Essential Mental Healing
Essential Mental Healing
Exploring Sexual Enlightenment: Harnessing Tantra for Intimacy and Personal Growth with Dr. Elsbeth and Freddy Zental
It's Therapy Thursday!!
Embark on a transformative exploration with us as we welcome Dr. Elsbeth and Freddy Zental from the Tantra Nova Institute to uncover the profound connection between intimacy, sexuality, and personal growth. Their wisdom illuminates how ancient tantric practices can be harnessed as a powerful tool for deepening relationships and enhancing self-awareness. Together, we venture into candid discussions about the importance of sexuality and pleasure in our daily lives, shedding light on long-standing taboos and encouraging open, honest conversations even within the context of family.
Throughout our discussion, you'll be captivated by the ways in which breath and energy flow intertwine with sexual meditation to elevate our everyday experiences. Discover the art of parasympathetic belly breathing and how it can transport you to a state of elevated consciousness and creativity. We share stories that reveal the unexpected impact of sexual energy on our physical sensations and overall well-being. Moreover, we delve into the unique role theater and edutainment play in conveying the messages of sexual enlightenment, demystifying its principles in an engaging and accessible manner.
As we draw this journey to a close, we reflect on the essence of self-love and the dynamic balance between masculine and feminine energies. Dr. Elsbeth and Freddie Zental leave us with powerful insights from their book, "Sexual Enlightenment," and extend an invitation to explore their workshops and free resources designed to guide you toward a more authentic and intimate existence. Join us as we part with a blend of gratitude and encouragement, fostering an environment where vulnerability is celebrated and life is embraced with open arms and a sensual spirit.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth and Freddy Zental Weaver have assisted thousands of couples and singles create lasting intimacy and fulfillment in their life and relationships. They are featured on Showtime’s documentary series Sexual Healing and the Emmy Award-winning NBC show Starting Over, best-selling authors of Sexual Enlightenment endorsed by world-renowned Spiritual Pioneer Dr. Michael Beckwith, and the co-founders of TantraNova Institute in Chicago.
Elsbeth and Freddy Zental are beloveds, husband & wife as well as business partners residing in Chicago.
Sexual Enlightenment book in hard copy and audio on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1452585431
The Social Sexual Power of Infinity Flow in e-book
https://www.tantranova.com/global/humanrelationshipmastery/
FREE GIFT for the audience
Ignite Your Relationship Workshop
How to Use Tantric Practices to Light That Intimate Spark You've Been Dreaming About
https://tantranova.lpages.co/ignite-your-relationship-webinar/
TantraNova website to find out about TantraNova workshops and programs
https://www.tantranova.com
Host Candace Fleming
Co-host Janet Hale
visit the website at https://www.essentialmotivation.com/
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To be a guest on our show email me at candacefleming@essentialmotivation.com
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Music by Lukrembo: https://soundcloud.com/lukrembo
Provided by Knowledge Base: https://bit.ly/2BdvqzN
Hello and welcome back to Essential Mental Healing, where I am your host, candace Fleming, and joining me today, as always, is my lovely, wonderful, beautiful, melanated, wonderful mother, janet Hill. Hello, hello, and joining us today we have guests and we are opening up the floor, the conversation, for something that I know you all want to hear. But before we get into that, we are welcoming Elsbeth and Freddy. Dr Elsbeth and Freddy, hello and welcome.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Yeah, thank you. Good to be here.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Thank you, janet and Candace, for having us on this morning.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Yeah, so great.
Candace Fleming:So we are looking forward to it. We are going to be having a conversation about intimacy, about sex, about losing the inhibitions. We're going to learn a lot today and I'm super excited. But before we get there and do that, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you arrived to where you are today and our sexual exploration?
Freddy Zental Weaver:Okay, well, yeah, this is Freddy Zental here and I'm one of the founders and directors of Tantra Nova Institute in Chicago. This is my wife and partner and beloved Elsbeth Dr Moyt, who we call a Dr E for short, and we have had our institute here for 22 years, teaching couples and singles and individuals how to work with their life force of sexual energy to get more deeply connected to what they most deeply desire. So these practices are age old. Some of it comes from East India and part of it comes from North America in terms of the transformational process that's more familiar to us, and generative language, how we create a reality in language and music, and art and movement and creative process. So that's a little bit. I get into more of it as we go on.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:We want to hear more about you.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Oh, do you do? Okay, so a lot of the part of what we teach I was introduced to when I was 13 and my teens living in Hawaii, and I was going through my puberty spending a lot of time in the shower. My father was a practicing psychiatrist and took video on me and gave me a book to read on how to integrate sex and meditation sexual meditation. Wow, well, I loved it, my girlfriend loved it and even more than that, I had this idea to go on to college on athletic scholarship, but I had a belief that I couldn't do it, given where I was in Hawaii and I wouldn't get the exposure and the training and so on. It was a belief. I did go on to college on athletic scholarship. It's not that I didn't do all the things you'd have to do to do that. It's just it came with ease and flow.
Freddy Zental Weaver:After college, I kept doing these practices and applying these principles in my personal relationships and I was in the software business for a long time and what I knew about my own life and engagement. Something was missing. So there was an opportunity in Chicago. I was in San Francisco and I took it, and that was 22 years ago. I was single online looking for a shock, be a female tantra partner, and Elspeth's profile showed up, so we're one of the original tantra online couples.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Dating Dating couples.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Awesome and so well. Six months to the day, we met what I call, transcended the romantic drama and created this work, tantra Nova, and thusly we've worked with thousands of couples, as I said, all over the world, teaching them these practices, and excited to be here with you guys today to talk more about it.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Thank you, All right, very story on my thoughts. I wish I would have had a dad who would have given me a book on sexual meditation when I was 13 years old. Right, however, far from it I don't know about you can disenchant it, but that was not customary in my family.
