Preface

Wilhelm Reich, Bernd Senf and Tantra – how we bring ourselves and the world back into flow

Motto

"Imagine what we have already achieved as slaves – and then consider what we could create as free human beings."

Natalino Barocsi

Dedication

For Bernd Senf (1944–2026), who showed us that water, the body and money obey the same law – and who never stopped being gentle. Thank you for passing the torch on to me.

And for Andro (1941–2019), who brought tantric massage to us.

Preface

Bernd Senf died on 25 September 2026. From 1973 to 2009 he was a professor of economics at the Berlin School of Economics (Fachhochschule für Wirtschaft), the author of books on money, economics and the work of Wilhelm Reich, a gifted teacher, a musician who sang about compound interest, and a companion on the way for many people. I only spoke with him twice. But those two encounters – one of them over coffee and cake in his apartment – have stayed with me ever since.

I only learned of his death at the beginning of October. I had already wondered three years earlier, when Bernd stopped answering my emails. Back then I archived his website so that his work would not be lost. When I now read that he had died, I decided that very same day to write this book.

It was not the first farewell of this kind. In 2019 Andro died, whose civil name was Andreas Rothe. Almost fifty years ago he brought tantric massage to Germany and founded the first tantra institute in Berlin. I understood both farewells as a sign: now it is my turn to carry their knowledge forward.

Bernd left a huge body of work on his website: hundreds of essays, lectures, interviews and videos, most of them freely available. Whoever dives into it finds a treasure – and easily gets lost in it. This book wants to make the essence of that work accessible, so that nobody has to read thousands of pages to understand what it was all about.

One sentence

Bernd summed up his life's work in one sentence, which stood at the top of his website: "The solution to the blockage is the solution – gentle, not forceful." He found this sentence in the work of three researchers who knew nothing of one another: Viktor Schauberger, who observed the flow of water; Wilhelm Reich, who studied the flow of life energy in human beings; and Silvio Gesell, who wanted to understand the flow of money. All three discovered the same thing: living systems fall ill when their flow is blocked – and they heal when the blockage is gently dissolved.

A note on the title: In German, Lösung means both "solution" and "dissolving". Senf's sentence plays on this double meaning: dissolving the blockage is the solution. English is lucky to have the same double meaning – in chemistry, a solution is also what forms when something dissolves.

Why I am writing this book

I come from a different direction than Bernd. My path led through tantra, Buddhism and bodywork.

For a long time I was a computer scientist, software developer and designer, most recently in a well-paid position in Switzerland. In 2014 I attended my first tantric massage workshop. After that I turned my life upside down: I quit my job, moved to Denmark and, as I put it today, finally started living.

Later I worked as a bodyworker with Andro at the Diamond Lotus in Berlin and attended almost all of his courses. I talked with him a lot before he left us. He explained one thing to me that is still with me today. It was about the body types that go back to Wilhelm Reich. One of them is the rigid type. Because he is usually good-looking, he has many opportunities for sexuality. In the compensated rigid type, Andro said, the sexual chakra therefore becomes the main chakra. The Manipura, the chakra in the belly, is clogged, and too little energy arrives in the Anahata, the heart. According to Andro, this puts him on the same level as the type Reich called the "psychopath". When Andro explained this to me, it felt as if he had worked it out for me personally.

That was the moment Reich and tantra came together for me. Reich described armour and body types, tantra describes chakras and energy channels, and both speak of the same energy that gets stuck in one place and becomes too much in another. I kept on learning, including in Copenhagen with Somananda Moses Maimon, another of my teachers, who has spread tantric massage to many countries in Europe with his tantra school. Then came Lomi Lomi Nui, Yin-Yang massage, pelvic floor work and the training as a Sexological Bodyworker. Out of all this came my own method, the Prana-Flow massage. For more than ten years I have been accompanying people in individual sessions and workshops.

I never gave up computing. Today I build free software for CrowdWare, and with the Ubuntu Pirates we want to build new communities in the empty villages of Europe. Right now I am on my bicycle on the way to Spain, and I am writing this book as I go.

