Who am I?
Yogita, the founder of Yogitantra
I love sex. Yes, it’s true! And I’m not embarrassed to admit it. However, people usually don’t react so nicely when they hear this – it just sounds too shameless – so I don’t broadcast this about myself during my normal daily routines. But I want to mention it up front because this very thing about me propelled me passionately into the service of helping others experience their fullest expression of sexuality.
I started my sexual life actually quite late by the usual standards. I was almost 20 when I lost my virginity! I can’t chalk that up to shyness, but part of me knew it was not my time yet. Once started, I had the “good karma” to have mostly positive sexual experiences, to feel very open, and to be easily orgasmic. I really loved having sex! However, I grew up in Israel – a fairly conservative and religious society – and I did not escape guilt, which led me to hide my sexual activities.
In my early years, I studied gymnastics, which gave me a powerful awareness of the physical body and an appreciation for its limits (as well as lack of limits). I also studied classical piano, which awakened my soul and stirred my love for music. In 2001, I began studying Ashtanga Yoga and in 2003 I became a sports teacher.
Yoga changed my life
In 2005, I began a quest in India to find a comprehensive program of Yoga studies. Instead, after a long search, I found only classes in stretching, fitness, acrobatic body-bending, and breathing. By January 2006, I made my way to Koh Phangan island in Southern Thailand, and into another humble Yoga hall. After just a single day of classes, I realized that I had hit the jackpot – this was the real Yoga I had been yearning to find; incredibly, the Yoga I had sought was exactly what Agama was teaching. I am the type of person who took to heart the invitation from that first week with the school: Yoga provides the opportunity to become the scientist, the subject, and the experiment itself in a great process of spiritual discovery verified by practice. Through the gift of the teachings and my dedication to a vegan diet, purification, and the Yoga itself (because actually without some dedication no results are possible!), I healed myself of horrible acne, chronic UTIs, sinusitis, and other ailments. I dove very deeply into Agama’s Yoga, and soon found myself prepared to commit to a new life in which this was my focus.
In March 2007, I completed the Agama Teacher Training Course and I have been teaching in Thailand, Israel, India, Mexico, and Sweden ever since, nonstop. I have continued to develop myself as a student of Yoga through Agama’s advanced studies of Kashmiri Shaivism and the kundalini practice, both of which have also synergistically enhanced my teaching ability. In addition, since 2010 I’ve been one of Agama’s senior teachers, acting as a lead trainer for its teacher training courses and kundalini program as well as giving mantra initiations. I’m very grateful for the knowledge and skills Agama has given me, and I regard it as a rare privilege and true vocation to pass these teachings on to others.
Being a Yoga teacher has greatly increased my enthusiasm for spirituality and made me a stronger practitioner. I also humbly extend my eternal gratitude to Swami Vivekananda Saraswati, who founded this exceptional Yoga school and remains its head teacher. His devotion and dedication to Yoga have been an endless source of inspiration on my path as a disciple and teacher.
Tantra deepened all the changes and led me to a kingdom of bliss…
Little did I know back in those early days of Yoga that I was only halfway down the rabbit hole…. I also began my tantric studies and practice in parallel, and was soon to discover new dimensions of sexuality I could never have imagined.
My sexual life before Tantra was just a shadow of what it is today. In the beginning, despite an ability to reach states of pleasure easily, I experienced pain with deeper penetration and at such times had to stop my partner. I also began to learn about my own body, touching myself inside the yoni for the first time. Until this point in my life, I had experienced only external (mainly clitoral) orgasms and, although multiorgasmic by nature, those orgasms felt superficial and left me unfulfilled on a deeper level. I thought at the time, there must be more to this!
Tantra soon became a deep and devotional practice for me. Instead of being managed by my sexual desire, I became its master. I learned the tools to take me through periods of celibacy, and began to completely spiritualize my sexual life. I had stopped serving my lower desire and came to lovemaking to connect with divine manifestation through the physical body. I learned to let go to my partner, to embrace my lover at the level of the heart, and to allow him to receive my soul as I received his supreme masculine essence in total surrender during our lovemaking. Despite growing up in a fiery wartorn society, I had finally learned to be vulnerable without feeling a loss of power. I had learned to reside in a very sacred place within transfigured tantric union as the embodiment of the Goddess. All that I have received from Tantra is invaluable.