Janet Hale:Well, we have open discussions Very open with my daughter and wanted her to be able to experience pleasure and for sex not to be a dirty word. And so for our you know we're different generations. My generation that I came up in, you know, that was just you just don't do it. What are you thinking about? Don't even think about it. You know what I mean. And so as I grew, you know and keep growing and I ended up having a daughter that would be a woman one day and I want her to stumble as much as I did in this world in pleasure and love and stimulation and different things like that.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Beautiful.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:So I'm probably more like you growing up, janet, in. You know we're a similar generation. Anyway, that didn't mean so I'm one of 10 children, so you can tell from my accent. I didn't grow up here in the United States. I was born and raised in Germany and came to this country in my late twenties. I do remember when I hit puberty I became very interested curious about, you know, all sexual things and boys and all of that to the chagrin of my parents. They did not like it. But to some extent I did what I wanted to do anyway, often with a lot of suffering, you know. But anyway, here I am coming to the United States to do postgraduate work in music and then a few years later I got my doctorate in education and from there I moved into management, consulting, and all of that was in the nineties and I had gotten really good at consulting.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yet was quite disbared over intimate relationships because I had this pattern of attracting unavailable men and while that was exciting at times, you know, most of the time I was alone. And there came one particular disbared moment when I woke up to look at the trajectory if I were not to change this pattern of attracting unavailability, which meant that I would leave this planet without having lasting intimacy and love in my life, and I did not want to settle for that. So that was the moment when I went inside and said, okay, else, but whatever you need to do, do it so that you can see what's in the way to bring lasting intimacy and love into your life. So I delve deeply into meditation and then deeply into the practice of Tantra. What I mean by that is like really taking it on as a discipline, not just reading a book here and there. So I really delved into it and what opened up through the healing dimension of the Tantric practice was that I discovered that somewhere down in my subconscious I was distrusting men. I didn't know that in my conscious mind, not like that. You know, if you had known me 25 years ago or so, you would not have called me a distrusting bitch. You know, I was really charming. I invited them in the guys, you know.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:But underneath what's not visible to the mere eye or the conscious mind, there was this level of not trusting and it harkened back to a time that all came up in the healing work. What it harkened back to was when I was 18 years old. So that was a memory that came up in one of the Tantric rituals. Just like this I was 18 years old, first love, first boyfriend. We had a beautiful, blissful relationship, and then one day he asked me to have intercourse and I said yes, although I was not ready and it was frickingly painful. It was so painful that I had to go to the gynecologist. The gynecologist's bill went to my house, my dad opened it. All hell broke loose. He called me a whore. The boyfriend left the relationship a few weeks later and there I was, all by myself, no soul to turn to, and in that moment I made a decision.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:It's this kind of coping decision we make when you know we don't know what to do, and for me it was something like see elsewhere, men are not there for you when you really need them. And so, while that was so at that time, it, however, trailed me into my young adulthood, into my adulthood. And no wonder that I attracted unavailable men, because that was further proof See, elspeth, they are not there for you when you really need them. So, in a twisted way, we then create this very thing we actually don't want, unconsciously. This is not unconsciously, and so all of that I discovered and in the process of the healing, that could be released. It was like opening a valve. You know, when we open a valve the steam actually gets more intense before it fizzles out. Same principle when I opened up into that, the pain of that 18 year old, the physical pain, the emotional pain, really got more intense and then fizzled out, got released. And with that release, all of that, what was going on subconsciously, could clear it out and in place. What opened up was deeper trust in myself, because that often goes first. You know why didn't you say anything else, but why didn't you say no? You know you cannot even trust yourself. You know you are not being counted on for yourself. So trusting myself that I can count on myself from this moment, that moment forward, then trusting men in general.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:And then six months later, some men came into my life and you know, I believe that if I hadn't done the clearing work, I would not have recognized him as a potential partner. I mean, I would have seen him he's tall, looks like a basketball player, you know very outgoing and but not as a potential partner if I had that clearing work around unavailability, because if I had still been in that unavailability pattern. He available. It doesn't fit, you know. So I'm really grateful and I'm so happy and I feel so privileged to be doing this Tantranoba work together with Freddie, assisting women. You know that they can clear whatever might be there for them, just as it was there for me, and Freddie supports men, and then, of course, we support men and women and couples, and to do that together as a couple, you know where we really come from the feminine listen listening, the masculine listening, the feminine speaking, the masculine speaking. So here we are, with you.
Candace Fleming:Yeah, thank you. Now I have a question for those who do not know Tantranoba. What is that and how does it differ from sex?
Freddy Zental Weaver:Okay. So there's a lot of things we can do with sex. You know for the last, you know, forever we've been procreating. That's what that energy does, it creates. We create life Last hundred or so years recreating with the development of contraceptives, and what we're teaching is how to co-create with this life force, intelligence, really. So when we are in our sexual energy we are more, whether we're doing consciousness work or not, we're more open, loving, vulnerable, receptive. Chemically we're changed more endorphin, serotonin, oxytocin, the feel good hormones. So we're in an altered state of consciousness.
