Episode 28: Tantra! with Kat Fleming

Rome: Hello my beautiful friends, and welcome to the Joy Channel Podcast; A podcast where we focus on self-development and shifting perspectives through cultivating more love and joy in our lives. In this weeks’ episode, we have a very special guest: Kat Fleming. Teacher of Tantric healing arts, purveyor of plants, and just... wonderful person. 

Kat: Hello, Nice to meet everybody. It is such an honor to be here today.

R: Kat, What is Tantra?

K: this is a wonderful and big question start this podcast with. The most succinct way that I can describe Tantra is; a practice of merging the self with infinite Consciousness. So, Tantra,  if you go back to the roots of the word, that means to weave or expand, so it's a practice of expanding the heart and mind and also weaving all parts of ourselves together for a holistic and integrative spiritual experience? 

R: How has Tantra improved your life?

K: That's another beautiful question, and I love that you're asking that. So, Tantra has improved every single facet of my life and, wow, where to begin. So, Tantra of course, it’s improved the way that I see myself. The concept of integrating all parts of myself has helped me to have radical self-acceptance. When I first began my spiritual journey, there were parts of myself that I felt like I needed to reject, like if I was feeling negative or angry one day I would actually try to smother those feelings because I had classified them as being non-spiritual or incorrect or a distraction from my higher self. But, since I’ve accessed Tantra, it’s helped me to integrate all parts of myself as an opportunity for love and transformation and full integration. And through that I've also learned how to love and accept other people more deeply. and so Tantra has improved my relationship myself to myself, my relationship to other people and really to everything that I do.

R: What have you learned about yourself in teaching Tantra?

K: What have I learned about myself in teaching Tantra? Well. Since there’s been the willingness to integrate all parts of myself, simply having that willingness has created space for all parts of myself to surface, so since I've started studying and practicing and teaching Tantra it's really been an opportunity to see myself in my entirety and really accept and fully dive in to all parts of myself, so I mean there’s been shame that I've been carrying, there’s been insecurity that i’ve been carrying, there’s been judgments that I’ve carried. And these were smothered so deeply that I didn’t even know that I was carrying them, but creating the space through tantra to really see myself holistically, has brought to surface my shadows and has helped me to release, or at least work on some of these parts of myself. I've also discovered things that I enjoy, things that I used to be afraid to enjoy, afraid to admit that I like. I've experienced my power and my strength, my connection to everything, my place in the universe. 

I have discovered what I want to do with my life. I mean really thought, Tantra has lead to an entire blossoming of myself. I feel like I was a caterpillar and then in a chrysalis, and through Tantra I've accessed my my butterfly self, and I'm excited to see where I'm going to fly to from here, because it's it's been such an unraveling and it's been incredible.

R: How long have you been practicing Tantra?

K: So, that’s a great question. I mean in a sense, my inclination is to say that I have practiced this my whole life, but I didn't know that it was a legit spiritual lineage until a couple years ago. So, a few years ago I got certified to teach yoga, I did my first yoga teacher training, and in that training my teachers told me about a path called Tantra, and they said it was a more permissive path, a path that included indulgence and acceptance of the more radical parts of being human and the way that they described it I was like “oh I think that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time. And so it was a couple years ago that I started, you know, reading articles online and doing some really simple research. In fact, I didn't really feel the need to research that much because I felt like I already understood at any time I read about it. But then last year, I wanted to deepen my yogic studies, so I went to India and I stayed in a Kundalini Tantra ashram, and I had some idea of what might happen there, but really I didn't know enough to know what I didn't know, and so,I ended up uncovering this entire practice. 

So really, it was about a year-and-a-half ago that I completely opened up the door and dove completely into the lifestyle and practice and philosophy of Tantra.

R: what are some of the branches of Tantra?

K: So, there's a ton of branches of Tantra, just as in Christianity there's a lot of different branches, or really within any religion there's all these different lineages.

So a really simple way to kind of breakdown the Tantric lineages is to talk about the left hand path and the right hand path. And so, one of the paths includes sexuality, and one of them does not. And either path, whether or not it includes sexuality, both of them aim to merge with Cosmic Consciousness, and aim to integrate all parts of the self. So, what I practice is called more of a “middle path” and so I don't reject sexuality, but it's also not the core focus of my practice.

