VIP Interview With Michelle Roberton – A Tantric Counselor

Michelle Roberton is a sexual healing and intimacy specialist who has discovered the power of healing through Tantra and touch.  Personally having to deal with childhood sexual abuse, anorexia, drug abuse, homelessness, death of a son, life threatening illness she found the answer and salvation in a healthy, sacred and holistic way.

This knowledge she now enthusiastically shares in order to give her gift of healing to people suffering sexual trauma, lack of intimacy enhancing each body, person and spirit.  She has been a tantric therapist since 2002 creating the connection between who we are, who we love, our body, sex and life.

Being an Authentic Tantric Therapist she offers training and certification courses (details that are available on her website) to those that wish to help others.  She mentors graduates long after the course, ensuring proper techniques are used in all sessions.  Her blog on sacredtantrictouch.com shares with readers various tantric therapy free with a useful vlog post on each explaining her methods ‘face to face’.

Hi Michelle, a warm welcome to the adultsmart community lifestyle blog.  I appreciate you taking the time to partake in this interview as I know that it is valuable and limited.  Let’s start at the beginning!  It seems that your vocation in life became apparent after some pretty harsh lifestyle experience occurred.  Can you run us through a bit of that?

Hi, really wonderful to be sharing with you all at AdultSmart.  Thank you for inviting me!

I do not know where the beginning is to be honest.  I guess I knew as a child something was not quite “fitting” in comparison to what I could see and feel around me and how I felt in my body and heart, love to be and an element of sex to I suppose. As an adult, I was unaware of this, dissociated from my body and its pain.

I was around 32 when the flash backs started, one of my brothers whom was living over in Canada … (I was in the UK) started getting them at the same time!

And slowly my life and all my self-sabotaging and addictive behaviors made sense.  It was not who I truly was but instead what I have been led to believe I was worth.

 

Yet you came through the other side finding your ‘inner bliss’ and wanting to share this with others.  How did you manage to do this?

I started as many adult survivors of childhood abuse do, seeking talk therapy, trying to reassure myself that this was not all some wonky imagination. But I discovered talk therapy had limits; I reached a point I couldn’t surpass.

Meditation, alternative healing therapies were easy for me, they were where I was at … ungrounded.

I was still out of my body and it was my body that was in trauma and pain.  The only way I felt was to reclaim my body and my sexuality.  And in doing that my childhood too.

The only “method” that encompassed all of that … body, sex, sensuality and creative soul was Tantra.

It meant I had to feel after so long from running away from feeling.

That is amazing, life-circumstances enough to break most people but you came out the other side with a mission to share your healing with others.  What power did you draw on to do this?

Oh, I do not know whether it was a power *smile*

Firstly I have 4 children and they were really all I ever wished for, so they were plenty of a reason to want to change things not just for me but be a part of re-writing their life script, so they too stopped suffering at the consequences of what happened.

Secondly, a courageous heart, which I am unsure where it comes from?  I guess it has always been part of me.  I doubt I would be here without it.

Buddhists and Hindus have accepted Tantra for many centuries but there are many doubting Thomases in Western Civilizations.  What obstacles did you face when starting out?

I waited until I fully integrated what I knew Tantra to be as truth for myself.  So it was not something I do but something I am.  In that, my boundaries grew and an enormous passion to share Tantra beyond what Western world believes it to be.

I had many potential clients contacting me for “Happy Endings”.  One gentleman shout at me in my home, because he didn’t get one. Others offer me more money or a new car!  But I had no interest in meeting them on their level, I saw my role to show others a new window to look through, not the one they already know.

Yes, Tantra is about Sex but so much more too.  It is not even about fantastical orgasms and lasting for hours.   People just focus on the sex part and that is a shame.  I think that is probably because that is the biggest part of our lives that we need to truly get honest about and move beyond the concept of purely penetration and ejaculation.

 

What can someone expect when booking a therapy session with you?

First, honesty, authenticity, warmth, and a deep commitment to meeting pain, shame, or joy with you.

