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Taoist Erotic Massage
by Ben Haggard
1.
Introduction: Challenging the Massage Profession
Ever since I learned Taoist
Erotic Massage (TEM) sixteen years ago, I’ve
been a man with a mission. Prior to that I was
trained as a massage therapist, and I learned
not only the strengths of massage therapy but
also some of its prejudices and weaknesses. I
have come to believe that one of the most
profound weaknesses in the way massage is
conventionally taught is the taboo against
including erotic touch in the massage. This
taboo is so widespread and so strong that is
hardly questioned within conventional massage
modalities. However, I believe this taboo is
actually harmful and runs counter to the deepest
and most central principles of massage therapy.
Massage
therapists are trained to teach their clients
that the body is beautiful, that the body is
sensuous, that the body can be honored and
healed through touch, and they are encouraged to
communicate this with regard to every part of
the client’s body except the genitals and the
anus. These, in contrast to the rest of the
client’s body, must never be touched. I believe
that this ban on touching actually conveys its
own message. What is being conveyed to thousands
of clients, in thousands of massage sessions all
over this country, is in fact a very deep
wounding to the body, as masseur after masseur
refuses to touch the body’s most profoundly
intimate and tender places - the genitals and
the anus.
This repeated refusal to touch
communicates a sense that these parts of the
body are somehow “unclean”, “untouchable”, not
worthy of being honored in the same sensuous way
as the rest of the body. This is, in itself, a
deep wounding to the body. Furthermore, for
people in our culture these are also the parts
of the body that carry our deepest, most
profoundly rooted shame. They are also the
places around which many of us carry wounds of
abuse. Many of us have experienced some kind of
abuse, either as children or with adult sex
partners. So when masseurs refuse to touch and
honor these parts of our bodies, they not only
ignore opportunities for deep healing, but they
actually reinforce our underlying feelings of
shame and our memories of abuse.
I therefore believe that touching
and honoring the entire body, and integrating
erotic, genital and anal touch within massage is
critically important to actually carry through
the core mission of the whole massage movement.
I think that when massage schools in this
country ignore this, or actually speak out
against it, they offer a grave disservice to the
massage profession, to individual clients, and
to human healing itself.
2. How is
Erotic Touch Healing?
Erotic
touch, especially when integrated within
massage, has the potential to be profoundly
healing. I would like to consider this on
several levels. Firstly, when masseurs integrate
respectful genital and anal touch within their
bodywork, they physically counter-act old
patterns of shame within their clients and
within our culture. At the most fundamental
level, when we, as massage therapists, are
working on the body and we treat the genitals
and anus as a ‘no touch zone’, what we are
basically saying is that everything here is okay
but these areas. This negative message is
communicated at a really deep level into the
body. However, by contrast, when we integrate
genital and anal touch within the massage,
honoring these areas as natural, “touchable”
parts of the body, we send a very different
message, and the body hears that. In fact, I
believe our bodies are hungry for this healing
message, for this profound touch.
Secondly, I believe there is
enormous healing potential in pleasure itself.
The sensuous pleasure of massage plays a
fundamental role in creating, integrating and
releasing a sense of well-being and happiness in
the client, and this is actually extended and
enriched through erotic touch. In fact, I think
that the distinction between regular sensuous
touch and erotic touch is a specious
distinction. Eroticism is a natural, necessary
and completely appropriate response to sensuous
touch, and the separation made between them in
massage mainstream dogma is false and
hypocritical.
Thirdly, integrating erotic
massage within a healing modality can have
profound importance for people who have
experienced abuse. Increasingly, we are, as a
culture, coming to realize that abuse of one
sort or another has been widespread in this
country.
We all recognize that childhood
sexual abuse, incest, rape, bad sexual
encounters and physical abuse can be deeply
destructive of our sense of self-worth and of
our capacity for love and joy. However, abuse
can be experienced at any number of levels and
in many ways. Many people today speak of
psychological abuse in childhood, for example,
that has left them deeply wounded. Some would
say the same about their religious conditioning.
Many people today live with paralyzing fear
around AIDS and other sexually transmissible
infections. At a more basic, cultural level, I
would say that living in a sex-negative society
is fundamentally abusive. It abuses our bodies,
our sense of ourselves, our sense of pride and
joy in life – and therefore it abuses our sense
of spirit. This is, perhaps, the most widespread
and insidious of all forms of abuse.
