The Power of Tantra Explained! with Goddess Amina

What if you could transform your sexual experiences into profound & powerful sensual awakening? Join me as I explore Tantra, guided by the wisdom of Goddess Amina, a seasoned somatic sexologist and intimacy coach featured on Netflix's Sex, Love & Goop. Amina illuminates the essence of Tantra and its power to revolutionize our intimate lives. 

In this episode you will learn:

• the core principles of Tantra
• Tantra's diverse traditions
• practical tantric rituals like worshiping the lingam and yoni, 
• transformative tantric techniques

Work with Me: https://talksexwithannette.com/sex-relationship-and-intimacy-coaching/

Find me on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@annettebenedetti
Subscribe to my e-newsletter: https://she-explores-life.ck.page/e9760c390c
Ask a question, Leave a Comment: https://www.speakpipe.com/LockerRoomTalkPodcast

To find out more or book a session with me visit:
https://talksexwithannette.com/home/sex-relationship-and-intimacy-coaching/

Email: annette@talksexwithannette.com

Use code EXPLORES15 for 15% Off at wevibe.com.

Use code EXPLORES15 for 15% off all Womanizer Products at Womanizer.com.

Get 30% Off Sex Toys & Lube with code EXPLORES30
at thethruster.com: https://bit.ly/3Xsj5wY

Use code EXPLORES15 for 15% off lovehoney.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:24

Do the sex, think fun, honest and feminist as fuck, and always with the goal of fighting the patriarchy. One female orgasm at a time. Welcome to the locker room. Today's locker room talk and shots topic is what is Tantra, tantric sex, and how can it improve your sex life Story time?

Speaker 1: 1:54

My first introduction to Tantra and Tantric sex was back in my college days. We're not going to talk about how long ago that was, and inevitably some artsy, fartsy musician guy would approach me tell me how he knew how to do tantra and tantric sex, how he could have sex for hours and hours, not come but orgasm internally, and how he was going to give me lots and lots of orgasms. Now I may have dabbled, I may have like, bought into the sales pitch and tried it out and I will say back then the promise and the delivery did not match up. I do not think. I do not think they knew what they were talking about, but the good news is, my guest today knows exactly what they were talking about and she is going to tell us all about Tantra, tantric sex, how we can start using it in our life.

Speaker 1: 2:46

My guest today is Goddess Amina. She's a somatic sexologist, intimacy coach and Reiki master, and she is the founder of Atlanta Tantra, a community rooted in somatic sexology and sacred sexual healing, and the host of Fix your Sex podcast. She was also featured on the Netflix reality series Sex, love and Goop. So this is the real shit, folks. Unlike my previous experiences, I mean, I would love for you to take a moment to introduce yourself to my listeners and tell them a little more.

Speaker 2: 3:35

Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2: 3:36

Thank you first for having me, and I've been in the sexuality field since the 90s, and so I always like to start there late 90s and then that out. But I started off in the 90s as a surrogate partner, a sex surrogate, and I have been working and learning and studying and practicing, growing and evolving, ever since I went to massage school in the early 2000s and started practicing erotic and sensual or sexological body work body work and that expanded and landed me into the world of Tantra where I have learned and shifted and been just awakened to so much, including sex but also including my own body and my own just spiritual understanding, and so that's been a beautiful awakening for me and I'm just excited to share some real life, practical, useful information on how we get into our bodies, how we get to experience pleasure and how Tantra has helped me facilitate that in my life and in the lives of others.

Speaker 1: 4:44

I'm currently my own best lover and I I have a big self pleasure practice and I do think learning pleasure and your own body and sexuality in your own body and and how that energy can affect everything else in your life and the people who are connected with you in their lives, is such a powerful thing to do. So, listener, please stay to the end, because we are going to really cover a lot here and I'm going to make sure, by the end of this podcast, that we have given you some practical information that you can start using to improve your own sex life or self sex life, tonight or as soon as you've finished listening to this episode. So I'm really excited to have you here. I'm honored, I'm excited to learn all about Tantra, so let's get ready to talk about sex and Tantra Cheers. So I'm like just gonna start off with the obvious what is tantra?

Speaker 2: 5:55

That is like the biggest question, not just like the most popular but actually the biggest size-wise question. First of all, I want to just acknowledge that there's different lineages of tantra, and so you will hear Tantra spoken of in the Vedic sense, which is coming through the subcontinent, coming through India and the region. You'll hear Tantra spoken about in the Buddhist context, or Tibetan Neo tantra, really focusing on almost isolated to California and Germany throughout the UK, but very heavily prevalent in in kind of the West coast, probably up through Portland plenty, and and then through parts of Europe as a kind of 70s, early to late 70s, development and expansion of a westernized, some may say bastardized version of Tantra. And so you have these three kind of wide varieties that people could be speaking about at any time when they're talking about Tantra. When I started learning about Tantra I learned through the lens of Neo-Tantra. I was living in Hawaii and back and forth between the Bay Area quite a bit, and so my exposure was through, like Charles and Carolyn Muir and the folks up at Esalen and just kind of learning about Tantra through these West Coast communities, and it was mostly centered around sex, which is why I was excited and interested in it. I was in my twenties, I had already been doing body work and so I was really into the body and the erotic. And then I found this and I was like, oh yeah, sign me up. And that is where we got started. Now Neo Tantra is the application of things that you're seeing from Buddhist Tantra as well as Vedic Tantra, kind of mushed up into a sandwich with modern sexual spirituality.

