Caroline Muir
Touch Yourself
by Natalie Geld
WhyAreWeWhispering.com
How honest is your relationship with yourself?
With your lover? Is there a sense in you that there may be something more?
“What did you answer? Because if there is no desire for anything more, why would anyone read the next sentence? There has to be a motivating factor within your own soul that’s calling you to unfold, or to awaken more fully. What are you looking for? What do you want more of really -- if anything? More pleasure?”
Deeper connections? To learn who you are inside? To heal and learn to love and be loved? And is it okay to even ask for that, is it okay to want these things?
“Is it okay to ask for that, yeah that’s a big one.”
Do you deserve it?
“Exactly, and I feel that’s really the most important thing -- that we know we not only have the right -- but we have the need to ask the next question.”
Within just a few moments of our interview with Caroline Muir we had plunged head first into our vulnerability, fear, power struggles, needs, and our desire.
This fiercely elegant creature had us at hello. The smoky voiced sexual pioneer, co-author of the acclaimed book, Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving (now in its umpteenth reprint), author of Tantra Goddess: A Memoir of Sexual Awakening and founder of the Divine Feminine/Awakened Masculine Institute has been quoted in nearly every corner of our earth over the past two decades.
She established Divine Feminine to teach consciousness toward living fully, making “love” boundless, and demonstrating life transforming pathways for sexual healing and creating vivid, passionate lives. A maverick in her field and as bold as they come (please infer my innuendo) -- she’s beautiful through and through. Now, Caroline is in our corner, and she’s just getting started.
Natalie: You unabashedly teach women and men to align the power of consciousness and sexual energies and how to expand their orgasmic potential. What possibly could have motivated you to explore and become an educator in this realm?
“We need education and healing. We need to align our energy with our consciousness. I was a darling blue-eyed Scorpio with tons of sexual energy and grew up in the Midwest in the ‘50’s where nice girls don’t do it and good girls saved themselves until they were married. And I was very misaligned from growing up in a home where my father was inappropriate with me, with my mother and with our girlfriends. Long story short, I went on to have 3 marriages and a handful of affairs, all driven by my sexual energy.
I wondered what was wrong. How come another marriage is ending and another affair is ending, and the one I thought I was in love with doesn’t want me? And what about me, what am I doing here?
Well, at a Yoga Retreat I heard about this thing called Tantra Yoga and I thought, “Come on, there is no Yoga that talks about sex.” There was. The more I heard about the study of this kind of Yoga - this union with one’s self and with another, the more curious I got about it. I thought I was right on target with lingerie and seductive ways, and believed, “It’s all about good sex, isn't it?”
Natalie: What turned the tides for you?
“In Yoga class I began to integrate my sexual energy with the rest of my being. I discovered my sexuality really was a part of me that I was sitting on or using indiscriminately and it ended up in a lot of unhappiness. That was the turning point for me. I knew I was off the mark. It could come to someone else in a different way. But I was on this whole spiritual path and I didn’t know where my sexuality possibly could be included there.”
At the very least, many organized religions deter us from our source, our natural healthy desire for love, pleasure and sexual unity. Ancient cultures of India, Nepal and Tibet understood this ecstatic state as well as the joyous feelings of union – it was one of their paths to God. This sacred sexual path known as Tantra is just beginning to flourish in the West, and it takes a lot of flack here. Just ask Sting, "People get very silly about the whole idea of what Tantra is. It's using your normal life as a devotional practice. Breathing, walking, eating, making love. . . it's all the same. Practice consciously.” It emerged as a rebellion against organized religion, which rejected sexuality to reach enlightenment. The word Tantra means "to manifest, to expand, to show and to weave." In this context, sex is thought to expand consciousness and to weave together the polarities of male (represented by the Hindu god, Shiva), and female (embodied by the Hindu goddess, Shakti), into a harmonious whole.