R: So it’s more integrated, rather than having it completely or having it not. 

K: Mhm.

R: Like a balance Between the two paths.

K: Mhm

R: Cool. How have you found sexuality to be received in the Tantra community?

K: So, sexuality I find to be very well received by pretty much everyone, and I actually think that that's a big reason why people come to Tantra is because one, most people tend to love sex, and then the other thing is that a lot of spiritual or religious lineages reject sexuality and consider it to be a distraction from the spiritual path, so I think a lot of people feel really excited and even validated when they find out that there's a spiritual path that can include their sexual experiences, and I think that’s a reason why Tantra is accessible for a lot of people, is because it allows not only sexuality, but all parts of being a human as part of the spiritual experience. 

R: That's beautiful, thank you. How do we use utilize Tantra to move energy in our bodies?

K: So Tantra is... I love that you phrased the question like that, because a lot of times when people ask me what Tantra is, the first thing I say is that it’s energy work. It’s moving through the body, it’s feeling the energy that moves through the body, and knowing that this energy is shared and connected with everything around you. There’s various ways of moving energy.

So, let's see, some of the fundamental ways are making sounds, making movements, using touch, and using meditation and visualizations. So a lot of Tantric practices can include [...]  yoga postures, that's a form of movement and that's also a way to open up energetic channels in the body. It can include sound, which in some more traditional lineages might include chanting or mantras, but in modern Tantra, you might hear more yelling and screaming and catharsis exercises, or even talking in gibberish is an exercise I’ve done in India. 

And with touch, you know, you can feel when someone touches you, sometimes it’s so energized it makes you tingle, or it gives you goosebumps, or it doesn’t feel good. So that can move a lot of energy. And then with meditating and visualization, that's an amazing and often overlooked way to move energy, simply meditating help move a lot of pain in the body or tension we’re holding onto, and can create space for energy to move. And visualization can help us to move energy towards things that we want, so it can be part of the manifesting practice. And you know that can be a far-out term for some people, but when I think of visualization and moving energy towards what we want, it's really just taking the time to continuously to think about what we want to put energy towards and if you think about it enough then the distractions naturally melt away. So yeah, breathe, sound, movement, touch, visualization, meditation; these are some of the fundamental ways to move energy with Tantra. 

[...]

I would love to elaborate on more practices.

R: Which practices would you like to elaborate on? 

K: So, there's a lot of really wonderful Tantric practices, and I've personally kind of frameworked them, and broken them down into categories. So, one category that I really like is catharsis and then there's also transmutation, and these are two really important ones in Tantra. So, catharsis exercises will incorporate the breathe, the sounds, the movement, the visualizations, et cetera.  And catharsis is all about letting go of energy, or moving energy that we no longer need to be holding on to, so this includes trauma, energetic blockages, energy that feels uncomfortable, energy that holds us back from stepping into our power. 

So, catharsis exercises can look a lot of different ways. Something that I commonly teach is shaking. And it’s exactly what it sounds like, literally just shaking every single part of your body and as you do this you can also accompany the shaking with a visualization of shaking off what you no longer want. A lot of people have heard that term “shake it off.” Oh, you’re upset, you’re annoyed, just shake it off.” 

So that’s what we’re literally doing in tantra; we’re shaking this energy off. And this is a traditional practice, I did this in India in the ashrams we would shake a lot and at first it felt weird to me and my ego would come in and be like “What are you doing? You're shaking, you've gone insane… if any third parties saw this, they would think this was a group of crazy people” And that’s been a great part of Tantra, is really just learning to shed that and just do the practice and reap the benefits. So there's catharsis practices, shaking, it can be dancing, even screaming. This is another one that was really hard to warm up at first. There were times in the ashram where we would just hit pillows and scream for 10 minutes straight and then meditate after, and it's amazing the sense of spaciousness that you can feel when you really just allow yourself to unleash that energy through movement. You know, punching pillows, through screaming, making sound. And dancing is, that’s a fun catharsis, and that’s a fun way to move energy and even orgasm can be used for catharsis. So, you can harness sexual energy and move it through your body to basically blast through blockages. I like to imagine blockages like plaque. You get buildup on your teeth, you also get build-up in your spiritual or subtle body, and all these exercises to help to move that energetic plaque off the body. And part of the reason why sex is included and the tantric practice is because that energy is really strong and can be used not only for catharsis, but also for manifestation, or connection, or really so many other things, which really I can get into a little bit later here. 

