Episode 68 - SEXUAL INTELLIGENCE: Access 24/7 Creativity & Pleasure with Dr. Elsbeth Meuth and Freddy Zental Weaver

Transcript

Female: This program is intended for mature audiences only.

Francesca Gentille: Welcome to “Sex: Tantra and Kamasutra”, bringing you the soul of sex.  I’m your host Francesca Gentille and with me today are Dr. Elsbeth Meuth and Freddy Zental Weaver, founders and directors of the TantraNova Institute in Chicago, internationally known seminar leaders, relationship coaches and tantric educators, producers of the DVD series “Creating Intimacy & Love”.

Francesca Gentille: Welcome.

Freddy Zental Weaver: Hello.

Elsbeth Meuth: Hello.  Hi, Francesca.

Francesca Gentille: Hi, it’s so beautiful to have you here with us across the country and with all our listening audiences all over the world, and we welcome them as well.  And, Freddy and Elsbeth, one of the reasons I’m so delighted to have you on the show is because the two of you so much embody a beautiful loving couple who you know does the work in their own life and then brings it out to us, and it’s really on the path of joy and what you called being led by “Sexual Intelligence” and I love that term.  Could you tell us a little bit about what that means to you and your [xx] as guides of love for us?

Freddy Zental Weaver: I guess I’ll open.  This is Freddy Zental Weaver, and Francesca so, Sexual Intelligence, there is an intelligence that is that sexual energy and we don’t have to think about it, it’s just part of who and what we are a part of.  When you think that this energy was creating life existence long before we as thinking Homo sapiens at any inkling of “E = MC²” with consciousness and focus, there’s a tremendous intelligence we can learn to draw on and those elements are creativity and pleasure, not just in the bedroom, which is great too, also in every area of our life where we live, how we treat our children, how we treat our neighbors, how we create our dreams and that’s what tantra really has been for me and for the hundreds of couples that we’ve had the privileged of working with over the eight years we’ve had TantraNova Institute in Chicago.

Elsbeth Meuth: Yeah.  And let me just add a little something here from how sexual energy shows up for me.  It is really kind of a transformation around the sexual energy because in our culture, we are actually not so well informed or I don’t know how to say about that energy.  We very much have it as a thing that, you know when we get married, it’s the time to use that and of course many of us use it earlier but however, it’s not an energy we get introduced to early on when we are children, it’s something that is just part of being alive, actually to the source of our life.  And so, in the work we do and what has been showing up for me more and more, the more I grow in the tantric practice, the more I grow in my relationship is that there is a knowledge of wisdom and intelligence in that energy that can be explored and then used and harnessed to create all of it, not just making babies and that is I mean how magnificent and magical, and the same energy we used for creating our relationship, for creating peace within myself, of course, I connect my sexual energy with the rest of myself, my spiritual energy, my love energy and so forth.  So for me it’s really a whole new level of evolution that we, you know, entering are as humanity and I think the tantric practice has opened up a tremendous door for people, for myself and others and I think Francesca, you and I, we’re a friend of something.

Francesca Gentille: Well, you know let’s look at this a little bit more closely.  What I hear you saying is that sexual intelligence is Eros itself, Eros as the life force itself, something that our embodied soul is meant to celebrate and be guided by; and I love that idea and yet, me, personally, and I’m guessing our listening audience as well.  OK, I can get pretty lost in how to do that and, and you know, here I have this beautiful lovemaking session, it was only this morning with my beloved and, and then I’m about to be on an interview with you and I’m rushing and suddenly I lose that intimate connection we have and I’m, you know trying to make breakfast and starting to get very curt and yell at him and so, how in those moments of life, when life happens, do we still stay connected to that erotic life force that the beauty of creativity and pleasure itself?

Freddy Zental Weaver: Well, you know Francesca, the key to presence in the “now” is the breath, that’s the first peace.  When we’re in our belly breath, a good deep belly breath, our mind is free for few a moments, there’s no yammering, there’s no conversation, there’s no interpretation, there is just breathing and being; and we can build on that, we can build more capacity to be present to that observer we like to call it, with practice.  And there’s a very practical practice that I can share with you now if you like, it’s very short and simple.