Speaker 2: 8:11

The word Tantra in its origin is Sanskrit. It means weaving or interwoven or connecting. It also can mean tools. I like to look at it as a tool bag that we use to kind of connect our bodies to our everyday, all the things that we do in life. Now, as a sexologist, I'm going to focus on that, but my Tantra practices now as I've grown up a bit, really show up in every part of my life because, at the end of the day, what we're really looking at when we look at Tantra is our ability to experience ourself at our wholeness, our ability to be in our bodies and be in the present moment, our ability to experience empathy, as we were designed to, and to experience pleasure and all of the other sensations that we get to experience as we were made to experience them.

Speaker 2: 9:15

There's a lot of nervous system understanding that pops up when you start really paying attention. There's a lot of, there's a lot of communication skills, emotional agility that really show up in the practices of Tantra and those translate very well to the bedroom, to sex coaching, to sexual experiencing, and so you see, as you pay more attention and learn about the different pathways, how it could all come together, how the spiritual practices of the East could be so easily folded into erotic rituals that are new and created in the West, and I love that. And so that's my tantra in a nutshell. It's just like it's this mishmash what we're seeing today, neo-tantra. It's a mishmash, but we cannot not acknowledge the lineages that the tantra that we get in the West have borrowed from Some might say stolen from from and how that's created such a beautiful opening for us to kind of get into spiritual practices that actually provide immense pleasure and healing and connection.

Speaker 1: 11:20

Can we talk a little bit about the practices and how they're applied to sex in the way that probably most people have heard of it?

Speaker 2: 11:30

Absolutely. And I want to just say, before I do that like, let me just be clear, without like colonialism and all of the isms that we throw into things, tantra included, sex, oh I get it. Spiritual practices, all did right Like every, because how could you not Like we're sexual beings? And so it's just like almost this extraction, like we just left the rest of the stuff over there, because that's what we do.

Speaker 1: 12:00

We take the yummy stuff that we like, the things that are and that are sometimes more marketable, and we throw the rest away. To me very much in this conversation. Already it resonates with yoga.

Speaker 2: 12:12

Very similar. In fact, yoga is in the same lineage as tantra, and so when you study the yamas and the niyamas in both lineages if you're in Vedic tantra, so yeah, all of that. So I just want to leave with that. The body is yummy and it's always been there, and pleasure has always been accessible. Is yummy and it's always been there and pleasure has always been accessible, and spirituality has often said like, be really good at sex too, because this is a little taste of your heaven on earth Go ahead.

Speaker 1: 12:40

I want to put a microphone to what you said before, because I think, especially certainly in Western civilization, this has been, I feel, stolen from us. You said that we are all sexual beings and it's part of our spirituality and I just really want people to have heard that the way I was born into this world and a lot of people um was to instantly have my sexuality taken from me and shamed, and you only get to use it when you're doing this thing and you have to do it in this way only, and if you explore and it looks different than this like pull up your dress, pull down your underwear and get pounded at to make babies, then you're being dirty. If you want something more than that, that is how most of us are literally raised and programmed, and then we spend the rest of our life.

Speaker 1: 13:39

trying to unprogram that and you have just said. What I think people just have to understand is that we are all our sexuality and sexual energy is like our birthright, it's part of us.

Speaker 2: 13:52

It's such a part of us and, you know, if you ever watch ultrasounds of babies or video, you can YouTube it. The babies actually masturbate in utero because it feels good and one of the first accesses that we have as a human form is the sense of touch. And so like, like pleasure, is our birthright. Having access to that as our birthright, and also like as humans, you have this beautiful reality of like how we come to be, which is, through this, what could be a most pleasure filled, you know, hour or 15 minutes, whatever you're at, of your, of your day, of your life, um, where you are in full connection and contact with another human being and boom, you create life. And that's how we're here, like, we're literally here because of this thing that feels so good when we let it. And then we're like, ooh, don't talk about it. Because of this thing that feels so good when we let it. And then we're like, ooh, don't talk about it. And so one of the things that one of the practices that comes from Tantra, is worship of the lingam or the penis and worship of the yoni or the vagina or the well, it's more than the vagina, it's the whole thing, it's the vulva, it's the vagina, it's the ovaries, it's all the bits that make us juicy.

Speaker 2: 15:13

And so that practice, which we hear a lot about in Tantra, comes from this reality of creation. It's an honor to us as humans and an honor to the devoted act of pleasure with a partner. It's an act of devotion and celebration to a partner's body. And I think about you know, folks like your lover, your musician, who, at 19, 20, 21, wherever he was at his life, just probably didn't have enough practice. Because that's the thing about all of this is practice, practice, practice. You don't just, it gets kind of awkward without a practice. It's like, oh, ice skating for the first time, ice skating for the first time, but with the practice of it and developing that, you do end up having sex for hours, because a big chunk of that time might just be dedicated to worshiping your partner's body. And that is a do in our lives, and on a regular basis with our partners, even with ourselves.

