Episode 8 - Melting into Sexual Bliss with Carla Tara, physical-emotional rejuvenation expert, internationally acclaimed Tantra teacher, author “Lessons From a Tantric Tango Dancer”
Transcript
Transcript
Melting into Sexual Bliss with Carla Tara, physical-emotional rejuvenation expert, internationally acclaimed Tantra teacher, author "Lessons From a Tantric Tango Dancer"
Woman: This program is intended for mature audiences only.
[Music]
Francesca Gentille: Welcome to Sex: Tanta & Kama Sutra bringing you the soul of sex. I’m your host Francesca Gentille and with me today is Carla Tara, author of the fabulous new book Lessons from a Tantric Tango Dancer
Francesca Gentille: Welcome Carla.
Carla Tara: Thank you Francesca! I feel really honored to be on your show and to be interviewed by you and I see your big heart arriving all the way to New York and touching me so thank you very much for being a wonderful person.
Francesca Gentille: Its my pleasure to have you with us today, Carla, because your are such a multi-faceted person; one who brings a great deal of richness to this area of contra-sexuality feeling and I feel it very fascinating that you have been a “tantrica” for 15 years, a therapist, a psychotherapist, for 10 years. How do those two things interact with one another?
Carla Tara: It is very interesting. Everybody supporting feeling in a different way and that different way is psychotherapy because most people don’t know about tantra. Psychotherapy is wonderful because it makes people look inside of themselves, take a look at their life and… the therapist has enough compassion and hopefully skilled to create this safe place which for them to open up and finally get to know the root of the problem and then slowly, slowly crack it.
Well…, tantra goes a step beyond that, I think, because I’ve a psychotherapist and I was seeing that it would take me much, much longer to create trust than contra. When I do psychotherapy in the contra context, trust is established within ten minutes and I don’t really know if the God is… I don’t know what is happening, the space that I… that I’m in when they come in they start feeling relaxed, open. They stare at my waterfall, stare in the room, they enjoy the flowers, they enjoy the arrangement of the candles that I’ve in, there is always some beautiful soft music in the background which I didn’t used to do when I was a therapist. Its more like a elegant suit… suite but not something that would open up the heart. And then there is me of course, that now I’m changed to Tantra and I’m becoming so open and available to them when I sit in front of the couple or the single person that come to see me, they start seeing that I’m their friend. They just see right away. “Oh, my God! I’m safe here.” Through the breathing, through the way I touch the hands. Many, many, many little signs give them an indication that they can open up and they have… that in two hours, because my session are never shorter than two hours and it takes longer to understand the Tantric approach than to just talk about yourself. So I take the first half hour or so to connect, pretty much like I would do in therapy, but with this new environment and the new me and then I go to the actual the tantra practices which, you know, really melts them completely. Even if they have communication problem, or anything, once they breathe a certain way and look into each other’s eyes the distances melt, for the moment and they can communicate very, very deeply from the core.
Francesca Gentille: That…
Carla Tara: You can understand… yeah?
Francesca Gentille: That is very different from psychotherapy; because we think of psychotherapy as something really works with the mind. It opens up the mind, it takes people back sometimes to facts from their past, maybe their, limiting police today. It sounds like the tantra… the tantric… the tantric therapy, the tantrica process is it brings in all their senses and as you said, it takes them from their mind into their heart and I love that friendliness that you are talking about, because I don’t think that we think of our therapists as our friends or their… in many ways, I think that, the therapists are taught not to think of their clients as their friends. Now there’s this friendliness that I hear you talking about and how important is that, you know, sense of, you know, friendliness, of connection, of that you are not the therapist on a high plateau, but that you are there with them? How important is that, you think, to the experience?
