Karen Salmansohn

Karen Salmansohn is a best-selling author with over 1 million books sold. Her goal: wake up sleepy minds, hearts and spirits… spread positive propaganda throughout the land. She’s known for presenting dynamic keynote seminars (Motorola, Unilever, Soho House, etc…) and is a recognized expert on happiness (in career, love and life) on The Today Show, The View, CNN, CNBC, WB, ABC – pick a set of letters! Plus she’s been in The NY Times, Business Week, Chicago Tribune, Self, Cosmo, In-Style, US, People, Fast Company, LA Times, Phila. Inquirer, etc…

Today Karen is launching a 30-day blog post campaign at her NotSalmon.com – Self Help for People Who Wouldn’t be Caught Dead Reading Self Help.

“Right now I will take up Aristotle’s advice… ” says Karen. “To begin with your final purpose in mind, or what Aristotle calls your ‘teleology’ and clearly state my teleology for these next 30 days on this blog. I want to give you techniques to break bad relationship patterns for good so you can snag a happily ever after love future.”

Her first article in the 30-day series, posted today covers a lot of ground, but in it she manages to link brain change, exercise, meditation, Kaizen visualization and positive affirmation with the likes of Woody Allen and a plan to send e-mail to yourself.

Karen explains, “Brain science says it takes 30 days to change a habit – and change neural pathways! When you change your daily thinking to support love/joy, your negative neural pathways shrink and positive neural pathways widen.”

Her first thought exercise will only take a total of 15 minutes out of your day, but that small investment could change your entire life… and it gets even better when you combine it with physical exercise.

“I’ve found that when I merge this ‘thought exercise’ with ‘physical’  exercise I get even more positive results, even more quickly,” says Salmansohn. “I got this  technique from Tony Robbins — and I gotta say, I’ve personally found  that exercising while I’m thinking positive thoughts has truly helped me in speeding up getting what I want!”

Current brain theory confirms the fact that your brain is continually evolving and that cardio-vascular exercise greatly facilitates the formation of BDNF. In Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, Dr. John J. Ratey validates the mind-body connection, presenting some startling research that proves that exercise is one of the very best defenses against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer’s. He describes how brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that acts on certain neurons of the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system, helps to support the survival of existing neurons and encourages the growth and differentiation of new neurons and synapses.

The link between body, mind and spirit is fundamental to Karen’s entire premise. She introduces the concept of linking thought to action with a brief discussion of the Japanese practice of Kaizen, “…celebrat(ing) the joy of doing small tasks that, over time add up to the joy of experiencing large life changes.”

Toyota manufacturing co-opted the principle of Kaizen (Japanese for improvement) applying the concept to its assembly line workers who were empowered to stop the production line and consult with a supervisor if they saw a way to improve the flow of productivity. Doing the same repetitive physical motion all day could actually become enlightening rather than mind-numbing.

I like the Chinese interpretation of gai-shan (from Wikipedia below) even better.

• 改 (”gǎi”) means “change” or “the action to correct”.
• 善 (”shàn”) means “good” or “benefit”. “Benefit” is more related to the Taoist or Buddhist philosophy, which gives the definition as the action that ‘benefits’ the society but not one particular individual (i.e., multilateral improvement). In other words, one cannot benefit at another’s expense. The quality of benefit that is involved here should be sustained forever, in other words the “shan” is an act that truly benefits others.

The Chinese form of intentional thought exercise… (and my very first Web video, shot on location in Dali, Yunnan, China, 2007)

Check out Karen Salmansohn’s latest book: Prince Harming Syndrome: Break Bad Relationship Patterns for Good—5 Essentials for Finding True Love (and they’re not what you think).

Katie Custer is a Minister, internet radio host, massage therapist, Reiki Master, and teacher. As a teenager, she found it odd when others reminisced about childhood. She, herself, had only a couple of vivid memories before age 12. She dismissed it as a result of having a “bad memory” and joked that “something bad must have happened to me and I blocked it all out”.

As an adult in her 20s, she felt stuck in thought and behavior patterns that sustained mild depression, growing debt, and a string of broken relationships. It never occurred to her that her “bad memory” could be directly related to her dysfunctional life.

After pursuing a graduate degree in Education (M.S. Education and Social Policy), still feeling unfulfilled, a friend suggested she pursue massage therapy for a career she could turn to during breaks from teaching. Massage therapy ultimately helped her completely change direction. Shortly after she started her massage practice, she was introduced to the idea that humans are made of energy.

First, she learned how energy worked in the outside world and how everything she encountered (saw, heard, felt, etc) was a reflection of her own energy. Next, she learned more specifically about the energy inside her own body, her Chakra system. For her, that step was the most profound. After a few months focusing on self-healing, flashes of childhood memory suddenly surfaced. She was recovering previously ‘forgotten’ memories from early childhood, specifically incidents of abuse. Before she could even respond to them, however, ideas poured in about why she was suddenly remembering and how her memory or body (or something) was able to store it all for so long. Overwhelmed, she began journaling to try to manage it all.

Though progress was slow, as she made changes the outside world responded. She was learning to see how her world was simply reflecting herown energy field – her attitude, her intentions. Over time, she started making significant progress. When she began working with energy, she could not have predicted how dramatically her life would change.

Katie Custer

In 2008, Katie created an alter-ego called “Chakra Girl,” and works from this platform to inspire people to study their own energy fields so that they can heal and discover the deepest roots of who they are, engaging and celebrating their life’s purpose. She can be found blogging about how everything is energy at www.Chakra-Girl.com. She also hosts Chakra Girl Radio (CGR), a weekly talk show dedicated to studying the human energy body and how energy is reflected back to us in our daily lives.

