On Integrity

I really love and cherish my work, especially when I feel I really made a difference to someone’s life in a SINGLE session – compared with my colleagues the Psychosexual Counsellors – they work on the same issues, however, it takes a lot longer, almost always more than a single session, to really bring change about – sometimes I sadly deplore my mole-like existence, banished into the escort advertising section by respectable society, and really wish I could just happily chat away to anybody about the details of my work, and just get the respect and acknowledgment that this work REALLY deserves. What a strange world we live in. I recently went to my local health centre to register, and wondered again why any contact with the NHS leaves me so very DEPRESSED. The initial health check is carried out by a young man. He looks at his computer, not at me. When I finally catch his gaze, I smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. He does not LOVE people. He doesn’t even like them. He is a healthcare professional in the NHS. His passion is for facts and statistics, measurements. – What would it be like to work in a team? I’ve been freelance for so long I can’t even imagine it any more. My work evolves constantly alongside with my own personal development. Integrity does not mean to follow a set of rules. The sad thing about working in an organisation is that it expects you to do things that do not really agree with your own judgement, which is demoralising and soul-destroying. I think professionals solve this by doing the right things inofficially, under cover. A returning client recently asked me if my work had evolved in any way. Yes it has! I think I have become able to really meet people where they are, without having to impose too many restrictions. Most tantric practitioners have a kind of system in place to protect them from disrespectful people, or those that use the work for purely sexual reasons, without involving heart or soul. One colleague offers naturist massage for any client, before he can come for tantric massage. Another colleague wants people to read her website before she talks to them. Another one gives elaborate explanations of what the work is about. I used to tell every prospective client that I don’t offer ejaculation at the end. Suffice to say, I now don’t think that’s a good way. While ejaculation is not recommended, it can be beneficial at times, especially when a client needs to feel accepted and at ease on all levels. I have become very good at keeping my boundaries. As opposed to a set of rules, I constantly check within, and – of course – with the client, too! Not everything feels right every time. Integrity seems to be this constant checking-in with your Self, with your instinct. In daily life, to function in the world, we are constantly told to override this instinct, so it takes some work to get back to it, to listen to the inner voice again. Try it out! Be surprised….. Lots of love and namaste to all, Sarani Premanjali

Night of the Senses

Recently, I was asked to help out at a charity event called the Night of the Senses, for a charity called Outsiders, founded by Tuppy Owens. The charity promotes the rights of disabled people to sexual activity, or, in other words, seeing them as PEOPLE with normal human needs rather than just disabled. The event is quite full-on sexual, and I had never been to anything like it before. The double page article in the Metro didn’t particularly cheer me up either – I didn’t know how I would deal with men masturbating in front of an audience, or with men lying in front of the ladies loo in order to get a thrill out of being trodden upon with high heels. Also, the event was to go on all night until 5:30am, and, to be honest, I get terribly tired after midnight, and don’t do clubbing any more. I arrived at 4pm to set up and help in the Tantra Lounge, and to provide 15min mini-massages or mini-tantric sessions to whoever was interested. It was a bit of a struggle to get through the night. We were working two 2-hour-shifts all of us, i.e. 4 hours of massage for each of us, plus setting up and taking down. Inbetween my shifts, I tried to rest a little in a room with some soft furnishing, a someone naked asked me if I minded if he sat next to me while masturbating, well fine as long as he didn’t mind me completely ignoring him! I finally got a place on a sofa, talked to a couple next to me who seemed just as tired as I was, and closed my eyes for a bit. I woke up and saw people had gathered around me and were intently watching what was going on behind me, on a kind of stage with mattresses. I couldn’t see it without getting up and turning around, so I just guessed by their entranced looks. What struck me was the open and peaceful atmosphere – people were walking around stark naked, or in bondage gear, or in funny costumes, and a real range of different people too. A slightly disabled naked man came to the tantra lounge and refused to leave after his 15 min session, sitting there content, watching, and happily self-pleasuring. I gave him a hug when I left for my break. He just loved it all. It was a huge venue and I frequently got lost, shied away from stalls with strange activities, and longed for a kind of guided tour. Someone invited me to come into the groping stall, but I was too shy to find out about it. What was also nice was to see my tantra colleagues happily sporting uebersexy or kinky outfits, and changing back into their oriental gear for their shift. I was surprised by the interest the tantric lounge got, we had a queue all night, and really had to work hard. Why would all these people opt for gentle touch, when they could have had intercourse, groping, lap-dance, a fully fitted dungeon? Fact is, they were lapping up the heart energy, the love and affection, as a counterpoint to all that hardcore showy sexual activity. Or at least, they enjoyed it as a welcome change! Lots of love and namaste to you all, Sarani Premanjali

