True Tantra Blog

Tantra, a way home

Niyaso Carter — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:15:17 +0000

You are invited to join this ongoing evening class on Maui

Tantra, a way home

Opening to our soul’s true nature through authentic connecting

For women and men, singles and couples

with Niyaso Carter

We are physical and spiritual beings. Connecting with one another is how we grow and learn about love. One potent way of connecting is through touch.

Touch can open us to our soul’s true nature very directly and quickly.

Touch, when it is the right touch, fully received, is pure magic.

In order to receive and give nourishing touch in any relationship, clear boundaries, good communication skills and a solid connection with our own body and being are a must.

The purpose of this on-going class is three-fold. First, it provides an avenue where singles and couples alike can enjoy the magic of “right” touch in a carefully structured, safe, yet playful setting. Secondly, you learn tools that will make future relating experiences more enjoyable and potent. Finally and most importantly the class offers ways for each person to be more fully in touch with their inner essence.

This is not a massage-, energy work- or a hands-on-healing class (even though aspects of all these modalities will be utilized) but an experiential laboratory; a place for relaxation and inspiration. No sexual touch will take place. We will be exploring the physical, energetic, mental, emotional, social and spiritual aspects of connecting. Each class starts with a guided meditation to deepen our alignment with our inner source. Participation in all segments of the class is optional. You may choose anything from just being present in the room, to relaxing in a gentle embrace, to actively exploring what touch feels good. Whether you participate a lot or just a little, ultimately the class, like the practice of Tantra, is not primarily about connecting more deeply with another, but provides an inviting space to drop ever more fully into your authentic self.

Niyaso has been teaching and counseling in the area of intimate relating for over 25 years. She is the author of Tantra, Sex for the Soul and the co-creator of the long time bestselling video The Tantric Secrets of Sacred Sex. She also is an experienced trauma resolution counselor and long-time body worker. Niyaso’s biggest gift is her compassion as she uses her resources and skills to create a learning space that is at once light, playful, safe, respectful and deeply trans-formative.

This class is intended to be a community resource as well as a community co-creation in authentic loving. Feedback will be invited after each class and community involvement in shaping the teachings is encouraged.

For more information call (808) 572-2234 or email info@sacredloving.net
to discover more about Niyaso and her work go to http://sacredloving.net/index.html

on facebook go to: True Tantra

https://www.facebook.com/tantricsex

When:

Every other Tuesday from 6:30pm – 9pm next class is May 28th

Where: North Shore Maui, Hawaii

Call for directions 808 572-2234 (this is a landline, so no text)

Or email info@sacredloving.net

Cost:

Suggested donation $10 -$20 (for young adults ages 18-25 the class is free)

Who: couples and singles, from age 18-110

Bring your favorite blanket and a pillow

Join us on any evening but please be on time

Mothering happens in many ways

Niyaso Carter — Sun, 12 May 2013 20:05:18 +0000

Happy Mother’s Day to all women! Whether you are mothering your own children, or the children of the world through your labours of love . Keep up the good work. The world is a better place because of you.

True tantric sex is messy sometimes

Niyaso Carter — Sun, 05 May 2013 23:11:02 +0000

Does the image of these dolphins playing seem tidy to you? Not really, but it sure looks like they are having fun. To let the pleasure of sexuality show you its full beauty, you need to let your love making be messy sometimes. Fears, anger, tears, laughter, trembling, talking gibberish, becoming still when you think you should be getting progressively hotter, all these are things that will come up if you open sexually, if you allow your simple truth.

It’s the paradox of Tantra that sometimes we need all kinds of practices to become more simple. But it’s really important to be clear that all Tantra is really trying to teach is to be simple and aligned with what is true. Any tantric practice is for that purpose alone, to be more simple and real, to open to the simple magnificence of what is. To have beautiful sex requires no technical knowledge whatsoever and so it is important not to misunderstand the purpose of any practice. Whether it is the practice of breathing deeply, chanting a mantra, yoga poses, visualizing, or any other method or technique, if it’s not about becoming more simple, relaxed, easy and clear it’s not a practice worth pursuing.

I’ve already discussed that some people have this notion that tantric sex is some sort of high tech version of sex and how false an idea that is. To have really beautiful sex we need to learn to listen to our soul’s true nature, we need to become more natural, more aligned with nature, more instinctual, more simple.

