Coach Alex Ray: Hello, my unicorns.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm so excited to be here with you today with another guest interview.
Coach Alex Ray: Today I have for you Kaelan Strouse, who is better known around the internet as ecstatic self.
Coach Alex Ray: Kaelan is an ecstatic spirituality coach with a background in classical yoga, tantra, an author, an award-winning actor, writer and film director, and I'm so excited to have him on the podcast today to share about his experience with tantra, how he helps his clients with their tantra practices, and what you can learn today about your own spirituality and sexuality.
Coach Alex Ray: So, without further ado, welcome to the podcast, Kaelan.
Kaelan Strouse: Such a pleasure to be here.
Kaelan Strouse: Thank you for having me.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, thank you for being here.
Coach Alex Ray: I would love for you to like introduce yourself a little bit more.
Coach Alex Ray: Tell everyone a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Kaelan Strouse: Great.
Kaelan Strouse: Well, you did such a good job introducing me, but to add a little bit more nuance to that, I've written a couple books on how do we come home to ourselves, how do we find the most authentic, integrated, radical, juicy version of ourselves that is inclusive of our sexuality, that is inclusive of our spiritual life, that is inclusive of all our crazy bits, and that really is the focus of what I help other people to uncover within themselves.
Kaelan Strouse: So I host a YouTube channel called Ecstatic Self.
Kaelan Strouse: I've been doing it for about three years now.
Kaelan Strouse: We've got about 265,000 subscribers at this moment, which kind of boggles my mind because I have no idea anybody would be interested in this shit.
Kaelan Strouse: But, it's wonderful to have so many people engaging and I tell people that the channel explores the intersection of meditation and spirituality, queerness, sex and sexuality.
Kaelan Strouse: What is masculinity in today's world?
Kaelan Strouse: And then how do we bring that all together to live an authentic life and find belonging both within ourselves and in the wider world?
Kaelan Strouse: I work with largely men, largely gay men, but there are some exceptions from around the world.
Kaelan Strouse: Virtually I meet with people once a week for about an hour and I help them come home to them so I can help them find more integration and what we work on various person to person.
Kaelan Strouse: Some people it's really about their coming out journey or still struggling with their sexuality post coming out.
Kaelan Strouse: Some people it's about developing a deep spiritual practice.
Kaelan Strouse: Sometimes it's people who are really struggling with connecting with their sexual energy and seeing that as something very divorced from having a spiritual life and something shameful, so working around that shame.
Kaelan Strouse: My background that got me all into this is I lived in an ashram for seven years.
Kaelan Strouse: I got into yoga and meditation during college and took a guru kind of dove deep into that tradition.
Kaelan Strouse: I left that tradition around.
Kaelan Strouse: The same time I left working as a professional actor and in my journey of like what comes next.
Kaelan Strouse: I started writing and I started doing corporate coaching and when the pandemic started, I kind of brought all that stuff together with now doing my books, doing my YouTube channel, working with people one on one, and I feel so immensely blessed to get to do what I do and to engage with people who are having life changing moments, who are really seeing themselves evolve and develop and change, and getting this feedback that, even in some small way, what I'm putting out there is making a difference for them and helping them live a better life.
Coach Alex Ray: It's amazing.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm so thankful that they like that your clients have you, that you're doing the work that you're doing out in the world.
Coach Alex Ray: Can you tell us a little bit more about, like your personal journey and how did you get into this kind of work?
Coach Alex Ray: Were you always interested in spirituality?
Coach Alex Ray: Were you always interested in like sexual dynamics or was?
Coach Alex Ray: How did this come along for you?
Kaelan Strouse: Oh, I love that question because it is definitely a journey, right, it's something that continuously evolves.
Kaelan Strouse: As a young person, yeah, I was always very much interested in spirituality.
Kaelan Strouse: I could remember having conversations with God and feeling like that was a very normal experience as a little kid Like it felt like something very personal and tangible, something that could very easily connect with.
Kaelan Strouse: And from a very young age I was very connected with sexuality.
Kaelan Strouse: I think I started masturbating when I was like seven years old, so pretty young, but sex was something that was very fearful for me.
Kaelan Strouse: I grew up in a household where my father was shamed for sexuality.
Kaelan Strouse: My father was a nudist and very sex positive.
Kaelan Strouse: He used to be a swinger and go to sex clubs, and my mother was the opposite.
Kaelan Strouse: She has only ever had sex with my father, so there was a lot of shame around that.
Kaelan Strouse: And my father was also a closeted bisexual.
Kaelan Strouse: He came out, I think about four years ago, at around age 80.
Kaelan Strouse: God bless him.
