Inside every woman is a goddess just waiting to burst free, reports Ros Reines

ALIFE-AFFIRMING course that encourages women to tap into their reserves of pleasure and worship the goddess within is one of the hottest trends coming out of New York.

From Manhattan to Sydney, high-powered businesswomen to stay-at- home mums are taking goddess courses, becoming "sister goddesses", with a growing goddess community of hundreds of women throughout the world (including a dozen or so from Australia, who study via correspondence).

The lessons have nothing to do with white magic or wicca but everything to do with confidence building. Women of all backgrounds, ages and shapes are becoming devotees of one of the best-known teachers, the pink-feathered-fan-toting-guru - Regena Thomashauer aka Mama Gena, whose mantra is: Put yourself first in your life and then everything else will follow.

"My goal in this movement," explains Thomashauer, a former acting student turned relationships' counsellor, "is for each woman to recognise that no matter how old she is, how cranky and disappointed she is by life, there is a goddess inside of her that she can access, if she chooses."

Thomashauer already has one book published, The Mama Gena School of Womenly Arts -- Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way With the World (Simon & Schuster) with another on the way about man training. Thomashauer firmly believes that men want to make women happy; they just don't know how to go about it and women must lead the way.

The School of Womenly Arts has officially been going for five years, based in a brownstone building on the Upper West side of Manhattan where Thomashauer also lives with her husband, Bruce and young daughter.

Mama G's sister goddesses are taught to focus clearly about what gives them the most pleasure in life and then to follow it. So, just a little way into the seven-week `101' course, some students are changing jobs, moving house and having sex for the first time in months with their partners. They are glowing with joie de vivre and simply cannot stop bragging to each other about how their lives have changed for the better.

For New York chiropractor, MaryAnne Shiozawa of the Esprit Chiropractic Wellness Centre, Goddess 101 resulted in "a complete transformation in the way I think, feel and move in my entire being as a woman".

"In the past, I simply didn't feel a connection to my feminine power and self," she says. "My life was always run by a governing masculine energy. Now I carry a constant glow that is fun and magnetic."

The School of Womenly Arts includes lessons on flirting and helps women to learn more about their own bodies. Goddess 101 students pay $US1000 ($1580) for seven 90-minute sessions via conference call and have to complete lengthy homework assignments designed to get students into the right way of thinking, including an impressive reading list and videos including historical romance Dangerous Beauty, African Queen and the Frances Hodgson Burnett story A Little Princess. At least once a week there is the (encouraged) group bragging sessions via email.

Those who can't make it to New York for the graduation ceremony are sent a diploma and a pink-feathered fan as a reminder to always "fan the flame of their desires".

Although many of her teachings might appear on the surface to be anti-feminist, Thomashauer regards herself as the leader of the next generation of feminists. "Your job as a woman," she says, "is to get everything you want." In her opinion, the feminist movement was sourced by anger, "which never leads to happiness". "The womanly arts is a new dimension to feminism. It recognises the need to treasure and please ourselves, which is infinitely more fun," she says. "I'm not seeking equality for women," says Thomashauer, " because I think that is aiming too low. What I want is for women to fully experience their own divinity."

Deborah Freedman, a 28-year-old Sydney life coach, is one of Mama Gena's most recent devotees in Australia. Originally from the US, she has done one of Thomashauer's courses and has been passing on the principles to many of her $600 a month female clients, who have all been given copies of Thomashauer's book.

"The main thing Mama Gena has taught me," says Freedman, "is to have more fun in life and how to take the pleasurable approach instead of being hard-edged and masculine in business. There is so much power in womanly energy and it is about relearning how to tap into it."