own life.
And each of these pioneers, in their own way, offers such tools as well.
Let me introduce you first to Mama Gena, who has been guiding women through her School of Womanly Arts for over 15 years. On the subject of enlightened sex, she says, “It is our culture that divides sexuality and spirituality, but within a human being, sacredness and sensuality are one. One of the things that is unique and beautiful about the women who graduate from my program is that they feel totally integrated and in ownership of their womanhood in all of its dimensions, including sensuality and sexuality.”
In a culture that prizes suffering, survival and fear, we’ve been taught to consider the body and all things of the flesh to be an impediment to spirituality and enlightenment. But perhaps, we’ve begun to think and hear, it is the concept of sexuality AS spirituality that opens us up to experiencing our divinity.
This concept may seem like a new-comer, swinging its sacred hips into a more prominent cultural conversation; however, the ancient traditions of Taoism from China, Tantra from India, and Goddess worship from everywhere built their spiritual practices and philosophies around the inclusion of the body and sexuality, rather than exclusion. The Taoists said, let’s use the body to enhance enlightenment. The Tantrics said, there’s nothing to transcend; you already ARE the divine. The goddess worship traditions said, women create life and that’s about as divine as you can get.
Mama Gena currently offers her feisty, revolutionary work in the form of a 6-month intensive called the Womanly Arts Mastery Program, or “Mastery” for short. “I look at women and I see legends with their