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Body Electric School, based in Oakland, Calif., offers hands-on, clothes-off classes in erotic bodywork. Through touch and breath, students learn to circulate sexual energy and awaken the whole body to erotic pleasure. In conventional massage therapy, the bodyworker steers clear of the client's genitals. While nonsexual massage is certainly valuable and nurturing, it can also reinforce our culture's messages that our genitals and our erotic natures are unclean and should be hidden.  Body Electric seeks to mend this segregation of our sexual selves by creating "safe and loving spaces for people to explore their erotic bodies" (www.bodyelectric.org). This mission is radical in a culture that warns of "sex addiction," but rarely admits that sex can heal.Perhaps even more radically, Body Electric strives to integrate sex and spiritual practice by bringing mindfulness, ritual, and prayer into the teaching of erotic massage. Many of the teachers and students identify with the service-oriented archetype of the sacred prostitute, the temple priestess, who offers sexuality as a channel for worship and connection with the divine. Joseph Kramer, a former Jesuit-in-training, founded the school in 1984 to help gay men regain their love of sex and of their bodies at the height of AIDS hysteria. In 1992, Kramer sold Body Electric to Collin Brown, who has served as the school's director for more than a decade. Initially founded as a school for men, Body Electric now includes courses for women and mixed genders. The school holds classes in a variety of locations and sponsors coordinators in 17 cities in the United States, two in Canada, and two in Australia. After participating in several life-changing intensives, I interviewed three women on the Body Electric faculty: Selah Martha, Alex Jade and Emaya. I was eager to learn what drew them to this work and how it has shaped their private practice. Selah Martha
EROS GUIDE: How do you define your work? Selah Martha: Primarily, as a process of embodiment. I think that most of our personal and cultural ills stem from disembodiment, a systematic learning not to trust in the body as our essential home while we are on this earth. When it comes to sexuality, I don't think the missing piece is technique. It is presence, to others and to ourselves. We are taught to enter into sexuality with an almost utilitarian approach (What will this do for me?), rather than a moment by moment exploratory, expansive, relational approach. For me, becoming resident in every cell of our bodies is the key to changing this unsatisfying pattern. EG: How long have you been doing this work? SM: I would say that consciously I have been doing the work since I started a yoga practice in the late 70s, when I began to understand that all my answers were going to come to me through my body, not through my intellect. I have learned from Tantric Yoga, Re-evaluation Co-counseling, Connie Wolfe, 12-step programs, the Transformational Movement community, singing with Pilar Montaine. I have had a professional private practice with individuals of all ages, couples, and groups since 1991. I have been teaching for Body Electric School since 1995. EG: What issues do clients bring into their sessions with you? SM: There are many presenting issues, usually having to do with dissatisfaction with their sex life, wanting more, knowing more is possible, but not knowing how to create more. Most clients are ready for a change in their lives. They are ready for a deeper understanding of how they are getting in the way of their own power and how to change that. EG: What kinds of clients and issues have you learned the most from? SM: When I feel judgment or aversion to a client's issues, this always forces me to recognize that I have the same issue, and my judgment or aversion is merely my lack of compassion for myself. As soon as I find my compassion, my breath and curiosity return. EG: What kinds of changes have you witnessed in clients and in yourself? SM: The biggest change I have witnessed comes down to more aliveness in their bodies, which is a mixture of more forgiveness, more acceptance, more sensation, more connection, more trust in their desires and hunches about what they need. This all goes for me, too. Alex Jade
EG: What drew you to this work? Alex Jade: I knew gay men doing sacred intimate work in the early 90s. One of my massage therapy clients was training with Body Electric. He was dying, and I got to learn erotic exchange from him while he was in his process. The work I did with him was not sexual massage. It was sacred intimate work. Within a year after he died, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. I did every kind of alternative healing possible, including erotic work. The surgeons removed a tumor that covered the entire surface of my cervix. This also drew me to the work, especially since the cancer was STD-related. EG: Tell me about "Power, Surrender, and Intimacy," your class in BDSM. AJ: In our culture and in ourselves, sadism and masochism are destructive if they're not grounded. But everybody has aspects of sadism and masochism in them. The question is: How do we use that? How do we ground that and bring it forth in relationships so it creates more intimacy? Since ungrounded sadism and masochism can lead to interpersonal violence, how do we use BDSM as a tool for intimacy and for healing parts of ourselves that may have been injured by an ungrounded sadist? EG: What kinds of changes have you witnessed in your clients and in yourself? AJ: Phenomenal changes can happen in a group. People can jump over big hurdles. It's literally life changing to sit with a group of people and explore sexuality in a way that's open, generous and full of love. This is why I don't want to stop teaching. This work changes me all the time. I used to rely more on pure erotic energy, but one of the things I'm learning in my practice is to let love be the transformer. Emaya
EG: How do you define your work? Emaya: I often think of my work as that of a translator and mediator. I help folks become a little more literate about their erotic world and help them translate their experience so that they can connect with others in a more satisfying way. EG: What keeps you motivated, especially when you feel like stopping? E: One circle at Shalom started with me seriously questioning why the hell I would be doing this and ended with one of the most loving circles ever. From the straightest, squarest person to the wildest sadist, this circle had a huge range of erotic expression. The feeling of fun and acceptance and loving curiosity and generosity is so memorable. I feed myself with it as a possibility of life on earth. There are days when I wonder where we all are going as a species on this planet, and I fear that nothing short of great calamity will shift things. I think our work is very important because it lets folks taste the life in their bodies and helps them notice life in others of the same species and also sense the life in the earth. We are the earth and she wants to unfold and live. Our work is for those who are really interested in combining Eros with heart and mind to serve the unfolding of life. I also think that our work can help couples navigate their way through the morass of culture and tradition to keep their erotic interest alive in new and creative ways. Too often people use sexuality to hurt one another. Sometimes they just don't know any better. Our work presents possibilities that many people haven't thought of and thus offers them more choices for how to relate to one another.
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