Imagine a way of being, not just a roll in the sack. Tantra explores sexuality as a doorway to the divine, and earthly pleasures such as eating, dancing and creative expression are sacred acts. Hmmm...makes sense if you think about it. Eating, dancing and creative expression are all part of our practical daily lives, and our sexual lives. Tasting someone’s mouth, their flesh and juices; the textures of our emotional landscape; our stride, style, gaze or touch; rhythmic writhing of bodies entwined; or our throaty whispers and bloodcurdling, spontaneous cries of ecstacy.
Natalie: What was the threshold you crossed?
“Eventually, I realized I needed healing because of fear. Huge amounts of fear around men and penises and the size of them and the needs of them. When I finally entered into sexual healing work I recovered memories in my childhood of my father’s erection; it’s inappropriateness with me. For 6 or 7 years I didn’t want to believe it. Then there’s a moment of truth - the ‘Oh, I’d better believe it, it really did happen and I know it did.’ I realized why I was so uncomfortable all that time with my dad, and began putting together the puzzle of unclaimed, disowned memories of my childhood. I started becoming a whole person.
Natalie: How did this awakening influence your sexuality, your sex life?
“Before these realizations, I thought if I had a clitoral orgasm I was in heaven. I had no idea a Sacred Spot ever existed in me or in women at all. I just didn’t know. There is so much more pleasure within us and our connection is our consciousness.”
Natalie: Help us to understand the difference of “regular clitoral orgasm” and “Sacred Spot” awakening? The former of which, as you said, everyone would be happy to have -- what else is there and how is that connected to our consciousness?
“Well, modern sexology sometimes refers to this area as the G-spot; the internal source in a woman in ancient knowledge calls it our ‘sacred spot.’ It is the South pole of the clitoris, the clitoris being what’s on the outside, the South pole of this sacred spot area being on the inside of her vagina. Sometimes we kind of access our Sacred Spot in intercourse...
Natalie: ... or rubbed vigorously, even aggressively as if he were trying to jerk himself off, or to get you hot so he can jump on board. And as women we’re not taught how to touch ourselves, books can be so clinical or mechanical.
“And it really does need to be tenderly touched and massaged with feeling in order for it to fully awaken. And when I say awaken that means letting go of old memories: times when you did shut down from fear or shame, the divorce that really left you in lot of pain.
Our body contains and maintains those memories and the imprints of the emotion. For example, many of my students and clients who’ve been in psychotherapy for 20 years were unable to uncover the real core of their problems until they received this physical massage.
Let’s say you have a pain in your shoulder, you can talk about that pain in your shoulder from now until kingdom come but when a masseuse, a really good massage therapist with a loving touch and an intention for healing gets in there and starts working with that shoulder, they can start to really get into the heart of what the problem is. And when you’re touched in this way you may suddenly glimpse a memory of when you were a kid and fell out of a swing on to that shoulder or something.”
Natalie: Oh, you’re talking about a back door, as I call it in hypnotherapy. We access blocks with the mind, or through a back door through body movement. No matter what goes on in your body – it’s connected with your brain and your mind. All roads lead to Rome – so you are using the body to affect the mind and emotions.
“Yes - it’s the same way in the Sacred Spot work, when this place is actually massaged and touched, memories can come up and pain can actually be released that cannot be released simply by talking about it. This can be done with a clothes-on approach, and getting off is not the focus, orgasm is not the goal here. Everyone has their pace and comfort level, we always respect the needs of our students and clients. Love making and orgasm are explored in private.”
Stephanie: You were fortunate to have had the insight to ask questions about your life. What’s the connection for women who’s idea of passion is being broadcast from the media, Victoria’s Secret ads, Cosmopolitan? Who thinks about sex and wonders how to get to that aspect of it? Who hasn’t discovered meditation or yoga, hasn’t had her A-ha! moment and still believes she just needs the sexiest underwear, the right way to play the game to figure out how to make that guy love her instead of not love her.
