SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Fucking My Way to Enlightenment. Today we're in Berlin with Jason, aka Embodied Ears, who's a tantra intimacy and kink coach and facilitator as well as sexological Jesus. I always fucking triple of this word. Sexological bodyworker, who fun fact has been a coach on Virgin Island season two. Welcome. So happy to have you here.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

And today we're gonna talk sex, banging, making sweet, sweet love, shagging. What is your two-go phrase?

SPEAKER_02 0:36

I would say I use fuck the most. Classic. It it also then kind of limits what's on the menu. You know, people hear it very literally. I mean it very broadly. But I also like play. You know, it's like, hey, do you want to play? Because I think that just sets a more open container that it doesn't always have to go toward penetration or that's not like the goal.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

And it's I I love the term play as well because it is uh the bedroom, broadly speaking, is often the only place that adults allow themselves to be playful.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Totally. Yeah, and also like, let's be a little weird about it. We don't have to take it so seriously all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

And your name, Embodied Eras, where did it come from?

SPEAKER_02 1:16

I did the sexological bodywork training uh back in 2019. And that was really my first deep dive into embodiment. You know, most of us are just living lives completely in our heads and our minds, and most of us are having sex completely in our heads, thinking about ourselves, thinking about our partners, thinking about anything other than what we're actually doing in that moment. And this professional training was all about getting back into the body and actually feeling our experience, feeling our sensations, feeling our pleasure, feeling our emotions, also feeling our desires, because they come from our body. We we often think our way of like, what should I want right now? But when we actually tune into our body, we get this deeper, more authentic response. And so I decided to orient my whole business around helping people get into their bodies. And then as I continued on my spiritual path, what I found is when you go really deep into your body, you also start accessing these incredible energetic states, these spiritual states. You get to meet the divine through you when you kind of land deeply enough in your present experience.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

So no biggie. Bye. Is that what you offer to your clients? What exactly do you offer to your clients on the menu then?

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Yeah, I primarily run group workshops and retreats for gay by and queer men. And it's kind of broadly under the umbrella of Tantra. And so we're doing lots of different embodiment practices that include breath work, movement, shaking, making sounds, but also learning how to touch, how to create different energies, how to wake up our essential energy, how to wake up different types of sexual energy, different genital massage techniques, and then how to move our energy through our body so that we can go into these incredible altered states, have these full body orgasms, have these experiences of bliss and divinity, and do that in this really deep intimacy with other men. You know, gay men have a lot of sex available. It's pretty easy to get sex, but it often feels really transactional or performative or disconnected. And so I'm also helping men to learn how to actually open up more, to open our hearts more and to yeah, really open to more intimacy in love with other men.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

And um, you what is the because you cater primarily to gay men. What is what are the main issues you'd say that um trouble the community that they challenge?

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Yeah, I think to understand the issues that gay men face, it's important to understand the context of growing up as a gay boy. You know, we grew up in a world where it was pretty unsafe to really be our authentic self. I was constantly criticized, like being called like gay, homo, faggot. And so very early on, I got deep messages that who I am is wrong and shameful and I should hide this. And then as my sexuality developed, there's nowhere, at least at the time, you know, I was born in 1990, there was nowhere for it to land. It's like straight counterparts have the opportunity to date and explore and play from a fairly young age. But for gay boys, you're having all this desire and maybe fantasies and longing, and there's nowhere for it to go. So our whole sexuality develops around unavailability. So we have this deep shame around who we are. Our sexuality is often oriented toward things that aren't actually available to us. And then even after we come out, we can be out and proud and have even done a lot of therapy and personal work, but a lot of those core wounds still remain. And so we have a sexual culture that was really built on a lot of freedom, which is amazing, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. But we were never really taught how to love each other. You know, we were never really taught how to have real connection. We moved from seeking sex in the shadows, which was really, really risky, to now we can do it and not be killed for it. But we didn't ever have models for how do we actually love one another? And to me, I think a lot of the straight models don't necessarily capture like the unique quality of love between men. And so many men carry this desire for a deeper connection, but it feels really scary because we learn so early that we had to hide ourselves to stay connected to people. So then it's like, I want to have this deep connection with another man, but when I start moving into intimacy, everything in my body is telling me this doesn't feel safe. They're gonna see me, and that's really scary. And so I need to create distance, I need to perform, I need to play a role. And so many of us have gotten just really, really good at wearing masks. I like to say gay guys have the most beautiful masks. They're like exquisitely handcrafted, it's gorgeous. Anyone who's been to a gay party is like, holy fuck, these guys are so beautiful, and I love that. But then we often don't know how to take off the masks, and so we get kind of stuck in this transactional way of relating to each other.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

What is your own relationship with being gay?

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Man, that's a good question. You know, I think now I feel more secure than ever and really proud, not just to be proud, like of being gay, but to me, there is something to me, the world really needs gayness.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

I agree. Hallelujah!

SPEAKER_02 7:09

In so many ways. But even if I look at it like spiritually, like to me, there's just all these different flavors of love, and there's something so exquisitely beautiful about love between two men. And so I feel really blessed to be on this mission of like wanting to bring more of this gay love into the world. And it's also, you know, I still have a lot of wounds around growing up gay, and I still struggle with with intimacy and with relating to other men, and I still have a lot of unmet longing in me. And so I'm not gonna pretend that it's like I figured everything out and then I've got it all sorted. But to me, it's being being in the realness of it all, being in the mix with other men in community. There's just so much beauty, and there's so much beauty in the healing journey, and there's so much beauty in the brotherhood that emerges.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Is that the reason why you do what you do?

