This week I sat down with an acupuncturist friend to discuss all things sexual healing. From tantra to Kundalini energy to root chakras, we got down and dirty with all things woo-woo. Needless to say, I was in heaven.
Please list your age, gender, and sexual orientation.
Age: 46
Gender: male
Sexual orientation: straight I guess….
Can you give some background on your healing journey?
Yeah, so I never thought I was going to be a healer until I was in my early thirties. I had been working as an entrepreneur since the age of 19 and ended up changing course after becoming enamored by Western thought and meditation and Eastern ideas of healing. One day, I just decided to leave my employees to run my company and go to school for eastern medicine, where I trained to become a licensed acupuncturist.
What does sexual healing mean to you?
I believe that sexual energy and our ability to heal – whether from emotional or physical wounds – really stems from one source. So if we’re repressed or stuck in our sexuality, then that’s going to impact our ability to handle stress from the environment and stress in our life. If we don’t have access to that sexual energy, we’re repressing our ability to move forward, grow and fully channel creativity within our lives.
Describe the healing modalities you like to incorporate into your lovemaking. Do you feel like it makes sex more intimate?
So obviously I keep things totally professional with clients. With lovers, though, I definitely make use of my healing services in the bedroom. To give someone an acupuncture treatment or even just a quick massage that loosens them up and gets the qi [energy] flowing can be very intimate. Sometimes the healing and sex blend right into each other, creating this sense of closeness that definitely enhances the overall sexual experience.
What can you tell me about the root chakra?
The root chakra starts in the perineum, which is the base of sexual energy in the body. Yogis consider the root chakra to be where the Kundalini serpent begins, wrapping itself up around the spine and then all the way up to the crown chakra at the top of the head.
It’s a way of visualizing energy spiraling upward from the root. So many people struggle with sexual dysfunction because of the stagnation there in the root chakra. Throughout our lives, we’re taught all these different ways to push that energy down and contain it. For example, we’re not allowed to talk about sexuality openly. As a result, we often become disconnected from our bodies. We keep that energy from rising up from the root to the throat chakra, which may lead to an inability to properly express sexual needs and desires.
I hear that hips store a lot of sexual trauma. Why is that and are there any special tricks you have to help unlock that tension?
So to tie this back to eastern medicine, there are these two channels that kind of run through the sides of the hips. the gallbladder channel is a channel that runs down the sides of the body — the gallbladder channel and liver channel. The gallbladder channel runs down the left side and the healthier it is, the easier time a person has making and sticking to decisions. When we have a blood deficiency in the gallbladder, it can make us out of touch with whom we want to be with or not be with intimately which can, in turn, result in tension down the left side of the body into the hips.
Then there’s the liver channel, which is very much connected and tied to the gallbladder medicinally speaking. The liver channel runs right through the sexual and reproductive organs. This channel can be very much affected by anger, such as romantic and sexual traumas. If you’ve been hurt by someone and haven’t processed that frustration, a blockage of the liver can occur. Through bodywork, these blockages can be healed and sexual health restored.
What’s the craziest sex healing session you’ve had so far?
A number of years ago, an ex-girlfriend of mine bought me a one-on-one tantric healing session and it was mind-blowing. It kind of changed my whole perspective on sex. Basically she gave me a hand job but I was not allowed to touch or kiss her.
That was super powerful at the time because up until then, I don’t think I’d ever really been able to just get into the experience of having somebody touch where I could just sit back and enjoy without getting to wrapped up in thinking about the other person’s pleasure: “Are they enjoying this?”
Before then I had trouble fully letting go and enjoying myself because I would get so anxious. But the tantric healing session enabled me to become fully present and aware of my own body. For the time, I was able to fully enjoy the pleasure of receiving oral sex.
What would be your ultimate healing sexual fantasy?