So, that was you know some examples of the catharsis practice of Tantra, and then there is the transmutation practices. 

So a lot of transmutation is really done through - for me - through an intellectual process of recognizing certain thought patterns and actively redirecting them. And that word “redirection” is really important, because we're not canceling negative thoughts but rather redirecting them. So for instance, if I feel really angry I can say “Wow, I feel so much energy in my body, I'm so angry right now” and there's two things I can do; one I can like go exercise or do a catharsis exercise and put all of that energy I’m feeling into something, and that's one way to transmute that energy rather than acting out on the anger, I put it into an activity and then the other thing is I can say “wow so, I'm angry, I feel fueled up about this, I feel passionate about this. What does that mean? What does that imply? Why am I angry? What’s beneath this? And so these intense feelings can be a platform and a catalyst for deep introspection and when we start going deep into ourselves, we can transmute anger by getting to the source of what we want, or the source of what's beneath any negative feeling.

 And and then, you know is it's like sometimes you’re angry at someone and then you realize “Well, I'm actually angry because I want to be loved” and so I can transmute these negative feelings into a more productive, or these basically negative experiences can be transmuted into productive personal or relationship development. 

Transmutation exercises are also not only intellectual, but they can also be energetic and that's... that's a whole other realm of Tantra, is the specific energy work of learning how to feel things in your body and transmute them into other feelings.

R: How do you use Tantra to transmute energy?

K: Cool, so there are specific tantric practices of course, but I would love to share with you one day I have intuited through my own Tantric practices. So, for instance say when I'm teaching a class, there is a lot of energy being released from all the students in the room, people are doing exercises, and so as a facilitator something that I do is I create my body as a toroidal field, and for people that don't know what that is essentially imagine a donut of energy that’s moving, so there’s a center and then the round point, and so I allow all that energy into my body and I move it through my heart space and I bless all of it with love and I say “This energy is not good or bad, it's all part of a process, and I love that process, and this is beautiful that we're processing all this energy right now.” 

So, I take in all the energy and I move it through the heart, and I just I direct it, I tell it “turn into love, this isn't foundationally love, this is fuel for transformation” and so I take away those labeling adjectives and just let it be pure energy, and I keep on cycling it through my body and it builds and builds, and that's the way of protecting the whole room actually, because I don't just want a lot of like anger or negativity or like any crazy energy to just be out there. So that process of transmutation is essentially, it does use the intellect, you know okay if this is not good or bad, and I process that, but then I also just feel it in my body as pure energy.

So that's just one example of how I transmute when I'm teaching, is creating a toroidal field and just cycling the energy and putting it through a filter essentially and saying this is all energy for transformation and it's not good or bad, it just is what it is.

One of the foundations of transmuting energy is recognizing all energy, no matter what the initial feeling is, whether it's a happy feeling or sad feeling, recognizing it as a fuel, and that fuel, that feeling is fuel for transformation, and that is where the transmutation happens. So, no matter what you're feeling, you recognize it as a potent energy in the body and you get to decide the next step with it. So, a lot of times when people are not familiar with transmutation, they’ll simply feel angry and act angry, feel sad and act sad, and that's okay, but transmutation is often just recognizing the energy at hand, and feeling it, and deciding where you want to put it. You can choose the direction of where you put energy, and once again you can use sound, movement, breath, meditation to help you transmute these feelings and move the energy towards something new or even just move out of your body.

Going back to the toroidal field that I was talking about, you can also use that sexually,  if you're having sex with someone you can transmute a lot of energy. So, you can create that kind of donut shape where you’re cycling energy through one body and into the other, over and over again and it's filtering through the heart and just becoming more and more loving potent energy so once again the visualization, telling the energy what to do, feeling it, directing it in certain ways. 

R: Putting intentionality into where your energy flows.

K: Totally.

R: Beautiful.  How would you say that practicing tantra is different by yourself versus with a partner? 

