ALT Coaching

An Interview with Shantam Nityama
by A (name withheld for privacy purposes)  May 2002

On Sexuality and Spirituality

A: Would you please describe what you do, Nityama?

Nityama: For the last twenty years, I am a master body worker. During that time I have been a spiritual mentor and in the last ten years I have been working mostly in the area of sexuality. I originally came into the sexual work based on my spiritual mentoring experience. Many people were coming to me wanting to develop their spirituality but what I discovered is they were generally shut down, repressed, and totally out of touch with their sexuality.
From my perspective, sex is the caterpillar and spirit is the butterfly and there is absolutely no possibility of having a beautiful butterfly without having a healthy caterpillar. From that place I began to look into and develop many sexual techniques as a way to open up an individual to come to a more healthy place with sexuality so that there is much more energy available for their spiritual development. It is extremely important to get clear about sex.

A: Why is it important to get clear about sex?

Nityama: I feel it is very important for individuals at this time to become balanced in their sexual energy. It is important to start to open up and take a look at deep fears, guilt, shame, and all the different things going on with sex. One of the main reasons is that a sexually liberated person cannot be exploited. So, on the planet it is becoming quite crucial that we liberate ourselves sexually so that we can take a totally different approach to how we live on the planet and what we give our life force to. As long as you are conflicted within your own self, as long as you are at odds with your own energy, there is no possibility of you interacting in the world from a balanced place.
Much of what I mean when I say people need to get clear about sex has to do with where they are with it, what are their issues, whether they are still living out the conditioning of their parents and the generations before them. So I say it is time to get clear about sex.

A: What are some of the first steps that both men and women can do to become clear about sex?

Nityama: One of the first things to do is take a look or assessment of where you are presently - your beliefs, your ideas, what concepts you hold about sex, and how are you in this point in your life living out your dance in regards to sex? How much of your assessment is borrowed information gathered from some other source - parents, girlfriends if you are a woman, from the locker room at school with your buddies if you are a man. How much of it is hearsay information that you attempted to function with? Then start to see, what is your relationship with men or women up to this point? Have they been healthy? Have they been growthful? If not, then look at the different areas in which you have been having difficulty. Take a close look at what your conditioning has been. What your ideas are about sex. In most instances I would say you would probably need to turn them 180 degrees to get anywhere near what is real. Because most conditioning on this planet is turned completely backwards.

A: I have worked with a lot of men and women and they know they have a lot of conditioning and know their ideas are backwards. They realize they have lost touch with their feminine and masculine energies and the feeling in their body. What would you say to a woman for example who has really lost touch with feeling her own beauty and sexual energy?

Nityama: The first thing is the importance of her coming to a place to give herself permission like she has never had permission before in her entire life. Giving herself permission like no one else could give to have the opportunity to start to live her life from a place of following her own energy. As an example: One day she walks into a room and there is a man in the room who she is strongly attracted to and she can see he is strongly attracted to her. Rather than engaging with conversation or in some way with the man, she goes into another part of the room and engages with someone else she has absolutely no energy with. A woman needs to see how much fear and fear of rejection is dominating her behavior.
The same is true for a man. Many men are not standing in their male energy simply because they are afraid in some way they are going to offend someone or be rejected by the woman. I say be true to yourself. What everyone is actually looking for is authenticity. There is no way to be authentic if you are totally afraid to follow your own energy. You cannot read the cues, you cannot take cues from other people in the room or someone you are interested in. You need to have a basis from which you are functioning that is totally grounded in your own experience and stand by that.

A: How do you start? When do you begin to feel again what is really your energy and what is borrowed?

Nityama: Whenever you are doing something that is borrowed you tend to rehearse it to make sure you have it right. If you are doing something authentically, you will actually hear it coming out of your mouth the first time as the person receiving your communication. This is authenticity. If I am a man coming to a woman and I am scared shitless because she is so beautiful, then if I am authentic I would say "You know what? I saw you from across the room and please forgive me if I stutter through this. But I needed to come over here and say to you that I totally appreciate what you have done with your womanhood. I don't need or want anything and I am scared shitless even to be standing here telling you, but I had to do it to be authentic to myself." Being willing to communicate what arouses you without rehearsing is a very powerful way to start being more authentic and feeling and following your energy.

A: I have met so many women who are not really sure about what is the essence of their feminine energy and the feminine power and beauty. Some women are tired and have lost touch with themselves. What is it that you find most authentic about women?

Nityama: I would say the most beautiful basic or essential quality of woman is the depth of her receptivity. We have totally underestimated or devalued the power of receptivity. The power of being a vacuum and be able to suck the whole world into your womb. This is a very powerful place to be that you could actually contain the whole world in your womb and turn around and birth everything back out of your womb.
The main thing I see that women have lost, especially in the West, is their ability to be receptive. They are now approaching life from a very aggressive male standpoint. You have aggressive men and women so receptivity has been practically lost. That would be the most basic and essential thing I would say to be a woman is to find that receptivity in her. What are her fears, her trepidations about being receptive, about being penetrated by existence, by life, by the male energy? What is the fear? Then start to work through these fears by being willing to feel them entirely.

A: What could you say to a man? Rejection is a very big issue for a lot of men. They fear they want to connect to a woman but they have been rejected so many times and turned away. You speak about men being invisible. What would you say to a man who has been rejected so many times? How could he get back to himself and feel his strength?