Speaker 1: 16:44

What would a beginner practice or start maybe integrating into, whether it's their own self-pleasure practice or with a partner? What would some basic practices be?

Speaker 2: 16:59

Yeah. So I like to tell folks just like, get kind of Beyonce-esque with it. I think a lot of times we play ourselves real small. We don't want to be corny or cheesy. I think a lot of times we play ourselves real small and we don't want to be corny or cheesy and so we don't want to light 200 candles because we are worried what somebody might say or that it might be weird. And I think, like you know, I think about Sasha Fierce and how she's. You know how when she steps, when Beyonce steps into that persona, she's not really worried about if she looks weird. She's got to move through the ritual of performance and that's always my first thing.

Speaker 2: 17:38

We make ourselves so small in sex that we might light a candle or burn an incense, or maybe we put out the lingerie for a special occasion. But I'm going to build an altar to myself or to my lover and I want it to be like God-esque, you know, like I want it to be divine. We look at altars. I just returned from Thailand where I'm going into these temples that have been built and these altars that are extravagant and gold is everywhere and there's like there's such care and just like this meticulous devotion that goes into it that there's no shame in like, oh I shouldn't be doing this much for Buddha. And I think we should. You know, like as a practice from the beginner standpoint is first just go big or go home. Create a space where worship will build the energy that you want in your sexual space. So, light the candles, be extra, find the fabrics that feel the yummiest on your skin. Find the fragrances, the foods. Make it an event where the central focus point is the partner, the body part, but everything is here in honor of it. Like I'm bringing all of these things to the altar my best pillows, my softest blanket, my most well-lubricated, lotioned body. You know what I mean. Like I'm going to the Korean spa and getting exfoliated before this. I want to come in and feel so good to myself that the act of falling into devotion becomes easier with practice. And so that's my first thing is just make it bigger than you think it's supposed to be, because supposed to be is coming from somewhere else and has nothing to do with you and your love life. And so, whatever you think it's supposed to be, go bigger than that, make it more dramatic, make it sexier, make it what you want it to, what you want devotion to, to feel like for you. And then you spend time.

Speaker 2: 20:46

I, um, when I'm looking into a lover's body, I'm staring at their genitals, I'm gazing into their genitals. I'll get very close and breathe into them, take in the aromas. I want to use all of my five senses. I save taste for last, because what we know, sometimes you get a little fired up once we put our mouth on genitals.

Speaker 2: 21:07

But starting in a space where you're really taking in and being present with the lingam or the yoni and allowing yourself to really see it for maybe the first time, if you're a beginner, maybe you've never really noticed all of the different colors on your partner's shitadels because the lights are dim or whatever.

Speaker 2: 21:32

But now you have 200 candles or whatever your lighting situation is, you're this close and you're looking and you're able to take in the smells without being distracted or thinking about your own smells. You're not centering yourself in this moment, you're just elevating and venerating and centering them, their bodies, their genitals, in this moment, offering gratitude. You know sing songs of praise, which don't have to be literal songs, but you know compliments and talking about what you love about it, those kind of things just moving into this act of worship, and that can be five minutes, it can be 30 minutes, it can be an hour of just sitting and gazing, stroking, getting to feel like using literally all of your senses and allowing yourself to connect to your partner in that way. It's one of my favorite things to do things to do.

Speaker 1: 22:41

That sounds amazing. I feel like one of the things that comes up in sex and sexual connections so often and the blockages to like a good sexual connection and a good sexual experience really is not feeling connected to the partner, having one partner just like not wanting to get into it, not feeling satisfied, not knowing what turns them on, and this practice of devotion and I always say, like set the scene right, but I think that your take, or the tantric take, on that, which is create a place of worship in your bedroom, because that's what you're doing and making the space conducive to that right. So the minute you go into that space, there's already that energy flowing. But actually worshiping your partner's body and then verbalizing you know, verbalizing your great gratitude that you get to have this opportunity to be intimate with them and to touch them and to get that close and to taste them, that's automatically going to like fix. Get that close and to taste them, that's automatically going to fix some of the problems that are there. Right, how could someone not feel in the mood or have their cup start to be filled when the person they love is like worshiping them and thanking them and telling them what's perfect and beautiful and you know desirable about them.

Speaker 1: 24:18

How often does that happen? That does not even happen. And it doesn't happen in typical. You know your everyday sex right. It's usually like let's get together, like you kiss a couple times and and I'm talking about sort of heteronormative, you know the conventional take on sex and then pound away. No wonder people's bodies are shutting down and saying, especially vulva owners, and saying I don't want this anymore. Why would you? You know.