Chakra Girl on BlogTalkRadio
Bringing the idea of energy down to Earth. Learn how energy works in your daily life, how decisions you make affect the energy in your world, and how you can use this knowledge to change anything that does not serve your highest good. The anatomy of energy: Seven major Chakras, aligned along the spine – from below the tailbone to above the skull – and endless minor Chakras. All of them function as spirals, spinning and distributing energy through your physical body (all the way to the cellular level!). Explore the current state of your energy field and identify emotions, behaviors and issues in your physical health that no longer serve you. Change your energy, change your life!

Chakra Girl Radio is found online at www.BlogTalkRadio.com/chakra-girl, airing live on Wednesdays, 9-10:30 a.m. PST, with archives available anytime. Downloadable podcasts are available at the same location.

Kendra felt as if she would topple off the face of the planet, fall into oblivion without any other person giving her a second glance. Stress, discord, the novelty of each day, wore and bit, clawed at her and she imagined that she was alone on the planet, at least in her own unique state, facing an onslaught of adversity. Things had gotten so bad that sometimes Kendra found she could not even write anymore and even her love life suffered as she ached to reach climax that would surge through to purify her, only to find that each little tremor stopped nearly as soon as it started as if a door had been shut. Emotionally, Kendra was drained. Sensually, she was shut down. Mentally, she wasn’t even certain that she had the foggiest notion what love was.

In the grey light of this rainy afternoon, Kendra thought of boys she had known, men who had taught her about love and lust, women she had imagined kissing her, though she never would have admitted that to anyone. She wondered if she could conjure them through the magic of pencil to paper, discard the MacBook Pro for the day and weave the old spells she had learned so long ago, the sloping Palmer method across the misty backdrop of recycled papers, ancient texts renovated and restored, the flesh of sacrificial trees that would give and give until every last drop of essence, of life, had been sucked from them, pulp drained of purpose until their bodies eventually dry and are discarded.

It had been weeks since she had succumbed to the insistence of her physical body, taken anyone up on an offer to find bliss in another and these days, she knew that the lust she sought required greater fulfillment. In each union since the dissolution of her marriage, she had found herself coming only at the surface. Her moans sounded like empty peals, lies even as they echoed within her. But stories had taught her to explore her sensuality in new ways, to remember what first had seduced her and what she had at first sought. That memory spread through her like a kinetic explosion, then settled like a blissful smile over her nubile body, the blush of sex and lust and love and deliverance, finding pleasure in another, bestowing love and heat, finding that such pleasure rests within you, coiled like a snake ready to awaken and slither upward, wet, and fresh, and strong.

Kundalini. The word rested in her lap, and she contemplated stroking it even as she began to type. At her lips, the word took life, crawled through her cavern mouth, slipped out like a pretty pink tongue, became a whisper of seductive power. She envisioned herself now in the fetal position, new and curious, postured to open herself to life, her mind to that visual seduction – imagination.

Muladhara

Red lust, trimmed in black, the petals of the lotus were like a beacon to Kendra. Four ladies in a ring, dancing angels, curled into and out of one another. They beckoned to her, pleaded that she play, but Kendra stood back, watching from the edges of a dream, each of them becoming pencil sketches on her tablet, one a bending cedar, another a span of water and the last two fallen branches, a bridge. Kendra longed to cross it, found herself taking tiny steps, her nude feet trailing against their soft backs, along thighs and shoulders, her toes twisted in the curls of their cascading hair. Need burned at her hollow core with every rushing sensation, hopes for their lips at her piqued nipples, her tongue passing through their petaled crevices, the stewing brew of their juices percolating beneath blood warmed flesh.

She could be obsessed with these, stop to play and chat, learn about their histories and their futures, dress them like characters in a story and make them into sexual playthings who would be loved or cheated or abused – always her characters ran from pleasure to pain, always they lost their path, always they returned grateful but weary from the journey, but these she protected, fought her desire to ravish them, corrupt them.

Kendra made these ladies only pretty stops along the path, scenery, landscape, backdrop to a greater story to tell. Sensually they spoke volumes to her, but for the audience they would be as incoherent as the wind through a cedar grove. Their only whispers, “Lam” to say “I have.” Kendra felt without, ached to know what they knew, laid herself across the floor, stretched her hands and then her feet, imagined herself a bridge of sorts and hoped those ladies would step across her to see the world as she does. Companionship would ease the pain.

Svadhisthana

Perhaps her ladies felt the plea that ran through her long, conjuring fingers because soon Kendra felt the crawl of life along her spine, the rise from loneliness to new found sensuality, the hope that came as tingle first then heated insistence at the pink lotus between her thighs, the emerging dew of some new spring there, as she hummed softly, “Vam” for “I feel.”

Orange sunset burst from the grey clouds that had hung above her all day, pushed itself between the thick drapes that hid Kendra from the rest of the world and she felt herself a part of something larger, a participant in an ancient unity, one of many. As the fourth lady stepped from the circle, leaving her sisters to join hands, each of these became a petal on the vibrant lotus.

“You… should be at the center,” the woman purred, her long, glossy, black locks radiating warmth and energy as she pulled gently at Kendra’s fingertips to guide her to the center of the women, elegant ladies now, she saw, each lovelier than those beside her, each more seductive than any man Kendra had ever met, and each more nurturing than her own mother had ever been. Guilt and shame and then, surprisingly, purest sensual desire rushed through her, as Kendra felt the Cobra in her lap begin to rise and sway, charmed by the pulsing rhythm of the sisters’ dance, poised to seduce and the hissing whisper through her lips was, “Come to me.”

