I just finished teaching my daylong workshop, Tantric Loving & Massage for Couples. Warning…I’m still high. In one day, a group of twelve fidgety strangers, embarked on a melting journey of erotic exploration. They created the necessary confidentiality, safety and protection along the way. Together, with breath, each dropped awareness from heady things into the body. You could feel it in the room.
Students spoke of their longings, fears, turn ons, and how they wanted to be touched. They brought items that represented what they were ready ‘to let go of in their sexual story’, and ‘where they wanted to go.’ They shared hidden parts of themselves–dispelling lifetimes of silence, isolation and shame. Puja style we looked into each others eyes, we saw reflected back our own humanity…and divinity.
“I cried when I felt how focused my partners was giving me a massage,” one woman offered. A man celebrating his forty-first wedding anniversary with his partner said, “I though I knew what slow was–but it wasn’t slow enough…and she loved it.” A woman said, “I didn’t think I could be naked in front of others before I came here, and it’s so easy. It’s nothing like what I logically imagined.”
Around the closing circle at the end of the day, each student finished the sentence, “Right now I am aware…” Twelve soft faces, slow and glowing, one after the other, said things like,”I’m aware of the peace in this room, I’m aware of accepting of my body just as it is, I’m aware being validated as a sexual being. I’m aware of feeling connected to everyone.”
As an erotic educator I’m convinced sexual learning in a group is more powerful than individuals behind closed doors. There’s a magic in accountable, conscious community. One student, dazed by the high erotic play brings, said, “I will never forget this day or this feeling.” In sex, as in other learning, it takes a community.
