Tantra

Tantra

Naked Ambition

-Ancient Hindu Sex Practice Gets a NewAge Makeover

By Asra Q. Nomani -Wall Street Journal Staff Reporter

Tantra may be old, but it has generated a hot modern market.The hottest new wrinkle in America's "feel good" industry - the teaching of tantra. At the peak of the tantric market are the Muirs…America's most successful tantra Entrepreneurs.

"Sexual healing" is very much the point…"The course" helps participants deal with everything from jealousy to sexual abuse. But the focus is largely on teaching techniques and putting extra zip into sex lives. (Upon returning to the course Sunday morning, one finds) a circle of couples, most of them beaming.

Santa Cruz, Calif, --Clean-cut venture capitalist Greg Lindae and his girlfriend , Allison Stern, a jewelry designer, gaze into each other's eyes here at the ballroom of the Best Western Seacliff Inn, candles flickering around them.

Ms. Stern is his "goddess," here to be "worshipped." A teacher in the presence of scores of other students, will soon explain how.

Before that, though, Ms. Stern must learn to open her heart by slipping between the arms of another man. "Look past to the next guy," her teacher instructs.

"Sometimes it's easier with a stranger. You don't have issues with them." She takes three steps to her left, presses the palms of her hands together, fingers upward against her chest, in the Hindu ritual of greeting. Ms. Stern stares into the stranger's eyes, as the teacher intones: "Be the little girl. Now men, be cute. Be the little boy. Show her your Doberman eyes." They draw closer.

"It's kindergarten Tantra," says the man in the front of the ballroom, Charles Muir, 50 years old and a Bronx, N.Y., native. It's hardly child's play, though. Mr. Lindae and Ms. Stern, both 34 and both from San Francisco, have plunked down $695 for a weekend workshop sponsored by Mr. Muir's Maui-based company, Hawaiian Goddess Inc. It's among the scores of upstart concerns cashing in big on the hottest new wrinkle in America's "feel good" industry -- the teachings of Tantra, an ancient and sexually inclined subset of Hinduism and Buddhism.

Tantra, as a quasireligious doctrine, dates back 4,000 years to India; its first texts were in Sanskrit and its original adherents practiced ritual copulation -- essentially, for them, a form of yoga meant to achieve an arrest of all mental processes en route to a mystical bond with the "oneness of the universe." As part of those beliefs, women were those beliefs, women were goddesses meant to be worshiped by men on the path to mutual cosmic bliss. Sex was the means, but not the point.

In the hands of America's New Age marketers, sex, or "sexual healing," is very much the point and profit is more often than not the motive. Trading on testimonials from Hollywood celebrities like Woody Harrelson and using a vocabulary borrowed from Hinduism and pop psychology, modern Tantra advocates are spinning Tantra into an eccentric market racking up perhaps tens of millions of dollars in annual sales.

At the same seminar attended by Mr. Lindae and Ms. Stern, 56 other couples and about 30 singles have paid earnest money to be led by Mr. Muir and his wife Caroline "Queenie" Muir, 55, in group sessions that promise to help participants deal with everything from jealousy to sexual abuse. But the focus is largely on teaching techniques aimed at putting extra zip into sex lives, notably by teaching men that the best way to please their female partners (or goddesses) is by delaying, as long as possible, their own orgasms. No less an expert than Judy Kuriansky -- "Dr. Judy" to listeners of her nationally syndicated radio show -- has attended several of the Muirs' workshops. She proclaims, "I'm a believer."

So, obviously, is Mr. Muir, who was a yoga instructor before he became one of America's most successful Tantra entrepreneurs; Hawaiian Goddess will ring up $50,000 in revenues on this weekend alone. And beyond these "goddess worship" and "sacred sex" weekends, the Tantra industry has also spawned weeklong, $350-a-night vacation packages in places like Bali, Indonesia, and four-night, $1,750 courses at Arizona's posh Canyon Ranch spa.

On top of that are rafts of cassettes, explicit how-to videos and best-selling books, plus scads of Web sites hawking Tantra courses, workshops and accessories. Numerous colleges and universities, such as Louisiana State University and the University of Virginia, also teach Tantra theory (often as part of their religious-study programs), as does the San Francisco-based Learning Annex, a longstanding alternative-education concern specializing in night classes for busy professionals. "It's real New Age," says Learning Annex Chief Executive Stephen Seligman.

