Whether it’s former page 3 icon Samantha’s Fox’s recent tv interview, or Emma Thompson’s new film Good Luck to You Leo Grande, older women expressing their sexuality is always cause for debate.
Shakti Sundari, a former businesswoman who is now an anthropologist and teacher of a sacred practice called Tantra, has been working with women to explore their relationships with their bodies for more than 20 years.
She will be hosting The Sovereign Sexual Woman Retreat for 12 women this weekend at a women’s spirituality retreat in Hampstead.
Sundari said: “Most women don’t love their bodies, most women think and judge themselves to be not good enough, most women compare themselves to other women.
“I see my clients, I see what issues my clients present with, women I’ve been working with a long time.
“The number of women I know who will take off their clothes and stand in front of you and say, I love my body is very, very small and of course that directly impacts on your sex life and your sexuality.
“Tantra is a path of self-actualisation, of experiencing life directly, intimately.
“What I’m going to say is based upon my own study, my own experiences, my own research.
“I don’t want anyone to take what I am saying as the gospel, this is my understanding and there might be people who completely disagree.
“But what I want to be clear about is often in the West there’s a misconception that it’s about sexual promiscuity, having orgies, being sexual with everybody.
“Women of all ages can feel the pressure to submit to self-objectification or to be objectified.
“Women are taught to project their value and worth on their physical appearance and that is the opposite of female sexual empowerment.
“Many young men and women feel pressured to seek validation through sex.
“Parents need to talk to their children about the responsibilities around safe and meaningful sex. The UK is still very conservative and repressed around sex.”
Featured image credit: Rose Ingalill Garrett
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