Podcast transcript: Maya Magdalena on embracing all the flavors of life

Connect with Maya via Instagram @divinityinmatter and her website divinityinmatter.com

For further research on those and topics mentioned:

ISTA - International School of Temple Arts
Bruce Lyon
Baba Dez

René Descartes "cogito, ergo sum"
Robin Sharma - The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari "the mind is a great servant but is a terrible master"
Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps the Score 
Stan Grof

Transcript: 

Giancarlo: Hello, hi. Welcome to this new episode of the mangu.tv Podcast. Today, we have Maya Magdalena. Maya Magdalena is a shamanic sexual somatic practitioner, trained by ISTA, which is the International School of Temple Arts, embodiment guide, and a Serpent High Priestess. She has been studying at various modern-day mystery schools dedicated to soul initiation. cosmology, mysteries of the body, and deep feminine mysteries. In these schools, she went through her initiation, and this is where a lot of her embodied wisdom comes from. She's also part of a global tribe dedicated to the emergence of temple and mystery schools around the world, recognizing the need for them on the way of anchoring new soulful civilization on earth. Currently, she lives in Ibiza where she offers community workshops, circles, and rituals, and serves men, women, and couples on the path of ecstatic embodiment, liberation and one on one sessions. This is so exciting when you hear ecstatic embodiment liberation. 

Maya: [chuckles] 

Giancarlo: Welcome, Maya.

Maya: Hello, thank you for having me.

Giancarlo: As our Mangusta listeners know, we are just starting inviting tantra experts, we will be licensing two documentaries on tantra. And yes, our listener really comes to mangu.tv mostly for psychedelic science, psychedelic medicine, consciousness, mindfulness, these kinds of topics. I thought that as you say here, if we need to-- you said anchoring a new soulful civilization. And so, I think this is the most important thing these days, or what mangu.tv is exploring with the end of the Mayan calendar, this moment in time being a tipping point in consciousness of people awakening all over the world. Then, of course, there is deep pocket of darkness and evil, like the war. All the misery in the world, but then there is a lot of people really awakening. That's what we're trying to explore in this channel. 

As usual, I would like to propose to you to divide this conversation into three main categories. Then, of course, we can go back and forth. Which is a little bit the cultural background of this practice, which is very ancient. And then, I want to hear what did you choose from all this enormous literature on tantra, then I'd love to know a little bit about your personal story, and then about your practice. Tell us a little bit, what is tantra and then what is tantra for you?

Maya: I feel there's so much confusion these days about what tantra really means. To be honest, I don't really use word "tantra" so much in my work, mainly because of that confusion. We have classical tantric teachings which are in Sanskrit and there is a lot of various translations and lineages that come from there. A lot of different teachers teaching also different kinds of interpretations of these lineages. And then, we have a neo tantra, which can be pretty much everything connected to the sacred sexuality. So yeah, everyone can tell you a different thing.

But for me, ultimately, how I understand the word 'tantra' is really to embrace the life just as it is, to really be able to welcome and embody all aspects of life, and it can be more to do with the presence and light and the consciousness, but also more human aspect of existence, more related to the body, to the desires, to the sexuality, to our emotions. For me, the tantric path is a path of actually welcoming everything that life brings us with presence, with awareness, with love, and integrating piece by piece. And this is a path towards wholeness and holiness as well, I believe.

Giancarlo: When you say integrating all these pieces, can you elaborate on what are those pieces?

Maya: It depends where we are on our personal journey. For some people, this piece might be expanding the consciousness. Maybe someone's very stuck into a business mindset and they need to expand their horizons and they start to do a psychedelic medicine, and they turn more towards the collective consciousness. For other people, it might be actually embracing what is happening in their body on the emotional level. Maybe they are in the chapter of their life where they go through a lot of just deep, heavy emotions. And maybe there is some trauma coming up in the body or problems in the relationships with your beloved or with your partner. So, this is then to be able to embrace all of that, even the parts of our humaneness that are very uncomfortable. Most of the time, we don't want them in our reality, we trying to push them away, because we always want to feel happy, we always want to feel pleasure, we always want to whatever is it that we want, but to really be able to welcome, also these dark moments and also our sexuality. 

