Tantra Massage on Metropol TV

In the studio:

Host: We’re laughing here, telling ourselves we’re really two tough guys in our fifties. I added a little, Jirka added a little too.

Jiří X. Doležal: Laughter.

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

Jiří X. Doležal: This time I stopped criticizing vices, and because it’s spring we made a report about something pleasant and nice – and that is tantra.

Host: Awwww, I’m going to like that.

Jiří X. Doležal: And the invitation was accepted by the tantrika Anna, who will tell us here whether it is psychotherapy or religion. And before that there will be a report from a tantric center to watch.
Host: Well then I’m not going to hang around here at all, because now the main thing is coming, the highlight of today’s show – Jirka’s report about tantric massage, and then the beautiful Anna will be here.

Report:

Jiří X. Doležal: It’s spring, and instincts awaken in people. That’s why we also set out today to a tantric salon to find out what tantra really is and what tantric massage is.

Doc. PhDr. Z. Vojtíšek: Tantra is one of the spiritual currents of contemporary religiosity, and I have to say that it is probably one of the most popular contemporary currents together with shamanism – it is very, very popular. That old Indian teaching entered the environment of the New Age movement, which essentially Europeanized it a bit. It was quite easy, because in tantra there is a lot of talk about power, about Shakti power, about overcoming dualism, also among other things through sex, and the New Age movement talks about energy. And energy is basically that power, so the transition from the Indian tradition into 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. So for us it is a holistic way of working with a person’s personality.

Jiří X. Doležal: How did it occur to you, please, in truly de-spiritualized Prague, to found a tantric center?

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: First of all, I don’t think Prague is de-spiritualized. According to surveys, most Prague residents do not identify with a specific faith, a specific religion, but the need for spirituality, the need for some unity, transcendence, some deeper meaning, is rooted in us – and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Prague resident, a Spaniard, or for example a Chinese person. That need is broad-spectrum, so I think that is also why tantra is successful in Prague, because it responds to a deeper human need.

Ondřej Havel: I have a big advantage in that I have at home an amazing future wife, a beautiful fiancée, who once came up with the idea that she would like to try it on me. And we found out that I’m probably not a complete klutz and that it has something to it, I started to take an interest in it, I got some literature, I enrolled in training, one thing led to another, hand met hand – and now I’m here.

Igor Samotný: The first basic task is to find contact with the body. The second task of tantric massage, or tantric practice, or tantric meditations is relaxation – jumping 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 absolute foundation was my introduction to tantra, which took place within a tantric training with John Hawken, which lasted two years. It was a process of personal maturing and of finding a relationship to that tantric teaching at all. And then I attended Taoist seminars of Maitreyi D. Piontek, who came here to the Czech lands, shamanic training with John Hawken again, and I started to feel that I would like to continue dealing with tantra also from the position of a lecturer. I received an offer first to assist in courses with lecturers who were already practicing, and later I began to lead my own seminars, mixed groups and women’s groups, together with psychologist Katka Kramolišová, with the feeling that I began to sense that tantra has enormous therapeutic potential. And I had a need to supplement my education also with therapeutic education, so I completed drama therapy training and now I am in another training – in Gestalt training.

Ondřej Havel: I perceive tantra as something that comes from me. And I don’t want to put it into a box, I don’t want to specify it as something that is clearly bounded, every massage is different, every experience is absolutely unique, unrepeatable, and I would like to leave it that way.

Igor Samotný: Tantra offers the possibility to process one’s instinctual nature in the most natural, kind, loving way. Accepting.

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: Masseuses and masseurs come to us from various fields, we have scholars of religion here in the center, we have graduates of theatre studies, psychologists and anthropologists. What usually connects them is an interest in the human being – in the question of what a human being is, and what their transcendence can be. And the fact that they are from different fields is immensely enriching, because it brings new angles of view, new knowledge, new opinions.

Igor Samotný: Tantra, the tantric experience, releases everything that is hidden in the mind, what is as if unexpressed – it gets expressed.

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: We try, whatever we do here with clients, to adapt it to what the person is coming with and what they need from us. If we can meet them in some way within that, then we work individually with that couple and we individually figure out what, in their specific case, is needed and what they themselves want.

