Tantra, heilige Weiblichkeit und Mondzyklen mit Carla Borracine Calace

Carla Borracine Calace ist Prozessbegleiterin in Tantra-Sexualität, Yogalehrerin und leitet Frauenkreise. Im Interview erzählt die gebürtige Argentinierin, wie sie die rigiden Strukturen des Katholizismus hinter sich gelassen, und ihre Bestimmung im Tantra gefunden hat. Wir sind begeistert von Carla, die mit einer ausgesprochenen Natürlichkeit und Ehrlichkeit über gesellschaftliche Tabu-Themen wie Sex, Menstruation, Orgasmen und heilige Weiblichkeit spricht. Interview auf Englisch. Stay Aware!

Transcript

Willkommen bei AWARE Interview.

Ich habe heute Carla Borrazine Calase zu Gast.

Carla ist gebürtig aus Buenos Aires in Argentinien und wir werden heute das Interview auf Englisch halten.

Ich erkläre euch kurz,

Wer Carla ist und was sie macht.

Sie ist holistische Therapeutin,

Leiterin von Frauenzirkeln,

Prozessbegleiterin in tantrischer Sexualität,

Hatha-Yoga-Lehrerin,

Masseurin und Lehrerin für Körpererziehung.

Eine wirklich spannende Lady.

Agnes hat sie online gefunden und war super inspiriert von ihrer Arbeit und über die erfahren wir gleich mehr.

Stay AWARE.

Hey,

Carla,

Good to have you here.

Thank you so much.

I'm very happy to be with you.

Yes,

I'm looking forward.

So,

As I told just in German,

Agnes found you online and was totally amazed by your work.

So can you tell us more about the woman empowerment work you do?

Yeah,

I think everything come because I was not happy to be a woman and so I realized I needed to become friends with myself,

With this body that I have.

And I truly believe we choose to be women.

As Simone de Beauvoir said,

It's something that we choose to be.

So I didn't know what it was to be a woman.

I didn't know how to be happy of being a woman.

Or I didn't even know if I wanted to be a woman.

So I was going around this fluid gender,

Everything coming,

Going,

Dressing like more like the stereotype of a man.

I didn't know anything.

I was kind of in the path of discovering.

So then I decided,

Okay,

I want to be a woman.

How can I be happier,

Empower?

I mean,

Have the ability to make good decisions,

Trust myself without depending on others?

How can I live in the patriarchy as a woman?

What does it imply?

How can I be a tool for other women to be happy with themselves or to be able to live the best life possible?

So I started to heal myself,

Finding teachers,

Women,

Gurus or wherever it was coming by.

The universe giving me to me the opportunity to evolve,

To change,

To discover who I was.

And that's what I want to share with everyone,

Especially with women,

Everything that I have learned and has helped me to be who I am today.

And I also believe that if a woman is balanced or in harmony and in content with what she is,

Everything around her will be the way she is.

So I truly believe that woman empowerment is very important for the moment we are living,

For the society,

For the changing that is coming of this,

The balancing between the male and the female energy,

Which is not balanced today at all.

Because,

Well,

We know because why,

But I mean,

For me,

It's all related with balance and yes.

And you're host of a women's circle.

You told me before that you're sharing your tools that helped you.

So how is it in a women's circle?

What happens there?

Yeah,

It's so crazy.

My first women's circle was with a lot of three or four women from Argentina in Malaysia.

That was for me very crazy because I was searching for this healing.

I was trying to find meaning in life.

I was very lost.

I didn't want to know what to do with my life.

But I feel attracted by this,

The energy of a one woman.

And when I started to talk to her,

She told me about the women's circle and all that.

And the full moon was coming.

And I asked her,

Can we do something?

Can we do what it was a women's circle for her?

And from that moment,

It changed for me.

I feel this sorority,

You know,

The sisterhood,

Feeling home,

Feeling that woman was not just to be alone.

It was something about community.

And that day we did something like saying who we were,

The daughters and the great daughters of who we were,

Like,

We make like a wish of what we want in our life.

And then in a fire,

Everything prepared,

Like we put there,

We burned our all fears or what we didn't want anymore.

But every women's circle is different.

And then I started to see that there are different ways of doing it depends on the woman who are there or the facilitator.

