Episode 81 - HERO, HEROINE, HEALER: THE SEXUAL HEALING PATH FROM THE MOTHER AMERICAN TANTRA with Caroline Muir

Transcript

This program is intended for mature audiences only.

Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex: Tantra & Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex.  I’m your host Francesca Gentille.  With me today is Caroline Muir.  Caroline is the founder of Divine Feminine Institute.  She’s the co-author of Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving, which has -- I think they’re on the bestseller list of tantra books for -- for decade now.  She is the co-leader of the Art of Conscious Loving seminar with Charles Muir for over 20 years and I know her and I -- some of you may already know her and by the end all of us will know her as the Mother of Western or American Tantra, there’s -- I have to say Caroline there’s no way that I -- that I mention you at -- and people don’t say oh, she -- she already started American Tantra / Western Tantra.  So, I feel so honor to have you with us here today, welcome.

Caroline Muir: Thank you so much, what a wonderful welcome, I’m so glad to be here.

Francesca Gentille: Well, this is -- it’s a big title, the mother.

Caroline Muir: The great mother?

Francesca Gentille: Not the grandmother.

Caroline Muir: Yes.

Francesca Gentille: [xx] of American Tantra.  And, so what it’s mean is that you’re at the fore front, you know 20 / 30 years ago of bringing it to the west.  How -- how did a nice girl from -- where are you from?

Caroline Muir: Kansas.

Francesca Gentille: I love it, I love it, what a nice girl from Kansas become the Mother of American Tantra?

Caroline Muir: That’s a great question by the way and it should get us well launched.  I -- I, yes, it’s a great question I think so many people will relate to being a -- an uninformed, uneducated, sex-hungry, very alive, spiritual path, yoga students who had no idea that there was any integration that I could learn how to make between my spiritual path and my sexual nature.  They live independent of one another and I could be very devout and very humble and very, very, still unquiet, you know yoga class and in the bedroom I just the guy knew what to do.  I never had the confidence that my life force had been greatly interrupted when I was in my 20s and had ruptured ovarian cyst and finally accomplish this direct to me by the way.  And ---

Francesca Gentille: In your 20s?

Caroline Muir: In my 20s, yes.

Francesca Gentille: Oh my goodness!

Caroline Muir: And I went through many years hearing that I would never be vaginally orgasmic and then, you know I’d lost all my female organ so gees.  Well, I didn’t have a period, I didn’t have babies, what was I now?  Because when I grew up that was a lot of your identity as a woman was your pregnancies and your, you know the -- the normal things that all the girls were doing like having periods every month and I got emancipated from that really, really and I -- I never grieved the loss into quite a bit later, which -- which we will get to because I -- I entered into and I was fascinated by the subject of tantra yoga because of the healing potential there.

Francesca Gentille: You heard there’s something so you’re -- there you were spiritual but you didn’t combine that with sexuality, you were like so many of us start out an educated and informed, we have a country and a culture misinformation and non-information about sexuality.  And then you had this in a sense it’s wounding around your uterus and your sense of -- your own sexuality sensuality your body ---

Caroline Muir: Yes.

Francesca Gentille: --- as a woman, a trauma relate to the body and then how did you hear about tantra yoga as – at all little that something that could be healing for you?

