Video Transcript:

I want to talk to you today about sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse. If you’ve ever experienced any of these in your life, you know how debilitating these can be in your adult life. I know from my own experience of sexual abuse in my childhood and mental abuse as part of that that it has taken me over two decades to heal from those experiences. I’ve done so much work on myself in relation to those that I would say life is much more abundant, much more beautiful, much more freer in myself that I don’t feel haunted by the experience. But there’s a little residual effects that are still there and keep me on my toes and remembering the healing journey i’ve been through. The reason that I teach Tantra is that it deeply, deeply heals these wounds that are part of sexual abuse, trauma, physical abuse, mental abuse. I know for me in my own Tantra training that it was hell on earth and I had already spent three years in counselling coming to terms with understanding the abuse and understanding why it had happened, understanding its impact to me. I spent three years in therapy and really got to terms with it on a very mental level and on a very emotional level but there was always something for me about the body still remembering even though my mind and my emotional self were further ahead.

What I met in Tantra, it would be fair to tell you that my Tantra training was hell on earth, well it was either hell on earth or it was absolutely amazingly ecstatic and beautiful and I kind of had the polarities of these two experiences. Either I was doing exercises that were absolutely hell on earth like, for me when I first went into the Tantric space, I actually thought everyone wanted to abuse me or consume me or almost gobble me up alive so I kind of put up what I call my ‘fuck off barrier’ and I realised that’s what I put up in life to protect myself and keep myself. My ‘fuck off barrier’ does a really good job of keeping people at distance but there’s a problem with that strategy in that it distances me from people and it distances me from intimacy and it distances me from love. For me, something I learn in Tantra is how to explore and trust other people’s intention of why they were approaching me and when they are approaching me what place is that coming from: is it coming from a place of love? And then there’s a confusion for me if someone’s attracted to me my ‘fuck off barrier’ would come up but actually how could I be with that interaction if I came into my heart. I also found in my Tantra training that there were practices and techniques that challenged me to my core and at times it felt like I was clawing my way through my Tantra training but I kind of knew and felt that I had to stick with it, I actually needed nerves of steel to stay with it. And let me tell you the reward.
The reward that I experienced and still experience today are just feelings of ecstasy, feelings of bliss, feelings of love.

I would say in my mid forties my life now is far more abundant and rich and happy and full and would you believe, there are even parts of me that actually love myself now as well and I couldn’t have said that to you ten years ago. The other thing for me is just this feeling of being free, feeling happy and feeling content and feeling like I’ve come home back to myself. While I’ve said that there are still some residual effects from the abuse that I experienced, I would say that I’m a million times more free and happy than I’ve been. So my advice to you if you feel that you’ve been affected by these issues, I’d say the first step is definitely to consider counselling so you can come to terms with it, so you can understand what is going on but I also feel that you’ll reach a ceiling at some point where you feel the counselling is not enough and that there is more to go at in the journey. In those circumstances, I’d absolutely recommend Tantra. As you’ll know from my website, Tantra4GayMen, with my partner Ingo we teach a deep-dive three year programme in Tantra of one week per year and I would say that this programme is fundamentally powerful and transformative and healing to help you with your healing journey. So if this speaks to you then you are very welcome to join us. Thank you