Speaker 2: 24:47

Yeah, and I think that, like that's such a huge part of this to me is in my work with clients, like I'm working with, most of my clients are women and a great number of them are coming to me at this point where they're not interested in sex with their partners in the way that they want to be or used to be, and or their partners are coming with the same complaint, like they're not that into it anymore. What happened? And I like to tell there's a story that when I went to, when I first moved to Costa Rica, I was having a conversation with the mechanic who is taking me home after I dropped my car off and he asked what I did and I told him you know, in my best Spanish available, sex coach is easier to explain. So I'm like you know, I teach, that's what I teach. And he laughed and laughed and he said, well, why would anybody need that? Like, who's hiring you for that? And I said, well, let me ask you a question Do you have any friends that are married? He said, well, of course I do. I said, well, do any of the husbands complain that their wives don't like to have sex? He's like all of them. And I'm like, yeah, do the wives do everything else that they really love to do? Yeah, and he just paused and he didn't say anything and we sat in silence for a few minutes. But when he dropped me off, he's like I need to get your phone number, cause I went like for to set up a meeting where you could like talk to me and some of the husbands, because the reality is is that if there's something that I really enjoy doing, I'm going to do it. Like that's called human.

Speaker 2: 26:28

And uh, when we get this rapid fire sex as our norm and I'm all about a conscious quickie I'm all about like, ooh, let's, you know, I have spontaneous desire. She's hot, she's wet, let's go right now. That happens too. Um, but that's not how it always happens, it's not going to always, and I'm 47. So that's uh, that's uh becoming less frequent, this like waking up with, you know, morning dew, and so I want more. I want more, you know, and I've wanted more for a long time. But I'm also talking to a lot of women in particular, and some men, who want more. They want more connection and uh, and it manifests differently in women than men, right, women will oftentimes and this is by no means like a binary. This is how it is, women or men. But women will oftentimes, you know, just kind of withdraw and find pleasure in other things, and men will withdraw and seek to conquer more bodies. They will go and try to get that fulfillment through multiple sex partners and sometimes even riskier sex.

Speaker 2: 27:43

I worked in HIV and AIDS prevention for a long time and saw it under that umbrella as well, just like constantly chasing something but not really knowing what that is. And I really believe it's that loss of connection, because it's such a fundamental human need. Connection is a human need and we are able to access that through erotic intimacy. But that's not what we're doing. So this allows us to invite connected erotic intimacy into our lives, and maybe that's once a month, maybe that's once, you know, like a quarter. I have a lot of little practices we can do throughout the time, and it doesn't always have to be yoni and lingam worship. Sometimes it's eye gazing, sometimes it's just breathing together, you know, sometimes it's just sitting with one hand on your partner's heart and just actually remembering that they have a heartbeat and you do too right, and like just being present for their humanness, um, and then sometimes it's getting tied up and exploring sensation play with Wartenberg wheels and whips Like it's all kinds of things.

Speaker 1: 29:00

I like those options, like you really moved through them and I'm like check, check and I mean I think that that's another piece is that people get bored. They do the same thing over and over again and don't realize the breadth of possibility, even if you aren't. A lot of people are like I'm not kinky, but there are just activities you can participate in that bring in, like, I think, a little restraints, pretty vanilla these days, but exploring, yeah right, a lot of things that used to be kinky are no longer there. They're everyday activities, yeah, but I love so you brought up the worship, the worshiping each other's genitals, um, and I love the focus on just seeing.

Speaker 1: 29:58

So many of us haven't even really like, seen, like truly. You know the lights are off and we just get down there and do the thing we've been told to do, but to like, really see, um, our genitals, our partners genitals. I am going to assume that if you were to take a Tantra practice for self pleasure would be gazing at your own genitals, which I think so many vulva owners and women need to do like and and worship it. I hear constantly women talk about how gross they think their own genitals are. I don't want to look at that. It's weird yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:41

I think it's a leftover remnant from junior high school. There was a point in junior high school that I can remember where we started getting hormones and our bubbles started changing. They go from these neat little kind of envelope looking packets to whatever they blossom to be, and at this time you're starting to crush on people because your hormones are there. You're also starting to stink, right. So everybody's a little funky, and if you don't remember this, just stop by a junior high school for like 10 minutes it stinks. I've taught sex ed and then they smell rancid.

Speaker 2: 31:25

As an adult, we were living like this. And so you have kids that are telling you you stink, that are saying that the woman stinks, that the smells that are coming up in this explosion of hormones is stinky, and so women are like you're going to sit there and smell me for 10, 15 minutes? I don't think so. That doesn't even make me feel like I'm not going to be sexy there because I haven't gotten to know my own smell, or you're going to stare at it. I have not even seen it, right. So how can I have you stare at it and feel comfortable when I've never looked at it for very long myself or at all. And so, while this gazing practice and worship practice sounds amazing to you and I, for many people it's absolutely terrifying the idea that someone might be just staring at us that long. And what are they looking at? And so, instead of me just allowing myself to be worshiped, I'm just running through all these thoughts of like, I'm trying to clench my booty hole so you don't smell anything, I'm thinking about how ugly it is. Am I wet enough? Is it getting wet? Is it too wet? Is it all of these thoughts? Because we haven't spent time worshiping our own bodies and getting to know. So the self-gazing is critical, is critical, you know, for us with vulvas, they're tucked away, we don't see them, so we have to go get a mirror.