Tantra made its first splash in America in 1981, though as a matter of some controversy. Its chief apostle was the Oregon commune leader known as Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, an Indian who was eventually booted from the U.S. for immigration fraud. He moved his free-love Tantra commune back to Pune, India, in 1985, changed his name to Osho and died in 1990. But he proved somewhat prophetic when he told his followers in 1974, "The days of Tantra are coming. Sooner or later, Tantra will explode for the first time in the masses, because for the first time the time is ripe -- ripe to take sex naturally."

Still, though '90s marketers are determined to take Tantra mainstream, Tantra continues to be dogged by controversy. Some adherents teach a form of Tantra in which they sleep with their disciples while encouraging them to take multiple sex partners. Law-enforcement authorities complain that it sometimes is simply a front for prostitution. And there have been a number of sex-crime charges leveled at Tantra practitioners: Consider the 1996 conviction of an Edmonds, Wash., hypnotherapist and Tantra apostle for four counts of second-degree rape; he had been charged with having sex with patients, telling them that Tantra was "necessary therapy to heal." Moreover, some scholars of ancient Tantric practices decry the sex-centered commercialism of many American Tantra teachers.

None of this seems to damp the enthusiasm of Tantra's new wave of entrepreneurs, who see the mix of sex and New Age cachet as an irresistible selling point to Americans shedding their inhibitions and willing to treat their sex lives like their tennis games -- as something to be worked on, preferably with the help of a pro. In fact, in the wild scramble for a share of the growing Tantra market, practitioners are increasingly acting like start-ups in the early days of the personal-computer industry, carving out niches that they flog with aggressive marketing, usually on the Internet.

Among those at the peak of the Tantric market are the Muirs, whose successful enterprises, touting a form of monogamous Tantra, have gotten them variously dubbed "the Ken and Barbie of Tantra" or "Mr. and Mrs. Tantra." In a move that sent shockwaves through the Tantra world, however -- and left some competitors gleeful -- Mr. and Mrs. Tantra separated about 15 months ago after admitting their own personal relationship was far from monogamous. But the Muirs, through their workshops and accessory sales that they continue to operate together. (The Muirs have since reunited and rededicated their marriage)

Others have tried to distinguish themselves from the Muirs by openly advocating "polyamory" -- seeking of Tantric bliss through multiple partners, which is in fact a tenet of ancient Tantra. One of these is Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Joe Banks, 59, an Osho follower who goes by the name Swami Nostradamus Virato. A onetime computer salesman, he runs the Nepal Institute in Black Mountain, N.C., where he sometimes shocks students by showing up and dancing naked in the classroom while encouraging them to engage in open free sex with one another there. On one Web-site posting, he declares, "I do not judge marriage, but I must examine why it is that there is a need."

And then there is Marie Elizabeth Naslednikov, another veteran of the Pune (pronounced poo-nah) commune who now goes by the name of Margot Anand. A Paris-born, Sorbonne-educated psychologist who studied everything from yoga to bioenergetics, Gestalt therapy and Taoism, she has developed an international school of "skydancing Tantra." By dint of a book, "The Art of Sexual Ecstasy," that sold well among mainstream readers, Ms. Naslednikov is perhaps closest to being a household Tantra name.

Still others, like Hawaiian-based entrepreneurs Claudine Decosterd, 42, and Raphael Sharpe, 50, seize on New Age angles; their Maui workshops allow participants to swim and undulate with dolphins as part of their Tantric breathing exercises. Not to be left out, even Osho's old enterprise returned to the U.S. last year, moving into the 46th floor of a building in midtown Manhattan, where director Klaus Steeg, president of Osho International, cuts copyright deals to spread the late guru's teachings. The shelves are filled with Tantra books distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc. in New York, Tantra audiotape meditations and a 1,139-page tome of Osho's Tantric ruminations called "The Book of Secrets," published by St. Martin's Press.

As in most highly competitive industries, this scramble for market share means the Tantra business isn't always the laid-back place that its teachings might suggest. Ms. Naslednikov, for one, sneers at the explosion of Tantra practitioners, some of whom she says got into the field just because "people decide they love to make love." She declares that "80% of Tantra teachers should be discarded."