Sexuality is such an important part of being human and there was a lot of I can talk about it, why is it important right now to look into our sexuality. But yeah, for other people, they are in the place in their life where these parts will be the parts of their sexuality, of their embodiment that they cannot access because of the shame in the body or different kinds of trauma. Then, this will be what they are about to embrace. Sometimes we have a lot of problems with really welcoming life, because we are very much into this polarization. "Okay, this is good, this is bad. This is right, this is wrong. This is what I like, this is what I dislike." For me, tantra really goes beyond that polarization. It goes really into the place beyond all of that when we can accept or we can embrace all the flavors of life and stop to make judgments about what's welcomed here and what is not welcomed here.

Giancarlo: I have been told that tantra, "tan" is expansion, and "tra" is the science of expansion. But listening to you right now, maybe it is more the sense of integration. And then, I guess, when you're integrated, you expand. 

Maya: Mm-hmm, exactly. 

Giancarlo: This is a discipline that would attract anybody who feels nonintegrated. So, it feels not hole, who has some sort of even existential anxiety. Some people have specific issue that has to do with anxiety or depressive episode or not being able to find their purpose. Feeling a little bit maybe having a problematic relationship with their loved one, with their family. So, basically, anybody who's not well in the skin is welcome to this practice.

Maya: Exactly. Of course, tantric practices are not always about sexuality and making love. Again, depends on the lineages. Some lineages focus specifically on the practices. These are the practices that you basically take to your bedroom. Others focus more of all different aspects of life, the practices that help you also to stay present, focused in the day-to-day life, not so much connected to sexuality. There are different lineages of more, the darker parts of our beings. We call them the darker, more connected just to the density and to the earthiness. Tantric schools, I believe, also are schools, some of them where they help us to liberate the body, to open the body, to release all the shame, fear, guilt that is stuck in our system, sometimes for generations. 

What happens then that the more the body opens, the more space there is in the body, the more the soul can land. Consciousness that we so much focus on these days, also through psychedelic plants, we are expanding the consciousness. I feel it's a preparation for them to come back to the body. I can share also, my understanding is that on the path of evolution, we had to go through a stage, like a couple of thousand years or more, focusing on developing the consciousness, expanding the consciousness, developing the presence. Because before that, we were driven by our very animalistic, very bodily desires. We had to learn how to control that, how to, in a way dominate the body, so we can grow and expand as conscious beings. What's happened then is that we went a little bit too far, and the mind became the muscles that, in my opinion, became overgrown. Just because we have big mind doesn't mean also that we are present and we are conscious. 

Giancarlo: Probably the opposite. 

Maya: Yes, very often. The psychedelic plants are coming into the picture to help us, help humanity to really bring the presence, bring the awareness to everything that we are doing and expand the field of consciousness. Realize that we are all one, we are all connected, that love is something that truly matters in this world. And then, once we have that presence and this awareness, then we can again come back on a descent path. Rather than ascension, which is reaching to the sky and to heaven and overcoming bodily desires, and in a way, also repressing them to really focus on reaching out to higher states of consciousness, then we bring it again all the way down to our body. As we go into the body, we're going to meet everything that we have left behind. I feel the psychedelic plants very often show us that. Everything that we're not willing to meet, sooner or later, we have to look into that, there is no way around it. We can play with time, we can postpone things, but when it's time to meet your personal inner hell, [chuckles] your trauma, your wounds, this darkness that is inside of you, it's going to come after you. When we go on this path back into the body, very often these are the layers of the body that we need to face as well.

Giancarlo: Yes. This is very important that I would like to make sure that our listeners got this because these two ideas that you mentioned. One is this idea of the glorification of the mind. This idea that Descartes says, "Cogito, ergo sum," this idea that the more we have developed mind, the better of a human being we are. And this is now is proving that, as you say, we went too far away. I can't remember who said that the mind is a great servant but is a terrible master. We feel that in our civilization designed to accomplish things, the mind becomes almost a prison. Being stuck in your mind then, and now I'm exaggerating, but you might develop illness in your body because you feel that you're almost neglecting the body. That's an important idea. 