My Mother Never Touched Me

These days I seem to encounter a lot of problems that are due to not having had sufficient physical loving touch in childhood. I am sure this must be a problem for women, too, but I limit myself to what it means for men. A famous example is the filmmaker and author Alejandro Jodorowski, whose creativity and exploration of Tarot and family constellations seem to be due to the enormous emotional pain he suffered as a little boy – never being touched by his mother – and are his own way of healing himself. In the beginning, I found the phenomenon hard to believe. Why would you have children, if you never wanted to cuddle and kiss them? Then I realised what had happened to those mothers – stuck in unhappy marriages, they felt unloved and un-cared for themselves, and even though they provided all the food and practical care, they didn’t feel emotionally nourished enough to give their heart energy to their little boys, also maybe as a means of taking revenge. Often, they are the offspring of similar mothers themselves, and suffered from touch deprivation, or their mothers died when they were only young. It is necessary for men to break the vicious circle, which they would no doubt pass on to their own children. Like for Alejandro Jodorowsky, this process of healing your life is hard work, but infinitely rewarding – you are effectively not only healing yourself, your family and your relationship, but your whole line of ancestry will be transformed. Suddenly, this line stops producing more and more children and adults whose lives are lived in quiet desparation, but takes a turning-point towards bliss and fulfilment, rich, emotional lives. What does it mean in tantra, or tantric massage? Men and women attract each other because of opposite polarities in their lower six chakras. If we look at the first chakra, located on the pelvic floor or pubic bone, men are positive, and women are receptive (easily spotted in anatomy – penises are sticking out, whereas female genitalia are much smaller on the outside, or internal). Looking at the heart chakra however, women are considered positive (breasts sticking out), and men receptive. In loving encounters between men and women, men tend to give from their first chakra (positive), and receive in the heart chakra (receptive), women the other way round, the energy flow is thus either from the heart down and out of the genitals (men), or from the genitals up towards the heart, and out of there (women). In sexual encounters and generally in life people seem to be most fulfilled and happy if this energy flow is free and rich, and unimpeded. People suffer just as much if they can’t receive, or can’t give. If this flow of love is obstructed early in life, e.g. in the relationship with our mothers, children get deeply frustrated, and tend to find it difficult to ever give and receive love freely again as adults with their partners, but unconsciously seem to take revenge on them. Also, physical phenomena like heart problems, muscle spasms and painful erections are frequent. In tantric massage, it is vital to restore the heart-genital connection, by stroking upwards, and to make people soften in their heart region, which often appears held and inflated. By softening and surrendering, they open up to receive love from outside, and also from their own inner feminine. They grew up starved of that energy, and need to trust that it is actually THERE for them to receive. They also need to become aware why their mothers behaved as they did, and forgive them, and thus letting go of resentments towards women per se, often shown in the relationships to their partners. Tantric massage in these cases does involve images and words, and emotions may come up and need to be expressed. Ideally, it would take place alongside psychotherapy or psychosexual counselling. However, the intention to heal our lives can do miracles – we are never the slave of our personal history – we CAN change our lives, and our relationships. Namaste, and blessings, Sarani Premanjali

Delayed Ejaculation

I must confess that I had never before come across a male client with a problem of delayed ejaculation before, especially not being linked to any erectile dysfunction, and in a client who was in his late twenties. It therefore took some persuasive power by the client to see him at all – my apologies! I have since done some internet research on the topic, and yes, it does occur…. Ejaculation and orgasm do not remain the same throughout a lifetime (by the way – they don’t have to be the same, or occur at the same time – did you know?). Think back of your teenage days, self-pleasuring and maybe first sexual encounters, then your first partner, settling down and getting married with children, etc. In tantric terms, we try to preserve our energy in order to stay vital, healthy and sexually active for our whole adult lifetime, however, sexual activity is a vast range of practices, and the older we get, the more refined and beautiful they become, as new realms continue to open. Sexual problems like delayed ejaculation often hint to the need for a change in our perception of what sexual activity is, in other words, we need to expand and find new ways, be it in self-pleasuring, or making love to our partners. Making love does not have to involve penetrative intercourse, and may not even involve ejaculation – many people report emotional orgasms, exquisite and beautiful. In a tantric massage, we surrender to our Self which means letting go of what we THINK we are. This is the point from where new ways of dealing with our sexuality emerge, new realms open up that we had not dreamt of before. To come back to my client, he deplored that orgasms/ejaculation seemed to be so hard work for him these days, and recalled how easy and pleasurable it was in his early twenties. To sum it up, his old patterns did not seem to work so well any more, and he could not find new ones either. What was needed to overcome his delayed ejaculation was the deep surrender described above, opening up of the heart chakra, and the erotic awakening of the whole of his body, to increase the container of his arousal. From this point of whole-body arousal, ejaculation then seemed easy and FAR more pleasurable then he had ever experienced before. His difficulties paved the way for a new level to live his sexuality. Here is what he said: “I will never make love the old way again!”

