Tantra masáže na Metropol TV

video*

In the studio:

Host: We are laughing here, saying we are really two cool fifty-year-olds. I added a bit, Jirka added a bit too.

Jiří X. Doležal: Laughter.

Host: Of course you recognize Jiří X. Doležal, because it is Thursday and he has a great report for us, and also a great guest, interesting and very visually interesting. Jirka, where did you shoot the report? Or rather, what is it about?

Jiří X. Doležal: This time I stopped exposing bad habits, and since it is spring we made a report about something pleasant and beautiful, which is tantra.

Host: Oh, I am going to like this.

Jiří X. Doležal: And we have invited the tantrika Anna, who will tell us whether it is psychotherapy or religion. Before that you will see a report from a tantric center.

Host: Then I will not stay in the way at all, because now comes the main thing, the highlight of today’s show, Jirka’s report on tantric massage, and afterward the beautiful Anna will be here.

Report:

Jiří X. Doležal: It is spring, and instincts are waking up in people. That is why today we went to a tantric salon to find out what tantra actually is and what a tantric massage is.

Assoc. Prof. PhDr. Z. Vojtíšek: Tantra is one of the spiritual currents of contemporary religiosity, and I have to say it is one of the most popular currents today along with shamanism. It is very, very popular. This old Indian teaching entered the environment of the New Age movement, which more or less Europeanized it. That was quite easy, because tantra speaks a lot about power, about shaktic power, about overcoming dualism, among other things through sex, and the New Age movement speaks about energy. Energy is essentially that same power, so the transition from the Indian tradition to the European tradition was very easy.

Igor Samotný: It is a kind of holistic system of working with a person, where we use intimate touch techniques, emotional techniques, tantric massages, intimate massages. For us it is a holistic way of working with the human personality.

Jiří X. Doležal: How did you come up with founding a tantric center in Prague, which is supposedly de-spiritualized?

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: First of all, I do not think Prague is de-spiritualized. According to surveys, most Prague residents do not identify with a particular faith or religion, but the need for spirituality, for a sense of unity, transcendence, a deeper meaning, is rooted in us, and it does not matter whether it is a person from Prague, Spain, or China. The need is broad spectrum, and I think that is why tantra is successful in Prague as well, because it answers a deeper human need.

Ondřej Havel: I have a big advantage in that I have at home my wonderful future wife, a beautiful fiancée, who once came with the idea that she would like to try it on me. We found out that I am not completely hopeless and that it has something to it, so I started to look into it, got some literature, signed up for training, one thing led to another, and here I am.

Igor Samotný: The first basic task is to find contact with the body. The second task of tantric massage, or tantric exercises or tantric meditations, is relaxation, getting out of the head so that a person stops thinking and starts living. And the third task is to open intimacy.

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: The very foundation was my first encounter with tantra, which took place during a two-year tantric training with John Hawken. It was a process of personal maturation and finding my relationship to tantric teaching. After that I attended Taoist seminars by Maitreyi D. Piontek, who came to the Czech Republic, and a shamanic training with John Hawken again, and I began to feel that I wanted to engage with tantra further also as a teacher. I first got an offer to assist in courses with current practicing teachers, and later I began to lead my own seminars, mixed groups and women’s groups, together with the psychologist Katka Kramolišová. I began to feel that tantra has enormous therapeutic potential. I felt the need to complement my education with therapeutic training as well, so I completed training in drama therapy, and now I am in another training, in Gestalt.

Ondřej Havel: I see tantra as something that comes from within me. I do not want to put it into a box, I do not want to specify it as something firmly defined. Every massage is different, every experience is absolutely unique and unrepeatable, and I would like to keep it that way.

Igor Samotný: Tantra offers the possibility to process our instinctual nature in the most natural, kind, loving way. In a receptive way.

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: Our masseuses and masseurs come from different fields. Here at the center we have a scholar of religion, graduates of theater studies, psychologists, and anthropologists. What usually connects them is an interest in the human being, in the question of what a person is and what their transcendence can be. The fact that they come from different fields is extremely enriching, because they bring new perspectives, new insights, and new opinions.

Igor Samotný: Tantra, the tantric experience, releases everything that is hidden in the mind, everything that is unexpressed. It becomes expressed.

