Sasha Lessin, Ph.D. (U.C.L.A.), a psychotherapist and relationship counselor since the 1970s, knew how to help people agree, compromise and work out their differences. He'd studied counseling with Drs. Irv Katz and David Quigley (Hypnotherapy), Stan Grof (Holotropic Breathing), Roger Woolger (Jungian Past Life Regression), William Baldwin (Spirit Releasement) and especially Hal and Sidra Stone (Voice Dialogue). Sasha knew how to help lovers resolve their differences, work things out, compromise, create win-win scenarios and re-connect emotionally. But he didn't know how to get them to re-connect sexually.
He'd also been studying tantra/sacred loving with Lori Grace and especially with Charles and Caroline Muir. From them he learned how to connect and teach others to connect sexually. Charles Muir, for his part, told Sasha that he could get lovers to re-connect sexually; but tantra didn't seem to get them through their disagreements. It was hard, Charles said, to get them to even be sexual when they felt emotionally distant.
Sasha then introduced tantra into his counseling. He started lovers' sessions, tantra style, with a breathing exercise. Then, shifting to psychotherapy, he had clients work through their bonding patterns and their emotional and practical difficulties. He finished the session having them engage in a tantric love-making ritual and left them to consummate it. Result: clients not only worked things out, but they felt close again too.
Sasha also began accompanying Charles and Caroline Muir, delivering communications lessons and seeing couples in Muir's Tantra Seminars around the U.S. and in Mexico. Result: Tantra students were also able to work out their difficulties.
Janet Kira Lessin, Director of the School of Tantra, followed a similar yet different path. Logical, psychic and intuitive, even as a young child, Janet attracted many who were drawn to talk to her about their innermost thoughts and feelings.
At 13, saddened with the obvious hypocrisy of her religion, she broke free from tradition and embarked on a spiritual path, reading hundreds of books on every subject, including psychology. She remained a natural counselor throughout all her jobs, be they positions as a legal secretary or computer programmer. Incorporating psychology and utilizing her natural sensitivity, she was a healing force for many, helping them to get through the difficulties of the day and to return home to face relationships, friends and family.
In 1991, Janet had series of mysterious dreams recalling previous incarnations and strange, ritualistic, lovemaking practices. That same year, she met a man from Hawaii and began a series of astral experiences in which she and he became etheric lovers and awakened her kundalini energy. The energies were startling, puzzling and disturbing for they rocked reality as she knew it. Yet she knew, this had to be real.
Asking her guides for help, she was led to books and videos through which she discovered that her remembrances of previous lives and astral experiences were teaching her about tantra. She had never even heard of the word before.
In 1995, following her great love of technology, Janet became an internet relations counselor on AOL (). The spontaneity of IMs (Instant Messages) and the anonymity of the internet led to thousands of "true confessions" from those struggling with unhappy relationships, infidelity, unfulfilled desires, sexual frustration and dysfunction. She did the best she could to help. She knew there had to be more she could do.
In the summer of 1997, her life road led her to Dr. Sasha Lessin, one of the foremost tantra educators and psychological counselors in the modern world.
Sasha and Janet married and immediately began teaching their diverse healing and spiritual paths together. Together (they further developed the synergy of tantra and relations counseling to its present form, All-Chakra Tantra, the guiding framework for the School of Tantra.