Which also means more vulnerable. It’s easy to take all your clothes off and have sex, but to be emotionally naked is a whole other matter. Sharing our fears, hopes, upsets and dreams is what opening our soul to someone is really about. But we are so used to protecting parts of us from ourselves and others, we are so accustomed to acting acceptable and not being too much of anything.

The good thing about sex is that when the pleasure of physical contact opens us, all parts of us open, also the wounded, discarded parts of us. So when during love play something we are not familiar with comes up, all we have to do is to have the courage to do nothing, to let it happen and not take action to hide what is coming up. Don’t push anything away, don’t contract because you don’t know where this feeling will take you. It’s not just dark emotions like fear and anger that we fear. We fear pretty much anything unfamiliar, even if it is the opening of our own life force, some call it Kundalini energy. When our energy body first awakens it can be pretty disconcerting and emotional, for some even scary. Just let yourself happen, bring a loving “yes” to all that arises. Our body will not open to more than our being is ready to handle.

Being spiritual can get in the way of good sex. The trap that spiritual people sometimes fall into, is that they wish to be positive no matter what. And indeed, an important part of growing spiritually is gaining the understanding that we have choice in how we view things and that seeing the glass half full is more useful than half empty. But being positive at all cost can lead to denial of what is real, and unconscious contraction can result.

Don’t get stuck in some image of what good sex should look like or that it should be all smiles and bliss. If you are in a relationship as you read this, discuss what I wrote here with your partner and see if you two together can make an agreement to allow your lovemaking to be messy if that is what wants to happen. Agree to give each other room for self exploration while you make love.

If you are single, just agree with yourself that you will not contract yourself to be acceptable in any situation, whether that is shopping in the isle of the super market or on your next date. I think you will discover that it is a fun way to live life.

How messy is your love life? Please let me know what this article touches in you.

Aloha, Niyaso

For more info check out

Tantra, Sex for the Soul

an audio home study course on making your love life all it can be

What is Tantra and why do people think it has to do with sex somehow?

Niyaso Carter — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:44:23 +0000

Tantra was a spiritual movement in ancient India and Nepal, it was comprised of many different sects and teachings with varying practices and rituals. The common denominator was that tantrik sects, unlike other religions of the time who separated their practices from every day life, accepted life in its many facets and energies as a teacher. They invited every aspect of life to provide a path to understanding their true nature and the divine. They worked with the higher and the lower vibrations of life and found ways to use them for their spiritual development because they understood that all of life is divinely informed.

In today’s use though most people think that Tantra has to do with sex somehow.
This is only true in so far as sex is certainly one of life’s facets and sexual energy is a potent life force.
Tantric sects acknowledged this life force energy and worked with it in ritualistic ways, but their spiritual practice encompassed a lot more.

excerpted from Tantra, Sex for the Soul

an Audio Home Workshop on 5CDs with tantric guide Niyaso Carter.

also available as a download on I-tunes

Do we need to protect our kids from porn?

Niyaso Carter — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:17:47 +0000

In response to the Porn Virus article I recently posted I got the following reader comment from a young woman who grew up in the US. I think you will find the answer to the question above in her story. It shows you just how important it is to pay attention to what our kids are exposed to in the media and if needed to control it, at least when they are very young:

“Reading the Porn Virus article you posted enabled me to reflect on my first memories of porn and observe the impact it had on me. When I was six years old my first introduction to intimacy was seeing on TV a fake-breasted woman rub her self with a soap sponge and invite her partner to join her. My first exposure to such content began while on a play date with my girlfriends. We were in the midst of flipping through channels when we came to some interesting images and sounds. This ignited curiosity and exciting feelings we had never experienced. From that day on we watched this channel regularly. With no supervision we would spend our time studying the images on the screen. We even went the next step and began to act out some of what we watched on TV. At the time, this seemed harmless, as an adult I reflect back and understand the distortions it programmed inside me. My first exposure to this type of intimacy impacted my relationships. For a very long time, I assumed I had to bend like the women I saw in the porn programs, act overly stimulated moments after touch, and be extremely vocal. For years I played this role and wondered why I was not able to commit to a long-term relationship or feeling ecstasy like the characters on TV. In the past I would also lose interest in my partners, resent them, and end relationships shortly after they began. This pattern continued in my teens and early twenties. It was finally broken when I realized that the sweet loving feelings I experienced after a relaxing massage or a great yoga class could be experienced in the bedroom. I began to relax, connecting to the feeling of infinite love, and celebrating my receptive body. At last, I was able to feel the bliss of love making free of any distortions I experienced as a child. Based on my experience, I recommend parents put more effort into protecting their children from porn exposure and instead take the time to talk to their kids about intimacy. It is so important for our future generation to have a healthy connection with lovemaking. Thanks for bringing this material to our attention. It really helped me.”

