Jan 2021 – ISTA Online Festival

The mystery of Cultivating Kundalini – Where Tantra & the Temple Arts meet

A talk, virtual museum visit, & short embodied enquiry exploring the self-ritual of cultivating Kundalini, life-force energy.

We virtually visit key Tantrik temples in the Indian sub-continent, where rivers of Non-Dual Tantrik tradition cross-pollinated with each other, challenging existing, deeply-rooted social prejudice & supporting humans to connect deeper with rhythm, heart, belly, genitals & soul.

Based upon translations of key “Tantras” in Sanskrit, we trace the arc of the development of Tantra through His-Story & also the much ignored Her – Story from Vedic times (pre 500 BCE) through to modern day times. Later waves of Tantrik movement were key to challenging long standing narratives of social prejudice & colonialism, supporting individual emergence.

Self Ritual – We explore the radical innovations to cultivating Kundalini first introduced in Non-Dual Schools of Tantrik Shaivism in Kashmir between the 9th -11th century that still offer practical ways to cultivate life force energy in marked contrast to Vedic or Yogic approaches to Kundalini. We explore what contemporary approaches to these practices can look like in the body bringing together somatics, neuroscience & the nervous system.

Through the Temple Arts of classical music & dance we explore the places of “Jugalbandhi” (improvisation) of “Spanda” (vibration) with Soul – especially in the spaces of contradiction and tension in one’s inner world  – where the body, heart, rhythm, dance & the cultivation of life-force energy merge.

Nov 2020 – One World Tantra Festival

Cultivating Kundalinī – Tantrum, Trauma, & Tantra

A social, historical, environmental, & experiential inquiry into the mystery of Kundalinī, life-force energy from a Native, Classical Tantrik perspective & also a modern Somatic perspective.

We explore the possibilities of staying connected with body, self & environment, while safely activating & expressing the emotional & energetic bodies, sometimes also expressing as the energy of tantrums or micro-traumas (here with a small t – not a big T).

Exploring the multiple ways in which micro-traumas of disembodiment & dissociation can unfold from body & self, often from a young age. Creating somatic feedback loops to stay connected with the body & environment in the present moment, and noticing and potentially disrupting deeply embedded patterns.

An experiential inquiry with a short talk & virtual museum visit through selected temples in India.

Based upon original source texts in Sanskrit & my own translations, we explore the development of the radical force of Tantra in India, beginning in the 7th century up to modern day times. We virtually visit selected temples, where different rivers of Tantrik tradition cross-fertilized with each other & challenged existing, deeply-rooted social injustice & prejudice.

Later waves of Tantrik movement were key to challenging narratives of colonialism & the British Empire itself, also contributing to the rise of 1960s counterculture. We explore the parallels emerging between the rebellious soil of the Indian sub-continent between the 9th & 11th century AD that gave birth to a living culture of “Tantrik” tradition with the present emerging movements for regenerative social justice, during quarantine + activism times for many on this planet.

During the embodied journey, using bottom-up languaging (i.e. body to mind), we explore mobilizing our physical, emotional & energetic bodies. We explore tracking the capacity of the body to engage with breath, sound, movement, and placement of touch to shift greater degrees of awareness into the present moment. Using somatic practices from the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra (VBT) which is probably one of the most well-known & widely referenced “Tantras” of the Tantrik corpus amongst other selected root texts, we explore the mysteries of Kundalini, life-force-energy.

Instead of your mind searching for, or another mind intellectually answering the beautiful, perennial question “So what then is Tantra?”, this session is an opportunity to support bottom-up listening. I.e. To gift your body the opportunity to have an experience, and reveal insights, sensations, feelings, messages, or information to you.

Opportunities to interact with others. Please have space around you to move & sit, & a mattress to lie down. Clothing optional out of camera view. Please bring pen & paper to journal. (Optional) – Blanket & candle/ritual object.

Beyond the Nervous System – The Embodiment Process

This is an embodied journey with an educational component, merging conceptual & experiential.

If you are someone who feels like your nervous system runs your life, is exhausted or frazzled by life, or you are curious to have a different experience of your body and awareness, you may want to join me.