Speaker 2: 33:03

I remember the first time for me, I had squatted over a mirror, I had a bad wax and a hair bump down there, and I was like, oh my God, I have caught something horrible. And I just remember straddling over a mirror like like on all fours so I could get a good look. And that was, you know, in my early 20s, and up until that point I hadn't spent any time really looking at my vulva at all. And I had seen a lot of vulvas, though on porn, and porn casts a type, and so I thought mine was ugly too, because it didn't look like any of the ones I had seen on porn. I'd also seen some bobas in the club, because gay clubs a lot, strip clubs a lot, but that's another story. But I just knew what mine, mine didn't. Mine was Meteor and I was thinking like if someone had told me let someone gaze in it back then I would have died on the spot.

Speaker 2: 34:04

It took me spending time to really love on and worship my own body and my self-worship practice.

Speaker 2: 34:11

When I'm coaching, I coach folks to have a daily worship practice of self. My grandmother prayed every morning before she came downstairs and I don't understand why we can't do that to ourselves, even if it's five or 10 minutes, just to spend time smelling, tasting, touching, moisturizing, you know, just really caring for our bodies, for our vulvas, for our vaginas, like, can we take care of ourselves? Because we don't, it's tucked away, otherwise we'll just kind of it'll just be down there, and so, yeah, creating, creating ritual around that is really important, and taking a look at it is really important. And, you know, for those with penises it's the same science applies, because just because you see the top of it doesn't mean you know what's going on underneath, doesn't mean you've seen your own scrotum or behind your scrotum, your perineum, all the parts you may not feel comfortable having someone touch, like touch them yourself. See what happens when you allow yourself to explore, because that's a part of the process is learning to become more comfortable with your own body.

Speaker 1: 35:30

I love that. I love the idea of a daily self-worship that includes you know, sight, scent, touch, you know. I also think women should and men, people with penises should incorporate tasting into this practice, like you should know what you taste like. There's so much fear around that fear or, in some cases, like an expectation that someone else is going to be willing to taste you when you're not willing to taste yourself. Right, and I think, just really knowing your body also, all of that stuff that you learn, especially on a daily basis. I definitely haven't done that, but it gives you so much information on your own health and well-being. You'll know when something's off, you'll know. And this is so important. You know I just turned 50. For women, as we age, like really knowing where our health is at is super important. When the skin is changing and the scent and taste are changing, like maybe you need to like check into your whole health.

Speaker 2: 37:11

Like when I look at the Tibetan lineage of tantra. It's a lot of embodiment, right. It's a lot about, like, listening to your body, and our body is talking to us in a lot of ways. Our nervous system is processing and communicating, impacting our heart, our blood flow, our hormonal regulation, our chemical responses. That is showing up in your yoni, that is showing up in your yoni, that is showing up in your semen. And so I often joke because if I get real stressed out, my white armpit is much more potent, like it's like oh, that's a stress scent. That's not like regular.

Speaker 2: 37:55

I was hot today and that's because stress actually creates a different chemical response in the body and you will smell that and you will taste it. It's not to say it will be foul, but it will be very different. And so it's good to know where you are in the day before you go out and expose yourself to everybody else. How much can you even take on from the world might be something that you can find out through some early morning breath, work and solo pleasure before you go out into the world. You've kind of taken a temperature reading of where you are and who you are on that day.

Speaker 2: 38:35

What are your stress levels, like Are you in your sweet phase? Are you ovulating? Because these are different. Right, these are different. If I'm ovulating, that's very different than when I'm about to cleanse my uterus, like, these are different energies and they're different smells, they're different tastes. My desire I will know that my pH can be off, I can know that you should never let these things catch you off guard. And so, yeah, tasting is huge and getting to know your wellness and you have an access point. That's so easily, it's just within arm's reach.

Speaker 1: 39:19

I want to move on to breath work as part of your own sensual, sexual kind of self practice. I know it's a big part of Tantra. I don't know a lot about it. I know that only in the last, I'm going to say, handful of months I've started to use my own breath work to change the kind of orgasms I have and to direct my like. I, at the beginning of this year, was really going through heavy grief and I could move grief out of my body while orgasming with the breath, like lock in the grief as I was orgasming and kind of move it out of my body, which was really intense, something I'm so glad I'm doing less of. But recently I've also been able to use breathwork to sort of change the intensity and type of orgasm that I have. I would love for you to explain a little bit and I'm like free balling it like no knowledge, just doing right, because I've read a little bit here and there. So what I would love for you to do is speak some like what am I doing?

Speaker 2: 40:28

I want to tell you, first of all, this knowledge is innate. You know what you're doing because it's as natural as you doing it. It's just you're looking for the backup, but we have a lot of this information that's already in our body and we know we could play around with it. It's like dribbling our ball or dribbling breath. We're getting to know what it's like to handle our breath and you know, for many of us, when we first witnessed sex on TV, in whatever form, whether that was on some soap opera or in a you know niche porn, wherever, and all the levels in between, but the breath especially, you know it gets really breathy, right, and you get that kind of happening in Hollywood with breath. And that is how I thought I was supposed to breathe when I had sex. It was. I started having sex young. I did that same thing. Well, it turns out that that's actually the same breath that my body is familiar with when it is in panic, that is, the breath of a flight or fight, that is. It's not a very deep, thorough breath, right. And so, yeah, I could have that breath, and I'm not going to say that it might not, I might not also experience pleasure in that breath, but by having a breath practice and in semantics you say you are what you practice right? So having a breath practice, that is a part of who I am as a regular human being, just like noticing my around, seeing what happens if I allow my abdomen to fully get out of the way for my diaphragms to make as much space as possible for my lungs playing around with the muscles in my body while I breathe outside of sex, just as a practice. It doesn't have to be anything that takes hours out of your day. People are like I'm going to sit for five minutes and focus on nothing but breath, and that will probably what I find is most people that do that regularly for five minutes fall in love with it and, as I said earlier, you do the things you love a lot, and then they just find themselves easily drifting off into 15 to 20 minutes of it, which makes it so much more natural when you are having sex, because now you're not trying to do breath work. You're doing this thing that you always do when you're relaxing, when you're paying attention to your body.