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: We try to adapt everything we do here with clients to what the person comes with and what they need from us. If we can accommodate that in any way, we work individually with the couple and individually think through what is needed in their specific case and what they themselves want.

Jiří X. Doležal: How does a tantric masseur handle it when a well-developed, pretty twenty-year-old woman comes for a massage, he gives her the massage, and does he himself not fall into sexual arousal? How do you handle these things?

Ondřej Havel: I am glad for this question, it is wonderful. I do not know how other tantric masseurs handle it. I cannot say from personal experience, since I have not yet aroused any of them myself. Personally, I do not have this problem. It has not happened to me. All the energy that occurs during the massage or during the tantric ritual is here, he points to his head, and here, he points to his heart.

Igor Samotný: I would call it a deep relaxation that leads a person to complete what needs to be completed.

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: Tantra is not a sexual service, and centers where sex or sexual services are offered should not call themselves tantric centers. We are trying to found an association of tantric centers, and we started by defining standards of quality for tantric massage. We wrote an ethical code, which is on our website so that it is available to the public, and so people can form an opinion about what belongs to tantra and what does not.

Assoc. Prof. PhDr. Z. Vojtíšek: Sex has always been used in spiritual practices, and after all, from religion we know the phenomenon of sacred prostitution. This is not something far removed. I would not call tantrikas prostitutes, it never even occurred to me. They are simply women who use their bodies for their spiritual benefit. Whatever we think of it, or whatever moral measure we apply, I think that officially and publicly we should stick to this simple statement.

Igor Samotný: Tantra is defined as self-expression. Ideology suppresses it, that is self suppression. Any ideology says, conform to our system, and we do not care what is inside you, your individual feeling. Tantra is self-expression. Everything that comes from you, show me, express it. If it is sexual energy, express sexual energy. If it is your memories, express them.

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: What it gives me that I practice it is mainly that my hobby has actually become my work.

Ondřej Havel: For me it is mainly the pleasure of helping people. I like to give, and I am happy when the energy I send to someone returns to me in tantric massages as positive energy, as feedback, a positive reference. A single word or a smile is enough, anything. All of this is energy I draw from, and it is essential for me in this work.

Jiří X. Doležal: Do you consider tantra a legitimate path to God, so to speak?

Assoc. Prof. PhDr. Z. Vojtíšek: To God as we are used to in Western culture, as a personal God, probably not. I would say it is a path to divinity, certainly. A path that has for us today the advantage that it uses the body. We do not really know how to work with the body, and it is no coincidence that even within Christianity today there are attempts to use one’s own body during worship. Tantra also works very well with the body, so the experience is similar. I quite believe in satori, and I believe that a person can have an experience of the nearness of God, or even of merging with some form of divinity.

Jiří X. Doležal: It does not really matter what anyone thinks about tantra, because scholars of religion themselves say it is a spiritual current. And after my own experience I feel it is one of the fastest paths to spirituality available to us today. For Metropol TV, Jiří X. Doležal, Reflex.

In the studio:

Jiří X. Doležal: I really like it when nothing needs to be added to a report, because Associate Professor Vojtíšek said it so well that there is nothing more to add. So I welcome Anna to the studio, and I will ask a question that did not appear in the report because it was so positive. We were sitting here with the producer Vojta Lavička, two ugly guys side by side, and imagine that someone comes for a massage who is as ugly as the two of us combined. How do you handle that?

Masseuse Anna: Your self reflection is truly disarming. However, one of the fundamental building blocks that tantric massage works with is the authentic experience of absolute acceptance. If a tantric masseuse were not able, were not personally mature enough, to accept a client regardless of whether he is purple, short, fat, or polka dotted, then she has no business in this field, because she cannot provide the real and genuine acceptance that she has internalized and truly believes in.

Jiří X. Doležal: That gets close to the criteria used by psychotherapists.

Masseuse Anna: Naturally, yes.

Jiří X. Doležal: I did not have enough time in the report, because it is only ten minutes, to ask strongly enough whether what you practice is psychotherapy or religion, or whether it is both.

Masseuse Anna: It can be both, and it can be neither. Note that psychotherapy may only be practiced by someone who has full psychotherapeutic education, which means a university degree and experiential training. However, tantric massage as such can be, and is, very therapeutic and very healing. Of course it depends on how someone knows how to handle it, what their qualification is. Based on that they can afford to go deeper, or they stick to safer boundaries, according to their own experience.