Francesca Gentille: I would love that because that deep belly breath sounds like that’s a good idea but how do we do it?

Freddy Zental Weaver: OK.  So just sitting or lying wherever you are in a comfortable position feeling supported.  Just observing any thoughts letting them be, letting them go, we’re going to breathe into the nose, into the lungs and breathe into the belly, extending the belly on the inhalation like a big balloon and exhaling back up all on your own pace, depth and rhythm.  When you extend into the belly on your inhalation, you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, different from your sympathetic nervous system when you are breathing parasympathetically you’re activating immune enhancers, endorphins, you start to cognate more differently from just left brain, you begin to be more present to just being and it relaxes you physiologically.  So, it assists in this observer that we were referring to.  So, breathing as you are sitting, letting the thoughts come and go, visualize the breath coming into the nose, down the esophagus, into your lungs and extending into your belly like a big balloon on your inhalation.  Exhaling back up and out all in your own pace, depth and rhythm.  Because it is unusual to breathe into the belly, you might put a hand on your belly to feel the rise on the inhalation and the fall on your exhalation.  Just breathing and being, giving the busy mind rest for few moments.  This simple practice on a regular basis will begin to build more capacity for you to be your own observer in creating what you want to create in your life.  However, you wanted that situation this morning to be when you were completing with your beloved, you know that you could make an easy transition from that wonderfulness to the other busyness of your life with the work that it’s possible that anything is possible and that we can be in the energy of that and then we create that.

Elsbeth Meuth: And so, like, in a concrete way then in that moment when you got up and, you know, what you might have been facing, it’s actually then to pause for a moment in breathe, it’s like that is why we want to have to breath, the conscious breath available so that really, oh yeah OK, now something is triggering me, something is frustrating me, I am feeling rushed, I am a little scared or whatever that emotion that feeling that comes up at a particular moment to pause and breathe.  And in that breath and the listeners who might have just experienced like having more to calmness and just like slowing down.  In that moment we actually become open again to listen, to listen to ourselves, what concerns are they, what needs are they, we can listen to the other, to our beloved because when we get frustrated and angry and upset, first thing that shuts down is the listening.  So, that is a way to actually shift in our relationships to stay harmonious versus is having these interruptions of upsets.  And it doesn’t mean that we don’t get upset, and it’s just being human.  However, we can now intervene in a way and that’s what Freddy Zental let us do is a great practice, each of us want to do it on our own so that we develop that [xx], so that it’s available for us in the moment of challenge.

Francesca Gentille: It’s so beautiful, and I want to go much deeper into how we keep that sense of creativity and pleasure and connection throughout our life, throughout our day, more about what that observer is and how to connect with that part of us?  After a break and a word from our fabulous sponsors and I encourage our listening audience to support our sponsors, they allow great shows like this to keep coming to you and our sponsors offers wonderful special and delicious discount, and we’ll be right back.

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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex: Tantra and Kamasutra, bringing you the soul of sex talking with Dr. Elsbeth Meuth and Freddy Zental Weaver, founders and directors of the TantraNova Institute, and also internationally known seminar leaders, relationship coaches and tantra educators.  I’m so excited I want to get back in, is that concept of the observer that we talked about; now, there’s a part of me that loves it, you know, the ability to be maybe have a little bit more witnessing and not be so reactive and then there’s a part of me that can think, oh, well, this just mean that I’m going to be disconnected from someone and my partner will sometimes even say to me, you left me, you know, I’m standing right in front of him but he’ll say you left me, you’re not connected to me anymore.  So, could you talk a little bit about what that observer really is and what -- how do we feel that someone has left us when they’re right in front of us and how do we come back into a sense of connection?