SPEAKER_02 8:15

It's a big one. I mean, I feel it's for me, it's a really strong personal calling. And, you know, I grew up very Catholic. I wanted to be a priest when I was 11.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Damn. And not here at eight.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Yes, yes, amazing. So I think very early on I had a strong calling toward a spiritual path and also to be of service to my community. But then when I left the church and, you know, went to university, I kind of left all that behind and then just got into this world of like, I guess I need to earn money and survive. And so I fell into the tech industry because I moved to San Francisco in 2013, and that's what you did. But the whole time I was just like, what am I gonna do that's actually meaningful for me? And in 2018, I came to Berlin and came to Stretch Festival, which is a conscious queer men's festival, and it was my first encounter with conscious sexuality, which for people who don't know is like exploring sexuality, relating intimacy in an intentional way, often in workshops, um, sober spaces, facilitated spaces. And every gay space I had been in for me felt super competitive. There were all of these internalized hierarchies of like who's the hottest, who's the most desirable, who has status. I always felt on the outside. And sex was often used for status, used for kind of buying one's belonging. And then in this festival, in this workshop, we were in this big massage train where like we're in this big circle. Yeah. It's like 40 naked guys, and everyone's like massaging the person in front of them. And we were sharing touch and pleasure in this way that was really generous. It wasn't like, oh, I'm only gonna touch this person because that's who I want in their head. It's like, no, there's this gift of helping each other feel good. And it was so connective. And I still feel really touched remembering this because it just was a total paradigm shift for me that I don't actually have to earn my belonging here. I don't have to earn sexual connection with other people by like performing some like super hot version of myself, but that we all deserve love, we all deserve to feel good. And that for me was just a moment of like, I've I need to figure how I can do this, how can I offer this to the world? And that kind of started me on my path.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

You're amazing. And you've mentioned before that um, you know, pretending that you have all your wounds healed, and I think this is an important um uh part of becoming a healer or being able to heal, it's always coming from your own wounds as well. You can only understand the other people's suffering once you have actually gone as deep as them through that stuff. And with that, I wanted to maybe talk a little more about um how was it uh to be a gay man seeking spirituality while also dealing with your Catholic Christian upbringing? How was that also being as a gay man, as a gay boy?

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Sure. Yeah, I was super Catholic by choice. So as a teenager, I was really involved in my youth group at church. I grew up in the states, and I had a really strong connection to God, and I was just completely suppressing my sexuality. I was watching porn and masturbating very often, but like completely dissociated. And so when I would go to church the next day, it was literally like I had no memory of what I had done the night before. Like these parts of my psyche were just completely split. And so that went on for a number of years, and I think around 15, 16, I kind of started admitting to myself that yeah, I'm probably into men, and I just felt nobody in my church would have a good answer for me. Um, and I decided when I would go to university that I would try to figure it out there. You know, it was an opportunity to start over, and I decided I wanted to just be out when I went to university. Like the whole coming out process sounded super painful and horrible. I was starting over, so I was like, I'm just gonna be out. And I went to a very Catholic university, but they had a welcome reception for LGBT students, and I dragged myself there. I did not want to go to this. It's gonna be so awkward, no one's gonna be there. I showed up, there were two people there. It was exactly what I feared. I was like, but one of them was really nice and uh invited me to go to like a Shakespeare show. He was an acting student, and we started hanging out, and just very quickly we fell in love. And so I had just arrived, like fresh at this new university, kind of being out with with all these new people, and pretty quickly just fell into a really, really beautiful supportive relationship. Super lucky.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Um, but I was still trying to figure out my religious identity. And technically, in the Catholic Church, it's totally fine to be gay. You're made in God's image, God's a big dike, he loves you. You just can never have sex.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Actually, put it in. Yeah. Right. Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

And so I made him wait nine months to have sex.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Damn.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

And I had really good boundaries back. But I was also really scared because it's like, you know, on the other side is possibly eternal damnation. So, like, you want to get it right.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Hell or penis.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Well, and you know, we're also getting super drunk every weekend and like really riding up to the line. And I was like, no, no, no. But by the time we finally did it, I was in such a loving relationship. I felt so safe, and I really felt I was such a better version of myself, and it was just so clear to me there's no possible way this could be wrong. Just full stop. And at that point, I just left. Like I stopped going to church, but really closed the door on the whole thing, you know. As a teenager, I had a really strong relationship with God, and I kind of just wrote it all off as like meaningless. And it took a good 15 years of just having no connection to spirituality before coming back to Tantra, and then kind of realizing oh no, that that connection I had to the divine was real, there was something real there, but the container that it came in was really contaminated.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

How did the tantric journey continue for you through the trainings and stuff?