Jiří X. Doležal: Now I am at the safe boundary. Since I underwent your tantric massage and I am a psychologist, I interpret it that you induced a rough regression in me, really brutal, natal to prenatal, including those procedures with the wet hot towels.

Masseuse Anna: Yes, there is a certain regression, definitely yes.

Jiří X. Doležal: It is very intense, and then you reassured me that even in that moment of brutal defenselessness you would not endanger the body. You reassured me, and to put it crudely, that the world is basically safe. That is the basic information one takes away. I believe that for many of your clients, especially if they have a gold digger at home, they are managers, and she holds them by the throat with her vagina, this experience can be absolutely pivotal, and they fall apart there. What do you do when a man starts crying after the massage and wants to hold your hand?

Masseuse Anna: It happens, it definitely happens very often, and I am personally glad that I have practice in crisis intervention. I often had to use that in my work. On the other hand, even if I did not have it, perhaps the most important thing I can do for the client, as banal as it may sound, is to be there with him completely, physically, humanly, essentially, and authentically. To hold his hand if needed. To be there with him, to be there for him.

Jiří X. Doležal: When you say it like that, it sounds like just being there with him.

Masseuse Anna: As if I just sit down, hold his hand, and everything will be fine, but...

Jiří X. Doležal: It is very demanding work.

Masseuse Anna: It is very demanding work.

Jiří X. Doležal: Do you have mechanisms like a psychotherapy center has?

Masseuse Anna: We have supervision with a very experienced psychotherapist who also has supervision training, which means he has long enough practice and sufficient qualification to give feedback and advice to others. We have regular monthly sessions with a doctor, a psychotherapist who also does body therapy, so he really has something to say on the topic of the body and embodiment. It is for our mental hygiene, our safety, and our further education, so that we know how to handle these situations.

Jiří X. Doležal: It does not really work without that.

Masseuse Anna: It definitely does not.

Jiří X. Doležal: If two or three clients emotionally unload in a day, you go home completely drained, that is obvious, like anyone in this field. But you did not answer how you feel about the religion question. Is it religion?

Masseuse Anna: For someone it can be religion, because it comes from the Hindu tradition, but I would not call it religion per se. For me personally, and it does not have to be that way for everyone, it is more a philosophy, a lifestyle, an approach to life. For someone who is spiritually parched, it can be the only acceptable path to personal religiosity, to personal spirituality, to something that transcends us. For someone it is easier to digest, or it can be a first step toward a deeper understanding of oneself in the context of the universe, or God, whatever.

Jiří X. Doležal: The world.

Masseuse Anna: The world. That is the basic thing.

Jiří X. Doležal: There is no need to argue about that, it is everywhere around us. How often does it happen that a client falls apart to the point that he says, come with me, cook me Sunday roast, and bear my children?

Masseuse Anna: Yes, that happens too, that clients fall in love with us. It is understandable, because for some of them, sad as it may be, it is really the first experience that someone takes care of them, and does so lovingly and without expecting anything in return. For many people that is a huge shock. It happens, and it is good that we have time after the massage to talk and reflect on it, to process it, to give feedback. Yes, you are saying you are in love with me, but this is not about me as a person, rather I am a symbol for you. We work with that. These are transferences and countertransferences, well known from psychoanalytic practice.

Jiří X. Doležal: I was warned, or rather, I got the tantric massage as a birthday present, and the cynical deputy editor in chief of Reflex, Viliam Buchert, told me to prepare for being offered paid sex after the massage. Luckily I was not, because brothels are not my thing, but I have encountered this opinion quite often. So what do you do about it? I am living proof that the Integrity Center is not a brothel. I know it is not, simply.

Masseuse Anna: Thank you.

Jiří X. Doležal: I was there, but many people think it is, and is it not time to do something about that?

Masseuse Anna: We definitely try to do something about it. That is partly why I am here today, to speak out against it publicly. Because calling someone a prostitute would not flatter you, or anyone else who is not actually in that profession. It certainly does not flatter me either. When I try to explain my profession to someone, they listen, then give me a sympathetic look and say, but you have a university degree, why do you do this? I say no, I am not a prostitute, I will not be, and I never was. We fight against that image not only by trying to speak out and define ourselves in the media, but now we are founding an association of tantric centers. We want to join together all of us who do real tantra. We stand behind it. We have standards of quality, an ethical code, conditions for how tantrikas or tantriks can work, what qualifications they must have, meaning massage courses, tantric courses, and so on, including formal education. We are currently in talks with other genuine tantric centers, not brothels and similar businesses.

