Episode 87 - Secrets of a Temple Priestess for Women (Part One) with Triambika
In this exciting show, Dr. Patti talks to Triambika, sexual healer, Dakini, coach, and leader of a program teaching women how to become Dakinis, or Temple priestesses themselves. A dakini is an amazing goddess archetype that men and women can learn to embody. Find out how you can become a Dakini. Hear how Triambika became dedicated to the path of tantra through her own sexual initiation, and why she is so motivated to share her passion with others. Find out the structure of what she teaches in her Dakini mentorship program for women. Learn what she feels are some of the most basic things a Dakini needs to know, and why female empowerment is so important as a foundation. Find out what you can do to become more orgasmic, and why stillness, and the ability to feel, will enhance your orgasmic pleasure, no matter what your level of orgasmic capacity. All this juicy information is interwoven amongst a backdrop of Kashmiri Shaivist tantric teachings and Triambika’s focus on staying centered in the heart. We are in for an incredible treat!
Transcript
Transcript
[This program is intended for mature audiences only]
[Musical interlude]
Dr. Patti Taylor: Welcome to the Expanded Lovemaking show. I’m your host Dr. Patti Taylor of ExpandedLovemaking.com and I teach you how to make exquisite love. This is part 1 of the 2 part series. Tod ay we’re going to be exploring the secrets a temple priestess teaches women. Now, as a woman, have you ever wished that you could have gone to school to learn the sacred temple arts of being a better lover? Well, these days you really can go to a program like that.
We have with us here today one of the world’s foremost teachers to share with us a little of what goes on in her temple mentorship program. Our guest today is Triambika. I want to welcome you, Triambika, to our show.
Triambika: Hi Patti, thank you.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Hi, it’s so great to have you here. I want to tell our listeners a little bit about you. Triambika is a sexual healer and a coach who has devoted much of her adult life to the study and practice of Tantra Yoga and the union of spirit and sex. She has studied from a variety of sources including sexual Chi Gung. She took initiation into Kasmiri Shaivist Tantra and has received numerous teachings and transmissions in this ancient and sacred tradition.
She currently has a private practice in Santa Cruz, California and she also teaches programs across the country to men and women on erotic spirituality and Dakini mentorship. So today we’re so lucky to have Triambika with us to get an inside look at what goes on in this very exclusive training program. After all, when we’re alone with our beloved we have that chance to take on many roles, don’t we? Including that of temple priestess and healer, or Dakini. So let’s find out how we can embody these roles in our lives, too.
Let’s get started. I think the obvious place to begin is to find out, Triambika, what is a Dakini?
Triambika: A Dakini traditionally is a mythical figure. She is a spiritual embodiment of enlightened energy in the female form. She’s an active manifestation of this spiritual energy and she comes to us in the form of a muse. What we would call in the Western culture an angel or a type of teacher that can come to us in our dreams and also can show up in our physical form; be able to really imbue us with the teachings of how to awaken and enlighten through sexual energy.
Dr. Patti Taylor: That sounds so beautiful. I want to be a Dakini! I guess the next question is can anyone be a Dakini, or is that a mythical figure?
Triambika: The Dakini is traditionally a female – so we’ll start with that. I do believe that Dakini can show up in anyone’s life; anyone who calls on her, anyone who wishes to manifest that. It’s not always in the sexual form. It can be dance, through art, through other arts, through cooking. But it’s really just calling in that strong, powerful female spiritual energy.
Dr. Patti Taylor: So it’s like an archetype?
Triambika: Exactly.
Dr. Patti Taylor: So I could be a Dakini then - great! So that’s why you’re teaching that school, so women can actually bring in that energy?
Triambika: Exactly.
Dr. Patti Taylor: This is really something that women have been learning for a long time, right? It’s a Tantric energy, isn’t that correct?
Triambika: That’s true. Both men and women have been calling on the Dakini energy in meditations for centuries. We come to embody this as women throughout our life through different initiations.
Dr. Patti Taylor: I just want to stop for a moment and find out since you’re teaching this, you’ve walked the path quite profoundly. I’d like to just find out how you came to walk this path.