Speaker 2: 43:14

And a breath does a couple of things. One, it gives me something to bring my awareness inward, which and I'm sure there's at least one listener here who is having sex and brain is over there and over there and going through the list of things that they didn't get to and wondering how much time this is going to take If they got to get back to the thing they're supposed to get to. The kids are coming in, yada, yada, yada.

Speaker 2: 43:39

Well, if I'm in all of those spaces and I'm not in my body and so I'm not actually accessing my pleasure fully, so at the very minimum, breath work is going to bring us into our bodies so that we can actually feel good, we actually get the pleasure like be in the experience of what is pleasurable, but also and also you need this opportunity to kind of play with it and notice like, oh, if I breathe like this, then maybe my orgasm is like a little bit deeper or expands out or it lasts longer one, because your breath, your body's relationship to breath and your body's relationship to pleasure are going to be based on what has shaped you in your life and what has gotten you to this point.

Speaker 2: 44:32

But to just not have any breath practice, you're missing out on some of the joy and some of the pleasure a lot of it really that's accessible to you at such a simple level, because breath is what you're already doing. You're already breathing, you've already got that down. So now just practice some other ways to breathe so that, when you're in these moments of a deeply erotic bliss, that you have other alternatives of breath, other than the oh shit breath. Other than the um, the is everything okay breath you actually are able to go into the I'm relaxed fully, I'm open and present. Breath, and that is where that orgasm shifts.

Speaker 1: 45:23

The first time I really experienced it I wasn't thinking about it, but the sounds I started making. I was probably one of the first times I experienced multiple orgasms with somebody else and I was so like, recognizing I was having this opportunity, and like was like, okay, recognizing I was having this opportunity, and like was like okay, and now let's get into the body, let's let's.

Speaker 1: 45:46

You know, and the sounds that I made in that experience I was like it sounded a little bit like I was giving birth. It was very primal. That breath was very, very primal. Not at all. You've never heard it in porn, I promise you. And I even had a moment of like this sounds really weird and I'm like I do not care. And I have noticed that the more that I play with breath as I could, because I have an extensive self pleasure practice but as I orgasm, the more that I can actually, then I'm connecting breath with pleasure. So even when I'm not touching myself, I can use breath to start to build the sexual excitement and satisfaction just through, because I'm creating kind of those connections. My brain is connecting them, which is nice.

Speaker 2: 46:41

Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1: 46:42

Can you talk a little bit about the Lingam massage? I've actually had listeners reach out and ask me about the Lingam massage and the Yoni massage, what these practices are.

Speaker 2: 46:55

Yeah, so I mean at the basic level. It is a massage for the genitals and I want to say a couple of things about this, because there's a lot of wild. It's the wild wild west out there in the world of Linga Mignone massage. The idea is not that when I'm offering a massage and I've been teaching Lingamony massage for about 15 years the idea is not that I'm offering this touch so that you can ejaculate or have an orgasm or squirt any of these things that you may see marketed. And I'm not taking away from folks that are doing that as a part of their practice and just saying that it's not the goal of a Lingam or Yoni massage. It happens sometimes, oftentimes it can happen.

Speaker 2: 47:52

The reality is is too often our genitals are for someone else, and they are. We get some of the perks of it, but, like if I, you know, for some of the penis, they're trying to get it in and make sure that you feel it and go as deep as possible and be it big enough and be hard enough. Those of us with vulvas, we're trying to make sure it's wet enough and tight enough and we're keeling ourselves to death. And all of this is happening not for our own pleasure but for the pleasure of someone else, just very similar to the way it is when we come to looking at our own genitals. We actually don't have, oftentimes a deep relationship with felt sense in our genitals, with what it feels like to have them touched, what the sides of the shaft feel like, what the front feels like comparatively to the back. We don't have a frame of reference, because lingam and yawning massage is illegal in most parts of the country and it's not something that we're talking about.

Speaker 2: 49:28

And so for folks who are trying to experience more pleasure, more genital pleasure, more gentle pleasure and it's a really good place to start in that there's ways to map pleasure through gentle manipulation of the vulva, of the vaginal canal, of the penis, and so it's a beautiful way to invite the person into touch without having them have to do anything. It doesn't matter if you ejaculate, so you don't have to try to be like, oh, I'm not going to come yet, right, which is taking away from your ability to feel pleasure that you've come into your head about not coming. It doesn't. You don't have to worry about like how long this is going to go or is this going to be painful, like all of these things that get in the way of you actually experiencing your body. Those things move out of the way.

