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Guy Spiro: There are two widely divergent streams running strongly in society now. We’ve got movies such as Kinsey coming out, and yet we have the rise of the religious right. Things are, to say the least, interesting for sexuality now.

Freddy Weaver: Absolutely. It’s an age-old issue. Sexual energy is so powerful that it scares people. It has been the seed of a lot of violence and misunderstanding and yet it is the seed of the creation of life. Nature has built it in to keep us existing. We believe that sexual energy is so primordial, fundamental and perennial that, in terms of creativity and the pleasure principle, it must be present in every aspect of our lives. With the exercises and practices that we teach at Tantra Nova, such as pranayama breathing, meditation, ritual exercises, and learning to move the sexual energy, the stories that keep it compartmentalized free up, and when that happens we get expanding creative and pleasure possibilities in areas of our life that seem completely unrelated to it.

GS: There are a lot of people practicing and teaching what they’re calling Tantra. Increasingly you see it, but would the Tibetans recognize it as Tantra?

Elsbeth Mueth: We call ourselves Tantra Nova. We do that on purpose because we are not orthodox tantrics. We don’t aspire to that. We are drawing a lot from that tradition with respect to the connection of the sexual with the ritual which is so alien to our Western culture. We blend it with western technology with respect to human development, and how we use language as a force in creating our lives, including our connection with ourselves sexually as well with another or others. We are aware of the fundamental conversation, what is Tantra, and who knows anyway?

GS: I didn’t point that out as a criticism, but as something that I think needs to be acknowledged.

EM: We are not attached in an orthodox way to that tradition. However, what was so eye-opening, not only eye-opening whole body-opening, with tantric healing is that it really brought together my sexual with my spiritual being. That was totally dichotomous for me. Not only for me, societally it’s dichotomous. One doesn’t seem to go with the other. But it doesn’t lie outside, it lives within me, so it’s just tapping back into myself and connecting with that life giving force that really drives everything. It drives my body, it drives my connection to the creative in me, my intellectual being has to do with it, but now it’s no longer fragmented. I can always tap back into it as well as my own relationship with respect to what it means to love and to make love. In the past, I was a lot in that realm of drama, and suffering, and romantic illusions, and that has all disappeared. Look at him rolling his eyes at me.

[Laughter]

FW: It’s a tough one to disappear, the collapse that we have in terms of romantic and the small “l” love drama that we had, hold sexual energy. When people come to the seminars or our work, whether they’re a couple or they’re single, it’s not like they’re sexually dysfunctional. It’s that they know or have a sense that there’s something deeper. It’s that intimate connection that’s often missing. When you combine the meditative practices, the stillness of the thought with the sexual energy, you connect with the primordial life force. What enshrouds that energy for most of us is what we learned about sex growing up, what’s supported by the laws, what the pundits, the clergy, the churches, the dogmas that are there suppressing, ignoring and vilifying that energy, had to say. As it frees up and starts to move, and we combine that again with that stillness of meditation, it’s phenomenal what opens up for people. They start really getting and developing another listening for themselves as to what they’re here to bring, what their song is, what their purpose is and so on. I mean ultimately it’s about, are you happy?

GS: I’ve always thought that there is a serious disconnect. We’ve been given these bodies, these amazing instruments, and told not to play them. And that’s crazy; not only are people going to, but now they’re going to feel guilty about it?

FW: People aren’t even supported to own their own energy and own their sexuality, and if somebody is suppressed and told, don’t touch that, their only inclination is to find out more about what it is.

EM: That is what is so great with the Kinsey film and Kinsey’s actual work. It’s very clinical, but he used the facts to show just what you said, Guy. Everyone is in a body and is a sexual being, and there are practices nobody talks about. Through his work, things became more open and like, oh, this is how it is, and not some kind of concealed way of looking at what sexuality is. That doesn’t mean that what Kinsey uncovered made the guilt disappear. That is actually, I think, where we do much of our work. What is keeping people from accessing themselves fully, and being with themselves fully, and also expressing themselves fully with another? This is where notions like guilt or shame live. I have done something wrong, it’s not right, or I’m not good enough. These notions we live in actually keep the energy from flowing.

GS: If you’re not supposed to touch that, then why do you feel pleasure when you do?

FW: I’ll tell you a little story. This was my first experience with sexual energy. It’s a story I often tell in our seminar introductions, a little bit about ourselves. I always preface this with, as you listen to my story, think about your own. I was five years old, watching the cartoons one early Saturday morning, and I heard these noises down the hall in my parents’ bedroom. I’m watching the cartoons and they’re interesting, but these noises are more interesting. So I go down the hall, I look into their bedroom and they’re making love, and I watch them for awhile. My father looks like, I don’t know if he’s hurting my mom or loving her, but at one point he’s got her in sort of a head lock and he’s humping and grunting and kind of bumping her, and then he strokes her hair and kisses her softly and the next thing you know she’s flipping him over and she’s bumping and grinding and I don’t know what in the hell is going on. They see me, they stop, they sit-up, they say, come in young Freddy and sit at the edge of the bed. Now they’re nude, sitting up in the bed and my father says to me, well, young Freddy, we’re making love and one day you’ll be even more interested in this than you are now. We both love you very much, could you leave and close the door. And I left and closed the door. I remember that as my opening experience in sexual energy, presented to me by two people I loved and who loved me very much, and it’s done with respect, caring and sharing.

