Episode 62: Power, Pleasure And Purpose: Awakening Your Spirit And Sexual Energy Centers With Linda Bogdanov
Do you believe that the universe continually nudges you until you realign to the path of your highest purpose? Our guest today was shaken out of her body to understand that what she was doing was not where she was supposed to be. Linda Bogdanov, a soul purpose life coach, shares how to heal your body and soul from the inside out and get clear on your mission to live a life of power, pleasure and purpose. She also explains how tantra plays a role in that path of healing. Awaken your spirit today and find the path to healing your body and soul with Linda Bogdanov in this episode!
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Power, Pleasure And Purpose: Awakening Your Spirit And Sexual Energy Centers With Linda Bogdanov
Do you believe that the universe continually nudges you until you realign to the path of your highest purpose? Our guest was literally shaken out of her body to come to the understanding of what she was doing was not where she was supposed to be. This realization took her on an entrepreneurial, spiritual, and tantric journey that has completely transformed her life in the best possible ways in three years. Linda Bogdanov is a former corporate data analyst turned sole purpose life coach in Tantrika Yoghini. She works with clients to heal their bodies and soul from the inside out and to get clear on their mission so they can live a life of power, pleasure, and purpose.
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Welcome to the show, Linda. How are you?
I am doing fantastic, Anand. Thank you so much for having me.
It’s so beautiful to have you on. Just so the audience knows, you and I met a couple of years ago. You were one of our first clients over at om.life Wellness, the wellness center I have here in Jersey City. We’ve had some amazingly deep conversations, and I got to witness such an incredible transformation in your life. I want to learn all about it because it’s such an inspiring story of how you left corporate and went through some challenges. You’re living your best life. The more you get out of your comfort zones, the more you’re expanding yourself. It is a beautiful thing to witness. I want to give the stage to you, and you could tell us a little bit about your background.
I’m happy to. I want to say that I am so grateful to you and that I came across you and your beautiful wellness center because I was floating all the time. I had one of those unlimited memberships and tried to go once a week. I was like, “If I could go every single day, I would.” It was part of my early journey of realizing I could become an entrepreneur in those tank sessions. I had so many ideas, so I’m forever grateful. We’ve continued to be friends, and you’ve shared so much more wisdom that’s impacted me as well. I want to say thank you. I’m grateful for you opening your heart to me and many of your customers and everyone you meet.
Thank you so much. I appreciate you. I remember the actual conversation we had. It was after one float you told me you got out of the tank. We’re sitting upstairs in the lounge, and you’re like, “I’m going to quit my corporate job.” You said it was very matter-of-factly. You got a promotion at that time and were excited about it, and then you’re like, “I’m ready.”
I don’t even remember that. I do remember writing. I journaled after each session. I want to go back to my notes now, but I’m not that surprised, but also, I’m glad that I ended up doing it eventually. I had so many different experiences, and that can be a whole other conversation. In terms of sharing my story a little bit, I was a data analyst in a financial services company in New York City. We were living in Jersey City at that time. Before I started on my wellness journey, I had a wake-up call from the universe. I look back now and it’s because I was on the wrong path. The universe was giving me nudges along the way, and I was not listening.
My right lung collapsed in 2016 and 2017, and the masculine side is what they say. After the first lung collapse, I started to think about what was important in my life. I was away from my family. My husband’s family is from Australia. Every single one of my family lives in Minnesota. I was starting my new life in New York. For a long time, I was running away from something. Now I realize what that is and what those things were. At that time, I was running and trying to escape. When my lung collapsed, it was a moment of like, “What am I doing? What are my priorities? What are my relationships like? Are they fulfilling or empty?”
I was questioning so many of these big life things. From that point, I started thinking about my health and was like, “I have to take care of myself more.” I had no idea that my lung had collapsed until I got an X-ray and a callback. I don’t know why they didn’t call me right away, but I ended up getting the call a few days later. My lung had collapsed already by at least 50%. By the time I got to the emergency room, it was 85% collapse. I had no idea. I was like, “Why do I not know when this is happening to my body?”
I was so disconnected from my body, so I vowed to take care of myself more. I then came across you and floating. I started having realizations, taking care of myself and being more mindful. That was the beginning of the journey. I was at that time working in my corporate job. I can’t remember if I landed the role. It was a big promotion for me. I felt excited about it. I was working hard and have been very masculine for most of my life up until this point. I was like, “I will work and don’t care about anything else.” I got to a point where I was starting to realize that I was not happy anymore.
I had these nudges and kept them in the back of my mind. A few years later, on my 30th birthday, my husband took me to Turks and Caicos for a getaway. It was five days. I was miserable even in paradise. That made me realize something needs to change because if you can’t be happy in this beautiful place of Turks and Caicos, which was magical on its own, internally, I was so unhappy. I had gotten another role at this point because I was like, “If I’m not happy, I’m going to change my situation and environment. A new role will help with that.”
It only helped for a few months, and then I was back to where I was before, which was sitting with my internal self, especially in paradise. I disconnected from my phone completely. Being in paradise and my husband, who I know is a beautiful, amazing soul and my sacred partner, I was still unfulfilled. When I got home, I was like, “I have to do something else.” I started researching different ways to start a business. One of those things was creating an eCommerce brand. I joined a mastermind and learned through various courses how to do that. I started building my brand and thinking about the products.