The second one you mentioned is that in all the religion and philosophical tradition, this idea of ascension and transcendence, what is really respected is this idea of going through this to transcend, and to go into this ethereal place. Also there, you're saying, "Be careful," because sometimes the liberation goes through dissension, goes through understanding your body, this New Age idea that the body is your temple, that you need to-- there is this book called The Body Keeps the Score that really explains so well that all your traumatic events are stored in your body. So, if you want to transcend, [chuckles] you need to descend. That's so interesting, thank you for sharing that. You mentioned all these different lineages, which one got your attention and which one did you practice?

Maya: I spent most of my life in some form of darkness. There was a lot of, a lot of depression, a lot of addictions, a lot of partying. And then came the moment when I decided to leave this all behind. Not that I decided, but there was really a longing and calling from depths of my soul and I just had to create the change in my life. I started with the ascension path.

Giancarlo: What is it? I'm not familiar with ascension path.

Maya: Ascension path. The path of actually transcending the body and developing the consciousness, developing the presence, developing the awareness. All the practices that help us to expand on the consciousness level.

Giancarlo: But what kind of cultural framework were you using for that?

Maya: Hmm, I think it started simply-- You're doing yoga and different kinds of meditations. I discovered Theta healing. Theta healing, which is using the theta brainwaves to create the altered states of consciousness as well and change the belief systems and reprogram our system so we can liberate ourselves from the different patterns we have.

Giancarlo: But how does it work? How do you harness the theta?

Maya: There is a school, it's simply called ThetaHealing School, and are different trainings. They teach you through meditation, how to access the theta brainwave. I was also practitioner, so I was helping people offering the sessions where they would come to me with a specific issue, and I will put them in the state of theta brainwave for them to be able to release some of this conditioning and programming. So, it's similar to hypnosis, but works with a different brain frequency.

Giancarlo: It's a machine that makes a noise?

Maya: No, it's actually through the meditations. It's very interesting, one can say a bit of magic. [chuckles] I'm saying that because I feel it's important for people to realize that very often that where we have awakening, so-called awakening, when awaken to our conscious self, first step, very often is this ascension path, this transcendence. We start with yoga, we start with meditation, we learn how to reprogram our belief systems, and so on, and so on. And medicine plants are so helpful in that as well.

Giancarlo: So, you started simultaneously with meditation, yoga, the theta healing, the psychedelics?

Maya: Then, the psychedelics came in. I was using already psychedelics before, but in an unconscious way, I would say. 

Giancarlo: Like partying, like LSD? 

Maya: Yeah, exactly. Then, I started to go to the ayahuasca ceremonies and it helped me really to come out of the addictions. I'm really grateful for that. What's happened then--

Giancarlo: Sorry, because this is a topic that is dear to our listeners. You might elaborate a little bit on how ayahuasca helped for you to address the addiction. What is the mechanism for you?

Maya: I spent maybe 15, 17 years in the party world, being a raver and doing all kinds of substances, and that was the way of life I knew. And then, something [click] changed in me. When I realized that ayahuasca is there and I heard many different stories, I started to get curious. At some point, it was just coming from the depth of my being like, "Okay, I have to do it." In my first session, I remember I just started to see the book of my life, like someone would just take my book and just go through the pages. Then, I understood was a little bit like people described before, like when they have near death experience. So, it was a little bit of that. That was the moment of this like, "Wow, this is my life." I wasn't really happy what I was seeing. 

Giancarlo: So beautiful no, that there is such a technology.

Maya: Yeah, it's incredible. It is really incredible. At that time, already, for seven years, I was suffering very, very strong headaches. I went to a lot of doctors, I did a lot of tests. Nobody could tell me what it is. It was this pain that I would describe as someone would put a screwdriver in my forehead. We can say where the third eye is, but I didn't understand that at that time. I would have such headaches that sometimes for weeks too that I will have to just do like three painkillers a day and I will wake up with a headache and go to bed with a headache, and nobody could help me. In my first ayahuasca ceremony, none of it made sense. I didn't understand what this book meant at the time. But then at some point, it showed up for me, a hand. A hand that just started to do this movement of scooping from my forehead. From that moment, I never had a headache again. I came to the ceremony with a headache, I remember. And that was really a miracle. That was really a miracle that shook me enough to start to believe in miracles. 