Mr. Muir, though his Tantric teachings aren't all that different from those of his neighbors, Ms. Decosterd, who goes by the name Kutira, and Mr. Sharpe out in Maui, nonetheless scoffs at their New Age-dolphin experiment as "airy fairy." Replies Ms. Decosterd: "The Muirs are about technique, and Tantra isn't all about technique."

Strange Bedfellows

Whatever the feud or the flavor, Tantra workshops are still not exactly places for those unwilling to shed their inhibitions. In a Tantra weekend in the Omagaki Wilderness Centre outside Pembroke, Ontario, this past July, Al Link, 53, a former college economics professor, who wears tinted glasses and his hair in a bleached-blond mohawk, and his wife Beverley "Pala" Copeland, 48, work the nine participants through costume dress-up, tongue exercises with oranges and a game of musical chairs designed to teach that sex should include a mix of play and technique.

All weekend, participants practice "the passion pump," a breathing exercise the teachers say helps move sexual energy from the groin area and up through the back to the head. Three couples pay 598 Canadian dollars ($388.70) to work through classic marriage issues: a husband whose eyes stray, another husband who wants more sex than his wife does. The rest are three single guys who paid C$350 hoping to learn how to have "sacred sex," not to mention multiple orgasms -- one of Tantra's claims.

At one point, because there aren't enough single women to go around, Frederic Pouyot, an Ottawa computer programmer, finds himself washing the feet of another man in a small basin of hot water -- not exactly what he had in mind. He then gets blindfolded, and fed tomato slices by his accidental male partner. At another time, fully clothed, he gets up to dance in a scrum of other blindfolded dancers. The idea of such exercises, the Tantra teacher intones, is to learn "emotional release." To get participants to "vent," the teachers require them to thrash the floor with towels while howling.

To learn to create a "sacred shrine" for sex, they fill a small area with a carpet, candles and personal mementos. One man puts down a paperweight he brought back from a Hong Kong business trip. Mr. Pouyot brings a red rose from home and props it against a potted plant. "It symbolizes love. It's beautiful, and it's plastic. It'll last forever," he says, pulling his fellow students out of meditation and into giggles.

This course turns out to be preparation for one this past weekend in which Mr. Pouyot and a female Tantra partner performed intimate Tantric rituals naked in a room with other couples.

California Dreaming

On a more recent weekend in Marina del Rey, Calif., another wrinkle in the Tantra market is unfolding -- a "dakini" workshop. Dakini is the Sanskrit term for a Tantric priestess; in the ancient Tantra concept, some dakinis performed "sexual healings" at temples, particularly for soldiers returning from war.

There are no battle-scarred soldiers about, but Corynna Clarke has filled a bedroom of her two-bedroom apartment with burning candles, soothing music and Hindu deity statues. Six would-be dakinis squeeze in on the wall-to-wall carpet to listen to Ms. Clarke, who legally changed her name from Corynne Clarchick and now calls herself Dr. Corynna Clarke, explain the fine art of Tantra to them. (She says she has a doctorate in spiritual counseling from a holistic institute.) They have all paid $600 for six Saturday classes.

Ms. Clarke, 26, says she used to run an escort service under a pseudonym until she learned Tantra at one of the Muirs' workshops and later as a... partner to Mr. Muir. She dumped the escort business and started a Tantra-training company, Temple of the Goddess. It includes a Web site with not just promos for her own business, but paid advertisements by "sexual goddesses," with names like "GoDiva" and "Moon Goddess," offering their own Tantric services -- "bath and massage" or "double goddess" ceremonies, for example. (Her sister is one of the "goddesses" and also advertises on the site, even though "she kind of thinks Tantra is a cult," says Ms. Clarke.)

Ms. Clarke estimates her new business takes in about $2,000 a day -- about what she made running her escort service. For her own services, she charges $390 for hour-and-a-half sessions, screening callers who just want sex by asking them, "What are you looking to get out of the session?"

Does she ever have sex with clients? Ms. Clarke, who wears a Hindu bindi, or "third eye," on her forehead, says she sometimes lets an inner Tantric voice decide. "I don't question the voice because it comes from the goddess within me," she explains.