But what did happen in there is that,

For me,

It's a celebration of being woman.

And it's also a healing journey of because we learn from each other as a mirror,

You know,

Every time you say something that happened in your life,

Maybe I feel reflected on that.

It's about talking.

It's about doing visualizations or meditations,

Dancing,

Which is very powerful.

Women love to dance and with so much nice energy,

Dancing,

Writing,

Self-journaling.

But there are many different things that it could be.

I don't know.

Wherever it comes,

Activities and then sharing.

And the most thing,

The most important for me was that every time a woman is talking,

You need to be present.

Hearing from your heart.

I mean,

No shushing.

You cannot talk to the woman.

You cannot interrupt.

You cannot give advice.

It looks like,

Well,

You're not doing anything,

But just to be heard.

You know,

You say your story and there are women listening to you and you are the protagonist.

You are the center of that thing.

And you it's like something comes in that it was buried,

My English.

But it was repressed there.

It's a space where you feel safe.

And you know that the other women have been somehow in the same journey because in patriarchy,

Well,

The women are considered in some way.

So,

You know,

There is something making connection in a deeper level with the other women.

So it's very healing.

Healing in community.

Yes.

You told me before that you have been a feminine activist and fighting for rights and political active.

How did it come that you went from this offensive,

Aggressive feminist activist to this healing,

Therapeutic feminism?

How did it come?

I was very,

Very angry.

Very,

Very angry.

I had a lot of anger inside.

I hated everything.

So the war,

My family,

The society,

The institutions,

Everything.

And the political activism gave me this possibility of channeling all this energy.

And I was there almost seven,

Eight years.

It helped me a lot because I break a lot of beliefs.

But there was a point in my life where I realized there was something deeper.

I started to question my own sexual identity.

And I realized that I was not who I was before.

And there was something deeper.

I needed to go deeper.

And I didn't find this space there.

So I make a backpack and started to travel.

And in the way I started to meet different kind of women,

All the styles,

From shamans to hippies or teachers.

I started to see there was an image of the woman that I really like it to be,

That I didn't have before.

So,

Yeah,

I think from the anger to,

Of course,

Under the anger is sadness.

So I was depressed or,

I don't know,

I was empty.

And of course I started to do many things inside the party that the party didn't like it too much.

And I was again,

Now I started to fight with my own party.

It was kind of,

Okay,

If I'm not helping my own place,

My own group,

I need something else to do.

And yeah,

I realized changing the world was not possible if I didn't change myself.

So that's where everything started.

In Buenos Aires,

Did you grow up in a family or were you born to a family who supported that way?

Or were they totally against your own being?

I mean,

Did they support you in fighting for feminism and growing your own way?

I think I have this training of fighting since I am a little child with my mother.

So you fighted against her?

Yes,

It was,

Yeah,

Tumorous.

I don't know how to say it really.

But we did have some different opinions politically.

Of course,

In the ways of being,

In the astrological part,

We are just the opposite,

You know.

I'm Libra and she's Aries.

But she always supported me.

She was always telling me,

Go to study.

Always like,

Don't take care of cleaning or I will do it.

Just go to study and make your own career.

And when I was,

For example,

I was like a political candidate,

You know.

I don't know if she voted me or not,

But I think so.

So,

Yeah,

There was this support.

I was never rejected because of being activist.

I didn't work too much in my house.

I remember the thing that this is not a hotel,

But I think both my parents are proud of what I am now,

What I did,

Which was very also part of the healing process,

You know,

To be aware that maybe I'm not the way they wanted,

But it doesn't matter.

They are proud of what I am.

And this also gave me like peace of mind,

Like being what I wanted to be.

They never,

Never punished me or they always supported me and gave the love they could.

Cool.

And you are a tantric sexuality facilitator.

And from the conversation before,

I know it has a kind of the opposite route,

Actually from the Catholic school.

Could you explain us how your way was actually in finding the female power through sexuality and finding how did it start?

Yeah,

I think I was,

I realized older that my way of giving and receiving love,

The primordial language for me is touch.

So I was always looking for sex as a way of receiving love.

So I started very young to have this connection,

Sexual connections.

And I was also going to church.

I was in a Catholic school and all that.