Giancarlo: I'm sure neuroscientists would say that beliefs create biological pain. People have backache all their life, but nothing is wrong with their back. They call it psychosomatic pain, which is more linked about the psychological condition than the physical condition. But yeah, I like also the word 'miracle'. [laughs] 

Maya: Yeah. Sometimes it's important. When you are in the period of your life when you are in despair, or you are depressed, which most of the time is connected to feeling there is no hope. So, these little miracles and faith that comes in in this moment, it really can save your life, basically. We don't want to make sense out of it. And this is always what has been serving humanity in some stages. For me, it was beginning of just being amazed by it and curious for this plant and the capacity of this plant. So, in my second ceremony, I remember I had such a deep healing with my father where I have started with my father, where we didn't have much of contact, and I thought I'm not being affected by it, but then I realized that it was a part of me that I deeply repressed because I didn't want to feel it. So, in the second ceremony, I had a very deep healing connected to my father and so on and so on. The journey has started.

Giancarlo: Yeah, because those tryptamines, DMT, they reduce this default mode network, which the neuropsychopharmacologists call the egoic armor, when that is weaken, then the subconscious material to become more accessible. It's incredible.

Maya: Yeah. To come back to your question, how this helped me with my addictions and changing completely my lifestyle is that I found out that after each ceremony, I would just not be able to-- for example, even have a glass of wine, not talking about any other heavy substances. And now looking back in time, I understand that it's because I felt so deeply connected to nature. In the beginning, it was the nature that I perceived on the outside of me, but then with time I understood that, to my own nature as well. After each ceremony, I will have periods of being sober, and in this--

Giancarlo: And it felt great.

Maya: And it felt great, but also it started to shake something in me which is the wound of not belonging, because all my life and my tribe, the people around me, my community was built around that. That's why I think it's so difficult to just change your lifestyle and come out of the addictions because you will be asked to let go of probably everything [chuckles] at some point. So, this became like another substance to work with in the next ceremonies. In the next ceremonies, there will be different elements and pieces coming around understanding of actually that I was in the wrong place. Not only in the wrong place, doing the wrong things, but also with wrong people. And that I have a mission on this earth and there is something else that I was supposed to be doing somewhere else with somebody else.

Giancarlo: Nice. Where were you, in Amsterdam, no?

Maya: Actually, it was here in Ibiza. Most of the ceremonies in the beginning were in Ibiza, actually, yeah.

Giancarlo: Nice. Then, how did you discover tantra? How did you pick your specific lineage?

Maya: Yeah. The story actually links very well, and this is a part of, of something that I wanted to also share here. After this part of ascension and expanding the consciousness and developing the consciousness, very often, and that's what's happened for me, I call it "the matter of your body claims you." Okay, now is the next stage. Now, it's time for me to go back to my body. Something calls me down, down, down to my body, to my base, to the earth in a very embodied way as acknowledgement that this body is actually Earth itself. It's not on the outside, it's this-- that my soul inhabits. For me, it was like that. Some time, I realized that this was my last ayahuasca ceremony, and now is the time to even stop to consume this plant, and I stopped also to consume all the psychedelics for some time, yeah, for a couple of years or more. This is where a lot of trauma started come up for me, embodied trauma and sexual trauma. 

I'm not talking here specifically of the trauma from abuse or being raped, not necessarily. Just the ways how I was abusing myself, mainly because I was taking the substances, partying, then having sex in a way that was very unhealthy, very disconnected.

Giancarlo: Not present.

Maya: Not present. I was disassociating from my body. So, I was raping myself in a way and abusing myself. I know I'm using heavy words here, but it's also important that this is just being acknowledged for what it is. In my system, it felt like that. It was really a trauma where I came to the moment in my life where nobody could touch me. I was emanating through my body just, "Don't come close." It threw me into one and a half year of celibacy. Not because I consciously wanted to, but just because I wasn't able to connect with anyone. It was also the time I separated from one of my partners, and so I went deeply into grief, into a heartbreak. A lot of situations were happening in my life that were just pulling me down. I started to seek again. I heard about tantra and I was looking for all different lineages and trying different things, and nothing really deeply resonated. I think this is why I never focus on any specific tantric lineage like Dao or classical tantra or any Vedic teachings. For me, it was just tasting, tasting, this tasting, that tasting, this tasting. 

