I ♡ tantra my wild and liberating devotional journey of learning how to love (WIP)

The combination of interpretive movement and dance as a ritual to connect to my body through Tantra has been swirling in my world for over 13 years.

I first encountered Tantra and the path of non-duality, in an Anusara yoga teacher training I was taking with a woman named Tara Glazier in Brooklyn circa 2010. Learning about non-duality and starting to feel the threads of lineage, pulling me to India settled something deep inside my soul.

After that, going to India, and having a direct experience of miraculous healing with the goddess Durga (my sobriety came form Her,) and studying more in-depth through meditation and mantra work Kashmir Shivaism introduced me to the transformation power yoga held. As an inner unlearning and uncovering force as much s a connecting to Goddess process.

Experiencing a continuation of energy healing in the mantra meditation, that wasn’t just about settling the mind, but making more space for the bigness and the intensity of energy that was awakening within me was a life-changing and saving.I’ve studied with many different teachers, including Sally Kempton, my partner, Harshada Wagner, Laura, Amazzone, Malcolm McQuirter and Varsha Choudhury, who lives in India and is one of the teachers in Body Temple that you will all get to meet in our trainings. I have also spent a lot of time with Ram Dass (through eh ethers and in person,) and have studied Bhakti Yoga in the depths of my soul and in India on 15 pilgrimages over these years. I have also studied Sacred Theater and esoteric astrology for the past 8 years with Heidi Rose Robbins (the best!)

The main teacher for me has been the awareness and love that is Kundalini Shakti–the formless sacred feminine power and energy that is within me (and you and everythang.) Following the Shakti and learning about how she unfolds in others through working with them, holding space for our worship and our devotion to the transformational power that is Shakti. Countless women, men, trans and non binary being shave been my teachers. Life, heartbreak, the intensity of awakening, is my greatest teacher of all.

Because my original spiritual awakening happened happened when my father died and a mantra I didn’t realize I knew came to me at his deathbed, the healing of the masculine, and the masculine in general, not just in gender, but in my own embodiment of it through Tantra has helped me learn how to find safety in this world that is not dependent on circumstances or other people, but is deeply rooted within.

My background with nervous system education, intimacy training and somatics run the course from TRE (trauma release exercise/Polyvagal Theory with David Bercelli,) to some Somatic Experiencing training with Abi Blakeslee to Somatic Sex education with Deborah Sundahl - a late legend in women’s health and sexuality. The roots also go back through my blood to the Mediterranean, the shamanic study I have done with drumming and dance that pre dates Christianity with Alessandra Belloni and awakens our innate power to heal through sound, movement and imagination.

Of course, our focus is on the fierce and tender wisdom of the feminine in Body Temple, but we really do value the non-binary experience of masculine and feminine from both an esoteric perspective, including working with the orgasmic energy of the universe, also known as Lalita in the Tantric tradition, as well as in our human experience where we are relating in very real human bodies also through a gender expansive lens. It’s nuanced to say the least.

We will have non binary, trans, women and men in our trainings, although cis het men will always be in the minority (unless otherwise specified,) we are building a new culture that centers the body, direct experience, women, queer, gay and trans* wisdom.

All are welcome that are willing to center the Goddess, women, children, people of the global majority and the gay and queer, trans community in this world and in our work.

We all have a lot of healing to do with masculine, and I’m so grateful that we get to do so much of that work together. We are all learning better ways of relating and it is important to recognize that this work is about collective liberation, the grief, rage and aliveness that connect us to our power and passion to serve. Each of us has a calling's nd we can help you create and play in material reality in ways that uplift and give you back all the energy and love you put out.

This work, works, and I am so honored to be a guide and create a container for us all to be held in. If you are in our online e(and in person with a retreat in NYC in November,) Unleashed and Undomesticated, welcome!!! If you want to join us, sign up here. If you want to join us in person in Ojai where we live, check out our summer retreat here.