Triambika: First, I was interested in Eastern Studies and needed to find a way to reconcile the split that had occurred in me around my sexuality and the religious beliefs that I bought into through the religion of my parents. I needed to find a way to mend that, and Eastern Studies and Eastern Philosophies seemed to really hold a lot of truth for me.
As I evolved in that path of yoga and traveling to India several times, I discovered Tantra and found that somewhere in these ancient teachings there was going to be a way for me to become one with all of it. With the sexual, sexy temptress together with the holy being that experiences god / goddess in everything I see and do.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Was there any defining moment for you, or was it a gradual kind of assimilation, a kind of progression?
Triambika: Was there any defining moment? I would say yes. When I first experienced a Tantric Sacred Spot session where a female practitioner was stimulating my G-spot, it was the very first time. I remember having that point accessed as if it were an electric shock that went through my whole body. I screamed and I laughed and I giggled and I cried all at the same time. There was this image of the temple and it was so clear to me that I had been there and spent time there. Everything changed from that moment on.
Dr. Patti Taylor: How many years ago was this?
Triambika: That was a little over 10 years ago.
Dr. Patti Taylor: And that changed your life?
Triambika: It did.
Dr. Patti Taylor: I’d like to find out your roots. Your teachings really come from a Kasmiri Shaivist orientation. Can you just say a little bit about what that means? I’ll bet you our listens are going ‘Wow, what does that mean?’ What does that mean to you?
Triambika: Kasmiri Shaivism is a whole philosophy, that in short, there is no separation between God and self. So whatever we’re doing, whatever we’re thinking, whatever afflictions we have; our issues, our stuff, our desire to have sex and to unite: all of that is not separate from spirit.
Dr. Patti Taylor: That’s really beautiful. There are so many different kinds of Tantra out there, but when you see Kasmiri Shaivist Tantra, it seems to be special. Is that a special kind of Tantra? Is there some special ring that that has?
Triambika: The Tantric Text originate from Kasmir. So these are you could say, the original forms and philosophies that developed Tantra. Tantra later traveled into Tibet, then to the south of India and all over the world from there.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Is there a particular saying from the Kasmiri Shaivist Text that you particularly love? Just one that you can think of?
Triambika: A saying from the Kasmiri Text…I have a definition of Tantra that I think is very much from the Kasmiri tradition and that is: for me Tantra is the moment to moment ecstatic awareness of life exactly as it is.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow. That is so gorgeous. I think that pretty much says it all for me. Just one more thing - you are now teaching and I really see a clear progression of how that happened. I’m just wondering, you’ve been teaching this for some time now, do you see a growing demand for the kinds of things that you are teaching?
Triambika: I do. I see people transforming and reaching out and wanting to know ‘what else is there?’ People get married, they get divorced; I see the same patterns coming up around sexuality. People are just not having enough of it or they’re not having enough intimacy. Men don’t get enough sex; women don’t get the right kind of sex.
They want to know ‘what else is there?’. Especially in times of trouble like what we’re having now in the economy. We search out for ‘what else is there’. There is a growing demand for these teachings and how to integrate spirit with the one thing that is so important in our life, which is sex.
Dr. Patti Taylor: On that note we’re going to take a break. When we come back we’re going to find out what you actually are teaching your women to teach people. I myself want to hear it! This is Dr. Patti Taylor; I’m here with Triambika and please stay with us. You can learn more about Triambika at her web site which is Ecstaticawareness.com.
[Program Break]
Dr. Patti Taylor: We’re back and we’re talking with Triambika about secrets a temple priestess teaches women. Let’s find out then – we’re in your Dakini mentorship program and what are some of the things that you might start out teaching? I know there are probably a million things. How long do these classes last? Are they a week long?
Triambika: Right now I have a mentorship that started off as a three day weekend and I stay with the women for six weeks after that, supporting them through emails and phone calls.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Maybe you can rattle off what’s covered in the weekend and let’s pick a few things to focus in on.
Triambika: The weekend is something of a level 1. It’s just a beginning to really give women an understanding of what it is to show up for anyone – and in this case we’ll say for men – how to show up as healer, as lover, as goddess. All of that comes by truly just adoring their counterpart. Adoring their client, their seeker, their man; whoever that is. Really just learning how to step into a full place of love and be able to embody their sexuality with love, and just pour that down onto that being. So that they can really feel what it’s like to experience union at this level.