Kaelan Strouse: So there was a lot of tension around same sex attraction as well.
Kaelan Strouse: So for me, even though I became, you know, sexually active pretty young with myself, I'm picking something that I really shut down, especially because at a young age I thought I really wanted to succeed as an actor.
Kaelan Strouse: And even then I kind of got the message that if you wanted to be a successful actor then you couldn't be gay.
Kaelan Strouse: And so I said, okay, well, I'll do whatever it takes.
Kaelan Strouse: So I buried my sexuality.
Kaelan Strouse: I didn't end up even kissing anyone until I was 25 years old, which you know.
Kaelan Strouse: Maybe it saved me some unfortunate decisions.
Kaelan Strouse: But you don't get to escaping a teenager.
Kaelan Strouse: You, even if you know if you're coming out at 40, you're still going to go through that chaotic turning process.
Kaelan Strouse: And so I had to do some development, some development later in life then you're supposed to a decade later at least.
Kaelan Strouse: But when I was in college I started to get super into spirituality and I grew up methodically.
Kaelan Strouse: I never had an issue with the church, but I always felt that there was something more.
Kaelan Strouse: I always felt like there was a deeper connection since the Bec's Dissie, a sense of awe, majesty, engling, juiciness, whatever you want to call it.
Kaelan Strouse: And the church couldn't give me that.
Kaelan Strouse: And I would ask, and all I would get back was join the choir, join the youth group.
Kaelan Strouse: And I'm like, oh, that's not it.
Kaelan Strouse: I know there's more.
Kaelan Strouse: And so I started researching it with the Buddhism, hinduism, baha'i, mormonism.
Kaelan Strouse: I looked at everything and started really connecting with yoga meditation.
Kaelan Strouse: And there was this one teacher I really connected with in Chicago and she suggested that I go and do a yoga teacher training at this big ashram in the Rocky Mountains and I had a scholarship that paid for it and the timing worked out perfect.
Kaelan Strouse: So I went to summer before my senior year and I found a sense of home.
Kaelan Strouse: I found a sense of belonging and answers to the questions I was looking for, and this was a tradition that I identified as classically tantric.
Kaelan Strouse: So classically tantric, as it's used often in the world, means that it's divorced from anything sexual.
Kaelan Strouse: It means those things, you can imagine them, but they're not meant to be done.
Kaelan Strouse: And what's really hard about Indian Tantra, unlike Tibetan Tantra, is it had to go underground due to different invading cultures who were very inhospitable to sex and sexuality, very inhospitable to taboo practices, and Tantra has always been about exploring the taboo, exploring that which is not mainstream.
Kaelan Strouse: And by the time the Brits invaded, it basically disappeared, and so anybody who's past practicing classical Hindu Tantra is resurrecting at that religion.
Kaelan Strouse: And because so much of it was oral, there's no concrete or sure way to be able to say what it actually was.
Kaelan Strouse: There's a very good chance of involve sex and sexuality, and we can say that because if we look across the Hindu Way mountains to Tibet, the Tibetan practitioners of Tantra, the Jain Buddhism Tantra, are still doing most of the same practices as the people in India, but with different names, in a different language, and sex and sexuality is a big part of it.
Kaelan Strouse: And that was a revelation for me that when I ended up leaving this community and starting to read the writings of Buddhist Tantra teachers, realizing how much there still was of that.
Kaelan Strouse: So I spent almost a decade with this teacher studying classical Tantra, moved into this community, lived there, worked there, did selfless service at four hours of meditation almost every day, and while I was there I did my coming out process.
Kaelan Strouse: And during my coming out process I had a friend.
Kaelan Strouse: I was working as an actor at the second study in Chicago.
Kaelan Strouse: Now one of my colleagues invited me to attend a Neo-Tantra massage workshop.
Kaelan Strouse: So Neo-Tantra, new Tantra.
Kaelan Strouse: Whenever you hear people for whom they say, hey, I do Tantra and it's basically just like sensual massage or I don't have better orgasms, that's Neo-Tantra.
Kaelan Strouse: And so he invited me to one of those and I was so nervous I was, I was visibly shaking walking into the building, one because I was still a virgin and two because I knew I shouldn't be there.
Kaelan Strouse: You know my, if my off-tron, if my teacher found out I'd been there, I would not have been a good situation.
Kaelan Strouse: But I went and as I was walking into this building, walking up the stairs, I heard an audible voice say this is part of the work you're meant to be doing.
Kaelan Strouse: And that's only happened a few times to me my life where I've heard the voice of God or you know, just somebody voice speaking to me.
Kaelan Strouse: And I Remember hearing myself reply back shut up, no way, absolutely not.
