‘I am constantly surprised by heterosexual female practitioners offering this experience to heterosexual women. To me it appears to be a deep misunderstanding of sexuality bodywork. There are many ways sexuality can be addressed – psychology, tantra workshops, counselling, educative media – where a woman helping a woman makes sense in a “me too” way. A sensual massage however is direct experience through the body and out of the mind. Of course if you are gay, you will be energetically comfortable being massaged by a woman.’
Many professional body workers will not agree with this. They teach, ‘Learn about your body from another woman and when you are happy and content you can go to a man and gently and confidently teach him how to please you.’ Yes, I understand. I get the theory. But it just doesn’t feel right for me.
At another women’s workshop my greatest fear was realized. It was almost dark and the room was lit only by candles and it was the end of the day … but as one process led into another I realized, to my horror, that I was going to be expected to masturbate in a room with other people. The fact that they were women didn’t make me feel any more comfortable.
This wasn’t in California or even New York; this was in Europe. There was music playing and we were being invited gently to ‘explore our pleasure’ making active positive use of exhibitionism and voyeurism. We were being encouraged to look at each other. A woman beside me was bravely standing and stroking herself. Well, I say ‘bravely’ but maybe it wasn’t brave for her – maybe she was enjoying the exhibitionism in the entirely positive and natural way that they were encouraging, but I hated it. There was a kind of magnificence about her in the half light, she was completely naked and with her eyes closed she was standing and stroking her breasts and her genitals and I was sitting on the floor wondering whether to look or not to look. I was being encouraged to look but I didn’t want to.
She seemed to being enjoying knowing that there may have been 19, 20, 30 pairs of eyes upon her. In a corner another woman was sobbing and not rubbing anything except her eyes. Behind me, another woman, who I knew was gay and so may have been enjoying all this female sexual energy more than I was, was masturbating joyfully and making sounds of rapture. It was all working for her at least.
Meanwhile I was thinking, Am I supposed to be aroused by the energy in the room? I have no idea if I’d have been any happier if there had been men present. This was certainly safe but it just didn’t feel right to me.
So anyway – here is a man on a very professional site, with all the references I could ask for, sticking his neck above the water and saying something that, to me, makes complete sense. So I rang him, had a long conversation and found out what he charges for this kind of bodywork. It seemed a reasonable price. I could save up and I could go. If you want to perhaps you could save up and go.
Now I just have to find a way to explain this to T.
T says, ‘It was bad enough when you were in San Francisco. What exactly is this bodywork going to involve?’
‘I don’t know, T. I didn’t ask too many specific questions.
I was afraid that if I found out too much I’d be too scared to go. Apparently there is a lot of talking and if anything doesn’t feel right I can simply walk out of the door.’
‘Well, OK. As long as you’re totally happy. Just don’t let me know when you are going. I won’t be able to concentrate on my job. When is it? No, no. I don’t want to know. Where is it? …’
‘What difference does it make to you whether it’s in Edinburgh or St Ives?’
‘None. None. You’re right. I don’t want to know where it is. When is it again? What does it involve? Can I see his website?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘He also teaches tantric massage for couples. Are you interested?’
‘If I can stop hyperventilating then, yes, I’d love to learn. You want to do this with me?’
‘Maybe.’
Tantric Massage and Light Beams
OK. We are back in the present. Don’t you find that with life?
I don’t know what I’m expecting. It’s best to have no expectations. If anything happens that I’m not happy about I’ll just say ‘enough’ or ‘thank you – stop’. If I’m unhappy, I’ll leave. I can remember that from Sue’s workshop. The clear use of the word ‘no’.
I’m in a leafy road of huge, elegant houses in North London. Most of these big old houses, like the one that I’ve arrived at, are now divided into flats. I walk up to the door and a gentle face appears from a room where it seems to be evening – even though it’s 11am outside. In a tantric world it’s perpetually early dusk – the crepuscule, before it feels late, when there is still plenty of time.
An attractive, round-looking face greets me. He could be anywhere between 30 and 40 – impossible to guess. He looks young but has the centred and grounded energy of an older man. He smiles with a mixture of confidence and shyness.
‘My name is Alexey.’
I hold out my hand, friendly Labrador style.
‘Hello Alexey, my name’s Isabel. This feels very strange.
But I suppose everyone says that.’
‘Yes. Apparently I’m a very scary person because everyone is terrified before they come. Some people want to run away when they come for the first time.’
‘I don’t want to run away.’ I pause. ‘Not yet anyway.’
The room is decorated tastefully with deep colours and gentle music of the subtle ‘New-Agey’ kind is playing. Not tweety birds like the plinky-plink they play in beauty salons, just relaxing.
‘Would you like coffee?’
Someone speaking these words is always a good sign.
‘Yes, please.’
