 Aloha and welcome to Shrink Wrap Hawaii. My name is Steven Philip Katz. I'm a marriage and family therapist right here in Honolulu. And before we get started with my exciting guests, I wanted to tell everybody about an amazing event that's coming up that everybody is invited to. The author of that book, I Am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help, which is a book all about how to help your friends and loved ones who are suffering with a mental illness seek help. That's going to be happening this Thursday on a webinar called Ask the Doctor with the host Ken Duckworth. It's at 5 p.m. on Thursday, this coming Thursday. That's the day after tomorrow, depending on when you're watching this, November 3rd. Make sure, if you want more information on how to get the webinar, send me an email. My email address is steve at hawaiifamilytherapist.com. Make sure you see it, it's very informative. And right now, I'm turning to my guests, Judith Shavani Davis, welcome. Good to see you again. And Paul Lito McCurdy, who I think altogether is the third appearance for either both of you or one of you. And I keep having you back because I love love. And these beautiful people help other people how to, how would you put it? Why should I make it up? What do you do? We help people find their self-love and come together and restore harmony and relationship. That's one of the key things. We help people learn to have more love in their lives. Build bigger runways for love. I like that, I like that. So I have done one of your workshops. How long ago was that? January this year. January, and it works for me. It's, there's so much. You're going to be doing another one when? It's November 18th. November 18th to 20th. Yeah, November 18th to 20th. It's about three weekends, one, two, three weekends from now. And you were telling me there were going to be three preview sessions? Yes. The way we work with the weekends whenever we offer a weekend in a, in a location is we usually do preview evenings beforehand. I live over on Maui so I'm doing them over there. Paul lives here on Oahu and I pop over from time to time. We usually have three or four preview evenings before each weekend to help the community get acquainted with us and also a place for them to ask their basic beginning questions about what is Tantra, is it for me, what will I learn, will it be scary, can I be a single. There's really some basic things we hear every time so we like to get people together in a group. They see YouTubes. They see, we do an exercise sometimes so it's just a little community gathering anywhere from six to 26 people show up for preview evenings. What made it wonderful for my wife and myself was that, I mean for me being with another person who you love is about creating intimacy and ways of expressing that. Who doesn't want that? I don't think, I can't imagine somebody that wouldn't want that. Some people, I know the first time I ever came to a Tantra workshop years and years ago, my girlfriend at the time said, oh it teaches you how to make love, so you're going to take me to a workshop where we can have sex and teach me how to have better sex. Why don't you elaborate on why that's true and not true? I think it was, you said it teaches you about sex, it doesn't, it teaches you about love and how to make love which is not necessarily a sexual act. Living with arrows and having that love infuse your life in everything you do is really what Tantra weaves into your body. So there are many practices of how to express your various forms of love whether it's a kindness act or intimate act of being courageously vulnerable so you're talking about expressing your deepest desires and your deepest fears and sharing that with someone else. I mean that's what intimacy and that's where trust and the love come from. I have an answer for that too which has to do with why does Tantra seem to so often be associated with sex and it is because that the conscious loving and western style Tantra is so much about learning to build, store and move energy. You build, store and you move energy and what is sex is really about building energy. Now Tantra really emphasizes the storing part because a lot of times we take our energy and we build it and then we let it go. So the whole bit about Tantra and the whole practice that we teach in the workshop which is how it gets its reputation for being about sex is when you build a charge how can you remain there? What do you need to do and learn in your body so that you stay in these heightened states of awareness including in your physical body before there is a discharge of some kind. So what we teach the people, you say we're going to teach you how to have better sex well what that is is it's meditation, it's sounding, it's doing mudras and mantras and yantras and exercises in all sorts of ways where we clear our energy and then we learn to share it with another and then we learn to hold it with each other. So these are the exercises of Tantra which seem to produce the results of having better sex. So just I know before I ever came one of the things that scares people off is they think that you know there's going to be 20 people getting naked having sex all together in the same room. No, no, they're not going to happen. It's a no-nudity environment, very safe, we emphasize compassion, acceptance, non-judgment and just give people the opportunity and permission to speak about a topic that most people aren't familiar with or don't have permission in their day to day lives to talk about and just allowing that permission