“Good question. We are so out of alignment. Our sexual energy is so out of alignment as a culture, that there is no connection to spirit, there is no connection to consciousness and there certainly is no connection to love. There is this great big split. It's as if human beings planetarily are split right in half -- right around the waistline. Yet we are always looking for love outside ourselves - when we sit at the computer, put on a video or stare out the car window.”
Natalie: As the constitution says to our demise, we have the right to the pursuit of happiness, when we can reach within and realize it’s all right here.
“Right, our intention with this education of the Divine Feminine/Awakened Masculine is to bring our human spirit into alignment. There is something more to sex than this new underwear or this new gal on the block or the new guy in the office or that cute ass in the gym.”
Natalie: My 21 year old daughter looked me in the eye and calmly said, “Sex is not love.”
“Your daughter is absolutely right, sex is not love. Any animal can have sex. Most do all the time and are not loving each other. We are animals by nature, but we are all evolving conscious animals. Sexual love was an art form once upon a time -- there’s little in our modern culture demonstrating this in healthy ways.”
Natalie: How about women that feel out of the loop, what’s in it for them? How do they wrap themselves around this? For example, here’s a letter we received: I’m single, my plate is full, I have children to raise and have no time and little energy left to even think about masturbating. And men? I don’t have anybody in my life, I don’t even have time to get on eHarmony or go to a bar or talk on the phone. I’m too tired, I can't even be bothered. I don’t even want to think about it, it's futile distraction. So, why should I care about this anyway, why would any of this help me?
”A little caring goes a long way. Offer some of your precious nurturing energy you spend on everyone else for yourself. It’s simple. And you’ll actually put your sexual energy and caring, compassionate energy into more alignment. Try a simple meditation, if you will, by placing your hand on your own heart and the other on your own genitals and transmit love. This brings you in alignment with the divine. Without the pressure of achieving orgasm, just 3 or 5 minutes with your own healing hands. It’s OK if you don’t feel the energy right away. But you probably will. You’re not necessarily doing anything about the disparity of not having a guy in your life, or time, interest or energy, but at least you know for 5, maybe 10 minutes in the morning and the next, because you will do it again, there will be an alignment that you have created within yourself between your genitals, your heart, mind and spirit.”
Natalie: So not that we need a man in our life, but even if we don’t have someone, can we actually be reverent with ourselves and that’s going to create some sort of awakening?
“I am saying that. Before you go to sleep at night or when you wake up in the morning, touch yourself in a reverent way. That kind of reverence and that kind of art form doesn’t have to have the goal of orgasm, it’s simply a loving touch, something we all crave and need. You may think ‘Gosh, that could be lovely, but it’s just not available.’
We have to create our experience of love and awakening, we have to want such a thing.”
Natalie: Too many women shut off the connection to their power. They disconnect. Feel afraid when aroused. We can have these mechanical - f*cking for fun, friction & getting off - experiences but then we’re not even an inch closer to feeling close with someone.
“Yes, I definitely agree. We do learn to be good at shutting off connection because it's too scary. Women have had to learn to protect themselves from being used, hurt or abused by shutting down our sexual response to the best of our ability. A pretty powerful energy with a domino effect in the emotional realm or in a woman’s physical health if she shuts it down completely. If she’s just having sex for the pleasure of it or the fun of it, or to have sex without any connection, she can do that.
Some women only do that, just like some men only do that. But then they are simply satisfying a biological urge, and at some point in their evolution of being human, the other energies within them will rise, as they’re inherently meant for connection with another human being. Christine Northrup, author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, studied with us at Divine Feminine Institute, and a big fan. She says, "Sexual energy is one of our most powerful energies for creating health, by using sexual energy consciously… we can tap into a true source of youth and vitality."
What’s the Next Step? Even a flicker of light that leads you to recognize and hear your needs is enough to get you started. If you and your mate are sleeping in separate beds, if you don’t know how to orgasm or why you don’t, if you’re getting off but still feeling disconnected, if you’re feeling ordinary, undeserving and alone, if you’ve spent your wad on your kids and your spouse and your job and your house and you’re wondering why you feel empty -- just begin by asking the next question. Whatever it is.
