The story of Love Movement Evolution & the Spirit of Intimacy January 9, 2020 – Posted in: LaboratoryofVisionaryPlay – Tags: intimacy, scienceofsexuality, somatic sexology, tantra, temple arts
Offering invitations to reveal, feel, & transform aspects of self into greater authenticity. Love Movement Evolution, a project created by Bynoi Desouza in 2015 integrating consciousness, love, sexuality, soul & stillness.
Bringing together embodying life-force-energy. Opportunities for individual & community self-inquiry, ritual, music & dance & community co-creations. Individual & collective creative expression informed by greater body, mind & soul awareness.
Since 2015, Love Movement Evolution & Bynoi Desouza have facilitated, produced or co-created over 40+ in-person gatherings trainings, sacred site journeys, retreats, festivals, experiential intensives, Practioner Trainings in Denmark, India (Goa & Khajuraho), Sweden (Stockholm & Gothenburg), UK, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, Scotland, Finland, Guatemala, Bali, Brazil, Iceland, & Australia, amongst other countries.
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It was the summer of 2015. Living in the port town of Göteborg, Sweden, I was integrating the experience of a recent week-long transformational intensive I had attended.
In my early 30s then, I had traveled a lot of the world beginning late in life after leaving India for the first time ever in my early 20s. I had moved to Belgium, armed with a job offer to work as a consultant to a global Telecom corporation. I found myself reflecting back on my life – Here I was, a boy from Bombay, that grew up in India, who had dreamed of traveling the world.
In the ensuing 10 years, I had lived in 3 countries, Belgium, Sweden & Argentina. I became fluent Spanish, Swedish & Dutch (which I no longer am fluent in). I had also met the dance of Argentine Tango, and in terms of learning hours invested in learning new languages, I summarized I had easily spent more time learning, practicing, dancing & teaching & growing community around Tango than I had invested time learning the other 3 languages.
On the surface – by day – I was a well-paid, successful consultant to global corporations at the intersection of human behavior, technology, psychology, & business. Most evenings & weekends – I was teaching, dancing or traveling to meet friends & dance Argentine Tango, a feeling that is danced. And yet, I had a feeling that underneath those well-curated masks of social media, I was unraveling. What I was also sitting with was deep grief & pain – My father & aunt, who was one of my first mentors, and a significant proportion of my extended family had died in those ensuing 10 years. A recent relationship had ended. I hadn’t fully allowed myself to feel the grief of loss of family & the darkness of cold winters in Sweden were the catalyst I needed to resource from even deeper within..
Growing up in a Roman Catholic family, in metropolitan Bombay, I recall visiting as many in temples as I did churches. Syncretism, or the fusion of different beliefs is quite prevalent in India. There’s a sense that in spite of whatever primary belief system people are born into, hedging your bets or intuitive devotion to other energies is equally welcome.
In my 20s, I dived deeper into Bon Shamanism & Tibetan Buddhism, eventually revisiting threads of Buddhist Tantra & Classical Hindu Tantra. As a child in India in the 80s, Tantra was a word that definitely carried charge and was not used lightly. It was associated with very esoteric mysticism, and usually, got mixed up with the use of supernatural powers for selfish or evil purposes so was also quite forbidden to use. However, revisiting the subject again in my 20s, I was fascinated by the seeming-cross pollination, syncretism between different traditions of tantras – classical hindu tantras & tibetan tantras and the places where those threads met and merged, such as in beings called Maha Siddhas that are pivotal figures in the transmission of both classical hindu & buddhist tantra & sacred sites in India & the HImalayan mountain range.
The most famous of the sacred sites is Khajuraho, most famously known for the stunning temples with erotic sculpture, but less known is the community in Khajuraho founded around a place called the Bija, or seed temple, presently in ruins. This site was one of the foundation stones for a thriving community of tantriks, supposedly founded by Gorakhnath living by the bank of the river. Threads of Tibetan Buddhist Tantra & Hindu Tantra meet in Khajuraho in the form of Hindu & Buddhist Tantric temples & also in Gorakhnath – he’s considered one of the 84 Maha Siddhas of Tibetan Buddhism, and also one of the 9 siddhas of Nath tantra & a pivotal figure in the formation of the Nath Sampradaya, from which a lot of yogic traditions trace their lineages. I’ve done a longer post on the subject here – About Khajuraho
I was also fascinated by the deep division between spirituality and sexuality in contemporary India. Outside Vedic, secretly Tantric, was the most concise way I found that dissonance being described. This is in stark contrast to a flowering Tantrik tradition in parts of the Indian sub-continent between the 7th and 13th centuries where sexuality was not always excluded from spirituality. I took up learning Sanskrit, a language that I had shunned learning in school in favor of learning French to understand the root tantric texts.
My own journey up to that point was one of ascension, of academic, mental exploration of tantra, of wanting to climb up the mountain top, to reach higher, rarer, and subtler levels of consciousness and one-ness. However, I hadn’t allowed myself the vulnerability of authentically exploring my sexuality in an embodied, grounded manner, or aspects of myself I judged as being dark or unwelcome. I took my first conscious sexuality journey with other human beings in an intensive called the Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Experience offered by the International School of Temple Arts. It was a deeply transformational experience.
Argentine Tango is a feeling that is danced and embodied connection to self, other & community is an integral part of the dance. However, I was blown away & fascinated by the deeper layers of embodiment and self-enquiry offered by somatic & sexual shamanic modalities of self enquiry. I created Love Movement Evolution, as vehicle to support creating containers integrating the energies of consciousness, love, sexuality, soul & stillness.
Over the last 5 years, I’ve produced & co-facilitated Tantrik, Sacred Sexuality, & somatic sexual education intensives, trainings & sacred site journeys in very different cultures and countries – India, UK, Denmark, Sweden, India, Portugal. Czech Republic, Spain, Australia, Iceland, Bali, Brazil, Guatemala & Finland. amongst other places bringing together somatic, sexual shamanic, tantrik, consent, sex-positive, & the dance & movement communities together exploring the liminal spaces of the human condition bringing resistance into resonance, honoring the beauty in decay, and finding wisdom in nature’s forms.
I founded the Spirit of Intimacy in 2017, to foster greater individual & collective creative expression informed by subtler & deeper body, mind & soul awareness, self-organizing structure, individual & community embodied inquiry, & sacred activism.
4 in-person gatherings unfolded as co-creations with other well known international facilitators (see names of facilitators linked to individual events & deep gratitude to all those individuals that gathered in person below) planting seeds of intimacy across different physical locations on the planet.
Welcome to follow the links if you are curious to find out more.
Blessings,
Bynoi
International Educator | Native Non-Dual Tantrik Scholar/Researcher & Practitioner | Faculty at the International School of Temple Arts (ISTA) |
Internal Arts Coach (Sexual Shamanic, Taoist Internal Arts, & Esoteric Embodiment modalities) | Creator of Love Movement Evolution , Co-creator of Master Your Pleasure & creator of the Spirit of Intimacy
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Spirit of Intimacy Editions:
1st Edition – June 2017, Møn Island, Denmark – https://lovemovementevolution.com/event/spiritofintimacy
2nd Edition – Dec 2017, Byron bay, Australia – https://lovemovementevolution.com/event/spiritofintimacybyron
3rd Edition – Feb 2018 – North Goa, India – https://lovemovementevolution.com/event/spiritofintimacyarambol
4th Edition – Feb 2019 – North, India – https://lovemovementevolution.com/event/soigoa2019