Carla Tara: Oh my God! Its very important because if they look up to you as this all knowing person, you know, they have to look up to and they are with their ties and suits and they have to behave a certain way, now even, you know, its much more difficult to let go of the persona and go into the depth or the core of what… why they came here to see you and part of them want to please the therapist. I don’t know why I did it also when I was going through my own therapy. It took me about a year to not wanting to please my therapist, you know. That was very interesting. They put… they tend to project mother or father or whoever it is to the therapist whereas they don’t do it with tantra because all the other senses are involved, and the whole energy senses of the body are involved. They feel their safety by breathing all the way down into to sex centre and feeling connected root to the earth, which I guide them to and then feel even the juiciness of the sex centre which in the psychotherapy is not encouraged to be felt because of all the restrictions, you know, you know that restrictions. And then they come into their own power, they feel equal to you, they know, they know that you are just a human being that is channeling the wisdom of the Goddess, the wisdom of God for them and you are there to help them. They, you know, they feel your are not left and then the heart opens; the communication centre opens naturally when the heart opens and the sense of touch is increased tremendously when the heart opens. And the breath is relaxed and deeper in the body. And then I see them naturally reaching out with their hands and touching my hands. They are actually doing it. It comes natural and then, you know, we involve, we involve the cognizance functions, the understanding of things, also but we are not stopping at that. Would be ideal to say after going to therapist for about 20 years, this is now I know the names of all my neurosis. But I’m still having them. [Laughs]
Francesca Gentille: You talked about having people come into their core.
Carla Tara: Yeah!
Francesca Gentille: What do you mean by core?
Carla Tara: Well, the core is the essence of who they are. You know, when we are children are really in our core. We feel so intensely that when you are happy you giggle, you know when you are unhappy you cry. You are not afraid that somebody is saying, “Don’t cry, you baby.” You know, when you feel all this feeling. You touch everything. You are in touch with who you are. This is, you came here to experience life for the divine. The divine took this incarnation for us to experience life through the body. And they did know to do it. They breathe all the way down into their belly. You see, when you observe babies, they are so inspiring because you see their belly is going up and down, like the ocean wave. They are so present. They are not holding their breath up, in the upper neck, you know, thinking through what they have to say. They are spontaneous, they learn, in fact, because they don’t have to process everything through the brain. They just learn the automatically, they pickup from the sounds. They look at you and they copy you. So that’s why tantra is so fast. On becoming more… you know, they becoming more like babies, and they absorbed what I know. Its very interesting, and that’s why tantra can be taught in minutes from the teacher to the students and not, you know cannot be really taught through the book or learnt through the book.
Francesca Gentille: Because its not… its not in the mind. Its really in the senses. its in… its in actual experience of it.
Carla Tara: Yes! The mind, I call it the mind, when all the senses are completely fulfilled and relaxed then I say, “Ok! Now the man can come in.” Because when the mind comes in at that point it does no longer criticize or judge us. Before we have all this pleasure in the body, what does the mind say, “Oh! You’re so stupid. You should not have said that. No, no, no,no…” You know, there’s always this critic, this internal critic that will stifle our aliveness. But if allow first the whole body to feel alive and vibrant then there in we can engage the brain and say, “Ok! Now you can come in and enjoy the ride.” [Laughs]
Francesca Gentille: Its… its absolute opposite of what we are taught in the culture. The culture says trust the mind, don’t trust the body, don’t trust the emotions.
Carla Tara: Exactly! But you know that the body doesn’t lie and the neuro-linguistic program, the people proved it that when they know when somebody says the lie; because, that they, you know… you notice that…when you… when they want to say “Yes, but they say, “No”, they say “Yes”, but you see their head going side to side, like saying “No”. So the head says “No”, the words say “Yes”, the truth comes from the body, not from the mind. The mind can lie, if it wants to prove something to the lawyer [Laughs]. And so it just can prove anything to be right, but the body does not lie. So when I ask my clients, for instance, when I want to help them change the belief system, for instance, say, “Believe, I’m stupid” and then after understanding, you know, and after talking to them and feeling more and then the feeling “Oh! Perhaps I’m stupid. Perhaps I’m inintelligent. Oh! Look at this example you just gave me” After that I ask them to repeat, “I am intelligent”. And if they repeat it, and something move in the body, the hands are moving, the feet are moving, something is moving means the body didn’t believe it yet. You know, didn’t believe it yet, that the belief is still ingrained we need to work some more. So I always take body feedback.