There are no problems there are Blessons

Niyaso Carter — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:48:31 +0000

The porn virus

Niyaso Carter — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 23:08:18 +0000

An eight-year-old boy appears white-faced in the kitchen with his friend. Curious, his mother goes into his bedroom and looks at the search history on his computer. She laughs when she discovers they’ve Googled ‘boobs’. She stops laughing when she sees the search result: a 15-year-old girl having anal sex with an older man while giving another a blowjob.

Sexualised images stare at us from billboards, TV ads and magazines, accompanying humdrum messages about car insurance, sofa sales or holiday destinations. Our bodies have become the pornographic wallpaper of modern life, while porn has become something altogether darker, harder and more violent.

‘Porn is seeping into popular culture,’ says marriage and family therapist Dr Julie Albright. ‘There is S&M and full nudity on MySpace and, according to a recent survey, there are also 26,000 registered sex offenders on the site.’

Even if we’ve wondered why our partner would rather gawp at fantasy women than come to bed, we may have been reluctant to voice our concerns about porn. We’re afraid if we aren’t enthusiastic about trying something new we’ll appear prudish or boring. Christine Lacy, a sex-therapist from Relate says, ‘Some women will go along with porn fantasies for a while, but then the sex might become so degrading they want out.’ Instead of speaking up about porn, we often prefer to voice our concerns through the more anonymous avenues of online forums and surveys.

‘How can I get rid of the anger towards my ex-boyfriend for his porn addiction? His rejection of me sexually has left me feeling unattractive and betrayed’ – this was recently posted on the Psychologies website. ‘Porn can cause women’s self-confidence to be shot to pieces and it’s important they know what they’re feeling is normal,’ says Lacy. Christie Brinkley’s husband had a £2,000-a-month web-cam habit. If a supermodel can’t compete, who can? According to Lacy, a third of cases at Relate now involve men who have lost interest in sex, often as a result of porn.

Real women versus fantasy women

In a recent study of 15,246 people in the US, Albright confirmed what we’d been fearing: porn is leading men to be more critical of women’s bodies, and less interested in actual sex. ‘Porn encourages the user constantly to seek the new experience, the next girl – it’s not about committed relationships,’ says Albright.

As a lecturer at the University of Southern California, she is seeing first-hand the effect of porn on college students. ‘Young men are expecting instant orgasms from their girlfriends, because the women in porn are faking it. One student told me her boyfriend asked why she didn’t moan “like they do in the porn videos”. What it’s doing is giving young men a very bad message about what pleasures women.

Porn is creating desires that would have confounded Freud. ‘One man was only turned on by smearing and eating faeces. Another client described to me in detail the perverse sex he was into, but he didn’t want to change. Instead, he asked me if I knew any women who would be happy to be involved in this kind of sex.’

Larry and Wendy Maltz, co-authors of ‘The Porn Trap’ (HarperCollins), believe porn changes our brain chemistry. ‘Watching porn releases a cascade of pleasurable hormones and chemicals. Some scientists have likened the changes to those that occur when using cocaine.’ Couple therapists for more than 20 years, the Maltzes recommend a holiday from sex for those corrupted by porn, since frequent viewing of explicit images and masturbation can leave the user desensitised to normal intercourse. For Lacy, ‘the turning point only seems to come when the user begins to see the genuine hurt and distress of their partner’.

Porn and children

‘Orgasms are alien and frightening to a child,’ says John Woods, child and adolescent psychotherapist at London’s Portman Clinic. ‘Being faced with explicit sex scenes on their computer can be disturbing and damaging.’ Woods treats young offenders, ranging in age from nine to 21. ‘Sexually inappropriate behaviour’ now dominates his caseload. ‘It obviously takes more than pornography for an adolescent to abuse a younger child,’ he says, ‘but porn is a very powerful factor.’

So what’s the answer? Putting parental controls on home computers is a good idea and Woods believes schools can play an important role through promoting the importance of meaningful relationships.

Perhaps an internet virus will descend on the contagion, or we’ll reach a titillation tipping point. But most likely we’ll have to learn to live with pornography and teach our children and partners that porn won’t love you back.

