I facilitated an experience a few weeks ago called Liquid Touch.
Amongst all the beautiful feedback was a paragraph that’s very powerful, that says some important things.
‘My experience as a man is that you only touch for sexual pleasure and that touching other men is off limits. It was a wonderful experience to disconnect from that need to seek sexual satisfaction, and connecting with other men in a loving, caring way brought a strong sense of shared experience. I moved to a very innocent part of my heart and found peace, love, and a feeling of connection with life. I can’t wait for Jonti to run another liquid touch experience.’
On many, not all, of my workshops and experiences, I’m not concerned with the gender nature of the group. Having an even no is more important to me.
That means that sometimes men are paired with men. Which for many men is sometimes pretty challenging.
In fact, for many, it’s the first time they’ve touched another, often, nude man.
It’s not sexual, it’s not genital.
It’s human, one to another.
Over all the years of teaching, of doing sensual and erotic bodywork, some surprising, amazing, beautiful, powerful, expanding, liberating things have emerged.
When we get past our stories, our fears, our conditioned judgements, we find ourselves in spaces of, sometimes, some of the deepest intimacy we’ve felt.
We find, in another man’s body, strength, comfort, ease.
A place to let go, with no performance, a place of acceptance, a place of no judgement.
What’s fascinating is that it happens in the body, naturally, not in the mind.
There’s not a whole inner conference and analysis, and story.
It happens in the skin, in the touch, in the feeling, in the sensation, in the energy.
It’s not something new, it’s always been there. It’s been bred out of us, conditioned out of us.
And in this, huge parts of ourselves have become disconnected, judged, consigned to places of fear and darkness, contraction and disembodiment.
Something within us softens, opens, when we feel, as men, the arms, the chest, the belly, the legs, of a man.
There’s a mirror, an invitation to feel myself in another. Without any sexual tension.
On these events we talk about arousal. Not to block it, suppress it. Just let it be there, it will move, and the next feeling will come, the next sensation. We don’t have to do anything with it, act on it. It’s simply there, like everything else we feel. Then it dissipates.
The story we have, which is mostly not ours, is the limitation, the inhibition, the judgement we’ve put on the source of arousal.
In so much of our world, many countries, cultures, religions, families, this sensuality is feared and condemned.
Spaces such as this, these events of mine, and other facilitators around the world, invite us to be ourselves.
This makes them challenging, even dangerous.
Definitely liberating, freeing, opening, expanding.
On a massage workshop a while ago 2 men paired up for the day.
Someone’s going to ask about the labels, here they are. One was straight, conservative, had never touched another man’s body before.
The other was bisexual.
He’d had a leg amputated at the knee.
One of the most moving things happened that day.
For the 1st time in more than 15 yrs since he’d lost his leg, another person, a man, touched his stump. With tenderness, with love.
The sensuality, acceptance, of a man to a man, with no sexual tension, no need to perform.
Just to be.
What I’ve seen over the years is something that I find beautiful.
When men are able to connect in this way, to share in this way, the understanding of masculinity changes. It goes from an often warped idea of ego-driven, performance, comparison, conquering, to a greater connection.
It softens something inside, that doesn’t take away the desire to create, to succeed, to achieve. It expands it into the awareness that there’s more.
It also flows into the relationship we have with women, bringing new dimensions and understandings. Again, opening different pathways that create deeper intimacy.
I’m a big believer in the transformational power of sensuality and connection.
I invite you into a world of greater openness, deeper connection.
A world where there are more ways for us to experience ourselves as sensual beings. To feel more, experience more.
A world that liberates us to find ourselves, more of the truth of who we are, together.
A world where these events are invitations into possibility that goes so much deeper than the experience we have
A world with more beautiful men.