Dr. Patti Taylor: What are some of the skills that they need for themselves in order to do that?
Triambika: One of the main skills is self-empowerment and confidence. I think that there’s nothing more sexy than a confident women. Having tools and tricks that you can pull out from your bag; you can really feel like you know what you are doing. That level of confidence shows itself in all of your relationships.
Dr. Patti Taylor: What would you do then as a woman if you’re not feeling completely confident? What might be one thing that you could do to begin to resource more confidence in yourself?
Triambika: I think that all women have a way of knowing how to be enchanting. Being enchanting can be very alluring for a man. It’s not dependent on their body type; it’s not dependent on their bra size [laughs]. It’s not dependent on their height. Simply being enchanting can put someone into a spell of sorts and it’s from that place that we get to play and be whoever we want to be. Be as juicy and sexy as we want because it’s not dependent on the exterior.
Dr. Patti Taylor: How would we be enchanting? What would that involve? I just want to tell my listeners I know Triambika and you are one of the most enchanting women alive on the planet. I want to know for myself so I can model you [laughs] starting immediately.
Triambika: I think one of the first things comes with the gaze, with the eye gaze. Who am I invoking when I gaze out at someone and I just pierce someone with my gaze, what’s coming forth? You know that look when you pierce someone with your gaze and you are angry, and how intense that is? Well, you can equally do that with your empowered sexual energy.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Ok, I’m really going to follow this because – I’m thinking out loud – I have met men that have given me that gaze, and I can just come on the spot when I get that gaze. How do you give that gaze? What is that gaze?
Triambika: It comes from inside. It really comes from inside and it’s not contrived. It’s something that just shows up as you begin to really pump the energies inside your body. Literally, we have muscles inside our pelvis that we pump to build those subtle energies of life force and juiciness and then breathe it up through our body [breathes deeply] and then send it out.
Dr. Patti Taylor: That’s a really good one. What else can we do? I know you work a lot with the energies, integrating energies.
Triambika: Energy is a huge piece here because it’s everything. It’s all of our emotions, our feelings, our sensations, our life force, our creativity. What I teach in my trainings is to begin to learn how to feel subtle energy. Sometimes we think that sexual energy has to this big, dramatic, passionate showing. But really the goods are in the subtleties and I teach the women how to tap into those subtleties and begin to expand on them. Not so much so that the sensation expands, but so that we can actually find the power or the enlightened quality.
Dr. Patti Taylor: I am so glad you said that because I find that is so true for me as well.
Triambika: I bet it is – I know that you’ve studied a lot of this.
Dr. Patti Taylor: It is – the more subtle a man gets, the more turned-on I get, and the higher we go. How do you tap into those subtle energies as a woman?
Triambika: The woman slowing down is huge. Just knowing that in stillness there is so much; just slowing down enough or pausing altogether to really feel what’s there. Even just putting our attentions, putting my mind and my awareness down into my yoni, and into my genitals, just feeling what’s really there. Maybe I’ll move a little bit, I’ll pump the energy there a little bit and just sensing. And from that place it really grows. It’s just putting – what is the saying – energy flows where conscious goes. So if I put my consciousness there, it’s going to flow.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Oh my god, I’m feeling so much energy down there. I going to come!
[Laughter]
Dr. Patti Taylor: I think you’re onto something there, Triambika. How about breath and sound?
Triambika: Breath and sound are two other really important components.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Quick, before the phone wires melt!
Triambika: [laughs] I like to emphasize breathing in through the nose. It really feels like it lifts the sensations down from my yoni and brings them up throughout my body, so that not just my genitals are feeling it, but now my whole spine and my heart and my breasts are just vibrating with all of it. So I really emphasize good, long, slow, deep, full breaths [breaths deeply] to expand the sensations throughout my body. Breath is a vehicle, it’s the vehicle of all life, so we need it. Why would we want to not breathe with our sexual energy? If we want more of it, here’s how we can have it. It can be all over our body, not just in that one spot.
