Tantra for Superheros

It's no more outrageous for the President to attend this month’s Tantra Heart workshop than it is for me to be on Oprah (April 8, 2010!). Tantra is where yoga was 20 years ago...it's being reborn. I had considered voting for Dennis Kucinich in the primary in part because I'd read he and his wife were Tantra practitioners. I was very aligned with his edgy, far left politics. But it was the Tantra piece that excited me the most. Imagining a President who practices Tantra inspires optimism for peace on earth. Admittedly, Kucinich was unelectable (in large part because, according to my friend Chuck, a politically savvy, articulate, esteemed Shakespeare professor, “He looks too much like a ferret”).

Nevertheless, we can still have a President who does Tantra! The workshop is happening in the Obama’s former neighborhood, Hyde Park, at the home of his daughter’s former schoolmate! How un-exotic, how do-able is that?

You can tell that the First Couple is already having darn good sex—have you noticed the way they look at each other? I suspect if the President did this Tantra class, we would be that much closer to world peace. Truly. You cannot do this TantraHeart weekend and go back to sleep, thinking you are not a creator, on a very high level. You cannot come out thinking we the Human Family are not One. You come out knowing that. So, yeah. That’s scary. It’s a big responsibility, to be a conscious creator, to honor all of life. Tantra introduces a new way of seeing. Since our First Couple are already fearless, highly responsible, conscious creators having really good sex…why not just formally embody that for all to see? Claim it! Register at www.ugoddesstantra.com!

They're probably registering right now. Did I mention I'm going to be on Oprah?

My daughter and I live in a wonderful single-family home in Lincoln Park, far better than my modest income would allow, due to the vision and heart of my dear friend and pelvic floor goddess Missy Lavender. (By the way, you might remember her as the perky blonde woman standing beside Oprah on Inauguration night. Missy is a right place at the right time kind of goddess.)

So. It’s a long story. But it began four years ago on the descending stairwell of a rental two-flat when, in a moment of inspiration, I set an audacious intention: "I want to live in a home that I love, a home much better than my income would allow."

Setting intentions works. But, as I explained to the group of goddesses that my dear friend Julie had assembled (she had been introduced to me by Missy, by the way) it helps to set audacious intentions.

I spoke with my goddess friend Katrina Rivers one afternoon last year and mentioned to her that I was going to speak at Julie’s gathering that evening.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Nervous,” I replied.

“Do you know nervousness is JUST energy? And that you can take that energy and turn it into something else? Such as excitement?”

Of course I knew that. I taught that to people, didn’t I? It’s just that…I had forgotten. Because I was nervous.

“Ok, hang on!” I said, “I’m going to do it right now!” And I did.

Katrina held on, talked me through the transformational moment, and I emerged, saying, “OK! I’m excited!” I thanked her profusely, and headed to my computer where I made an outline of everything I wanted to say to Julie’s guests.

Enjoying Julie’s gathering, I could not help but notice that the other speakers, including my colleague, tantra goddess Elsbeth Meuth did NOT speak from an agenda. The piece of paper quartered into my back pocket began to haunt me as I listened to Elsbeth and breathed my enlightened sexuality up into my heart, as she was instructing us to do. I was brimming with excitement, enough to ignore the thought what if I can’t do it without my typed-up, well articulated agenda?

I walked to the front of the room and looked at the open faces waiting for the NEXT words and I let it flow. I was more open than ever, the voice of the Goddess flowing, when I gleefully instructed these women to dig deep and imagine what their heart’s desire truly was.

“What’s your heart’s desire?” I asked, to a handful of women.

I revealed mine. I said, “Naming our heart’s desire can actually be stressful. For instance, I want to write a book. And I can say that, but then the thoughts creep in, thoughts like, ‘do I have time to write a book?’ or ‘what if I don’t write the book?’ so it is very, very beneficial to set an intention above and beyond that. So, yes, I want to write a book. My book will be about enhancing the spiritual connection between mothers and daughters. Now for the audacity: I want Madonna and her daughter to read it, and form a mother-daughter circle. I want Michelle Obama to read it, and I want there to be mother-daughter circles at the White House (she hadn't moved in yet, but that was beside the point)! I want mother-daughter circles to form across the country. AND I WANT TO BE ON OPRAH!” And everyone laughed, as I had expected. I laughed. Because, what an audacious intention!

“See?” I said. “When you set an audacious intention, it makes you smile.”

A few weeks later, I went through that same series of thoughts in one of my UrbanGoddess workshops. Each participant amped up her intention until it made her smile.

“I just want peace in my family,” one of them said. “I bet you can't amp that up.”