I remember one day, I was going to quit my job. I knew that, but I was going to do it at the end of the year. In May or June 2021, the middle of the year, I can’t go to work. My body doesn’t want me to go. I was talking to my husband, and I was crying. He was like, “You know what you need to do.” I ended up putting my notice in, and I gave them a month. My body knew it was giving up on me. It was like, “You can’t keep going like this.”
Luckily, I already had something in mind and was starting to create it. I knew that I was going to launch it soon. The end of the year was my goal. I ended up quitting my job and then having the time, space and support from my husband to build this thing. That was the start of my entrepreneurial journey. I’m hearing it maybe because I’m in this world and looking for this information, but no one told me how hard it was going to be mentally and internally.
When you start your own business, things come up. Fears and all the insecurities come up. I had to deal with them. I couldn’t blame somebody else, my boss for being too hard on me anymore or my job not being a good fit. I was like, “I decided to do this. I created this. I was taking full responsibility.” All of these insecurities came up. That’s when my deep internal healing journey began, so here we are.
That’s such a beautiful way you put it, self-responsibility as a business owner. It’s also the greatest self-development exercise because to become successful and be happy as an entrepreneur, you have to work through all of those insecurities. Every single one comes up and continuously comes up until I move forward past them emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually as well. Spirituality is a big thing that a lot of entrepreneurs lean into because you have to have some faith that you are protected. As you said, the universe is always trying to give you clues and propel you forward toward your greatest potential.
The universe is always trying to give you clues and propel you forward toward your greatest potential.
I loved hearing about how you were feeling it. You were listening to your body about all the different signs it was giving you. It’s not easy to go through that, but in reality, if we’re not listening to that, we could go through an entire lifetime of pain or unhappiness. It’s almost like a comfortable misery. You can deal with it, but you’ll never going to be fulfilled. There are those like yourself who decide to take a moment and say, “No more.”
You declare a new life when you say, “I’m not going to live this previous version of me. I’m going to become a better, happier, and more fulfilled version of myself.” It doesn’t happen for a lot of people until you hit absolute rock bottom in whatever way it comes, whether it’s health, relationships, or family. Whatever it could be, there has to be some catalyst. A lot of times, people say, “That was my worst day.” You can look at it as that, or you can look at it as your absolute best day when you decide, “I’m going to be a different person.”
That’s very true. My life and my upbringing felt so out of control and chaotic. I felt I had to be in control of everything. Now going with the flow, and we’ll talk about this later too, I feel I’ve surrendered more, and it’s been beautiful, which has been so hard for me to do.
What does surrendering mean to you?
Surrender means going through life in alignment and in flow and listening to my body when it’s time to step in and change course, but going in flow and knowing that I’m going to be taken care of. There are bigger forces out there that are going to take care of it if you’re going in the wrong direction. As a result of that, there have been so many more synchronicities in my life in a positive way than ever before when I thought I could control everything. It’s been a beautiful journey. To witness that, I’m like, “The more I surrender, the more beauty comes my way.” That’s been my experience.
In 2020, I remember I was doing some short episodes for the business. I was talking to people who are living their full potential. At that moment, you were a little less than a year into opening your business. I had to drag you on camera that day because you were a little bit uncertain about sharing your amazing story. You had a data analyst background and skillset. That helped you in your entrepreneurial journey of creating a brand. You’re looking at all the data to see how to move the direction of the business in terms of sales, inventory, and all that kind of stuff. At that point, you were making as much money as you were in your corporate job. That’s incredible. Can you talk a little bit about how you were able to scale so quickly in your business?
It definitely took our own personal investment to put into the business. I felt it was a combination of leveraging data and luck in a way because my first product was pretty successful. I’m still running this business as well as all the other things I’m working on. In some ways, I was still in my masculine, and I was like, “I have to make this work and at least make how much I was making before.” That was my benchmark.
It did well, and it’s continuing to grow. What was interesting was that I was starting to learn how to manifest, learn about the Law of Attraction and all of that stuff. I was like, “I want to make this much money in my business so that I can have this much revenue. This is how much I wanted to bring in and the profit margins. This is how much I would make.” Every time I would try to do that, I would end up getting the income, but not in the way that I wanted. It’s not through the business. It was through my husband instead him getting a bonus or an increase in his role or a new role or whatever. I was like, “Can you give it to me?” Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I learned about that as well.
I’m like, “What’s going on here? I’m going to trust this.” We can talk more deeply on that topic as well, but I wanted so badly for the business to be that one thing I do. I realize I’m very multifaceted. I don’t know if you’ve heard of human design, but I’ve been deep into the human design. Part of my journey is to be that multifaceted person and have multiple projects because I get bored so easily. I will start a new job or project, and six months in or a year in, I’m like, “What else can I do? What else can I build?”
That’s how it’s always been. Even if I look back at my corporate days, I was always looking for the next job because I would get comfortable. I want to keep growing, learning and stretching. Even in this process of starting my business and wanting to make an income from that, I realized that there were other ways that were going to happen and would lead me on the path I was now.