Kaelan Strouse: And then behold, here we are a decade later.
Kaelan Strouse: So I'm not that I'm being very much the case.
Kaelan Strouse: Well, that voice was right on.
Kaelan Strouse: But one of the things that that works have kind of awakened in me was an awareness, important to know critical Connectionists are critical human touches, how we are not meant to be solitary organisms, we are not meant to live alone, we are pack animals.
Kaelan Strouse: And how tremendous the healing touch, intimacy, seeing and being seen breathing together, learning to be vulnerable as somebody, can be A lesson that I would continue to learn as I continued to come out and then, especially, after I met my life partner I've been together with for over eight years and just seeing how much healing has incurred has occurred through loving each other and being with each other.
Kaelan Strouse: So, as I've evolved as a spiritual practitioner and as somebody who continues to explore this wonderful world called earth and all the possibilities that it has from living a vibrant and joyful life, the more and more that I have felt that sex and sexuality has to come apart of our spiritual life, because it is so pleasant to our daily life and it's we spend so much time and energy focusing on sex, and Especially if you're a gay man.
Kaelan Strouse: Right, like I, forget the statistic the average amount of time a gay man spend longer every day is staggering.
Kaelan Strouse: We we will never Accept a spiritual path that tells you that sex is bad.
Kaelan Strouse: We will never be able to accept a spiritual path that says queerness is bad.
Kaelan Strouse: And in fact, I think the best route we can take is to find connection to spirituality that is not only inclusive of sexuality but a celebratory of sexuality, and say, hey, your queerness is a gateway, your love of sex is a gateway to your highest self and something that I've really come to believe, the longer that I have been on this path, is the immense sacredness and the queer experience and queer meaning fans, gay, whatever, anything where you are Raking the tropes of society, breaking the tropes of heteronormativity, breaking the tropes of gender, what is traditionally gender appropriate, because when you step outside of those rules, you see something from a different perspective.
Kaelan Strouse: You are granted an advantage, what is an understanding of the divine, or the universe, or God or whatever you want to label it?
Kaelan Strouse: But seeing the other, seeing the other side and I Am a big believer and there is research that has that pre-patriarchy, free industrialization, the queer people around the world have been the holders of spirit, but they're the ones that would be the priests, the shamans, the sages, the guardians of that which is other.
Kaelan Strouse: And If we look at what are some of the major tropes of modern-day life, lots of sex, lots of sex with multiple partners, party drugs, parties, dancing All of these, in another context, are all spiritual ritual.
Kaelan Strouse: There have been, you know, sacred orgies.
Kaelan Strouse: There have been temple prostitutes using sex and sexuality for a transformation.
Kaelan Strouse: There have been the use of hallucinogenic substances to change your mind, to step you out of your limited construct of who you think you are.
Kaelan Strouse: I was that too, different from you know, Taking ecstasy at a club.
Kaelan Strouse: Speaking of clubs, ritualistic dance, ecstatic dance, using movement, repetitive motion, repetitive rhythms, flashing lights to achieve us an altered state of awareness.
Kaelan Strouse: I think all these things that we ascribe as being the quote-unquote, a experience or mainstream culture, are all Vestiges of our spiritual past trying to resurrect themselves.
Kaelan Strouse: And yes, they are devoid of context and yes, they are devoid of Meaning and a deep rootedness, but they're still there.
Kaelan Strouse: It is what we are drawn to, because that is part of our purpose.
Kaelan Strouse: And Tantra, whether you're looking at classical Tantra or Buddhist Tantra or Neo Tantra, is so much about the embracing of the outsider experience, about stepping out community and going to the charnel grounds, the cremation grounds, and communing with spirits.
Kaelan Strouse: We're wandering naked through the streets, covered in ash, carrying a begging bowl made out of a human skull, or Having sex with somebody who isn't your partner, or imbibing unholy flu, unholy fluids and this idea that if you can go into these fearsome places, these taboo places, find God there, find peace there, find serenity there, then use one, then you can go anywhere, then you have achieved a stated being that can thrive no matter what life throws at you.
Kaelan Strouse: And that truly is the heart of the tantric message is God is everywhere, god exists in everything.
Kaelan Strouse: And when you can see the divine in the beggar on the street, in your sex life, in the getting fired from your job and losing everything, in a really messy sexual experience, no matter what, if you can see the divinity there, then you're experiencing true Tantra.
Kaelan Strouse: It's the opposite of renunciation.
Kaelan Strouse: It's the opposite of saying I have to give up things to find God.
Kaelan Strouse: I have to give up me, that you have sex, I have to give up alcohol, I have to give up whatever.