And then we sit and talk. We talk for two hours. And I find I agree with 100% of what he says. I wish this were an interview because I want to write everything down. But I’m not going to tell him, initially, that I’m writing. I don’t want to make him nervous. So I just listen and he talks complete sense. I can disagree with almost anyone but not today, it seems. I want to curl up on his sofa and sleep. His energy feels cosy, safe and comforting. Either that or his gas fire has burnt all the oxygen in the room. I tell him I felt uncomfortable exploring my sexuality with women.
‘You’re heterosexual.’
I laughed. ‘I know! And my boyfriend says that when he did a weekend of men’s work, the closest they got to touching each other was punching each other’s hands to help them express anger.’
I think it may be some years until we hear of a workshop of straight men helping each other heal their ‘lingams’ with touch.
‘Sex is about energy,’ he says. ‘Not just physical release of tension – which is the way that it is so often used today. It’s about saturating each other with beautiful energy – all this magnetism, sensation, vibration between your bodies. And the yoni has the most powerful energy. It is designed for that connection and you don’t have the same energy in your hands or in your mouth. Love in sex is energy too. You feed each other with the energy of love from your body – and when you give love like this, you do it just as much for yourself as you do for the other person.’
Makes sense to me.
I tell him about my summer. About my experience with the clitoral strokers of San Francisco and he says that the new emancipation of the clitoris is both a good thing and a bad thing. I defend it:
‘So many women have no pleasure. At least training men to find the clitoris and to stroke it means that women have pleasure.’
This is true, but it’s very similar to the male penis. It is, essentially, a penis. It has the same innervation and the same energy, and when women focus on it they are connecting more with a male energy within them and not their true nature. The yoni is the true female organ and it can offer a richness of female sexual experience – if women develop it but often, instead, they choose a clitoral pleasure. You simply irritate the nerve, it stays irritated until you relieve it.
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‘Irritate the nerve?’ Ha ha ha. That’s what we’ve been learning? How to irritate the nerve effectively?
‘Well, that’s what people are doing when they rub and rub as if it was only about physical technique. Physiological response is not what human pleasure is about. Sexual energy is vibrations. Sensation is a vibration between the energies of two people. The yoni holds a richness of vibrations. One needs to learn how to create the right energy there.’
‘But I’ve been told that many of our vaginas are damaged.
There is this idea that knots develop in the vaginal walls and need to be released through massage?’
‘I have only been doing this work for ten years but I would say that I don’t see any proof of that. It’s not what I do.’
‘So, what do you use?’
‘Energy and vibration. Sensation is a form of vibration.
A response to the energy of the other person.’
‘This makes complete sense and matches my experience.’
I find myself thinking of the saying of Jill Bolte Taylor: ‘Please be responsible for the energy you bring into this place.’
‘So you would say, “Sex is energy”?’
‘Yes, because otherwise all you have is physiology.’
‘And how would you define good sex then?’
‘Good sex is something that brings beauty, positive energy and love into your life.’
I like this definition because it includes the results of the sex as well as the sex itself.
He asks me about my sex life and I tell him everything I’m experiencing with T. All the complexity you’d expect between two people.
What a weird job he has. He listens and eventually speaks.
‘One of the great things about sex is that you can give unconditional love in sex, whereas relationships are complicated. When you give love in sex you do it just as much for yourself as for the other.’
‘Presumably though, you need to be reasonably OK in yourself before you can love someone else? Otherwise, as Nicole says, it’s like two orphans trying to parent each other?’
‘You need to be conscious of what kind of energy you are giving out of your body and know that your partner needs your love. This is the highest nature of a woman – to radiate physical love as sexual energy, as sunshine to her partner. To be a creator, a nurturer, a giver of life. All women have it within and feel grounded and confident when they connect with this energy. Just as he is able to give her love with his body.’
‘Hmm. I don’t get many letters from women who describe their sex lives like this. What’s the main thing that women need to learn?’
‘Women are too passive in creating the right kind of sex lives for themselves. They don’t take responsibility. The sexual journey is about each individual woman. It’s what you’re learning.’
‘Yes, that’s why I’m here.’
‘OK, so let’s do the massage.’
‘This is the point where some women leave, right?’ I stand up, breathe deeply and glance at the door. Outside the sun is shining. I do feel like bolting.
‘Let me just tell you about what will happen,’ he says.
‘First of all, you are not here to have an orgasm.’ Might as well go then. Not really. I sit down again.
‘Experiences like this may occur but it’s not about that. So you can put that out of your head.’
‘OK.’
‘We are exploring vibration and sensation. I’d like you to look for the sensation of happiness not for the sensation of excitement.’
Hmmm … post-OM training I’m quite experienced in looking at sensation. I don’t think happiness is a sensation but I decide not to argue at this point.
‘OK.’
‘You may experience different kinds of noise in your head. There is what I call irrelevant noise – such as, you may find yourself thinking about things far away from here in the past or the future or in a different geographical location. Or there is noise which you may feel is relevant, for example – “I wonder if my thigh looks weird from that angle?” or “What is he going to do next?” This is all just noise. None of it is relevant. Just focus on sensation.’
‘This is the same as in an OM.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll be talking to you during the massage but you don’t need to reply. Obviously if there is anything that you don’t like or you’re not comfortable with in any way just ask me to stop.’
