Movement
Getting a buzz on……..
Erotic Self Regulation Part 2…..
“Sexual energy is a sacred, vital, and intimate energy that connects us to someone else in a very special way. Sexual energy flows through everything that is alive.” Julie Tallard Johnson
I have an older client that is going through a second adolescence because of the bodywork we are doing on the table; I swear he is younger than me sometimes, so full of joy and delight at what he is discovering about his body. One characteristic that is coming out of this work is a spontaneous movement routine he has adopted first thing in the morning as a way to wake up his body. It’s really quite simple – he rolls out of bed, reclines on the floor and begins moving from the inside in whatever way feels different.
I do not mean in a splitting, good versus bad duality, more in a way that is new and fresh, lead by a sense of curiosity. Sure, many men run on a treadmill in the morning or do proscribed Tai Chi movements and that can be very good however I sense that something is missing in this kind of exercise. He has a mindset from the beginning of wondering….what happens if I stretch my arm in this way or bring my hip over my ear? It is a “not knowing” what will happen or where he will end up that he finds so exhilarating. And from this simple exercise each morning he reports finding new energy that he never knew he had. As many of you already know, I am all about discovery; it is precisely our routines that make us old. Feeling our full masculine erotic energy is really about un-learning, about breaking our routines of what we think is good for us, becoming mindful with our bodies and being curious, really listening. Give this a try for a few mornings and I guarantee you WILL be feeling it!
Five? What happened to only 1?
Grad school at CIIS was a trip – not only did I have to contend with living in a big city for the first time and commuting on BART, I had to learn to immerse myself in a group of mostly women. Yikes! Yes, lots of drama ensued, plus my own responses to group process. The 2nd semester, back in early 2004, I found a local practitioner Jamie, who offered classes on movement therapy for gay men (click here for more info on that – yes, he is still teaching!!). It was a very comfortable atmosphere, meeting other gay men who wanted to learn about themselves non-verbally in movement – wow, a whole new world opened up to me – my body as resource. This was whole new concept, and an excellent panacea to the stress and confusion of grad school. Instead of trusting school-mates and doing process work with them (clearly there were some emotionally mercurial people – read: roller coaster ride) I learned to trust myself. This was huge for me!
Jamie, the kind and gentle man that he is, introduced us to the 5 Elements in Somatic Expression: movement, sounds (not words), breath, touch or contact, and stillness. I went on to study with this man for the next 3 years, discovering how to be in my body, and with others, in a new, more grounded way. These trainings, along with a number of different modalities became the groundwork for Sensory Energetics, especially the Puppy Intro.
I got to thinking the other day that these 5 elements are essential to a good erotic play session. Let’s look at each one:
Movement – some men grew up in a crowded household with no privacy to explore their erotic body so they “learned” to be quiet, to be very still to experience their pleasure. Another scenario could be an emotionally repressive or even scary household (Mom or Dad has a psychopathology like bipolar or borderline personality disorder, or alcoholism or drug use).
These patterns are set in place and become the groundwork for later adulthood erotic expressions. NOT GOOD! There needs to be a certain abandonment to the moment in sex play, a sense of NOT knowing what is coming next, of having fun, getting wild, of moving your body in ways you would never think of doing.
Sounds – making sounds helps us to self-regulate, calms us down when we become stirred up or triggered and during sex can really amp up the energy of the session or greatly prolong the plateau phase. A good example of prolonging would be the classic tantra pose (one seated with the other in their lap facing each other, while the one on bottom has their cock inside the one on top). Here we would be breathing opposite each other making sounds on the exhale, getting the vocalization to vibrate in your body. Later as we approach the big “O,” we would begin breathing together and making sounds.
As for how we learn this, see above in Movement. I am always amazed at how some men have an orgasm and there is absolutely NO sounds whatsoever. If I did not see the ejaculation, I would never had known anything happened to them.
Breath – Yes, very important Little Grasshopper! We learn how to breath shallowly most often from trauma, growing up in a volatile household with lots of beatings or yelling, more common than you’d think. Try and remember the last time you felt shock – most likely you took a gasp, a short sharp inhale, sometimes even holding your breath. This expression then becomes reified. In fact, the diaphragm supports this by developing musculature, further cementing the expression in place. Another way we could become shallow breathers is from grief or sadness, usually residing in our upper chest. A good erotic play session includes ALL of who we are including our breath – remember, you are an athlete.
Touch – Sex is a contact sport, despite what I’ve seen in various places around SF! It’s so odd to me seeing men having sex where there is only genital contact and nothing else. When I am playing erotically, I want to get to know every inch of my partner’s body, every sensitive spot, every smell. I want to explore his sweat, to lick his eye lids (try this!!), and to bite his ears.
Stillness – A necessary part of every play session, sometimes at the beginning, middle and most often at the end. We can never appreciate movement unless we have stillness, the contrast is what makes the movement all the more sweeter. There is much to be learned from stillness – ask any meditator, a return to homeostasis and balance.
I often wonder why men settle for less than a full-on sporting event in the bedroom. Sadly, quick expressions of erotic life seem to be the norm. So grasshoppers, teach others what you’ve learned in the class, demand more time with your partner, more contact, more breathing, and take in more life!
Let’s get down to the basics – Yum! Good!! Part 2
The founder of Diamond Heart work, AH Almaas writes, “Sexuality is a part of our basic nature. It is true acceptance and integration of our bodies and genitals; it is free and unconflicted Presence in our pelvis. It is our being, our Essence, allowed to exist and flow in our pelvis, to engorge our genitals. It is the experience of ourselves as pleasure, as delight, as beauty, as value.”