“I can,” I replied. “What if your family went to a yoga workshop together? What if at the end of the workshop, they composed a song and sang it to you, thanking you for how peaceful they all felt?”

She laughed. We all laughed. Outrageous, right? Why set an intention that’s going to stress you out, when you can set one that will make you laugh?

So I went about my life. For months. For a year. The mother-daughter book was slowly being written. One day I took a nap. When I woke up, I checked my messages.

“Hi Rachel, this is Brian from the Oprah Winfrey Show,” the message began. I put Brian’s voice on speaker, stunned and euphoric. “I know this is late notice (HA! I thought, This is happening much sooner than I had imagined!), but we’d like to come over and tape you teaching Tantra to some clients of Dr. Laura Berman.”

With deep gratitude, another goddess, my dear friend Annmarie, popped into my mind: she had introduced me to Laura Berman, based on her intuition that we should be working together. (In case you're wondering, Missy had introduced me to Annmarie too.)

I listened to Brian’s message two more times. I savored it. If you had asked me then—and maybe even if you asked me now—what the highlight of my life has been thus far, I would say, “Hello, this is Brian from the Oprah Show.” Indeed.

Audacious. Not so much because I wanted to be on tv--but because the Universe had heard my intention!

As it turned out, the Oprah show did not film at my house.

I met the couple four or five times. They kept walking in the door of Vessel Yoga, and I kept introducing myself, as if for the first time, five times. The second time, I felt somewhat insincere. By the fifth time, I was trying not to feel fraudulent. After that, they went and sat down. I approached them. “I am here for you,” I said to them, wanting to make a real connection this time. “I’m not here for the tv show. I’m here to do what I always do with couples, and I can assure you that if what you want is to be healed, you will get what you came here for." I paused, waiting for them to take that in.

But Brian, the director, respectfully took my arm and steered me aside. “We ask that you only talk to them when the cameras are rolling. It’s kind of like…reality tv.”

When I arrived home from taping that day, my beloved goddess of a daughter Lily looked at me and said, “Mom. You wore THAT? On tv?!” I had no idea what was wrong with my outfit. I was wearing what I always wore to teach yoga. She illustrated how I was supposed to dress, by pulling my yoga pants tightly around my legs.

The next day, Ann the assistant called me to say 1) we were changing studios due to the el train noise; and 2) they were running late. I was already used to the running late part by then. I canceled the rest of my appointments that day and headed to Moksha Yoga, where, coincidentally, I had spent hundreds of hours and am very comfortable. When Ann called again to say they were running even later, I headed into Moksha’s boutique and tried on the first yoga pants I saw: they looked exactly like Lily told me they were supposed to look. I felt a tad exposed. But the ease of shopping and the thrill of buying something hot at the right price…reminded me of my intention for the day--to HAVE FUN!

The tech guys were cool 30-somethings, intrigued by my job. I was equally intrigued by theirs. Harpo cameramen. I loved the camaraderie they had and how smoothly they worked together. There was a level of respect for me, in part because the day before I had been assertive enough to tell them what I would need, in order to do my job and assure success for all of us.

“You’ll get the hot footage and good sound bites that you need IF this couple gets 45 minutes’ uninterrupted yoga, and 15 minutes uninterrupted breathing,” I had said. “I need to feel like I’ve given them the same healing appointment that everybody else gets. ...No, I never take off my mala beads.” My mala beads were clicking against each other, interfering with the sound. The sound guy settled on taping them to my wrist with medical tape. A clever compromise, which worked.

“I hate to ask you this,” he said, hesitantly, “but can you take off your necklace?”

It was bumping right against my microphone. It has deep significance, was made by my partner, and I wear it every day. It has an OM on it. It worked with my top, and my lotus necklace. Of course I didn’t want to take it off. “Sure, no problem,” I said with a smile. It’s not like I’m a prima donna or anything.

“Can you say the thing about the full-body orgasm again?” my director, Brian, requested. I repeated it. About six times. Keep that in mind, reality-tv fans. I did a lot of repeating, until reality and what Brian wanted were united as One.

“Can you say that again, without using the word ‘esoteric’?” asked Brian. “That word is a little too--”

“—esoteric?” I asked.

By the end of the four hours of taping, I understood just what Brian wanted. I wished I could come back the next day, armed with ten-second descriptions of Tantra, a 4,000-year old spiritual path which takes book-chapters to describe.

Later my friends and clients asked what it had been like.

“It was like trying to get your child to do their homework…during their birthday party,” I replied.