Speaker 2: 50:20

We have a practice that allows a practitioner or a lover to come in and offer touch in a beautiful, loving, sensual and therapeutic way to the whole genital area the insides of the thighs, the top of the mons pubis, the shaft, the head, the balls, all of this, the perineum, you know, really feeling into the labia, like having women notice where the clitoris actually sits in relation to the labia. It's pretty big and people get a chance to feel that behind the skin. When someone is offering a yoni massage. You get to feel the engorgement, it gets to feel the different phases and just be present for that, instead of also trying to be present for a lover, which is really, really powerful.

Speaker 2: 51:19

And one of my favorite practices to teach to offer um. It's, it's, yeah, it's just magical and it I can't speak enough about it. If you get a chance, I teach workshops all over and there's other folks tons of folks up in the Pacific Northwest, for sure, but people all over the country that that teach um and offer how to give a massage, how to have a confidence in your hands to offer that to someone else, and so, yeah, it's just a really beautiful practice and it's not rooted in performance like so much of our sex is.

Speaker 1: 52:03

And so you're saying one of the main benefits is that you learn your own pleasure where it's taking place. You connect more with your own body and your own pleasure. Are there other benefits to these types of massages?

Speaker 2: 52:22

Yeah, there's a lot of trauma that we experience in our genitals. Most penises in the West have been cut as an infant. They have a circumcision scar that actually impacts their ability to feel pleasure. That is trauma to the body, and so it offers an opportunity to do some healing around that as well. Feeling safe in the body for folks who have experienced sexual trauma of any type doesn't necessarily have to be as violent as rape, but that also included. It just gives you a chance to actually feel yourself, and so there's healing in that.

Speaker 2: 53:00

And recognizing that I'm human, healing in that. And recognizing that I'm human. Desire is human, pleasure is human. I can feel this. I don't have to do anything to feel this. I am worthy. It is in my body. This is who I am. That builds something in the body that is healing. It's also just fun, and fun and joy are like human requirements, so I also like to like. Well, we could wax poetic and be all philosophical, but the reality is is it feels good, and when I feel good, my body releases all kinds of other chemicals. Sure, I can go and buy some chemicals. I could have my doctor prescribe them for me, but a lot of them my body creates just fine on its own, and pleasurable touch is an easy way to access some of my body's natural chemical neurotransmitters, all of the good stuff that make me balanced as a human being. And so, yeah, spreading joy is a good reason to get a yoni massage or give one.

Speaker 1: 54:11

Can you use Tantra practices even on your own, to try to manifest the things that you want in your life?

Speaker 2: 54:22

I really believe one of the most powerful practices in Tantra in general to me has been the practice of somatic descent, which I learned from Reggie Ray, and you can Google Dr Reginald Ray and somatic descent. His practice is actually free online. You can take classes with him. I've studied through his programs. But the somatic descent is a practice of dropping deeply into your body through a meditation so that your body can tell you what it needs and wants. Very short, succinct wrapping up of what the practice is.

Speaker 2: 55:08

I do not believe we manifest well when we don't know what we want. I do not believe that it is easy to manifest things that don't belong to us, and in a capitalistic, consumer-driven society, manifesting is becoming harder and harder because we are striving for things that won't serve us, that won't offer the fulfillment that we want and need. And so Tantra and the practice of Semitic descent, which is through Vajrayana Tantra, tibetan Tantra, allows you to develop a deep relationship with self, with the body, in so much that you really know what you want, and then you actually feel that feeling again when you're near it, which is what I believe we're doing when we're manifesting. I believe that if I know what the feeling is when I am fully immersed in the understanding of what I want, that when I'm near it I'm drawn to it and it's drawn to me. Everything else I got to work hard for and I am giving up on working hard.

Speaker 1: 56:25

You and me alike, because what I have realized is, if I like, tune into the energy around me, what I often do is I'll wake up one day and I'll be like here are my goals today and this is how I'm going to like, push my whatever businesses forward, make more money. And I wake up and everything I push on like fails, and so I push harder.

Speaker 1: 56:50

And pretty soon. I'm in this like state of being where I'm like everything's failing. I suck, I can't do this. And what I've realized now is like I tune into my day, I feel out what's going on and maybe I try something. You know, you know something on my, my large to-do list and at the minute it starts to crumble, I'm like that's not what today is about. So today, yeah, I'm gonna like change my mode into something like that's more about feeling good, good, or resting, or taking what I already have and really being grateful and maybe fortifying it. I really tuning in instead of I cause. I think in Western culture, when it comes to sex, when it comes to finding relationships, when, when it comes to, uh, building life, it's like kill yourself to do it.

Speaker 1: 57:42

Work, work, work, work, work and acquire, acquire and if you haven't acquired, yet work more until you're dead and then you've never gotten to really like, enjoy life, right. Right, and back to what you said about manifesting. I like to frame it as using the power of the pussy to manifest the life I want.