In her recent dakini class, she has brought in a team teacher, Sharon Seabrook, to help put her students through their paces. Known as "Shara," Ms. Seabrook slips off a white-gauze sarong from over her white G-string bikini as she climbs on a massage table to straddle the table with Ms. Clarke's live-in boyfriend, Evan Sarver 30, a Web designer, who sits naked, his face just inches from hers. He has volunteered as a kind of Tantra guinea pig.

"What are your goals today?" she whispers.

He hesitates, then says, "I'd like my work to flow more smoothly."

"Is there anything more?" she asks, more deliberately.

"Well, I have an energy twitch through my right elbow. I work on computers," he offers.

"Anything more?" she tries again.

"Uh, well, my shoulder and my back hurt," he says.

She stops asking, puts her hand on his back and says, "Send a little gratitude into all those organs that make your life perfect." Then, taking off her bikini top, she rocks his body with hers, in a slow, intimate massage as Ms. Clarke, and the dakinis-in-waiting, watch rapturously -- some of them taking notes.

When Ms. Seabrook asks Ms. Clarke's boyfriend a sexually explicit question aimed at coaxing him into a Tantric state, he can't seem to find his inner voice -- in fact, any voice at all. At last, he mumbles an unintelligible answer. The class later breaks for discussion.

Meeting the Muirs

For show, though, it's hard to beat the Muirs, who still teach together despite their separation. (The Muirs have since reunited and rededicated their marriage) In the back of the room at the Santa Cruz Best Western, where their workshop is being held, they have lined the walls with promotions for their other Tantric offerings, including a $3,100, nine-night "Tantric vacation seminar" in Bali.

There are also rows of Maui Moisturizing Body Oil, a stack of their books, videos and cassettes and brochures for their two-year program in which they certify graduates as "Certified Tantric Educator" and "Certified Love Coaches." The program includes classes in "successful business dynamics and marketing techniques." So far, they've had two graduates. (Mare Simone and Diane Greenberg)

At one point, like spectators watching gladiators in an arena, the class gathers around Mrs. Muir, in a black bodysuit, as she simulates sexual positions and massages on Mr. Muir, clad in tight underwear. Diane Greenberg, 40, a dakini who says she lives in a house with a well-known Hollywood couple, wraps her legs around the sitting Mr. Muir to show sexual positions and advises, "Pillow talk takes practice."

"What would be pillow talk?" asks Caroline Korybut, a 27-year-old high-school teacher.

"Breathe my heart in through the crown of your head. Feel the circuit of my love," she offers.

Part of the class includes yoga. As he leads the group through a stretch, Mr. Muir coaxes, "Try to spread the love and compassion to your thighs." Then: "Spread love to your back."

...Monica Giles, a Larkspur, Calif., dental hygienist, stands in the middle of a "puja circle" created by Mr. Muir. She, and five other single women, are surrounded by seven single men sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed.

Ms. Giles's teenage son is spending the weekend at an outdoors camp.

As Tantra master, Mr. Muir instructs the women to hold hands, "breathing energy" out their right hands and "honor the goddess within you." He says anyone can leave: "Here are your choices. You can go home alone and experiment by yourself. Or you can say, 'I'd like to experience sacred-spot massage and I'm willing to trust someone to do it with me.'"

He then guides them to choose a "sacred-spot massage" partner.

"If you are chosen," he tells the men, "you're making a commitment to serve the goddess in whatever form she comes to you." He adds, to giggles: "Even if she doesn't come in the form of that blonde you were hoping for."

"Go and choose a man and hold his hands," he tells the women.

The couples, like Ms. Stern and Mr. Lindae, have already left to do their homework.

Days earlier, when she agreed to go to the workshop with a male friend, Ms. Giles asked him, "Do we have to share?"

Now, instead of choosing her friend, she goes to a stranger she had met in the workshop the night before and takes his hands.

"Open your eyes, guys, and behold the gift," Mr. Muir says.

That night, Ms. Giles and her new partner pick up citrus Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers and coconut macaroons -- gifts for the "sacred temple" he plans to create for her.

When they return in the morning, they find a circle of couples -- most of them beaming. Ms. Giles will confess only two things: Her goddess was served and, "Oh, my God, my best friend is going to think I'm nuts."