I believe that respectful,
sensuous erotic touch, and in particular the
TEM, has enormous potential to help heal abuse
on all these various levels. This kind of touch
opens us to the possibility of re-programming
experience, of returning to the original root
experiences and reintegrating them – and
reintegrating ourselves - as we, in a sense, put
the pieces together again in new ways. At this
level, because the TEM includes breath and touch
and heightened states of energy and awareness,
there is the potential to reach very deep into
the body and the psyche and open up enormous
emotional release. Then, with loving, sustained,
nurturing touch, there is also the potential for
reintegration. I can say this because I have
experienced it myself, and I have observed it
closely in any number of my clients.
3. Healing
Abuse, Opening to Pleasure
As I
have already mentioned, abuse has the potential
to happen at any number of levels and in a
variety of ways and it is continually being
reinforced by the pervasive, almost pandemic
sex-negativity of our culture. Healing from such
abuse will be complex and multi-faceted, and it
will often lead us through phases or periods
that are not pleasurable at all.
In doing erotic, healing work
with clients I have observed a characteristic
pattern, which I have also observed in myself in
my own personal process. When this kind of
bodywork first begins, I have found that erotic
touch is not necessarily associated with
pleasure. This is particularly true for people
who have suffered profound physical abuse. Even
if erotic touch is associated with pleasure
there is often a kind of split inside them that
is very difficult to reconcile. This is a split
between the fear of further abuse and the
experience of physical pleasure itself. This is
often further complicated by entangled memories
of the pleasures associated with past abuse, or
perhaps associated with certain kinds of pain.
The masseur needs to be very sensitive and very
patient as the client begins to face, rather
than repress, both fear and pleasure. I think
that one of the things that is so profound about
doing this work with people is that it is really
an expression of love, and it’s the
open-hearted, respectful, embodied love that
actually brings the healing, or at least lays
the foundation for the healing. Being held in a
continuous, non-threatening way and receiving
genital touch in a steady, sensitive, loving
way, can be profoundly healing. A lot of us
carry body shame, and to be held, loved and
touched in the places that we’re ashamed of is,
in itself, a healing experience.
In this whole journey of erotic
healing there are, of course, further
developments and phases. Many of us need to
learn how to develop our capacity for pleasure
and once the first tear in the fabric of our
being has begun to be repaired, then we can
actually begin to re-knit the weave of delight,
joy and openness to ecstatic spiritual
experience in our lives. So the healing process
at that point moves far beyond repair, and
invites us to become more whole, more authentic,
more expansive in our embrace of all that makes
us truly human and fully alive. And that, for
me, is the pro-active, exciting, generative
dimension of erotic touch, erotic healing and
erotic life.
4. TEM: Levels
of Growth and Transformation
One of
the things I really love about Taoist Erotic
Massage (TEM) is that it is so inherently rich,
functioning at multiple levels. Over my years of
practice with TEM, these are some of the levels
that I have discerned.
At the most basic level, Taoist
Erotic Massage is about pleasure. It is
wonderful to be touched. It is wonderful to be
turned on. It is really wonderful to feel every
tissue of the body awake, vibrating with sexual
energy. This kind of pleasure is not usually
available to most individuals, at least in our
culture. So TEM is a great way to enhance or
expand our capacity for pleasure.
At the second level, there is the
potential for healing. TEM is a powerful healing
tool. Moving erotic energy throughout the body
heals not only sexual trauma associated with the
genitals or the anus, but it also heals the body
as a whole. TEM is an effective way of
energizing the body, of building up the immune
system, of working with depression and moving
the client out of de-energized, deflated states.
By building up vitality in the body and
awakening a sense of physical well-being, we can
effect an integration so essential for any kind
of real healing.
At the third level, TEM has the
potential to function as a “shamanic tool”. Many
people have found that TEM is a way of achieving
altered states and entering into altered
perceptions of the world. For me, it is a way of
awakening my ability to see the world as energy,
and as energy forms. When I am practicing TEM
and I reach a high enough state of arousal, with
enough energy moving in my body, I find I can
literally look out into the world and see it as
an energy phenomenon, seeing the material world
as patterns of organized energy.
The fourth level of TEM actually
goes beyond this opening to altered states. I
would describe it as achieving mystical states
of awareness, actually peering into the center
of existence. It is a little hard to articulate,
but I know I have had classical, mystical
experiences through this process, and I know
many other people have. For me, the most real,
awe-inspiring and exciting potential of TEM is
what it can awaken and unleash in terms of our
profound visionary capacity.
5. Exploring
the “Big Draw”
At the
end of the Taoist Erotic Massage, the receiver
is encouraged to clench for twenty or thirty
seconds all the muscles of the body. This is
called the “Big Draw”. The most important areas
to clench are the muscles of the pelvic floor.
