Ladies, perhaps you realize that you are feeling less beautiful, less desirable, more taken for granted. . . I know many of us feel this way at one time or another.

When your man is in love with you at the beginning of your relationship he sprinkles, “you are beautiful,” “I love you so much,” “you are important to me” in so much of what he says to you. . .

Now you might have to wait for a special occasion or perhaps a new sexy outfit for him to notice how beautiful you are. His feelings haven’t changed; he has just forgotten the need to share them with you.

Men, are you taking the time to make sure your woman hears that she is important and beautiful and sexy to you?

Perhaps there is also another way you can give attention to her?

Saying “you are beautiful” can get boring or lost its meaning, and a general comment never has the same power as when you compliment her on a specific trait. Perhaps instead you could notice her expression and comment on it. You can tell her exactly what about her body attracts you most. Perhaps you may also notice some of the loving things she says or does, and acknowledge them with some attention – and even a kiss, or a touch . . .

This Valentine’s Day, and all through the month, use your imagination to communicate your desire to your woman. You will be surprised how eagerly she reacts to your attention!

Most people’s perception of Tantra is limited to controlling sex so you can have it for hours and hours in strange positions. Tantra is much more than that. It includes 64 arts that support you to be the most sensitive and accomplished lover of life and of another person. It includes the art of understanding the energy flow, of communicating deeply from your feelings, the art of romance, of setting up a room that will encourage you to create a mood that takes you higher into your fullest potential of vitality and passion, and more…

l embraced Tantra fully, and I teach it passionately because it has helped me to free myself from limiting emotional conclusions about sexuality, and to accept on all levels of my being that sex is an powerful force that amplifies any intention I hold. So if you intend to increase your love or vitality or abundance, your sexual expression is doing that. If you have the intention of connecting deeply with another and experiencing bliss together, sexuality becomes a very high expression of love, and learning to become the best lover you can becomes very important. Tantra encourages you to become the ultimate lover on all levels.

Tantra is a path that successfully unites sexuality with spirituality. It is the only spiritual approach I know of that faces the sexual challenges directly and teaches us how to use sex in a safe, and powerful way. It is a path to enlightenment, which can be reached by transcending our dualistic state of mind. Often we think one thing and feel another. Tantra uses our natural sexual energy to heal the split between body and spirit, between thinking and feeling, and helps you feel whole and really fulfilled.

It is not about how many hours you spend in sexual activities, although it helps with that too if you so desire. Tantra guides you to generate, heighten and transform sexual energy to more subtle energies as you channel it up through higher energy centers in the body (chakras). With the intention of transforming this powerful energy, you can create a new you.

Chakras are wheels of energy. The Hindu tradition believes that there are seven energy wheels that need to spin freely to be fully healthy and to move the maximum amount of energy. The first chakra is situated at the base of our spine. It connects us with the earth, and when it is open and balanced we feel safe. The second chakra is about sex, fluidity, and juiciness; the third – the solar plexus – is about expression of willpower and self-esteem; the fourth – at the heart level – is about love and compassion; the fifth – at the throat level – is about free and honest communication; the sixth – at the forehead level – is about intuition; and the seventh – in the middle of the brain – is about connection with the part of us that is beyond our personality and reaches into the spirit.

The idea of Tantra is to balance these energy centers and to raise the vibrations of pleasure from the first and second chakras to the higher chakras to express self-esteem, love, honest communication, intuition, and finally to merge with into your ultimate transcendent reality. It transforms the sexual energy that is coiled in the lower chakras into love and into light.

Tantra is also a path to complete intimacy with oneself and with another being. Many find it easier to be physically intimate than to share true emotional intimacy. We hold back on letting others see us as we are, especially the parts of us that we judge as bad. Many are more interested in learning lovemaking techniques, which Tantra offers in abundance, than to committing to emotional and spiritual intimacy and absolute honesty with a partner. It seems logical that, in order to achieve the highest state of union with All That Is, we must first be willing to be fully open with at least one human being.

Furthermore, even on a less cosmic level, in order to fully heal ourselves from the shame of our imperfect state of being human, we long for a person who loves us as we are. However, in order to be able to allow that love to penetrate us and heal us, we must first be willing to fully accept ourselves with all our desirable and undesirable qualities.