What’s great about human design is it gives you permission. I already knew some of these things. It just gave me permission to be all those things, multifaceted, and the person that does things that nobody else has done or nobody else that I know has done. I’m a risk taker, and I’ll try things and go on these different journeys. I’m not afraid to do it. I’m meant to be that person. I was like, “That’s good.” Everyone thinks I’m crazy because my family doesn’t do that stuff. That’s who I am, so I’m going to keep doing it.
Sexual Energy Centers: What's great about human design is it permits you. Like I already knew some of these things, it just permitted me to be all of those things.
It’s about embracing who you are. Human design shows you a blueprint of so many different facets of who you are. The moment we start identifying ourselves, it’s like, “This is my job. This is the city that I live in.” You’re limiting yourself from everything that you’re technically not. You then start going deeper and deeper into that identity. The more you put your feet on the ground, the less you can expand toward the sky. One of the things that came to me in a recent ayahuasca experience is destroying the labels and identity we think we are. When we destroy ourselves every single night of our identity, we can create a new one and also look at people from a different perspective rather than always looking at them in the same exact way.
I am all for it. As a manifesting generator, I absolutely love new projects. That newness, creating, and getting out of my comfort zones is what turns me on the most. I love starting a business and creating it. It’s wonderful and running beautifully, but I still want to create. I will not have that itch to do more. What can we do? How can we have more fun here on Earth? It’s aligning ourselves towards our passions and missions, and you keep going. The universe opens up for you, and rainfall of abundance ends up coming toward you because you’re following those paths.
You’re following the breadcrumbs in terms of what lights you up. Also, when you’re open and releasing that you need to know how things are going to happen for you, the universe is like, “Here you go. Here are some options. What do you think?”
You can handle more, so it’s going to give you more. Moving onwards towards conquering entrepreneurism. Obviously, you’re still doing it, but you feel you have more to give to the world. Tell us a little bit more about the stuff you’re creating right now.
I’m creating so many things. It feels very aligned. It doesn’t feel overwhelming. I’ve had a history of being able to work like a mad woman. I’ve had multiple jobs at the same time. Even in high school, I had three jobs. I was getting straight A’s, was vice president of these business clubs, and always doing all these things. I have the energy to do that, but then, it was coming from a place of not being empowered. It was probably more of a disempowered place of having to prove myself. Now, it’s coming from a place of alignment and working in this beautiful flow. I’ll tell you more about the exact things, but the way I got here was through my entrepreneurial journey. It was a hard moment in that journey because I launched in February 2020.
There have been a lot of challenges, beauty, and realizations. On this journey, I was also learning about how to deal with these things like insecurities and failures. All of that was coming up. I would sign up for courses or go on retreats. I started to expand on that spiritual and healing path. I went on this amazing retreat in Portugal. She’s still my teacher now, and I am deeply connected to the person that held the retreat. This was the first time I felt I was good and worthy enough of existing for nothing except for the fact that I was alive and breathing. Every single day that I wake up means that I’m worthy.
It was so beautiful. There were a series of different things that we did in this retreat. The first realization was during this hot seat moment when the retreat leader was answering questions. I had an a-ha moment when she described this worthiness. She said, “You are as worthy if you sit on the couch for the rest of your life as if you are the most successful person.” I saw myself sitting on that couch, and I was like, “I am worthy. That’s okay. I don’t think I would do that, but if I wanted to, I would be okay.” That was never something that I could do. I could never relax and allow myself to be.
Sexual Energy Centers: That person sitting on the couch is as similarly as worthy as the most successful person.
I realized that at that moment, and then there was this other amazing exercise. It was a rebirth where I saw myself as a baby, and I looked at her and saw how beautiful she was, literally for breathing and being alive. My inner child was being healed at this moment. There was a death of this old version of myself that didn’t think that was worthy enough. This new me rebirthing into someone that saw and loved myself as is. I’m wearing a necklace, and the snake is a symbol that I connect with and have since then because it represents that snake sheds its skin constantly and transforms.
The snake also represents the divine feminine and wisdom. When I got back home, I realized how free I felt without the revenue numbers, the titles, or anything. That’s when I realized I wanted to teach others how to be free within themselves because that is going to change the world and not make us be power-hungry and need to inflict violence and others. If we have the power within ourselves, we don’t need to find it in other ways or external sources. That was the end of 2021. I had my ayahuasca journey shortly after that as well. I was doing so many things. I was like, “Sign me up for this.”
If we have the power within ourselves, we don't need to find it in other ways.
Was it all planned out or impromptu? Were you like, “Next year is going to be all growth for me?”
It was impromptu. For some of it, I had to sign up in advance, but I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I was checking in with myself, “This feels good. I’m going to do it.” I had no idea what to expect from the retreat. Somehow, the ayahuasca came shortly after in a beautiful way. It was like, “If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it’s fine.” She wanted to work with me, so it happened. From that journey, I’ve started to say yes to more aligned things. I started doing tantra yoga teacher training in early 2022. I also became a Dharma Certified Coach, which is a spiritual life coach. I was following the breadcrumbs to get me to where I am now. We can definitely dive into all of those things.
Let’s start with the ayahuasca experience. Why did you decide this was the next path on the journey for you? Tell us a little bit about it.