Then, I came across ISTA, International School of Temple Arts, which is a modern mystery school. They're actually combining a lot of these different teachings. They've a different philosophy faculty that that brings different knowledge from different lineages. The framework is combining a lot of the ancient practices together with modern ones. So, it was like a school that I felt was really giving me everything that I was looking for.

Giancarlo: Wow, incredible. Who developed the curriculum of this school, Baba Dez?

Maya: Yes, Baba Dez is the founder. And then also, I want to mention Bruce Lyon who came in later and he's responsible also for a lot.

Giancarlo: This is in a way very classic question. What was Baba Dez and Bruce Lyon's background? They were trained like what? 

Maya: I'm not sure about Baba Dez's background to be honest. I'm not really sure. I don't think I can answer the question. Bruce Lyon, he is the guy that is just studied and investigated like everything. From science, to different kinds of mystic practices, cosmology. This guy is a really incredible well of wisdom and I really recommend to check this guy out. 

Giancarlo: He wrote some books? 

Maya: Yeah, we wrote some books. There's a lot of esoteric books connected to cosmology, to soul initiation. And yeah, so it's quite esoteric stuff. 

Giancarlo: We'll put in the show notes the name and maybe these books. I can't help asking you now, what is the link now with cosmology in tantra?

Maya: [laughs] As I was mentioning, when we embark on this descent path, back into the body. In my communities, how we call it is to land the soul in the body. In a way, we can look at it. Of course, this is just a way of framing it, but we can look at it as a soul or the consciousness or the feel of unconditional love, coming deeper and deeper into the density of the body. In ancient times, this was called a "soul initiation." There was a lot of temples and mystery schools dedicated to the soul initiation. In the modern mystery schools, we are going through the processes, we're consciously in the ritual and through different practices, we are bringing more and more consciousness and awareness into the body, and then everything that comes up on the way as we are coming into the body, we come in deeper into the density, we meeting the trauma, we meeting our shame, guilt, we're meeting all this stuff connected to asexuality and we are dealing with it. We are learning how to feel safe with the intensity of our body, with the intensity of how our body can make us feel sometimes overwhelming with everything that is stored there.

The cosmology, if we look at the cosmos, as a fractal, and it's like a microcosm and the macrocosm, as within, so without. If we look at the cosmos, there is the Earth, there is the sun, and there is the center of the galaxy, or the blackhole. In the symbolism, the Earth means the body, the sun is the soul, the center of the galaxy, the blackhole is our dark core or the spirit.

Giancarlo: Or the subconscious.

Maya: Or subconscious, also, yeah. We can use this as a framework-

Giancarlo: Like a metaphor.

Maya: -metaphor, yeah, to really create the processes that will help us to understand our nature, and to understand how to bring ourselves into process of initiation where the soul can be integrated into body. The cosmology gives us a lot of insights into our nature.

Giancarlo: It's like a semantic framework to understand our place in the universe, and how by integrating our body, we integrated us with everything really. Just to go back to more practical, you felt that you were misusing sexual energy for many years, but you still felt that it was a strong force that maybe can be harnessed in a different way. You heard about tantra, you start researching it, you find ISTA. So, you ISTA level one, where and how long?

Maya: [chuckles] Yeah. It was three and a half years ago, I believe, in Guatemala. First, I heard about it a year earlier. The moment I heard about it, already something so it started to shake in my body. There was vibrancy in my body, something was coming alive. And then, I heard the different names. Again, I had this reaction in my body, like, "Ooh, something is happening." I was just coming out of this time of celibacy. So, I was quite bad, let's say and suddenly there's this aliveness, so that was, "Oh, what is this? I want to follow that. I want more of that." Then I met some people from ISTA. I had some connections with them. That was almost the introduction for me already. Again, I felt so much aliveness in my body, so much lifeforce awakening. Ooh, I was feeling more and more ecstatic and just excited about life again.

Giancarlo: While you were there? 

Maya: Yes. 

Giancarlo: Give us a little bit if you can, a sense of the program. It's one week. There is a little bit of theory, a little bit of practice, and then people are encouraged to just try. Just give a little bit of sense of what's happening in this one weeklong retreat.

