Honoring The Wisdom Of The Yoniverse

Honoring The Wisdom Of The Yoniverse

Women Healing Women

Jun 6-7, 2009

Through Initiation and Celebration
A workshop for women
Step into the Temple of the Sisterhood to be supported in igniting
Your Own Divine Feminine Nature
ExperienceTantric Initiation Rituals and other sacred and safe techniques to

Activate and transmit the Feminine Life Force and awaken your ancient natural
Ecstatic Feminine Power
Learn to Invoke True Sexual Magic as we
clarify and set intentions for ourselves

www.tantricsacredjourneys.com
dawn@tantricsacredjourneys.com
www.awakenedloving.com
judith@awakenedloving.com

Pam Babbitt, Transmuting Sexual Energy

Denver Tantra Examiner
Pam Babbitt

Tantra is a magical path to creating the life and experiences of your dreams.
‘Tantra invites your body to remember’ - your essence, your power, your potential, your dreams, and your body’s innate erotic intelligence.
It helps remove blockages due to dis-ease, sexual abuse, invasive medical procedures, negative experiences, and the stresses of everyday living. Tantra lovingly returns you to ecstasy - your birthright.

Our most ecstatic sex occurs when our body and heart merge with our soul to achieve a powerful connection to ourselves, our partner, and our Creator. When we allow ourselves to sink deeply into that state of peace and release all those goal-oriented notions (you know the ones), waves of ecstasy can ripple through and transport us to a place of connectedness with all there is.

....more from Pam Babbitt

The Dragons Gift, Sacred Arts of Bhutan, SF

Now through May 10, 2009
San Francisco Asian Art Museum

Free admission Sunday May 3, 2009 (and first Sunday every month)

The first exhibition of its kind, The Dragon's Gift provides an exceptionally rare opportunity to view some of the most sacred and beloved Buddhist arts in Bhutan. ...more from SF Asian Art Museum

Reviews:
SF Examiner
Marisa Nakasone
I was most impressed by the Asian Art Museum's sensitivity toward preserving the spiritual and cultural integrity of the objects--these are not mere artifacts but spiritually utilitarian objects that must be framed in the context of their original religious setting. The Asian Art Museum has addressed this by bringing a Buddhist altar into the foyer of the museum and inviting Bhutanese monks for a residency for the duration of the exhibition. The active, ritual movements and interactions between the monks, the altar, and the sacred objects reinforces the immediacy and vitality of the objects and the culture of Bhutan. ....more

Wall Street Journal
Michael Ybarra
He looks like a demon from an especially bad nightmare: a blue monster with horns and three eyes on his head, which is in turn topped by another eight heads, culminating in a strangely serene Buddha face. His main hands hold a chopper and a cup made from a human skull. Thirty-two other hands wield an array of weapons. He wears a belt of human heads and his 16 feet trample small humans and animals. A nimbus of orange flames surrounds his body. Even his penis is angry, brandished like an avenging sword.....more from WSJ
Wall Street Journal slide show

Namaste Nancy
The Sacred Arts of Bhuta is one of the most ambitious and eagerly anticipated exhibitions of Buddhist art in many years. Bhutan is a tiny kingdom in the Himalayas, wedged between the two superpowers of China and India. It was never conquered, never colonized and still survives as both an ancient independent kingdom and the world's newest democracy. The Dragon’s Gift explores Bhutan’s Buddhist cosmology through its sacred visual arts and ritual dance (cham), using Buddhism as a lens through which to explore the full range of Bhutanese culture.

Vajrabhairava is a wrathful form of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom (* see Tom Christensen's blog for a delightful exposition of this "blue meanie)

The exhibition includes more than one hundred works of art with a wide iconographic scope. Exhibited materials include thangkas (textile mounted paintings), sculptures, metalwork, textiles, and ritual objects, all made for use in a Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhist context.......more from Chez Namaste Nancy

Live, April 24, Dalai Lama, 'Ethics of Our Time', KCSB 91.9 FM, UC Santa Barbara

Dalai Lama will give two lectures at the UC Santa Barbara Events Center, New Moon, Friday, April 24:
“The Nature of Mind” (9:30–11:30 a.m.) and “Ethics for Our Time” (2:00–4:00 p.m.).