Ayahuasca had been in the back of my mind for at least a year, maybe two. It’s interesting because I’m not someone that does recreational drugs. I don’t participate in that. I’ve always been afraid of it, probably because of my upbringing. When I heard about ayahuasca, it was for healing and plant medicine. It’s supposed to be a beautiful experience. Everyone’s experience is different, but I felt very called and drawn to work with ayahuasca, even though it’s the most extreme thing. I can be a very extreme person if I feel like it’s right. That’s my personality. One of the biggest reasons I thought I wanted to work with her was to heal my ancestral lineage of their trauma.
They say when you do the healing work, you heal seven generations before you and after you. I was starting to think about growing my family and becoming a mother. I wanted to have this experience before bringing life into the world because I knew I had some things to clear and work on. Also, my family, my mom and my grandma have had a lot of recent trauma in Cambodia, so there are definitely impacts on the entire Cambodian community. They don’t talk about it and don’t know how to deal with it. It’s very traumatic, and that’s probably why, but I was like, “If I can do the work and it will help them, then I’m going to do it. I’m going to dive in.” I’m not even going to think about the other things.
That was the main purpose for me in wanting to work with ayahuasca. What I got was something entirely different. She didn’t even show me that. She didn’t even want me to see it. I had two ceremonies, and on the first night, I had all of these intentions. You can go with intentions. Sometimes she’ll answer them. Sometimes she won’t. It depends on what you need to see. One of my intentions was to show me a past life or past lives that are relevant to my life now. Show me what my truth is versus what society’s truth is or what I thought was my truth but wasn’t. One of them was to show me my ancestor’s pain and help me heal them.
I saw the first two the first night, but I didn’t see any trauma or anything like that from my family. The next day I said to the facilitator, “I had a beautiful experience.” It was more of an astral journey visual. I’m very clairvoyant, so I can see vivid images. I was telling him about the journey and how I didn’t see their pain. I wanted to heal that. He asked me a good question. He was like, “What’s your intention with that? It’s because what’s going on is that you have survivor guilt.” I realized that was the case. I had survival of guilt, and I’ve been operating in my life in that way of feeling a little bit guilty if I’m living too big, too indulgent or too in my pleasure and all of that. I was like, “That makes sense.” Going back, one of the things she showed me in my past life was that I was a goddess of pleasure.
What is a goddess of pleasure?
It was so beautiful. I’ll set the stage. It seemed like it was back in the Roman Empire days. I had this palace. I was this goddess who was in this flowy gold outfit. I was the queen of this palace. It was a place where people could come and feel safe in their pleasure in whatever way that meant to them. It was my place. I had these events where people could come. They were my family and the people I cared about. It was the community that I had created in this past life. They came to be in their pleasure and heal their sexual trauma in my space.
What I saw, which makes sense to me now, was that these armed group of men came and destroyed my palace and my place of pleasure. They burned it to the ground. Afterward, I was like, “That was a very interesting past-life download.” I don’t know what this means yet, because, at that time, I was afraid of showing up as a healer at all or as somebody of her pleasure to everybody else. I didn’t want to be seen. That was in my shadow and behind closed doors. This is who I was. Going back to that other retreat, that was the first time I had awakened my sexuality. It was at the very end. It was because I felt so safe in this community and had that rebirth.
There was another exercise we did where I connected a sexually traumatic event in my life with all of these other events that happened later in my life. They were all interconnected. Because there was so much trauma, it was all fractured. I didn’t associate all the things with that route, and I didn’t even label that incident as trauma. I was like, “I don’t know if it happened,” but I blacked out. I couldn’t handle it. This was when I was a teenager. The most significant event after that was I tried to ask for help. I tried to tell somebody in my family about what happened, and they said, “Can you not tell anybody about this?” It shut me down. From that point on, I allowed things to happen to me that I wasn’t comfortable with, and I wouldn’t use my voice because it didn’t matter.
That’s a whole lot of stuff there that I unpacked. It was the first time I connected the dots. Since I connected the dots, it released that memory or that trauma in some of the exercises we did. I remember being in the final circle. This retreat leader channels different guides in all of the circles we have, which happens every evening. This final one, she called in the goddess. That’s when my goddess awoke. Literally, I was in flow and dancing in one of my red dresses. I was so in my pleasure, and it was so beautiful.
My ayahuasca experience showed me in a past life that I was the goddess of pleasure. The second night, after talking to the facilitator and realizing I had survivor guilt, I was like, “I’m going to keep it simple tonight, and my intention is going to be the ayahuasca shows me pleasure. What does that even mean?” It was the best night of my entire life. I could go on an entire episode about this because it was so pleasurable. I’m like, “How do I bring all that back? How do I bring this pleasure into my life now and share it with others?”
You decided you want to share that with others to awaken that spirit within them and the experience of pleasure. When we go through some trauma or some bad time in our life, we’re so focused on healing from that particular event. There has to be healing done. Also, the other way to look at it is, how do we ramp up the pleasure to shake ourselves out of that energy of whether it’s being hurt, a victim or the past part of ourselves? When we lean into the other side, a lot of the healing can start happening. A lot of us have suffered from issues where we feel guilty for enjoying ourselves, enjoying life, or spreading our wings because we live in a society where there are eyes everywhere on us.