Maya: When I did my first ISTA level one, it was quite challenging for me, actually, I have to say. What we do there really is we are diving into the topics of-- first of all, what are the fundamentals that you need to learn to start to feel safe with your sexuality? So, you learn the basics of consent, you learn the wheel of consent, you learn about the boundaries, you learn and practice a lot how to say no, which is a really a difficult part. [laughs] 

Giancarlo: I mean they should teach it in schools.

Maya: Of course, totally. Yes. We are working with our emotional body. Emotional body is a portal and it's between-- it's almost the first step before we can go really, truly deeply into our roots and our sexuality. There is a lot of stuck emotions. There is grief, there is rage, shame, fear, guilt. So, we deal with that. I mean, we never deal with that fully, but we work with it. In level one, we look into that and we learned tools, how to feel safe when our emotional body is activated, and how to increase fluidity, emotional fluidity, because we quickly learn that the more emotionally fluid we are, the more we can perceive life, feel life, and the more pleasure we can also feel. We cannot choose what we want to feel, what we cannot feel. If we say no to grief, we say no to pleasure. Just simply we cannot choose. Either we feel life as it is, or we don't. 

In level one, we really tap into that and into this aliveness that becomes available once we really want to embrace life as it is. The are the shamanic tools we get also how to deal with these different parts I was talking about and how to really take life in our hands and reclaim our sovereignty. It's a lot about learning how to be a sovereign being, which means you are an authority, how to know, how to clear your emotional body so you can tap into your truth, into your presence. From there, what's good for you, what's wrong for you, when it's your yes, when it's your no. We learn that very often, especially in the sexual context, we say yes when we mean no. Especially for a woman, it's a big issue to sometimes literally open your mouth and say something when there is already gentle form of overriding boundaries happening, we get in freeze. We also learn how to unfreeze. We learn about the sex-connected conversation, like how do we actually become comfortable with talking about sex and safe sex practices as well. Yeah.

Giancarlo: This is so interesting, and we can have another full podcast on understanding the cause of this shame and guilt and lack of boundaries. It comes from the patriarchy, it comes from the Judeo-Christian morality. There is so much that has been done to create all this shame and guilt and unease around sexuality. It was difficult for you because you had to face all your trauma. But then you left and you felt empowered and you decided to be a tantrica.

Maya: [laughs] 

Giancarlo: Is this that fast?

Maya: Yeah, I think already a year before when I started to have all this-- I call it "tantric awakening" happening in my body when my Kundalini started to awaken and I started to experience my body shaking and a lot of lifeforce moving through which will also create an altered state of consciousness. 

Giancarlo: Well, but tell us a little bit about this Kundalini, Is this something you also had in yoga?

Maya: No, [chuckles] there is, I think, a lot of misunderstanding about the Kundalini. The Kundalini Yoga is a very different thing. 

Giancarlo: No, that’s the breathing. You didn't have the Kundalini rising before the tantra? No not really?

Maya: I never really went fully into that practice. I don't think it's the same thing. It feels like an earthquake in your body, and it's an eruption from your base. Actually, it feels like the very powerful energy of the earth wants to move through you, from your base, and up out through your crown. Because the body is not used to that energy in the power and because there is not enough space in the body, because of all this trauma and all this other stuff I spoke about, it creates the friction and resistance and there is sometimes a very, very uncomfortable feeling and shaking. In other times, it brings this expanded vision, or used to take me into altered state of consciousness. I was again, similar with ayahuasca, "Ooh, I want more of that. I want to experience that." When I did my first training, I was already in it. Even though it was challenging, I was able to understand that, "Okay, this was challenging," because I didn't want to face a lot of that, and now I faced it, and I liberated myself a little bit, and I want more liberation. I felt ecstatic, and I was so open and so receptive, and so flowy, and so pleasurable, like with so much pleasure. Also, when the emotions were coming, they were flowing, they were not getting stuck.

Giancarlo: Amazing. Who wouldn't want their Kundalini rising after this description? [chuckles] But is it difficult to activate it?