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Yeah, well, I I started the sexological bodywork training, and one of the other students there was like, Jason, you have to try Tantra, you're gonna love it. I had no idea what Tantra was at the time. If you would have asked me, I probably would have thought of like weird sex positions like the Kama Sutra or something. But I just immediately signed up for this like five-year-long Tantra teacher training. I was like, I love this. This stuff is amazing. Let's do it. And it totally changed my life. So it's important, Tantra itself is a really complicated word, it means many different things. So, what I'm teaching is neo-tantra, which is a set of spiritual practices that originated in the West in the 70s, specifically from Osho and Margot Anand. So this was coming about kind of post-sexual revolution, during the human potential movement, coming out of California, where they were inspired by classical Tantra, which is a spiritual system from the East focused on non-dual awareness. And they were inspired by some of the tenets, and we're looking at how do we recontextualize this in a modern Western context. And so a lot of what people think of as Tantra, or certainly how it's presented in Europe, is focused on erotic practices. So intimacy practices, practices using our sexual energy to bring us into spiritual experiences to get in touch with our innate sense of ecstasy and bliss, to be able to contact the divine within us using our sexual energy and in support of a journey of awakening. So this is what I'm teaching.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

And what would you say is sexual energy? Or when did you even start realizing the power of it within your own body?

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Yeah. On the first retreat of this teacher training I did, we did a chakra massage. So this is where one guy's like massaging my cock and I'm doing this like heavy breathing. And I'm visualizing this energy moving from my cock up my chakras. So I have there's different chakra systems, but you have these energy centers kind of through through the center line of your body. And there's like visualizations that you do to enhance this process. And so I'm moving the energy up and I'm moving the energy up, and I'm having this incredibly visceral experience of my whole body shaking. I'm screaming and I don't even know why. It's like we're like screaming the roof down. There's different sounds for each chakra that are just kind of coming out of me. And then at one point, it kind of moves up through the crown chakra, and I just have this feeling of this like white light energy just shooting out of the top of my head. I had no reference points for this. I had never experienced anything like this, but I came out of this just in a total state of ecstatic bliss. I think for a good two hours, I was just like so incredibly high. And you know, no substances, it's just purely working with the body and the energy, yeah, energetic body. Yeah, and your energy. And so that just captivated the shit out of me.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Yeah. And in a tantric frame, you know, sexual energy is not just your the energy from your genitals or that's actually in sex, but this is kind of the the creative energy of life. It's seen as the most powerful energy in the universe because all of existence emerges from sexual energy. So your creativity, your your artistic creativity, this is all an expression of sexual energy. Your urge to connect with another person or to commune with something that kind of draws you towards something. You can think of lust as this like intense draw into something else. These are all expressions of sexual energy. And similarly, even like falling in love, like that. Oh my God, I have to move toward this person. The draw toward them could be an expression of eros. So it's it's an energy that can be felt in the body, and it's the strongest energy in the body, which also makes it a bit easier to work with than like other more subtle energies. Like when you're turned on, you know it, you feel it. Like you can't deny it. And so uh it's a really, really powerful way to clear like energetic blockages that we have in our body. Most of us, our sexual energy just stays around our genitals when we have sex. So tantric sex is really all about moving that energy up into the body through our chakras where it has the ability to kind of open and activate these different energy centers.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Yeah, you've mentioned also sexual energy being creative energy. I've read the other day someone mentioned how aha moments, ideas that come to your head, it's actually an orgasm. It's it's a little orgasm in your head, you know.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Yeah, just a little, oh yeah. How do you see this work? Well, not just tantra, but generally like somatic sexuological work being empowering for people not just in the bedroom, but also in other areas of their life.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yeah, to me, sex is like this little microcosm of the rest of our life. And so a lot of the issues that people bring around their sexuality or their sex life are really reflections of broader issues they have in their life. So, as I mentioned earlier, like being able to feel your authentic desire. Do I actually know what I want? Do I know what turns me on? I think most of us are kind of moving through life half dead. Because we don't yeah, we're zombied out. And of the world has done this to us. So it's, I don't blame people, but we've totally lost touch with what are the things that actually turn me on. If that's being in nature, if that's creating, if that's playing, what whatever that is. And so if I'm feeling stuck in my sex life, if I don't know what I want. That's going to show up in my work. That's going to show up in my relationships. But also, what's my ability to actually have boundaries? This is something a lot of people struggle with. We're also terrified of rejection. So these often show up in our sex life. The inability to ask for things or to say no to things. Um, so there's all these ways that when we start actually getting into our body and feeling ourselves more, it becomes harder to perform. You know, most of us are performing sex to some degree.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

And that when I actually start feeling my body more and I start feeling my emotions more, the performance starts feeling increasingly dissatisfying. And it kind of forces me to reckon with what's actually happening here. You know, where am I abandoning myself? Where am I not being fully authentic? Where am I not owning the things that really turn me on, which might actually be kind of scary? Maybe I have some turnouts that are a little unconventional, you know. Maybe I haven't fully embraced the fullness of who I am erotically. That's probably a sign that I haven't done that in my life as well.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

You've mentioned that you are into some potentially different kinky things. You are also actually a kink uh coach as well. And uh you are into kink yourself, I guess. Uh obviously, I took a part in your beautiful workshop at the Tamtrik Festival in Amsterdam. Um, how did you get into kink?

