I was picked up by a chauffeur at the Rio de Janeiro airport and was brought to a wonderful seaside home. The private Tantra retreat took place in this home. I was treated to a luscious Brazilian meal for the first time - Feijoada - after which I was able to relax…
We began our training in the evening. No, not strength training. Imagine, I had three beautiful women around me, and for me alone - for the entire week. But it was not so simple, it was not a sex vacation - it was much better than that.
Now, I’m imagining that I’m at this seminar once again - I will take a few notes from my diary and share them here:
“Wake up” - I hear while I’m dreaming. I look at the clock, and it’s 4 o’clock in the morning. “Wake up - morning exercises - meet in 15 minutes in the yoga room.”
“Sit! this is the Ardha Padmasana, the half lotus. Come Joy, show him how he should sit.” Somehow, one of the girls arranged my feet into the correct position. It was painful. “Close your eyes. I’ll tell you something. It’s called Kayastaryam - the rigid body. It’s not a secret exercise, but it’s also not well known among those who practice yoga. First, we’ll do this exercise, and then a different one. Look, this is how it goes: This is Kayasthairyam Dharana. Dharana means concentration. Listen closely to what I say. It’s important. Do not move throughout the entire exercise. Stay absolutely still, with your eyes closed the entire time, staring inwardly a little up towards the space between your eyebrows. That’s called Shambhavi Mudra. Right now, you’re sitting in Ardha Padmasana. Now breathe 10 seconds in and then out.”
It was difficult for me to follow his instructions. “The first level of Kayasthairyam Dharana: feel your hands, your buttocks and your spine.” I tried to concentrate, but I was tired and all my joints ached. Then he had to speak again.
I remembered the word “Sankalpa”. It seemed very important. He wanted me to consider what I wanted to achieve, what my life goals were, and the desires of my body. Actually, I just wanted to lie next to these women and look at them. That they would hold and comfort me. My thoughts wander off, and I can only hear his voice from afar.
“We’re going to the next exercise. By the way, no one likes to do strenuous things by themselves.
Therefore modern Tantra is very gentle. Everyone tries to be nice and speaks of Chakras and Samadhi. But that’s not how it works. That’s nonsense Tantra. We’re not doing that here.
Close your eyes. I’ll open the window a little, do you feel the breeze of the wind? Concentrate on the wind and how the air caresses your body. Focus entirely on the surface of your skin and the moment the air touches your skin. Sense this completely. This is called Sparsha in Sanskrit - Touch.”
I reluctantly did as he said. I lost myself a little with it. I don’t want to say that I was having fun, but it wasn’t uncomfortable either.
Michael continued: “What thoughts are coming to mind? Observe your thoughts while still sensing your skin, as it is in contact with the outside world. From all these thoughts take one. Take a beautiful or terrible one. Isolate it from the other thoughts and begin to exaggerate it to infinity, but only inwardly. Create a hell or heaven, it doesn’t matter, but hell works better.
I was torn from my imagination. Michael said: “Concentrate on the scent. Imagine that you are only a fragrance. The smell of freshly brewed coffee filling your nose as you enter the kitchen, the scent of flowers in nature, the fragrance of the woman sitting next to you, try to become one with these aromas. That is Gandha. What do you feel is stronger in your life - Gandha or Sparsha? What kind of human being are you?”
Slowly I relaxed and noticed that Michael’s voice was actually pleasant. Nothing he says has to do with the nonsense I always hear. What he was talking about was as if it was coming from another world, another time. It seemed to me as if I had done it all before, thousands of years ago. Haha - that’s what I’m thinking.
So continuing on. Michael gave exercises that always became more interesting, I must admit. He drove me to the limits of my physical capability and my intellectual attention. In the end, I loved this exercise. Michael said that in modern yoga, this Asana had lost all its meaning. He spoke of Shavasana, the corpse pose, he spoke of the corpses and of the dead, and so on and so fort. He spoke of the tradition of the Goddess Kali.
Again I doze off into a foreign country. He plays a song by Leonard Cohen 'My Secret Life'. “Oh fuck,” I thought. The bass moves so deeply in me, I cannot hold myself awake. I had never experienced this form of sleep before. We do not not speak until the evening.
“Tonight, we will do the first ritual. In this Ritual, we will begin to speak. Never before, Hermann, will you have spoken as you will speak tonight!” I try to smile, but I manage only half. There were no exercises in the afternoon. One of the women took me by the arm after lunch and brought me to a room. She tells me to lay down. She starts to push me, and I feel like a baby with a full belly. She touches me here and there, I do not know why. Later, I learned that it was a "spiritual massage", a technique channeled by Trance drawer Luis Gasparotto from Sao Paulo in the 70s and developed by Angela Moraes, one of his pupils, into a school of spiritual healing in Rio de Janeiro. I feel something I have not felt for decades, a forgotten feeling, I feel small, very small, tiny, I see tears running down my eyes. I see I feel, I dream. I am in a paradise - it seems endless - colors without form - eventually I wake up. She walks around me. She snaps her fingers. She kisses my forehead as a mother would her child. She leaves the room. I feel like I’m slowly losing myself - my name and all I that I am and believe to be.
It’s the evening, and the ritual begins. I feel uneasy. I sit across from one of the 3 women, she looks me in the eyes, and the other two women sit with each other.
He says: “Look at the person opposite you and find a part of their body that pleases you. When you find it, stop and imagine that this piece is part of your own body.” And he goes on and on again. We’ll perform breathing exercises in between. Then he says, "Now look directly at this other person. Imagine what character she has. Imagine who she is. Take this character, put it in a jam jar, and give it a label. How would you name this character?”
The thoughts in my mind were like a thunderstorm sent by Poseidon. I am writing on my imaginary jam jar - “whore”. I mean, this woman is a hooker and she has the character of a hooker. And all I believe she is, I put into this glass. “She is a cheap hooker and Michael has hired these hookers to lure me out of money.”
The exercise is over. We still haven’t spoken a word. It was already 3 o’clock in the morning. Michael said, “Let’s go to bed. I’ll wake you up tomorrow and we’ll extend the silence for another day. We will do the same exercise naked tomorrow and say everything we wrote on the label to the other person in the face. It was too soon today.”
And so the story continues. More extreme and cooler. From day to day it has become naughtier and more psychedelic. Then another woman came. She cooked Catuaba tea and gave it to me. Well, you can imagine how I felt after it. It was the most beautiful experience of my life. Words cannot describe it.
Today Michael is one of my best friends. This week in Rio de Janeiro changed my life. He taught me exercises - those that I can perform during sex - exercises that continue to help me have long and extensive sex. I did not succeed right away. I had to work on it for several months.
Yes, he treated me harshly in the beginning. First, I had to let go of all my anger about life, and project it first on him and then on the women. The woman who I labeled as a prostitute is actually a biochemist, a totally intelligent person. And when this woman has sex, a man must practice a few months of Tantra beforehand to be able to come along with her.
My life has changed quite a bit since this seminar. But I will tell you about it on another occasion.