Kaelan Strouse: Instead, it says I go everywhere and I find the divine in all.
Coach Alex Ray: Beautifully said okay.
Coach Alex Ray: So I I'm wondering for someone that's maybe listening right now and is saying okay, I'm curious, I'm interested in hearing more About Tantra.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm interested in hearing more about how I can maybe decrease the shame around my sexuality.
Coach Alex Ray: Um, but maybe this person is.
Coach Alex Ray: They grew up with a spiritual, religious background that taught them a lot of the same things that you expressed the shame around sex, particularly queer sex.
Coach Alex Ray: What kind of advice would you have to them, or even like your younger self, right now to just put their mind at ease, so that they could potentially take something away from today's episode?
Kaelan Strouse: Whenever I teach meditation and I teach a live class every Sunday at 6pm on my YouTube channel, so feel free to train it if that's useful to you Whenever I start teaching meditation, one of the very first things I say is a lot of yourself, to be where you are.
Kaelan Strouse: I think so many of us have this strong desire to change, or give in the senses, to fix, to move, to find a way of getting comfortable right now, finding peace right now, having the body I want right now, whatever it is, and what that does is it creates attention within us.
Kaelan Strouse: It creates, I often think, about one of the first laws of physics every action has an opposite and equal reaction.
Kaelan Strouse: If you decide you want to belly flop into the water because you're hurling at several miles an hour and you are on a big blown floor going against a watery surface, it's going to feel like you smashed into concrete.
Kaelan Strouse: It's going to feel hard, and if you just step to the water's edge and slip in, you'll move effortlessly.
Kaelan Strouse: And so the more force we have, the more we need and want, the less we're going to shift, the more force is going to push back at us, and so the very first thing I encourage people to do is to accept where you are.
Kaelan Strouse: It may not be comfortable, it may not be fun, but allow yourself to simply take a breath and accept your given circumstances.
Kaelan Strouse: And when you can start to feel a little release, a little expansion, perhaps a little more breath here you'll feel what I like to call space.
Kaelan Strouse: In Tantra and my personal philosophy there is nothing good or bad, it simply is.
Kaelan Strouse: And the same way, there is nothing inherently negative or positive, evil or good.
Kaelan Strouse: It's all the same energy, it's all divine.
Kaelan Strouse: The differences are things can be in the state of contraction, where you think of it being frozen, all the molecules pulled tighter together, it gets smaller, it doesn't move, versus the state of expansion, where the molecules move a little further apart and it stops being a solid and maybe moves into a liquid or a gas and things move more freely and it takes up more space.
Kaelan Strouse: When we are contracted, when situations feel contracted, we feel stuck, we feel depressed, we feel tight.
Kaelan Strouse: When we can breathe and let go and open up a little bit more, suddenly we become a little more fluid, things can move, more opportunities present themselves.
Kaelan Strouse: And so when we can create this space, then change becomes possible.
Kaelan Strouse: And when we can let go of our need to fix and make it okay right now and just accept it for what it is.
Kaelan Strouse: The ironic thing is then change happens.
Kaelan Strouse: It's like the old adage when you stop looking for love, love finds you All from that desire you have is creating the obstacle that's preventing it.
Coach Alex Ray: We're like a watch pot and never boils Right Like that's true.
Kaelan Strouse: Yeah, and so this would be my message for somebody who's dealing with a situation like this take a moment, take a breath, accept where you are, find a little sense of expansion, find a little sense of release, and with that you'll often find a little bit more clarity too.
Kaelan Strouse: You'll get an idea, you'll have a eureka moment, you'll have new insights into your condition because you're not so trapped in the way you've been seeing them, and then you can take a step forward and a big believer that a spiritual path should never be something that totally uproots us from where we came from spans, plants and something else.
Kaelan Strouse: I'm not a big believer in the benefits of conversion I really am but Dalai Lama says the same thing.
Kaelan Strouse: Right, like don't become a Buddhist, stay in the tradition you are, but then find the tools that are helpful for you where you are.
Kaelan Strouse: Yeah, I'm using the word Tantra today a lot because it's you know what language you've been using when you've asked me to talk about it, but if you go to my YouTube channel, I very, very rarely use that.
Kaelan Strouse: I think I have two or three videos out of almost 400 up there with Tantra in the title, just because it comes with a lot of baggage and because I don't want people to think I'm saying, hey, you need to convert to this other spiritual path, but to say, hey, we can take these lessons, we can take these ideas and allow them to meet you where you are, and I really do think that you have everything that you need your personal evolution, for your happiness, for your enlightenment if you want to call it like that right here and the area you find yourself in as the tools, the teachers, the gifts, everything you need.