Jiří X. Doležal: How does a tantric masseur deal with it when a developed, pretty twenty-year-old girl comes for a massage, he provides that massage – don’t you yourself fall into some sexual arousal, or how do you deal with these things?

Ondřej Havel: I’m glad for this question, it’s wonderful. I don’t know how other tantric masseurs deal with it, I can’t say from my own experience, because I haven’t personally aroused any yet, but I personally don’t have this problem. It hasn’t happened to me. In fact all the energy that takes place during the massage or during the tantric ritual is here (points to the head) and here (points to the heart).

Igor Samotný: I would call it a deep relaxation that leads a person to fully live through what they need to live through.

Bc. Michaela Lynnette Torstenová: Tantra is not a sexual service, and centers where sex or sexual services are offered should not be called tantric centers. We are trying to establish an association of tantric centers and we started by defining quality standards for tantric massage, we wrote an ethical code, which is on our websites so that it is accessible to the public and so that people can form an opinion about what belongs to tantra and what no longer does.

Doc. PhDr. Z. Vojtíšek: Sex has always been used in spiritual practices, and in the end we also know from religion the phenomenon of sacred prostitution – it is not something distant. I wouldn’t call tantrikas prostitutes, it never even occurred to me, they are simply women who use their bodies for their spiritual benefit, whatever we think about it, or whatever moral measure we apply to it, I think we should officially, outwardly, remain with this simple statement.

Igor Samotný: Tantra is defined as self-expression, ideology suppresses it – that is self-suppression, any ideology, just fit our system and we don’t care what is in you, your individual feeling, but 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 operate it is, above all, that my hobby has actually become my work.

Ondřej Havel: For me it’s mainly the pleasure of helping people. I like to give and I’m glad when my energy, which I send to someone, returns to me in the case of, for example, tantric massages as positive energy – energy of feedback, positive references, it only takes a word, or a smile, anything. All of this is energy that I draw from and that is essential for me in this work.

Jiří X. Doležal: Do you consider tantra a legitimate path, let’s say, to God?

Doc. PhDr. Z. Vojtíšek: To God as we are used to here in Western culture, as a personal God, probably not. I would say it is a path to divinity – definitely. A path that today has the advantage for us that it uses the body, we don’t really know how to work with the body and it’s not entirely a coincidence that what is also happening within Christianity today is some way of using one’s own body during worship. Here tantra also works very well with the body, so even if the experience is similar, I quite believe in satori and I believe that a person can have an experience of God’s closeness, or even merging with some divinity.

Jiří X. Doležal: It doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks about tantra, because scholars of religion themselves say that it is a spiritual current. And after my experiences, I have the impression that it is one of the fastest paths to spirituality that is available to us today. For Metropol Television, Jiří X. Doležal, Reflex.

In the studio:

Jiří X. Doležal: I really like it when nothing needs to be added to a report, because Docent Vojtíšek said it in a way that there is nothing to add, so I welcome Anna in the studio, and I would like a question that did not come up in the report, because it was so positive. We were sitting here with the dramaturg Vojta Lavička next to each other, two ugly guys, and imagine that someone comes for the massage who is ugly like the two of us together. How do you deal with that?

Masseuse Anna: Your self-reflection is truly disarming, nevertheless one of the basic building stones that tantric massage works with is the authentic experience of complete acceptance. If a tantric masseuse were not capable, not personally mature enough, to accept a client, whether he is purple, small, fat, spotted, it doesn’t matter, then she has nothing to do in this field, because she cannot provide that real, genuine acceptance that she has internalized, that she truly believes in.

Jiří X. Doležal: But that brings us close to criteria that psychotherapists apply, for example.

Masseuse Anna: Naturally, yes.

Jiří X. Doležal: I didn’t have enough space in the report, because it only has ten minutes, to ask forcefully enough whether what you practice is psychotherapy, or religion, or whether it is both.

Masseuse Anna: It can be both and it does not have to be either. Attention – psychotherapy can only be practiced by a person who has complete psychotherapeutic education, meaning university, and self-experience training. Nevertheless tantric massage as such can be, and is very therapeutic and very healing. Of course it depends on how someone can handle it, what their qualification is. Also based on that they can allow themselves to go deeper, or they rather keep to some safer boundaries. Based on their own experience that they have.

