Soma this and soma that, helps us survive and advance during these troubled times on planet earth: advancement, and preparation, because I believe that we will go into the golden age soon, inwhich the somatic state will be part of life.

I am a soma guide. I have been doing this since I started teaching yoga 30 years ago. I learned from one of the best; my yoga teacher, back in the mid-seventies. She had a mystical east Indian way about her, was from India, and was personal friends with Swami Srivananda.

The fact that we need to emphasize soma as a separate category from yoga, signifies that we are not 'getting it' as part of the yogic experience.

I find that many meditational guides do not have the voice for guiding it, nor the depth of understanding of mystical philosophy, to project the deep wisdom, and therefore the somatic experience. It is either fraught with tones of ego, empty of the vibe of true understanding, of what they are saying, or they don't have a gentleness to their voice. When a meditation guide is in a semi-state of meditation, they are more aware of the sound frequency of their voice, and are able to work with it, while streaming higher consciousness, rather than something merely memorized.

In the case of the somatic state, Swami Muktananda spoke of sexual control. Not as a sex act, as has been misinterpreted,but rather to not stay in the lower chakra. Instead, people need to let the energy rise up to the highest chakras and down and all around, therefore, not being a slave to sexual energy. I may be wrong about this, but I feel that the current world kundalini movement is not quite correct, and therefore can lead to issues this way. Kundalini is activated not through the base chakra, but through the crown chakra. To open this chakra, one needs to go into the somatic state. Shakti then enters the body, and goes down the spine through all the chakras towards the kundalini coiled at the base of the spine, and that is how it becomes activated.

Back about ten years ago, I was in Victoria, BC. I was walking down the street, and a van quickly parked. Out tumbled, enthusiastic and good-looking young men with an unusual look of mind-control in their eyes. They looked very confident in themselves and seemed ready to start pumping anything in sight. One came at me, and he told me what they were up to. They had been trained as sexual experts, here to revolutionize the human sexual experience. They seemed to think that they were on a very cool, and very important mission to help humanity. At the time, Tantric sex therapy was in flashing neon lights. Tantric sex is misunderstood. You can't do it with someone that you don't feel mutually attracted to, so that it is no more than just a sexual act. It just doesn't work that way. Tantric sex is for two people who are connected on a higher level of awareness, a somatic state, and therefore in a love frequency. The experience is then amplified. You can't do this in a clinical setting, otherwise, it is like a base sexual experience, which is not tantric. My opinion, but then I could be wrong.

When I encountered those lads tumbling out of the van, with a enthusiastic bounce, I knew that something was amiss. It was an example of...'what goes on', in a society that takes good things, and inverts them. These lads did not look like they were knowingly doing something wrong.

So, it is very important for people to raise their vibration, through practising soma, and this includes learning abstinence and therefore control in the sexual experience. Abstinence and control, does not mean that we should deny our sexual instincts, but rather, they shouldn't control us.

If we, therefore, truly understand the somatic experience, the sexual revolution will not bring us down, but rather upwards. It won't be about gratification of the senses, without love.. The way it is now, the idea of sexual freedom is more at a level of sexual indiscretion. This can lead to spreading terminal, or debilitating sexual diseases, feelings of deep violation, and emotional trauma. It ultimately leads to distancing rather than greater connection.

Even when teaching yoga, when I said that we have to become more instinctual. My students this fall, had a look on their faces of, 'oh dear, what have we got here for a teacher'. I had to bring clarity, by saying that we need to purify our beingness, so that we can distinguish impulses of higher consciousness from lower.

This is why the soma state is so important. It helps us to be more discerning to clear away the subconscious sludge, that may be controlling us like the, seemed, programming of the young lads bouncing out of the van on a mission to create some type of sexual awareness.

Soma practice , on the other hand, helps us live more optimal lives.