‘Yes.’
‘When we come to the yoni part of the massage it’s important that you draw the sensation up to the heart.’
‘With the breath?’
‘Yes. You know the point they call the heart?’
‘Yes, it’s the spot between your breasts that hurts when someone you love goes away.’
‘That’s it. Draw the sensation, the energy, up to there. After that it will look after itself.’
‘OK.’
He leaves the room and I undress and clamber onto his massage table to lie face down on the stretchy towelling table cover.
I’ve had lots of massage. This is different. It’s not the sexual massage of those that hold their hands six inches over a woman’s body and make some woman orgasm without touch. (Yes, this is possible but that’s another story. You can look up The Tantric Mongoose17 or Sasha Cobra18 on Google later. I think it’s mainly projection.) Nor is it Reiki, where people move their hands in what they call your energy field, nor is it a Kahuna-type massage where all the action seems to be in the masseur.
He comes back, puts one hand on my back and with his other hand holds my hand and talks to me. I don’t remember what he says – but his tone of voice is warm and he makes me feel relaxed and calm. Then he puts both hands on my lower back and just holds them there while I feel the warm energy move through me. The massage is slow with no pushing or downward pressure. This isn’t a massage to relieve sore muscles. This is a massage to help me tune into subtle sensations. He moves a finger just a little and I feel a warm echo somewhere inside me.
Then I find myself thinking about San Francisco. I wonder how they all are.
‘Only the present moment. Nothing else is real,’ I hear Alexey say.
I feel the touch of his fingers on the top of my legs. I hear the gentle hiss of the gas fire warming the room. As he moves his hands slowly and carefully I feel vibrations pass up and through me. How does this work? Why do his hands moving gently on my legs make my jaw relax? How little we understand about ourselves and our own bodies – or how little I understand.
I find myself thinking of my ex-husband and how he never touched me like this. How ironic, I think, that a man is touching me the way that almost any woman would enjoy being touched and I’m paying him to learn this. When I was first married I remember wondering why my new husband was only interested in touching my genitals and thinking to myself that there must be men that are interested in kissing their lover’s arms. I felt sadness for arms.
‘Only the present moment. The last moment is past. Only this moment is real.’
I tried to remember what I was supposed to be thinking and remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be thinking at all.
‘Be present to the happiness from the touch.’
I tune into the touch and feel contentment, peace, relaxation, gratitude and tenderness – all this, in the present moment, does feel similar to happiness.
‘Now, if you’d like to roll over?’
I roll over. I feel so relaxed. Before I started this journey I wouldn’t have been able to do this. How many unnecessary inhibitions and insecurities I have lain down. I start thinking about all those who have helped me reach this – T, Hilly, Sue, Justine, Rachael, Nicole, Ken and all those talented men in San Francisco. Thoughts continue to distract from sensation.
He continues his gentle touch, often with one hand holding my hand and another touching my skin. He touches my breasts but doesn’t linger on them more than on anywhere else.
As he touches my breasts I think abou
t T and wonder whether the happiness I’m feeling at this stranger’s touch is disloyal? But Alexey has a girlfriend too. Is any pleasure that he takes in touching me disloyal? I can hear some of you thinking, ‘Yes, it is.’ But here is my stance on it – and it’s the same with the community at 1080 – the harm is in the lies. If everyone tells the truth there is always choice.
I had an interesting exchange last night with a married man who phoned me. We have had an attraction for many years. He knows, from my Facebook postings, about the OM conference and is curious. He asked me, absolutely sincerely, if he could come over one afternoon and have me teach him how to OM. He said that he’d like to learn from me and I know he meant it. I laughed and then told him, much to his surprise, that it wasn’t impossible. ‘But you would need to take the OM training with your wife.’
‘Oh, she wouldn’t be interested in anything like that,’ he replied.
‘Is that so?’ I challenged him right down the phone line.
‘Usually when you tell women that OM is a study in female pleasure they are very interested.’
Silence.
‘Anyway you could ask her. And if she says yes and you both join the community then, if she’s OK with it, you can OM with me as much as you like.’
‘But other blokes get to touch her clitoris?’
‘Yes. And everyone is honest with everyone. That’s my stance. You’re welcome as long as no one lies.’
He actually said, ‘I wouldn’t like any other man touching her. I’m very possessive.’ Is this sounding familiar? He’d have come over to my house any afternoon I’d invited him, and been quite happy to deceive his wife. It amazes me what people do to avoid Tolstoy’s famous saying, ‘The one thing necessary in life, as in art, is to tell the truth.’
‘And let that last moment go,’ Alexey continued. Oh goodness, what a lot of noise I have in my head.
Then something weird happens. One of those weird woo woo things that I have no explanation for and it sounds as though I’m making it up. But I’m not. He places his hand over my genitals. I think it’s the fingers of his right hand, which are facing down as he stands at my right side and holds my right hand with his left hand. And he says something about energy and vibration.
Sensation Page 16