Freddy Zental Weaver:So what we teach at Tantranoba are particular distinctions in how to be conscious in that altered state, to get more deeply connected to what we don't see, that's running in the background, that's giving us what we, what we're getting, not necessarily what we say we want.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Like Hell's Butts example, where she had that an impacting experience at an early age men are not there for you and she felt that because it was an impacting moment. But then, when she got older and she wanted to create relationship and said she wanted to be in relationship, she would still unconsciously create and look for men who were not available so that her ego and her safe safety could be that. Yeah, you see they are not trusting. I'm right about that. So, to shift what we most deeply desire out of the clay that we look into, from the experiences that we've had in our life, a lot of people do things. They'll do therapy, they do nature walks, meditation, retreats, they do plant medicine, but none that I know of learn how to work with the life force, energy as an altered state of awareness, to get more deeply connected, and so that's what we've been teaching at Tantranoba, that's what we do.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yeah, so the difference between Tantranoba and sex is that we distinguish between sex and sexual energy. So sex is the act, sexual energy is the life force energy that runs through us at all times, no matter what we do, and life force energy is sexual energy. It's that energy that brought us into this life. We wouldn't be sitting here and talking with each other if it hadn't been for that energy. However, we are not being introduced to that energy, not even our life force energy when it's in subtle stages.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:You know, you probably had courses in high school or college where you learned about electrical energy or nuclear energy or thermal energy, but did you ever learn about life force energy, human life force energy, in biology class? I didn't. I mean, it was totally absent, although it's the most powerful energy because it brings forth life. Nuclear energy is very powerful as well, but it cannot bring forth life. So we can learn to become aware of that energy that runs through us at all times.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Think of it in the way that life force energy emanates from the base of the spine, our root, all the way up in a serpentine way, like a DNA, all the way up to the top of the head, and then moves down again back in a DNA all the way down to the base of the spine. It moves up on the inhale, it moves down on the exhale and you can think of energy. Like you know, blood flow. We are not aware of our blood flow, but it runs through us at all times. It nourishes us, it brings nutrients to every cell. I mean it's rather remarkable. And the veins and the arteries are the grid for blood flow, for energy flow. In the human being the grid is the nervous system, including the spine. There are lots of nerves that run through the spine. So that is where energy runs along. And we can become more aware of that grid.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:And how we do that is learn more about the conscious breath, because energy can only flow with the breath. When we don't breathe, we die. I mean it's rather obvious. There's even a reflex built into our system, like when we don't get enough air, the lungs. Actually there's a reflex in the lungs that gasps for air so that we don't suffocate. So in our practice we actually teach the sympathetic, the parasympathetic breath. The lung breathing is the sympathetic breath, the belly breathing is the parasympathetic breath. So we want to learn this parasympathetic breath because with that we can learn how to use the breath in a way that we can move energy While we don't generate energy, we can learn to affect the flow of energy.
Freddy Zental Weaver:So one of the things about the breath that's important to know is that when we use the parasympathetic breathing, we give our mind, our thinking, conscious mind, a little space, a little break, because we have to consciously think to bring the breath down and extend the diaphragm which is behind the belly right, and for most of us we can do it for about three breaths before our mind gets distracted Squirrel, you know and we get distracted. But as we continue to practice that, we begin to develop what we call the witness state of mind, where we're just watching the thoughts without what we call the total felt sense of the thought. So that's one of the first distinctions that people learn when they start to incorporate sexual meditation. And what we're teaching is not taking away from all the other stuff or making bad or vilifying all the other wonderful things we do with sex with ourselves, with each other, quickies in the morning. You know, all of that's great.
Freddy Zental Weaver:What we're sharing is something new and old. New in that wow, sexual meditation having to do with something that has nothing to do with sex. You know, how does that affect how I'm living my life, or where I live, or the work that I do, or how I'm experiencing my life. So what's interesting is, when you bring consciousness to the sexual, the kernel of that energy, creativity and pleasure starts showing up in areas that seem completely unrelated to sex, in the simple process of living. So once I bring consciousness in that intimate, altered state of awareness in the breath and energy, awareness with intention, as a meditation, when I start listening in that way, in that deep way, if I said, oh, I hate my job, 30 more years of retirement, that dog wouldn't hunt anymore because the cascading effect of the thought thoughts are energy with my energy, that doesn't feel very good to say I hate where I work, what kind of choice is that in my life? So we start listening and creating and choosing our life differently, as we do these practices.
Candace Fleming:You know I have a silly story. When I was in college, I went to Howard University for acting and one of the classes that we have to take is breathing, and so I actually missed this first class. But when they told me about it and then seeing some of it later, the instructor showed us how to use our breath. She gave us an example, like she sat in the floor on her yoga mat, but the results sounded like a pure orgasm.
Candace Fleming:It was body tremble, tremors. She would get in the yoga pose and allow the breath to just kind of take over her body and allow the noises to come out in the full, whole bodies, like in college, when you're 18, 19 and you're seeing this for the first time. You're really like did our teacher just have a full orgasm in front of us?
Candace Fleming:but, you talk about connecting the breath to sexual energy. It makes sense, because there was one class when I really got into the breath and I can feel it in my vagina and I thought that was really weird. I was like, okay, I'm just breathing, but this breath is contracting things. I'm like, okay, this is weird, so I can.
Candace Fleming:Actually it only happened once, but I can understand how the breath and the sexual energy and how that carries us losing all of that inhibition. And just and there was another time you talk about how the blood flows through our body and it's unconscious. I forgot which class, but same year, freshman year, when they have us getting in tune with all of our bodies, the professor this was professor L Freeman had us quiet our mind and he did this, where we had to focus on every part of our bodies, but not just the outside, and I remember actually feeling the blood in my body circulating. So two interesting stories that somehow can connect.