Jiří X. Doležal: How many facilities do you respect and acknowledge as a tantric center and not a brothel? How many are there in Prague?

Masseuse Anna: Three.

Jiří X. Doležal: Then you should really start protecting that label.

Masseuse Anna: I think so. I do not want to wrong anyone. It is possible that besides those three fairly large centers I know of, there are some local, private tantriks who offer their services and truly do what is genuinely tantra. On the other hand, if they work privately, I do not know where they advertise. I do know of someone who works like that, a person I know from a tantric self experience training I attended. I understand that since he is an individualist and does not want to work in a center, it may look suspicious to some that he works for himself in a private space.

Jiří X. Doležal: Maybe he does it as a hobby. I would like to emphasize to our female viewers that after this experience I discovered a tantric talent in myself and I have started, in trial mode and free of charge, to offer tantric massages to ladies in whom I find some spiritual disposition. So those interested can write to my email which they can find in Reflex.

Masseuse Anna: I will not even comment on that. I know nothing about your qualifications, that is true.

Jiří X. Doležal: That was a joke, I hope the viewers laughed. I assume that like a normal psychotherapy facility you cannot tell us who comes to you and who does not, and I will not ask that. But could you say what kind of people come to you, sociologically speaking?

Masseuse Anna: Of course people with higher incomes come, the upper middle class, because yes, tantra is expensive, it is an expensive service, insurance does not cover it, nothing can be done about that yet, although I think it could. Usually these are people who are deprived of touch, who miss touch. People who perhaps do not miss touch, but miss spirituality, and are looking to fulfill their need for religiosity. Curious people come who do not really know what they want, and they do not necessarily leave knowing what they want. The most common reason they give is curiosity, to try something new, something that perhaps transcends them. I am speaking for them now. I am tired of constant stress, I just want to rest. And that is a legitimate reason, to come and rest.

Jiří X. Doležal: In today’s society, if you cannot rest, you die from stress.

Masseuse Anna: It is unique. Thirty year old men come to me whose bodies are blocked in a way that I would expect in an eighty year old man, and they are thirty.

Jiří X. Doležal: I did not fully understand what the center in Lažánky near Brno is called.

Masseuse Anna: Meditation Center Lažánky.

Jiří X. Doležal: And is that like a tantric monastery?

Masseuse Anna: I would definitely not say it is a monastery or an ashram. We can call it whatever, but it is truly what it is called, a meditation center that offers various courses to those interested, for example tantric yoga, Mahenjo Daro, which is wonderful, I really recommend it to all women, where they dance, practice tantric yoga, and have the space for it. There are meditations, various massage courses, so they can learn, not necessarily for a professional career, but for themselves, for their private life, for their partner, to learn to massage well in a tantric way. It is a multipurpose facility. Some people go there purely for recreation, to rest among people who share their values and interests.

Jiří X. Doležal: May I ask, we are almost at the end, one intimate question?

Masseuse Anna: I am curious.

Jiří X. Doležal: After the massage, do eight men a week kneel at your feet, men who at least have the potential to afford the massage, which is not cheap. What does that do to your self confidence? Is there a risk you will burst?

Masseuse Anna: I think I am quite fine.

Jiří X. Doležal: I mean it seriously. What does it do to a person to see this as part of their job?

Masseuse Anna: I will return to what is the basic prerequisite of the personality of a tantric masseur or masseuse. The work on self awareness and humility is absolutely key. If a tantric masseur comes in, has these experiences and feedback from clients, and leaves with his nose up saying I am a demigod, I am a guru, then again he has no business in this field, because humility and working on oneself is extremely important.

Jiří X. Doležal: Thank you very much for visiting. If you could convey to the founder of the center, and to Mr. Igor from Lažánky, who is in a way the ideologue of tantra for the Czech Republic, that if they need a spokesperson for free in my spare time, there is no problem. Thank you for coming.

Masseuse Anna: Thank you for the invitation, have a beautiful day.