gives people the freedom to explore themselves in their relationship with a partner where they don't have that chance on a day-to-day basis. So we want to emphasize that, super safe, no-nudity whatsoever. Well, and we say it's super safe depending on what you think about intimacy. Not everybody feels particularly safe when they're experiencing intimacy. And so with no-nudity in a very sacred held space, we give people who are beloved couples and who have never met before the chance to have the conversation out loud about what it feels like to talk about being vulnerable, to talk about being intimate, to talk about what prevents them from being intimate, and talk about, a lot of people talk about sex not being that intimate, and why not? So it ends up being an environment where everyone just gets really, it's a little bit like emotionally naked maybe, and I get a lot of people who need some coaching on, gee, I don't know how I'll be talking about this in a group. You've got to remember that everybody there is feeling the same way, and I believe that we do a really good job of creating an environment inside which this topic can really be revealed. My experience, right, because I do talk therapy, different kinds of talk therapy. It's all about talking. And when you came and presented to the other therapists that I work with, we came away understanding what you're talking about when you talk about moving energy. So sometimes talking gets in the way, and I found watching you work with a couple that where both partners have been very hurt in their past and with each other, and they couldn't talk to each other, and they were afraid to talk to each other because it seemed like it would just cause more hurt. So I saw you put them in a position with their clothes on, on the floor, sort of in a spooning position, and talk them through that. And I was glued to that because you saw the change. Everybody in the room was transfixed because there's something about what you were doing with this couple, and they didn't have to talk, was incredibly liberating. And it was almost like they started to shed their defenses in a way that I couldn't do just through talking. Right. It's amazing, isn't it, how you can actually see energy change without words being present and with just breath. Yeah. And you can feel it in the room. And two bodies coming together. Two bodies coming together. Because the bodies know. Right. I mean they know what they really, I mean you could tell with that couple that they wanted to be together. Of course. But they couldn't figure, they couldn't find the words to do it. Right. So you just remove the words, put the bodies together, and let the bodies do the job. And they were just holding each other just still, but you could see, like she said, the energy just shifted in them. And when they came up, stood up later, I mean they were just all smiles and they were, I mean what a shift in their whole energy pattern. And a lot of that is just, the bodies know, they know, they keep the score, they know what to do. The body keeps the score. That's the book, right? That's the book. That's the book. That's the van de Komp? Van de Komp. Van de Komp. Right. Right. I mean it's a little bit like, it's like dancing. When you watch two people. That's why I love dancing. Yes. When you watch two people dancing, you watch them harmonize their energy together. Right. So you're watching something artful. It's amazing. Like I remember dancing sometimes and you'll go to a club. I mean not in kind of fancy dancing because I can't do any kind of fancy dancing. Basically jump up and down a lot. But sometimes it would have been me with my partner dancing and sometimes it's somebody else. When people get into that harmony, all of a sudden a circle forms around and everybody's watching them dance. Right. It must be that energy. It is that energy. It is. Yeah. Try to create this environment where certain things can be discussed. Other things can be felt. Other things can be shared. And we do have an agenda of talking about how to help individuals drop their defenses long enough to heal a certain kind of defensive layer around their physical body and become more available and present for intimacy. Now usually you have to walk through the door of vulnerability and it doesn't mean everybody goes off and gets naked and has sex with each other. It means you spend some time finding your yeses and your noes. That's a really important piece in the workshop. Tell me more about finding your yeses and your noes. I like that. Yeah. Well, have you ever agreed to do something that you really didn't want to do? Yeah. Many times. Yeah. And you feel that in your body. You kind of get that feeling and you get like, oh, I got my, your gut saying, I don't want to do this. Well, so do you teach people to recognize that? That's right. That's what we're talking about is you want to have a good, solid commitment for that yes and to honor the feeling you have in your body for the no. Because who wants to participate with someone in intimacy if they're not a yes? Right. That's a very uncomfortable place to be. Everything from the beginning question to, do you have a moment, may I ask you something? I mean, that's a courtesy we give people to find out if you're willing to drop whatever either you're doing or what defenses you might have up so that we can connect. Wait, I have to practice that. I have a moment. May I ask you something? This is a great time. Sure. We have to go to a break. Okay. Hello. My name is Crystal. Let me tell you my talk show. I'm all about