Sound is another component that I bring in a lot in my work. I find that sound has the ability to raise our orgasmic potential. It raises the octave of our orgasm when we take our juicy, excited orgasmic energy and start to move it through our body. It kind of gets into this circuit where it’s moving through us and then we need to blow off some steam, so to speak. Letting out some sound, not just a pornographic moan - although they know what they’re doing, I have to say - but really kind of letting it out.
Let me just try it for a moment. I’m pumping, I’m pumping my pubic coccygeal muscle, my mula bunda, pumping, pumping, pumping…[breathes deeply]…[moans]…[breathes deeply]…[moans loudly].
Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow, right through the phone wires! [laughs]
Triambika: I just encourage everyone to try it themselves for a little while.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Thank you for that, that was so beautiful. We have to take a break [laughs], which is good, because I think everyone needs to breathe. This is Dr. Patti Taylor and I’m here with Triambika. We promise you we’ll be right back because we have more, and we’re going to talk about some really good stuff. Please stay with us. In the meantime, you can check out Triambika at her web site: Ecstaticawareness.com.
I just want to say we will be right back. You can find out more about her training; she does teach erotic spirituality and she’s doing these Dakini trainings – there’s one coming up May 15 and 16 in Florida. She’s going to be doing these ongoing, so if you catch the show after the release date, you can get it again. Just see what she has to say; it’s a great, great web site. I just wanted to put that out there.
Triambika: I just want to make a correction that the May 15, 16, 17 training is going to be in Oakland, California.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Ok, maybe we’ll just scratch that and say check out her training May 15 through 17 in Oakland, California.
[Program break]
Dr. Patti Taylor: We’re back and we’re talking with Triambika about secrets a temple priestess teaches women. Mostly, when I have talked to women their questions eventually – when they get right down to it – often come down to either they’re not orgasmic, they’re orgasmic and they want to feel more, or they want to have multiple orgasms. Maybe we have time to touch on those three topics, I don’t know if we do or not. Do you want to pick any one of those to talk about?
Triambika: I think non-orgasmic is important.
Dr. Patti Taylor: OK.
Triambika: What I say to the women who come to see me, who are non-orgasmic is: first and foremost it takes a certain amount of surrender, of letting go completely in order for orgasm to occur. Often, if we are in our heads or worried about something or if our heart is having some stuff going on, it’s almost impossible to really let go, especially if we’ve never done it before. I really encourage women to get massage, get full-body massage and get yoni massage.
Get those areas loosened up – not for the purpose of producing orgasm during the massage - but more just to relax the bands and the sheaths of the tissue there that might be contracted in a way that they don’t realize. It’s almost like there’s a certain amount of contraction that needs to take place in order for orgasm to occur. If you’re already tight and contracted then there’s no space for the pulsations.
Dr. Patti Taylor: That’s really profound; I really like the way put that. That’s beautiful.
Triambika: Thanks. There’s a also lot to be said about meditation and the way that we learn to be still and relaxed and let go of some of our intense thoughts through meditation. It’s a way that we can bring our meditation into the bedroom and start to just really let go of thought, and of worry and everything else and tap into just sensation. If women are not touching themselves, then they need to be, because no one will know how to touch them better than they will.
Dr. Patti Taylor: You’re right; I’m going to start touching myself right away [laughs].
Triambika: Right away. Let’s do it together, shall we?
Dr. Patti Taylor: All these men that are giving me orgasms, I really ought to start giving them to myself. Anyway, I love what you are saying. I was curious, what percentage of women do you think are non-orgasmic, that you’ve run into?
Triambika: I have run into a lot of non-orgasmic women. And if they aren’t, there are a couple of different variations. Some women have never experienced an orgasm and some women have an incredibly difficult time getting there.
Dr. Patti Taylor: I was wondering if this is one of those things that a lot of women aren’t talking about, and maybe we need to bring it out in the open and start acknowledging it. Take the secrecy off of it. You know what I’m saying?
Triambika: I do think it’s important to talk about and I think that women can stop being hard on themselves if they’re trying to get there and it’s not happening. Don’t let anyone lay a trip on you.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Good for you.
