Theories That Inform My Work

In Sensory Energetics work, the principal focus is on descension instead of ascension, on sinking down into our hips and our feet. We need to drop down into the muck of our bodies to experience the rawness of pain, the longing for connection, and our inability to breathe deeply. As men, we become anesthetized, numbed out of our bodies through addictions to the gym, food, coffee and alcohol, even TV – all of the ways that take us out of connection to ourselves and, most importantly, with other men.

Descension is the foundational work of our lives, without which we can never experience nor appreciate the joys of ascension. In most yoga classes the energy, both quiet and meditative, is expected to be rising, to reach for the realms of bliss contained in the 6th and 7th chakras. In Sensory Energetics it is the exact opposite – I ask men to allow the energy to drop down, to hang out in their hips and their pelvis, to experience the rage and the fear residing there, and also the sensuality and power.

THE BREATH

Lack of deep breathing is how we mediate our environment, our emotions. Think of a young baby being startled – they take in a sharp in-breath. In a very real way, the breath is how we negotiate the influx of physiologic stimuli. It is a pause, an “oh my God.”

I teach men how to make noise again in their lives, to groan, to yell, and to take up space again in their lives. I teach my students to open their jaws and let in life and to breathe, and to soften their armoring around their abdomen and heart. I want the breath to inform the belly and the body, to belly-breathe and then have the body follow that impulse to move.

CONNECTION

In addition, there is also a relational model for the class - ways for men to interact on many levels, in pairs and in groups, skin on skin, breath on breath to enliven, to break the trance of their lives, to play with the masculine of doing and efforting with the sacred feminine of allowing and surrender – with the ultimate goal being the lived expression of the integration of these two polarities. To me, this is what a man is all about.

I am continually asking men to take emotional and communal risks, to explore and be present with their process while being naked, in addition to moving in and out of connection with others. What do they notice? Is there a momentary stiffening of the abdomen as participant moves away to work with another, a sadness in the leaving? Is there a hollow aching in the chest from a yearning for connection?

I believe that on the deepest, most innermost level men desire connection with other men, to touch and be touched, to be held, and to be accepted just as they are, in all of their messiness. The media would have us believe that the majority of men are buffed and well built, muscular and well hung when that is far from the case. They are, in fact, the minority. I feel that men have been conditioned to manage who they are in public, hanging out in the liminal state of being who others want them to be, as if in a suit that is too small, so that they lose touch with who they really are: lonely, afraid, and angry at being told how to be.

I offer men an opportunity to experience and re-experience in a safe environment what it is like to connect with other men, the joys and the frustrations of connecting and disconnecting that we go through as men in this culture. This class began as a call to that end, to address that longing for intimate connection on all levels, to claim and re-claim grounded eroticism with self and another.

I wish you the best on your erotic journey.

Excerpt from Sensory Energetics - A guide to healthy descension © 2007

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