The Big Draw focuses the energy, circulates it
throughout the body and, if enough energy has
been built up through the breath-work and the
touch, sends it out through the crown of the
head. This process can lead to profound
visionary experiences.
The Big Draw can be used in many
different ways. I use the Big Draw in my
masturbation practice as a way of working
consciously with erotic energy. After I’ve been
charging the body for a while with massage,
movement and breath, I’ll use the Big Draw to
collect the energy and take myself to the next
plateau of experience. In this process I am
using it strictly as an erotic practice, as a
way of building and heightening the erotic
experience. I build up the energy, I come to a
plateau, and I’m able to remain at that plateau.
Once I stabilize the energy, I then can use the
Big Draw to move to the next level.
My lover and I are both
experienced in using the Big Draw. Often, when
we are having sex together, we will use this
clenching as a kind of alternative to
ejaculation. When we have been making love for
an extended period of time, we’ll come to a
climax place, use the Big Draw, and have this
sort of alternative climax that sends us to very
heightened states of joy and pleasure, of
intimacy and release. Then we’ll come into a
kind of quiet place, and rest together. This
leaves us prepared to go on if we choose. So
it’s a great technique for extending lovemaking,
and for increasing the shared intensity of
pleasure that the lovers experience. If your
partner is not familiar with this technique, it
can be wonderful to introduce him or her to it
and to explore and experiment with it together.
In addition to offering
heightened states of sexual pleasure, the Big
Draw can open us to profound states of
awareness. The key to using the Big Draw in this
way is the breath. While the body is being
erotically charged through touch, it’s critical
that it’s also being charged through breathing.
The technique for doing this is usually
demonstrated by a sharp, strong inhalation
followed by a very relaxed exhalation. This is
very helpful if you’re learning the breath or if
you’re breathing with other people, since it
produces a clear sound and a strong rhythmic
breathing. The real key to the charging breath,
however, is actually taking in more oxygen. So,
it’s even more effective to relax the face,
relax the lungs, relax the whole body, and take
in more air. When the body is fully charged
through both breath and touch and we are
reaching a very high state of erotic or sexual
arousal, then we use the Big Draw. At this
point, the potential to actually go out of the
body and into really amazing shamanic, spiritual
or mystical experience is greatly heightened and
enhanced. The nature of these experiences is
unpredictable.
I’ve had experiences of seeing
the whole cosmic order laid out in front of me.
I’ve had experiences of going back to the moment
of my birth, of experiencing my mother’s pain as
she was giving me birth. I’ve had experiences of
healing old wounds and shame. I’ve had
experiences of unbelievable bliss. I’ve also had
experiences of emptiness and quiet. All of these
are potentialities embedded in this
astonishingly simple technique – a technique
anyone can use at any time. Many people who are
coming to TEM for the first time may be unaware
of how rich, deep and life-long this practice
can be. It is an authentic spiritual practice,
that deepens over time. There are all kinds of
things to explore within this practice. I
encourage people to experiment with it, to try
it and test it, to play with it, to discover
both the joy of enhancing pleasure and erotic
delight, and the adventure of achieving these
profound states of awareness and consciousness.
6. Creative
Practice
One of
the things that I would caution against,
particularly for those of you who are learning
this practice from DVDs like Fire on the
Mountain or Fire in the Valley is becoming too
rote about this practice. As with any practice,
we can slip into familiar and well-worn grooves
that subtly de-energize us and sap our practice
of its capacity for opening us to ecstasy and
transformation. The TEM arises out of the
awareness that we carry amazing energetic
potential in our bodies. An effective way to
raise that energetic potential is through
genital stimulation combined with breathing and
massage strokes that move the energy throughout
the body. This is the central concept. Beyond
that there is the process of the Big Draw for
collecting the energy and moving it to a higher
state. These are the core aspects of TEM. We can
play with them in any number of ways. We can use
them ourselves in our masturbation practices. We
can use them with friends on a massage table –
much as is demonstrated in the DVDs. We can use
them with lovers and with partners. We can use
them in public erotic space. So, becoming
flexible, becoming fluid, becoming thoroughly
versed in these various strokes and techniques
and understanding their potential, means that we
can move them into every aspect of our lives.
And what a great way to live!