Tantra gives us plenty of suggestions about how self-acceptance can be reached, and guides you gently to go beyond self-acceptance to honor our true God self.

Sex is very important in our lives. It is a powerful creative force and it leads to orgasm. Orgasm is probably the closest some of us get to the experience of enlightenment. For a more-or-less brief moment, we get to forget ourselves, our problems, our egos, and just be with pure energy, with God.

Tantra guides you gradually to lengthen the peak experience of sexual ecstasy so that, in a way, we get to “hang out” with God longer. This expands our consciousness so that, when you come down to the dualistic plane, you see yourselves and life in a new way. You can actually experience the love that supports the whole cosmos. It is awesome.

When I started playing with the idea of making Tantra my path, I was surprised to notice my resistance to practicing it, finding “plausible” excuses not to find time for it. I remember feeling a similar resistance to my meditation practices. My resistance was confusing to me because here I had found a path that allowed me to use pleasure to reach God and I was avoiding it. Why? After some inner search I realized that this pleasure was different from the previously felt pleasure, which was mixed with pain and guilt. This, however, was pure pleasure, and I did not know how to be with it. Slowly, with a lot of patience and practice, I started to build up my capacity to sustain pure pleasure. I also had to overcome the voice of my internalized mother, who condemned me for feeling sexual pleasure in the first place.

With practice I was able to relax my body while being at the same time in a highly aroused state. Somehow these two states are not mutually exclusive, as one might be tempted to think. In Tantra one can relax because there is no issue of performance. The process itself is the reward. Only through being fully in the process can one reach the highest orgasm.

Do you necessarily need a partner for Tantra love? No. Many tantric exercises can be done alone. In fact, learning to love and honor your own body is an important step toward the tantric experience with a partner.

Tantra helped me break old taboos and heal my past emotional and physical traumas connected with my sexuality. I can now use this additional experiential knowledge to help woman, men and couples in my New York.

To my great joy there are also people who are already fully sex positive and emotionally healthy and feel great with high erotic energy flowing through their bodies. It is a pleasure to assist those people to achieve higher levels of ecstasy alone or with their partner, whether I can help them in private coaching, or in the wider sharing of a workshop.

Take a moment to reflect on your parents and your upbringing as a child. Make a list of what your mother and father believed about sex and love.

Now, consider the following list and answer for yourself, did you parents believe and tell you at an appropriate age that:

* sex is a gift from God and it is your right to enjoy it fully;
* sexual energy creates great pleasure and expands love;
* it is important to make love to yourself to find out what you like so you can tell your lover;
* moving sexual energy is healthy for your body, mind and spirit;
* it is your responsibly to achieve orgasms;
* you have the right to ask how you want to be touched and kissed, and where;
* you take turns in giving and receiving pleasure;
* before making love, clear out resentments that might create a bigger disturbance if not addressed;
* making love out of duty creates a rift in your soul;
* looking into each other’s eyes in a soft way increases your openness to give and receive love.

If you answered no to several of these points, or if this list is quite different from your first list of your parents’ beliefs about love and sex, you might consider doing the work of changing those beliefs into your own empowering beliefs.

Perhaps your parents themselves were never exposed to these ideas, and they might have felt shame or guilt about their own sexuality.

In that case, even if they told you all or some of the above, you might have received instead their unconscious message that sex was shameful.

That happens because as a child you live on an emotional level, so you absorb what your parents believe in their guts more than what they tell you with words, even when they believe their words at an intellectual, thinking level.

Now that you are a grown up, it is your right to check in with yourself and see where you are still unconsciously faithful to your parents’ beliefs. This may be challenging emotionally – you took in what they believed because you loved them, and changing those beliefs might feel to you like a betrayal of your love.

You can both love your parents for who they are, without judgement, and also find and own your own beliefs that will empower you to a richer and more pleasurable life.

To bring those beliefs up into the conscious mind –where beliefs can be changed –takes intention, introspection, commitment, and a special breathing which I call “Ocean Breath.”

As you know, unless the foundation of a building is firm, the building may collapse. Make sure that the foundation of your love-building is strong, so you can build it as high as you want in strength and safety.

Blessings,

Carla Tara