 Hello, welcome to life a spiritual gym. I'm really pleased to introduce you to dr. Seema Anand here. Hi Seema. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. You are our icon this month and I would love absolutely love you to speak a little bit about the topic sexuality. It is a topic which is completely in my opinion misunderstood a very important topic and Seema speeches on that she has written a beautiful book Art of Seduction and I would love to hear what your take is on sexuality. So, Zanita I came to this topic through a slightly circuitous route as you know. I work with women's narratives and the only thing that we'll never ever talk about in a woman's story is her right to her own body that was always somebody else's property and it got me wondering what are these stories that we silenced and you know something unfortunately you're so right this idea of sexuality so misunderstood you say the word and everybody thinks of something bad something sinful we are made to feel this terrible sense of guilt. So, on one side you have complete silence on the subject because it's so sinful and guilty and on the other side you have unending streams of pornography which is the only way that people are getting any information on the subject and as we both know that is completely inaccurate and nothing like real life and we as human beings are stuck in this little twilight zone between those two streams there's nothing real about either of them and if you're not taught about something how do you ever learn about it and let's face it this is the core of our identity absolutely I mean as a child we were all hushed anytime anything to do with sexuality was like a taboo completely don't talk about it don't talk about it it was like oh oh you talk about it you look down you're judged you're like you were saying yeah yeah yeah yeah you're like you're you're inviting trouble because you look to be that so you know it is really sad because it is the seed it is the reason why the humanity is there without the divinity there is no growth there is no birth and it starts like you said it starts from the sages please share with us what the story you were telling me actually it's it's interesting to think that you know we do believe our ancient sages our ancient literature believes that all love love for god love for anybody all love has to begin at the physical level you can't go straight from here straight up there and say I have preached god you have to go through the journey it is a journey and so we believe we understand at some metaphysical level that you know this is for the development of our spirituality but actually our ancient sages believed that it was for our entire life's development everything was based on how you viewed yourself about yourself and your sexuality your gender your your idea of yourself plays a huge role in how you interact with the world but um also I found that you know that there is a certain poetic beauty with which it was represented the subject the kamasutra the the the bad word you know like you say the word kamasutra everybody has a certain idea in their head which is completely inaccurate as we know but the kamasutra which was written in 300 something ad you know here is a book sanghita that for the first time allows an equality a platform of equality for women can you imagine for the first time in the world women are given a sense of equality not out socially but in the bedroom they're given the right to consent this is the book that never ever uses any um abusive language it does not give in to any kind of misogyny there is nothing you know the kamasutra what's amazing about it is it talks about pleasure but and it gives the woman the right to consent it never makes the woman into the femme fatale you know it's never that okay she's the sort of martahari character who's it treats women with an incredible amount of respect you are the woman you have an equal right to pleasure and it is the woman's pleasure that will make the man's life better that's how they view it and i think that is one of the most important reasons why relationships has become such a sore issue today the biggest problem amongst partners amongst relationships whether it's youngsters or even older couples who've been together or the safety the security the man the woman it's because of the way we perceive a man versus a woman the role and also the the respect absolutely so you know um it's funny so people are always really surprised when i say that there wasn't one kamasutra there were several thousand books written on the subject and i always say that every king that i mean india as you know back then was made up of a bunch of many many kingdoms um every single king that came to the throne had one of these books commissioned because they actually believed that really good physical intimacy meant that the relationship between a man and a woman would be stable if they were connected physically through a great deal of mutual pleasure and intimacy the relationship would be stable if the relationship was stable society would be stable if society was stable the kingdom would be stable i mean i think that's an amazingly forward thinking idea we've lost it along the way because at the very time that vat sain is sitting on the banks of the river ganges and writing this book at almost the exact same time 325 ad across the oceans in constantanople the roman catholic church is setting up their first round table and with setting it up they are starting from day one to say the body is evil sex is sinful this is the road to hell this is the road to hell and you know where vat sain is saying this is the road to heaven this is the pleasure is the road to heaven heaven and these two strains of thought are being developed at exactly the same time and as we know the the christian strain of thought about sex being an evil thing about being a bad thing about being shameful is the one that basically pervaded the rest of the the world and that's what we live with today so really suppression on one end you know brings in oppression on the other and if we can balance if we can balance what is meant to be and really educate ourselves the reason behind sexuality what does it really mean so that we can have bite size of the meaning and digest it and get the right perspective i think we can make this world a much better place absolutely i started this journey segita because i have children you have children we all want to make this world a better place for our children i really i have a daughter who's 21 i don't want her growing up in a world which still takes the same i i want to do my bit towards changing it that that that story that narrative that thought process it hasn't been an easy journey it's taken a lot of courage to stick with the journey and i always say that today by the grace of god i've had a lot of support from wonderful people like you and lots of other friends and society and right now it's seen as okay you know seema is coming out to do this and it's a fairly glamorous evening and everybody's going to enjoy it they're going to learn something new and it's going to be fantastic it wasn't always like this but you know what i also know i i'm i have no illusions the day god forbid something goes wrong something bad happens all of these people who are supporting me right now will all stand back and say dega she talked about stuff like this it was bound to happen so you know there is nobody who's actually walking this path with me it is a fight i've chosen to take on and i'm determined to see it through because i think that change is now due fantastic well thank you so much seema for sharing your insights and we wish you all the very best and if there was one tip one thing that you had to say that could you know be the beginning of just an insight for our viewers what would that be so i find that um we have actually we've got so conditioned into thinking that this is a sinful bad thing to do i find that there are parts of our brain that we don't even access the part of our brain that deals with pleasure we don't even dare to go into it because you don't know what you're going to find take baby steps start to go into that part of the brain pleasure is a good thing it's never a bad thing just start to access that to see maybe it'll take you to the next step on that note look forward thank you