Freddy Zental Weaver:What's beautiful is that when we I did this show I created this show called sexual, it was called Tantra Nova man initially. Then it exchanges sexual enlightenment and it was a show. It was a one-hour one-man show that I did and I did it all over the world for like 15 years and there were five songs in it and it was all about demystifying sex-level intimacy. So sharing with people who knew nothing of what we were doing in a theater format, sort of like edutainment to these concepts and ideas.
Freddy Zental Weaver:But what's interesting is that my father's a psychiatrist, had this whole thing that he wrote books on called creative self-discovery and what's interesting is you learn, you could, you discover yourself in the creative process and music and movement and art. And so as I was doing this play, this show, I would have to really get connected with myself, to share by deep, intimate self to people I didn't know, 500 people in an audience you know to be as authentic like I'm talking to you now with them and nobody I can't even see them because the lights are blinding. Yeah, like this inner creative process the theater really does for you. I love, love the whole process of it. I sing jazz. Now I'm not gonna do the show anymore, but I was getting too old to jump in and out of the bag and to all the jumping around.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:I'm sure it was a great show. Though you know, when he says he jumping in and out of the bag, it starts out like he has this huge bag all over him over the head. You know, antique does this slow dance.
Freddy Zental Weaver:It looks like a big amoeba that was a symbolism, was that I was like the single-celled amoeba coming out of the slime, humanity birthing itself.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:You know and I had a voiceover going yeah, and then slowly the hand is formed and then he becomes the human and he does this all in a kind of a pendulum, I'm way and then he the sack opens and his face, his head comes out, and then all the way down this you know sack moves down and there he stands in some performances totally naked, talking about being vulnerable and unmasked.
Freddy Zental Weaver:You know, in some art with some audiences we couldn't do it because you know that wherever we would teach, like you know, like Essel and out in California, it's a transformational retreat. In Big Sur we were. We were on faculty there. We go there a couple times a year and there I could do it. I could come out of the bag nude, because that was those. People were working on their stuff. And in other places. Well, could you please wear like a G string or something you know?
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:but anyway, back to the point I want to make was around this energy we have so much like fear, shame, embarrassment, jealousy, you know, and this is not just our own, this has been passed on for generations, you know, over the millennia. However, all these emotional states like embarrassment and shame and fear, they are constricting energies, unlike joy, love, acceleration. You know. They are expansive in terms of energy, opening your flow, all of that. And when we are in these high frequency emotions, we feel alive. So when I feel shame around my sexual self and expressing that, it's not just the sexual, it's also my whole life force which is incumbent.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:So when we do these healing practices, we free ourselves from these constricting emotions and frequencies and we can't become more alive. I mean this example can't, as you said from your class, purely using the breath in a particular way can set us free, you know. And then in the process, of course, we get to see who, like you said, oh, 18 years old when your teacher it sounds like she just has an orgasm. This is not your typical way of a teacher expressing themselves. Yeah, but you know, that is really setting that energy free. And then it's not only free for experiencing pleasure, joy, acceleration bliss. It's also available for expressing myself in the world. No matter what I do, it flows through me. As Freddie said earlier, what's encapsulated in that sexual energy is creativity and pleasure. So if we set it free in some place, it's set free in all other places in our life so you guys teach this practice.
Candace Fleming:What does it look like? So when someone comes to you? They come to you and say I can't experience pleasure, or what is it that? A lot of people come to you with their difficulties, and what is it that you do for them?
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yeah, so we don't do anything for them.
Freddy Zental Weaver:No right.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:We just guide them so that they can do it for themselves. That's the only way how we can shift something. But I know what you meant. What are we doing that sets An?
Freddy Zental Weaver:assist in finding their way.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:And actually reconnecting and Freddie also always calls it rediscovering what we had forgotten.
Freddy Zental Weaver:So yeah, when I say that, it's like okay at the beginning and I'll get to answer that question in just a moment in terms of what they actually get and what they come to us for different things they come to us for, but at the beginning, for all of us, we're in the womb, in its womb service, and it's just wonderful, floating, my God, its womb service. We're just giving food, we don't have to think about anything. It's warm, it's beautiful. Then, all of a sudden, we're born bright lights, we're whacked on the bottom, some guys are getting their wee-wees cut. We're thinking about gee, send me back.
Freddy Zental Weaver:And then life happens good days, bad days, potty training, bullying all this good and bad stuff happened. And then we get to a certain point in our life where we're looking into the world from all of those experiences and we're living out those experiences. They become the belief that we look into the world from. Yet we have an idea of something new that we've never experienced, that we would like to experience, that we see possible. And that's the thing that connects us, that imagination connects us to this elegant design of a universe that goes on forever, this consciousness that we are encapsulating, held in these carbon unit body forms. So to get to that dream that we have an idea about requires letting go of everything that we are in terms of the stories and beliefs that we look into the world from. So to do that again, as I mentioned earlier, we do therapy, we do nature walks, we do meditation retreats, but none of us really learn how to work with the altered state of the cut of the sexual energetic, to get more unmasked in that intimate vulnerability to what we don't see emotionally, energetically belief, story, frequency, right.
Freddy Zental Weaver:So what we teach? And people? So people come to us with a lot of things. People come over. We want to make love.