Jiří X. Doležal: Now I’m at that safe boundary. Because I experienced your tantric massage, and I am a psychologist, I evaluate it as you put me into a rough regression, really brutal, natal to prenatal, including those tools with the wet hot towels.

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

Jiří X. Doležal: It’s very intense, and then you somehow assured me that even in this moment of brutal defenselessness you would not endanger the body, you assured me, and if I put it very badly, that the world is basically safe. That is the basic information a person takes away from it. And I believe that for many of your clients, especially if they have some gold digger at home, they are managers, and she holds them by the throat with her vagina, that this experience can be absolutely turning-point for them and they fall apart there. And what do you do with it when the man cries after the massage and wants to hold your hand.

Masseuse Anna: It happens, it definitely happens very often, and I personally am glad that I have practice in crisis intervention, I often had to use it in my work, on the other hand even if I didn’t have it, then perhaps the most important thing I can do for the client, even if it sounds terribly banal, is to be with him completely physically, humanly, essentially and authentically – to be there with him. For example even to hold his hand. And to be there with him, to be there for him.

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

Masseuse Anna: Like I sit down somewhere there, hold his hand and it will be fine, but...

Jiří X. Doležal: That is very demanding work.

Masseuse Anna: It is very demanding work.

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

Masseuse Anna: We have supervision with a very experienced psychotherapist who also has supervision training, meaning he has such long practice and such qualification that he can give feedback and advice to others. We have it regularly every month with one doctor, a psychotherapist, who also does body therapy, so he truly has something to say about the question of the body and physicality. And it is precisely for our psychohygiene, for our safety and for our further education. So that we know how to handle it.

Jiří X. Doležal: Somehow it can’t be done without that.

Masseuse Anna: It definitely can’t.

Jiří X. Doležal: When two or three clients mentally vomit themselves out to you in a day, you go home completely drained, that’s obvious, like everyone in this field. But you didn’t answer me how you feel toward religion – is it religion?

Masseuse Anna: For someone it can be religion, because it of course comes from the Hindu tradition, but I wouldn’t say directly religion. For me, for me personally, and it doesn’t have to be that way for everyone, it is rather philosophy – a way of life, a life approach. But for someone who is completely spiritually parched, it can actually be the only acceptable path to their own religiosity, to their own spirituality, to something that transcends us, for someone it is more digestible like that, or it is actually the first step toward some deeper understanding of oneself in the context of, I don’t know, the universe, or God, anything.

Jiří X. Doležal: The world.

Masseuse Anna: The world, that’s the basic.

Jiří X. Doležal: We don’t have to argue about that, it’s everywhere. How often does it happen that the client falls apart to the extent that he tells you, come with me, cook me svíčková and bear my children.

Masseuse Anna: Yes, that also happens, that clients fall in love with us, it is of course understandable, because for some of them, even if it is sad, it is truly the first experience that someone takes care of them, and takes care of them lovingly and non-reciprocally. That is a huge shock for many people, and it happens, and it’s good that we also have space after the massage to talk and reflect it, process it, give him feedback – yes, you talk about being in love with me, but it’s not that I am for you only some symbol, to work with that, those are transfers, countertransfers, completely known from psychoanalytic practice.

Jiří X. Doležal: I was warned about... like this – 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 the fact that after the massage I would be offered paid sex. It wasn’t, fortunately, because I don’t like brothels, but I encountered this opinion quite often, so please, what do you do about it. I am living proof that Centrum Integrity is not a brothel, I know it’s not, simply.

Masseuse Anna: Thank you.

Jiří X. Doležal: I was there, but many people think it is – and isn’t it time to do something about it?

Masseuse Anna: We definitely try to do something about it, for example that is also why I am here today, to publicly object to it somewhere, because really neither you nor anyone else, if they don’t really make a living that way, would be flattered if someone called them a prostitute. It definitely doesn’t flatter me either, and when I try to explain my profession to someone, they listen, then they look sympathetic and say, you have a university degree, why do you do it? I say no, I am not a prostitute, I won’t be and I never was, and we fight it besides the fact that we also try to appear and define ourselves in the media, now we are founding an association of tantric centers in which we want to connect all of us who do real tantra, at least we stand behind it, we have quality standards, an ethical code, conditions for how such tantrikas or tantrics can work at all, what qualifications they must have, meaning massage courses, tantric courses, and so on, or also classical education, so negotiations are now taking place with other real tantric centers – not sleazy places and similar establishments.