To be honest: The body types come from the bioenergetics of Alexander Lowen, a student of Reich's. He distinguished five character structures, among them the rigid and the psychopathic one. They are a helpful map for bodywork, but not a scientifically validated diagnosis. The link to the chakras is Andro's own interpretation, drawn from his tantric practice.

When I first told Bernd about the parallels between Reich and tantra, I mainly wanted to talk about bodywork. We ended up talking about everything: about the Earth as an organism, about energy, about money. And I realised that what I experience in the body of a single human being – how blockages dissolve and life starts flowing again – also applies to a society.

That is why the focus of this book is not on bodywork but on world affairs: on power and its abuse, on corruption, on a monetary system that shifts wealth from the bottom to the top, and on the question of how we can change this. The body is the key to understanding these connections. But the goal is the world.

What this book is not

Not a book against anyone. It does not accuse bankers, politicians or the rich. I still raised my children the way my parents had taught me – and only noticed late what I was passing on. Everyone acts the way they have learned and the way the structures push them. Bernd saw it exactly like that: he was never looking for culprits, but for structures. Structures can be changed.

Not a textbook that wants to be right. Reich and Senf saw many things that others overlooked – and claimed some things that have not been confirmed. Where time has proved them right, I say so. Where research shows something else, I say that too. For this purpose, many chapters contain small boxes headed "To be honest". Anyone looking for a prophet in Reich will be disappointed here. Anyone who wants to get to know him as a discoverer, with all his rough edges, is welcome.

How this book is built

The book has four parts:

Part I – The core sentence: what "letting flow" means, why damming up makes everything worse, and why change has to be gentle.
Part II – The human being: life energy, the formula of life, the armour, pleasure and fear – Reich's discoveries and the view of tantra.
Part III – The world: power and obedience, the defence against what is alive, greed and false prosperity, money out of nothing, compound interest, debt and expropriation, the financial markets, digital dependence and the history of violence.
Part IV – The solution: why revolutions tip over, money that flows, an income for everyone, the Ğ1 and free software, an economy with its feet on the ground, and a consciousness that carries.

In every chapter three voices speak: Reich with his discoveries, Senf with his application to economy and society, and I with the view from tantra and my own experience. All quotations from Senf and Reich are reproduced faithfully and referenced to their source; you can read most of the texts yourself on berndsenf.de.

When the outline of the book was finished, it had twenty-two chapters. I had not planned that – the chapters grew out of the material. Only afterwards did I notice, and I had to smile: two and two make four, the number of manifestation, of taking shape. Twenty-two is considered a master number, the "master builder" who brings a vision into the world. The tarot has twenty-two major arcana, twenty-two stations of a path from the Fool to the World – just as this book leads from one's own body to the world economy. And it has four parts. That is not proof, only an image. But a beautiful one.

Don't believe a word I say

A Buddhist monk taught me a sentence that I use in all my workshops: Don't believe a word I say. Make your own experience.

That is why every chapter ends with an exercise. Some are for the body, some for reflection, some for everyday life. You don't have to do any of them. But the book will give you more if you don't just read it but try out what it describes.

Where this book flows

A book about letting flow should flow itself. Apart from a small part that gets me out of basic income support, the profits from this book go in equal thirds to the Ubuntu Pirates association, which wants to build new communities in the empty villages of Europe, to free software from CrowdWare, and to the Ğ1, a currency that grows from the bottom up. More on this in chapter 20.

Thank you

I thank Bernd Senf for his life's work and for the torch. I thank Andro, who opened the path to tantra for me. I thank my friend Ralph Boes, who went on hunger strike for human dignity and who still shows me today what resistance without violence looks like. I thank Natalino Barocsi for the sentence that stands at the beginning of this book. And I thank everyone who has accompanied me on my way, in the workshops, in the communities and on the road.

Berlin, October 2026

Adam Art Ananda

A note on the translation: This English version is a working translation of the German original, made with the help of artificial intelligence. Quotations from Bernd Senf and Wilhelm Reich have been translated from German for this edition. Corrections from native speakers are very welcome.