I pray.

I used to pray every night.

I go to the church every Sunday,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

But in the moment I told to the priest,

Confess my sins,

That I have had sex,

He told me not to do it anymore or pray.

I don't know how many thousands of Ave Maria.

And I said,

OK,

Maybe I just need to say the other things,

The other little things,

Sinners or whatever you say.

But then I realized lying is also a sin.

So I started to go away from the church,

Meaning this connection with God or the goddesses was lost and just become atheist.

And then I started to be Marxist with all this feminist activism.

So,

Yeah,

I tried to find a way to connect them.

And somehow I heard about Tantra and I was in this journey.

I was out of Argentina traveling.

I heard about this Tantra thing and I said,

I want to learn Tantra massage.

That's what it came to me.

And then the universe was taking me to a school where I learned that this sexual desire,

It could be also called a spiritual aspiration,

Because every time you want to have sex,

You want to connect with someone else.

And so this desire could also be transformed like I want to connect with something higher.

So for me,

It was crazy because now being horny was something pure,

Something that I could use for my spiritual path.

So for me,

Tantra saved and this bridge that was from Catholic church and sex.

So Tantra gives me this possibility to connect my sexuality with the spiritual path.

So that's how it was connected.

Hier in dieser Gesellschaft hat es eine schlechte Reputation oder einen missleidenden Sinn.

Was ist Tantra in deiner Erinnerung?

Was ist Tantra in seinem echten Sinn?

Well,

The word Tantra especially means web.

It's like,

Imagine this carpet is this,

Everything is connected.

Everything is one,

But it's a little weird to say everything is one.

But at the end,

We are made from earth.

We need earth to breathe.

We need the sun.

So we have everything inside us.

So Tantra is not only about sex.

Inside Tantra,

You can say that 5% is about sex,

But then it's about Hatha Yoga.

Everything that is related with energy can be considered Tantra.

So Hatha Yoga,

Meditations,

Yantras,

This like images that you gaze at.

What else?

Mantras,

You know,

Singing mantras and all this is coming from the Tantra,

Which is the opposite or yes to Vedanta,

Which is more ascetic.

Tantra embraces manifestation.

Vedanta,

It's more like everything is an illusion.

And we try to not really connect with the body,

You know,

In the Buddhist temples,

They sleep on the hard floor.

They eat very little rice,

Nothing that makes them awake or feel some desire.

But no strong food,

No garlic,

No.

So Tantra was kind of a revolution coming after this Vedanta mentality or ascetic.

So Tantra really is like a web.

You can connect with everything through different techniques.

One is Tantra massage.

This is the most popular thing,

Which I have seen.

That is not really what it's the deepest meaning of what I have learned,

Like could be something related with the person to be aware of feeling pleasure again and through this also healing.

So a tantric authentic massage is not about just having an orgasm.

It's really feeling your body,

Connecting with your sensations,

Being present.

This is something very crazy.

But many times when we make love,

For example,

We are the body is here,

But I am thinking about other things.

So Tantra is coming more to tell you,

Stay in the present moment.

Every time you feel something,

It's a celebration.

So yeah,

That's what Tantra means for me.

And it's a spiritual path that consider the body as a temple and the feminine as a temple.

It's not like the Catholic religion,

Where the image of the God is Jesus on the cross having pain,

You know.

So you need to have a connection with other person.

You need to know how you feel.

You need to know what you like.

You need to know what you don't like.

And parenthesis,

We Shaktis,

Shakti means women in Sanskrit.

We change all the time.

We are cyclical.

So this means that something that you like one day,

You may not like it the other day.

So you need to be aware of all that,

Because if you are with someone else,

You need to be able to communicate.

The other person has no chance to guess,

Because maybe they want to guess and they say,

No,

But yesterday you like it.

Yeah,

But today I don't.

So it's very important to know yourself,

To know what you like,

What you don't and the perception of feelings.

We,

As we say before,

Like patriarchy has this ability to numb ourselves,

To make us don't feel,

Because the body is something dirty.

So we learn not to connect with our feelings.

So reconnection with our own body,

Awareness.

This is very important.

And the best thing to do it is self-practice.