Freddy Zental Weaver:One couple I remember they came to us and they had lost a son. They loved each other dearly. They'd lost a son like a few years before, five or six years. He was a grown, but they were so bereaved and so really distraught by it that they couldn't connect anymore. Whenever they would start to get sexual with each other or intimate, they would just break into tears and sadness. That intimacy and that vulnerability would just bring them right back to that place. So they come to us with they want to connect again.
Freddy Zental Weaver:And so what we teach in the practice that we teach in the developing, the witness of this clay and these experiences that happen in our life on our way back to wherever we go after we've transitioned out of these forms is just an experience. So what we teach in the witness aspect of that is to be with those kinds of emotions and feelings, with a little bit of a lightness to it, feel it deeply and be willing to and able to let it go, be over there. So they were able to. Conceptually you can understand that, but to get to that through the processes in the altered state is what allowed them to really experience deeply that and get that okay. I can also be okay and I can choose choices. What opens up for people?
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Although it only opens up, this is not an intellectual process. I want to be very clear about that. We actually take people through what we call a recall practice. That allows them to tap into their subconscious Because there's something stuck in the subconscious where they couldn't break free from that memory that had them. They didn't have the memory, the memory had them, and so, in that you know viscous way of tapping into the subconscious, people can see things that they cannot see from their conscious mind, and that is where choice arises, because there may be pleasant experiences or unpleasant experiences. The question then is do I want to perpetuate the unpleasant experience and how that feels in my body and my being, or do I want to leave it in the past, literally leaving it where it belongs Again? This is not a conscious process. This happens in the viscous process.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Yes, so in these exercises and practices that we're talking about, people get actionable insights and they feel things and they can see things. Now, when we teach them the sexual meditation practice and their intention is to let go of some of the suffering and to move towards the loving then in that intimate vulnerability, that unmasked, altered state of what happens in the sexual, perhaps being given to their partner, is their giver. So it's not mutual love making, there's a construct. So if she or he gets excited and they're giving, they're not to engage sexually with them, they're supposed to. Just we teach them specific ways to be with them Anyway. So in that altered state one can get in touch with the sadness and the grief in a deep way and in touch with their desire to want to reconnect as well. There's an unmasking that happens in that place you can't hide from yourself. So what do you do with an actionable insight Once you? Okay, thanks for helping me understand here. But then how it lives energetically is the opportunity in that sexual unmasked, altered state, to really get to something?
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:So what's required for that? So this is a practice that doesn't come at the beginning. The practice that Freddie talks about is there are two distinct practices. One is dedicated to the woman. We call it the yoni ritual.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yoni is the sacred space of the woman the sexual center of a woman and that is dedicated to her, where she is the receiver, the woman being in a receiver role for an hour, one and a half hours, two hours. What may open up in that state that may not be available when we have mutual lovemaking, which is wonderful, and not to throw this out with a bathwater, these rituals enhance mutual lovemaking, they inform the way we make love with each other. So the rituals are there to actually open something up that is not otherwise available, and the other thing is that so let's say, I'm the receiver in the yoni ritual, freddie is the giver. For the giver, his job is to be fully there. He is not there for his own gratification. That doesn't mean that he may not feel wonderful, doesn't mean that he may not get aroused. However, he doesn't act on it. He uses this energy, breathes that wonderful energy up from his lingam, which is magic wand in English, or the penis. Magic wand or wand of light sounds much more endearing.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Especially than maybe dickhead.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:So he breathes up this wonderful lingam energy, magic wand energy into his heart and uses this energy to support her. And when a man can be there like that for his partner, or like I did it, I went solo when I started practicing Tantra. I worked with a practice partner and it was not about having sex, it was about assisting each other, opening something up that may be the key to the very thing we want to experience or open up in our life, or clear out and release and heal. So, of course, the other way around as well, where the man is the receiver.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:By the way, these practices are not just for men and women, they just apply also to same-sex couples, bisexual a pair, transgender people, because in every relationship, if there is not a feminine masculine dynamic or Yin and Yang dynamic, there is no magnetism.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:If we are both masculine, it goes like this we are straight, linear, protruding, going for it.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:If we are both more in the feminine, the Yin, we are just floating around, we don't know if we're coming or going, but the masculine Yang actually complements the flowing of the feminine Yin. So, anyway, to complete, in terms of the rituals, so when the man receives, it is very much for him about the exploration of transmuting, of channeling his wonderful Lingam testosterone energy from his sexual center up into his heart, where he then becomes more connected with himself, more present to himself. He can do this in a solo practice or in the partner practice where, if it were a Friday and May, I would be the giver, and then it applies to me as well. I hold the line I'm there to support, I'm there to serve so that he can channel his wonderful energy, and I use every stroke very consciously so that I don't just get him over the top, because in the Tandric practice and Fred is going to talk more about that it's all about for the men to learn separating a checkulation from orgasm.
Candace Fleming:Okay. So, mind blown, I have questions. So because you practice Tantra Nova and you teach it and everything, do you approach sex from a Tantra Nova perspective every time? No, no, no.
Freddy Zental Weaver:No, if it's anywhere, it's everywhere. So once you really get the subtleties of pleasure, you don't just jump right in, You're not going to be unconscious. But I mean, what I'm saying is the ritual stands alone as a ritual. So not every time we make love it's a ritual. Okay, so the ritual that we teach in the workshops are designed like, again, there are roles, there's a receiver and there's a giver, as opposed to mutual love making. You're giving and receiving. It's back and forth, right, and so it can culminate in a lot of different ways. There's no particular idea, you don't necessarily set an intention, you aren't guiding someone in that sort of construct, but yet the feelings of the subtleties of pleasure are there. If that's anywhere, it's everywhere. But what I was going to go back to, was, and also about the breath Just a moment.