But Kendra hid herself away from the seduction of the snake and found herself immersed in the affections of her family. Soft hands caressing softer curves, the subtle rise of body heat, manifesting in the must and musk of life, but Kendra held back, her tongue at the cusp, the gateway of one pretty red mouth, and folded her blooming lotus to cloister her taboo desires.

Manipura

“Fear hinders you, My Love,” one lady whose eyes gleamed in variegating hues of amber gold spoke softly across the sepaled center of their budding lotus. A bow on her back reminded Kendra of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, yet with an aura of peace emitting from her core.

Kendra was surprised to find herself so discovered, so exposed. She felt as nude as Eve in the Garden, a woman so blacklisted for her earliest experiential understandings of femininity. Imagining herself uncloaked, an epiphany of shame, Kendra ducked deep into the dewy center of the lotus, ached to disappear, retreat from the dreamy evolution of her own story, but a hand reached to her, took her into it, soft and sweet and fragrant.

“You must find yourself in the cycle, the lotus. Stretch your hands out, open your thighs, allow the world to come through you. Create and live and be.”

Taking her place, moving from focal point to truest unity, a sense of belonging, Kendra felt power course through her arms and legs, up her spine, at her navel. And her arms became vibrant petals as she and her sisters danced in the singing breeze, as “Ram” became a virile hum to insist “We can,” and lust and sensual affection became manifestations of love.

Anahata

Belonging is a precarious state – a danger to those willing to lose themselves to another. Some place in the back of Kendra’s mind this warning loomed, but she felt no danger as the chant grew to an insistent cry of “Yam.” Instinctively, Kendra knew this cry to declare “I love,” and the sentiment became a declaration of how she hoped to live. Her love for these women grew, boundless, unwavering, without condition, and she felt peace grow within her, too, imagined herself pregnant with life as if another grew in her, a product of conception of Self, as if she could recreate and renew strictly through the force of love that flowed like a river through her.

Orange sunset melting like a moist twilight of greens and pinks, Kendra detected a new fragrance on the air – wafts of sultry lavender and jasmine fell on her. She arched her back, imagined herself a dromedary for the thirsting earth. The power of the New Moon welled, swelled in her, and she felt herself overwhelmed, pleased, subdued with compassion that spilled out of her, each tear a drop of life for the evolving lotus, each dewdrop sustenance to increase the petals, unfold the bloom, beckon and increase life, release desire, heighten knowledge.

Spinning as if to dance, Kendra found herself and her sisters multiplied, increase of heart begetting new life and the lotus bloomed to reveal twelve petals, each strong and lusty, each tender and new, each like the pink flesh of a young girl, ready to give herself to life, to allow love to pass through her.

Vishuddha

Pressure at her throat, momentary uncertainty, forced Kendra to make a choice for love and lust. Slipping fingers to the snake coiled in her lap, she stretched each one across skin of silky scales, slid each along that curving spine, whispered with wet seduction all her own,

“Ham, I speak, and for this you exist, to rise through me, to be my strength, my defense, my nimble spirit, my charming comrade.” And the snake moved up through her, made his body rigid, thrusting, slid within to find passage along his mistress’s welcome subtle body, each stop as prana to a weary traveler.

And Kendra imagined herself a fish, swallowing, accepting the snake into herself, diving and swimming, seeking satisfaction through life, finding life and renewal in the consumption of flesh and then rebirth. In his force through her, the Cobra delivered life, and her body became a sea prime for creative force, brimming with thoughts to share, each cell of her being as potential for new growth, understanding.

Ajna

The awakening at Kendra’s heart and core, her sensual center, grew to an illuminating light that transcended all the states of understanding she had yet known. It was if the bright moon above shown only for her, found her third eye once blind and forced it open and she felt herself ready, open to love, to feel again that which she had lost, to know it better, more deeply, to make of life what love had taught her, what she had found within herself. A voice rose within Kendra, like the cry of a new baby and she discerned it like the roar of the waves of consciousness, “Om. Omm. Ommm.” No hollow peals this rising moan, and Kendra cried ecstatically to know, to see. “I see,” she proclaimed to the ladies of her lotus, and it felt significant, synonymous with “I come,” but now there were only two, Kendra rising to new found revelation looking back at another so familiar, yet so distant, one she had been who had stood in the dark, alone, before she had recognized her place in the world, her power to ascend, to be something more.

Seated, peaceful, as calm as a lotus itself, Kendra raised two petal arms to the skies in jubilation of arrival.

Sahasrara

And the hush she felt rather than heard, became a hymn of peace as her subtle being grew to a subtler understanding and her mind became a field of awareness and information, as if the world had dawned on her with the rise of the star anise. “I know” her pulsing heart poured forth.

The crowning of her lotus heart and soul and mind brimmed with colorful petals. At their center a violet sepal rose like a scepter. In peace and enlightenment, Kendra rested her head, and bliss grew in her soul. Peace from the journey, ecstasy in the arrival, coming to consciousness far surpassing the coming of her body.

Nola Erus, reared in a deeply sensual family which taught her to observe the evolving world around her in its most minute glory, comes to her love of language and communication naturally. An education in International/Intercultural studies, diverse languages and English composition and literature informs her insatiable quest for better understanding of her universe and her fellow humans> her desire is to
convey that understanding via storytelling. Through her stories she hopes to discover more about herself and to share a reverence for the erotic with the world community.
She blogs at sexysecrets.eroticachallenge.com.