Speaker 1: 58:04

Um, and what I think I've realized and what I love about sort of summarizing this episode on manifestation using Tantra, is that a lot of the love and the sex and the relationships I've manifested in my life haven't come from a place of actually knowing what I really wanted, and I didn't even know how to know what I really wanted, right. But as I've been sinking into sort of this self pleasure practice, I've started to like and it's, I feel it in my low, in my belly and my in my pussy area, and then it kind of comes up to my heart and I'm starting to be able to see clearly, more clearly, what I want. But I love that you have given me that extra insight to like. Okay, now I have this feeling what happens with it and that when I encounter it out in the world, if I'm staying tuned in, I'm going to feel it.

Speaker 2: 59:06

Yeah, my manifestation procedure is just follow your pleasure. If I know what is feeling pleasurable to me and I'm leaning towards that, I am always moving towards my success. That's been tried and tested for me has been tried and tested for me. And when I'm uneasy or feeling a feeling that is displeasurable to me, what I've determined is not pleasurable to me and I go. Anyway, I'm always in some shit, I'm always like this is not what I wanted. And if I just listened and paid attention to the sensations, the feelings, the information that my body was already giving me, then I wouldn't have went there and I would have been on a different path. But sometimes you got to learn the lesson multiple times, and I have.

Speaker 1: 59:58

And so I end up there.

Speaker 2: 1:00:00

But you know that's my. I know what it is when I'm there. I like didn't follow the pleasure. I know what it is when I'm there. I like didn't follow the pleasure.

Speaker 1: 1:00:07

So we're at that point where it's time to sum things up for my listeners If I had a listener here was like, all right, I've taken in this podcast. I want to start integrating some practices today, tomorrow and then learn more and go deeper down the road. Day tomorrow and then learn more and go deeper down the road. What is the little kind of package go package, go bag, if you will of Tantra learnings, maybe practices they could just dip their toe in, starting right away.

Speaker 2: 1:00:37

My biggest thing is and I give this to all of my clients when they first started work start working with me to do 30 days of self-pleasure first thing in the morning. Um, whether that's five minutes or an hour, give yourself the range of space when you, when you have an hour, take it. When you have five minutes, take it. But spend a little bit of time just loving on your own body every day for 30 days and see what happens. Just pay attention. Pay attention to what you're noticing, to the colors in the world, because they might be a little different, but just like, literally just pay attention. See what comes alive for you in that. What information is there? Journal through it and stay consistent. Offer yourself a few minutes a day before you give yourself up to the world. Be selfish first thing in the morning as a tantric ritual and allow yourself to come into the world that way every day. Start there, and it doesn't matter if you have a partner. This is not just for I am married. I have someone in my bed every night, just about at least one person, and so it doesn't matter if you're partnered or not. This is for you, this is your practice. So give yourself that as a reality and see what happens from there, see how that opens up and expands. Because the reality is is that there is no prescription for one individual except for what comes from within you. And so if you can actually start experiencing your own self at pleasure, if you can start paying attention to your own self, creating space, loving on, worshiping your own self, that will open you up into a world of embodied, fulfilled sets, just from that practice alone. And so do 30 days with no break, and see what happens. That's always my first, no matter the gender, no matter the gender arrangement, those of you with penises.

Speaker 2: 1:02:54

I'm not talking about soap and jacking off. I'm talking about touching and feeling. Allow yourself to become erect and then fizzle back out. This is not like how many times can I nut in a month? I just want to be clear, because sometimes people hear that and they run in the opposite direction. But it's also not like what's my most powerful vibrator? Vulva folks. I also want to just clarify that yes, the vibrator is great, I have an assortment. Like, yes, the vibrator is great, I have an assortment, and so sometimes just like actually touching and rubbing on yourself with your hands, just get into your own body for 30 days. See what happens, notice what your breath is doing, notice what else there is to notice. Be curious, be playful, be light and see how your perspective on sex and sexuality changes, just from that little basic practice.

Speaker 1: 1:03:54

From there we can build up, support it 100%. Can you tell everybody where they can find you and learn more about?

Speaker 2: 1:04:03

you, yeah, yeah, so you can see me on. If you haven't seen um. Netflix is sex, love and goop. You can see me on episode three. Uh, you could also find me anywhere on at ATL Tantra, so ATL Tantracomorg, um. Uh, at ATL Tantra on social media and um. On social media and um, and then at your local sex conferences and tantra festivals. Look for me there too.

Speaker 1: 1:04:36

Thank you so much for joining me for my listeners. If you are just a listener, if you want to, you can always email me your questions at Annette at talksexwithannettecom. At Annette at TalkSexWithAnnettecom. If you want to head over to my YouTube channel at Annette Benedetti and find this video, watch it because you want to see our beautiful faces. But if you drop a comment into the comment section below the video, then I can keep your questions organized.

Speaker 1: 1:05:03

I can reach out to Amina to answer anything that she can answer and get you sort of the knowledge and information you want as soon as possible. That's all I'm going to promise, but you can always email me. You know how to get a hold of me. Scroll down, subscribe to my newsletter, because I will be sending all of this information to you as well. I also have a speak pipe. You can send me a voice message if that is easier for you. Thank you so much for joining me, amina. I feel honored and I feel like I have a lot of takeaways that I'm going to be integrating into my own life. So I very much appreciate you. So until next time, listeners, I will see you in the locker room. Cheers.