Bringing together Somatics & Bio Hacking, Somatic Research, the Emotional & Energetic Bodies, Neuroscience, Polyvagal informed Nervous System Health & Tantrik Non Duality.

This session offers practical tools,  a guided experience & possibilities to create an ongoing daily practice; to increase the resilience of the nervous system & and the capacity of self to disrupt patterns, regulate, nourish, care, & cultivate. The permission to vulnerably explore, uncover & express disempowering narratives, beliefs or stories that we may hold about ourselves or different others.  The possibility of uncovering “aspects ” that make you different,  which can be an “add” instead of keeping you from being a “cultural fit”.

We shift between observing & embodying parts of the nervous system, exploring greater possibilities of self to connect with body & environment. Dropping under the nervous system, we explore the possibility of opening a conversation between our nervous system & the fluid & cellular system in the body.

A vortical, spiral dance + self-massage + meditation process that uses breath, subtle movement, sound, placement of awareness, & touch.

In groups that I have shared this journey with, both complete beginners and those with experience have reflected expanded awareness, shifts in emotional states, greater self-reflection or awareness of their boundaries & taken home practical tools to engage with this awareness & embodiment practice.

Primarily an Individual journey. Opportunities to interact with others. Please have space around you to move & sit, & a mattress to lie down. Clothing optional out of camera view. Please bring pen & paper to journal. (Optional) – Blanket & candle/ritual object.

Oct 2020 – The Embodiment Conference

Re-Source – Opening to the potential of Orgasmicity

This journey is for you, curious about deeper embodiment of the frequency of orgasm, if you are also willing to invite radical-self acceptance & take self-responsibility for having your own experience.

This is an embodied journey with an educational component. Using breath, sound, placement of awareness, and movement, we activate our physical, emotional, & energetic bodies.

An orgasm as an event that has a build up, peak and resolution, often time-limited is one type of orgasmic experience. e.g., a peak genital orgasm. There are also a range of other orgasm-type experiences that beings can shift their awareness into, which are not always time-limited. For e.g., crygasms, heartgasms, full body energetic orgasms, or hands-free orgasms which can range in frequency & intensity from very high to low intensity.

Orgasmicity describes this wide range of potentially, ecstatic experiences

This is a solo, clothed journey. You can choose to participate to whatever degree you choose. Please have space around you to stand-up, move, sit, & lie down.

July 2020- Wild Love ISTA Online Festival

Fumbling towards Sense Making – Prejudice Within, Trance Formation, & Embodied Shadow Stalking

Alongside dozens of the best keynote facilitators from the sexual shamanic field. Four days 24/7 journey of deepening self-love, power, and ease.

In the depths of collective despair, how do we sense make of the possibilities to fumble back towards repair, resilience, or even self-expression individually first?

Then if we choose to look outwards collectively, how do we leverage that self-expression to impact the wider collective, communities or fields that we are an inter-dependent part of?

Acknowledging the interconnectedness of personal, community and social transformation, this session explores alternative ways to have embodied conversations about valuable, “flash point” subjects.  For example, prejudice within and outside, equality, inclusion, diversity, & race.

Deeper embodied explorations about these issues are challenging to have on the socials due to the tendency towards extreme polarisation.

In this session, we use bottom – up communication, i.e body-to-mind rather than a mind-to-body approach. Oftentimes in collective consciousness, inquiry is dominated by mind assessment.

We give ourselves & others the permission to vulnerably explore, uncover & express disempowering narratives, beliefs or stories that we may hold about ourselves or different others, especially around valuable, sensitive subjects in collective consciousness – color of skin, gender, sexual orientation, age & language.

We will use dance, movement, breath, sound, placement of awareness & touch to dialog with subtler aspects of self. While uncovering & meeting our Shadow motivations, and the underlying wounds, traumas, & limiting beliefs that also play out unacknowledged within & without.

Shadows often show up in our lives in the form of unconscious, disempowering patterns of behavior that drain life-force energy or can also be gifts of individual self-expression that we have disowned. Shadow stalking is the process of patiently tracking, illuminating, and potentially dissolving aspects of our unconscious that we may be unaware about.