“I knew Theodore Sturgeon who was a great science fiction writer and he wore a little medallion around his neck that had a Q with an arrow going through it. What it meant was: ask the next question, because every time we ask the next question with real sincerity in our heart and a real desire to know what it is and with a willingness to find out, always we are directed towards the answer to that question.
Please ask the next question, keep asking questions, allow the desire in your heart and in your whole being to come forth. That desire is going to be what pulls you forward.
Unfold the magnificent gift of your consciousness -- connected to each and every one of your energy centers... which will carry you beyond your wildest dreams.
In part Two of our exclusive interview, Co-director of Divine Feminine/Awakened Masculine Institute and Relatiionship Counselor, Joan Heartfield, Ph.D. joins our Roundtable discussion where we’ll discuss whole body orgasm, how to connect your energy and power channels with your partner, and How to Stop Living from the Waist Up.
WhyAreWeWhispering.com
How honest is your relationship with yourself?
With your lover? Is there a sense in you that there may be something more?
“What did you answer? Because if there is no desire for anything more, why would anyone read the next sentence? There has to be a motivating factor within your own soul that’s calling you to unfold, or to awaken more fully. What are you looking for? What do you want more of really -- if anything? More pleasure?”
“Is it okay to ask for that, yeah that’s a big one.”
Do you deserve it?
“Exactly, and I feel that’s really the most important thing -- that we know we not only have the right -- but we have the need to ask the next question.”
Within just a few moments of our interview with Caroline Muir we had plunged head first into our vulnerability, fear, power struggles, needs, and our desire.
This fiercely elegant creature had us at hello. The smoky voiced sexual pioneer, co-author of the acclaimed book, Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving (now in its umpteenth reprint), author of Tantra Goddess: A Memoir of Sexual Awakening and founder of the Divine Feminine/Awakened Masculine Institute has been quoted in nearly every corner of our earth over the past two decades.
Natalie: You unabashedly teach women and men to align the power of consciousness and sexual energies and how to expand their orgasmic potential. What possibly could have motivated you to explore and become an educator in this realm?
“We need education and healing. We need to align our energy with our consciousness. I was a darling blue-eyed Scorpio with tons of sexual energy and grew up in the Midwest in the ‘50’s where nice girls don’t do it and good girls saved themselves until they were married. And I was very misaligned from growing up in a home where my father was inappropriate with me, with my mother and with our girlfriends. Long story short, I went on to have 3 marriages and a handful of affairs, all driven by my sexual energy.
Well, at a Yoga Retreat I heard about this thing called Tantra Yoga and I thought, “Come on, there is no Yoga that talks about sex.” There was. The more I heard about the study of this kind of Yoga - this union with one’s self and with another, the more curious I got about it. I thought I was right on target with lingerie and seductive ways, and believed, “It’s all about good sex, isn't it?”
Natalie: What turned the tides for you?
“In Yoga class I began to integrate my sexual energy with the rest of my being. I discovered my sexuality really was a part of me that I was sitting on or using indiscriminately and it ended up in a lot of unhappiness. That was the turning point for me. I knew I was off the mark. It could come to someone else in a different way. But I was on this whole spiritual path and I didn’t know where my sexuality possibly could be included there.”
At the very least, many organized religions deter us from our source, our natural healthy desire for love, pleasure and sexual unity. Ancient cultures of India, Nepal and Tibet understood this ecstatic state as well as the joyous feelings of union – it was one of their paths to God. This sacred sexual path known as Tantra is just beginning to flourish in the West, and it takes a lot of flack here. Just ask Sting, "People get very silly about the whole idea of what Tantra is. It's using your normal life as a devotional practice. Breathing, walking, eating, making love. . . it's all the same. Practice consciously.” It emerged as a rebellion against organized religion, which rejected sexuality to reach enlightenment. The word Tantra means "to manifest, to expand, to show and to weave." In this context, sex is thought to expand consciousness and to weave together the polarities of male (represented by the Hindu god, Shiva), and female (embodied by the Hindu goddess, Shakti), into a harmonious whole.