Like any authentic spiritual
practice, TEM has lasting effects on the lives
of people who are committed to it. I have been
working with TEM for over fifteen years, and
I’ve seen profound changes in myself, in
clients, and in the colleagues with whom I’ve
been exploring and practicing this work. I think
the most pronounced effect has to do with a
growing sense of confidence – that’s the best
word I can find for it. We seem to share a
deepening sense of being a whole person and of
being confident in the world and in relating to
one another. This sense of confidence is not
over-weaning or aggressive, but rather it is a
kind of quiet, self-assuredness that is generous
with regard to other people. I notice it over
and over again. It is a kind of deep intuition
about this universe being a friendly place,
being a place that holds a space for humanity,
and that awareness becomes the source or
wellspring for love. The people I know who do
this work in a consistent way have a great and
developed capacity for loving – not just one
person, but for loving in general – loving the
world, loving each other, loving their clients,
loving themselves.
7. Men and
Taoist Erotic Massage
TEM is
a great place for us to come together as men. It
offers a rich, embodied experience that men can
share in common, and it also offers a great
opportunity for healing all kinds of arbitrary
distinctions between us – and particularly the
distinction between gay and straight. Straight
men who attend an all male TEM training discover
not only a highly charged experience of working
with erotic energy, but also a whole new kind of
bonding with other men. This can be
revolutionary for them; it can change their
lives. As men, both straight and gay, learn to
bond at this deep level, they can also work to
change the world in wonderful, healing ways. I
would like to imagine that this experience has a
deep affinity with the way men in tribal
cultures bonded together. The Erotic was an
honored aspect of all men, who they were, and
how they connected in the world. It had nothing
to do with how they identified themselves in
terms of sexual orientation – it had to do with
a certain nature of eroticism that is
characteristic of men, and that all men share
with each other. As men, we have to rediscover
this potential to bond with one another, to
learn from one another and to teach one another
about what it is to be a man and an erotic
being.
8. Eros and
the Earth
I lead
a dual life. On the one hand I’m a masseur and
an erotic practitioner; on the other hand I’m an
environmentalist and an ecological designer. I
have spent many years designing and lecturing
about permaculture, which is a whole-systems way
of design. I’ve also spent many years trying to
understand how these two seemingly separate
parts of my life--the environmental and the
erotic-- relate to one another. This has not
been an easy question to resolve, but I know it
has been an important issue for me to work on. I
have come to believe that the radical
disconnection from our bodies, which so many
modern people experience, is closely related to
our radical disconnection from the earth. Our
inability to understand the flows and dynamics
of our own bodies is closely related to our
failure to lead lives that are fully engaged,
integrated, whole, healthy, and that contribute
to the well-being of the people around us. This
failure, this deep disconnection from ourselves
and from others, is directly parallel to, and
perhaps identical to, the way we engage in the
on-going destruction of our planet, of
ecosystems, and of our own environment, simply
through the way that we live.
It’s not that we are interested
in going out and doing harm--most of us would
actually love to do good! We would love to be
able to live in a way that benefits each other
and benefits the planet. And yet we find
ourselves, again and again, bumping into these
blank walls and facing these dead-ends. Why is
this? I believe the solution has to do with
dropping into who we truly are as living beings,
and seeing that erotic energy, is at the core of
our being. I believe that when we can love
ourselves, love our bodies, love the earth, love
animals, love trees and love one another, from a
really grounded, embodied place, we will
discover the sensitivity to be able to shift the
systems that we create as human beings, and
transform them so that they no longer do harm.
Of course, there appear to be all
kinds of technical issues and problems involved
in humans living in harmony with the planet. In
reality, the solutions to most of these problems
have been known for a long time. Some of them
were resolved millennia ago. The real issue is
one of consciousness. Although we know, in
theory, how to live in harmony with the earth,
we don’t know how to adopt this as an enduring
way of life. This would require developing a
different perspective and a different kind of
sensitivity in ourselves. TEM is not a cure-all
for the work needed to develop this sensitivity,
but it’s a very good way to begin, since it
awakens the body part of our lives. The body is
itself organized and orchestrated as a natural
system, and this is where the understanding of
how the living world works lives in us. This is
where it is – right here in our bodies. Becoming
tuned in, plugged into this embodied knowing,
feeling it fully, feeling the waves of emotion,
the waves of energy, the waves of arousal, the
waves of blood coursing through the body,
feeling the way that connection and love occur
between us and everything else, really tuning
into that – this is our best way of coming to
understand and study nature, ourselves, and the
world as a whole.
This is, perhaps, the most
precious gift and the most radical promise that
Taoist Erotic Massage offers to the human
family.
Ben Haggard From the DVD
avialable at
Fire in the valley
Massage Training
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