K: So, you know by myself, it can be easy because I'm clear on my personal intention, in my personal practice, and what I'm trying to do. When it comes to sharing this practice with another person, you know, I’ve had it happen naturally with some partners, like we just fall into the experience and it’s happening and we both allow it to happen, and that’s such a big thing with with a lot of spiritual practices, and especially with Tantra, is allowing it to happen, but when it comes to specifically sexually with a partner, sharing that cycling of energy there's certain skills, you know, setting the intention together, knowing that that's both what you want to do. Simply setting the intention is huge. Having a basic skill set of feeling energy; a lot of people only feel their physical bodies when they have sex, and it's actually a skill and a certain level of awareness be able to feel energy. And so, having a partner that can feel that energy is a huge help. Sometimes it happens so potently and spontaneously that it just overtakes and it just happens, but if you can feel the energy, it’s easier to direct it and tell it where to go. And you know of course, when you're having sex you're connected at the waist, and then if you're also kissing then you're connected at the mouth or at the throat area, and that can help to move that energy in that cyclical way. But even without having penetration of genitals or of the mouth and you can still create a cycle of energy between you and another person.

R: So, practicing tantra with a partner in a nonsexual way, what would that look like?

K: So there’s two different ways that that can look. Energetically, there is a lot of fun energy work that you can do with a partner that includes, you know, learning how to send energy to each other and how to receive energy but in terms of the holistic practice, Tantra includes a lot of personal development, a lot of Shadow work a lot of getting to the core of your being. And having a partner to be amazing because they can be a mirror and a team player and a cheerleader for you during all those things. I mean, Tantra is by some people called a confrontational path, because since you're really diving into yourself, into your totality, and with a partner they can sometimes help you see parts of yourself that you don't usually see. Or they can trigger you in ways that you're not usually triggered. And you and your partner can hold a lot of space for each other and show love and acceptance for the shadow which is the best way to heal those shadows. Healing your shadow yourself can be very challenging, because it's hard to accept your own shadow, but when someone else can accept your shadow, you realize that you can drop the mask, you can stop hiding and suppressing that shadow, you can let it come to surface and you and your partner can collectively heal it with love. And that’s something that I love about doing Tantra with my friends, or with people that I'm dating. 

And then of course, you know my personal practice is fantastic, but the more people you practice with at a single, time the more energy you're working with, and so energetically it can just get more and more intense. I had mentioned the toroidal field goes with my own practice or when I'm teaching a class, and I love doing that when I'm teaching a class because there’s so much energy in the room that I feel it rapidly going through me while I teach and it feels like a waterfall. It really feels like there is a literal waterfall charging through me and I'm transmuting it very quickly into loving Creative transformational Energy, and when I'm working with that many people the transformation and the love and the bliss happens very quickly. So, I really view partners or friends as potentiators for my practice.

R: Lovely. Fun with Friends.

K: And so you know just adding on to that; the tantric sex is incredible, and it's a highlight in many ways, but it's also just only one facet of practicing with someone. You know, sharing a spiritual experience with anyone is incredibly moving, incredibly life-changing, and bleeds into everything that you do together. When you're on a spiritual journey together, your entire relationship becomes practice. Yeah, it's really incredible. 

R: Thank you, beautiful. So, you mentioned you teach classes. What does a typical Tantra class look like?

K: so everyone’s Tantra class will look different, and I love saying that, because it's really exciting to practice with all different teachers and experience all the different flavors. As I had mentioned earlier in this podcast, there’s branches of Tantra that are highly sexual, and there's branches that are not sexual at all. So my classes tend to be non-sexual, and I typically start by helping people drop in, and then we do intention setting. We always do some catharsis, and we also do a lot of connection exercises. So, in the beginning we often do Qigong. That's a great way to feel the energy in your body, and just start moving it, and open up the channels a little bit. We love chanting Om; we do an ocean of Om, and if you've never had that experience, it’s-

R: Faaantastic.

K: It’s very sensational to chant om over and over again with a bunch of people. It's very tangible, and I love throwing people into that experience because no matter how woo woo you are or are not, I think that you will feel that when it happens. You know, you can you can feel sound, if you've ever stood in front of a speaker at a concert, you feel the sound as it hits you and just feel that sound in a room while you're chanting, you- it gives you goosebumps. You feel it, it’s incredibly tangible. 

