An unexpected tantra session
I used to be silk artist on Maui, where my wearable art became well known. Maui is a popular destination for seminars, and I often got invitations to show my silks at them. Participants shopped, the presenters got a percentage, and I made enough money to continue doing my art, which is what I loved. One day, I was selling my silk at a tantra workshop on sexual healing.

Two of the women in the training invited me to their room so I could show them my silks, but they were too busy bubbling over about the bliss and healing powers of sexuality to give them very much attention. What they really wanted to do was talk about sexual healing, which they did with the enthusiasm of evangelists. At first, I listened out of politeness, but soon I became intrigued. Their excitement was palpable.

“It’s one thing to talk about it – but quite another to actually do it.” Gwen declared. “How would you like to have a session?”

“Right now?” I queried, a little red in the face at such an intimate offer.

“Yup,” She answered casually, as if this was something she was accustomed to doing.

“What does it cost?” I inquired, stalling for time to get over my nervousness.

But…money was a legitimate concern. I had heard that healers in her profession got at least $200.00 an hour each and there were two of them. No way I could afford that – looks like I was off the hook…

“There will be no charge.” Nadia replied. “We want you to have the experience. It seems meant to be. Isn’t that right Gwen?”

“Absolutely!” Gwen chimed in.

I hesitated for one more instant…and could feel myself growing a bit red in the face. I had never done anything remotely like what she was offering. But it did seem meant to be, in fact it felt like an answer to a prayer for healing I had made days before.

“Yes! Thank you so much!” I blurted. I had just jumped into something, but I had to admit, I wasn’t exactly sure what it was.

As we sat down on the bed, my mouth opened with a question, but Gwen asked one of her own.

“Do you understand what a session is composed of?” Gwen asked, responding to my question before I had a chance to speak it.

“Not exactly.” … The truth was, I didn’t have a clue.

“Let me explain…” she said, with a reassuring look.

“We start with massage,” she continued. “Unlike, your typical therapeutic massage, if you’re comfortable with it, the touch may be at times sensual and erotic. If you become aroused, that can become a part of the healing. I will explain more about that later.”

The importance of releasing trauma
“The goal is to release old trauma – stuff that has been holding you back. Such memories can be hidden in the body. You may not even know they’re there. But, they can be doing you harm none the less. They can limit your capacity to experience your emotions and make you feel less spontaneous and alive. They can even damage your health – and shut you down sexually as well. The goal of this work is to address something that a psychologist named Michael Newton, talks about in his book, Journey of Souls…”

“… Those of us who have experienced unresolved personal trauma in our lives carry the seeds of our own destruction. This anguish affects our soul in such a way that it seems we are not whole.…””

“That’s well put. Unfortunately, I know this all too well,” I replied. “I was molested as a child, and the memories are still causing me suffering.”

“I thought this was right for you,” Gwen replied. “It took courage to agree.”

“We’re happy that you did!” both of them said almost at the same moment, producing a few giggles.

Gwen went on. “When three people work together, it is called a “triad.” Most sessions involve just two, but triads can be even more powerful. I will be the main healer and Nadia will support and hold space. What we are going to do is called “sacred spot massage.””

I shot them a quizzical look, which was rewarded with an explanation.

The power center of man
“The prostate is a powerful place. It is the energetic center of a man, just as the womb is for a woman. Touching it lovingly can be pleasurable, arousing and profoundly healing.”

The keys to transformation
“In this work, sexual energy is used for transformation. As the sexual power awakens, you can direct its energy towards healing. It can access a primal part of yourself that cannot be contacted in any other way. Eroticism has its essential healing purpose. That’s why we don’t exclude it like so many other modalities do. But neither is it our sole purpose in a session. For once it is present, we shift our attention to using it for inner healing.

“As the pain of trauma is released, sexual pleasure is used to bring new energy to areas that have been shut down. So, if you feel aroused at times, its ok – it’s part of the work. You don’t have to be embarrassed or try to hold it back. But if arousal doesn’t happen, that’s ok too. There are no expectations. Just relax, and know that whatever comes up is exactly as it should be.

“Medical doctors and psychologists sometimes recommend this work. Breakthroughs can happen in a single session that weren’t achieved in years of talk therapy. Mind you, it’s not right for everyone, but when it’s a match, the results can be dramatic. The work uses intimacy and sensual touch to access repressed memories held in the soma, or tissue of body.

“During the session, I am going to gently put my finger inside your anus and massage your prostate, which is about two inches inside and towards the front of the rectal wall. I’ll touch all around the inside. Emotions are stored in this area – or to say it more precisely, it accesses parts of the nervous system including the limbic brain, where deep memories and trauma are stored. So, if powerful feelings come up, especially the first few times you receive this – that’s normal.

“Don’t worry, I will stop any time you want me to. And I won’t go inside until you are fully ready.

“Is there anything I’ve told you so far that you’re uncomfortable with? Would you like to mention any boundaries – anything you’re not ok with?” Gwen asked, with a look of concern and caring on her face.

As she was explaining the details, my nervousness was being replaced by a knowing that this was exactly what I needed. In fact, for months, I had been having an intuition that I needed some kind of intimate healing work – even though at the time this modality was unknown to me. I had made a prayer that whatever was right for me would come. Now, I felt sure this was it.

“I am totally open,” I said, surrendering. “I’m not going to make any boundaries, but if something doesn’t feel right, I’ll let you know,” I replied.

“Good. No one can tell us better than you what you need for healing. Tell us what you want and what feels good and what doesn’t. Let us know if there’s anything you don’t want to do. We want you to feel safe and relaxed.”

She gave me a few moments to take all this in. “Do you still want to go ahead?” She asked.

“Yes.” I answered.

They invited me to take off my clothes, and lay down on the bed. They lay on either side of me. I felt excited and vulnerable.

All of my past sexual interactions had been about romance and desire. But here we were creating the intention of using the sexual experience for growth. Just lying in that awareness, I felt myself entering into a new realm of possibilities. The idea of using sexual energy to break through limitations captured my thoughts. I was excited by the potential to become more free.

But I was aware of fear as well. I knew I had to confront it’s source, or it would prevent me from moving forward.

The fear was about my having been molested as a child. When I remembered it, I felt helpless. It happened when I was so young that it seemed imbedded into my cells. It held me back in so many ways.

I had tried to heal it, but without success. Releasing it would take a work primal enough to shift me to my core. Three people gathered together can hold a powerful space. Somehow, it seemed in that moment, that anything was possible.

Releasing the pain of generations
I dreamed of being released from my grandmother’s pain, and that of her parents who had hurt her so much that she had become an abuser. It seemed that my ancestry was an endless cycle of victimization and perpetration. How far back did it go? How many generations? I wanted it to end – right now with me. I wanted to be released from its dark energy.

I was aware that breaking through to a new paradigm always requires facing fear. That has always been the way of initiation. This was the price of becoming my true self.

Like family members before me, I could have denied my pain. But this was how it was perpetuated. It’s true, I could have just enjoyed the pleasure of being with the two women, and not faced my fears. But that would have been a betrayal of myself and of them as healers. I had prayed to release this and would not turn it aside. In the beautiful space they held, I knew that Gwen and Nadia honored the sacredness of what was being offered…and so would I.

They gave me massage for a while, and as the touch became more sensual, I became aroused. I allowed the pleasure to bring me deep inside my body. Memories began to appear.

I remembered my child self – when I was an infant. And then I became very vulnerable. In that moment, what I needed most was the safety and compassion of the space that the practitioners so adeptly held.

Gwen began to massage gently around my anus. No one in my adult life had touched me there, other than the urologist, whose touch was cold and clinical. This was different. Gwen’s touch was tender.

The power of receiving
Previously, I had thought the sexual power was in being the initiator. Now, I was not expected to perform. There was nothing to do but be open and receive. With the shift from my old role, new possibilities arose. I was free to focus on my own needs and healing myself. I was learning that in the right circumstances, receiving can have transformational power.

When I was molested as a baby, I had been a victim. That was a very negative kind of receiving. But now I had the power of an adult. I could rewrite the script, and play the victim no longer.

All the while, my healers gave me their full attention. Did that feel good? Was the touch too strong or too soft? What did I need right now? What would be most pleasurable? What was I feeling? I was invited to participate in the session every step of the way. They didn’t try to control it, instead their job was to facilitate, and keep me safe. They trusted me to have the wisdom to guide it to where I needed it to go.

“Are you ready for me to place my finger inside of you?” Gwen asked.

“Yes.”

As she touched the entrance of my anus, it seemed to open itself to allow her in. Soon her finger was inside. I felt so vulnerable! But it wasn’t arousing – not that time. There were too many emotions. Some of them not so pleasant.

Suddenly I was drawn back in time. Gwen became my grandmother who had molested me. I remembered being penetrated against my will – feeling trust and innocence violated. I felt scared and very uncomfortable. It took all of my will to stay with the vision, but I knew that was what I had to do.

Gwen, was an attractive woman but in the vision, she took on my grandmother’s persona – obese with a small grotesque growth dangling from her face. She gave off a strange unnatural odor and there was a feeling of shame that exuded from every cell of her body and penetrated mine.

Noticing the tears running down my face, Gwen asked what I was going through. Still in the experience, I tried to share as best I could.

“Tell me when you want me to remove my finger.” She said kindly.

The women’s love was like a life line. It enabled me to face a memory that I had not been able to on my own.

After a few more minutes the vision faded. I nodded, and Gwen slowly withdrew her finger. They held me close while I returned.

I was filled with gratitude. The healing took time to integrate. Days and months went by and more memories came up. As I released them I began to feel lightness and joy.

Later, I attended a series of workshops and received training in giving sacred spot massage both for women and men. I did the training for my own healing, and also so I could help others. I worked with women, applying healing touch within the vagina as well as the anus. During the workshops I received many more sessions as well.

The benefits I gained from this work were countless. Among them was a complete healing from “benign prostatitis” which was a painful inflammation and swelling of the prostate. This was no minor thing, because it had become serious enough to make urination at times impossible. If it had permanently stopped my ability to urinate, it could have been fatal. In such cases, the doctors treatment is surgery, which could have left me impotent.

My healing from prostatitis was 35 years ago, and since then I have kept up with the practice of massaging my prostate for a few minutes every day. The disease never returned. I am convinced that prostate massage has prevented the prostatitis from progressing to cancer, which occurs for a large portion of the male population as they age. ¹

Afterwards

A word of caution
At this point I feel compelled to caution the reader. Not everyone has the skill and integrity of the healers I worked with in my session. This is especially true for a modality that is neither recognized nor regulated by mainstream medicine. (In fact, practicing it professionally is illegal, although workshops “for the purposes of education” are not). For those of you who seek healing or training, please be very discerning as to whom you work with.

Receiving sexual healing can be a very vulnerable experience. It is possible for the wrong practitioner to make things much worse. The last thing I want to see is someone who has been through a terrible experience get re-traumatized.

Just because someone claims to have training, or even heads a workshop doesn’t mean they are worthy of trust. Even if they are competent – there is the matter of style. Are they too aggressive, too invasive? Will they honor your feelings?

I am sorry to say there are those who use the appearance of being healers to exploit people sexually, and it is sometimes the people with the most prestige and credibility who take advantage.

The power of sexual healing
If the risks are so great, why do I recommend this kind of work at all? Because it changed my life – and I cannot imagine having had those breakthroughs in any other way. Intimate touch was needed to access the primal part of my being that contained the memories of trauma. I’ve known others who have had equally powerful experiences. Some people’s path of healing requires a modality that includes sexual touch. Perhaps you’re not one of those people. If this work does not call to you, by all means don’t pursue it.

Sometimes healing requires taking a chance. To make the right choice requires discernment and the tuning into your gut instincts and your boundaries. That’s true for any modality that implies risk. There are many treatments doctors prescribe where risks and side effects are a concern. It is always better to use an approach with no possible downside, but sometimes that isn’t possible. I am convinced that I wouldn’t have healed without tantric sexual therapy, and the doctor’s surgery that I avoided had a definite risk – that of permanent impotency – and such surgery would not have forestalled the risk of cancer that would almost certainly have developed from the inflammation and unhealed trauma in that part of my body.

A technique such as prostate massage or what the Tantrics call “sacred spot massage” should be considered according to the same criteria as other therapies. The potential risks should be weighed against the potential gains.

A tradition abandoned in the West
The ancient healing traditions of India and China include prostate massage. It was routinely prescribed by western doctors in early 20th century America. But it was discontinued – not due to a lack of efficacy (for it was proven to be extremely effective in treating prostatitis), but for reasons of “morality.” (The doctors were afraid of scandal and law suits due to the puritanical mores of society.)

It seems that we are willing to sacrifice our wellbeing and even our lives for the righteous ideal that pleasure has no healing value. If we change that belief, our society would enjoy better health, and many diseases that are epidemic would be less prevalent. We would also be released from the false teaching that toxic shame is a spiritual virtue.

The outcome of your healing experience is in your hands. Sexual healing is a powerful modality. It can create massive healing if done appropriately, but also emotional harm if not. You will determine the outcome by the choices you make.

What kind of person will you choose to work with? Will you choose to play the victim, or take full responsibility for your own healing process?

Taking responsibility
Don’t expect the people you work with to be perfect. They’re not going to be. Sometimes they may step out of integrity or make mistakes. It’s up to you to use the issues that come up in a session to grow. Are you going to stay in control of your own healing, or are you naively going to put that power in someone else’s hands? The latter is an invitation to disaster.

Lastly, I want to emphasize, that I am in no way encouraging people to do sexual healing instead of talk therapy or other modalities, but rather in addition to, if at all. Although it may access areas of healing that other ways cannot, that does not diminish the importance of other more traditional psychotherapeutic methods which have their own strengths, and may incur less emotional risk.

Prostate disease is not inevitable
Doctors currently believe that benign prostatitis is an inevitable part of aging. But I have found this to be untrue. The prostate condition I experienced 30 years ago reversed quite rapidly through self-administered prostate massage – and now at the age of 70, doctors say my prostate is the size of a healthy young man’s. I know others who have had similar experiences.²

The prostate is a pump. As such, it’s health depends upon the movement of energy. This is fine for a young man who ejaculates regularly, but as men age, nature tries to conserve the vital life-force within the semen, and men ejaculate less often. Thus denied the stimulation from ejaculation, the prostate begins to stagnate, creating inflammation which inevitably develops into prostate disease. This “inevitable” progression into disease can be halted or even reversed simply by massaging the prostate.

There are no health risks to prostate massage – no side effects except increased pleasure and sexual health. Although physical touch is necessary for maintaining prostate health, healing emotions is equally important. Holding toxic emotions in our bodies can sometimes be as harmful as physical poisons. To be fully whole, we must not only heal our bodies but also our psyches and our beliefs.³

Emotional release such as I experienced in the tantric session is not just for people who have been molested. It is for anyone who has had trauma, rejection, or negative experiences. It is for everyone.

The anus is a powerful healing center
The anus is a physical, spiritual and psychic healing center. Whether or not you have emotional issues to overcome, and even whether you are a man or a woman, healing touch within the anus can be very beneficial.
Why is this? Because nature placed meridians, or energy pathways within the anus that innervate all the major organs.

The rectum also has nerve centers that directly access the limbic brain. This part of our brain holds our most profound emotional memories. It is why the kind and loving touch I received in the anus during my tantric healing session produced such profound emotional memories. Healing then followed because only with remembering and embracing our emotions can trauma be released.

The anus is a spiritual center as well, because it corresponds to the first chakra, which is the foundation of the psycho-spiritual field. The sacredness of the first chakra and the anus is part of the Divine design for our psychic, physical and spiritual health. This is why holding shame in this part of our body can be so damaging.

Becoming vulnerable
The “sacred spot” is an intimate place that can access powerful emotions for all men. Receiving healing work there helps a man to experience his vulnerability, which is such a crucial part of being human. By feeling his emotions, and experiencing pleasure there, a man can maintain the wellness of this part of his body and receive its healing gifts.

Illegal
Sexual healing that involves pleasure is legally defined as prostitution in most of the West. The only exception is certified sexual surrogates who are prescribed by a psychiatrist – but his modality is extremely rare. For the most part, professional prostate massage is illegal in the United States and most of the western world. This is especially true if it involves some degree of eroticism – which if done tenderly and lovingly, it inevitably will. Even without the exchange of money the healer can easily be sued because of the “moral aspersions” that society casts upon this part of the body.
Pleasure is looked at askance
Why do we create such strong cultural taboos against pleasure, while at the same time blindly accepting many procedures proscribed by our doctors that are pain? It seems that pain somehow legitimatizes healing in the west, while any service that involves pleasure is looked at askance.

The importance of healing self-touch
Healing our sexuality naturally involves pleasure, and society’s judgements about this can prevent us from receiving sorely needed sexual therapy. Studies show that leaving sexually related issues unhealed can be harmful to our emotional and physical health. This is especially true for the prostate which needs loving touch to prevent prostatitis and prostate cancer as we age. Yet many people men are too ashamed to touch these parts of their bodies. In these ways, aversion to intimate self-touch can damage our health, and even increase our risk for cancer.

Receiving loving intimate touch from a professional on a daily basis is not possible for most of us – and receiving it from a lover may not in the long run may be consistent enough for our health. This is why, it is important for us to learn to give ourselves intimate healing touch as a part of our daily health practice.

The “sacred spot” of a man needs to be nurtured in this way to remain healthy. We men are not made of steel, like our macho myths would make us believe. We are vulnerable human beings and our bodies (and especially our prostates) need tender support.

Intimate self-massage is beneficial for women as well, because massaging their breasts can play an important role in maintaining their health and helping to avoid breast cancer.⁴ According to the ancient healing wisdom of the East, this practice of loving touch is beneficial to a woman’s vulva and vagina as well.⁵ But just as for men, the sexual shame of society often prevents them from giving themselves the intimate touch that they need.

Now I know, many readers who have an active sex life may think, “Why give myself intimate touch when I can rely on my lover to do it for me?”

But what happens if your partner gets sick, or is not in a sexual mood, or even if you take some time apart? Do you want your health to suffer as a result? What if you find yourself alone in your old age? That is a time when your health practices are most crucial. These experiences remind us that ultimately, we are responsible for our own health.

It is your responsibility to heal yourself, not someone else’s. No one could know you as well as you do – nor can they be trusted to care for your healing with the daily attention that you can bring to your process. The journey of healing depends, beyond all things, on how much you love yourself.

1. Benign prostatitis is almost universal in older American males and helps set the stage for cancer. 80% of men in extreme old age have cancer cells in their prostate. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men. ↩︎
2. “Medical science today accepts that is normal for men over the age of 50 to experience problems with their prostates. Although prostate problems may be (common) … they are not normal occurrences. They are abnormal occurrences. There is no need for any man to have prostate problems. If he regularly examines the prostate and practices the deer exercise, (which is a form of prostate massage) he might never have a prostate problem.” Quote by Stephen T. Chang, MD. From his book The Tao of Sexology p.63 (words in parenthesis inserted by author.) ↩︎
3. “Emotional toxins are feelings or beliefs that block healing. Examples are feeling unworthy, unloved, incompetent, stupid, ugly unfit or unlovable. Others are fears, worries, anger and resentment guilt or others. These can be every bit as toxic as pesticides or heavy metals.” Quote from Lawrence Wilson MD. ↩︎
4. Researchers at the UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley national laboratory have found that squeezing and massaging the breasts can help guide malignant mammary cells back to health. See online article published by Berkely News “to revert breast cancer cells, give them the squeeze.” Published December 17, 2012. ↩︎
5. See online article “What Yoni Massage is and How to Practice It” published in Medical News Today by Hana Ames and Zawna Villines – medically reviewed by Janet Brite Ph.D. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/yoni-massage ↩︎