Freddy Zental Weaver: Great.  So, there is the observer in our meditation that is just without any agenda, without any evaluation or conversation about whatever is coming up emotionally or in the physics of their location.  And as we continue these meditations, there is an intentional observer.  So, if for instance, you were with your beloved and you felt there was a shift in the way that you are being or you’re being aloof by observing what was coming up, you can bring your intention to create more love and more light and more presence.  Again, these capacities build as you do more of the quiet observer on your own.  The mind’s very busy and we are chemically addicted to our emotions, this is wonderful story that just illustrates what I’m talking about.  So, there’s a moose walking in the forest and this is just how busy our minds are, the moose is walking through the forest and a tree falls and the moose is just glad that it got out of the way and didn’t get hit by the tree and then the moose looks the tree and eat some of the berries on the tree and then the rain starts to fall and the moose sticks his snout up and then catches some of the water in his mouth and when he’s ready he moves on.  Now the human, the big brained Homo sapien is walking through the forest and the tree falls, and the human oh my god, the tree is falling in my path.  Now, I’m going to be late for my meeting, I’ve got to make a bridge, God, why me, why me?”  And this is what we do with everything automatically.  So, our minds exists because we have to have something to fix and correct and make right, and the mind has served us well in terms of understanding the universe, creating a longer life, the exact science and so on.  And yet, if there’s nothing to worry about, we’ll create something to fix or make wrong or worry about and often out of our ego or our survival mind.  So in this observer, we can be more intentional and to manifest and create and be in the energy of what we’d like to create, and not be so automatic, which is what we normally do.

Francesca Gentille: Freddy, as you’re speaking, I’m sorry did you notice that in my everyday reality, I am imagining our listening audience as well, we’re always assessing, judging and evaluating, you know, I like that outfit, I don’t like that outfit.  That person looks dangerous, that person looks friendly.  And moment to moment, I’m reacting and labeling everything around me, and it sounds like the observer is not that.  That the observer is someone the part of me that can even be the noticing, oh look at me, I just judged that person.  Oh, look at me, I just assess that they were unsafe when I have no basis for that that my -- that can watch what I’m actually thinking.  Is that what we’re saying, a kind of step back from just being in the room, thoughts moment to moment and actually watching them?

Elsbeth Meuth: Yeah.  Actually, something this morning happened for me like that and I had a cancellation from my women’s workshop that is coming up and so I said, oh my gosh, because I had liked to have even numbers so the women can do partner exercises with each other.  And so at first I thought, it was almost falling through like a lost or you know, how can this person do this to me, you know, it was like this moment that this came over me and at the same time then, I shifted in and oh, wait a minute, this has just went so at this very moment, she’s not coming, oh just forget it, she’s not coming.  So, instead of wallowing in her canceling and feeling bad about it, I was breathing, I said, OK, so how can I use this opportunity, this challenge to create something that was not there before, got on the phone, called a couple of women, one woman signed up, just like on the spot which I never would have done if that other cancellation hadn’t come about and I really shifted it in the moment.  Now, I’m not saying that I’m like this all the time, like that I’m also not saying that I’m always like that with my beloved because sometimes my beloved can really push my button.  So, but that is what I’m practicing both in my business life and also in my relational life and so, it just brings me back to the moment and then in the moment I can look at, oh what could I do here, and also with my beloved Freddy, you know, oh, instead of getting angry that we don’t make phone calls so that we don’t coordinate our schedule, oh, OK, can we just talk about this.

Francesca Gentille: You know that’s so beautiful.  So, like you, when you talked about that sexual intelligence the very beginning that it’s creative and pleasurable that you shifted from the reactive mind into the creative mind.  When you took that breath and you said, what could I make of this?  It sounds like creativity was present, I love that.

Elsbeth Meuth: Yeah.

Freddy Zental Weaver: Yes, exactly and it looks totally different than what people perceive sex to be, and yes there are definitely practices that are practiced with active sexual, you know, energetic activation and yet that is replete, that same creative joyousness is replete to every area of our life, especially when you think that without that energy we wouldn’t be here, so that anything pleasurable or creative could be almost considered sexual.  It’s like gravity or air or water.