For that’s what chakras are—invisible yet impossible-to-live-without pools of moving energy that spin like rotor blades when we’re healthy, and sputter and finally stop when we die. According to Quodoushka (pronounced Qua-dosh-ka), the native teachings of Turtle Island (1), we have ten major vortices of spinning light inside our bodies—which they perceive as luminous eggs cocoons. In their view, if you could accurately see what the human body is made of, you would see an egg—shaped ball of light, with ten spinning wheels inside that are more commonly known as chakras.

Medicine Wheel of Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains

Why Would You Want To Know How Your Chakras Are Doing?

Truth is you’ll live just fine even if you’ve never heard of a chakra. However, when you find out that feeling insecure, fearful, anxious, uncreative, or unsexy has a lot to do with sluggish chakras, the subject gets more interesting. The subject gets even more interesting when you learn that women’s chakras spin one way and men’s another. It’s also one of the hidden reasons why it feels incredibly nice to have our whole bodies next to someone we love. It’s not just our skin that touches—we have these spinning balls of energy flowing between us in opposite directions.

The robustness of our chakras also explains how we are irresistibly attracted or totally turned off by someone. Chakras either put out gusts of energy or they suck energy like vacuum machines. When they are vibrating with gusto everything is abundant, when they are slow everything is difficult. The good news is that there are several ways to balance chakras when they start slowing down or turning in the wrong direction.

The Quodoushka teachings locate ten chakras. For brevity’s sake I’ll just mention one here to show you how they work.

The First Chakra
Life begins and ends at the first chakra. It’s where our sexual, creative energy collects. Quodoushka calls it the Sun Wheel because when it’s open, uninhibited and used with respect, this chakra becomes a magnet for intimacy and love. What blocks the flow of our sexual, creative sun energy is the enemy of guilt. Every time we feel guilty about our natural sexual urges, or we repress, misuse or deny our sexual feelings, we put a plug in the first chakra. Since all the chakras are connected,
when we shut it down for too long, everything else becomes listless. Our emotions wobble, our minds dim and our spirits become lethargic. Quodoushka teaches that sex is natural and good. This means enjoying touch, affection, kisses, hugs and yes, good old sex too.

The first step in getting all ten chakras turning brightly is to accept the beauty and naturalness of our first chakra. When a woman joins her heart (4th chakra) with her genitals (1st chakra), it opens her 5th chakra or third eye of wisdom.

When her partner is doing the same, the merging of their chakras raises the power of love, making each act of kindness ripple into the universe like a single drop falling on a great wheel about to turn.

Quehestemehah
‘You Dance in My Heart’

May you walk In Beauty,
Amara Charles

(1) Turtle Island refers to ancient land masses from North, South Central America along with New Zealand and Australia. Quodoushka is the spiritual sexuality teachings from ancient native sources.

Amara Charles is the founder of Nourishing Arts, a healing center providing training courses in the spiritual sexual arts. Author of Sexual Agreements, Aching to Open and Erotic Touch for Two, Amara has been teaching spiritual sexuality workshops throughout the US, Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand since 1987. Her programs include Taoist White Tigress, Shamanic Quodoushka Sexuality and the Yin Yang of Sexual Restoration. She also hosts Men’s Sex Forums promoting better, healthier sex. She has been a special guest on BBC and ABC Radio shows and a guest lecturer at Arizona State University. She writes articles on sexuality for a variety of publications.Offering Retreats and Private Sexuality Training for Women, Men and Couples.

Under the leadership and guidance of the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, an international Buddhist community and monastery was established on the 488 acre site. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas as it is known today, is one of the first Chinese Zen Buddhist temples in the United States, and one of the largest Buddhist communities in the Western Hemisphere.

Into this pious realm, steps our heroes… Amara and Shyena, two westerners, lifelong students of eastern philosophy and yet advocates of the sensual life – ready to undertake a 7-day retreat, meditating and celebrating Guan Shi Yin, the Goddess/God who helps us cultivate compassion.

“I never imagined I would visit a Buddhist monastery, and to tell the truth, I often felt something too complex or grand in all of it for me,” Amara explains. “It took hearing Guan Yin’s name to lure me into the Dharma Realm, and the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, after which, perhaps, nothing will ever be quite the same.”

Read all about her life-changing adventure in “How Lucky We Are… About the Guan Yin Retreat.”

Monks at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

It turns out that Amara has more secrets to reveal and what better place than at a Buddhist Monastery that was once an insane asylum to come back to one’s senses.

“Returning to our room after an entire day of recitation I am dying for a cigarette,” she reveals. “Of course there is no smoking permitted within the place, so I must go outside to sneak one. This is day one of seven. I’m thinking, God, this is awful. Ridiculous! I can’t do this here.”

Find out how she beat back the Nicotine Demons and rekindled her love of film making while you enjoy her latest online video production, a  glimpse within the walls of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in “Two Confessions… on the making of this video.”

“With 4.3 million babies born in the U.S. each year it’s time to reexamine what we’ve been told and look to what is possible,” says director Debra Pascali-Bonaro, an internationally renowned childbirth educator and doula who witnessed so many ecstatic births she was inspired to begin filming them. “If you don’t know all your options then you don’t have any. Orgasmic Birth will strip away your fears and reveal how to create a powerful and transformative experience. It is time to reclaim this sacred event.”

Five years in the making, Orgasmic Birth has had an international impact on the film festival circuit and was screened this year at the prestigious Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, Baltimore Women’s Film Festival, Usti Film Festival in the Czech Republic, and Festival Caminhos in Portugal, to name a few. It won the Audience Choice Award at the 2008 MotherBaby International Film Festival in Bermuda.