So take a time,

For example,

And prepare the space with candles,

With something that you like to smell,

Maybe put some nice music and start dancing,

For example,

Or moving if you don't want to dance with yourself.

Try to show yourself how the movement,

Dancing,

It is said that it's almost like fucking,

Can I say that?

So the first part is to have a nice time with yourself.

This also,

It's also very important to connect with every aspect of your body,

Not just going to your genitals or to your breasts.

You have all parts.

Explore what you like.

Try with your feet,

With your neck or these things is very important perception.

Then,

Of course,

There is the aspect of controlling that energy.

What you do with your sexual energy when you awake,

This energy is there.

Okay,

What can I do with this?

I think this part is very important to go with a teacher or with a guru or with someone that can help you to go through it,

Give you the techniques.

All this,

It's a very deep and secret.

This was all,

You know,

Coming not to all the public in general.

It was very something very sacred.

So if you have the possibility to learn with authentic teachers,

Go to it.

It's a very nice path.

So,

And then,

Yes,

So connect with someone who can help you.

Read,

There are many books related with Tantra,

So read everything that you find and watch documentaries.

There is a lot to connect with.

So I would say that.

Okay,

May I summarize it up just to make it clear that I have understood it fully.

First,

Not to blame the partner that he cannot satisfy you,

No?

First,

Self-exploration.

What do I like and how do I feel and at which day do I like it and when do I like it not,

No?

And then to communicate.

I think that's another step,

Like to feel comfortable to say it,

No?

Okay,

And the next step would be to control the sexual energy or to guide it.

And for that you suggest a teacher.

Yes,

I think it's the best.

There are so many books there,

But sometimes the books are specifically making some tricks,

You know,

And sometimes the chakra that it should be here,

They put it here,

Because they didn't want to share the secret with everyone who was not prepared to it.

You know,

When you go to some kind of guru,

They tell you,

Okay,

You need to do this,

This,

This and this,

And then you are able to do this other thing.

So I think with someone that you connect and you feel that it can help you,

It would be good.

And you're also trained in sexual intelligence.

Where is the difference between Tantra and sexual intelligence?

I think the best way to say it is that Tantra is a spiritual path.

You could practice the techniques that are inside Tantra without taking a spiritual path.

I would say that this is kind of more the intelligent sexuality or the conscious sexuality,

When you don't want to explore the spiritual path,

But you want to have a higher level of quality in your relationship.

This I would say,

You don't want to go to the God-Goddesses part,

Then you practice more this conscious or intelligent sexuality,

Where you are,

Again,

It's the base,

It's the same,

To be conscious about what you want,

Your feelings,

Communication,

Saying,

You know,

This,

But in Tantra sometimes you use prayers or you offer your act as an offering to whatever you want to call it,

The universe God or,

You know,

Everyone has their own Buddha.

But in sexual intelligence,

You are not using this energy to a higher purpose.

I think that's the,

For me,

The most clear difference of these two.

They are connected,

But.

.

.

You mentioned before,

Women are cyclical.

And on your website,

It's super funny,

On her website,

It's,

We are not crazy,

We are cyclical.

I love it,

Because we claim,

Like some men maybe claim that women are crazy,

But we are not,

We are in a cycle.

Yes.

Yeah.

Can you explain?

You have workshops about it.

Can you explain that?

Yeah,

For me,

It was,

It changed completely my relationship,

Again,

With my body and to be what is about being woman.

We have a cycle,

Which is related with our hormones and all this,

Our,

So while,

For example,

While menstruation is there,

We tend to be more caving time.

This is a moment of going in to come with yourself.

I mean,

You are bleeding,

Literally,

It's kind of something is dying inside you.

So it's a time for grief,

For maybe you realize that something in your last month didn't work.

So you are making a time for letting that go.

I mean,

It's an energy,

It's a moment to be calm.

But in this system,

It's,

We need to produce,

You need to go,

So you need to put something inside,

A cup or wherever and go to work.

But this is not the real essence of what we are.

We are connected with the nature,

We are nature.

So as the moon is going through phases,

We also go through phases,

And they are connected.

You see this almost 28 days.

And then,

For example,

After menstruation,

We are coming up again,

The hormones are coming back and everything is changing.

And you are more like,

Again,

You want to connect with the world before you were coming in.