Nityama: First he would have to come to a place where he finds great joy in being rejected. Being rejected builds character and substance. You can almost know the men who have been rejected because they generally will be the men that will have the greatest ease with women. Because if he has been rejected over and over it has given them the opportunity to totally refine and dance with women. They have tried different things and have come to a woman, danced before her, seen that she was totally baffled and then they eventually found a place where they were capable of opening and allowing her to touch them through the rejection.
The woman is such a clear and quick barometer to where a man is. If he wants to know if he is being real, he should bring whatever he thinks he is to a woman. She will let him know in seconds whether or not he is real. So the rejection is a beautiful feedback system for men if they are into learning. If they are into wanting to be perfect and wanting to have things without going through the learning process, then the rejection process becomes a dreadful experience, one they want to eliminate.
The question is how well are they learning to feel and stalk the woman's energy? This is very important. If a man doesn't know how to stalk a woman's energy and follow it and even get to the point where he can move ahead and be there when she gets there, if he doesn't have this capacity, then he needs to go out and get a lot of rejection. Rejection is a tool for becoming more sensitive in their dance with women.

A: I have also met many women who have been disappointed over and over again by being with men. I feel a longing to feel his power and manliness. What would you say to a woman of how she can communicate with a man and guide him to become stronger?

Nityama: The first thing is assisting the man or creating a space for a man to be able to come into his own as far as his strength and his true maleness. To take a look as a woman to see where are you actually constantly coming to him and pulling on the little boy in him. Where are you pulling from the little girl in you? Where is the little girl in you saying at every turn "Please don't be a man in the room because I don't know if I can handle it." so I would suggest taking a look at what she is actually communicating to the male in her presence. How are you actually conditioning and programming him to stay away from his power?
For instance, a woman comes into contact with a man. She sees him across the room. He has a certain amount of male energy and she is attracted to him. She approaches him or he approaches her and they start to interact a little bit. This realness in him, to whatever degree he had it, is what attracted her. But then she becomes infatuated, decides she likes him and immediately says "Well, I am willing to interact with you providing you are willing to stop interacting with everybody else." You just took the man and literally cut his balls off. Because part of him staying a strong male would be his ability to stay present and be authentic when he is interacting with women. You want him to be a man and on the other hand you want him to cut his balls off and only look at you. I say the moment he is only looking at you I give him about two minutes and he will not see you. Take a look at how you are asking him to be a little boy to accommodate your being a little girl. See how she very subtly undermines his manliness by asking him to do things to accommodate her fearful little girl. Once he starts in that pattern, then he will eventually lose all his true masculinity because now he is catering and coddling so this woman would not want or be interested in what he becomes in the least.

A: Can you take that a little deeper and speak about the difference between sex and romance?

Nityama: Sex and romance never really meet. Romance is in a certain way like a created idea, a mind thing. Example: A man and a woman are being totally present sitting having dinner. A man is totally present sitting with a woman and so present with her and taking in every little nuance of her movement, every little movement of her lips, everything. It is because of his presence that he is taking this in. It is not like he is sitting and gawking at her. He is actually feeling as she moves how her movement cuts the air in the room. He is feeling how, as she breathes out, her breath ricochets through her body. He is that present and aware. Someone sitting at the next table notices this amount of awareness and how the woman is practically having shivers. She is practically orgasmic at the table. So the person sitting looking on thinks "How romantic". But for the two people involved this is not romance at all. This is called being present. Romance is almost unconscious therefore has developed as a way of mimicking someone who is present. From that standpoint I would say that sex is something that would come naturally through presence and authenticity. It could never be mimicked, never be performed. It has to be felt and directly experienced.

Sex comes out of authenticity and romance comes out of a mental attempt to displace something you are not actually in touch with.

A: If I come to one of your workshops or programs, what will I experience?

Nityama: One of the things I do in a workshop is lay out a lot of the dynamics that go on between a male and a female. You will get pretty specific instructions and ways in which the man can start to develop his capability to interact with a woman in a way her being understands. I will also give out quite a bit of information for the woman as far as her gaining clearer understanding of how to even set an atmosphere that would allow a man to come in and interact with her and stand with her while she goes through her clearing process. You will get a lot of information about different lovemaking techniques and how to enter into lovemaking in such a way that allows clearing and clarifying the things that have accumulated through the years. I will share things around the power of heart-to-heart connection in lovemaking and how the actual genital regions can be used to facilitate heart-to-heart nurturing.

I give in-depth instructions on how to hug. My nickname is Sir Hug-a-Lot. There are certain things in how to hug both from the standpoint of the man and of the woman. There will be the possibility of some actual techniques of how to use the hands and certain body related exercises and forms of stimulation and forms of moving energy through the body in order to be alive and awaken each other. And lots of laughter. I love laughter which is one of the most important aspects of any workshop. Having fun and enjoying life and celebrating life. I am also one who is pretty spontaneous at times, so any number of things could happen.

ABOUT..

SHANTAM NITYAMA has led Tantric workshops internationally for the last 10 years. He co-facilitated workshops with Deborah Anapol, author of the book "Love Without Limits" and Founder of the Sacred Space Institute in San Rafael, CA., for six years before going solo. Nityama is also a master body-worker with 20 years experience in numerous healing modalities. His diverse background includes, Reiki Master, Polarity Therapy, Body Talk, Advanced Medical Qi Gong, Bowen Technique, Sex to Super Consciousness Training, Neuro-structural Integration Technique, and he was also a disciple of Tantric Master, Osho for 21 years. Nityama also leads a successful private practice in San Rafael, CA., where he offers sessions for men /women/couples, mentoring programs for men, and powerful energetic phones sessions for women.