Caroline Muir: Yes, what was just so perfect, my yoga teacher, Charles Muir started – gave a little talks in the evening after five-hour classes of, you know, doing postures and yoga and meditating and some of the other parts of yoga.  But they were kinds of a different limbs of the yoga and one of them was tantra yoga, having to do with our sexual nature.  And boy I pricked up my ears because I didn’t know there was anything in -- in yoga or in spiritual books or thinking or history that addressed our sexual nature at all.  And, so that’s what really threw me in was my yoga teacher who I had a high regard for, Charles Muir, one of my yoga teacher.  And, seemed to have some understanding of the subject of tantra yoga and I began to look for books and read about it and -- and there wasn’t much to find out.  Back in early 70s I think there were three books on the shelf at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore in Los Angeles.  And I devoured all three of them and I kept going to Charles’s retreats down in Mexico with a bunch of other friends and we would be fascinated or tell us more about this tantra yoga and how do you learn it and how do you practice it and how do you bring it to someone else and we began to learn a little bit here and there as he was learning himself.  And my girlfriend who knew that Charles was doing sexual healings with women went to him for a sexual healing session.  And I was in thick judgment, I feel what does that mean, he’s our yoga teacher, he’s not suppose to be sexual with any of the students and she comes back from the session with him and just in stillness with tears rolling down her cheek said, oh my friend, this is not anything like I could have ever imagine, this is not sex, this was very, very healing.  And I went oh my god, you know I need that.  I was just coming out of my third marriage, really emotionally immature when it came to love or relationship because I only had one and I was always walking down the aisle with -- with the new -- the latest one because that’s just what we did.  And, I knew after three marriages and I was in my early 40s that there must be something about marriage and love and sex that I’m not -- I’m not doing right.  So, when I started to learn a little bit about tantra from his classes with Charles and our yoga retreats, I am -- I came -- came to Charles after my friend had done this session with him and I said I want that sexual healing too, I need that and he said well, I know now your -- your current husband and you both taken a couple of tantra seminars with me and you’re my students and it wouldn’t be right.  And I begged then I cajoled and I said I’ve been separated now from the third for about three months and I want sexual healing whatever it is.  And, he relented and I had a life changing experience Francesca, in a couple of hours in Charles’s room at the spa down in Mexico where we -- where we went to for the yoga retreat and that was the first time ever in my life that I was honored as a spiritual woman with sexuality that would awaken and I had a place finally to begin my healings.  I had never been with a man who didn’t take advantage of me or want to have sex with me for his gratification, I had never been with a man who just simply honored me and was willing to assist in my healings.

Francesca Gentille: Um-hmm.

Caroline Muir: I even know I needed healing, really, you know.

Francesca Gentille: Caroline, this is -- this is so beautiful, I just want to slow down and -- and highlight a couple of the gorgeous things that you said.  What I want to put it to our listening audience is that, we are with Caroline and  Caroline is, although she is the goddess incarnated tantra at the same time, this is a girl from Kansas, she’s started out with curiosity and inquiry, someone who said it’s not working, how could it work?  And from that point I see a pathway opening out in front of you of letting your spirit guide you to receive the answers of those questions, asked and -- and the answers shall be given that you’re reading book, you’re taking classes and then something awakens in you around this concept [xx] that around sexual healing and I want to also highlight for those that are listening that we can receive it, so we’re feeling that some unknown way that this is something we longed for, it is out there to be received?

Caroline Muir: Yes.

Francesca Gentille: And if we’re someone who forgot to say, I know I think on that person who’s meant to give sexual healing to others that this is also something we can become and that men can be sexual healers, women can be sexual healers and we can do that in our relationship, we can do that in the world there are something really glorious as you said about that honoring of the union of our spiritual nature with our sexual nature and the preciousness of the embodies soul, this is -- this is so gorgeous.  Caroline, I’m just adoring this and we need to go to a quick break but we’ll be back in a moment.  After a work from our fabulous sponsors who encourage you to support because they allow show like this to keep coming to you and we’ll be right back.

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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex: Tantra & Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex with delicious, delight and divine Caroline Muir, Mother of American Tantra, founder of the Divine feminine Institute, really sharing her life path, which is the opportunity if we tried on to be our own life path and you had just been receiving sexual healing and your whole world had opened up with a new possibility than what happened?

Caroline Muir: Well then I absolutely knew that this is what I wanted to dedicate my work, my life to you, was to taking this information out to people who wanted to learn.  Certainly people who studied yoga were interested in tantra yoga but more and more as a people coming to our classes and our seminars were just focus.  You just focus in relationship or focus who you’re dating, or focus who had been divorced and didn’t want that to happen again and I began teaching with Charles as well as continuing my own healing and awakening because we fell deeply in love and we fell in love in agreement to live a tantric marriage and to bring ---

Francesca Gentille: What does that mean?  What is a tantric marriage?

Caroline Muir: Tantric marriage simply meant and I -- I said yes, right away without ever really thinking what it might be like to have to go through this but I said sure let’s share our love and sexual life in a healing way with those who come to us and let’s teach classes and let’s travel the world and let’s bring this information out to others and there was never such a thing is the word monogamy in our marriage.  And I said that’s fine because I never could stick to monogamy anyway when I was married so let’s try this other way with all this consciousness and with the -- with the intention for healing and someone is going to be with us, it wasn’t just going to be about having a good time.  And that is what has really, really change it’s my life to see how many women and also how many men are carrying wounds and emotional blockages to the fullness and the -- the ecstasy and the radiant of their sexual nature because you can’t bring spirit to your sexual nature spirituality to it without becoming a radiant thing.

