PATH - Totality Therapy - Shakti Shiva Academy

Totality Therapy

What is Totality Therapy

Totality refers to the whole or the sum of something. Totality Tantra is a modality that Dr Shakti Malan developed during her lifetime to support participants in cultivating a whole or full embrace of all that life offers us – the agony and the ecstasy – and particularly as this gets revealed through our sexuality. It is her most comprehensive teaching and transmission on how to work with the psychological and mystical dimensions of human sexuality.

It is a contemporary and streamlined interpretation of the wisdom of Tantra, the ancient practice of integrating transcendent/mystical realisation in all aspects of life, including the body, emotions, sexuality, and relationships.

Many religions and spiritual traditions have aimed to achieve God-realization through transcending this world. We believe that every single experience we get to have in this human life is an invitation to meet, realize and embrace our Divinity. But the key is our willingness to embrace the totality of life – the bitter as much as the sweet.

The teaching is experiential and will require of you to live through every aspect that the course addresses. This certification track is ideal for professionals who are or who would like to work with the theme of sexuality in private practice or group work.

It is our intention that after completing this certification you will not only have a vastly expanded relationship with your own inner landscape, your sexuality and the world you live in, but also that you are richly equipped to facilitate this work for clients and students who come your way.

The entire Totality Therapy Training explores life from the perspective of our sexual, intimate, and relational experience.

Why focus on Sexuality?

We are blessed in today’s world with an abundance of superb therapeutic modalities, and yet so few deeply address the dynamics of sexuality. In part, this is because sexuality is such a taboo topic in our world. Sexuality is also one of the most complex aspects of our psyches because it is intricately linked with our unconscious.

1. Sexuality is a guide to the unconscious The unconscious is every aspect of our lives that we haven’t fully integrated or felt. Starting with birth and throughout our lives, we have experiences that are overwhelming and too much for us to digest at the time. These often show up later in our sexuality.

2. Sexual energy is life force While our society has turned sex into a genital affair, Totality Tantra aims to expand your horizons so that you can experience the true nature of sexual energy – as life force itself – the power that animates all of life. This broader understanding of sexual energy requires a re-definition of what we mean by masculinity and femininity, and an inquiry into the nature of attraction – the electrical response which initiates the movement of life force.

3. Sexuality and presence Presence during lovemaking is likely to be a chance occurrence – until you get initiated into the meditation of lovemaking. A significant aspect of the Totality Tantra is immersion in Tantric lovemaking practices for yourself, with others and with life itself.

4. A meeting point of mysticism and therapy – It has become a trend in spiritual circles to deny the value of therapy. One thought that this is because much of therapy has become a rationally driven business which tends to keep clients in the identification with their story about themselves. Many spiritual seekers see therapeutic methods as slow and not resonant with the deeper levels of self-realisation that they are achieving through spiritual practice. – Having said that, denying the value of therapy is a dangerous movement for spiritual seekers as it contributes to spiritual bypassing – that is, the use of spiritual practice and realization to bypass or avoid our humanity, which includes all the dimensions of our emotional and sexual lives that are held in the unconscious. Spiritual bypassing is simply a modern version of spiritual and religious movements that aim to transcend by escaping the intricacies and messiness of this human life.

"Our capacity to be present with our humanity opens us to an intimate knowledge of life beyond consensual reality – beyond what we can perceive with our five senses. Totality Therapy invites you into the mystery beyond what you think you can know, feel and see where there is a world waiting to be discovered – all the way into your subtle sexual body."

Professional Training for Practitioners

Totality Therapy is a practitioner’s training program. It will benefit you if:

You have an existing practice which you wish to develop and grow
You would like to start a practice focused on the Totality Therapy materials.
You are also welcome to do this program purely for personal development reasons.

Whereas most professional training programs are mainly intellectual, this program is experiential. It is our view that practitioners are only able to assist clients with life issues that cross over into sexuality to the degree that the practitioner has lived into his/her own sexuality – both the shadow and the light of it. At the same time, this program is also deeply satisfying on an intellectual and academic level. We will be systematically exploring all the main themes that you may encounter in a somatic, therapeutic, or spiritual inquiry around sexuality. Please note that this training is not medical or anatomy focused.

Totality Therapy is not accredited with any academic institution. Clients will come to you because they can sense the depth of experience, compassion and clarity that you bring to your work as it relates to the theme of sexuality. The kind of skill & capacity you will acquire on this training is extremely rare on the planet at present.