The couple, especially the wife, was very distracted by what was going on around us. I rely about 95% on intuition and 5% on what I’ve done with other couples in the past. Imagine tuning in to your intuition, and to your clients’ body/mind/spirit, and to the clients’ relationship dynamics...while all three of us are miked, with lights in our faces, and cameras following our every move. There were eight other bodies in the room for me to NOT tune in to.

I loved every minute of it.

I loved the challenge of getting through to the couple, despite the challenges. I loved the challenge of Brian asking me to oversimplify everything I said. I loved my new, tight, yoga pants. I would do the whole thing again the next day, in a second. I would do it EVERY day.

I might have forgotten all about it—two months have gone by—when another goddess, my friend and former sister-in-law, Kathryn, emailed me with a link to Oprah’s schedule. “Is this it?” she asked. And indeed…it was.

So, I have no idea what they will show, after our four hours of taping. I am thrilled that tantric sex—spiritual sex, heart-sex-consciousness in union as taught to me by my teachers Richard and Antoinette Asimus --is going to get some valuable daytime tv exposure, even if I personally come off as a flaky, nervous, new age nymph in tight pants.

THE COUPLE: What I doubt they’ll show on TV

Dr. Berman briefed me on the couple, and because of the tv time constraints I didn’t have a leisurely introductory dialogue with them. But I did ask what I always ask. They answered that they’d met at a non-profit, where they had both volunteered.

I often use that question, “Where did you first meet?” as a point of departure. It is an easy question for nervous novices to answer. I can also see who talks first, who holds back, whether they agree, whether one defers to the other…then I often ask, "What did you first like about her?" And then I might move on to, “And when did you really focus in on them and realize, wow, he might be the one for me?” And finally, “How did your first sexual encounter go?”

We had, of course, started two hours late. I wanted this couple to DO, rather than talk, because I knew that they had already talked extensively to Dr. Berman, and lord knows how much repeating they had done for "reality's" sake.

Fortunately their non-profit initial meeting struck a chord which allowed a leap forward into their new paradigm. After they were softened up with some yoga and breathing, I offered, “You have been living as a couple who has “sex problems,” and you have come to identify yourselves as a couple with “sex problems.” I bet you’ve lost touch with that initial meeting. So let’s go back there, to the non-profit. Let’s remember that you met performing selfless service, and that by being HERE NOW you are still performing selfless service. You are showing the world—how many people watch Oprah? 16 million? 23 million? You are showing the world that sexual challenges do not need to be kept secret. You are allowing cameras into your life to help people; do you realize how many people out there will benefit from watching you on this show? Do you know that cliché about love, ‘It’s bigger than both of us!’? Let that be your new mantra. From now on, when you think about your intimate life, if you fall back into discouraging thoughts, reroute. Use your mantra. Remember that you have been presented with your unique challenge because you were meant to help others. Millions of others! How amazing that your so-called problem can be used for the benefit of millions! It is not just about you two in the bedroom. Take a moment and transform your former ‘problem’ into the gift to the world that it’s going to be! Create a new vision of yourselves, for yourselves! You are SUPERHEROS!”

It was an audacious intention for them to embody. I bet they were the least likely superheros they could imagine. But they smiled. As the cameras rolled.

And that was their pep talk. They breathed into that new reality, grateful to have let go of the old one. Superheros.

When the lights were taken down, after we were unmiked, after we had found our socks, but before they left for their next event…the wife approached me.

“Do you say that to everyone?” she asked.

“Do I say…what…to everyone?”

“You know, just, everything you said to us. Or were you saying it for…you know…the show?”

“I was absolutely saying it to you, for you,” I replied. That is exactly what I had tried to establish the day before after we’d met five times. Right then I realized that she had probably been too nervous and distracted to hear most of what I had said, but I could tell by the transformed expression on her face—and the ease and warmth between husband and wife—that even though she might not have heard it all, energetically she had “gotten” it.

And truly, beyond my lofty and audaciously met intention to be on Oprah, their recognition, their transformation, makes for major job satisfaction.

That evening, Lily and I remarkably ran into them and the crew at Whole Foods. I was still flying high. This time the husband pulled me aside. “The breathing we did,” he said. (For more on that breath virtually meet David Elliott!) “After that breathing. I felt like…like…it kind of felt like…I felt like I was...in church,” he concluded. "Do you know what I mean?"

“Yes,” I said, “I know what you mean. That’s your spirit. Feel it! Because that’s who you truly are!”

Skyrocketing job satisfaction at this point.

What more could I ask for?

PS No, I did not meet Oprah. (Everyone asks.) Why didn't I? Because it had not been part of my intention! But I do want the Obamas to come to my Tantra Heart workshop!