Also in my classes, we do the shaking usually, and we sometimes do things like eye gazing. And that’s not to force a connection. Eye gazing isn’t about forcing a connection, it’s more about seeing your shared humanity with another person and seeing their soul. And that can be very humbling to look into someone's eyes and say like “Wow, you're a human just like me; you're good at things, you're bad at things, you've experienced a lot of emotion. We've all had trials and tribulations. I relate to you no matter how different we think we are.” That’s incredibly humbling. 

My classes also often include a lot of personal development, so sometimes we do authentic relating the end, where I prompt people with questions that help them really look at themselves, maybe look at their shadow, or look at things that they want to work on, or find deeper ways to connect, or discover new things about themselves that they usually don't get to talk about. 

So yeah, the class, it includes a lot but there's always energy work, and personal development, and conversation about how we can integrate spirituality into our day to day life.

R: What are some ways in which you have integrated spirituality into your everyday life?

K: So the easy answer to that, would say, I would say you know I’ve integrated spirituality into almost every aspect of my life. It's really just a matter of remembering, which we often forget, that every single moment is so beautiful, and every single moment is a stepping stone on your path to transformation. And so, really just, just knowing that from tantric philosophy, just really feeling sure that this is all spiritual, there's nothing that's not spiritual, has been so life-changing, and practicing Tantra helps me to have more moments of remembrance that this here right now, this breath, this moment, this podcast, this conversation, these thoughts, these words; all of it is incredibly spiritual and knowing that causes a profound shift.

But you know, on a more practical note, in terms of integrating spirituality into my day-to-day life, it's really made me consider what type of career I want to be in, how I want to spend my time. You know, I used to drink a lot, and I don't think that drinking is bad, but I have found so much connection and so much contentment and so much joy and play through Tantra that alcohol just no longer seems necessary, I just don't need it anymore, so that's been a big change.

It’s influenced my career, I got a job as a gardener because I love feeling grounded after I move so much energy, you know, YTantra really expands your energetic field and I was like “wow, I need to get grounded” and I can't always get grounded how I want in an office, so I'm going to go be a gardener, cuz I love gardening and it compliments my practice well.

Tantra has helped me to really accept difficult people in my life because I used to, I used to take some people's behavior so personally, you know, someone would do something that I didn't like and I would take it personally, I would get offended, and Tantra has helped me to recognize the metamorphosis that we're all going through, and I don't need to take other people's process personally. Whatever they're going through and however they're acting, that's about their journey, it's not about me and through truly understanding that, I have found such deep acceptance and patience and humility. And that’s been huge, just really learning how to accept other people and accept myself. And yeah like I said, just finding so much more play and connection, and the freedom to be myself. I had mentioned in the beginning of the podcast it you asked me how Tantra has changed my life or something, and it’s helped me uncover a lot of shame, and I am no longer ashamed to be myself. At least not very very ashamed, you know sometimes I find these new little seeds of shame that I'm holding onto, and Tantra has helped me learn how to identify them, and let them go. And it's been incredibly liberating to just step out in the world and say “This is me” loud and proud, nothing to hide, I'm beautiful and you're beautiful too, we're all beautiful, let's all show up and be beautiful together, there's nothing that we have to suppress any more.

R: Mmmm. Aho to that. That felt so good. 

K: I’m glad you liked it.

R: Thank you so much.

K: There’s one more thing that I want to say about how Tantra has changed how I live my life, and this just came to me right now, but this has been incredibly valuable, and that's my decision making has become much more intuitive. And that’s for a few reasons; one, I am not second-guessing myself as much, I'm really confident and clear in what I want, but now that I can feel the energy in my body so much more clearly it's almost like- I feel like a marionette sometimes. Like the energy is pulling me towards where I need to go, and decisions feel a lot more clear because I'm like, my body is like, sometimes it feels like my body decides for me before my mind can even make the decision. Like I’ll see someone, and all the sudden my body is walking towards them and then I find myself in front of them, and I’m like “Oh, I wanna talk to this person” but my body got me here before I even consciously had that thought.