Francesca Gentille: Absolutely and I just -- I want to go a little bit deeper into two directions with this, Caroline if you don’t mine, one direction, I just want to highlight, do you think, you know it’s important that people have to have an open lifestyle or is it possible to maintain more monogamous focus and still engage in this sexual spiritual healing?

Caroline Muir: Oh it’s totally possible to be as monogamous as anyone wants to be, there’s no requirement that you’re ever with anyone else.  And, it was simply ---

Francesca Gentille: And ---

Caroline Muir: --- an agreement that Charles and I made because he said I need to learn and I need to explore and I want to do it with you, and I said yes.

Francesca Gentille: Great.  I just want to clarify that it was an authentic longing for -- but for those us who may have an authentic longing for monogamy still absolutely possible to follow this tantric sexual healing path and as you’re speaking about this concept of their -- their sex and then their, you know, healing sex, would you be so kind to maybe draws a picture with your word of, you know, regular, I’m going to distinguish regular sex I think you’re hot, you think I’m hot and -- and maybe we’re, you know kind of kissing and, and, and, you know crossing each other’s bodies and in a fairly short time, the clothes are going to come off and in a fairly short time will be focusing on genitals either with our hands maybe occasionally our mouth and with our, you know, genitals themselves and in a really -- relatively short period of time will be often having intercourse and then intercourse itself may not last all that long and -- and then -- and then we’re done and in the early days of the relationship, it’s fun because there are so much internal body chemistry that’s pumping through us that gives us a high and feels so delicious type, it’s very hot passion in fact and later when that internal chemistry are died down, which is destine to do, I suddenly no longer feel attracted you, I think it’s your fault and I don’t know what to do with our marriage.  So, I’m going to distinguish that maybe it’s kind of average sex.

Caroline Muir: That’s describes its ---

Francesca Gentille: So what -- pardon.

Caroline Muir: That sounds like it describes pretty well.

Francesca Gentille: Now, what would healing sex look like?  How’s the difference in that?

Caroline Muir: I’m not even sure it would be still sex, no, you can call it that if you wish but healing -- sexual healing is not necessarily healing sex.  Sexual healing does not necessarily include sex.

Francesca Gentille: That’s an interesting concept, how could sexual healing not include sex?  So by sex, are you referring sex as intercourse, is that what we mean by sex?

Caroline Muir: Exactly, exactly, so sexual healing would be more massage with the hands, the fingers, it would not be necessarily to arouse someone or to do anything that could cause them to be arouse.  The person receiving the sexual healing may -- may create a boundary of gee, I’m in a monogamous relationship, I don’t want to be arouse and yet I need healing in this area because often the genitals have shut down and the energy in case in the genitals, which we all know as passion get shutdown because of some emotional traumatic fearful, degrading early life experience or lots of them.  And, women by in large have not -- well we have been objects of desire and mostly how we have grown up knowing that if we just have put on, you know shiny lips and we have big boobs and -- and we -- we ecstasy and sexy that we’ll get all the attention we want but we also often get attention we don’t want.  And I think that many women are -- have shutdown the natural hugeness and re-power of their sexuality because they didn’t -- it ultimately wasn’t safe for them to go out into the world with that energy flying off of every finger tip and pretty little painted toenails.  So we began to -- but not been close down and protect because we -- we are objects of great desire.  So the education is not just the -- the education in the healing women it is very much necessary for men to really get what deep emotional beings we are and that they are and begin to treat one another with more sacredness and reverence and respect and we could come to a sexual healing session in very much an agreement that this is not going to be sex, I am not going to have sex with you but I will stay in a role of giver or healer.  And even if you change your mind I will not crossover this boundary and this agreement that we have set from the very beginning.  So it has a lot to do with integrity and agreement and this is for most people aren’t able to stand with this because sexual energy can get really big during sexual healing.

Francesca Gentille: This is really key that integrity in that agreement because I have seen many times actually with women and you know, the words of women, women talk to women, so we tell each other our personal secrets and I have heard secrets from women where they been the last they had abused traumatized and then they’re leading with something very sexy and sassy went back not that authenticity, the authenticity is it could be revealed would be a very tender, a very lovely, a very radiant.  Young girl who’s never been gently and honorably and compassionately initiated into her body and so she leads with this, this sassy sexiness and literally unconsciously colludes with her own abuse and so there’s a test, I’ve seen women I probably did it myself where we test them and by being really sexy and really, you know, they’re coming on to him in a way but what we actually want is a man who can see beyond that ---

Caroline Muir: Um-hmm.