Now you're again out,

And later when you are on the ebullition time,

You are more sexually attracted,

You feel like blowing,

Everything is good,

And also connected with the mother instinct.

You want to mother others.

Maybe sometimes when you are in ebullition time,

People come to tell you their problems,

And you don't know why,

Because these archetypes are in our subconscious mind.

We don't choose this,

It's there.

And then again,

When the circle is coming again,

Close to the menstruation,

We are coming to this healing woman,

Medicine woman,

We are connecting more with the herbs,

And we want to help others to heal,

And we are feeling more intuitive and feel like,

Okay,

Now I see this,

I don't see it.

And I think that's why,

For example,

The premenstrual syndromes are like,

You are nervous or angry,

Because you start to see what you don't like,

That you didn't pay attention to before.

So,

Connecting with your cycle,

It gives you the opportunity to know,

Okay,

Now I am ovulating,

Now I understand why I am like this.

If you are menstruating,

You are like this.

It helps you to understand yourself,

Because we are cyclical,

Not crazy.

This is very important.

And it's also nice to tell your partner,

If it is a male partner,

Okay,

Look,

Now I am in this phase.

So you need to be more patient,

Or I want this and I want that.

So,

It helps a lot.

There is a book from Miranda Gray.

She is helping you to go through all the months.

You do a journaling for three months,

Taking care of everything that happened in you for this time.

It really connects you with you.

Is a man also in a cycle?

Men are linear.

I can't even imagine myself to be linear.

Of course,

The moon influences them.

You know,

When there is a full moon,

You can hear people doing more crazy things,

Or more horny things.

But not as much as we are influenced.

But yeah,

Every time you go far away from nature,

You will feel less disinfluenced.

When you connect more with nature,

It will influence you more.

You will be more perceptive,

More sensitive.

I observed that women either have menstruation with new moon or with full moon.

It's interesting.

I just know that both.

.

.

What is the difference and why?

Miranda Gray is very good with this.

There is the moon cycle,

Red or white.

The white is when you are menstruating with the new moon.

For example,

Now we are in new moon.

So when you are having,

You are connected because there is no light.

So you are in the cave.

You are connected with that.

And then you ovulate in the moment there is full moon.

And then nature,

When you see nature in the full moon time,

Is when the mammals and all the life wants to be having sex,

To be,

You know.

So you go kind of with the moon.

But then it can happen that you have your menstruation in full moon.

And this is very interesting because women who are having the period in the full moon were separated from the group.

Consider them as witches or something like that.

Because they were against of nature.

You should ovulate on full moon.

You know,

Like this patriarchy thing,

Like everything.

But it can happen that you don't.

And they say,

It is said that it's more when you are menstruating in the full moon,

You are not kind of in this mother archetype.

You really want to go away from being a mother.

This is what I believe also.

And then when you are more connected,

You are in this mother archetype and you want to have a child.

So you connect and you help,

Connect with the nature and the nature will help you more to be in this.

But it's not only about having children.

It's also when you have a project,

It's also connected with this creation.

So you're giving birth to your project like this,

You know,

And then you communicate.

So,

Yeah,

I encourage every woman should have this in the school,

For sure.

But if not,

Go to the moon.

Red Moon is this book that is very,

Very inspiring.

Oh,

Cool.

I will put it in the show.

Yes.

Yes.

It's very good.

So others can read it.

So what are you offering?

If someone says,

Yes,

I want to learn with Carla.

Come on.

What are you offering and where?

We are doing the workshops and especially women's circles here in Durban,

In the Tao Centrum,

Which is a very beautiful place.

I really like the view.

We gather there only women.

We have different activities,

But this is just for women.

I share kind of what I share like here,

But deeper.

And then we go through all of that.

We do activities.

And when you put yourself in the role of now I am in the menstruation role now,

They have names like the virgin or the teenager,

You know,

The shaman,

The witch or the wise woman and the mother.

They have different.

So you can go through all of them and experience them.

So women's circles are once a month,

Always the second Saturday of the month,

Six o'clock.

They last about two hours and a half,

Three hours.

I really like them.

Yeah.

And so I also really like this idea of maybe there is a group of women who want to learn.

Just call me and I will be there to share it.

Cool.