A lot of mental illnesses and victimhood are talked about so much, and all this stuff, but there are not a lot of people showing an empowered lifestyle in a very healthy way. Not in a show-off way like, “I drive million-dollar cars and go on yachts and everything,” but to embody full happiness. When you start doing that, sometimes you can get attacked. It’s so important to do that for our own sake and not to worry about what other people are going to think. You can inspire others, or others can see you, whichever way they want to. In reality, we’re the ones who have to live with ourselves. If we’re not fully embracing ourselves, then we’re not fully living our lives.
If we're not fully embracing ourselves, we're not fully living our lives.
I agree. Before I got out of it, we had these beds that we slept in and had our experience in. There’s a bucket if you need to purge. I remember there’s the center with rugs. I was so shy to go out. even though I knew I wanted to dance, and that’s my pleasure, I was going back and forth from my bed, me wanting to crawl out of it but retreating, and then I purged. I knew what I was purging, and it was guilt, shame, and judgment. I was like, “I’m going to let it out.” After that, I ended up getting out of my bed and going onto this beautiful rug. I was feeling the rug and seeing the beauty of it. It was so colorful and magical.
Before I started dancing, which was one of the things I love embodying now and was in my shadows about as well, I could hear everybody’s experience. I could hear people crying, screaming and having difficult experiences. I said to her, I was like, “How do I step into my pleasure when everybody else is in their pain?” She was very nurturing with me and very gentle, and she said, “Trust me. When you step into your pleasure, you will heal their pain.” That was so powerful. That was the sentiment with my ancestors as well. As long as I step into my pleasure in this life, I will help heal their pain.
I don’t have to go where they were to heal their pain. I can do the opposite, be this empowered person and be my pleasure and joy because we all deserve happiness. Since they couldn’t experience that, I get to, and I can do it for them. It was so beautiful. What I didn’t realize was that the next day, we had a circle after ayahuasca, and everybody shared their experience. Every single person had an experience with me in their own way, whether that was releasing the demons from their own selves and knowing that I was untouchable because this person was afraid that other people would experience if she released this from her body that it would go to somebody else.
She saw that I was in the divine feminine energy that couldn’t even touch me and allowed her to continue with the work that she needed to do. That’s one example. Every single person had some beautiful experience with me that I didn’t even intend to. I was like, “I’m going to be in my pleasure, dance and be embodied in all of this beautiful stuff.” That was a huge lesson for me and has led me to where I am now, which still took a while to be. It was recently that I said what I was doing.
What are you doing? Let’s get to it.
I am a spiritual life coach. I am incorporating tantra as well. Life coaching is powerful because it helps you find clarity and purpose. I’ll work with my clients through that. I also work with my clients on holding a safe space for them to share vulnerably, whether sexual trauma, shame, guilt, or any of these things. What’s interesting is I didn’t think that I would be doing life coaching and doing the sex coaching along with it so early because I was like, “I want to wait for another year because then I’ll be ready.” I realize I’m ready now through the work with some of my earlier clients. I realized how powerful it was for them and for me to work in this capacity of holding the space and for them to share.
Sexual Energy Centers: Life coaching is powerful because it helps you find clarity and purpose.
I was like, “This is needed now. I don’t need more training to be able to hold that space.” Of course, I’m not going to work with people who I’m not capable of working with some of these things because there are people that are very trauma-informed. I will recommend them if it gets to that or if it needs that. I realized that even now, I’m able to do it. I was afraid of showing up publicly as this person that is a life coach and sexual healer. Ayahuasca told me that I was and I’ve always been afraid to be in the light.
I’m always the person in my data roles. I could be the person that was behind the computer, doing my coding and data structuring. I felt comfortable there. Anytime I had to present, which I wasn’t bad at, I was so anxious because it was me. I was in the light. It’s always been a fear of mine to be in the light, especially with things that were either traumatic to me or were in my shadows. Pleasure and sex are one of those things.
It takes so much courage to, first of all, embrace it yourself, but then also to share it with the world that, “This is who I am.” I love the combination of spiritual coach and tantra sex coach because you’re handling the superconscious, which is energy center number eight, which is above our crown and expands to the oneness of it all, God, or whatever you want to call it. You’re also going all the way down to the root chakra, where so much of our life force is dependent.
Tantra is such a vast field of knowledge to understand. Each one of us has these tantric centers in us. If they’re not being activated, so much of our life force can either dissipate or grow when we tap into it. As you go up the energy centers, you’re encompassing all of life in the spiritual and the non-body, “I am no one, or I am no time. I am just consciousness.” This is the physical body right here, and I stand strong to be there. When you can live in both places at one time, you’re showing up as a soul, body, and human.
Each one of us has these tantric centers in us. If they're not being activated, so much of our life force can either dissipate or grow when we tap into it.
I agree. Sometimes, when you have those experiences of bliss and being pure consciousness, which I’ve had through ayahuasca and other experiences that I’m happy to talk about, it is hard to want to come back because it’s such an amazing feeling. It’s that balance of knowing that it’s part of who we are where we can access it at any time and living the human experience at the same time because that’s why we’re here too.