SPEAKER_02 23:40

You know, I always think I was a kinky little pervert. Again, Catholic.

unknown 23:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Um, you know, when I was 23, I moved to San Francisco, which is like one of the most kink-positive places in the world. And so I was just kind of discovering my sexuality and coming of age and just exploring a lot. But there was a lot of stuff that in the context of San Francisco gay sex culture to me didn't even read as kinky, but was just gay guys having sex. You know, it's like, you want to wrap me up in plastic? Like, okay, I'll try it. Like, whatever. You know, there's the baseline was somewhere else. Yeah, there's a phrase of like, don't yuck someone's yum. It's like, that's very San Francisco. It's like, yeah, you're into it, cool. So I wasn't even thinking of what I was doing per se as kinky, but I was exploring, I was exploring a lot. And I think then when I started doing more conscious work, I kind of started getting much more um skilled and educated about like how to do kink well, how to actually communicate really well about what one wants, about boundaries, how to set a scene, how to negotiate aftercare, these types of things. And so then I realized, oh, I had actually not been doing it that well. That I had just been kind of walking into a lot of experiences for the sake of trying it. Sometimes it went really great. And oftentimes I left with a kind of bitter taste in my mouth because I didn't know how to have boundaries. And I was quite submissive, and I got myself into a lot of experiences that honestly didn't feel very good for me because I didn't know how to say no. And then once I actually started doing a lot more embodied consent work, I was like, oh, when this is really held well, there's so much potential for healing, for this incredible intimacy, um, and also just having a lot more fun.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

I think that's the curse of journal. I think Berlin, I don't know if you find that too, that there's so many people who went to kink, but sometimes you feel like really someone is just reacting their wounds out on someone rather than consciously coming into union and renegotiating what they're gonna do and how with full respect to each other.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Yeah, it's a big part of the culture, you know. It's I really encourage people to explore. Um and there's always a risk, you know. And so to me, I think there's this kind of balancing act of like really go for what you want, but the more intentional we can be about it, the more smarter you are so that nobody gets hurt and you know you actually enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

And you mentioned the healing. Do you think kink kink practices can be healing?

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Fully, I believe kink kink practices can be healing. I think it's important to say there's different kinds of kinks. So I'm much more into the realm of psychological kink. Um, so this is often like role play, power dynamics, kinks that are built on the meaning of what's happening. So someone might be flogging me, and there's like the pure sensation of being hit and what that does to the body, but there's also the meaning of who's doing this. What's the dynamic between us? What am I kind of projecting onto this person? What's the fantasy that's being enacted? And that is really for me what turns me on. Other people are much more into just the pure sensation, you know, it's like they really love being bound. Shibari is a great example. It's it can do so much for the body to be in these different types of sensations. The psychological arena is where I think there's a lot of potential for healing early wounds. And it's also a bit delicate to talk about um because kink is still pretty stigmatized in a lot of the world. You know, living in Berlin, it's it's really easy to be like everyone should just be really kinky. Like this is totally normal. But, you know, in a lot of the world, being gay is heavily stigmatized and is still seen as a disease that should be fixed. And so kink can also be seen as a form of sexual deviancy that should be fixed. So I think it's important to first state I am very pro-kink, and I think that it's a very natural thing that our psyche does to eroticize different things that turn us on. To me, there's nothing unnatural about kink. And a lot of psychological kinks stem from early childhood experiences that might have been overwhelming, painful. And our psyche does a really intelligent thing, which is it takes that really overwhelming or uncomfortable experience and it eroticizes it as a way for us to cope with that experience. I think a lot of people now are familiar with the body keeps the score and this awareness that trauma kind of lives in the body, that our body mind has this way of coping with these negative experiences. And it also uses our sexuality as a way to cope with these adverse experiences. So a lot of us like being humiliated or feeling used or feeling abused, things that in your normal state of consciousness would feel horrible. But when you're turned on and aroused and it's consensual, it can feel really, really good.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

And you're dictating what happens in a way.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Right. So to me, the healing part comes when there's agency involved. I'm choosing this experience for myself. I'm setting what's okay and what's not okay. I know I can always opt out of this. And it gives me a way to get in contact with the original material or with the energy that's underneath it in a safe container where I'm now in control. So I might have had these early experiences of not being in control and now I get to reclaim that. Or perhaps I want like a compensatory experience. Maybe I felt very powerless as a child, and I want an experience of feeling really powerful. I want to be worshipped. I want someone to adore me. I want to feel really, really hyper masculine because maybe I felt very shamed in my masculinity when I was young. So there's lots of ways that we can work with kink to have these healing experiences. And it can also point us to where some of our wounds are. You know, unfortunately, we don't come out of childhood with just like a clear map from our parents of all the ways that we got hurt. We have to figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Having that map would be like, I might as well kill myself with this full.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

I would have appreciated one. It would have saved me a lot of money. But you know, we we figure it out through our own like healing journey. And so our fantasies are actually a really powerful place to look and kind of be like, oh wow, I'm actually really into this thing. I'm can I get curious about what that's about? If you want to, also, if you don't want to and you want to just enjoy it, by all means do that. I'm definitely not saying every kinky person needs to like analyze their kinks to death. No, have fun. But if you're on a healing journey, your erotic life can be a really powerful way of getting in touch with some of those wounding places.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