Celibate Marriages

While I still have many more male than female clients, I would think about 50% of both genders coming to see me are married, and would either like to overcome a performance issue, are in a celibate marriage, or think that there must be simply more to sex than what they are experiencing. Unlike some of my colleagues I don’t have moral problems taking on on married clients of either gender, but I tend to ask just a little bit about their circumstances, whenever it’s appropriate. Ideally, I would like the session to benefit BOTH partners, even if the other half doesn’t even know what their spouse is up to. Often the client is satisfying his own need of being lovingly touched in an honoring way, of being ALLOWED to be sensual and sexual with somebody. Reinstated in his sexuality, he loses the bitterness and anger underlying the relations to his beloved, and can be open and loving again. If at all appropriate, I will also teach the way to touch their beloved, which often makes a big difference (loving and sensual hugging does NOT HAVE to lead up to sex!), and recommend couple residential weekends, if the partner is at all open to this kind of thing.

This morning I read an article in the Guardian “Life after Sex” , and while I fully agree that there is a much bigger number of celibate marriages than people would admit to, and that you can be happily married without having sex with each other, underlying the whole article is a kind of BITTERNESS. Of course, journalists rarely make themselves vulnerable by opening their hearts to the public, and sarcasm seems to be a prerequisite for the job. Still, I feel there is so much to say which can’t be reduced to “uninterrupted bonking” or “My husband? Ha! he hasn’t seen a nipple for years”. I’m not a relationship therapist, but in the course of my work am getting more and more intrigued by people’s life choices, or the situation they find themselves in. I used to share a house with two intensive care nurses, and could never understand how they could relax after a 12 hour hospital shift watching yet another episode of the Green Wing on the telly, but I love my work, too, and obviously have my own share of life and relationship experience by now, and articles about topics like the above intrigue me. I personally believe that it is rare for a 20 year marriage to be still full-on sexual, all the more worth celebrating that marriages like that really do exist! It’s worth pointing out that it’s probably the norm that sexual desire for each other diminishes in the course of the marriage, so it’s nothing to feel guilty or shameful about. However, love and intimacy can be re-kindled on another level, to the degree that you may be surprised WHO you are married to after 20 years. Any kind of performance problem, midlife crisis or sheer dissatisfaction can trigger a self-development journey on a spiritual AND on a physical level, which can include both partners. Barbara Hand Clow, in “Liquid light of Sex” <a href="http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_top&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=saranprema-21&o=2&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1879181746“> states that Kundalini rises naturally in sexually active (I include loving sensual cuddling and self-pleasuring here) people of both genders in midlife, and can entail a lowering of the sex drive to begin with. A lot of guilt and shame seems to be triggered by the fact that the sex drive changes over the years, it can also be naturally diminished while Kundalini energy is rising, but can return on another level. Intimacy means being able to talk to each other about sexual, sensual and intimacy needs. Marie Stopes, grandmother of sex education, advises in her book “Married Love”,<a href="http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_top&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=saranprema-21&o=2&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0199536546“> published 100 years ago, 1918 in fact, that separate bedrooms for married couples should be the preferred option. Can it really be possible, that a hundred years later, couples still feel shameful about this solution? Apart from much needed sleep, privacy and dignity, this may even allow for uninterrupted self pleasuring, and new discoveries, who knows… Spouses can be loving with each other on so many levels, but it’s not advisable to seek the fulfillment of all your needs in one person. We need to be true to ourselves first of all, to free our relationships from bitterness, guilt and anger, and open our hearts to each other, to truly mirror our masculine and feminine side in the other. Dare to transform your relationship – including the relationship to your Self – into a divine union!
Love and namaste to all couples
Sarani Premanjali