With those qualities I support others to initially get away from a life lived from the chaos of the head and back to a place of being in the body.  From here, a relationship with sensation can be trusted again and an ability to attend to feelings.  Of course, that incudes our sexuality.

It is a very unique, lived experience, and because of that I do not feel I do anything to “fix” people, I feel I empower them through tasting the experience for themselves in their body to “fix” themselves.  Giving back control and empowerment to them.

Do you have any requirements for prospective clients?

Yes, a level of honesty and to have read the relevant website page to them, just so they are aware of how I share, dissolving any confusion.

I always arrange to speak to a potential client before they commit to booking.

This is essential I feel.  It gives them time to ask may questions they may have.  It gives me an insight into how I may support the reasons why they are seeking change.  And most importantly it gives an opportunity to hear my voice and ensure they feel at ease with me.

And commitment to self … to actually want to put the work in to get the results they hunger for.

 

There are different tantra techniques used for men, women and couples.  Can you explain them?

My goodness, that is quite a big question. I will try answer simply.

I feel Tantra is initially an individual journey whether that is a man or woman.  We cannot share what we have not got.  We need to be in our sex from a place of “good health” so we can share our sex limitlessly.  (Note I said share our sex, not give it away as a performance or obligation.)

Yes, there are different techniques but they all boil down to the same message.

To be in the body, to slow down, to ride and be with the breath, to be sensual, to be in this moment.

Once we can own that for ourselves, the electricity can then expand as a couple.  Again, a couple would use the same methods but now together.

How do you incorporate Tantra with helping with sexual trauma?   

Tantra was the only “method” that supported me to reclaim my body and sexuality.  It is a complete re-wiring.  We get to drop all that we know and believe so far and start again. Reclaiming and reinventing our sexuality, once painful or confusing, is both powerful and empowering.

We feel the sensation of sex, for our self and can relate with it from a new understanding.

Body Armor that is outdated protection and wounds that may be supporting the body to feel the abuse is still happening rather then something that happened is gently attended to and dissolved.

We get to feel our body as a source of pleasure.

And touch! … To have new experiences of touch, that has no agenda, no goal … no fear.

In life there are always highs and lows.

What most do you regret? What is the highlight

I regret that my unconscious self-sabotaging behavior effected my children and lost me my marriage. That elements of my childhood no matter how good a parent or wife I believed I was, still found a way to show up and hurt those I love dearly.

I do know that I would not be the person I am today, without my past.  I know that is old and cliché but I only regret that my childhood affected those I love, I do not regret who it has made me today.

Highlights are many..

Giving birth to four amazing human beings.  Being a mum!

My work, that does not feel like work at all, more …  when I touch another’s skin I feel like I am a dancer moving intuitively across the floor … and when I see people unfolding from such closed spaces into a full life … Wow … it’s such a beautiful feeling in my heart.

And finally arriving here in this body and owning my sexuality for what I choose it to be.

If you could do anything differently, what would that be?

I would want to have made a difference in sex, relationship and intimacy education in schools.  And find a way to remove body shaming and the crazy ideas drummed into children and teenagers about the elusive perfect body.

Can you tell us a little about your Tantric Therapy and Massage Training Courses?

I share these as a one to one.  Purely because Tantra is an initiation … a doorway of feeling.  I do not wish to make 30 carbon copies in a class or give a rigid structure of how massage must look as that then is shared from head not body or heart.

When working with individuals I can support them to share their authentic self and tantric journey that happens through the learning.

I feel that is how we used to learn, from mentors, through direct experience and I deeply want to honour not just that lost part of our culture now but honor the individual I am working with, by sharing all I have.

Which do you enjoy more – therapy through tantra or teaching tantra to students?

I do not enjoy one more.  They are both ways of sharing that I love and a different adventure.

What do you feel is your greatest achievement?

My four children.  They are wise, compassionate, funny, beautiful people.

What will you be doing in 10 years’ time?

Hopefully, still this … with a dash more travel, sunshine and sunsets. 

How do you want to be remembered?

For how people feel when I touch them or just sit close.