Kaelan Strouse: If you just see it, if you just open your eyes and become aware of the miracles that already are present in your life, you don't need to go to India, you don't need to go to Tibet, you don't need to move into an outro for seven years, like that, it is all right here, if you just see it.
Coach Alex Ray: Amazing.
Coach Alex Ray: So with that you know I Know a minimal amount about Tantra.
Coach Alex Ray: I know what it is in general, but I would love to hear two things.
Coach Alex Ray: One from what I understand, tantra tends to be phrased in a very like gender binary way, so I would love to hear about how you bring it to the queer experience for gay people, trans people, non-binary people.
Coach Alex Ray: And Can you also, before maybe we go there to querifying Tantra, can you tell us a little bit more about how you define it or what Tantra is for somebody that's maybe not familiar at all?
Coach Alex Ray: Feel free to share.
Coach Alex Ray: I want to hear you like your perspective on it.
Coach Alex Ray: You said that you don't even use the word Tantra much because of the baggage that comes with.
Kaelan Strouse: So so, yes, well, I will answer the question, actually in the order you asked them how it can be perceived as being heteronormative.
Kaelan Strouse: Because if you look at a lot of the Quote-a-quote Tantric texts the main ones that have survived that people turn to, like the Vagana by Rava, they're usually told in a Conversation form between Shiva and Shakti, so the Divine Masculine and his consorts, the Divine Feminine, and Shiva is supposedly, in the text, the holder of the knowledge and he's explaining it to the feminine, although we see as you go further into the text that she already knows all the answers.
Kaelan Strouse: She's just asking them for the benefit of the humans who are receiving this.
Kaelan Strouse: So there is that national and feminine paradise in in the text.
Kaelan Strouse: However, it we have to understand is that everything we receive From India comes from an imperialistic lens.
Kaelan Strouse: Indian culture was Decimated by the breads when they invade and took over, and, as we see right now this year, in Africa, where a Ameran Christians have gone into places like Uganda, who were not traditionally homophobic, who actually revered the queer experience for centuries, millennia, and now these Christian, these very, very restrictive Christian ideals, because it was, you know, some of the most judgmental Christians who went there proselytizing now Uganda's passing all this atrocious homophobic legislation that and put people in jail for their lives just for being accused of being gay.
Kaelan Strouse: So we can see how these can be exported and really do some really nasty things to a culture.
Kaelan Strouse: The same thing happened in India, where it didn't used to be homophobic Go back hundreds of years.
Kaelan Strouse: It used to be very celebratory of the queer experience and there are still some vestiges of that today where you see, well, we would call trans or we would call gender non-conforming, where they have special terms for them and they're considered good luck to invite to your wedding and you know that they've pursued as you both can perform curses and so if they ask you for a dollar, you better give it to them, like.
Kaelan Strouse: So there is still some Fuzzy respect for them, we can see.
Kaelan Strouse: But unfortunately India has become incredibly homophobic because of the British invasion and I have point-blank had Indian people tell me I cannot practice yoga because I'm a gay man, and of course that's bullshit.
Kaelan Strouse: That is absolutely bullshit.
Kaelan Strouse: And then when we look at the tantric tradition specifically and yoga can be tantric, it cannot, and the other term is sutric.
Kaelan Strouse: Sutric is renunciation.
Kaelan Strouse: Tantric is what we've been talking about.
Kaelan Strouse: When we look at the tantric path, which is all about brain, social.
Kaelan Strouse: It's all about embracing the taboo.
Kaelan Strouse: Of course queerness finds a home there, right Like?
Kaelan Strouse: What is the clear experience about the breaking of heteronormative Like?
Kaelan Strouse: Even if you're a cisgender, very masculine, presenting gay man, you are still breaking gender norms because you're doing nothing that men are not supposed to do, right that you are.
Kaelan Strouse: You are Shucking off the traditional labels of masculinity.
Kaelan Strouse: By having sex with another man, you are fulfilling the woman's role in a way.
Kaelan Strouse: So it doesn't matter how masculine or feminine presenting you are still gender nonconforming.
Kaelan Strouse: You are still breaking societal taboos.
Kaelan Strouse: So I believe tantric in itself is very inclusive and if you look at some of the well-known Tibetan teachers of tantra, they have been very embracing of the LGBTQ community and they have, in their ratings, talked about how tantric can be applied to Gay couples and gay sex.
Kaelan Strouse: Now they will say that our student practices that can only be done when being done between a man and a woman.
Kaelan Strouse: I don't know how much I agree with that, because the truth is, as we all hold the balance of the masculine and feminine, and one of the wonderful things about being queer is we have a greater balance on that within us than a heterosexual person or gender normative person has, because they need the opposite to find balance right.