So really, becoming embodied with Consciousness, and that is probably the core teaching of Tantra, or at least one of them is becoming embodied. And just discovering how that changes how you live. You're no longer being controlled, you're not a slave to your mind anymore, your body is free and it does what it wants, and it's incredible. It takes you to places you wouldn't consider. And you know, I keep on falling back on this almost cliche metaphor, and that’s of the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. When that transformation is happening, it's not a conscious thought, the caterpillars not like “Oh, let me mummify myself and become a butterfly.” It’s just happening through the body. This energy, this primordial energy is moving through the caterpillar and it transforms, and I feel that that same energy is moving through all of us and I have just learned to hold space and let that energy move through me and trust it.

And that has been, at first scary, but now it's wonderful, and I love just allowing energy to move through me and guide me. And feeling that energy, letting it guide me, and trusting it; having that trust and that faith has changed how I do everything.

R: Mmm, thank you. 

K: Yeah, thank you.

R: What is a way in which you include Tantra in your daily life, or what is a way in which you practice Tantra daily? 

K: So, some ways that I practice Tantra daily…  I find movement to be really important. For me, dancing is huge, for just a general like cleansing every day. There's… there's things that we feel, and things that we experience, and things that we process that we don't always have proper words for, or sometimes we feel them more than we think them. But sometimes we don't even realize what we're feeling because we're so caught up in thinking. And when I dance, it’s an opportunity for me to feel and then process and then let go of whatever has happened recently. So that's huge for me, and it keeps my slate clean. And dancing has also been an opportunity for me to really become comfortable with my own expression. To be witnessed in my expression. When I go to ecstatic dance, I am completely being myself and letting energy move through me, and I'm being witnessed. And doing that regularly has bled over into my daily life of just like “Hey, this is me, this is my dance, this is how I show up, and I'm okay with being witnessed, you know, this is it. Enjoy. Take It in people! You know, like, this is it!

Some other ways that I integrate it, you know, I've become a lot more connected to my breath and so if I'm ever feeling like my feathers are ruffled, if I feel uncomfortable in any way, I notice that I get this tightness in my body. And that's another thing I’ve noticed from Tantra, is being able to experience my feelings as actual feelings in my body. And when that happens, I'm like okay, take a breath, like I'm contracting, my lungs feel tight, my breath feels tight, my shoulders are tight. How can I breathe and create space for this experience? How can I create physical space for the emotional and mental space? 

So that's been really big and really helped my life become a lot more seamless. 

And other ways that I bring Tantra into my day-to-day life are, you know, just having the humility that I've developed through this practice and this true sense of humanity and accepting my own humanity helps me connect with people in a really beautiful way. And really, viewing connection as practice. Every time that I talk to or connect with someone, even even if it's just passing them at the grocery store, that’s an opportunity for practice. 

Yeah, tantra reminds me that really all of this is an opportunity for practice, and just remembering that more and more often helps me to be more intentional, more kind more patient, more with fluid with everything.

R: Thank you. I have one more question; what is a tantric practice that you have found to cultivate more joy in your life?

J: Mmm. A tantric practice that cultivates more joy in my life. So, the first one that comes to mind is meditation. Well. I did mention the oming, and oming always brings a lot of joy for me, but with meditation, I um, and this takes a lot of practice, so I hope that everyone will develop their own meditation practice. But through meditating, I have found this ground of awareness. And I like to visualize my mind as a lava lamp, and so there’s, you know, when you turn off a lava lamp, it's this like, flat blob at the bottom, it's a flat slate, and you turn it on and things bubble up and when you turn it off they return to that flat state. And so your mind is the same way. You have these thoughts that are bubbling up, and they're very mesmerizing and enchanting, just how a lava lamp is. But when you're able to take a step back, or calm the mind a little bit, you see that the thoughts return to that flat slate, which I call “the ground of awareness.” And this has been incredibly liberating for me because I'm able to witness any challenging, or happy, or really any emotion. And I am able to witness it, and see it and then watch it return to that ground of awareness, and that has made all feelings very bearable and exciting, and it's helped me realize how things come and go with the natural ebb and flow of the mind, and of everything around me really. And that has actually brought me great joy; just being able to return to the ground of awareness and not over identify with my experiences or my thoughts. I'm independent from them. And I, yeah I'm a witness, and meditation helps me become that witness, and find the joy of being the witness.