I really want to learn from you.

I'm so touched.

Cool,

Cool,

Cool.

And what is like if you see your life in an overview and your way and all the experience,

What is the essence now what you would share to other people?

I think my what I really like to do and the essence for me is this coming from the patriarchy pyramid thing way of being to this circle thing,

To this community thing.

I feel now more comfortable doing it with women.

And I believe this is what I really like to do.

This is my desire,

My passion or what I really like doing,

Because you grow,

I grow doing these places,

Space.

I see the others also changing,

Transforming and being able to embrace to be a woman.

So I truly believe the change has to come from this balance of it needs to come forward,

The feminine energy.

So I feel this like my mission also,

You know,

Like sharing,

Yes,

Everything related with the sisterhood and womanhood and all this for me is how I feel useful,

You know.

And where there are books,

You say Maastricht,

You mentioned one already.

Are there some others you would really,

Really recommend?

Yeah,

Well,

The first book it came to me when I was in this healing process was from Louis Hay,

You know,

You can heal your life.

This was a powerful book for me.

I was in a library searching for metaphysics books about quantum physics and this book come to me and I was like,

Okay,

This was super,

Super important to with all to how to deal with all this anger.

I really like everything with Joe Dispenza,

He's a doctor.

I really like Becoming Supernatural from Maureen Murdoch.

I'm reading now.

I finished yesterday and it was so powerful.

And then Goddesses in Every Woman is from Xin,

I'm so horrible for pronunciation,

Bolden or something like that,

That I will give you and then you can put this somewhere.

But super powerful to know that each woman has an archetype more developed.

But you can have one and in this society,

We expect women to have this mother,

You know,

The mother,

You need to have children,

Stop working.

This is your life to be a mother,

Finished.

But there are women that don't want to be mothers and they have another archetype.

Not only mothers.

Yeah,

Or they want to be mother and workers or mother and entrepreneurs.

This is a difficult word.

So we have different ways.

And this book,

It helped me to understand,

Like,

For example,

My relationship with my mother.

Like,

I never thought that my mother,

Maybe she didn't want to have a baby.

We suppose that all women are like,

Yeah,

But maybe not.

So this could help a lot.

So,

Yeah,

I don't know.

These books are helping a lot.

I really like also Eckhart Tolle for me was The Power of Now,

Strong one.

Yeah,

I don't know.

But there are also some people who guide you.

I mean,

Probably your tantra teacher.

Yeah.

Were there some others who somehow showed you there is a path,

Maybe it's the one for you,

No?

Well,

My first teacher was called Alana Messino.

She's from Argentina and now she's living in Spain.

The first workshop I did with her was about feminine awakening.

And I needed to go with a skirt,

Long skirt,

And I didn't have.

So I had to cut some things that I had there at home and make a skirt.

And I was like,

Why the hell I need that?

I don't like to do this.

But when I was there,

We dance and we connect with the skirt.

And that was very powerful for me.

So she was kind of there.

And then,

Well,

Swami Vivekananda Sarasvati is one of my teachers.

And then,

Yeah,

Yes,

This was for me the most powerful ones.

Then I met many teachers inside that helped me.

But I would say these two.

And then also Maha is another teacher,

The spiritual lay.

I have this many things names now in my head.

But yes,

To connect with this feeling of being able to be love in a way that I didn't feel before.

I'm very touched by your work and your story.

I really want to say thank you from the heart space.

Thank you.

And I think you're a true role model for going the path of healing and to heal the wounds.

We all should do.

Yeah,

It's only when you feel the call,

Not before,

Not later.

Like there is a moment that you are tired of being how you are.

And then I truly believe in the moment you give that first step,

The universe will help you because the universe wants us to evolve.

It's time to wake up,

To be aware to this.

So I really hope that our shareness can be the inspiration for others,

As others have been there for us.

What you are doing,

I really like it.

I'm very happy to find,

You know,

When I came to Darwin,

I didn't realize,

Oh,

This could be happening here.

You are a really wonderful woman doing this project.

I'm really grateful for the universe to connect with you.

So congratulations also for your work.

I'm very happy to be here and know all of you.

And I hope we can do some work more together,

Create some events for women here.

I'm looking forward.

May I hug you?