Francesca Gentille: --- with the tender being inside, no I’m sorry ma’am, this is -- this is it kind of an initiated secret here and I’m -- I’m both happy to reveal it and sorry to reveal it, I’m happy because you need to know, I’m sorry that we live in a world with so much wounding that this kind of masking and this kind of -- of, you know challenge is -- is put toward you that you actually need to pass through this labyrinth to really reach the -- the core and a heart and a path -- the two passion of a woman, I -- I feel sad for this and yet, you know gentlemen you need to know.

Caroline Muir: I’m right there with you Francesca and I think once men do know they -- my experience is that men really want to be the heroes and the healers for women and we make our entrusted by us to be our hero and our healer.  Such friendship and love and respect and healing really does happen for -- for all concerned.  The war between the sexes is not or we want to continue.

Francesca Gentille: Let’s just breathe that in.  We -- we want to come with peace and harmony where the sexual life force can be a bridge of healing communion between men and women and we’re going to talk about -- more about that how men can be on that journey for women, women can be on that journey for men and we can be on that journey for ourself and of course Caroline, wonderful journey ahead of us to pioneer in all of it.  Let me come back from our break and a word from our sponsor.

 

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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex: Tantra & Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex with a dynamic Caroline Muir, I just going to get right back into this gorgeous place that we’re at of the communion and the healing erotic life force between men and women and I -- I want to say to women to that that kind of something I -- I feel and initiated mystery women need to know is how really tender men are around their sexuality and that men can often lead with [xx], a performance, a sense of having to prove their masculinity but that underneath that it’s really raw tenderness of wanting to be received and -- and I’ve heard it’s over and over again from men, a desire to have a woman hold such a strong presence of love and compassion for them and their own erotic nature that they can finally surrender that underneath, you know they -- they said [xx] that every top, every dam, every person is actually taking charge really longs for someone compassionately strong enough and competition enough that they can surrender into.

Caroline Muir: Beautiful, I love that.

Francesca Gentille: So, tell us more about, you know your journey and -- and this journey.

Caroline Muir: Well, you know, my journey was happening simultaneously with the journey of thousands of students.  As I would teach for 20 solid years workshops with Charles plus writing our book and making our own DVD and -- and creating a home study course so that people who couldn’t get to our, our workshops could learn much of this information about tantra and sexual; healing.  I really, really flourished into the goddess that I ---

Francesca Gentille: What does that mean you flourish into the goddess?  Are there Temples of Caroline now?

Caroline Muir: No, no ---

Francesca Gentille: Just like candle that should be.

Caroline Muir: If anyone who called me a goddess early in life I -- I know they were nuts and I didn’t know what that meant.  So, a goddess is something you suddenly become by wearing a certain article carving.  Yes, it’s something that bubbles up from the core of who we are and at the core of who we are is our sexual -- is our sexual nature, we don’t juts give birth through our genitals, we give -- to -- to babies, we get -- get birth to life.  There is so much energy that women are walking around with and men are chasing them for, and it’s the energy of life and once I really got that it wasn’t about one more orgasm or ten more minutes of sexual loving but utilizing all of that energy into my brain to allow it, to awaken my consciousness that’s when I really began ashore Francesca, with my teaching, with the creating of the Divine Feminine Institute, I continue to teach with Charles, I will teach again with Charles [xx] this fall and the study of tantra is part of the Divine Feminine curriculum.  But what I really got in my own experience of sexual healing and awakening was that all of the consciousness that is present in all of the chakras, I was able to bring all of that up into my brain and literally give birth to new ideas to awaken consciousness and how to teach it.

Francesca Gentille: That is gorgeous, so, in -- in essence what I hear you saying is that any of us really can, male and female can be on this pathway to recognize and more fully embody and open up to and open up with the life force energy, the -- the divine energy within us that it’s not about starting our own church, the Church of -- the Church of Caroline or the Church of Francesca, it’s really a journey of thing god got us make a mistake, I am divine and I’m a part of divine consciousness and therefore I too am goddess, therefore you too are god ---

Caroline Muir: Yes.

Francesca Gentille: --- is that our pointing too?

Caroline Muir: Exactly right.  That’s exactly right and that we can begin to won that this sexual nature and our sexual energy is sacred, it’s only been men and women that screwed it up.  Energy itself is very sacred, it was created by the same god the created the oceans and the sky, the trees and the magnificence of nature and our bodies.  So, the sexual energy needs to get out of the genitals and get up through the chakra system and into the brain or we can think with it.