This will be the fourth visit His Holiness has made to UC Santa Barbara, and the first since an endowed professorship – the XIV Dalai Lama Chair in Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Studies – was created in his honor in 2001.

Both lectures are sold out

April 24th, KCSB 91.9 FM, Exclusive live broadcasts of two speeches by the Dalai Lama from the Events Center at the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Tune into KCSB 91.9 FM or to KCSB’s live webstream (www.kcsb.org) to hear his lecture, “The Nature of Mind,” from 9:30-11:30am, PDT, and his follow-up talk, “Ethics for Our Time,” from 2-4pm. Continue reading ‘KCSB 91.9 FM to Air Exclusive Live Radio Broadcasts of the Dalai Lama’s UC Santa Barbara Speeches on Friday, April 24′

Toward Enlightenment: The Sacred Art of Tibet &
Universe of a Deity: A Tibetan Sand Mandala
University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara
April 1, 2009–June 14, 2009
The exhibition highlights the multi-level functioning of the art and its themes of transformation of the profound into the worldly with a strong emphasis on depictions of teaching. These paintings echo the purity and precision of visionary buddhas, bodhisattvas, archetypal deities, lama portraits, and protectors.

Yoga Therapy and Tantra Teachers

from TIME
Talk. Share. Cry. Stretch? Psychotherapy has historically been an exercise of the mind, but in the offices of more and more modern-day mental-health providers, emotional healing is taking place not just on the couch but on the yoga mat. ....
"................The concept of healing the mind via the body, and vice versa, has been around for decades. "Freud used to work with hysterical women with unconscious conflicts that they couldn't express through words," says Visceglia. "Only through looking at the symptoms of their body [like phantom pregnancies] could they even get to what was psychologically needed for healing." .......
Since the days of Freud, research into the mind-body relationship has come a long way. Studies show that not only are your mental health and mood dependent in large part on physical factors like exercise, but also unchecked stress, anxiety and depression can affect physical health, increasing blood pressure, heart disease and even risk of death. So it was perhaps inevitable that patients would start bringing their yoga mats into therapy.
.....more from TIME

Tantra Yoga teachers and educators have always understood this connection. Tantric practice encourages clearing of emotions, using them as a path of transformation, not through repression or indulgence, but through naked awareness. Direct experience of our authentic selves exposes the roots of disturbing emotions, and with awareness comes transformation. Tantra uses all the energies available, and instructs in disciplining and developing the senses as tools for spiritual and emotional liberation. Techniques, including, breath, mantra, bhanda and touch, expand consciousness and help us access the spontaneous, and outrageously awake, place of bliss. Instruction, because it is often one on one, provides a sacred space to learn, experience and practice the powerful, radical, fast acting, multifaceted tantric techniques, and an experienced guide holds a mirror, and helps you process, and integrate all that arrives. .....and administer cpr, no, just kidding!!..lol

recommended reading

Sky Dancer Keith Dowman

The Kalachakra Tantra Tenzin Gyatso and Jeffrey Hopkins

The Crystal And The Way Of Light Namkhai Norbu

Tibetan Buddhism in Western perspective Herbert V. Guenther

Milarepa W. Y. Evans Wentz

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism Chögyam Trungpa

Reflections of mind Tarthang Tulku

The Tibetan book of the great liberation W. Y. Evans Wentz

Mudra Chögyam Trungpa

Clear Light of Bliss Geshe Kelsang Gyatso





Los Angeles Tantra Coach

Gucci Little Piggy: The Myth of Male Hideousness

Great post on current trend of men depicted as unattractive, smelly and silly.

Gucci Little Piggy: The Myth of Male Hideousness

Tantra, Buddha Mind and La Petite Mort II

La petite mort, the little death of orgasm gives us a glimpse of panoramic awareness, the distinct feeling that you have lost your edges, and have no center or need of one, you are one with all of it. In complete surrender to the moment, unclouded, non-dual, Buddha mind has been exposed. Spacious, free of desire, and no room for thoughts,
an exquisite and pure taste of naked awareness.

And a taste of death. Or the process of death, and it is a process. We do not die all at once. When the heart muscle has stopped Western medicine tags your toe, and for organizational purposes, labels you 'dead'. This has not been the common wisdom. Complete death takes awhile, just as birth. Tibetan Buddhism suggests 3 days before the consciousness has left the body and 49
days for complete departure.