Jiří X. Doležal: How many establishments do you respect and recognize as a tantric center and not as a brothel, how many are there in Prague?

Masseuse Anna: Three.

Jiří X. Doležal: Well, then you probably really should start protecting that brand.

Masseuse Anna: I think yes, again I don’t want to wrong anyone, it’s possible that besides those three relatively large centers that I know about there are some local private tantrics who offer their services and really do what really is tantra, on the other hand if they do it somewhere privately, I don’t know where they advertise, it’s true that I know of someone who does it like this, it is a person I know from some tantric self-experience I took, but again I understand that because he is an individualist, he doesn’t want to work in a center, so it can be suspicious to someone, because he works on his own in some private space.

Jiří X. Doležal: Maybe he does it just as a hobby, I basically – I would like to emphasize this mainly to female viewers – that after the experience I discovered a tantric talent in myself and I began, for now in trial operation and for free, to provide tantric massages also to ladies in whom I find some spiritual talent. So interested women can contact my email, which they can find in Reflex.

Masseuse Anna: I’d rather not comment on that, I don’t know anything about your qualifications, that’s true.

Jiří X. Doležal: That was a joke, I hope viewers laughed. But I assume that like a normal psychotherapeutic establishment you can’t tell us who comes to you and who doesn’t, and I won’t ask that of course, but could you say what kind of people come to you, sociologically.

Masseuse Anna: Of course people with higher incomes come here, upper middle class, because yes, tantra is expensive, it is an expensive service, the insurance company doesn’t reimburse it, for now nothing can be done, even though I think it could. In any case they are mostly people who are in some way touch-deprived, who lack touch, people who for example don’t lack touch but lack spirituality, they seek fulfillment of their need for religiosity, curious people come to us who actually don’t know what they want, and they don’t necessarily leave with the fact that they already know what they want, in any case the most frequent reason they state is curiosity – to try something new, something that maybe goes beyond me, now I’m speaking for them, I’m already tired of the constant stress I have, I just want to rest, and it is a legitimate reason – to come and rest.

Jiří X. Doležal: In today’s society, whoever can’t rest will die from stress.

Masseuse Anna: Yes, it’s unique. Thirty-year-old men come to me who have their body blocked in such a way that I would expect something in this state from an eighty-year-old man – and they are thirty.

Jiří X. Doležal: I didn’t quite understand what the center in Lažánky near Brno is supposed to be called.

Masseuse Anna: Meditation Center Lažánky.

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

Masseuse Anna: I definitely wouldn’t say it’s a monastery or an ashram, we can call it anything, it is really what they call it – it is a meditation center that provides interested people with various courses, for example tantric yoga, mahendžodáro, that is an amazing thing, I really recommend it to all women, where they dance, practice tantric yoga, they have space for it, there are meditations there, various massage courses, so that they learn, not necessarily for a professional path, but for themselves, for their private life, for a partner, to learn to massage well in a tantric way, it is a multi-purpose facility, someone goes there purely recreationally – to rest among people who share, for example, their values, their interests.

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

Masseuse Anna: Well, I’m curious.

Jiří X. Doležal: After the massage, every week there are, for example, eight men kneeling at your feet, who at the very least have the potential that they earned the money for the massage, which doesn’t cost little, so what does that do to your self-confidence. Is there a risk you’ll burst?

Masseuse Anna: I think I’m quite fine.

Jiří X. Doležal: But I mean it really seriously. What does it do to a person when they see this as part of their work duties?

Masseuse Anna: I’ll return again to what is a basic prerequisite of the personality of a tantric masseur or masseuse – the work with self-awareness and humility is absolutely key. If a tantric masseur comes who has these experiences and feedback from clients, leaves with his nose in the air and says, I am a demigod, I am a guru, then again he has nothing to do in this field, because humility and work on oneself are extremely important.

Jiří X. Doležal: So I thank you very much for the visit, and I would like you, if you could, to tell the founder of the center and also Mr. Igor, who is from Lažánky and who is kind of the ideologist of tantra for the Czech Republic, that if they needed, for free in my spare time, the function of press spokesperson, no problem, thanks for the visit.

Masseuse Anna: Thank you for the invitation, take care and be well.