Triambika: I think a lot of times men want to see that they gave you an orgasm. Nobody gives you an orgasm, it’s only you. I think that we need to do the deeper work of seeing where we contracted, where we are conflicted in our life, where are we holding on. Where are we not willing to surrender and let go and then let that translate into our sexual experiences.
Dr. Patti Taylor: I just love talking to you, because everything you say is so beautiful. The other thing – I’m just thinking out loud here – is that sometimes I tell my friends, or lovers, or I’m just joking around at a party, I say ‘who wants to have an orgasm?’. It’s like the last note of an opera or the last bite of a 16 course meal (the way we think of it in the West). The whole experience should be the orgasm; it’s the whole, everything we do and then the last note should be going over the edge.
In a funny way when the whole focus is on that last note, it is not necessarily a good focus. What you’re saying is very beautiful: where it’s the massage, it’s opening up the space. I want to see a world where it’s not performance oriented, like what you are saying. Where we’re really in our hearts and the connection probably would really support people in having more pleasure and feeling.
Triambika: Absolutely; the journey is so delicious. Often times when I’m working with individuals and we’re raising sexual energy, I have them capture the experience while they’re in it. This is it, this is the journey, and this is what we’ve been waiting for. The end, it will soon come - no doubt – [laughs] but pay attention to what’s happening here and now. It’s that moment to moment ecstatic awareness of what’s so, of just what’s happening.
Dr. Patti Taylor: I know in our next show I’m going to get into some real, actual examples from your working with clients and I’m counting on it. Before we close out the show can you just give us maybe one example of working with a woman on some kind of orgasm issue, just what happens?
Triambika: What happened is that everything got really wet [laughs].
Dr. Patti Taylor: So start from the beginning. What was her issue and what happened?
Triambika: A woman I worked with recently - a young woman actually - had never found her G-spot. She didn’t quite know how to access it and didn’t think that her boyfriend was getting there. She just knew that she could experience more pleasure than what she was experiencing. We did some work together, we massaged and explored inside. What we do is go in without an agenda at first, and move around inside of her yoni. Then find any spots that feel like there is emotion stuck there, or trauma.
She moved a lot of emotional energy. It was very powerful through breath and through sound. Eventually the tears came and shortly after the tears - I continued to stimulate her and direct her awareness to her G-spot - within moments tears turned into laughter, and turned into these crying-out delicious moans of pleasure. A few moments later everything got really wet and she was ejaculating. She was just giggling and giggling, she couldn’t stop giggling. She went from rage, to anger, to sadness, to total giddiness. It was wonderful.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow, how beautiful, huh? So beautiful. It’s like that, isn’t it? Just like the whole thing, everything. The tears, the joy, the laughter, the mystery, the surprise, everything.
Triambika: It really is beautiful, actually.
Dr. Patti Taylor: It’s the whole journey.
Triambika: It’s an honor for me to show up in this way with people. I am continually floored, if that’s possible.
Dr. Patti Taylor: On that beautiful note, we’re going to close out the show. I’d like to invite you to just leave our listeners with one final thought for the day as they may be turning off their iPod or radio right after this. Close out the show, to leave us all inspired?
Triambika: One final thought for our listeners is that because this was regarding women, I think it’s important to recognize that in order for a woman to really be open in her sex, she needs to feel open in her heart. She needs to feel safe. So if men are listening, go ahead and charm her, adore her, compliment her. Really show her she’s loved and you’ll get the response you’re wanting because those two are so deeply connected for women.
Dr. Patti Taylor: What a beautiful thought. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for coming on our show. That does bring our show to a close; we do have a part 2 to this show where we’ll be taking about men. Also, some examples from your practice, so it should be an amazing part 2. We will be back and in the meantime we have been talking with Triambika.
You can find out more about her and her work – I highly encourage everyone to check out her website and get to know more about Triambika. Visit her website, it’s really fun and she’s a gorgeous, gorgeous human being: Ecstaticawareness.com. This is Dr. Patti and you can send me email [email protected]. For text and transcripts of this show, you can visit PersonalLifeMedia.com and you can also visit me, Dr. Patti Taylor, at ExpandedLoveMaking.com.
That’s all for now; I remain yours and I will see you next week.
[Program end]