Freddy Zental Weaver:What I was going to go back to was the man gets to get in touch with the unconsciousness around his sexual self. Because we as men are modeled to have two emotions. That are okay that's either fucking or fighting. But yet intimacy, tenderness, nurturing, is not something that is, like quote, okay for guys to exhibit. So in the tantric practices, in the process of uncoupling the unconscious proclivity to want to just connect sexually with the lingam and learn how to bring that energy up to your heart, with some focused attention, muscle control and breath awareness, really begins to open the woman's heart to trusting again. And because we have a lot of couples you mentioned earlier, asked earlier, what do they come here for? And a lot of couples come in there in the middle of their sexual aliveness in their 30s, maybe 40s, and she's like I don't know if he loves me. He's like, of course I love you, baby, look at my erection right. And she's like, yeah, but can you kiss me with your heart?
Freddy Zental Weaver:And that's not something guys learn, because for guys, again, with that limited emotional modeling or belief, the only time that they can really be open and intimate and loving and tender is when they're in their sexual self. So when they're in that intimate sexual piece, they're like screaming and yelling and feeling and intimate and touching and so on and loving. So that's where they start feeling. So once they learn some discipline and some consciousness around that, that opens up a new space for them. It starts to integrate what we call that yin yang polarity. Yes, jen, okay.
Janet Hale:I'm so enjoying you guys. I talk a lot and I have been silent. So because I'm just enjoying it and watching your wife's movements and others are not able to see her- First of all, she's beautiful.
Candace Fleming:Let's just say that she's gorgeous, it doesn't matter.
Janet Hale:We were like what?
Candace Fleming:She's beautiful she had me fixing my posture.
Janet Hale:You were like whoa whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Yeah, we did. We were like okay, sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry At. The reason why I bring that up is because I know they don't have the visual. And when she's talking, what I'm seeing is a dance. I'm watching her body movements, the way she's moving her hands, the way she's talking, and it brings me to what I believe you guys are teaching, and that is to live in that space. To live in that space where we are free to be who we are Right.
Janet Hale:To be able to let go of whatever. Like I love when your wife said about the memory how the memory has you. You don't have the memory.
Freddy Zental Weaver:That's real.
Janet Hale:That's real, real, real real.
Freddy Zental Weaver:It's everywhere.
Janet Hale:We all got it, it's everywhere and to learn and listening to you guys, and to learn that we must love ourselves first, and once we've mastered the man, then we're able to give us some good stuff.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Yes, yes, yes To teach us the physical?
Janet Hale:I'm not, I'm talking, you know. I'm saying the whole, the interactions that we're having every day, the conversations that we're having, the love making. That's not even physical.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Right.
Janet Hale:So that's what I'm hearing, and when I'm watching her talk, I'm like I wish they could see this. She's like how you got to do this? Look at her. She's just like tell me how to do this and so those are.
Janet Hale:Because you guys are talking, I was writing some things down. The other thing I thought about too and I speak to women on this, not that I had the PhD and did that major, because they won't send me one, I guess I won't get in school, but anyway. So the energy, the feminine and the masculine energy. And so I think a lot of times that women are caught up in our masculine energy because we have built a wall because he's not coming. He's disappointed me so many times that I've got to be him, and so when he shows up, we're not ready. We're manifesting the thing that we don't want. I think that was meant, you guys. You know what I mean, right, yeah?
Freddy Zental Weaver:yeah, yeah.
Janet Hale:And so I just think I was so excited about you guys coming on this show, like when are they coming? Okay, I need to know, because I don't want to miss this at all. Oh yeah, that's great, yeah, but I just think it's so important. But there's kind of information to get out there to understand that it's okay to be free, it is so okay, and we're not taught that, like you can't be nude on stage, why not? Why can't I be nude on stage?
Freddy Zental Weaver:Well, anyway, I hope you read our book or you listen to it.
Janet Hale:Oh, I am.
Freddy Zental Weaver:You can get a sense of kind of where we came from.
Candace Fleming:Yeah, tell us about the book, since you brought it up. Tell people where they can find the book and what the book consists of.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yes, it's called sexual enlightenment how to create lasting fulfillment in life, love and intimacy. It's available on Amazon, both in hard copy and in Audible, so you can listen to it. There are practices in it, so that's one way of learning more what the Tantric practice and you know what you could get from learning from Tantra Nova, from our work. Even if you cannot come to a workshop, there are many ways you can actually learn with us. So one opportunity is the book. Another opportunity is, like you know that we want to give the audience, everyone who is listening, a free gift, and this gift is a video class where we introduce you to sexual meditation, so that if you could put this into the show now yes yes, it will be Great.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:and then, of course also our website has a lot of resources, and there you can learn more about our workshops and private programs workshops for women only, for men only co-ed workshops for couples and singles, where singles get to be paired up with another single, and so the website URL is Tantra Nova dot com T-A-N-T-R-A-N-O-V-A dot com Tantra Nova. Like supernova, tantra Nova you can make a little rhyme right, so that's also a great way. And then, of course, you can contact us if you like to learn more, or with a gift the sexual meditation gift you actually also get a complimentary consultation when you pick that gift up. So we just know that out of this conversation probably things got, you know.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Opened up percolated.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yes, and curious curiosity, and given that we cannot do really practices here, but in the video there are concrete practices, including the belly breath, the parasympathetic breathing, and then about the energy how you can connect more with your energy, how you can listen to it, how you can identify, how you can channel it. All of that is in that video, so please pick it up and learn more and bring it into your life. If you have a beloved, bring it into your relationship.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Into your dreams what it is. You want more with that.