health. It's healthy to talk about sex. It's healthy to talk about things that people don't talk about. It's healthy to discuss things that you think are unhealthy because you need to talk about it. So I welcome you to watch Quok Talk and engage in some provocative discussions on things that do relate to healthy issues and have a well-balanced attitude in life. Join me. Aloha. I'm Kaley Ikeena, president of the Grassroot Institute. If you want to be an informed citizen, we invite you to watch every week as we bring wonderful guests together on Ehana Kako, a weekly program on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network every Monday at 2 o'clock p.m. We talk with people who know what they're talking about when it comes to the economy or the government or to building a better society. So we'll see you then on Ehana Kako, which means let's work together every Monday at 2 o'clock p.m. on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. Aloha. Welcome back to Shrink Rap Hawaii and my guests, Judith Shivani Davis and Paul Lito McCurdy. And we were just talking about getting in touch with your yeses and noes. I mean, because so often, especially I hate to generalize because everybody's different, but men seem to have a harder time getting in touch with their feelings from my practice. That's a gross generalization. But yeah, I mean me. I've only been a man so far. So I know there are many times where I found out later I should have said no to something, whether it's going to a party or making a date with somebody or making love to somebody. And then the curious part I was talking about with some men is the experience of, first of all, especially in the beginning is very hard to ask, you know, you're with somebody say and you haven't been with them that long and that dance of when to ask and then the other person what to say and how they can say something to their partner in a way that it will be received without hurting them if it's a no maybe. And this is what we do a lot of work with. I mean, we allow the safe space so people can make that expression. We give them dialogue to communicate these things. And so often that in my experience, you know, I'm not taught how to do that. Right. So once you get the dialogue and once I have those, that language and the permission in this group to express that without any consequence of judgment or anything, it becomes, you start to internalize it and you start to embody that technique. And then you can speak it to your partner or your friends or whoever it is if you're single, you're partnered, whatever, it makes no difference. So it's a, to me that's a super key piece of what we teach is giving people the language to communicate these things. And what makes that, I don't want to give people the impression that we spend the whole weekend in these exercises with one another. We have a lot of time in the weekend where what makes it easier to find a yes and no is purifying and cultivating your own energy. So that's where we do the individual practices of certain yoga and certain sounding and certain meditations where you spend time paying attention to what's really happening in your body. Right. Your chakra is associated a lot with your chakra systems. So where are you blocked? Where could you be open? How could you make a sound to clear something or a movement to clear something or a yoga posture to clear something? When your body is clearer without energetic obstacles, you are connected to an inner compass of, oh, there's my yes. Oh, there's my no. Then you have, you say, okay, I have a choice here. Do I want to go with what I know? Or am I too scared because of all the things I thought about what it means to say no? What would they think of me? What would they think of me? Or, oh, I hate being rejected, so I'm not going to ask because I don't want to. You know, these are the things we help people in Tantra give up listening to because Tantra is a practice where you follow the energy, not the thought. Right, and it's so hard to find that energy for some of us. Right, especially in the western culture. So that's one of the reasons Tantra is having a real revolution in the western cultures is we are giving people an alternative to following their thought, which is not the same. It's not like you give up your awareness, but you include your awareness to be about your energy, not just what you're thinking. Yeah, it's amazing. You were saying before that you weren't taught this, so that's another thought that I came away with at the workshop is why isn't this taught in the seventh grade to everybody? Besides the energy stuff and the more difficult stuff, but the concrete stuff, these are where the nerve endings are. This is what feels good to a woman. This is what feels good to a man. Just simple stuff like that to be able to say those things outside. Out loud. Right, in front of people, we're all human beings and we don't even know how our bodies work. Well, and it's really a sad fact that we have no shame or uncomfortableness about expressing anger or scolding our people. But God forbid we're expressing pleasure or what feels good. Right, and people, the entire military system is taught how to hurt people. But where are we taught how to love people? There's a huge renaissance going on in medicine right now in neurobiology and neurotransmitters and how does the body really work and what is a rectile network in a woman? What is a rectile network in a man? This is getting very, very big again. And we do have a portion of our weekends about training the men and the