Francesca Gentille: You know this is fascinating, how we learn to listen to our own bodies, listen to one another’s bodies, how that’s part of the truth of tantra that… that grew in and I want to talk about it more. It’s fascinating. Ha ha.. after the break and a word from our sponsors.
Carla Tara: Of course! Thank you.
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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex: Tanta & Kama Sutra bringing you the soul of sex. Today we are talking with Carla Tara, amazing author, psychotherapist and tantrica for many years and we’re just talking about the body and how tantra connects us to the body and helps us come into the truth of the body. And Carla is there a way that as partners with our beloved, that we can support one another to come into that body truth and be able to see, you know, in a supportive way, is my partner in the truth with my body or not. How can I nourish that? How can I respond to that?
Carla Tara: Oh… Well. There are many, many ways. But what comes to mind now is most people most couple work outside the house and at least one of them coming home full of thoughts and disappointments or joys or whatever, but everything related to work. So he comes in loaded, or she comes in loaded with this stuff in the brain, not present in the body at all. And he, lets take the more general view, its many men that come to me, “I can’t connect with my wife sexfully anymore” or “All she thinks about is the children”. Now, she comes in and, you know, she can’t wait to tell him what difficult day she had and blah, blah, blah and he comes in with his worries. What kind of connection is that? Even if they hug, you see, it is a perfunctory hug, not a soul hug.
So what we recommend to the people is use a little bit of this ritual, which is when you come home take off your shoes, or your coat or whatever it is, hang it there, put the shoes aside and visualize that you are not entering from a war world out there; making a living is like a war sometimes, [Laughs], you know and enter into the temple of love. You are entering to nourish each other with love. So that little ritual for the person coming home is very important. For the person staying home and doing the chores or the children, everything… her little ritual be to take a couple of deep breaths when she hears the bell and remind herself that she wants to first connect with her lover. This is her lover coming home, not a person to dump on everything. There will be time to talk about her problems later on.
But first I want to connect with the heart of this person. So she comes to the door and hugs him with a smile. Right. Now the hug is going to be a long hug, a more relaxed hug both of them feeling each others belly instead just touching each others chest or burping each other or something. You know, sometimes there is this habitual hug is the hug and the burp, patting the other on the back like you are burping the children. So… not that, connect, take a deep breath and connect the body with each other and stay together until your body relaxes into each other arms. Its not the “Hi Honey!” <smooch> <smooch>, like that or “Thank you”. Its not a habit it’s a real things. Also used to say, “When you hug, be the hug. When you kiss, be the kiss.” So perfectly present. That five seconds, ten seconds count so much into the connection. and then you would sit together for a moment, perhaps holding hands, because by now your are connected with your lover. And now you can look, you know, if you see that he looks worried you can say, “Honey, I can see. I mean that you have lot on your mind by now. I like to make it beautiful and easy for you.” And he might just look at her and see she’s worried about something and he could say, “Honey, could you tell me (you know) you have anything that you want to talk to me about.” And they would connect naturally with each other and instead of complaining it would be full sharing of what went on during the day. Now you are ready to be in love. Now whatever you do, whether you are cooking food together, or turning on a candle, or anything, would be making love. Making love does not mean having sex, making love is making love happen and it started at the door. That’s one, I mean there are so many, but that is one way of approaching… the… how to connect with your partner on a deep level and to keep that relationship fresh and vibrant. Don’t go… get into habit.
Francesca Gentille: Know, this is… this is so simple. These practices, if … if we remember to do them. You know. And I’ve… I’ve learnt a number of things from you, Carla, and have been in your presence and I just recommend everybody to get to know Carla and especially, New York or Maui if you are ever at either place. These are the practices that have changed my life from, you know, dramatic tragic relationship to easeful. You’re a mother, you have children, you’ve grandchildren. You have been idly. I’m just so wondering to know, how has this changed your life and maybe a little bit of a window or picture into you. What inspired you to have a change and how has it changed? How do you incorporate these practices?