And yeah, and you've mentioned it's it's a very delicate topic because the haters who stigmatize kink in general, uh, they will immediately say, Well, if you were traumatized in a childhood, that's exactly what the only reason why you're doing this. Well, really, everything we do in life is because we get traumatized. Like your whole personality, everything you do, the way you react to a conversation, it's literally just trauma dumped from the past. That's how you project it.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Yes, 100%. Most of our personality structures are things that we've developed as protection strategies or survival strategies. And I think when you see kind of how your psyche uses your sexuality, there's this genius kind of beauty to it. Um in a way, these experiences are have a lot of energy. That's kind of the definition of a traumatic experience. It's where the intensity of that experience overwhelms the capacity of your nervous system in that moment. And when you're aroused, it actually expands your capacity. Your nervous system can tolerate more energy when you're in these states of arousal without collapsing. And so your psyche has this genius way of being like, I'm gonna just store this material, I'm gonna like stash it away in this little box so that when the system has more capacity, maybe we might pull it out of that box so that we can do a little work around that.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

And transmute it into something beautiful, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

And have fun with it too.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

Yeah. And you predominantly run your workshops here in Berlin, but also in Amsterdam, would you say there's a there's a difference in clientele?

SPEAKER_02 33:30

You know, Berlin is so much bigger than Amsterdam and just much more alternative. And so I would say I get a lot more kind of alternative, queer folks coming to my work in Berlin. Um, also more folks kind of across the masculine spectrum. So like trans and non-binary identifying folks. Um, Amsterdam has a smaller community, but it feels more tight-knit. I think that's one of the beautiful things about kind of a smaller pond is it's the the men who are doing this work are very well connected. Uh, whereas in Amsterdam, it can sometimes be like people show up to like a workshop or a weekend and then kind of you know disappear back into the city with all the the events that are going on.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

I actually want to circle back uh because I just uh thought about your king journey and we talked about wounds. How did your kings change over the years? Over your own journey of healing and also tantra? Have you changed your preferences? Have you noticed a difference?

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Absolutely. Um, definitely in my 20s, I was much more submissive, or at least I thought I was. I think I thought I was a very good sub, and in many ways I was not. I was very demanding. Um yeah, but I was I was often playing with kind of older men and playing out this like daddy boy dynamic. And I did that for a long, a long time. I had a lot of fun with it. Um and yeah, in the last few years, I've really stepped into my dom more and also getting to be daddy, and I love it. And as I've done a lot of healing work, also maybe just as I've aged, but like the charge that was underlying that boy role has dissipated. So there was a long time when I was playing it out fairly compulsively or unconsciously. I like the attraction that I would have to these men was so intense. Let me again say it was so fun. It was so fun, but it was also very confusing for me because I was connecting with these men sexually who I had these really intense feelings for that was activated by my unconscious material. And then, like, kind of confusing that with love or with partnership and trying to make these romantic relationships work that were based on kink dynamics, and it was very, very confusing for me. And as I've done a lot of healing around my own inner boy and my own like father wound and um my relationship with masculinity, the charge and the kind of compulsion has reduced. So now it's something I get to choose. It's like, oh, I'm gonna take this role out of the closet and wear it, and it's still really fun, but it doesn't have the same compulsive, like, I have to do this energy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

And you've mentioned your uh relationship to masculinity. How has that changed and how has that affect what you teach and what you see in other men?

SPEAKER_02 36:48

Such a good question. I think I always felt very insecure in my masculinity. Like I was a very effeminate little boy. I went to an all-boy school for seven years and just constantly felt on the outside. Um, I also grew up with two brothers. I was the youngest and like clearly the super gay, super gay. I joked, like, we didn't have any sisters, but we didn't need any because I filled the role. And and that was also something that I played out in my sex life is like I was drawn to these super masculine men. And I think part of it was a kind of compensation for my own feelings of inadequacy and wanting that and wanting to be close to that. And it's really only been in the last honestly, like year that I feel I've healed a lot around my relationship with masculinity and especially with straight men. And for my whole life, I was I had no close relationships with straight men. Like these were the men who uh mocked me and bullied me as a kid, and I just felt super unsafe with them. And I'm really, I'm really happy that I'm able to start having friendships with straight men where I feel comfortable being myself and I don't feel like I have to edit who I am around them.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

And I think you've also started doing some workshops with straight men now, too, right? That's uh also a very interesting uh dynamic to see straight men have contact, physical contact with another straight man when it's not even linked to a certain desire, but an ability to open yourself up to another straight man.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

Yes. Yeah, I've started running men's work workshops, which is not exclusively straight men, but mostly straight men. And I think there's such a longing among many men to have more closeness with other men, but kind of contemporary culture has given us no outlets. And historically, there were many, many more. It's much more common for men to hold hands or to have to touch one another and just have this deep closeness. And our culture has really stripped all of that away and put it under the specter of gayness. That now no homo, man. Right, no homo, right? Exactly. Like that's such a thing that, and I've heard straight men say, you know, they really want to be closer with other male friends, but they're afraid of being seen as gay, which is kind of painful from so many perspectives. And yeah, in the work that I've been offering, we're using just really simple touch to get out of the heads. Again, it's not about just talking and telling our stories. A lot of men's work does that, and that's amazing. But it's like, how do we come in physical presence with one another? Because when we do that, often that longing starts coming up more kind of unfiltered, and there's actually a lot of grief. There's this grief of isolation, of like wanting to have had something that was kind of robbed from us.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