I look at it this way. That’s super consciousness when you feel ecstatic, bliss and enlightenment, these moments in plant medicine are through meditation. That is your home. You forever have a dwelling in this place. These lives that we live, we’re here for this amount of time. Maybe 100 years if we’re lucky, or a little bit more with certain biohacking things we could do now. I’m definitely not turning into a machine. I’ve already decided I’m not going that route. We’re here for an experience. Why not have a good time and have fun doing it and fully enjoying and utilizing this body and driving every single last mile that we can on it? At the end of the day, it’s a vehicle, and then that vehicle will perish.
What happens to this right here, this mind, soul, body, and consciousness? Where are these thoughts coming from? Do they go away, or do they die with the body? I have a hard time believing they die with the body. We’re living in both places at once. We’re physically and consciously here right now. We can do a lot of stuff to raise that vibration. We start connecting higher and carrying all that consciousness with us through our daily lives.
You said that beautifully. I would love to talk about tantra in more detail, what it is and what it isn’t, and the energy body as well.
Let’s get into it. What is tantra to you? There are so many ways of describing it. How do you view tantra?
The way I learned about it was through the neo-tantra and surface level in terms of the books I was reading initially. I was fascinated because I was very much in my shadow, so I was open to learning about new ways of exploring sexuality. That was my initial, but I never participated in the neo-tantra, which is the modern-day view of it. It’s purely around sex, which is fine, but I was feeling called to look a little bit deeper. I came across traditional tantra yoga. The place that I learned it from is a place in India. From a traditional tantra point of view, what tantra is it’s more about the connection, the divine and the balance of the energies like the feminine and masculine energies within us and within our partnerships as well as the working with that kundalini energy body as much as we can.
Sexual Energy Centers: Tantra is more about the connection to the divine and the balance of the energies within us and our partnerships, as well as working with that kundalini energy body as much as we can.
There’s another element of tantra, too, that is creating and treating everything as sacred. That can be sex, for sure. I’ve definitely worked with that, and it’s very powerful. There are some exercises that I’ve used and want to work with in others as well. You can also have a sacred meal and moment. Something that I do with my dogs that I started when I was starting to study tantra was I do grace with them before they have their meal. I have two dogs. I hold their paws, and I offer their meal up to the divine. They’re rolling their eyes, not knowing what’s going on, but I do think they feel the energy. I want to treat my dogs’ meals as sacred.
They’ve gotten used to it. They’re like, “I’ll give you my paw.” I hold their paws the whole time as I’m saying grace. It’s so cute. Through their eyes, they’re like, “Let’s do this.” They are dogs. They want to eat their food. They’ll wait because they’re patient. You can do it, and little things like that would seemingly be so insignificant. You’re like, “I have to feed the dogs.” It’s a thing you do, but actually, you can create sacredness in that, in your walks and nature. Those are the main principles around it. Speaking of energy, I am training in tantra yoga. You can think of the training I did as doing hardly yoga, but with tantric principles. We focus on the energies, chakra centers, and moving energy through the different chakras in different poses.
Is this different than kundalini yoga?
It’s slightly different. Kundalini yoga is its own branch. It’s very much focused on the energy, less on the poses, even though elements of the asanas are incorporated too. Tantra is a slower version of some of the yoga that is out there now. We’re focused on moving the energy up into our chakras and energizing those energy centers. It is said that the energy bodies, unlike our human bodies, move with us into our next lives. The more you work on it in this life, the higher the baseline of energy you work with in your next life.
The Ancient Egyptians talked about preserving certain subtle bodies. They had preserved the physical body so the next subtle body could travel with them. Maybe that’s one of the techniques that they did with mummifying.
I’m not as familiar with mummifying, but I know that Egyptian alchemy does exist. It was practiced and probably is now. They’re something that they call the Ka body. It’s similar to the energy body. Every culture has its own name. The more you are energized, the brighter your energy is going to be in the afterlife and then thereafter. That’s beautiful. You may not see the tangible results in this life, but knowing that it can move with you, unlike money and material possessions in this life, gives me the desire to work on this energy as much as I can.
The more you energize, the brighter your energy will be in the afterlife.
It’s like little daily deposits that you’re investing into your future or your current energy body, but then also your next incarnations. I love that.
I’m feeling called to go to India to further my tantric studies. There’s another school that I’m looking into in February 2023 that is more focused on the kundalini energy and working with that even more. More to come in that. So far, it’s been beautiful. It’s brought my husband and I together even more because we create a sacred container in our relationship in our day-to-day. It can be in the bedroom, but also outside of it. That’s been magical too.
It’s incredible to see your growth from a few years ago when we were talking about trying to get you to come on a short episode. You’re fully embraced in life, and it’s a beautiful thing to witness that you’re blossoming. I love the fact that you’re now focusing on helping other people because it’s so needed in this world. When people are repressed in any of our energy centers, there’s no flow because we’re surrounded by so much divine energy. If we’re able to harness it and move it all the way down through our body, then we can get recharged. When any one of these centers is blocked, there are a lot of issues that can happen, especially hard as the big ones. They’re all big ones. Our voice, throat, speaking, declaring who we are, third eye, and pineal gland.