Sexually speaking, I also found transcendent and ecstatic bliss through Tantra. I explored all kinds of new orgasms, reaching unfathomable heights and depths of pleasure with my partner. Being opened by grace to these experiences also taught me humility – that this great realm of limitless potential also comes with great responsibility and power. The manifesting power of the creative (sexual) energy had been revealed to me. In every way I realized that I had discovered a very sacred treasure and that I had the great honor to guard that treasure, to share in it, and to pass it forward like a candle flame to light the way for others.
The journey into massage
A few years into Tantra, I began to explore Tantra Massage for men and women with some of my friends in Israel. When I returned to Thailand, I was invited to share my approach at a special women’s group. The date was April 4, 2010. I brought a (very brave) male friend with me to demonstrate a lingam massage. It was a wild and fascinating experience to give a tantric massage for a man in front of 40 women watching gleefully with wide eyes, and to explain what I was doing while trying to remain strongly connected with him. Immediately after that demonstration, women came and asked for yoni massages, and the rest is history, as they say. In the first five years of my massage practice, I did not advertise once; every new client came by referral.
I believe that my own openness and years of grounding in Tantra enable me to hold the space powerfully for my clients. It is my great joy to guide both men and women to discover their sexuality in a way that lets them open up to love, build their confidence as lovers, allow masks and fears to fall away, and feel aspiration blossom in their hearts.
Empowering the sacred feminine with women’s group work
In 2011, I began to work with women’s groups, facilitating workshops created to empower women in their expression and tantric experience. The following year, I started leading Agama’s “Shakti Groups” on Koh Phangan – special weekly sessions of tantric training intended for women – and to manage many of the rituals and festivities at Agama Yoga Thailand such as the Mahashivaratri celebration, the women’s Rites of Passage, and monthly transfiguration rituals. This very rewarding experience has helped me grow in my own journey toward greater expression of the divine feminine nature. Each woman finds herself at a very unique place in this process and I too have faced many challenges since I began my tantric studies years ago. In particular I was confronted with my tendencies toward control, toughness, and a lack of sensitivity. This journey has softened me greatly with sweetness and receptivity, connecting me with my own nature. It has brought me to a space where I’m the most able to share my gifts and talents with the world, to fundamentally support women in particular, and to guide women with love. I embrace my dharma as an instrument of love, a vessel for Shakti, and I rejoice in every aspect of this sacred dance of life.
Yogitantra – A Journey to Yourself
Be yourself
Enjoy yourself
Love yourself
All we need is love. It sounds like a cliché but it’s true. Eventually at the end of the day, what everyone is looking for, in fact craving, is to be loved. When we’re in relationship or with friends and family, we want to feel love. When we don’t perceive it, we may become upset, frustrated, sad, depressed, and lonely. In this journey many people realize that what they are lacking is not love from others but love from themselves. That’s why my philosophy is love yourself. This journey is an invitation for you to love yourself. For many self-love is like a city in China; they don’t know how to do it because they spent their whole life looking for love, searching outside instead of inside.
In Tantra we learn that love is not dependent on an external source but is a vast unlimited amount of energy which is there all the time, and we just need to plug in and attune ourselves. For that we need to acknowledge and release all of the self-hate we are reinforcing through our beliefs and actions, and only then can we receive love from others. When you respect yourself you will receive respect from others. This runs counter to our tendency as humans to point the finger and blame others or the situation for what is happening to us and consequently to try to avoid taking responsibility for what happens to us in life.
"Nobody makes anybody feel anything. Understanding this is the first step to claiming something very precious – your own emotions. ... Remember, it might be easier in the short run for me to dump my feelings on you when I feel bad; it sure is tempting to make how I feel all your fault. But when we blame others for feelings that truly belong to us, we disempower ourselves. If it's your fault that I feel bad, I guess there's nothing I can do about it, so I'm stuck. Only when I am willing to own my emotions do I have the power to change and grow."From The Ethical Slut, a Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships and Other Adventures, by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy