Tantric bodyworkers give whole body
massages to
help you get…wherever you need to get.
I mean
that in the prurient way. If you want to
have an
orgasm, you are certainly welcome to
and will be
aided in that way, but the sessions are
more about
exploring issues in your life, your
sexuality or
general spirit. It’s kind of a mashup
between a
therapy session, a spiritual quest and
an extremely thorough spa visit.
It sounds weird, and it is. But also not.
But then a
lot about tantric bodywork occupies a
space that’s
uncharted and in between.
Bodyworkers, who can get professional
certification
in California, Switzerland and Canada,
among other
progressive spots, aren’t sex workers or
prostitutes. They don’t have sex with
clients, yet
what happens during a session can be
quite
sexual. Incredibly deep personal
moments might
pass between client and bodyworker.
They are
often strangers, yet they see people in
their most
intimate vulnerable states. The whole
thing up-
ends so many ideas we think we know
about sex,
gender roles and relationships that it’s
hard to
know how to even think about it.
“Tantric bodywork is a beautiful and
brave act of
care and self-care,” writes tantric
bodyworker
Matthew on his hidden web page. “If and
when you
decide to receive this type of touch and
attention it
is an acknowledgment of yourself as a
sexual
person regardless of your sexual
preferences or the
level of sexual activity in your life.”
Matthew is based in New York City and
has been
doing bodywork for three years, working
with
mostly women and a handful of couples.
(He’s
happy to work with men, but says men
generally
prefer a gay bodyworker.) His clients
have ranged
a from a no-nonsense high-powered
businesswomen to a 75-year-old woman
whose
husband had not hugged her in 15 years,
much
less made love to her. “This was a
woman whose
body was starving for touch,” he says.
Every encounter is different, depending
on what the
women want to work on or what might
arise during
a session. One woman who had initially
asked him
to skip over her breasts because she’d
never had
much sensation there, ended up having a
“massive
emotional outpouring and suddenly had a
lot of
sensation in them.” Matthew says, “She
had a
crying orgasm that was more about grief
than it
was about pleasure for 20 minutes. It
was really
powerful to witness and for her to have.”
Jill Hamilton: Why do people come to
you?
Matthew: Some are adventurers who
want to have
a powerful experience involving sexual
energy.
Others come because they feel like there
are things
that are stuck in their lives and they feel
like it has
to do with their sexual energy. Some are
desperately missing touch and aren’t
skillful at
receiving it or asking for it. Some want
the
experience of being held by a strong and
trustworthy masculine energy where they
don’t
have to worry about any other sort of
hooks being
involved. And others come because
there’s trauma
that they want to release.
JH: Tell me about some of your clients.
M: One woman wanted to fight me, but
she wanted
it to be mixed with bodywork so she
could express
her full rage in a semi-sexual space with
a man.
For 90 minutes this woman came at me
with full
unmitigated physical rage. I had to catch
her,
restrain her, hold her down, then pin her
down to do
bodywork on her.
And working with a woman with ALS,
that dropped
me to my knees. I cried in that session
at least a
half a dozen times. I mean, I lost my
mind. It was
amazing.
JH: How so?
M: By her own description, her body is
so alien. It is
so human—hips and arms and legs just
where you
would expect them. And yet those very
same
trusted landmarks are so withered, so
twisted, so
weak, so fragile, so exquisitely
sensitive, riven with
tension. She speaks in a slow and
choked whisper.
This woman, who I hardly know, who
drives a
wheelchair with the better of her two
hands, trusts
me with her life. Part of her life in this
state is how
vital touch is, how vital feeling desire
and sexual
hunger course through her deepest
channels is. In
witnessing that I see her strength
become manifest,
physically and otherwise. Witnessing that
is a joy
and a heartbreak at the same time.
JH: It’s all so intimate. How do you
make sure
you’re not mucking about with people’s
neurochemicals? (Touching a woman’s
nipples, for
example releases oxytocin , a bonding
hormone.)
M: I try to set that up at the beginning
by framing
the space and saying what we’re there
for. At the
end, I close the space with a small
ceremony
cutting the ties, because there are ties
that are
connected and it would be foolish to say
that there
aren’t. But there can be great love and
admiration
and affection without there being an
anchor that
ties us to each other.
JH: How about on your end, how do you
not get
attached?
M: I feel very humbled that any woman
who’s
essentially a stranger to me feels
compelled to
literally bare themselves and put
themselves out
there in that way. So I cannot help but
be moved
and to love the women tremendously.
But just
because you love someone doesn’t mean
you’re
going to have a relationship that shows
up in a
particular way. I’ve had what the culture
would say
are spectacularly beautiful women in
front of me
and I’ve also had women who the culture
would
say are not beautiful and I’ve loved
them just the
same.
JH: Don’t you get turned on?
M: Of course. I’ve worked with women
and thought,
“Oh my god, this woman is beautiful and
smart and
interesting,” but it’s not my job to insert
myself
there. You can get turned on and be like,
“Oh right,
I’m turned on, this body is turned on,
it’s
expressing itself in a particular way,
mentally or
physically.” But I’m not here to fulfill
that. I’m here
to be of service.
JH: Is there anything you’ve said no to?
M: I guess I’m sort of up for anything.
I’m not a
prostitute so I don’t sleep with people. I
tell women,
“I have a universal touch rule: You can
touch me
anywhere you want.” I’ve had women pull
my hair,
grab my legs, touch my genitals—
because they just
sort of need to. I’ve had women bite me,
pound my
chest or my back. All that’s fine, they
can do all
that. But I don’t have universal touch
privileges.
With one woman, I was working near her
head and
she said, “I just want to kiss you for a
second.” The
woman—who I never saw again—just
needed to
feel that connection of lip to lip. That
was fine, but
I’m not going to turn that into a makeout
session
because that really starts to change the
dimension.
JH: How do you not kiss back?
M: To have someone kiss you and not
kiss back,
who’s super beautiful and totally
sexually open?
You could take advantage of that really
easily. But I
don’t have sex with people, that’s not
what I offer.
I’m not a rent boy, I’m not a prostitute.
And I have
no problem with those, but that’s not
what I do.
The one thing that I have in this space is
my
integrity, so to break those boundaries
would
essentially shatter whatever delicate
gossamer
thing that I have established.
JH: Women get turned on by being
desired; how
does that work here?
M: I think that I can express desire
without having
to, like, tug my cock or talk dirty. My
admiration
and devotion to the work is my desire,
and that
comes through. But that doesn’t mean
that I’m
there to fulfill it for my desire to feel
good. I’m
expressing it because it needs to be
expressed.
That’s the nature of desire, it’s a
circular energy.
JH: You really get to see into women’s
dark weird
shit. What have you learned about
women?
M: I definitely get dark weird shit for
sure. I have
learned how to hold space with whatever
comes
up, to witness it, and not judge it or try
to fix it.
JH: How can people find someone who’s
not a
maniac?
M: Mostly I get referrals, so they already
know that
I’m not a maniac. The only thing you can
really do
is talk to your weirdo friends and find
someone who
can refer you to someone. There aren’t a
lot of
people who do this so if you live in
Paducah, there
may not be an option for you. You may
need to go
to a big city.
JH: What about this work does it for
you?
M: I find it really beautiful and really
humbling. I
love doing this work because I adore the
deep
humanity of it. A chance to deeply see
people and
be seen at their most raw and most
tender and to
show up the same way. I am moved by
the power
of sexual ener
Spirit