Maya: There are the practices, of course, that can support you, but I think at the end, there are certain things that needs to be done on the path first, and then whether you want it or not, it's going to happen for you. So, maybe we can speed it up or maybe not, we don't know really how is it, but when it comes, it comes, and you cannot provoke it, if you're not ready for it. 

Giancarlo: So being ready means working on your obstacles, on your psychological resistance.

Maya: Yeah. I believe also developing the heart because this is also the power that becomes available for you, I believe that we need to truly care and love for one another and for the planet to come to the point of being ready for another chapter.

Giancarlo: You have to do that journey from the mind, the heart.

Maya: Yeah. I believe we go from the mind to the heart, we expand our consciousness, and then we have the awareness present, and we have the love, and then we can dive into the mysteries of the bodies and mysteries of our sexualities and harvest the power that is available there.

Giancarlo: Amazing. We are now in urgent need to integrate this practice into the mainstream and possibly in school. Because these teenagers, they grow up completely misinformed, and educated by porn, and maybe the next evolution of the MeToo movement will be into more tantra available for the mainstream because very few people even know about this practice exists. They think it's such an esoteric thing, but it's just about knowing your body and taping into your heart. When did you decide to make this your career?

Maya: We all have different missions on this planet, and for some people it will be more connected to the consciousness awareness and so on. For other people, it's more connected to the body. As I was doing these different trainings, mainly because I wanted to feel free and ecstatic and liberated, I started to realize that I carry a gift there, that actually something there that I get faster than others, let's say, and that I'm able to see between veils. And that my shamanic capacities in a way how I use this life force to create altered state of reality, it's something that comes easy for me. Nobody taught me this. Just because I was put in the trainings where the field was supporting that revelations, I was able to almost remember that this is something that I know already.

Because I was the seeker, and because I tried so many things, and I came from this place of depression, and so on, so on, I really wanted to find this reason why I'm here. When I started to feel that, it really felt like, "Oh, this is why I'm here for." When you really want to be there, and when you start to feel it, I want to live that, I want to embody that now but it doesn't happen so fast. You have the moments when you feel like you are it and then again, you forget, and again you go back into day-to-day life, and you deal with your problems, and you sometimes became an asshole, and you don't care for a moment, then do again remember. It was the period where I was just driven by really wanting to be this.

I started to offer some little sessions here and there, just as an exchange, and then going to do different trainings and go to study different mystery schools, more specific ones. Until I came to the point when I realized that it's time to really step into this being my, let's say, full-time job. I don't like to call it this way but you know what I mean. I did the practitioner training of ISTA, which is specifically designed to actually offer one-to-one somatic sexual shamanic sessions that include bodywork and include working with the sexuality.

Giancarlo: I want to get into that, but just to finish on the training. The level two then ISTA and then there's a level three, and there's a practitioner workshop. 

Maya: Yeah. Practitioner training.

Giancarlo: Yes. You want to tell us a little bit the difference between level one, two, three? Can you explain how is two different?

Maya: We're not talking about what's happening in level two, either in level three, but I can say that it's transpersonal work. It's not about you, it's not about your trauma, it's not about your story, it's not about you being a sovereign being. It's actually about service and about awakening to the transpersonal realms. 

Giancarlo: This is, for me, personally is very important. I'm a big fan of Stan Grof, who's the godfather of transpersonal psychology. And just for people to understand, Stan Grof used to say that Freud was fishing, sitting on the back of a whale, because Freud had his incredible intuition of psychosomatic ailment and how the psyche affects your body, but he was only looking at your biography. And then Stan Grof said a lot of stuff affects your psyche, even before you were born, in the mother womb. All the children of the mother, the Jewish mother in Nazi time, they will end up with eating disorder. The actual birth itself, going through the canal, some kids have an easier birth, some as an emergency C-section and also that affects your psyche. And then, you can go to the transpersonal, which is your ancestry and your previous life. To really understand, I think, the human psyche, you have to look also at the transpersonal material, which we know-- I mean it's a leap of faith, but there are more and more disciplines like quantum physics, quantum mechanics, paranormal activity that show that consciousness is not created by the brain or epiphenomenon of the brain. It came before mind. 

It's not that from a single-celled amoeba, then we develop into these humans that-- all these animals when the brain was complex enough, then, poof, consciousness appeared. It might be the other way around. It might be that cosmic consciousness has been there forever, and then created matter. So, if we embrace this change of paradigm, then it is obvious that we are informed by the law of transpersonal material.

Tell us a little bit about how do you work? Tell us a little bit about your work. I know it's difficult to standardize, everybody's different, but what type of clients do you have? Even if there's no such thing as typical, but what's the most-- if you can standardize a little bit, what is the journey of your clients?

Maya: Yeah. Most of my clients are people who actually are embarking or are on their descent path. Sometimes it at least feels like a conscious choice, because they just feel like they want to connect to their body, connect to the Earth, connect to their sexuality.

Giancarlo: But why? Because they feel they're disconnected?

Maya: Yes. Yes.

Giancarlo: How does it manifest - into stopping making love with your wife or your husband?

Maya: Yeah, like not feeling their power, not having erection, like woman having trauma, that they are not able to receive a man or disconnected from the womb or they just feel disconnected in general. I work a lot with the emotional body. I help people to feel safe in the body. Because what's happened is that very often, we don't want to even talk about the heavy emotions or trauma. Sometimes, when I talk to people how is my day, and I use these words, because sometimes I'm in it myself. I go through heavy emotions, because I have a capacity to hold them. I'm expanded in this way and I have capacity to hold heavy emotions. Sometimes, not mine. 

People contract, people are scared because our nervous systems get overwhelmed. It's a gentle journey of learning how to feel safe with emotions, all kinds of emotions. Expanding our capacity to hold it, but not in a way of controlling and replacing, but embracing it and finding ecstasy in it. There is ecstasy in grief. There is a power in anger. Actually, anger, if you go a little bit deeper, it becomes rage, and rage is just pure roaring, raw lifeforce of the Earth, moving through systems. If you know how to harvest that, you have a lot of power in your body. I help people to really see and change the narrative about judging emotions. And then as they start to feel safe, they start to calm deeper into their bodies, they are opening more, they feel more safe, and then we can go into sexuality. Some people can go right away into sexuality, but for many people, the journey, at least the clients that come to me, it's connected with the emotional body first, to work with the emotional body.

Giancarlo: Amazing. Do you work with more men, women, or couples, or everybody?

Maya: Yeah. I work with both. I work more with men than women these days. Just because I don't control that, that's what happens. I work also with couples. With women, I work these days more in the context of circles. And yeah, I have a gathering coming up and a little retreat. So, I work in groups with women, but one to one these days mainly with men. 

Giancarlo: Do you have teenagers yet or young adults like 18, 23?

Maya: No, actually, this is a topic that circulates around me a lot. I have a lot of friends here who have children and they keep asking me, but no. I think it's a little bit tricky to work with the teenagers. I don't know, they may be not so open, and then you cannot work with the children under 18 because basically it's illegal. [laughs] 

Giancarlo: Yeah, let's call it young adults like 18, 23, because my son is not very open with me about his sexuality. I would imagine that still sexuality is very much linked to alcohol. I don't know how many of these young kids are really present and understanding what's happening.

This has been super interesting. Where people can find you if they've been intrigued, they want to work with you? You have a website and Instagram?

Maya: Yes, I have Instagram, which is @divinityinmatter. Also, my website, divinityinmatter.com. 

Giancarlo: Perfect. People can find everything on the show notes. This is fantastic. We're now getting to one hour. Is there anything you want to address our audience that we haven't covered?

Maya: Yeah, what's coming to me now, it's to share this part around, just embracing our whole body. Just as we embrace everything who we are, the whole humaneness, the ugly, the beautiful, the messy, the pleasure, the pain and so on and so on. Also, in the body, it's embracing all of the body, which is also our genitals and receiving a body work that includes also all these parts, that's very often are linked to shame. In my work also, I focus a lot on that. Really learning people how to feel comfortable naked and comfortable with their genitals, with their sexuality, and how to really see the innocence. The innocence of our bodies, the innocence of our sexuality and the sacredness of our flesh and bones.

Giancarlo: Amazing. Thank you very much for your time and we'll speak to you soon.

Maya: [chuckles]

Giancarlo: Ciao, gracias.

Maya: Ciao.