I’ve gone through lots of different phases over the years. I feel like right now I’m going into a place of really wanting to explore my darker sexual energy through BDSM. The interplay between that more aggressive energy and pain and sexuality is something that I’m really enjoying exploring. I actually just bought a St. Andrew’s Cross for the sex dungeon I’m building.
What are your thoughts that sex work in and of itself can be healing for those on the receiving end? From an energetic perspective, do think there can be genuine healing even when the sex is transactional and only one person is into it?
I absolutely think sex work can be healing. America is a country built on puritanical values though, which creates unnecessary stigma. It’s kind of similar to psychedelic therapy in that people instantly have this reaction like, “This is taboo and there must be something wrong with it.” I think with sex therapy and sex work, no matter what you do when you start talking about it, it just brings up that reaction.
But I’m starting to see more and more people that are so genuine and intentional with their work and who are doing it in a really therapeutic way. And it’s so needed. You know you could spend five years in talk therapy working through your sexual issues or you could have a series of tantric healing sessions with someone who can kind of just cut through the crap and get right down to the core of what you’re dealing with.
Just one session working on something could completely open you up in a way that years of traditional therapy never could. Talk therapy is a great way to compliment your healing journey though. My own life-changing tantric healing session came after doing a ton of talk therapy and I was able to draw on the more cerebral work I’d done while there and incorporate it into the more viscerally charged body healing session.
With our patriarchal value structure and widespread sexual repression, we need sex work and the healing that comes with it now more than ever. Without it, I think society might actually collapse.
What advice would you give to someone looking to up their healing energy in the bedroom?
I guess there are a few things worth mentioning here. First and foremost, you have to change the perspective that sex is about getting pleasure. This can be especially hard for guys because they are taught from a young age that sex is about getting pleasure for themselves.
As long as your perspective towards sex is one of conquest, then you will never really be able to connect to another person deeply because you’re not paying attention to them. You’re paying attention to your own pleasure. So then sex becomes an intentional practice. When you catch yourself focusing too much on yourself, just shift your awareness and attention back to your partner so that you can enter a whole new world of sexual exploration: “What is the other person experiencing? What turns them on or what turns them off? How does their sexual energy flow and where does it flow?”
Recently someone read me some really dark shit she had written down — stuff she had never read aloud to anyone. Something just clicked in me as I listened to her beautifully written and super twisted sexual fantasies. I had never personally been interested in that kind of stuff but at that moment, I was able to shift gears and get really present and excited about exploring a new fantasy with this person.
It ended up turning me on so much. Partially because she was telling me about something super secret to her, partially because it was so well-written, and partially because it was so disturbing that it actually helped me come to terms with and heal from sexual repression I had been holding on.
Any closing thoughts?
One thing I would say is that it’s really important to approach this topic with lightness. It can be really hard to do that because some of us have experienced real, sexual trauma. That’s why working with a therapist is so valuable — whether it’s a tantric or sex therapist. Doing so allows you to face the darkness so that you can start your healing journey. When mental stress or bodily tension comes up during conversations about sex, that’s a good indication of where to start.
I hate to even bring Freud up, given how misguided so much of his work was, but there’s this book he wrote called Civilization and its Discontents that basically delves into the idea that our sexual energy as a society has been repressed and channeled instead into the creation of civilization. According to him, skyscrapers are just really big penises.
Once you realize that sexuality is going to be the fuel and fire for all of your life, all your creativity, your vibrance, your vitality – you will understand the importance of unlocking that core sexual energy. It will transform your entire life. It’s not just that you will have better sex. You will open yourself up to a whole new set of life experiences that will expand your perspective and make you more powerful in whatever you decide to put your energy towards.
Jules
Based in Brooklyn, Jules has dedicated her twenties towards harnessing her pussy power, exploring the muse, whore, and wild woman archetypes along the way. When not blogging, you can find her sweating the toxins out in a hot yoga class or sipping a matcha latte at a pretentious coffee shop, whilst she scribbles away in her journal.