Mobilizing life force energy, we journey into liminal, “trance forming” (also a play on the word “transformational “) states to expand awareness about unconscious or disempowering aspects of self.

You will take away  practical tools to expand awareness, engage in embodied self-enquiry, disrupt disempowering patterns of behavior, and potentially reclaim parts of your being that are in service of greater, authentic self-expression. We explore the possibility of uncovering “aspects ” that make you different,  which can be an “add” instead of keeping you from being a “cultural fit”.

Sensemaking through deeper embodiment, vulnerability & personal responsibility with self, others & in community.

Clothing optional out of camera view. Please have space around you to move & sit, & a mattress to lie down. Please bring pen & paper to journal.

Welcoming you

June 2020 – Online Tantra Spirit Festival

Fluid Energy Orgasm

This is an embodied journey with an educational component (approx 75% embodied & 25% educational). Using breath, sound, placement of awareness, and movement, we activate our mental, physical, emotional & energetic bodies.

Water makes up (approx) 60% of our bodies. Human beings are fluid waves of interpenetrating motion that have stabilized on land. Dropping under the nervous system, we explore the possibility of opening a conversation between our nervous system & the fluid system in the body.

This is a tantric laboratory for you, curious about deeper embodiment of the frequency of orgasm, if you are also willing to invite radical-self acceptance & take self-responsibility to have your own experience.

An orgasm as an event that has a build up, peak and resolution, often time-limited is one type of orgasmic experience. eg, a peak genital orgasm. There are also a range of other orgasm-type experiences that beings can shift their awareness into, which are not always time-limited. eg, full body energetic orgasms, crygasms, heartgasms, or hands free orgasms. These gasms can range in frequency & intensity from very high to low intensity. Orgasmicity describes this wide range of potentially, ecstatic experiences

In groups that I have shared this journey with, both complete beginners and those with experience have reflected expanded awareness, shifts in emotional states, greater self-reflection or awareness of their boundaries & taken home practical tools to engage with the skill of orgasmicity,

This is a solo journey. Please have space around you to stand-up, move, sit & lie down. Please bring pen & paper to journal. (Optional) – Blanket & candle/ritual object.

Breath of the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra (VBT)

Instead of your mind searching for, or another mind intellectually answering the beautiful, perennial question “so what then is Tantra?”, this practical session is an opportunity to support bottom-up listening , i.e body-to-mind listening. To gift your body the opportunity to have an experience, and reveal insights, sensations, feelings, messages, or information to you.

This is an embodied experience during which you will be guided into breath & somatic practices from the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra (VBT), which is probably one of the most well-known & widely referenced “Tantras”  of the Tantrik corpus.

Practically, we explore tracking the capacity of the body to engage with breath, sound, movement, and placement of touch to shift greater degrees of awareness into the present moment.

There is no prior knowledge you need, or to invest in a belief system. In groups that I have shared this journey with, both complete beginners and those with experience have reflected powerful journeys, expanded awareness & shifts in emotional states.

The VBT is one of the few tantras with a continuous tradition of study down to present times on the Indian subcontinent. Originally written in Sanskrit, probably around the 8th or 9th century, the VBT at last count has over 20 different versions of translations in English. I will also share some of the history & context surrounding the VBT in the Indian-sub continent. More commonly known are the poetic translations in English. This session is an opportunity to explore the embodiment practices that are less commonly known or shared.

This is a solo journey. Clothing optional out of camera view. Please have space around you to move & sit, & a mattress to lie down. Please bring pen & paper to journal. (Optional) – Blanket & candle/ritual object.

An Embodied Approach to Shadow Stalking

Shadow stalking is the process of patiently tracking, illuminating, and potentially dissolving aspects of our unconscious that we may be unaware about. Shadows often show up in our lives in the form of unconscious, disempowering patterns of behavior that drain life-force energy or can also be gifts of individual self-expression that we have disowned.

In this session, we use a body-to-mind rather than a mind-to-body approach to expand awareness about unconscious aspects of self. Often times in collective consciousness, the spirit of inquiry is dominated by mind assessment. In this experiential session, we will use tools to engage dialogue with subtler levels of the body – for example, heart, belly/womb, and genitals.