These eloquent words put a spiritual spin on Wilhelm Reich’s basic thesis that our erotic impulses are fundamental, vital to who we are as human beings. As you can tell, I’m still ruminating over the term asexual from a previous post on here. Forget all of the reading, the hours of studying somatics – deep in my soul I believe that erotic expression is essential to our very existence. Denying that part of ourselves makes us incomplete. Hey, don’t hate me cuz I’m pretty – this is what I believe.
Stand at any street corner or park yourself at a Starbuck’s and watch how men shift their pelvis as they move. You can usually spot who is tightly constricted or who is moving freely in their hips. Or, said another way, try and imagine who might be a good lover in bed (don’t even try to tell me you’ve never done this on a DAILY basis) and then work backwards, asking yourself what is it about this man that leads me think this? Most likely it is how they move in their bodies. And their nice butt….After all, it’s all about the basics!!
Taking a risk
Let’s chat a bit about WHY movement in general, and Ecstatic Dancing specifically, is important. We as men hold our bodies to mediate the environment, in addition to our breath – it is how we manage physiologically what we are feeling in our bodies. this tends to be become rote, patterned, because we humans gravitate toward what is familiar.
My niece Alexi, for example, only listens to music that is familiar whereas I often times listen to what is unfamiliar. I want to be surprised, to get out of that listening rut, to discover something new and fresh in the music I listen to. The same principle goes for movement, and as you may have guessed, how we play erotically!!!
Ecstatic Dance, held in downtown Oakland and San Francisco every Sunday morning and Wed evening, is a perfect place to experiment, to find that unfamiliar place in your body to move in and out of, to let the music move you with eyes closed, and to MOVE OUT OF the patterned ways we move our bodies on a day-to-day basis. This is about taking a risk physically and emotionally.
I cracked up to see that women are comfortable taking their shirts off just as the guys do during the movement. It’s a nice crowd ranging from small children running around to folks in their 60’s, about half gay and straight, a circus at times with skateboards weaving in and out of the crowd to hula hoops.
Check it out as a great way to open your body, lose a few pounds, or just breathe……
Get Moving
Check it out guys! I’ve been doing this for the last 10 months or so – it is a great workout and a friendly place to move your body to some some rocking grooves………..
The Holder part Deux
If you’ve ever watched how a baby breathes, it is effortless. The energy in the pelvis informs the rest of the body and the movement is spontaneous, undulating on an organismic level. Reich’s theory of his Pulsation Model describes just this after observing all matter of beings from a single celled organism to animals to man. All creatures/systems undulate from the micro to the macro level. Each morning we brush and wash and shower and clean up ourselves, we fuck and eat and shit all in rhythms. We move in and out of contact, even out emotions fluctuate a thousand times per day. Reich looked at our life force exploding outward from us in our orgasm – as I write this I’m reminded of the Big Bang theory, the beginning of the universe as we know it. I’d like to think that our orgasm is a micro level Big Bang, a part of the Pulsation Model in harmony with the universe.
I’m not saying that one position is better than the rest – IT IS THE CHOICE THAT IS IMPORTANT!!! When we become locked in our pelvis, dropped down posteriorly like a dog hiding it’s tail between its legs, we are in the discharge position and are unable to hold an energetic charge in our bodies – consequently we lose our choice in the world as to how we move in it. A man cannot hold these sexual feelings when his pelvis is in this position so he either has to act on them or squelch them, cutting him off from his very essence, his aliveness.
Ah, and our bodies, that wonderfully ingenious collection of breath and bone accommodates because that is what it does most efficiently, it allows. It builds musculature to support our rigid posture (not good).
Conversely, if our belly is soft and our pelvis tucked into a forward rotation, we can hold our charge. Our sexual feelings (not genital stimulation) are held here in the belly along with our feelings of sadness and power in the world. Scary, huh? Nah, it’s all good.
The Holder of all that is Sacred
I’ve been mulling over in my mind about the idea of convergence – the concept that eventually, when looked at with a wide enough lens, all things can be distilled to a foundation, a set of ideas or beliefs that inform our basic nature, how we can live in balance in our bodies. Wilhelm Reich, the grandfather of Somatics, knew this. In 1961 he published the Function of the Orgasm, a seminal piece of work (please no puns), studying the connection between the mind and body. Here he commented on how a men’s pelvis can get locked in place by both circumstance and emotion, how a man lived his life including thoughts, choices, decisions, experiences could shape his sinew and bone. He designed cathartic experiments to free the body of blocked energetic bands running both horizontally and developmentally. Alexander Lowen’s Bioenergetics in the 70′s and Feldencrais’ Functional Integration all looked at the importance of the pelvis as a repository of all that is sacred and profane, our deep feelings of sexuality and our rage, tapping into our very life force.
The significance of the pelvis is not a new concept by far. Ancients in the East developed the system of yoga thousands of years ago after observing the vicissitudes of nature, how all beings seek out balance. I’m referring to the free-swinging forward and backward rotation of the pelvis as integral to our health. Think of it this way – imagine that your pelvis is a bowl of precious liquid (and indeed it is in Bioenergetics). In a forward rotation, the liquid would be spilling out over your feet while in a backward rotation your butt sticks out and you’ve got a nice curve in your lower back.
Certified Massage Therapist and Yoga Instructor David Burke of Sensory Energetics.