The Bardo Thodol, from the father of Tantric Buddhism, Padmasambhava, and available to us as the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, is an amazingly accurate (according to science)guide of the death(ing)process along with the practices, and philosophy for making the most of this mind blowing*, once in a lifetime event. A skillful death requires a lifetime of practice, better to begin now.

The ancient, and obsessive fascination with sex and death, and the mixing of the two, continues for good reason. They are intricately connected and mirror a mind space rarely available in any other way. Humans are, and have always been drawn to these mind spaces. Scarfing, erotic asphyxiation, dates back to the 1600's, and was thought to help with impotence after erections were observed in men post hanging, practiced today for its erotic appeal. A truly shocking visual created by a doctor is available from Turban Sing in 'Exploring Sex and Death'.. Space Monkey, popular with teens, is a choking game played for a high and/or erotic value, involving the loss of consciousness, and the occasional, but very real, tragic oops of accidental death. Michael Hutchins from INXS, is said to have accidentally killed himself with scarfing, making 'in excess ' eerily appropriate.
Some tantric sects have a startling**, and at first glance macabre, often erotic ritual and practice of meditation on corpses, a practice to instill the meaning of impermanence, among other things. ....and it works!
Perfect for the beginning tantric, a little tantra lite, a simple one hour walking meditation at Forest lawn.... or any cemetery , try it!


*Nirvana: blown out
**One of Christianity's most interesting symbols is Jesus nailed to a wooden cross...ouch!

Art:
kali's necklace
mandala/ 17"x24"
my dakini

Lifespan of Romantic Love

The latest research suggests romantic love can survive more than a year or two, and does for some couples.
A variety of practices contribute to long term romance, including quality time, conflict resolution, and exercise.
I would add kissing meditations, and some type of tantric practice. One of the yummiest techniques
in tantric practice is eye/soul gazing. This simple, but powerful practice even has scientific backing,
eye gazing releases oxytocin, the hormone of love and bonding.


from: MSNBC
Live Science
Though it is widely held that romance and sex must ultimately yield to friendly companionship over time, new research found that's not the case. Instead about 13 percent of people reported high levels of romance in their long-term relationships, in a new study published in the March issue of the journal Review of General Psychology. ...............more from MSNBC

FindingDulinea.com
Bianca P. Acevedo, Ph.D.—who completed a study of love at Stony Brook University—along with co-researcher Arthur Aron, Ph.D., noted the distinction between romantic and passionate love: “Romantic love has the intensity, engagement and sexual chemistry that passionate love has, minus the obsessive component.”
According to Live Science, the 13 percent of people who maintained romantic love in their long-term relationships made these relationships “central to their lives” and sought to settle arguments “relatively efficiently and smoothly.”

PsychCentral writer, John M. Grohol, highlights suggestions from research about maintaining long-term relationships, advising couples to try new activities and confront new challenges together. He emphasizes, “Feeling that your partner is ‘there for you’ is invaluable for a good relationship.”
.........more from Finding Dulinea

It's Always Sunday Morning, Bhakti Yoga

the best use of music found here is as a 3ish minute solo, moving meditation,
or even better, dance to your own music, just do it
Everyone has 3 minutes to practice a little musical pharmacology.

If possible, be skyclad-naked, and just be, go with it, surrender..
allow your consciousness to drop into your body, and your body drops away,
we experience a few minutes existing as pure consciousness...
....this is basic Sufisim and the heart of Bhakti yoga, the children of Tantra...

..lyrics need not be about a lover in human form from the outside,
The lover is within, and ultimately without, in that space, it becomes all, mystic bliss, often flavored with the erotic......

for a really fun little trip, play 2 or3 at the same time
Sunday Morning with Tantra


Sunday morning rain is falling
Steal some covers share some skin
Clouds are shrouding us in moments unforgettable
You twist to fit the mold that I am in
But things just get so crazy living life gets hard to do
And I would gladly hit the road get up and go if I knew
That someday it would bring me back to you
That someday it would bring me back to you

That may be all I need
In darkness she is all I see
Come and rest your bones with me
Driving slow on sunday morning
And I never want to leave

Art from Tantric Wisdom

click to enlarge

thanks Vikram!
Tantric Wisdom.blogspot.com