This article is reprinted from Psychologies Magazine

The magazine for those who want to know more and grow more

Lovemaking requires surrender

Niyaso Carter — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:39:23 +0000

True lovemaking is a mutual surrender. It’s when you and your partner use the pleasure of the sexual act to transport you to something higher and more vast then your usual selves. Through sex that is filled with love and allows for total let go, you can access a more expanded and transcendental place than you might be able to access on your own. That’s the potential of sex, but unfortunately it is not a given that this happens when a couple gets together. It requires surrender, a vulnerability that many people are afraid of. Not because we want to look good, but because we are afraid of saying or doing something to displease our partner. So most couples, to avoid “hurting” each other, end up settling into a well worn path that their sexual play follows, without much examination or conversation.

My invitation to you: Before you make love the next time have a little conversation with your partner about the above statements. Talk about what it touches for you. Then share what new explorations you would like to try. Talk about what you might want to do differently in order to have more enjoyment. Because, the good news is, more enjoyment equals more opening to this transcendental place that I am talking about. But you have to be willing to explore a little, to venture into new territory. Is your relationship worth it? I hope for you that the answer is yes?

And of course as always I invite your questions and comments.

with warm Aloha, Niyaso

If you want more insights and ideas about what you can do to make your love life more enjoyable and transcendental check out my audio program

Tantra, Sex for the Soul

If a woman isn’t active in lovemaking is she a “dead fish”?

Niyaso Carter — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 03:07:22 +0000

Here is what a young woman had to say about it:

Thoughts from a tantric love making fan

During listening to Tantra, Sex for the Soul, the audio workshop by Niyaso Carter, an excerpt caught me by surprise. While driving, I listened to Niyaso’s gentle voice say: “Men, if your woman is still during love making that doesn’t mean she’s a dead fish.” As a woman in her late 20’s all my life I have felt pressured to perform. In order to let my partner know I was enjoying our foreplay I always felt that I should make sounds, use words, or make movements. Niyaso reminds all men and women that intimacy can be like meditation. “A time of stillness can bring a woman into deeper union with her body, with her partner, and she can experience pleasure more fully.” Intuitively, I have always known this to be true but have always felt pressured to perform. All my past exposure to intimacy taught me that laying still was unacceptable. After listening to the audio, I was inspired to put a stop to my internal performance pressure. Instead, I decided to share my feeling with my partner. He responded well and later admitted to me he also felt his own past programming, expecting me to make movements or sounds. After our talk, I was able to spend time being still during love making. This made us both feel more pleasure. Later my partner admitted to me that during my time of stillness his old performance ideas made him question his own ability to please me. This experience opened up a new topic, how conditioned we are when it comes to love making and where are the conditions are coming from? Overall, listening to this excerpt and then sharing my needs with my partner brought us closer together and motivated us to look at all the different expectations and ideas we bring into our time of intimacy. With open communication and loving acceptance, we are now honoring our needs and are becoming more sensitive to each others touch. I love this new movement in our relationship. I’m excited about where it will take us. I encourage all lovers to have a conversation about this topic.

To find out more about this audio workshop go here Tantra, Sex for the Soul

Sex should be effortless. True or False?

Niyaso Carter — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:27:39 +0000

What’s your gut answer to this question? “True” is what I would say. And yes it is true. However this statement comes with a side note:

Most of us believe that if we fall short in the world of sex, it must be our fault, or our partner is wrong, or the relationship is a failure. As a society, we’re imprinted with the belief that great sex should happen passionately, on it’s own, without any effort or communication on the part of the couple. This explains why we’re so reluctant to work on this area of our lives, when we’re so willing to work on just about anything else. We have been brainwashed to think that it should happen magically on its own. This belief that great sex should happen on it’s own is quite in contrast to the practices of the spiritual traditions of Tantra and Taoism.

Paradoxically, great sex can & should be effortless. That is to say that it will be effortless once we know what to do, or rather once we know how to deeply trust our inner knowing and follow it. When we learn to relax so deeply that we can hear our heart’s, body’s and soul’s true nature that’s when sex becomes effortlessly awesome. In essence that is what Tantra teaches. It’s not a path of effort, it’s a path of allowing, but it requires a deep understanding and listening.

Are you willing to do some learning and listening in this area? It will be so worth it.

Excerpted from “Tantrs, Sex for the Soul,” an Audio Home Study Course on Tantric Sex