The Seven Charms

Courtesans, many of whom have vanished without a trace, were often highly cultivated women who specialized in exchanging artistic graces, elevated conversation, and sexual favors with male patrons throughout history and around the world. Courtesans were present in Japan, China and Italy, where exchange was made through poetry, speech, and music; in pre-colonial India through magic, music, chemistry, politics, economics and other arts.

The following are seven feminine qualities courtesans cultivated within their arts for hundreds of years. Trained in the ways of feminine beauty, they were not only experts in charming, conversing with and enchanting men, many courtesans discovered how to bring their lovers into the highest states of contentment and pleasure. Although many courtesans lived precarious lives and were often kept as secret mistresses, there is much
any woman can learn from these elusive women who devoted their lives to appreciating the men in their lives.

The Seven Charms…

Timing
Consider everything you do with a man an erotic preliminary. It may last for an hour or days and weeks. Entirely up to you, timing is the art of offering a gesture, your voice, a touch, or whatever is needed in any given moment. Timing means being keenly observant, on the lookout for what someone likes, and then, at just at the right instant, effortlessly saying or offering a gesture that brings beauty into the space. Usually, timing is an invisible art, for when what is most needed to be said or done is given, the courtesan disappears and gives credit to someone else.

Beauty
Are we born with it, or can we create it? The only thing that matters is that you find yours and trust it. Believe in your beauty. Be willing to be seen, and take joy when you are. Drink in compliments like you are savoring a fine wine. When you are given even a
hint of a compliment smile shyly and let it linger. Your shyness can be irresistible.

Wit
Humor and laughter are your greatest assets. Your humor dissolves his insecurities. Your intelligence, delivered with wit will not be felt as competitive. Competing with men, in a direct or overly serious manner dampens their attraction to you. On the other hand, some men love playful, intense competition. They sometimes love to be tested and they love to have powerful women around them. Your power and comments should elevate them in some genuine way. In other words, the key to using your wit in a cheeky way means that you stretch your intelligence and use it to raise his feeling about himself. Then, with wit, a man is more open to being shown where and how he could be even better.

Benevolence
Kindly appreciate any man who praises you. His attraction is flattering, yet it doesn’t mean that you have to do anything but enjoy it. Listening with empathy, resist the temptation to over fix or change his situation. Fully hear where he is and then offer a small ray of hope. A courtesan is a seductress, not a schoolteacher or therapist. Men are highly attracted to the courtesan aspect of a woman – for she likes him as he is. She also lets him know she believes in his ability to make it. Believe in him more than he believes in himself, this is benevolence.

Lightheartedness
Men love gaiety. Your frivolity, your playfulness is highly attractive. It’s delightful to men. The lighter you are the more room there is for others to relax around you. Lighten yourself like a butterfly landing on a branch. Become a carefree power spot, calmly attracting laughter and an easygoing breeze to follow you wherever you go. Your calm relieves a man of his own worries. The brighter, more easygoing you are the stronger and more confident he will feel. It’s even better if you make him feel your sense of gaiety comes from him.

Grace
Grace is elegance in your movements. It also appears in your manner of speaking tenderly and politely in everything that you do. Allowing your graceful movements to be seen and enjoyed, grace is elicited through your eyes in the way you look at him. Your smile accepts him for who he is. Your grace melts away his insecurities, warms his feelings, calms his mind, and calls forth his desire to respectfully enjoy your gifts.

Charm
Even though you may never choose to have sex of any kind with a particular man, convey through your gestures that you could. Give signs of your interest while allowing the mystery of the outcome to remain open. Charm means keeping the possibility of sexual play in the air, why clearly conveying the timing is entirely up to you. He will respect you for this and actually likes the playful tension of the dance. Your openness entices and challenges him to remain in your good graces. He will want to be respectful, not because you outwardly tell him what to do; rather it’s his choice to be courteous. Rather than frustrating a man, temper his eagerness by allowing possibilities of connecting with you to remain possible. Consider his sexual interest as natural and good. Inspire him to offer you delights, and show him your sincere pleasure; thank him when he does.

The Key…
to acquiring the charms of a courtesan is through sincerity and generosity. Regardless of your age or how you look, you can share these qualities and charms not only to delight the men in your life, but to cultivate your soft, enduring feminine nature as well. The best part is that the more you freely give, the more beautiful you feel and thus the more beautiful you will become. Just as a flower effortlessly offers its petals to the sun without expecting anything in return, any woman can give with tenderness whenever she likes. As if dropping a pebble into a pond, watch the vast ripples, the effects of your giving, spreading out and touching others in beauty.

May you surround yourself In Beauty,
Amara Hsien Ku
Tigress of the Jade Moon
www.nourishingarts.com

Amara (with Fay McGrew and Shyena Hsien Shen) will be presenting the Jade Maiden’s Salon – a two-day Woman’s Retreat for Cultivating Feminine Vitality in Los Angeles, December 6 -7, 2008.

This article focuses on the female aspects of Taoist Spiritual Sexuality. There are equally profound teachings for men as well, which I will be presenting future articles.

“If you cannot face directly into your sexuality, You will never discover your true spirituality.” – White Tigress Manual

While western scientists and drug companies seek to unlock the mysteries of female desire, the sexual teachings of the White Tigress are quietly revolutionizing women’s views on sexuality around the world. Propagated in secrecy through small clusters of female Taoists, a rare lineage from ancient China has preserved the secrets of female desire for thousands of years. Known as White Tigresses, these women long ago knew that a woman’s sexual passion is directly connected to her health and spiritual well-being.