It is said, too, that the chakras move from the base upwards. If we do have any blockages in the three main lower chakras, that is going to impact each one above it. You definitely want to work with the base centers if you’re feeling any blocks anywhere else. Those, I would say, are critical to move past. Your third eye and crown chakras are going to be impacted and, in a way, muddied because that energy can’t move through you. It’s like if you have clogged in your home, the energy isn’t going to flow properly.
Something fascinating that happened was I learned that I had endometriosis. It was a buildup of this endometriosis cyst in my reproductive organs. That’s the second chakra, which is also connected to the work that I’m doing and working with this energy. The second chakra is all about the sexual and creative powers and your life force energy. I had surgery, and two days after the surgery, I had more energy than I had going into the surgery.
I was like, “Who is this person?” I was working in flow. I was so creative and inspired. This was two days after the surgery, and I was still recovering. I am still on some of the pain meds they gave me, and it still continues in this journey. It was after the surgery that I was brave enough to announce what work I was doing. I was sharing with one of my spiritual teachers, and one of the most impactful teachers was Psalm Isadora, who’s now passed away, but she was a tantric coach. I didn’t think I would be brave enough to share that until recently, but it was almost there was a clearing out. It was cloudy and blocked.
Even then, I was able to work on it. Now, I’m excited to continue to do this work because I know it’s going to be even more impactful. Something I’ve been working on as well is the Kundalini Activation Process, which I am obsessed with. It is all about working with those energy centers and clearing and unblocking these centers. It’s such a beautiful thing because I was able to get to the level of bliss that I got to with ayahuasca in my kundalini activation sessions. In these sessions, you don’t have to do anything. You go, and your intent is to surrender. You lay on a yoga mat, and you’re supposed to surrender. I’ve had the most magical experiences of very vivid imagery downloads and feelings of bliss and connectedness.
Kundalini's activation process is all about working with those energy centers clearing and unblocking these centers.
My body moves involuntarily every single time, and it gets crazier, like I’m shaking my whole system, especially at the base. I feel like I had a lot of movement in the hips and the base because it’s trying to get things out and clearing all the gunk there. It’s been so beautiful. I’m so grateful for it. The craziest thing that happened after my surgery, which was a week after, was I woke up in the middle of the night and had a spontaneous kundalini activation on my own. Usually, I go, and there are facilitators that help bring that out in you, but I woke up in the middle of the night, and my body did it. I was like, “This is powerful.”
From the very first session, I felt called to work with the kundalini and this particular process because the freedom and the bliss I felt in these sessions without taking anything was incredible. It doesn’t always happen to everybody in the same way. Some people go, and they don’t experience anything, they don’t feel anything, they don’t have movements or downloads, or whatever. Everyone’s experience is different, and it depends on where you are in your journey as well. I’m feeling called to do Facilitator Training. This particular method was created by Venant Wong. He taps into his own intuitive guidance to see when these sessions for Facilitator Training are going to happen. He hasn’t announced anything yet. I have a feeling there’s going to be something in 2023.
It’s a pretty magical experience. I’ve done it 3 to 4 times, and it’s wild. It’s very similar to an ayahuasca experience. I felt my energy body shaking in different places when I’m focusing on different ones. Some of the music activates things. I tremor afterward. Even after you’re done with the session at night, I’ll feel the energy moving through my body. When an animal shakes, it’s moving around some of the energy in the body and getting rid of maybe the experience of a slight trauma or something like that. My dog, when it’s in the cold, it comes back inside, and it does a shake.
These animals release the trauma that’s inherent in them. For us, when we start shaking, we can also move around the stuck emotions and energies in different parts of the body. A lot of times, when we have some negative experience, it gets caught in different areas of our body. If we’re not breathing into it or not moving our body, these are ways in which we can get rid of these things out of our system. KAP is a wonderful method for that.
We can do it by shaking ourselves. As you said, your dog does that. I do that sometimes. If I have an argument, I feel upset, or something has happened, I will do this shaking thing with my whole body. I might do it to a couple of songs and let it out. Dancing or shaking is so helpful. In the Kundalini Activation Process, your body will do what it needs to clear all that out. I had a fear of showing up. I was doing kundalini once a week. I’ve done it maybe ten times now. One day, I woke up, and my fear was gone.
Sexual Energy Centers: In the kundalini activation process, your body will do what it needs to clear all that out.
I’ve been sharing on social media very vulnerably and all the things I don’t hold back. It was the end of November 2022 that I woke up, and I was like, “I’m good.” I started sharing. Sometimes there are these things that happen as well that you’re not conscious of, but it’s changing, not the way you think, but some belief systems in you that may have been stuck in certain centers. Our first chakras are insecurity and fear and all of that. This was probably stored there. I never could access it and release it consciously, but it happened. I was like, “That’s a great gift.”
What a gift it is to be able to release immediately and the thought of an idea of being with you and then getting removed. It is possible for spontaneous healing, either physically, emotionally, or spiritually. A lot of times, in mental health, it’s like, “You have to go to therapy for years in order for you to get through things.” In reality, we don’t live in that world anymore. We live in a world where there are so many more emerging ideas and things that once became woo-woo and are now being proven by science.
I am so excited about our futures because we can change the paradigm and heal ourselves. All it takes is love. That’s what it comes down to. At the end of the day, if you have love in your life, allowing the love to come in and reflecting that toward others, that’s the biggest healer in this world. I always say love is the ultimate truth in this universe. We tap into that more for any of the answers that we need.