Natalie: What was the threshold you crossed?
“Eventually, I realized I needed healing because of fear. Huge amounts of fear around men and penises and the size of them and the needs of them. When I finally entered into sexual healing work I recovered memories in my childhood of my father’s erection; it’s inappropriateness with me. For 6 or 7 years I didn’t want to believe it. Then there’s a moment of truth - the ‘Oh, I’d better believe it, it really did happen and I know it did.’ I realized why I was so uncomfortable all that time with my dad, and began putting together the puzzle of unclaimed, disowned memories of my childhood. I started becoming a whole person.
“Before these realizations, I thought if I had a clitoral orgasm I was in heaven. I had no idea a Sacred Spot ever existed in me or in women at all. I just didn’t know. There is so much more pleasure within us and our connection is our consciousness.”
Natalie: Help us to understand the difference of “regular clitoral orgasm” and “Sacred Spot” awakening? The former of which, as you said, everyone would be happy to have -- what else is there and how is that connected to our consciousness?
Natalie: ... or rubbed vigorously, even aggressively as if he were trying to jerk himself off, or to get you hot so he can jump on board. And as women we’re not taught how to touch ourselves, books can be so clinical or mechanical.
“And it really does need to be tenderly touched and massaged with feeling in order for it to fully awaken. And when I say awaken that means letting go of old memories: times when you did shut down from fear or shame, the divorce that really left you in lot of pain.
Our body contains and maintains those memories and the imprints of the emotion. For example, many of my students and clients who’ve been in psychotherapy for 20 years were unable to uncover the real core of their problems until they received this physical massage.
Let’s say you have a pain in your shoulder, you can talk about that pain in your shoulder from now until kingdom come but when a masseuse, a really good massage therapist with a loving touch and an intention for healing gets in there and starts working with that shoulder, they can start to really get into the heart of what the problem is. And when you’re touched in this way you may suddenly glimpse a memory of when you were a kid and fell out of a swing on to that shoulder or something.”
Natalie: Oh, you’re talking about a back door, as I call it in hypnotherapy. We access blocks with the mind, or through a back door through body movement. No matter what goes on in your body – it’s connected with your brain and your mind. All roads lead to Rome – so you are using the body to affect the mind and emotions.
“Yes - it’s the same way in the Sacred Spot work, when this place is actually massaged and touched, memories can come up and pain can actually be released that cannot be released simply by talking about it. This can be done with a clothes-on approach, and getting off is not the focus, orgasm is not the goal here. Everyone has their pace and comfort level, we always respect the needs of our students and clients. Love making and orgasm are explored in private.”
“Good question. We are so out of alignment. Our sexual energy is so out of alignment as a culture, that there is no connection to spirit, there is no connection to consciousness and there certainly is no connection to love. There is this great big split. It's as if human beings planetarily are split right in half -- right around the waistline. Yet we are always looking for love outside ourselves - when we sit at the computer, put on a video or stare out the car window.”
Natalie: As the constitution says to our demise, we have the right to the pursuit of happiness, when we can reach within and realize it’s all right here.
“Right, our intention with this education of the Divine Feminine/Awakened Masculine is to bring our human spirit into alignment. There is something more to sex than this new underwear or this new gal on the block or the new guy in the office or that cute ass in the gym.”
“Your daughter is absolutely right, sex is not love. Any animal can have sex. Most do all the time and are not loving each other. We are animals by nature, but we are all evolving conscious animals. Sexual love was an art form once upon a time -- there’s little in our modern culture demonstrating this in healthy ways.”
In the West, we usually view sex as a source of recreation rather than a means of transformation. To reach orgasm rather than to pleasure our lover or
to connect with him or her more fully.