Carla Tara: Oh, that a good question. I think the most important part of my choice was, because I was feeling I couldn’t love as deeply as my soul wanted me to. And there were, like, sexual wounds and all of that so I decided to go to therapy and took all the courses and… but it was not until tantra that my life really changed because I understood that I could love as deeply as I wanted and even more difficult was to receive love, you know to receive love that was part of me, we didn’t feel worthy of that love. So, you know, Tantra has changed my life now and I’m feeling… I… I don’t know, I was very lucky, I was very fortunate because I found finally, a man who was so enlightened that he made Tantra sound easy and accessible to me. He didn’t… like he left me mind without words I couldn’t believe and this and that. But he called it with simple everyday word and that’s how it helped my mind science. My… How my life is changed now, I love more deeply and I live more fully. I dance... After working instead of resting I dance. This is my rest. That’s my meditation. I shifted my life from competition to co-operation. That’s a big one. I shifted the guardian it from theoretical to experiential. Tantra helped me experience both the masculine aspect of God and the feminine aspect of the God, which was never mentioned before.
Francesca Gentille: How important is that spiritual perspective in… in Tantra? Is it important to leave ones own tradition or faith to study Tantra? or
Carla Tara: No! No, no, no, no… no, no… you can have any tradition you want. This goes beyond religion. You know, it doesn’t make any religion wrong. Religion are used up to certain level for certain people and, I mean never make religion wrong. But you know like the Dalai Lama used to say, “Study your rules very well, so that you can learn how to break them responsibly.” So that’s what I did to the religion. I said, “Well, they forbid me sex, I mean, how can… how could God for using wonderfully his gift.” Which is one of the gifts, one of the greatest gifts is the sexual energy. I didn’t believe that rule. You know, I didn’t throw away the whole religion, but I started becoming wise and asking myself, you know, there may be some people who need that restriction. People who do not have that development that we have, the sensitivity that we have, and perhaps, you know, I just stopped judging altogether and doing my own judgment. But the important… Do you understand what I mean?
Francesca Gentille: Absolutely, I mean, it important to use the sentiment even in one religion because religions are, of course, written down by human beings who are perfectly imperfect and every religion has sacred sexuality in it. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, if you know where to look, there are these beautiful seeds of sacred sexuality in every tradition.
Carla Tara: Yeah!
Francesca Gentille: As well as in Hindu. Carla I want to talk with you a little bit more about when does someone, you know when would they come to a tantric, or how would they know that this is a good time in their life and their relationship to have this kind of training after we come back from a break and a word from our sponsor.
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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex: Tanta & Kama Sutra bringing you the soul of sex. With our special guest today Carla Tara, author of Lessons from a Tantric Tango Dancer
Carla Tara: Yeah, they come at different stages. The really lucky ones come when they start a relationship. I have a few couple who say we’re going to be… we’re going… we’re engaged now; we’re going to get married in a month. We would like a tantra session so we can start the right way. That’s my favorite, you know, those are my favorite couples. I really love them. Then there are… most of them are couples who are, you know, already cooling off of the relationship or breaking down and they go, “Well, I don’t really want have a divorce, I have children. I still love my wife.” And its usually men who come first, because they want sex more and she stopped giving them sex. She’s angry, she’s angry at him because they have not been communicating at one of these levels for a long time. And he’s angry at her for not giving him sex. So apparently what is happening is the she, instead of using the communication that I’m going to teach them, starts retreating from… from communicating, says no to sex, and punishes him so to say, and punishes herself for not receiving pleasure let alone. He starts becoming running more and more after her says, “Come on! What’s wrong?” You know, “You’re angry. I love you. You are good looking woman.” And, you know, it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work.