women about their own bodies and each other's bodies have really sort of gotten written out of the textbooks for a good couple of hundred years. And it's back. I have to thank the internet briefly. And because they didn't have enough research, especially on women, I mean for a man you can see it. It's pretty obvious for a woman. You can't see it, it's not obvious and nobody really wanted to do the medical tests, the medical technology to really explore it till now. And I thank the internet for making it spreading like wildfire about what our bodies are capable of alone and together. Yeah, yeah, and I'm suspicious that also the whole women's empowerment movement has pushed it in that direction in the sense of, I mean the medical establishment up until, what, I don't know, 50 years ago was dominated by men. Women were all men in this country. All the studies, the heart studies were done on men. And it wasn't until women got enough power to say, hey, we're more than half of the human race here, what's going on? Well, I have to say sexually it's a really great time to be a woman on this planet because we are definitely getting a certain amount of attention. I think that women's studying women's bodies as a superstar. We're superstars right now. And we have superpowers. I know women have all the power. That's interesting also. I know in the workshop how you play with roles and who is giving and who is receiving. And that's always a hard one with a couple, right? And you give us some, like a recipe, you know? You say, and it's very freeing to say, oh, I have my homework. I'm supposed to do this, this, this, this, and this. And you're not supposed to do anything tonight. Well, no, the receiver has their own script. See, that was secret. I didn't know. Exactly. What I want to tell you. My design. So one of the things I want to mention is that we're going to do this one more Beginners Weekend and that recipe that you didn't know about, we're going to be doing that recipe in January where you will get to find out what it means to be the receiver of all that sort of thing. And the women, we're going to switch roles. That's an intermediate weekend. Beginners class wouldn't do an intermediate where the roles are reversed. Right. So this weekend in November is a chance for people that may want to feel that they want to really learn how to reverse the roles because in order to learn something whole, sometimes you have to take it apart in sections and learn them in pieces. Right. So the second piece is coming for anyone who's done a weekend like this, either here or on the mainland with us or with the Source Crew of Tantra. We invite you to stay tuned and learn more about a little bit more advanced practice, including you. Sounds great. By the way, we're not going to have enough time here for people. I mean, there's so many questions. If people wanted to get in touch with you, how should they do that? They can go to our websites, which mine is TantraYogaOahu.com or by telephone, and that's 808-497-2901. Okay. And Judith is... My information is Center for Awakened Loving or AwakenedLoving.com or you can find me on the Source School of Tantra as one of the staff. My phone number is 303-818-3445. You can also reach me at Judith at SourceTantra.com. So we have some beautiful YouTubes on both of our websites, and we both love it when people contact us for specific questions. If anyone is remotely... If your inner compass is turning you at all in the direction of learning more about Tantra, I really hope that you'll give one of us a call so that we can talk you into, if you're on Oahu, we can talk you into coming to one of the preview nights. If you're on Maui, I'm happy to have a private preview evening with you. But that is where you'll get your personal questions answered. This weekend is magical. It was very magical for me. My homework that night with my wife was very magical. And every once in a while, I get out the candles and stuff and make the room beautiful, probably not as often as I should. You say, do I just once in a while, Steve? Come on, man! Yeah, I'm proud of you! Good, it's stuck. I always tell people, we download so much information to them over the weekend that if 10% sticks, you're a hero. You'll be great. Well, yeah, it's the best homework I've ever had in my life. And what I can tell you too is once you go to Tantra, you never go back. Why should you? Yeah. But you've got to remind yourself. I mean, life gets in the way. I work with couples every day and work, kids, relatives. It's really easy to get caught up in your to-do lists and not put... Intimacy. Intimacy on your to-do list. I mean, and really, people should. You have to carve out time. Everybody's got nine different schedules. You know what? They all deserve it. They're worthy of it. Well, and it makes everything else better. Right. Right. I mean, like you were saying, that Tantra is not just in the bedroom, right? It informs all of your relationships. Right. With people and the world as well. With children, with everything. Animals and nature and food and your job. And so when people learn to live in that beautiful environment of being intimate with their life, then a lot more connection happens. And we really are a species that thrives on connection. It's all about connection. It's all about relationships. And I think they're telling me, are you telling me, Zuri, we're done? Okay. Thank you so much for joining and come back next time and make sure you contact them. Sign up for their Tantra workshops. It'll be the best thing you ever did. Bye-bye.