Elsbeth Meuth: Let me say a little bit more about how that shows up for me in my body because that sex connection with my sexual being has something to do with the breath and with my lower centers in the body, not lower like they are less but lower like just you know, they live in the butt area, which is the first centre and then the creation centre, which is above the pubic bone; by breathing actually and coming back to myself, I connect with my sexual energy in a subtle way.  And so of course, I’ve been practicing to connect with my sexual energy, my sexual center for many years now.  So, it’s something that I can call on very quickly.  I just want to bring that also to the audience, to the listeners that it’s something to cultivate the connection to one sexual center as you know a center that is sourcing us, that is enlightening us both our sexual sensual love experiences, lovemaking experiences as well as our daily experience.

Francesca Gentille: That is so gorgeous.  And I want to talk more about that and also how do we help others.  My listening audience knows, my mother died a year ago and it was a very challenging year for me.  It’s like, I lost that sense of my creative centre, that I lost that sense of being a secret witness of myself, and how can we be that support or guide for others in relationship, in friendship.  I think our culture is so under knowledgeable about how we help others who are going through hard times or loss or trauma and we’ll discuss that a bit more when we come back from our word from our fabulous sponsors.

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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex:  Tantra and Kamasutra with Dr. Elsbeth Meuth and Freddy Zental Weaver.  And I just want to get right back in to that place we’re talking about the witness, the observer, that sense of creative pleasure and life force in all of our life and practices.  Thank you for sharing about how we do that ourselves.  And how do we work together if I remember but my partner forgets or if I’m with someone and they’re really suffering, they’re not centered.  How can I contribute to their creative force, their pleasure force and bring them back home?

Elsbeth Meuth: That’s a great question.

Freddy Zental Weaver: Let me just -- I’ll just answer or share briefly a bit.  We can’t really help anyone.  I think what we can do is be a model in our own being to be that which we would like the other to experience and in that the other can choose and/or remember or be guided in their own decision, in their own process to come back.  And just if nothing else but to be in the energy of who you’re being in that joyousness or just even in the holding of the space or allowing the other to grieve or to be sad because that’s all part of life too.  So, it’s not to say that, “Oh, I should always be joyous and creative and happy and I should never allow myself to feel any of the things that happened to us in this life.”  That’s not it at all.  It’s to be fully in the experience of all that this life is and it can offer and what I found in my life is I’ve done these practices over since I was 15 and I’m 52 now, is that a lot of the upsetting things don’t last as long.  I still feel them but I move quickly through them.

Elsbeth Meuth: And so, what Freddy Zental brought up is like that we can hold the space with and for another.  So, for example, how we can bring that being in my observer, which for me it’s really being a place in my body where I’m whole, where I feel peaceful, where I can listen to myself, what is going on for me, where I can listen to another and in that place, I can then, you know, for example, when Freddy Zental and I, we have an upset or we argue, you know, if I come back to that place of peacefulness in myself, and connectedness with myself, I then can just go over to his desk, embrace him and invite him to, you know, do a few breath with me because if I do the breath by myself, as we did it earlier in the practice, we then bring the breath to the relationship.  And the wonderful thing happens then which is that by breathing together into our heart center which is right in the middle of the chest between the breast, we just place our heart centers on each other, embrace each other and breathe, come to one breath, synchronize our breath and in that breathing as one, we drop out of our head and we melt into each other.  And for that moment, you know, the upset is gone and new listening shows up.  And in that new listening, we can listen to each other’s concerns because most upsets, you know, they have something that needs to be taken care of.  Like, you know, he wants to do something I don’t want to do.  He wants to go to the movies, I don’t want to go to the movies and what are we going to do and but if we fight, it’s very difficult to find a solution.  So anyway, the breath and the synchronized breath for the couple can do wonders with respect to resolving differences.

Francesca Gentille: It sounds so simple and yet, if even as your saying it, I’m remembering the breath that Freddy led us so beautifully and Freddy Zental led us so beautifully in the beginning where I felt a sense of calmness and peace come over me.  And just taking that moment to remember that I can be the catalyst, the positive catalyst or the negative catalyst in any moment in any relationship and choosing to take that breath and to be that positive catalyst.