Kaelan Strouse: A cisgendered man needs a cisgendered woman to find a true sense of balance.
Kaelan Strouse: As queer folk, we already have that balance.
Kaelan Strouse: We already are existing, holding the polarity continuum within us.
Kaelan Strouse: And how sacred is that, how special is that?
Kaelan Strouse: And many ways that makes us more divine, because we are already encompassing of the totality of human experience in our gender, not normative in this, in our sexuality, not formativeness.
Kaelan Strouse: And so I Can see Tentra as being a wonderfully abrasive of the queer experience.
Kaelan Strouse: And again, remember the fact that we are not doing real Tantra.
Kaelan Strouse: It's dead and gone, at least the Indian region is.
Kaelan Strouse: And if you want to do Buddhist Tantra, then great.
Kaelan Strouse: You're gonna have to go convert to Vajran, a Buddhism, which you can go do.
Kaelan Strouse: But like I said earlier, I think it's best to meet us where we are, to root ourselves into our own natural habitat, not transplant us to some different forest on the other side of the globe and see, we can take these ideas, we can take these tools and then bury them in the fertile earth around us, let them sprout into Analogous practices that are similar but rooted in our culture in the same way that we've got pyramids in Egypt, so we've got pyramids in Central America.
Kaelan Strouse: They're both pyramids or a little bit different, but they're both pyramids from around the same time.
Kaelan Strouse: Ish, right, we make it our own and then we turn it into this beautifully queer, rainbow, kaleidoscopic spiritual tradition that is inclusive of our lives, where we are, because we're never, never, gonna be able to live the life of went to that or Indian person.
Kaelan Strouse: We're never gonna be able to live the life that they have, because it is a completely different culture, it's a completely different experience, it is a completely different world, world view advantage.
Kaelan Strouse: So how do we make it our own and how do we make it something contemporary, present, helping, appreciative of the traditions from?
Kaelan Strouse: Once again, all of that, I think, leads into your second question of what is Tantra?
Kaelan Strouse: It's everything we've been talking about.
Kaelan Strouse: It's the embracing of the idea that the divine is and everything, and everyone and every object, whether we would consider it's Lentine term of God exists everywhere, that you find God by embracing everything rather than inject, rejecting it, to see that we Hold polarity within ourselves and within each other, and that polarity can be masculine and feminine.
Kaelan Strouse: It can be the light in the dark, positive, negative uphill down here.
Kaelan Strouse: Why do you want to call it that we are encompassing all, of all of it, that everything is defined.
Kaelan Strouse: Everything is sacred For me.
Kaelan Strouse: That's how I would define it.
Coach Alex Ray: Awesome.
Coach Alex Ray: Thank you for all of that.
Coach Alex Ray: I just really enjoyed getting to listen to you and your perspective there.
Coach Alex Ray: I really enjoy the way you are sharing with us I know this word has connotations that people may not like but appropriating these practices for integrating another culture's practices into our own, learning from it, respecting it, honoring it and letting ourselves learn from it.
Coach Alex Ray: So you just kind of take what works for us personally, leave the rest and know that we can make like you've talked about with easing into a pool, like kind of more gradual changes, as opposed to oh, you need to go, you know, move into an ashram, become a monk.
Coach Alex Ray: You've got to fully change 100% of everything about your life.
Coach Alex Ray: That's just not realistic or true, and go ahead.
Coach Alex Ray: It looks like you have thoughts or responses to that?
Kaelan Strouse: I appreciate you bringing up the word appropriation because obviously it's something that we have all become sensitized to in the last 30, 40 years or so, this idea that, oh you know, we don't want to take this culture's thing and use it because of the history of exploitation, because of the history of, you know, reducing a very rich, complex thing to something often commodifiable, that often is being exploited for resources, for ideas, for money.
Kaelan Strouse: But when we kind of step outside of the box of which we use the word appropriation and look at the larger and more historical perspective, everything historically has been about the free trade of ideas.
Kaelan Strouse: We even look at people's cuisines throughout the world.
Kaelan Strouse: You know, garlic is used, cumin is used from Mexico to India, like it is used throughout the world.
Kaelan Strouse: It didn't start off that way.
Kaelan Strouse: It's because of trade, because of cultural mingling.
Kaelan Strouse: Everything we have is because of sharing.
Kaelan Strouse: And if we even look at like a biological perspective on this, bacteria, viruses, they survive and thrive because they're constantly exchanging DNA, they're constantly exchanging genetic information.
Kaelan Strouse: We do the same thing.