I don't know. So people think it's just uh going against women, but actually it's policing men from showing any vulnerability on human side.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

Completely. I think men suffer immensely under patriarchy, and there was something yeah, for me, I mean, profoundly humbling and healing that these straight men would see me as a sort of model of integrated masculinity because they want to be more in touch with their emotions. I think they can feel something's missing, you know. It's like, or they feel the stuckness within themselves, or they feel the crunchy complexity within themselves that they just struggle to get in touch with. And so I think the desire is really there, and and it's it's a painful place to be for a lot of men.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

You've mentioned before full body orgasms. Uh is that what you and through? What do you do in your bedroom? Full body orgasm withholding. Some people also withhold the orgasms uh or ejaculation at least to use that energy for manifestation and other purposes. What kind of magic do you do in a bedroom?

SPEAKER_02 41:19

Okay, great question. Um, so I love energy sex. And if someone hasn't experienced it, it may the the term may not actually mean anything, but you know, we could be having energy sex right now.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Right now, yes. And you guys have no idea about it.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

Uh the beautiful thing is like you don't even have to be touching someone when you're very energetically sensitive. And I really, really, really enjoy it. And I, again, before I got into Tantra, I had no idea what the hell that was. And it's just opened up a whole new realm of play. And I love playing with women. Whereas, like, normally I wouldn't be sexual with women, but when it's just in the energetic realm, the the gender really doesn't matter. So huge fan, and for me, that's where I access like whole body orgasms because it's my whole energetic field that is in the play.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Um, but when I'm having kind of conventional sex, conventional sex when we actually touch each other's earthly bodies.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

Exactly. We're like human beings. Um, I don't specifically practice like semen retention, but I'm not super attached to coming, anyways. Uh, and I do like to just tell my partners, because uh for a lot of guys, it yeah, it is something like they just it's a sign that we're done, actually, and that they've done a good job.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

And so I like having lesbian sex.

unknown 43:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

So I like to tell them sometimes ahead of time, like, oh, I might not come, that's fine with me. Uh, but if it happens, then it happens.

unknown 43:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Yeah, I remember when the first time I had uh energetic sex and I realized only afterwards I was like, oh, I think that's what people were talking about.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Yeah. How was guiding uh coaching people who were virgins? It's it's a very interesting topic.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

Yeah, so you're referring to virgin I think. Yes, virgin, yes. Channel 4 in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

Ah, yes.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

Um, and on the show, there's a a lot, there's a number of adult virgins. And I think a lot of them did feel that it's taboo, especially in the dating world. You know, that as they're on dating apps, that could be something like a reason that someone would reject them because they don't necessarily want to initiate someone. And uh I do think that. We have a lot of we have a lot of judgment, you know, around people's sexual experience or lack of experience. Um, and yet we're also, you know, again, I'm from the states. I think the UK is pretty similar. We're absolutely obsessed with sex, it's everywhere, and yet we're deeply uncomfortable with it.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Puritan. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

And this is why Neo Tantra focused so much on sexuality. Osho talked a lot about this. We have just such incredibly complicated feelings about this thing that is everywhere all the time, constantly sold to us. All of these ideas, how it should be, what's the right way to do it, how much should we be having, who should we be having it with? What does it say about our status and our worth? And yet, also just this deep sense of shame. And if I do too much, I'm bad. And if I don't do enough, then I'm bad. And if I do it this way, then I'm bad. But if I don't do it that way, then I'm bad.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

There's just no way about it.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

It's just like it's like a lose-lose.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Yeah, and also parties in power, whether you think about some church or government and the movements that are out there, they want people to stay in the shame and guilt because it's a way to control people as well.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

Absolutely. Yeah. Sexually liberated people, I think, tend to just be liberated people. You know, they're again, they're really in touch with their life force, with their desires, with what turns them on in life. And those people are hard to contain.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

What happens at a kink workshop when you're running it?