He doesn’t know how to pay her a real compliment like, “Honey, I really appreciate who you are. You are staying on with those children the whole day. You are taking care of them. I would go crazy spending only two hours with them. You spend the whole day. I really honor you.” And so on. Now the heart of the woman starts melting, because she feels acknowledged, seen, and you know, ‘coz its like person just doesn’t want to give her sex. But she’s being admired by him, you know. And so I teach them to… to the man for instance to give them specific compliment. Don’t say to them, “You look beautiful.” No, that’s too vague. And you can tell anybody that. But I like, ask himto say, “Oh my God, this morning I saw you with this beautiful yellow dress. Yellow is the color that looks so good on you. Wow! You look so exciting. I can’t wait to make love to you.” That’s it and then go off to work. The whole day she’ll be thinking of the compliment and… and be completely different when he comes home.
Or you know, I ask them, “Do you remember how many times you used to call her when you went out first time or you need to call her at lunch time, “Honey, I can’t wait to see you tonight. da, da, da, daa.” Then at 3 o’clock again, “I miss you” [Laugh]. You know, and then when you when to the restaurant wouldn’t stop talking. So you will see, the person serving food coming over tow or three times stop by asking you if you were ready and you haven’t even looked in the menu because you were looking inside his eyes and talking. Do a little bit more of that again with this beautiful woman that you have married. So that’s the… what I could say to men. And… and to women about, you know, making sure that they communicate about their feelings. And communicate in a way, like when Laury Grace teaches about compassionate communication. Pretty much about, “Honey, you know, I really feel this, because I have this news that snubbed me... would you be willing to listen to me now?” And he instead of preparing a solution for that, “Oh! I know how to take care of that. Ok, so if you are tired with the children let just hire a baby sitter.” No, that’s not what she wanted. She wanted to be heard about how difficult it is to be a mother, or to be, you know, anything, to go to work for somebody, and not being able to express your feelings at work and then you come home, you need to express it with your lover. So… So communication skills, making space for the communication to happen, which happens when you a looking into each others eyes, you pay attention to each other. Communication does not happen when she is washing dishes and he starts talking.
Francesca Gentille: So these pieces of tantra that really, the heart felt communication and spending those time really looking into each other’s eyes. These kinds of skill set, they are perfect to learn in the beginning of a relationship. ‘Coz then you are starting a relationship great. They’re ideal, you know to jump into if there are problems in a relationship and even if someone is single, it’s a great time. I think sometimes the best time to learn some of these skill sets are before a relationship.
Carla Tara: Well, thank God, I have a lot of men coming to me and men come usually because they want to experience more pleasure and it’s a good beginning, you know, I don’t say no to that. That’s a good, you know. But then they get all the good stuff of tantra besides pleasure; which really the aim of tantra is not receive pleasure, it’s just a consequence of more intimacy. More intimacy, and that’s what I teach them: Intimacy. Intimacy means See to me, see, see to the core of my feelings, my needs, my desires, my joy, my spirit; that’s what I’m teaching them. Whether men or women, I have about like fewer women and more men single coming in. But many women now come because they tell me that, they come because they say,“ I want to feel they talk about the orgasm I never felt in my life. I want to be able to feel it.
Francesca Gentille: That is, you know, this is so exciting. I could talk to you for hours more and I’m sure that our listening audience would want to know more about you at www.1tantra.com, that’s www.1tantra.com and I want to thank you so much… we are well out of time, I want to thank you so much for joining us today, Carla, It was total pleasure. And I want to thank our listening audience at Sex: Tanta & Kama Sutra bringing you the soul of sex. And you can get more information about Carla, her website, transcripts from this show.
Carla Tara: My website is actually, onetantra.com, “One” is the numeral one not the word “one”.
Francesca Gentille: Oh very good! the numeral one.
Carla Tara: Thank you.
Francesca Gentille: The numeral one tantra.com (1tantra.com) and you can find out more of tantra’s links, transcripts from the show, fascinating blogs, about tantra, Kama sutra and sacred sexuality at www.personallifemedia.com, that’s www.personallifemedia.com, with two “l’s” in the middle dot com.
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