Freddy Zental Weaver: Yes, and the thing is doing that requires our continued practice and building capacity to be in the process of life itself because that’s where the shifts and the things happen, that’s where as you said, the game really is.  But in doing the practices, exercises that you teach, that we teach at TantraNova Institute, that’s where these things can begin to shift in our life.  Now, in our mind, we can understand very clearly and analytically that, OK, so to first accept exactly what I’ve got and then to create a new possibility of what I want to create is where we can start to think about what we want to do.  But to do that, is a different story because there’s emotions, there’s old stories, there’s rationalizations.  So, and these practices coming again as we mentioned earlier to this observer is where we can begin to really make a difference in our lives.

Francesca Gentille: And let me ask you one more thing.  Is that at times, I often hear, I’m imagining you do too, from couples where one partner is feeling, maybe, more depleted or possibly both partners are feeling depleted.  There’s definitely depletion in the relationship, a sense that maybe needs for touch or joy or pleasure, not so sexual haven’t really been met sometimes, it is sexual.  And one partner is experiencing more of a sense of urgency or drive to shift this.  And when we say, you know, breathe and start to be the witness, sometimes, they can feel like they’re so depleted that there’s something else that needs to happen before they even have enough inside themselves to relax or to breathe.  Have you noticed that at times as an issue and what do you recommend for the person who is experiencing, their mind understands the good idea but they feel like they’re so depleted they can’t quite get there yet?

Elsbeth Meuth: What I found in working with people and actually, also with myself, when I have that sense of feeling depleted, what helps a great deal is the other one, if Freddy Zental listens to me.  So, and listening like with no demand, just being there and you know, want to share with me what’s going on, or is there anything, you know, where I don’t have to justify, where I don’t have to explain, it’s just like I can express my feelings and he just is there, without, you know, his judgments or without recommendations or what I should do, just total listening.  And in that being totally listened to and heard, some of the depletion actually disappears because the depletion comes from that I either don’t see any possibility, I’m resigned, I’m despaired, I don’t get what I want, I don’t know how to make known what I want, or I don’t feel that the other one realty cares about me, all of that goes on.  So, when he just listens, really, truly listens to me, it’s like, oh! wow! I can just be.  I don’t have to be any different.  So, and I also found that when we work with couples that, by then coaching them in a way that whoever is depleted, is being listened to by the other and in that listening, the one that feels depleted can open up and can actually get more in touch with his or her own feelings and it does wonders.  Now, that, I would say is the beginning.  Of curse then, there are other conversations, other ways of connecting that follow but unless I feel listened to, I don’t want to even look at anything else.

Francesca Gentille: That is so beautiful.  That’s so key, that longing to be seen, felt, and heard by another.  And sometimes, even in that really being received, something shift, where I’ve experienced that myself, where I feel so desperate, I have to have something and when I’m deeply hurt, then somehow it can almost disappear or transform, less attached suddenly because I’ve been received and connected with.  Thank you so much for bringing up a gift that we can give one another in that deep listening and sometime working with counselors such as yourself or myself, going to someone else to receive some deep listening so we can come back into the relationship and offer deep listening to our partners.  And this is the --- a treasure, I just want to thank you so much for joining us on the show.  I wish I had longer.  How do people get in touch with you, find your beautiful DVD series, take your wonderful retreats, how would they find you?

Freddy Zental Weaver: We can found on the internet, TantraNova.com that’s T-A-N-T-R-A-N-O-V like Victor-A, TantraNova.com.  We’re located in Chicago, Illinois.  Our number is 773-525-5006.

Francesca Gentille: Thank you so much Elsbeth, Freddy Zental for joining us.

Freddy Zental Weaver: Thank you Francesca.

Francesca Gentille: You’re welcome.  Thank you.

Freddy Zental Weaver: Wonderful being with you.

Francesca Gentille: And I want to thank you, our listening audience for joining us, for being on this journey with us, for being this fabulous people of soul and heart.  And if you want to know more about Freddy Zental and Elsbeth, see their pictures, read the transcript, get their links, find out about me and my coaching and my retreats.  You can do that at www.personallifemedia.com.  That’s www.personallifemedia.com, Sex: Tantra and Kamasutra bringing you the soul of sex.

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