Kaelan Strouse: We are exchanging cells, we're exchanging information.
Kaelan Strouse: I am the person I am today because of the people I've had intimate connections with in my past.
Kaelan Strouse: I've picked up things from them, I've learned from them, I've adopted gestures and facial expressions and terms of phrases because of the people I've interacted with.
Kaelan Strouse: So to make this idea that we exchange and take from other cultures and take from other people a universally bad or malevolent thing, not a farious thing, is doing it such a disservice, because we are again creatures that are tribal, that are connected, that are meant to be in communication and exchanging and having things free flow.
Kaelan Strouse: And, yes, we pay respect and yes, we honor it and yes, we also make sure that it is something that it's okay to take, that we're not taking something that they say no, no, no, no, this is sacred drugs.
Kaelan Strouse: You have a lot of use it Like there's a conversation right now around the peyote plant with indigenous cultures where they do not want Westerners or white people using the sacred peyote plant and saying, well, maybe you can use a synthesized version of the synthetic version, but this is for our culture only.
Kaelan Strouse: You know that is an interesting conversation and this is one that is important to be having, but these ideas and these practices are being willfully given, willingly given.
Kaelan Strouse: They're saying, yes, take them, use them.
Kaelan Strouse: Please use these things.
Kaelan Strouse: That will make the world a better place.
Kaelan Strouse: The issue I have is, as a white man from Chicago, I don't want to go and say I'm now an expert in cashier shave by Tentra, and there are people who do that.
Kaelan Strouse: There are a lot of people who come and say, ah yeah, I'm from Kansas, but now I'm an expert in Vajrayana Buddhist Sandra.
Kaelan Strouse: Right, I'm from New York, but now I've gotten three degrees in Sanskrit and I can answer all the questions about you know, vedanta.
Kaelan Strouse: I think there's a lot of Hebrews there and there's some really beautiful Tantra teachers who have done that, and I personally don't want to be one of them.
Kaelan Strouse: I don't want to go and say, hey, I'm going to become an expert in something foreign.
Kaelan Strouse: I'd rather take these ideas, study them, learn from masters, learn from people who've used them in depth, and then bring them back, strip them of their cultural context, strip them of what made them them, because these are universal truths.
Kaelan Strouse: Even the term for Hinduism is Santana Dharma, which means the eternal truth that if you just pay attention, you'll discover these same things.
Kaelan Strouse: Take them and say how can I make them relevant to here?
Kaelan Strouse: How can I root them in today's culture and make them something that doesn't feel culture-appropriative but still retain the heart and the soul and make it something that is universal.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, yeah, I think you used a really important word there just learning as we all interact with each other or travel or read a fucking book.
Coach Alex Ray: You don't have to rip out the pages of the book and then like it's some kind of limited resource.
Coach Alex Ray: These are ideas that we're sharing and learning from and you're taking it, you're using it in a more Western context and a queer context.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm just so glad that you're more like translating than anything else.
Kaelan Strouse: I know that yeah.
Coach Alex Ray: I wanted to touch on we don't have to spend a lot of time here, because I think you've already given us quite a good idea around how to deal with us already but specifically the spiritual portion of what you do.
Coach Alex Ray: What would you say to someone that has maybe a lot of religious trauma or baggage?
Coach Alex Ray: They feel that their queer identity clashes with anything spiritual?
Coach Alex Ray: How would you address somebody's concerns or questions around spirituality in the way that you practice spirituality?
Kaelan Strouse: That is the case for so many of us, because even the quote-unquote inclusive churches will often say things like love the sinner, hate the sin.
Coach Alex Ray: Right.
Coach Alex Ray: Oh, my God, I heard that so much growing up.
Kaelan Strouse: It's not inclusive, it doesn't feel good and many of us are carrying a lot of baggage around religiosity and we'll use the term religiosity as opposed to spirituality.
Kaelan Strouse: The thing about spirituality is that it is unbounded.
Kaelan Strouse: There is no dogma, there is no rules.
Kaelan Strouse: You don't have to believe in God to be spiritual.
Kaelan Strouse: You don't have to believe in Jesus.
Kaelan Strouse: You don't have to believe in sin.
Kaelan Strouse: You don't have to believe in any shit.
Kaelan Strouse: I think the most important first step if you're questioning I'm burned by religion, but I'd like to have a spiritual life is to cultivate the experience of awe, to try and approach a walk outside with wonder, to see the majesty that exists in the church, the crowds, the beauty of the sky, the earth.
Kaelan Strouse: Notice the awe you feel when you hold someone who loves you and you love them.