SPEAKER_02 45:33

A lot of my kink workshops focus on power play. So this could be seen as dominance and submission. Tantrically, we might see that as being in power or in surrender. And a lot of us have a really complicated relationship with our power. It's often very uncomfortable for us to be in power. I think, especially in Berlin, it's so politicized. Like we see the way that power is so corrupt or abused out in the world. And so we have really strong ideas about power, which often leads to really complicated feelings in us when we want to stand in our power. But not being able to own our power significantly hinders our ability to have an impact in the world. And so, to me, power play is this incredible playground where we get to practice how it is to actually channel that energy of power. Because from a tantric perspective, this isn't just a concept. Power is like a thing out there. It's an energy in your body that you can actually feel. And so Kink gives us this playground to practice bossing someone around, telling them what to do, and noticing the in us when that starts feeling like really crunchy, really uncomfortable, but also kind of delicious and sometimes really intoxicating and sometimes really arousing. And on the flip side, being in this submissive role is an act of surrender, a conscious choice to let go of control. And again, many of us are just constantly controlling every aspect of our lives in order to keep ourselves safe. But spiritually, surrender is an essential part of waking up, surrendering the ego, surrendering the aspect of our persona that's just clinging on to control. When we finally surrender that, we can actually reveal our true nature. You can't force your way there. It's like a the metaphor, it's like a palm opening. You're letting go of your grip of control on life. And so, again, in power play, I get to practice going into this embodied state of surrender. And I will meet the parts of me that are afraid of that. Do I actually trust this person? How much am I judging this person? How am I subtly manipulating them or controlling them or refusing to surrender because I think that they're not doing a good enough job or that they're not doing it the way that I would like? But it's actually all my own shit. And then when I finally get to that place of letting go, sometimes there's just this bliss. It's like you can go into this trance state where you don't have to control anything. You realize that there's this incredible liberation on the other side of finally letting go. So the workshops that I teach are using these spiritual tools, but in a kinky context where it's hot and erotic and yummy and charged and delicious and sometimes crunchy, but we get to meet those places in ourselves and learn about ourselves and have a pretty good time along the way.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Spicy. I have to say, like personally, too, with surrender, uh we talked about being politicized too, for me for a while, uh, especially after Giselle Pellicot case. And uh I got into a whole into my algorithm when I was mostly watching um uh horrific things that men did to women, and that really affected my sexuality too. For a long time, I was unable to trust or really fully surrender men. And I've seen anyone who would be submissive towards a man, you kind of like you know, the feminist, you know. Luckily, I have gone around this now and it's been healed and sorted. But yeah, it was a whole, it was hard, it was hard to trust anyone.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's you know, sex is so incredibly vulnerable. And so in a lot of my kink workshops, we may not be touching each other at all. We're just playing with commands, issuing commands at someone, or maybe playing with proximity, maybe like towering above them, but we're not even touching them. And so it gives us in container where we can feel the charge and the heat and the intensity, but there's a safety there as well that this isn't actually gonna go into anything explicitly sexual. You know, I can always tap out of the scene. And so it's sort of how do we get close enough to feel the heat while staying enough connected to myself that I can remember that I'm safe. And that's ultimately what builds our capacity is being able to feel the heat while staying connected enough to actually metabolize it.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

And I think a lot of people have. Um, when I took part in your workshop too, um, my partner was really, I could see it, she was opening up so much because at the beginning, even the work she was doing, it was so like timid, and she felt like, oh, maybe this is cringe, I shouldn't be doing this. And then seeing how this just really opened herself up, and towards the end, she was just giving me those dirty looks standing above me. I was like, wow, this is a beautiful transformation.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

It changes everything. You know, I've been in a lot of very performative kink scenes, and someone can be technically really skilled. You know, they can be an amazing Shibari tire or amazing at flogging or whatever. But when they just have presence, when they hold their power in their body, oh, he could just look at me and I'm like, I'm wet in the moment. I'm like, anything you want, you know, it's it's a night and day difference. But this isn't something you can learn from porn. You know, you have to feel it in the moment, and you have to slow down enough and to be in a in a playground. And that's the thing is sex is often so loaded that we want it to be great, we want to impress our partner.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

And do the next thing, and next thing, and then the whip, and then that, and it's like you forget yourself.

SPEAKER_02 52:08

Yeah, it's like where do we get to practice where we can make mistakes, you know, where we can be imperfect, where we can actually learn. And that's that's the beauty of the work we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

Taboo is very present in a lot of our lives. I think everybody has some kind of a desire or fantasy that maybe is oscillating on something that is a little more abnormal. How how does one deal with taboo desires?

SPEAKER_02 52:31

Such a good question. Yeah. I think the first thing is to say this is completely normal. Uh, there's a well-known sexologist, Jack Morin, who refers to them as troublesome turn-uns. And I really like that. It's it there, it it just touches something that it's it's normal, but it's uncomfortable. And to me, the first thing is always how do we remove shame around this? It's vulnerable to share, especially if you're in a relationship, if you're with a partner where you might be exposing these types of things for the first time. And so, as much as possible, I think being able to ask for like a non-judgmental space, and maybe even framing it as I'm not saying that you need to do this with me right now, but I just want to be able to bring this out into the open. There's a sort of coming out as being a kinkster or having these desires, and often just someone receiving that in a good way can help ease some of the shame or the fear that we have about it. And then I think having a more practical conversation of is this the right person to explore that with? And a lot of kinky folks have kinky play partners that are outside of their main partnership, partly because sometimes the dynamics we're looking to play out in kink don't actually fit so well in a partnership that's based on equality. So if I want to be really submissive to somebody, you know, you can create a scene and go into that uh energy or that dynamic and come out, but it can be hard to switch. You know, part of your mind might still view this other person as someone who has power. And we're often accessing young parts of ourselves when we go into particularly submissive states. Uh, and so again, even when we come out, those parts, those young parts, might still see this person in this role of power. And so it can be really um kind of helpful to be honest of like, is my partner, if I have one, the right person that I want to explore this with? Maybe I want to go seek someone else who has more experience and expertise. There's munches, which are like kink hangouts um that you can find in Berlin or in Amsterdam. There's kink workshops, kind of getting connected to the broader scene. FetLife is a great resource for finding events, um, or gay men will sometimes go on recon. And it's like finding other kinky people just really helps normalize whatever it is that you're into. I mean, of course, there's also porn. And I would just say I think there's a double-edged side of using porn as like sex education. Um, and to me, connecting with other real humans in the real world is the best way of normalizing your desire of like, hey, look at all these really nice people having coffee right now. Huh. Oh, they're also really into being degraded and humiliated. Oh, it's so nice. Maybe we can do that another time.