Candace Fleming:So you guys do in person and online, or online only? Yeah, both.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:So the All Women's Workshop and the All Men's Workshop can be attended either in person here at the Institute in Chicago or by Zoom online. So it's a they are hybrid workshops. Our co-ed workshops so far all have been in person, because there's some, you know, about working with a partner and they are the practices we teach. And the first workshop is very much about how to cultivate emotional intimacy, because we cannot really experience sexual intimacy without deepening emotional intimacy. I'm not saying that we couldn't have sex. I can have sex and enjoy it no two bodies together but that doesn't mean that we are intimately connected. You know, there's nothing wrong about it. It's just the first level, so to speak. So we are about expanding into many, many levels that are available.
Candace Fleming:How many workshops would, on average, a person need to go to in order to, kind of reach their sexual energy peak?
Freddy Zental Weaver:Well, you know they can tap in almost immediately the first workshop that they might do, the emotional awareness exercises and so on. But you know again, it's an ongoing practice, it's moment by moment. We are always doing our work. You know, if things don't stop coming up between us, they just don't stick around as long. And you know we don't spin it like when you get angry or sad or disappointed or whatever it might be. That's like we're animals, we're emotional, we feel things but then we remember it and we relive it like it just happened. And so that's the practice of learning to separate and be a little witness to that thinking and story and cascading effect and start to choose how I want to feel. I can't change the weather, but I can change how I feel about it.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:So let me just answer your question in terms of, because we have developed our curriculum in a progressive way so that you know, once a woman has taken the women's workshop, she may also want to start coming right to the co-ed workshop. It depends on where she is or where the when a solo guy, a single guy comes where they are in their life. You know, even when couples come, they we just had a couple that where they decided okay, the men wants to go first into the men's workshop with Freddie, the woman came into the women's workshop with me and in January they are coming back for the co-ed workshop. You know, some couples just jump right into the co-ed workshop. So it depends on where they are at what they may want to explore further. It's very individually different and so they can start where they want to either the women's workshop or the men's workshop or the co-ed workshop. They are. We call them all foundations workshops because that is where the foundation gets laid.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:And then we have an advanced workshop for men and women, couples and singles, where we teach sexual intimacy, where we teach these rituals, the Yoni ritual, the Lingam ritual. Everyone had already prior work, so that is not a new, you know people are already familiar with, with the spirit of the work they have done practices, they did their homework, you know, their body has changed, their nervous system is more open, and then we go to these sexual rituals that then, of course, open up whole new spaces. And, by the way, that Yoni ritual was really the pivotal moment for me in my Tendric journey, where I had that opening into trusting. You know, and I cannot receive, I cannot surrender to myself in another unless I trust. So this is pretty deep.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:And it leads me back to what you said about many of us women that we have moved so much into the Yang energy, the masculine, to protect ourselves, to be in control, to not have to feel the disappointment again.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:And to that I want to say what I have learned in my, you know, not so short life is that unless I learn to fully love myself and experience myself as the source of aliveness, as the source of being in love, as long as I look over there to another where I can have that feeling being in love, I'm still dependent. Now that doesn't mean that I couldn't share that feeling in love with myself, in love with life itself, that I can share this with a beloved, or with bringing in a beloved into my life, but it's not because of him. It is already here Now. That took me a long time I'm 74 years old now and I think that took me at least 70, 72 years to become more aware of that and ever since I've been cultivating, cultivating, cultivating the connection with self and living my life from the source of me being in love.
Candace Fleming:Thank you, yes, thank you so much for that. With the workshops, people who are looking to get into them, what is the average cost for the workshops? Do you have sliding scale? Do you work around people's budgets? Do you take insurance? What does it look like financially for people looking to get into the workshops?
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:So they differ a little bit. The workshops, for example, the women's workshop is $1,300, the men's workshop is $1,200, the foundation's co-ed workshop is $1,200 per person, Although when they are ready to move forward, we like to offer what we call a fast action scholarship People who want to commit themselves, because once we commit ourselves, things start opening up. People often say once I decided to sign up for the workshop, things started moving in my life and the workshop was not until two months later. So that would be another $300 down. We offer very generous customized payment plans. People can stretch it over months at times and we are very trusting too because we trust that they will, even if they have completed the workshop, that they will complete their payment plan, because where we come from is like we don't want money to be in the way of someone's transformation, so we co-create with them so that they can create it that sometimes they pay $100 per month.
Janet Hale:Yes, Janet, when I was listening to the way, the payment and all that, the thing that came to mind is we must feel worthy that we are worth whatever it costs, and that's the thing that came to me as you guys were talking about, and you are, we all are, and I think that's what it looks like, sometimes just like pulling teeth. I bought that Cadillac?
Freddy Zental Weaver:Yeah, right, exactly you know we can get a piece of it, but I'm going to spend the $1,200 on getting me together. Yeah, or say to my marriage, or whatever.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Saving myself.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Saving myself.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:How important is me to me? Yeah, Is my relationship to me and to us? You know, then the conversation totally shifts, then there's something at stake. Yeah, we work only with people who are fully committed to themselves to produce an opening and a breakthrough. People aren't there. It's not. You have to be there to.