At Ease with Women

Recently I had a new client in his late twenties of Asian origin, born in the UK to Asian parents with traditional values. Half way through the tantric massage, he confessed that he had never been with a naked woman before. It made me gasp a little, understandibly perhaps. A tantric massage is not ideal in that case, trespassing too many boundaries at once, that the client is not able to set yet, out of fear, and curiosity. It made me think there must be more men in a similar situation out there, for whom a natural sexual encounter just hasn’t happened so far, and who long to take the step into intimacy with a woman, but for who a tantric massage is too much yet. I decided to offer a kind of counselling session in a comfy setting, that may or may not involve getting naked, may or may not involve touch or massage, in order to gently ease into intimacy and acceptance. I am not a trained counsellor (although my counsellor friend thinks I am really good at it and confides all her worries in me – bless her). If I were, practices like getting naked with a client would get me kicked out of my professional association. Counsellors can’t offer this kind of session, and would work with escorts or other professionals if a client needed sexual encounters as part of the therapeutic process. I think that getting naked together is a gentle way of approaching intimacy, and can’t quite believe that sexual encounters with professionals (involving penetration) are a good way to go here. I have now had a number of clients who came with confidence issues, being insecure about how acceptable their body is to women, for a wide range of reasons, relieved they could finally address the issue with someone. It also made me realise that women’s bodies are much more on display everywhere, for everyone to see, apart from their genitals – you’d have to buy a gent’s mazine to see those I suppose. Women have just as many hang-ups about their genitals as men, but they can hide them away when getting naked in the shower of their fitness club. I have recently been to women’s yoni (female outer genitalia, it means “sacred place”) honouring session, where women take it in turns to lie in the middle of the space with their legs open, and the other women come to look, and honour. It’s not particularly easy either – women can’t even see their own genitals without the help of a mirror, and their husbands, lovers or doctors are often more familiar with them than themselves. If a man is unhappy about his genitals he would avoid getting naked anywhere, among men or women. I recently watched a Seinfeld episode where poor George is caught with his pants down after having been in the cold swimming pool, and sneered at by his female friend. Men! We women are not like that, believe me! Take courage – show yourself to the world! I was on an advanced tantra course the other weekend, where women and men are quite naturally naked together. What a wealth of shapes and sizes of breasts, bodies, penisses! How wonderful that we are all unique! How beautiful people are when they are naked! How I wish some of my clients could have been there…. Love, namaste and blessings to you all, Sarani Premanjali

Addiction and Ecstasy

What does Ecstasy mean for you? Any kind of Ecstasy? Does it have a place in your life? – I have seen two clients lately who had alcohol or drug addictions in the past, and one of them found that life is not really worth living without his addiction, in other words, he is clean now, and has been for many years, but he hasn’t found the element that really connected him to life. He thinks his life is boring. He can’t really fully enjoy it. I’ve recently listened to a podcast by a wonderful American lady, Shambavi, who teaches Direct Realization Tantra in Portland, Oregon . She found that addictions actually have a lot of elements in common with religious devotion, e.g. ritual, and are a kind of substitute for the REAL thing. The more we substitute the real thing with coffee, alcohol, cake, or hard drugs, the more desperate we get for the former. What is the real thing? I personally believe that we have all come here with a mission from elsewhere, and all our lives we get hints what to do, where to go, in order to fulfil this
mission. Most of us do our best in order not to hear this voice any more, to finally live in peace and not be pushed forward by our longing, not to painfully face our issues and go all the way into the unknown, follow our desires and take the plunge. Our longing for safety makes us retire early from our mission. I’ve watched a brilliant film lately, I think it was called “Thank you for Smoking”, and the hero, a spokesperson for the tobacco industry, says the world may be a better place if nobody had mortgages to pay. We remain at a place in our lives that is not quite right. We know it. Yet, bills need to be paid, and at least we are getting by. In order to deafen the tiny voice that’s still speaking we need distractions, and drugs. And we may pay a price in the quality of life, nothing seems real any more, the joy is not real joy, or we may get depressed. The amount of antidepressants we are consuming these days is staggering, almost one in ten Americans is taking them. Barbara Carrellas (bless her!) has written a new book called “Ecstasy is necessary”
and I really like the title. Ecstasy for me is felt connection, both to my deepest Self as to everything and everybody, past, present and future in one, being fully and joyfully in the moment, and just wanting to BE, and FEEL, and STAY. It’s an experience I really miss when I haven’t had it for a while. Ecstasy can come spontaneously! If we want to go and look for it, however, most often we need to look at our fears, at the risks we haven’t taken, where we’ve deviated from the “Resilient Edge of Risk” into safer territory. Now, Barbara, I really love you, because not only is this book advocating to take erotic risks, and, believe me, Barbara is MUCH more experienced in all kinds of dangerous things than I am, but also she writes about surrender, a word I so dearly love. In order to get the most out of life, surrender is necessary, joyful surrender to all that is, whatever it may be. On p 146, Barbara quotes Deepak Chopra: “You will have no enemies once you decide to surrender. Surrender means not giving in to another, but giving in to love.”
Dare to give in to your Self…. love and namaste to you all, Sarani Premanjali
PS I found this BEAUTIFUL talk by Brene Brown on TED, it’s on vulnerability and shame. Don’t miss out!