R: Thank you so much. Gosh, that was so… the visualization, the tools. The medicine you give is so amazing. 

K: Thank you!

R: Would you like to lead us in a tantric practice?

K: Yeah, I would love to, I really would. There is one that comes to mind right now and it's from a book that I actually have next to me luckily. So we'll begin. Are you guys... are you ready for the practice? You ready? 

R: I'm so ready. I’m here.

K: Okay, cool, so I can guide us through a short meditation. And it simply begins by closing your eyes, and noticing your breath. So, you'll notice how the rib cage expands, the rise and fall of the belly, the sound of the breath. 

And now feel each inhale as it caresses your body, this is like a love song to your body from the Universe. You're in union, merging with your environment Having actually a type of intercourse with your environment, each moment that you take a breath. 

So, allow this breath to be a remembrance of your connection to life. Sharing energy and particles with everything around you. 

Allowing them to caress and nourish and fill your entire body.

And now just do a quick scan of your body; noticed your legs, hips, torso, ribs, shoulders, arms, and hands. And noticed your head. 

And now, notice the space all around. You notice the space in front of you. To the right. To the left. The space behind you, above you, and below you. 

And as you noticed the spaciousness, notice how it feels. Maybe you can tangibly feel the empty space that surrounds you. Or you can notice the proximity of the objects that are in the room around you. Maybe you can even feel the walls that are around you. 

Just noticing the spaciousness around your body. Visualize all the particles around you. All the space around you is composed of atoms and molecules. Notice all these small particles around you. Notice your body composed of atoms, molecules, and particles. Notice and experience the feeling of everything being composed of particles. Notice the space between every particle. Atoms are mostly empty space, so feel that space. Feel the space that makes up everything. Take a breath, take in these particles, and as you exhale, just completely dissolve. Feel this perceived boundary of the skin, feel it dissolving, merging with the space around you, almost as if you're becoming vaporized. 

Just completely meshing with the environment, sharing particles, sharing energy. Feeling yourself as light expansive energy. Now, stay with this sensation, and I'll share with you just a very short poem from a tantric philosophy book.* 

What is this delight filled Universe into which we find ourselves born? 

What is this mysterious awareness shimmering everywhere within it? 

What are these dancing particles of condensed radiance?

Inhale. Take a deep breath.

What are these particles of condensed radiance?

So, that's one of my favorite meditations, and I enjoy contemplating the particles and the spaciousness, and my connection to my environment all the time. And that's a wonderful, easy to integrate Tantric practice that I hope you guys will take with you.

Thank you so much for participating.

R: Mmm. Thank you so much, Kat Fleming! That was lovely. Where can people find you if they want to contact you or follow you on social media? 

K: Mmm, yeah, yeah. So, I have a website, it’s tantrahealingarts.love. Tantrahealingarts.love. I love my website name. And I also have an Instagram that I post on. It’s @love.freq and that's f-r-e-q as in frequency and also as in freaky. @love.freq

 I’m also Kat Fleming on Facebook. And yeah, I love to stay connected with people, feel free to reach out, check out my website. Thanks for asking that because I'm always happy to meet new friends and answer people's questions. And I’m hosting some teacher trainings, I teach in Austin, I sometimes teach at festivals. So yeah, follow me on social media and you can stay up to date with all the stuff I’m doing. 

R: Thank you so much.

K: Thank you for having me, this was a lot of fun.

R: Yaaaaay. Alright. This has been the Joy Channel Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you like to find more content, you can go to thejoychannel.org 

You can also find us on patreon at patreon.com/joychannelpodcast for extra meditations and affirmations and goodies and whatever to make your week more joyful. 

If you want to find me on Instagram it’s @joychannelpodcast and on Facebook it's joychannelpodcast. Cuz we like to keep things kind of consistent.

Thank you so much, Kat Fleming, for being here, and everybody else have an absolutely beautiful week. Bye now!

K: Thanks for having me! Love you guys! Bye! 

*Radiance Sutras by Lorins Roche