Francesca Gentille: And how do we do that?  Can you give us like maybe just one practice, I know there’s probably hundreds or in thousands but it’s a one practice you would want to gift us in the show that starts to help and beware of these chakras, the wheels of energy that align along the spine from the very base up to the very top of the head and help us move and open that energy?

Caroline Muir: Yes, wonderful.  It’s the very first technique I learned and it is still the technique that that does me the most value and that I teach every student that comes to me and that is the use of the breathing and focused mind, so they go together the breathing and the mind.  If you’re receiving sexual pleasure let’s say, we can all imagine that.  You can either, you know think about somebody else or you can just go the unconscious and just go into the -- how good it feels but there’s also something else you can do, you can imagine that you are breathing that energy down there, up through your power center and your heart center and your throat center and up into the area of consciousness called the seed of consciousness or the third eye and in actually to the brain itself, which is the gateway to spirituality and you breathe -- so you breathe long deep breath of the pleasure that you’re receiving or whatever it feels right to you, bring it up to your brain, just bring it up.  And when you have brought it up and you take in that in-breath, exhale with sound.

Francesca Gentille: Like, what kind of a sound?

Caroline Muir: Any sound, any sound not -- not an enclosed sound but a big -- big aaaah… like you want to share with, you know the people down in town that you’re having a beautiful moment.  Aaaah…

Francesca Gentille: Aaaah… yes.

Caroline Muir: That might be a pleasure of moment.

Francesca Gentille: Yes, oh god, oh god, you know so often we hear people yelling at each other, we don’t hear them having pleasure.  So, modeling pleasure out into the world, I love it.

Caroline Muir: Yes, and even if it’s not pleasurable yet, what you’re doing to yourself or what someone’s doing to you, it will probably get more pleasurable if you’ll breathe and make some sounds because pleasure likes to be moving, it -- it likes moving energy and we have to sometimes move our own energy through breathing and sound in order to feel more.

Francesca Gentille: So what’s the chord again?

Caroline Muir: Yes, a very simple technique and it’s -- some of the hard -- it’s one of the hardest ones for people to do.  People have sex and even great sex making very little sound, so no one can hear the, I mean, you know they will get caught [xx] why don’t I -- we don’t make sound.

Francesca Gentille: And one of my teacher says that it is actually possible to do it quietly because they’re in the next room to at least open the -- the mouth and feel that sort of relaxing and be like huh… huh..., you know even if it -- if it doesn’t shake the neighbor’s next door at least there are some sound that’s moving consciously through my body.

Caroline Muir: That’s right, you can even make a sound into the palm of your hand and even a better muffler would be to pull the pillow up, you pull the pillow up, the one who is going to make a sound and, and muffle the sound with the pillow but you can still make a lot of sound that way.

Francesca Gentille: So, letting the sound of breath and the -- the mind, the intention of the mind up to the course center of the body, it’s along the spine and all the way up to the third eye between the eye brows and the whole brain itself to enlightening it up as they were ---

Caroline Muir: Yes.

Francesca Gentille: --- and I know, I know that Caroline had so many more techniques and trainings and deliciousness, the home study course I want to take it and all -- and all sorts of things, how would people find you and get this information?

Caroline Muir: Well, first and foremost they can go to www.Divine-Feminine.com and all of the -- my products that I created through tantra and my work with Charles are on my website along with the books of another one of our core teachers [xx] teacher that works with us and teaches with us and a SourceTantra.com is Charles’s website and all of the products that we’ve created are on his website as well.  And they are very helpful but the video are in DVD now, Secrets of Female Sexual Ecstasy.  I actually -- we show some of the sexual healings work and I saw the release of the female ejaculate.  And I -- but mainly the camera is on my face and I’m showing the deep breath and this exhale with sounds so that women and men can start to see what it looks like when you’re having a session of this nature.

Francesca Gentille: Beautiful, beautiful.  Thank you so much Caroline for dedicating really so much of your life to this, continuing to dedicate, I want to have you back again because I know there are so much more we -- cut up from some of the last 20 years but I know that there’s a future, I know there’s a new book coming, so we definitely want to have you back and thank you so much for joining us here today.

Caroline Muir: Perfect.  Thank you, Francesca.

Francesca Gentille: And I want to thank you our listening audience for being on this journey for all being Caroline, with Caroline and Francesca’s with me and your own beautiful self on this journey of sexuality and spirituality reuniting and you can find the transcript more about Caroline, myself, see her beautiful picture, learn about our services at www.PersonalLifeMedia.com that’s www.PersonalLifeMedia.com, Sex: Tantra & Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex.

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