After practicing these teachings for many years, I have come to discover a few things about sex… it’s one of the three best things in life, and I can’t remember the other two. I have come to understand we need sex at least as much as food and that if we don’t enjoy enough intimate sexual touch we age rapidly. Tigresses understood that if a woman gives up on expressing her sexual passion, it’s a sure ticket for rapid aging. Interestingly, medical science is confirming the many health benefits of sex (for both men and women). The Hebrew University performed studies on semen and found it contained high levels of micro-nutrients and proteins that are par excellence for the skin. Studies also showed increased frequency of performing oral sex creates a greater production of saliva, and the micro-nutrients in saliva have been proven to break down fat cells. Yes, this means you can lose weight performing oral sex, but more on this later.

The Basis of White Tigress Philosophy

While this article focuses on their sexual practices, in truth these were only part of White Tigresses did. Were they wanton women who practiced indiscriminate random sexual acts?
Hardly! They were highly disciplined and selective in their sexuality and extremely conscious of their safety and health. Unlike many spiritual traditions, Tigresses viewed the expression of passion as central to a woman’s well being. Taoist in nature, their goals were simple: to live a long, happy and healthy life, which for them meant “being youthful in old age”

As rare and powerful as white tigers in the wild, White Tigresses are renown for their compassion and feminine gracefulness. Their origins can be traced to the long lineages of courtesans, Tantrikas, and Geishsa of Eastern cultures that flourished for centuries in part by honoring the cultivation of feminine intelligence, beauty and power. The unique aspect of the White Tigress is their claim that women have their own process for acquiring the physical and spiritual goals of Taoism, namely restoring youthfulness and ultimately achieving immortality. Tigresses viewed their sexuality and spirituality as one and the same, and they discovered how to use it to stay remarkably healthy and young.

Replenishing her yin forces with yang

The theory they maintain is that since males are yang by nature – outward and active – and females are yin by nature – passive and inward – both can achieve optimum health by replenishing themselves with their opposite energy. Although not an exact translation, in our current language it would sound something like this: Women have both “yin” hormones called estrogen and “yang” hormones called testosterone. When testosterone levels drop in women we lose our libido, we age and the theory goes that if we add more testosterone (yang) we can restore our sexual desire. A Tigress sought to replenish and balance these hormones naturally by connecting with male energy.

According to Tigresses, the secret for men to stay young is to cultivate tranquility (yin) and avoid dissipating too much semen, whereas women should cultivate more focused (yang) activity. Tigresses maintain that women become youthful by expressing their sexual passion intensely and frequently. Who ever thought the secret to staying young was to enjoy passionate sex? (Actually, many women are finding this out for themselves!)

Harnessing the Power of the Jade Maiden

Tigresses consider the time when a young girl’s body is ripening into its first potent flair of
sexual energy, a most valuable period of a young girl’s life. During this phase, she is called the Jade Maiden, for her initial curiosities and sexual feelings are just emerging through the changes in her body and spirit. The infusion of new hormones causes her hair to shine, her eyes to shimmer and her skin to be fresh and rosy. Everything about a young maiden radiantly glows and her internal organs are robust and healthy. And of course, she starts to look at the opposite sex in a new way. The initial curiosity, enthusiasm and excitement for male energy is what she seeks to recreate in herself. It is this youthful period of optimum physical and spiritual health, the condition of the Jade Maiden, which female Taoists, and in particular White Tigresses, knew how to reclaim in women of any age.

Of course not everything about puberty was that great and few would want to relive the confusion and anxiety we felt growing up as teenage girls. For most of us it was like cracking through an eggshell we wouldn’t want to be trapped inside of again. No one explained the changes in our bodies or emotions, and most of us had to figure out what to do with these intense surges on our own. Unfortunately, this pre-pubescent push–pull confusion between feeling sexual, wanting sex, and not wanting it sets the stage for our adult sex lives.

Yet, some things were great about being a girl, and Tigresses sought to help women reclaim the power of those initial curiosities. Think about how exciting our first thoughts of dating were – how we looked forward to seeing some boy, how thrilling it was to have our (often clandestine) first kiss.

Tigresses viewed these early states of mind as a source of powerful energy that any woman can bring back into her sex life. One of the ways they restored the energy of the Jade Maiden included light exhibitionism. They helped women appreciate men’s attention, and taught them ways to be more playful and light-hearted around men. They knew the more youthful our minds became, the more youthful our bodies would remain. By deliberately recreating the playful and positive aspects of puberty (with greater wisdom and safety than we had as girls!), Tigresses sought to fully embrace their femininity rather than discard it.

Restoration and Sexual Practices

Tigresses were also probably as “health conscious” as many of us are today – they ate few grains and carbohydrates, with small amounts of fish and meat, took specific Chinese herbal formulas to increase libido and regulate their menstrual flow, practiced Healing Tigress, Tai Chi and Qigong exercises. They also maintained certain sexual disciplines.

White Tigresses engage in two primary oral practices to revitalize their yin and yang energies. In the first, Congealing the Dragon’s Jade, she makes use of male semen to restore her skin and hair. In the second practice, she focuses on enjoying male sexual energy, referred to as Absorbing the Dragon’s Breath. Absorption is the ability to induce and receive the energy of the male orgasm into herself, whereby she strengthens her own, as well as her partner’s energies. Tigresses viewed oral sex as far more than mere foreplay and it was considered the most important part of her early training. Not only did it help preserve her physical beauty, it could lead to transcendent states of spiritual illumination.