“There has been no education about sexual love, about what you do with your emotions and what happens when the bonding hormones get so big that the woman is in love with the man and he is not thinking love at all. We are not educated about this energy. We need to learn this and we need to heal. We are also walking around with a lot of wounding, a lot of fear, a lot of having watched our parents in terribly dysfunctional relationships, having seen nothing but abuse in films or even in the media where the woman is always objectified sexually for the man’s pleasure. A lot of women grow up with not thinking that there is anything to sex but that. Thankfully we are awakening. We are not whispering so much.”
”A little caring goes a long way. Offer some of your precious nurturing energy you spend on everyone else for yourself. It’s simple. And you’ll actually put your sexual energy and caring, compassionate energy into more alignment. Try a simple meditation, if you will, by placing your hand on your own heart and the other on your own genitals and transmit love. This brings you in alignment with the divine. Without the pressure of achieving orgasm, just 3 or 5 minutes with your own healing hands. It’s OK if you don’t feel the energy right away. But you probably will. You’re not necessarily doing anything about the disparity of not having a guy in your life, or time, interest or energy, but at least you know for 5, maybe 10 minutes in the morning and the next, because you will do it again, there will be an alignment that you have created within yourself between your genitals, your heart, mind and spirit.”
Natalie: So not that we need a man in our life, but even if we don’t have someone, can we actually be reverent with ourselves and that’s going to create some sort of awakening?
We have to create our experience of love and awakening, we have to want such a thing.”
Through this simple ritual we stimulate our energy reserves and rouse passion -- these seemingly small incremental conscious connections extend beyond us, into our relationships across the board. Actually attracting more love by sharing it with yourself.
Natalie: Here’s another letter: As a woman, I know I need sexual healing work, but it's too scary for me to even think about having someone touch me "down there." Is there any other way for me to receive the healing I know I need?
“First you need to know you are always in charge of your Yoni, your "down there," your vagina and genitals. This is truly your sacred space. Before you even think about having someone else touch you, we suggest you work with yourself by placing your own hands over your Yoni (dressed or undressed) and simply transmit love and healing. As you consciously begin touching yourself in a loving and kind way, your Yoni (your vagina) will start to relax and trust you. Someday you may feel safe enough with a particular person, or in a healing ceremony, to open to touch that has no agenda other than to bring healing energy to you. Before that time, know that you can do a great deal of healing by yourself and with yourself.”
Natalie: Too many women shut off the connection to their power. They disconnect. Feel afraid when aroused. We can have these mechanical - f*cking for fun, friction & getting off - experiences but then we’re not even an inch closer to feeling close with someone.
“Yes, I definitely agree. We do learn to be good at shutting off connection because it's too scary. Women have had to learn to protect themselves from being used, hurt or abused by shutting down our sexual response to the best of our ability. A pretty powerful energy with a domino effect in the emotional realm or in a woman’s physical health if she shuts it down completely. If she’s just having sex for the pleasure of it or the fun of it, or to have sex without any connection, she can do that.
What’s the Next Step? Even a flicker of light that leads you to recognize and hear your needs is enough to get you started. If you and your mate are sleeping in separate beds, if you don’t know how to orgasm or why you don’t, if you’re getting off but still feeling disconnected, if you’re feeling ordinary, undeserving and alone, if you’ve spent your wad on your kids and your spouse and your job and your house and you’re wondering why you feel empty -- just begin by asking the next question. Whatever it is.
“I knew Theodore Sturgeon who was a great science fiction writer and he wore a little medallion around his neck that had a Q with an arrow going through it. What it meant was: ask the next question, because every time we ask the next question with real sincerity in our heart and a real desire to know what it is and with a willingness to find out, always we are directed towards the answer to that question.
Please ask the next question, keep asking questions, allow the desire in your heart and in your whole being to come forth. That desire is going to be what pulls you forward.
In part Two of our exclusive interview, Co-director of Divine Feminine/Awakened Masculine Institute and Relatiionship Counselor, Joan Heartfield, Ph.D. joins our Roundtable discussion where we’ll discuss whole body orgasm, how to connect your energy and power channels with your partner, and How to Stop Living from the Waist Up.
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