That’s beautiful that you said that because I also had a download during KAP. It was through multiple sessions and I was told that I was letting fear dominate instead of love. Once I allow love to dominate, then I’ll be in my purpose and power.
Linda, tell us a little bit about the types of clients that you coach and what your process is.
It is constantly evolving. It’s going to change in 2023. I finished a series of working with six clients, all different backgrounds and types of things that they wanted to work with. It was a four-session series. I don’t work with anyone for less than that. In one session, you don’t see the changes necessarily because you can’t follow up, and it’s just one time. I’m sure there are huge impacts on that, but I decided I wanted to work with clients for a minimum of four sessions. They’re all very different, as I said, and have all had massive breakthroughs. Some breakthroughs were, “I don’t want to do what I’m doing anymore. I’m going to go on this new path,” which, for some, that’s huge.
If I had a coach when I was going through this, I would’ve made that decision so much quicker. Within those four weeks, some of my clients were able to change course within the next session. We primarily saw each other on a weekly basis. It was over the holiday season as well. There were some exceptions where it might be two weeks in between instead of one week. They all had transformational journeys. There were many that ended in tears, even with myself, because our clients are also reflections of ourselves in some ways. I saw that through one of my clients that was going through a journey of healing sexual shame, and the feeling of liberation this client felt was powerful. This particular person has been very successful in society’s eyes, like an eight-figure entrepreneur.
There was a struggle as well there in a different way in ways that we maybe don’t give enough time to or appreciation towards healing. I was able to provide a safe space for this person and for them to share vulnerably and to feel accepted into the acceptances within. Having somebody help you work through it helps accelerate that process of whatever you’re working through, whether that’s a life transformation, healing of anything or realizations. Coaches help you get there faster than your own. It helps keep you accountable too. Some sexual transformations, internal transformations of liberation, and lots of coming into their own power in their own individuality.
To have somebody helping you work through life transformation or healing process helps accelerate it.
I worked with each one through their human design in north and south astrology. Those are helpful guiding posts for that energetic blueprint of where you want to be in this world and where the soul wants to be. I’m using that as a baseline. Either getting permission, as I said, for my own journey as well with human design, I was like, “That makes sense. I’m going to continue to operate this way.” I’ve had a lot of a-ha moments with my clients, where they knew this about themselves, but then they heard it, and they’re like, “This is being echoed back to me, and it makes sense. Now I’m going to go full force into this because this is who I am.”
I’m working through things that come up sometimes in the moment. They’ve all been so different. In 2023, for the clients I work with on a one-to-one basis, I’m going to work with them for a minimum of six months. I was working with six clients at the same time. That number feels good to me. Maximum of probably ten clients. What I also want to offer at the same time is I’m going to be launching courses for this journey, like life purpose, sex, money, coming to your own power, and manifestation. I’m combining all of those elements that have helped me step into my power and make it more accessible to people as well. That’s the purpose of the courses. I’m also launching a podcast in 2023.
It would’ve been so scary for 2019 and 2020 Linda. I’m launching a few different things because podcasts are great for giving access to information that people need. I could share it on a bigger scale than I could on a one-to-one basis. It’s more accessible because it’s free to that other person. I want to be able to share and provide tools and information to my community and others. My community is generally living in poverty or going through a lot of struggle with their parents or generations before, not knowing how to deal with trauma, shutting it down and not being able to talk about it. They end up themselves wanting to do something about it but not knowing where to start or where to go.
There are different offerings that I have for different purposes. With my one-to-one clients, what I’ve realized is my mission. My mission overall is to spread divine feminine, cosmic love and raise higher consciousness. All of these offerings do that. One realization I had was that in working with very influential clients that have influence and work with a lot of people or lead a lot of other people, is that there is a trickle-down effect. The person at the top, if they’re healed, can create an organization they’re leading from a very empowered place rather than a disempowered place. That’s what I’m thinking of stepping into 2023.
Sexual Energy Centers: If they're healed, there is a trickle-down effect that the person at the top can create an organization where they're leading from a very empowered place rather than a disempowered place.
Thank you for shining your light in this world. When everyone becomes awakened and start living their highest truth, you start activating others, and they become that. As you said, you have a whole range of clientele. Some of them are making eight figures. Imagine how successful they got on their own. Once they remove a lot of the shame and hurt they’re dealing with, what can they now go ahead and bring into the world? We all have to activate each other in so many ways. The work and the coaching that you’re doing is making such incredible impacts on the world, and you might not even realize how much it’s happening. I applaud you, and I congratulate you on this transformation. I’m so happy to be a part of it in a small way. I want to thank you for coming on.
You’ve had more of an impact than you realize. I’ll always be grateful. Thank you for having me on here to share my voice and for always pushing me to share my voice, even when it feels scary.
I believed in you from the minute I met you. I knew that you were fighting your greatness every day and every moment.
Thank you. You’re amazing.
How can we learn more about you? What is the best way for anyone reading this to reach out to you?
You can follow me on Instagram to start, which is @Linda_Bogdanov, or you can search Tantrika Soul Coach. I will also be coming out with my podcast and my website.
Thank you so much. I appreciate you.
I’m happy to be here.
