Tantric and Taoist practices to control ejaculation, enhance vitality, deepen intimacy and heighten pleasure. This basic training for men is now available on two audio tapes: "The 5 Greatest Male Sexual Secrets; A Step by Step Sexercise Training" and "A Guided Erotic Journey; The perfect companion to the Sexercise Training".

Sometimes people wonder, 'Why does it seem so natural for you to teach men? I say: " You understand, I grew up with six brothers. I was the oldest and the only girl. This was the beginning of my teaching career". Later on I became a high school teacher of French and history.

Sacred Journey into Women's Sexuality

As I pursued Tantra, I continued healing the wounds left from my cultural and religious inheritance. I have increasingly felt a need for solidarity with other women, to reclaim our sisterhood and its inherent power. I have been strongly guided to gather women together in sacred circles where we would have a container to receive our common intention, our common determination, our common commitment to liberate, to heal, and to empower ourselves as we get to know who we are. We share similar pasts, we live in a similar present. We can co-create our vision of a balanced, holistic, ecstatic, sensual, artistic, loving, spiritual, creative, peaceful, exciting future, where we all can fully embrace and embody every aspect of ourselves as women.

Following this vision and guidance, I felt devoted to working with women. In many ancient cultures with strong esoteric foundations, the woman was the Initiatress. And so it is with Tantra.

I felt that we needed to restore our birthright as women with rites of passage--to make sacred those important changes which occur in our bodies and psyches, birth, menarche, sexual awakening, lovemaking, giving birth, menopause, death.

For women who are ready to be initiated into their sacred sexuality, I designed "Sacred Journey into Women's Sexuality", an empowering journey to heal, free and celebrate our sacred erotic power. My work creates safe conditions that facilitate the reconciliation of our sexuality and spirituality. It is designed to awaken the ecstatic body and to burn through the old negative programming while expanding consciousness.

Powerful orgasmic breath processes, erotic dancing, sensual rituals, the healing power of touch are only a few of the practices involved in this transformational journey.

When asked how this journey has been affecting them women shared:

"It's the most loving thing I have done for myself so far in life and I am 54 years old! Freedom, love and passion have been my gifts from the series."

" I made new choices around my body, refusing the shame and guilt in favor of joy and pleasure."

"I am thrilled beyond words that I now can achieve orgasms"

"I now have what I have yearned for- a relationship with myself- that's organic, honest and wondrous."

The deepening transformation I myself have experienced, the tears of joy, the laughter, the risks taken, the breakthroughs I have shared with these women have been a continual blessing and continues to enrich my work.

We are reclaiming our role as Initiatress of the arts of love

From this place of our integrated power we welcome men who have made the choice to honor the feminine within and without. We are reclaiming our role as Initiatresses of the arts of love according to the Tantric tradition. As healers, sacred prostitutes, temple dancers, mothers, lovers, and priestesses, we are consecrating the new paradigm of woman as the source and embodiment of the divine feminine.

For those of you who feel in their heart as I do, that this work is crucial to expanding collective consciousness, for those of you who understand our personal responsibility to free who we are as sexual beings; for those of you interested in supporting this vision in any way you can, please know that your support is greatly appreciated. Promoting this work in the world has become a shared, collective responsibility. Together we do make an important difference.