These, and other transformational sexual practices that were meant to be healing for both men and women, have long been held secret and were highly controversial in nearly every society. In China, where the preservation of the male lineage has dominated religious and political laws for centuries, little importance was given to women maintaining their youth or health. Along with many spiritual teachers, White Tigresses were imprisoned and even murdered in China for their views. Those that survived went underground, continuing to practice in secret, hoping the ancient lineage of feminine spiritual practices would be carried into the future. These teachings are also foreign to Western sensibilities where generations of religious philosophy regarded anything of the flesh as sinful. Yet as many are beginning to explore, there is more to sex than getting our needs met. A growing number are seeking ways to express their sexual passion with greater spiritual intention.

Even today, White Tigresses are quite rare and while their traditions are being adapted to suit our culture, their practices have survived due to the courage of a long lineage of dedicated women and men that still exist in secluded places. For the most part the methods of restoring youthfulness and creating the conditions for immortality have been handed down from teacher to student, often from sister to sister. Though many female Taoists and Tigresses remain reclusive, as it is their nature to disappear like mist in the mountains, their teachings and their beauty quietly echo through the valleys.

Amara Hsien Ku
Tigress of the Jade Moon

Amara is presenting The Jade Maiden Workshop, Dec 6 -7, 2008 in Los Angeles with Shyena Hsien Shen and Fay McGrew. It is a 2-Day Woman’s Retreat celebrating Feminine Vitality, and clearing up confusions around men. Presenting workshops, private sessions and trainings throughout the world since 1989, Amara is the founder of Nourishing Arts, a spiritual sexuality center dedicated to the preservation and continuance of the Taoist Sexual Arts. She is the first White Tigress initiated on Western soil.

More at: www.nourishingarts.com

There is a secret to gathering Yin Essence.

What is Yin Essence? While it’s invisible, illusive and impossible to contrive, everyone has felt it. It lives in the smile of a young child, it breathes when you lie back to absorb the blue sky. It happens when you laugh, it appears when you weep, you see it flash in people’s eyes.

Without the mysterious activity, of yin essence, life is inexplicably dreary. You could say it’s an unknown force that can pull you out of bed no matter how bad it seems.

Is it Real? Does it really exist?

What matters is that it seems to exist. It is far better to imagine there is some sort of nourishing essence (let’s call it Yin Nectar for a moment) sustaining you. Why? Watch what you attract when you forget to smile, drink a little yin nectar, make love, laugh, hug someone or purely give. Every time you do one of these things, you get an infusion; a whiff of yin essence to lift your spirit, even if you’ve never heard of it. Notice how deflated your spirit becomes chasing thoughts of doom. Here’s a great description from ‘Anna’s Book,’ one of my favorite collections of stories told by a young girl who was rescued from the London slums by her friend Fynn.

Fin say if you live in a house and you let the window get sploshed and dirty and if you look out of the window it look like the world is dirty bit it is not. If you look inside it look dirty too but it is not dirty because the window is dirty.

Fin say all of the people have two windows. First people have got eye window and then a hart window. The eye window is to look out and the hart window is to see inside to see you. Fin say wen you cry it is for to wash the window so you can see better.

One day I ask Fin for som sweet and Fin say no and I was sad and I cry some ters and I cry som ters to wash my eye window because my eye window was all dirty, dirty greedy for sweets. And Fin did not say nothing and Fin piket me up and put me to a luking glas to see my face reflechun and it was al funy like rain on a hous window. And I could not see proper and then I stop the cry and see Fin face reflechun and it was al smilig. And so I smile too and then I see my eye sparkling because I can see good. And then I see that Fin say no, becas he have got no mony, because he give it all to Missis Barkr to buy som penuts to sell to get som mony to buy som food and I did not see good because I have got dirty eye window and it was all sploshy with greedy dirty.”

Seeing Through Sploshy Windows

Annal saw it well. You see, the reason our innocent yin energy slips away is because we have sploshy windows and we can’t see the truth. We get greedy dirty eye windows, one looking inside us, the other looking out, and as Anna says, we can’t see right. The good news is, it is not the truth, it’s only a dirty window.

We forget this a thousand times a day. Perhaps it’s the reason why in Buddhist, Taoist and other religious traditions, prayers, mantras or scriptures are spoken daily, sometimes several times a day. It is incredibly easy to forget how to feel innocent, relaxed and open. We need constant reminders to see the truth of our beauty.

Catching The Robber

Our bodies are neither beautiful or ugly, sex is not dirty or clean, difficult or easy to get; yet how often do we let these kinds of thoughts and judgments interfere with beautiful moments we could share with someone? How often are we putting our selves and others down, pouting for what we want, while really looking through dirty windows? In other words, how much are we making up?

We are especially prone to these kinds of false thoughts, especially about our bodies. I recently lost twenty pounds. I have to say, sex was good when I had the extra twenty, but it was just as good after they were gone, no two ways about it. Actually, in terms of how fabulous I felt, there was no difference at all. Somehow though, we get to thinking that if we could just change something about our body, we would feel more beautiful. I assure you, however, the beauty of Yin essence is not measured in pounds.

Turning Weakness Into Strength

This being said, if you would like to change something changeable in your body, it is your Yin essence that is going to give you the will to do it. It is true that many women feel better and sexier when they are lighter. There’s no question, gliding across a room, catching a few guys sneaking a peek, is a lot more fun than lumbering around, covering up what we can. It’s just that, if you lose your yummy yin on the way, what’s the point? The truth is, you are going to need the unlimited power of your yummy yin to make whatever changes you want. And in the end, you are going to see that it’s your Yin Essence that does all the attracting anyway.

