Poly bliss coach Kamala Devi gets on CBS

KCAL-TV Los Angeles, and others

One of our rising stars for poly awareness is Kamala Devi, tantra teacher and "bliss coach," who is building a career on "helping you integrate your sexuality with your spirituality" and using it to aid creativity. "She specializes in working with artists, healers and visionaries. Her sessions and events are designed to activate the second chakra, which is not only the sex center but the source of creativity." (I'm just quoting, understand.)

Kamala was recently interviewed by the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles. On Monday the station aired a 3 1/2 minute profile of her and her husband Michael McClure (plus toddler) talking about the basis of their poly life. It uses a lot of video bits that she supplied herself. It may be appearing now on other CBS stations around the U.S.

Michael: The way I look at it is, we kind of have the American dream and the American fantasy.

Kamala: ...We're deeply, passionately in love. We also honor that we have attractions and relationships with other people.

Unidentified sexologist: ...In a poly group they have to master that. They have to learn to express themselves, they have to have emotional intelligence down....

Narrator: To be poly, experts say, you must have a complete line of communication, total transparency. Perhaps the biggest concern: the children involved.

Kamala: I think the first concern that people have, when they hear about our lifestyle, is like, How is that going to affect your child? [Toddler sings Itsy Bitsy Spider.] He has so much love, and so many aunties and uncles.

Watch it here (Nov. 16, 2009). Note the anchorpeople's befuddlement afterward.

Here Kamala writes about her mixed reaction to parts of the show, and her faith that she's doing the right thing regardless in exposing her life.

And here's her longer account, from a while ago, of her TV baptism by fire on the Morning Show with Mike and Juliet on (shudder) Fox News:

...Crushed, I took my heavy heart into my bedroom, pulled the covers over my head and cried. After allowing a reasonable pity party, Michael, bless his soul, pulled the covers off my head and said: "Kamala, you say you want to stop playing small, well, this is what it's like to play big in the world. If you don’t piss a few people off, you're probably not taking big enough risks." And that's exactly what I needed to hear....

Read the whole post (scroll down to "Fifteen Minutes of Fame").

Since then she has gone on to appear on the Tyra Banks Show, Discovery Channel, Inside Edition, and MTV’s True Life. She has just produced an instructional DVD with Reid Mihalko titled Ethics for Non-Monogamous Ninjas, "so you don't get your ass kicked on the open road of love and intimacy."

With Reid, she is collaborating on a book (and perhaps other media) called Free-Love: Can You Really Afford It?

P.S. Kamala Devi, of San Diego and New York, is not to be confused with poly columnist and alt-relationship coach Kamela Dolinova of Boston. The latter writes the Boston Open Relationships Examiner, with cogent essays and advice columns well worth a read.

[Permalink]