Catharine Stott rode the waves of pleasure, excitement, nervousness, fear and love, dissolving into bliss on Tantra Man-Tantra Woman in June.
Tantra Man Tantra Woman. Great name, great workshop.
And my third foray into Tantra with the Sarita since January. When I discover something that makes me zing I throw myself right into it. I couldn’t wait to get back to the impeccable surroundings of Croydon Hall for another dose of cosmic love.
This was the second time that Sarita had run this group. It was extended by a day, but even so it was jam packed with meditations and challenging, loving exercises, punctuated by more showers and tooth brushing than I usually manage in a month. That’s the thing about Tantra, you’ve got to be fresh, fresh, fresh; you never know when you might have to breathe on someone, or lovingly caress them.
I was both excited about and dreading the idea of intimate massage with men I had yet to meet. Please let George Clooney be there, I prayed. George wasn’t, but 26 luscious other people were.
If you’d been on my first workshop, you might have noticed I was constantly on the verge of tears. In my second, Sacred Sexuality, I was laughing like a hyena for much of it, but when it came to being comfy with being sexy, forget it. I was so uptight that when it came to a certain exercise involving a little bit of clothing removal, I managed to get through the whole thing without removing more than my cardy and one shoulder strap.
This time though I was far more at ease. Maybe because now I trusted Sarita and Suta (left). Maybe because they’d lined up a great team of assistants, some already familiar to me: Roxana, Shanti and Santoshi for the women, and Vince and Richard for the men. Maybe also because we women had an extra, gorgeous, gentle-voiced teacher, Verica. Lucky us.
I was back in the zone as soon as we’d introduced ourselves. Day one we spent doing exercises with the men, sharing about ourselves and some touch, and a sound meditation that took me to the other side of the universe and back.
For the next two and a half days we were with the women. I love being with women, discovering ourselves, each other and what being a sexual woman is all about. I can’t go into detail because that would spoil it for you, but if you’ve never spent time with your own sex doing Tantra then I highly recommend it.
The men and women came back together on day four in a ceremonial performance, which was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. I was too old, too fat, too not beautiful enough compared to all those luscious Tantrikas that surrounded me and seemed so at ease with themselves. In fact right up til the last moment I wasn’t sure I was going to do it, but I knew that if I didn’t I would regret it forever. So I did it. By the end of the night I had come a very long way from the cardy/shoulder strap scenario of my previous workshop, shedding shame and inhibition like an old skin to find a new glorious me underneath; that I liked much better.
Then the culmination of the workshop. Two intimate massages, each done with two men I barely knew. This was massage, not sex, but in a country where a normal massage leaves your knickers on and ignores your breasts, it was a challenge. It was a good job that by this stage in my Tantra journey I knew for sure that my yoni was pretty normal and maybe even pretty. The first massage was an incredibly powerful experience. A feeling like I’ve never had before went up into my head and transported me somewhere that left me feeling like a 14 year old, innocent and very vulnerable; a feeling I never experienced as a teenager.
I went into a big crisis about massage two, hardly slept all night, needed help from my group of women to find me a man who I could feel safe with, and they rallied. I think up until then part of me, the bit that got trampled on as a kid in a dysfunctional family, didn’t believe that I would be supported, but as soon as I asked, I received. Thank you, women. And thank you to the man whom I did it with, a great big ride of healing and pleasure and then zonking out so completely that when I came to I felt like I’d been thousands of miles away for years and couldn’t believe I was still at Croydon Hall.
I floated home on a cloud of love for all the world, and am now plotting my next course.
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