Remember, Yin is the persevering, resilient, persistent part of our nature – not the nagging, complaining part that can’t stand the way we look.

While we often let the inner nag reign free by endlessly comparing, and cutting ourselves down, it is actually our open and relaxed yummy yin essence that can become much stronger… if only you will allow it.

While it’s true I generally feel lighter now, after losing a lot of weight, I realized most other people were not thinking about me the way I saw myself, and if they did, what on earth were the thoughts I think they were thinking doing in my head? The truth is, we think people are thinking about us a lot more than they actually are. The reality is, they are likely thinking about themselves, just like you are.

Things like losing weight, or any of the achievements we’d like to accomplish, are only important, or lasting, if some other changes go with them. Namely, watch out for the false thoughts, the dirty windows looking in and all the things you make up that people think about you.

We cry about things like Anna, waste tons of energy thinking about what we think we can’t have, what we no longer look like, or what we think we will lose. Eventually, we find that the things we convince ourselves into believing, are not even real and have nothing to do with the genuine story.

Amara Charles is the founder of Nourishing Arts, a healing center providing training courses in the spiritual sexual arts. Author of Sexual Agreements, Aching to Open and Erotic Touch for Two, Amara has been teaching spiritual sexuality workshops throughout the US, Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand since 1987. Her programs include Taoist White Tigress, Shamanic Quodoushka Sexuality and the Yin Yang of Sexual Restoration. She also hosts Men’s Sex Forums promoting better, healthier sex. She has been a special guest on BBC and ABC Radio shows and a guest lecturer at Arizona State University. She writes articles on sexuality for a variety of publications.

Offering Retreats and Private Sexuality Training for Women, Men and Couples

Amara is presenting The Jade Maiden Workshop, Dec 6 -7, 2008 in Los Angeles with Shyena Hsien Shen and Fay McGrew. It is a 2-Day Woman’s Retreat celebrating Feminine Vitality, and clearing up confusions around men. Presenting workshops, private sessions and trainings throughout the world since 1989, Amara is the founder of Nourishing Arts, a spiritual sexuality center dedicated to the preservation and continuance of the Taoist Sexual Arts. She is the first White Tigress initiated on Western soil.

Contact:

Nourishing Arts

3741 East Shangri La Rd.
Phoenix, AZ 85028
amara@nourishingarts.com
602.765.9551

Why is it a great sign of male virility to have lots of notches on your guy-bedpost, but when a woman does the same, she is not equally respected? Rachel Kramer Bussel, investigated this question in her recent Huffington Post: Sexual Math: A Small Number of Partners Does Not Add Up to Happiness.

“Yet another reason feminism still has work to do: women who surpass an entirely arbitrary number of sex partners are labeled ’sluts.”

Hmmmm. It truly amazes me how people throw such words around, as if life is high school. If you look up the word “SLUT,” the definition reads: “an immoral woman, a prostitute.” But, then if you look up the word “IMMORAL” it says: “not conforming to the accepted rules of morality, morally wrong, especially in sexual matters.”

Interesting to note the words “accepted rules.” Wouldn’t it be wise to ask ourselves: Who made these rules? Are they a fit for me? Do I think everyone should live by them? Aren’t they based on religious oppression meant to keep women in line? What are these rules anyway? Or does society just make them up as we go along? Also these so called “accepted rules” would be different in Europe or any sexually liberated country like Sweden or Denmark, when compared to America. Does that make one country more immoral than another?

This is such bullshit, since it’s all a judgment-call, made in the mind. If one segment of society or a whole nation doesn’t accept those so-called rules, then are they immoral? it’s only  a different game being played by different rules. Wake up America and while you’re at it, grow up sexually as well. I am well aware that this is not an easy task since social and religious conditioning plays a part in both women and men who are brave enough to have numerous sexual partners or choose to have only one – and the repressed who can only judge, shun and impose their “accepted rules” on everyone else.

Could it be that we are all victims of our own beliefs and limitations concerning our sexuality? All this blogging and ranting about people’s sexual opinions like the article on the 15 lovers that Carla Bruni had before her marraige to French President Nicolas Sarkozy or the article by Michael Bader about John Edwards’ affair that has infuriated so many…

What does this really say about America and its obsession with famous peoples’ sex lives? Why have we made such a natural desire so repressed, obsessed and unnatural that in some cases it even turns into deviant behavior as in rape and child abuse? The author of the article on Edwards is a psychologist and psychoanalyst and his forthcoming book “Male Sexuality: Why Women Don’t Understand It – and Men Don’t Either,”  says it all to me.

I often and always say to my students, “It’s the blind leading the blind.” In other words, both sexes never will understand their own sexuality until we stop seeing and feeling it as somehow separate from the rest of ourselves – when we start embracing our sexual nature as a natural, playful and an integrated part of our wholeness. Balance is what we need to strive for. Our sexuality can’t be contained in a little box that we take out when we feel the need or the right opportunity comes around – and the rest of the time we stick it on a shelf. We need to  learn to be totally present with this divine, creative force that is connected to us all. Indeed, it is what made us. Only then can we attempt to heal the giant sexual wound on this planet.

Now you’ve got me on a roll, but I’ve got to go since it’s 3 am. Love that cat energy…

Dagny Boch, CHT is a Tantric and Taoist educator for over 10 years – but most importantly, a sacred sexuality advocate. She believes that everyone deserves a spiritually fulfilling sex life. It is her endeavor to bring the sacred back to sexual love… founder of the World Institute of Sexual Enlightenment.