SPEAKER_00 56:06

I think with the kink community and generally people who are aware about consent, from my experience, it's a safer experience sometimes with someone who is not aware of consent and doing vanilla experience. You know, I have had sex with men who would push my head down and do things that were technically vanilla, but they were clearly not respecting my autonomy or my consent, versus I can I have slept with a guy who put a pillow on my face. And he was like, Can I put a pillow on your face? And I was like, sure, never had that done. So I've tried it, you know, didn't turn me on. I could still breathe, it was fine. But like, it's just how safe do you feel and like constant checking throughout the experience as well that changes everything.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

Yeah, it's a real wild west out there, and I would say I've also had the same action done by different people that had completely different impact based on how attuned they were to me. So I've had someone like slap my face before without consent, which was deeply triggering. And I was like, this is super not okay for me. Honestly, I've had other people do that where there was deep attunement, there was like a buildup. I felt they were incredibly present with me. It didn't come out of nowhere. And then there was like, yeah, okay, I want more. But having the conversation up front ensures you're more likely to get the second experience than to get the first. It helps a lot. Um, I think I'm speaking particularly from the perspective of gay men, where there absolutely is a leather scene where guys are into negotiated scenes, but the reality is, you know, there's a lot of guys that are just playing around and trying. And so it's a risk. If you're just kind of out on grinder seeking something that you're looking for, you often don't know kind of how experienced your partner is. And a lot of guys will present as DOMs who are also just exploring. Um, and so you're more likely to get into situations that don't feel good if you aren't able to talk about it up front.

SPEAKER_00 58:24

And I wonder also something as well. We talked about taboo fantasies. Do you think that all taboo fantasies are um uh driving you to try them, or some of them are still just to be left as a fantasy in the head?

SPEAKER_02 58:40

That's a great question. I'm not sure that I have uh like an official opinion. I definitely think there are some fantasies that should not be acted out in the real world the way the fantasy exists in your mind. You know, obviously you need to be consenting adults and following the law. Um, so I'm not gonna endorse kind of anything outside of that. Um and I think in the frame of consenting adults who are following the law, you can act out a lot of fantasies that might be really uh troublesome, and that can be really healing. You know, there's a teacher, Mark Paradise, who goes by the orgasmic shaman, and he just came out with a film called Unshamed, and it's about stories of clients that he's had where he does kinkwork with them exploring really taboo topics like incest, like age play, things that societally we're deeply uncomfortable talking about, and we tend to just say, shame it, never go there, shove it away. Yet any spiritual teacher will tell you any energy that is repressed will come out stronger and typically not the way you would like it to. And so actually creating containers as consenting adults to be able to explore these very troublesome turn-ons, to de-shame it, to realize you didn't choose that this is the thing that turns you on. You know, this wasn't something that I picked out of the library.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

For like the gayness, sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:21

Exactly. That this is something that's in me. And the more I can get curious and compassionate toward myself about this, then the more I can actually create a space for me to engage that material in a way that might be healing, um, or might just be able to express it safely without that coming out the side.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:42

Final top tips about a better sex.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:46

Yes, better sex. The first tip that I give is always the best sex is the sex you want to be having. Cosmo will give you a hundred tips on the right way to do it or how to please your man better or whatever. At the end of the day, the best sex is the sex that you want to be having. If you want to be having kinky taboo sex, that's the best. If you want to be having super vanilla soft, loving sex, that's the best. It's really how do I get most connected to my authentic desire? And for some of us, that's actually pretty hard. You know, that requires a lot of deconditioning, of getting aware of like the stories and the judgments that I have around the types of sex that I should or shouldn't be having. One amazing resource is the Wheel of Consent from Dr. Betty Martin. She has great free videos on her website, and it's a framework for exploring consent, but also desire. What do I actually want? And there's a game called the three-minute game. We do it a lot in workshops, but folks can do it at home with a partner, even on a first date. Oh, sex cute little first date idea to explore like, what do I want with this person right now? Because especially for gay men, grinder is full of like, what are you into? And then we copy and paste the same list of 10 turn-ons that I wrote 12 years ago. And we act like desire is static and decontextualized. But what I want with one person is completely different from what I want with someone else. And what I want when I feel their presence is different from the idea that I have when we're chatting on an app. And so the wheel of consent is a game to be like, well, right now, with the mood that you're in, with however you're feeling with this person, what do you actually want? And how does it feel to get it? Just for three minutes.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

I think I just dripped a little. And would you say, can you fuck your way to enlightenment?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:02

I think Margot Anand would say yes. Um, she's one of the like OG neo-tantra teachers. For me, the type of tantric practices that I teach aren't specifically about fucking. I focus on massage practices, breath work rituals. And I would say these absolutely support a journey of awakening. They bring us radically into our body, radically into the present moment, working with our energies where we might have blockages, and ultimately get a taste of our divine nature. And awakening is just taking that taste and that slowly over time becoming the bedrock of your existence. So we're like opening these windows to get a glimpse of where we could go when we embark on a spiritual journey with dedication.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:00

Amazing. Thank you very much for joining.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:03

Such a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for having me.