You will take away practical  tools to expand awareness, engage in embodied self-enquiry,  disrupt disempowering patterns of behavior, and potentially reclaim parts of your being that are in service of greater self-expression.

This is a solo journey. Clothing optional out of camera view. Please have space around you to move & sit, & a mattress to lie down. Please bring pen & paper to journal.

June 2020 – One World Tantra Festival

Fluid Energy Orgasm

This is an embodied journey with an educational component (75% embodied – 25% educational). Using breath, sound, placement of awareness, and movement, we activate our physical body & energy body.

Water makes up (approx) 60% of our bodies. Human beings are fluid waves of interpenetrating motion that have stabilized on land. Dropping under the nervous system, we explore the possibility of opening a conversation between our nervous system & the fluid system in the body.

This is a laboratory for you, curious about deeper embodiment of the frequency of orgasm, if you are also willing to take self-responsibility to co-create your own experience.

An orgasm as an event that has a build up, peak and resolution, often time-limited is one type of orgasmic experience. eg, a peak genital orgasm. There are also a range of other orgasm-type experiences that beings can shift their awareness into, which are not always time-limited. eg, full body energetic orgasms, crygasms, heartgasms, or hands free orgasms. These gasms can range in frequency & intensity from very high to low intensity.

Orgasmicity describes this wide range of potentially, ecstatic experiences. In groups that I have shared this journey with, both complete beginners and those with experience have reflected expanded awareness, shifts in emotional states & taken home practical tools to expand the skill of orgasmicity.

This is a solo journey. Clothing optional out of camera view. Please have space around you to move & sit, & a mattress to lie down. Please bring pen & paper to journal.

Breath of the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra

This is an embodied experience during which you will be guided into  breath & somatic practices from the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra (VBT), which is probably one of the most well-known & widely referenced sacred scriptures of the Tantrik corpus.

Practically, we also explore tracking the capacity of the body to engage with breath, sound, movement, and placement of touch.

We use a body-to-mind approach rather than a mind-to-body approach. Instead of the mind searching for the answer to the beautiful, perennial question “What then is Tantra?”, this practical session is an opportunity to allow your body to have an experience and reveal insights to you.

There is no prior knowledge you need or to invest in a belief system. In groups that I have shared this journey with, both complete beginners and those with experience have reflected powerful journeys, expanded awareness & shifts in emotional states.

The VBT is one of the few tantras with a continuous tradition of study down to present times on the Indian subcontinent. Originally written in Sanskrit, probably around the 8th or 9th century, the VBT at last count has over 20 different versions of translations in English. More commonly known are the poetic translations in English. This session is an opportunity to explore the embodiment practices that are less commonly known or shared.

This is a solo journey. Clothing optional out of camera view. Please have space around you to move & sit, & a mattress to lie down. Please bring pen & paper to journal.

May 2020 – ISTA Online Festival

Breath of the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra

This is an embodied experience during which you will be guided into  breath & somatic practices from the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra (VBT), which is probably one of the most well-known & widely referenced sacred scriptures of the Tantrik corpus.

Practically, we also explore tracking the capacity of the body to engage with breath, sound, movement, and placement of touch.

We use a body-to-mind approach rather than a mind-to-body approach. Instead of the mind searching for the answer to the beautiful, perennial question “What then is Tantra?”, this practical session is an opportunity to allow your body to have an experience and reveal insights to you.

There is no prior knowledge you need or to invest in a belief system. In groups that I have shared this journey with, both complete beginners and those with experience have reflected powerful journeys, expanded awareness & shifts in emotional states.

The VBT is one of the few tantras with a continuous tradition of study down to present times on the Indian subcontinent. Originally written in Sanskrit, probably around the 8th or 9th century, the VBT at last count has over 20 different versions of translations in English. More commonly known are the poetic translations in English. This session is an opportunity to explore the embodiment practices that are less commonly known or shared.

This is a solo journey. Clothing optional out of camera view. Please have space around you to move & sit, & a mattress to lie down. Please bring pen & paper to journal.