Freddy Zental Weaver:yes, yeah, people quickly once they start looking into us. Get that this is not learning some new sexual tricks. You know, which is oftentimes guys hear oh God, you know I heard Sting lasts for eight hours, you know, in his lovemaking sessions. Well, it's not like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom for eight hours be broken hips and people in wheelchairs, you know.
Janet Hale:Of course, let's break down the lovemaking, let's break that work down, you know, connecting, you know.
Freddy Zental Weaver:but once they get that, then they can either be in or they're out. But once they get it and they're in, then they're in and they get what they come to get. Yeah.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:And also and Candy has given that you are asking about the workshops and all of that the workshop, once you, you know, register, it comes with a promise.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:And the promise is that that what you set out as your intention and everybody fills out an intention form with respect to what they want to get out of a workshop or out of a private program we also work privately with individuals as well as with couples that that what they set out, that that comes to fruition by the end of the workshop. You know that is a biggie, pretty big promise we are making. But we know that our work can produce that, you know, because the work is designed to produce a fundamental shift. You know, like moving from a flat world into a round world is a fundamental shift. It's not a little different, incrementally changed. No, it's totally different, because I can do things in the round world I could not do in the flat world, I couldn't sail around the world in the flat world, and so in the same way, that's an analogy of what opens up the work through. What's opened up through the work is that then people have experiences.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Choice.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:They have connections with themselves. They. Some women come back and said I never felt that level of pleasure. I didn't even know I could feel it. Others come back and see what's in the way for them and that it's not another. It's that being with yourself in a self love practice for an hour. That may be very confronting freaking. Confronting, because many women never have spent that much time with themselves. So it's very different from masturbation, where I get it on and get it off, you know being your own lover.
Freddy Zental Weaver:That's another level.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yeah, oh, yeah. So to be with myself in that intimate way can be a challenge. On the other hand, it supports the woman to break through the very thing that keeps her from perhaps bringing the beloved into their life or having the wonderful sexual intimate connection With a beloved, or you know, dating is no longer a chore. It's like dancing with a dating partner, so to speak. Because we explore together, we can co create, instead of having all these expectations to be fulfilled by the other. Did that answer your question, candice?
Candace Fleming:Yes, yes, yes, I'm going to. Okay, we are at time and over, but I'm going to ask a question that I know the audience is probably wondering how often are you guys making love?
Freddy Zental Weaver:Every day.
Candace Fleming:Every day.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Every day.
Candace Fleming:Now, is this intercourse, or is it?
Freddy Zental Weaver:It could be a variety of different ways of connecting. You know, it's not always what people assume is in terms of intimacy. We might just even in the morning, just connect with a heart to heart connection. You know, I may massage her at night, or maybe intercourse, or maybe entering in slow, or maybe her touching me, I touch her. It could be a lot of things that don't always appear like what people think. Oh, are you having sex, are you? You know? You know it's multi dimensional.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yeah, yeah. At the very core of our daily practice is breathing together. Now we have done it so many times. It's just, that's just what. When we do, when we embrace each other, or when Freddie leaves in the morning to go work out, you know, then we hug each other and for three breaths we breathe. Let me.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Let me say to you know, once you start tuning into the subtleties of pleasure. There it's everywhere. It's in your breath, it's in your touch, it's in your gaze, it's in the wind on your skin.
Janet Hale:Yes, I was going to say you guys, when she asked about the how often do you make love? Hmm, in my opinion, you may love in this session. Hmm, yeah. See you see, you know me. Yeah, the pleasure was here, because it was here, it was, it was all of it.
Freddy Zental Weaver:All of it was there we were, all we were having a menage quattro here. Or we were having, or early we were having.
Candace Fleming:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we weren't we were mentally stimulate me yes.
Janet Hale:You know, you guys, we are to see each other and just the interaction, the whole, just watching you to the whole, the respect level, the wait. One moment I need to say this Okay, all right. And then oh, let me go back to that Again your wife and her dance. I wish they all could see it.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yeah, but you know, Janet, you can see it because you have it too.
Janet Hale:Yes, thank you.
Freddy Zental Weaver:You're a dancer, we can see you dance.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:You are as a tuned to your erotic. Yeah, please, energy. You know you're very central.
Janet Hale:Yes, yes.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Oh, it's so obvious and you know it. Wait a minute.
Janet Hale:I was like okay.
Candace Fleming:Do I just say yep you got me.
Janet Hale:You got me, yeah, but the love making. I just wanted to say that to that when she asked that question. Well, thank you.
Candace Fleming:Did you? Did you have anything else that you wanted to ask them?
Freddy Zental Weaver:as we are over time at this point, Well, I would just suggest, oh yes, oh, janet, to ask yes.
Candace Fleming:Oh, did I want to ask? Did you have anything you wanted to ask?
Janet Hale:Thank, you for that. I just wanted to say thank you very much for coming on here and bringing this out in the open, because it is needed. This is so needed that I'm glad to finally meet somebody you know, get this.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Yes, beautiful.
Candace Fleming:Yes, thank you, thank you Is there anything that you all would like to ask us or give the audience before we sign out.
Freddy Zental Weaver:Well, happy holidays everyone. Thank you both for having us on your platform and for all of us listening to keep choosing your life. Yes, to bring your life.
Dr. Elsbeth Meuth:Thank you, thank you so much. Lots of love to you, janet, to you, candice, and love from my heart to everyone who is listening in. Yes, kisses.
Candace Fleming:Thank you.
Freddy Zental Weaver:What a pleasure.
Candace Fleming:Did you want to play kisses? Okay, thank you guys, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
