Sexual Liberation through Dance
I’ve been dancing all my adult life. I’ve found it invaluable for my personal liberation. Through dance, I discovered tantra, and then became a somatic [body based] sex therapist, helping people discover their capacity for joy, pleasure and connection.
I don’t think I’m unique in this. I’m pretty sure most of the people who do the dance I love – 5 rhythms, contact improvisation, biodanza, tango and kizomba – find it helps them to express and free themselves. One aspect of that freedom is an increased capacity for intimacy, helping them towards their sexual liberation. But alongside that, there can also be a frustrating sense of “What next?”
When we dance, we – sometimes, preciously – are free of the usual constraints of ‘appropriateness’ ‘what will happen next’ and ‘what do I want?’, so we can often dance with a partner in a way which is more liberated and expressive than when we are in actual intimate situations, where we’re often captive to a predictable script, one shaped by our male or female socialisation and coloured by memory, including traumatic memory: all of it conspires to make our sexual lives smaller, quieter and grayer than they could be. All dancers have experienced the bittersweet realisation that often we’re much more our fully embodied, joyful selves when dancing than when we’re making love.
When I started doing bodywork to help people become more free with their sexuality, I didn’t imagine that my dance experience would be connected with that in any way. But gradually, I discovered that for my clients to fundamentally change, it wasn’t enough that they dramatically expanded their sense of their own pleasure, there needed to be a relational and expressive aspect too. If there wasn’t, they would just bank the pleasure of the session and return to a life which was unyieldingly the same.
And so, alongside talking and consensual touch, I started to adapt my work to make it more relational. I would encourage my clients to move freely during the bodywork, to sound, to express themselves. And for some people, generally people who loved dance as I did, I found it really helpful to dance with them before the bodywork. Alongside the talking, which established the safety of being seen, being heard and hence being safe to express who you really are, I found that dancing together took that to another level, because it helped establish relational warmth and connection, which then enabled the bodywork to be much deeper.
And talking to my dancing clients, they’ve pointed out how this work could fit very well with a dance practice. How so?
A corollary of the freedom of dance, the sense of possibility that it creates, is that often you hit a glass ceiling. When the dance with your partner ends, it’s over. It doesn’t translate into an ongoing intimate connection. There isn’t a way of exploring what you’ve just experienced further, of taking it deeper, of using it as a developing and deepening tool for your sexual liberation.
That’s where my work comes in. I’ve gradually come to think of my work in terms of being an Intimacy Surrogate. That is, I’m not inhabiting that ‘friendly yet distant’ professional mode. I fully bring myself into the relational connection, but I do it in a boundaried way. I’m not sexual with my clients, but am very relational and very sensual, in service to their liberation. I think of it as a form of devotional love.
There are three aspects to this: the initial conversation, the dancing together and the touch work, weaved together in a way chosen by each client, and developing from one session to the next at a pace commensurate with the intimacy created. It is as if the three work together like interconnected wells, replenishing and deepening each other.
The conversation can be easily mis-seen as a preliminary, but it’s essential. I endeavour to receive my clients in whatever is happening for them at an emotional and relational level. It’s not therapy, rather it’s a form of empathy, which enables the body to relax and express in dance and touch because it has already been received, on an emotional plane.
[ If you’re interested in exploring the possibility of working with me, just email me at johnwebberfraser@gmail.com or text me on 07545707751 and we’ll get something in the diary]