Kaelan Strouse: Notice the awe that can be triggered from a really good meal and start to experience that feeling of something greater, that there is something expansive and joyful and powerful in this world and it doesn't need a name.
Kaelan Strouse: It doesn't need to be called Gaia or God or Jesus or Holy Spirit or Mother Earth or Shiva or Allah or whatever you want to call it, but there is something awe-inspiring in this world and if you just pursue the experience of awe, you will be connecting with spirit beautifully said.
Coach Alex Ray: I couldn't agree more.
Coach Alex Ray: One last thing that I wanted to be able to kind of give our listeners today for them to be able to take away and start implementing right away Do you have any recommendations, a tip or something that our listeners can take away to start stepping into a little more connected spiritual sexual practice?
Coach Alex Ray: And is this a universal tip or is this?
Coach Alex Ray: Do you have something specific for people who have a partner or partners, versus someone who's single?
Kaelan Strouse: Great Two things One is for yourself and one is for somebody else.
Kaelan Strouse: Beautiful.
Kaelan Strouse: Next time you're going to have an intimate moment with someone and this can be sexual, it could also just be with somebody or good friends, that's fine too Take a moment and breathe with them.
Kaelan Strouse: Either hold each other and feel each other chest to chest, belly to belly or just place your hand on their heart and breathe with them and notice what happens, because breath carries our life force.
Kaelan Strouse: You can go days without eating, hours, sometimes days without drinking, but you can only go for a few moments without breathing.
Kaelan Strouse: And so when you connect that vital force of air prana, chi, whatever you want to call it through the breath, intimacy starts to occur.
Kaelan Strouse: So try that with somebody and then with yourself.
Kaelan Strouse: A really useful tool and something that I often have my clients do is practice the ardor with self massage.
Kaelan Strouse: So many of us are not very kind to our bodies, but take 15 minutes tonight, go in the bathroom, sit down in town, go get some massage oil or some coconut oil and massage every part of your body and while you do it, appreciate whatever part you're currently working on, say thank you to it, just notice all the things it does for you and just feel like gratitude for this amazing gift you've been given because, quite honestly, this human body is the most ridiculously superb gift you could have, better than any iPad or any smartwatch or any Ferrari.
Kaelan Strouse: The things that this body does is absolutely phenomenal and if you can appreciate it and start to see it as the miracle that it is, your connection with yourself will change, and by changing that, your connection with other people will as well.
Coach Alex Ray: Amazing.
Coach Alex Ray: Oh, Kaelan, thank you so much for being here today, for like sharing your wisdom and all these tips with us.
Coach Alex Ray: I really appreciate having you.
Coach Alex Ray: We will link everything down in the show notes for everyone, but do you want to give everyone just a quick little spiel about where to find you and what you know, what you have going on?
Kaelan Strouse: Of course, youtube is my favorite platform.
Kaelan Strouse: Youtube.
Kaelan Strouse: com/ ecstatic self.
Kaelan Strouse: I have two books this far.
Kaelan Strouse: I'm working on my third right now.
Kaelan Strouse: The first is called Journey to the Ecstatic Self and it is a workbook so you can choose your own adventure as you explore it very much in the vein of all the things you talked about today.
Kaelan Strouse: And the second book, if you like stories, is a fantasy novel.
Kaelan Strouse: So this idea of how do we come home to ourselves, how do we become more of a empowered person.
Kaelan Strouse: That story is told in the form of a parable about a teenage, half dragon, who the book starts with him almost being lynched by his classmates for being different, and the journey he goes on to learn to love and accept himself.
Kaelan Strouse: So those are two great things as well.
Kaelan Strouse: If you like the more spicy, erotic side of things that you have on the make it Twitter and your fans, if you'd like kind of getting more behind the scenes of my life and what I'm doing, phe on is a good place you can work with me one on one through my website, ecstatic Self, and this year I'm going to start planning increasing retreats and workshops, so if you want to come and hang out with a group of 20 other people and do some soulful work together.
Kaelan Strouse: You'd be more than welcome.
Coach Alex Ray: Fabulous.
Coach Alex Ray: All right, Thank you so.
Coach Alex Ray: So much Again, y'all.
Coach Alex Ray: We will have all these links down in the show notes so that you can find Kaelan's work very easily.
Coach Alex Ray: Please go check out his YouTube, go check out his books, go work with him directly.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm just so thankful to have you here today and for all the wisdom you shared with us.
Coach Alex Ray: Thanks for being here.
Kaelan Strouse: Oh, thank you, it's been such a sincere pleasure.
Coach Alex Ray: Amazing.
Coach Alex Ray: All right, well, my unicorns, I will see you on the next episode.
Coach Alex Ray: Bye.