GS: You were very fortunate.

FW: My point exactly. There are not that many parents that are grounded enough in their own sexual energy to be able to present it to a kid who is not even into puberty in an open, sharing, caring and honest way. It’s not what we learn. As I grew older, I was very open about my sexual energy, but that wasn’t what I ran into in other relationships, because they didn’t come from that same kind of household. But can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone were that honest and open and understanding about their own sexual energy?

GS: You guys are working in that direction. You have a new series of DVDs out.

EM: The first one of the series is a twenty-minute introduction. Freddy always says you can give that to your mom when she asks you, what are you doing with Tantra Nova, what is it? The first one is called, A New Path to Loving. The second in the series is called Creating Intimacy and Love, and it’s a condensed version of our one-day beginning level seminar. It introduces people to the foundational practices which have to do with breathing and energy awareness. Without the breath, we cannot move energy, and when we want to connect sexual with ritual energy within us, then we need to know how to move energy throughout the body. So they are foundational practices we run through for students. Then the third one is called The Discovery of Sexual Spiritual Connection, and that is where Freddy and I demonstrate the healing rituals for the woman, and the healing rituals for the man, and that is more explicit in nature. Of course each of them can be bought separately as well as together.

GS: As I look through your promotional material, without having to get very explicit, there’s a lot of what looks like really good ideas for people to practice. “Master Your Breathing and Calm the Unending Chatter in Your Mind.” That’s good for anybody to do, whether they’re involved in sexuality or not. The “Touch Each Other’s Heart through Hands-On Heart Connection,” this is good stuff, people need to know these things. “Kiss Often to Awaken the Endorphins;” people don’t know about the upper lip, they don’t know these practical things.

FW: That’s the beginning. Once one starts working with those sound fundamental practices and integrating that into their practices with their beloveds or their partners, that’s when we start getting to another level of intimate connecting with, first, ourselves and then really turbo-charging our relationships.

GS: Number four on the sheet, “Gain Control of Your Love Muscle and Let Go.” That’s basically what they teach pregnant women to do with the Kegel, right?

EM: Yes, but to only use it for toning, which is, of course, crucial to the young mother. It’s also important to a man who wants to separate ejaculation from orgasm to sustain his wonderful life force energy, or a woman to really pass into her creative center. It goes much further than just strengthening that muscle. It is really a tool to center ourselves, to come back to oneself and to activate our sexual center, if you choose to. I also want to say something about the ten practices you referred to a little earlier. It’s really just an example from Freddy’s and my life, and that is that we do these practices during the day, sometimes it’s just for a minute, that Freddy comes to my desk and he just puts his hand on my back or on my chest and we breath together, which brings us back to ourselves and connects us. It has a very curious effect, it connects one to oneself and it connects one to the other. Simultaneously, without words, it’s just a connection of our energy and the connection of our breath.

GS: When two people are breathing together, one will have greater breathing capacity. That one should breathe more shallowly than they normally would, so that the breathing is simultaneous?

FW: There’s several different breathing practices that we teach, but what I do is sometimes it’s two in one, so one person, who has the smaller lungs, will take a breath. While I’m taking one breath, they might take one and let one go. By the time I get full of air, then I let go on their out breath. As you do it more, it becomes more intuitive. It’s a wonderful way to begin a listening.

GS: So the DVDs are readily available?

EM: Yes. On our website. We just started a relationship with New Leaf as our distributor, so there’ll be an even wider distribution of the DVDs through their magazine and their contacts. We are working on a relationship with Amazon, but that won’t happen until the New Year.

GS: You guys are local Chicagoans, so you are accessible.

EM: That is another thing that’s unique to what we’re doing here in Chicago. When we started this three and a half years ago, there were people that would come and go; Margo Anand would come and go, Body Electric comes and goes. We’re the only facility that has regular seminars and private session work, where individuals can start to fundamentally integrate these practices into their personal life.

Dr. Elsbeth Meuth and Mr. Freddy Weaver are the founders and directors of the TantraNova Institute, headquartered in Chicago. They offer seminars and private sessions to couples and individuals to assist them in rediscovering their passion and renewing intimacy within themselves and their relationships. They may be ocntacted at 312-787-7642 or by email to tantranova@tantranova.com.

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