Welcome to your Body. Remembers pleasure. I'm your host, Rahi Chun. This podcast is devoted to sexual embodiment, intimacy, and the body's innate capacity to heal, feel, and remember pleasure. If something here resonates with you, you're welcome to explore more writings and resources@rahichun.com. And now let's begin.

 I am deeply honored. Very excited to invite Joseph Kramer to the podcast. Today. In many ways an interview with Joseph should have been the inaugural podcast for something called Organic Sexuality. Joseph Kramer founded. Two seminal institutions that have produced literally thousands of somatic sex educators, sexological body workers, and sacred intimates all over the world.

Namely the Body Electric School of Massage and Rebirthing approved to train professionals in California in 1984, and the profession and field of sexological body work which was approved as a profession by the state of California in 2003. So we've just crossed the two decade mark. Today there are seven sexological, body worker body work trainings all over the world.

At which three of them, Joseph is on Faculty Now and Body Electric School events, virtual and in-person workshops and trainings all over the United States. Before completing massage school and practicing as a massage therapist and teaching at creating his own massage school, Joseph completed his master of divinity degree at Berkeley.

This was after serving as head of the Religion department at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, an all girls Catholic school in New York City, and after entering the Jesuit order where he spent 10 years studying, teaching and preparing to become a Catholic priest. Although he left the Jesuits before ordination, Joseph found his vocation as a teacher embracing the Jesuit motto to be a person for others.

Joseph, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. I'm in awe of, of human capacity and touching. The aliveness that's here and the different forms of aliveness. Let's start with what you just mentioned, the touching, aliveness. As we talked about before we started recording, it is very preliminary to understand the capacity of the states of consciousness that can open up with the intention of touch and the different kinds and quality of touch.

When you started your massage school, it sounds like that was like a principle or one of the main things you wanted your students to really embody in their sense eight experience. Could you definitely a little bit About what? What about that capacity for our consciousness and our embodiment to alter and expand through touching, aliveness.

Yes. Thank you for this opportunity. I, one thing we're talking about is languaging. How do we name some things and there's, especially when we get into areas of feeling states in the body and sensations. We're at a loss often, and there's a poverty there. I early on read Walt Whitman and one of his, many of his phrases just came into my body.

But one of them was the line many people know I sing the Body Electric and the Body Electric. Said something to me there is that's, I felt this vibration in my body. This is how I felt aliveness. And I go, yes, there is this aliveness. And most of my life I've been a long distance runner. Slow, easy, but long distance.

And this is like a meditation. And in that running or in my early days of. Solo sex with myself or with partners. I would feel this or just feeling wonderful on any day in my body, but noticing me, I would feel my own. How I am alive and then I got this word, body electric, and I go, yes. It's like an electricity that moves through my system.

This gives us this circulation too that it can move, there could be parts of our body that don't have much of this feeling and parts that have more of this feeling. So I. I, when I was 17, I joined the Jesuits, this Roman Catholic religious order, and I was there for 10 years till I was 27, 28, and an amazing education in those years.

But one of the first rules we got. When I joined the novitiate, it was two years of silence except one hour in the evening we could speak. This was our formation at the beginning, 1965 and the rule, and if we had to speak during the day, we had to speak Latin. And the rule was. Nolo tore, do not touch, you cannot touch anyone else.

That was the main rule. And so going into this, my years as a Jesuit, although of course I touched people, but the bottom line was don't touch. And so this is, I'm sure this is one of the reasons that I left that path. Yes. But. But it's because touch became so important for me and the touch, the electricity of touch.

And I remember studying acupressure, not acupuncture, but acupressure, and finding that one, the tip of one of my fingers on somebody. I could just hold it. And start to communicate and feel and amazing things just with one finger. And I love doing this. There are two fingers, two places on the body. So I, when I came to start my school, I go, the obvious name of the school is Body Electric.

Yes. And so I named it Body Electric. For that it was just this s aliveness. And part of the school involved breathing. We had breath work classes, and we had classes in people with life threatening illnesses, how to deal with that. We had cl, we had certainly shiatsu, which dealt with finger pressure and rhythms on the body and certainly, or a massage of the body, but.

For me, it was passing on this, the amazing qualities of touch and I thought the more that people touch, the more they would notice the different. Qualities, let's just put it that way. And so I have to say to this day, I'm 76, I, when I meet people who are massage therapists, I quiz them because I think these are people who have spent a great deal, especially people who've done this for many years.

They spent a lot of time touching what have they learned? What are they communicating? What's, what are their skills? And I feel their hands. The hands get turned on in different ways. So it's this touching, aliveness. And there's one more thing. I've always had trouble focusing attention, and as an adult I found out a DD, it's attention deficit and I have some of this, but when I'm touching I could focus intensely.

There was this, oh my God, and I've done. I figure 5,000 sessions. In my life. And I don't remember being upset or worried about distractions when I was doing those sessions. When I'm touching someone, I'm paying attention and I'm, if I'm not paying attention to the. The exact qualities of the touch, I'm paying attention to the awesomeness of just being able to touch.

So that, that was, it was like my gift, my way of being in the world was the importance of touch. And so I started as a massage therapist and then went into. Massage school that would foster this. And I had no intention by the way of moving this into sex or sexual touch. I never wanted to be a sex educator.

I'm a. An introvert, and that seemed a little too extrovert, but in introvert was this massage. The school was in Oakland and San Francisco was one of the places that AIDS first really hit. And as a. Gay male identified, queer identified male. I go, I know a skill that can be of assistance here because touch does not communicate HIV.

So I started to teach with trepidation, I have to say erotic massage classes for gay and bisexual men. And this caught on a lot of. A lot of people came to these classes including I invited people with aids. I wanted, I said, even if you have HIV, you're welcome in these classes. And that meant anybody who came knew that they were in this mix.

Right? And out of that, what happened there is I got to start. I got to pay attention. To a different quality of touch, and that is touch of sexual arousal. What is sexual arousal in the body? Both on the genitals, but throughout the body. And that's what I've been exploring for many years. And you mentioned two professions. I just wanna throw it in here. I thought there are people like me whose special gift is touching, and I called, I first named people who had that gift sacred, intimate, who were there with people for their transformation, but through touch and sacred intimates. I developed this during the AIDS era.

When there was no cure and so sacred, I, infants were also trained to be there with people as they died. So there were like midwives of the dying. But then as this evolved, lots of people became erotic masseus and touch became very more widespread. I, but illegal in the United States, still illegal to do this.

So that's where I pushed and created sexological body work and got the state of California to approve this as a profession in California. But it, but sexological body work was again, another vehicle to teach people to touch people in a variety of ways, but also erotically to awaken.

The potentials of, I found sexual arousal as a motivation to pay attention to your body. And we're in this big era, we're in this era of disembodiment where people are more and more their attention is elsewhere. They're in their, the virtual. And so this idea of touching erotically was to help people to come back and to feel their bodies.

So that's, and it wasn't necessarily to go the place of tantra, which was to come into your body and to touch another's body and to become. One with that. And I felt there was lots that was happening, but I felt there was a stage before that, that those two bodies coming together would be even better if people had a sense of their own body and what was their own body electric, what was going on their own body, and then came together.

The structure of my history. Yeah. It's really it's really fascinating, Joseph. What stands out for me is. During your 10 years of preparing to be a Jesuit priest the withholding of touch I'm really curious whether that heightened your sensitivity and attunement.

To touch because it sounds like that is just one of your natural gifts is, and when you talk about how touch for you is a communication between you your sensate focus and the other person's sensate reception that's a perspective and experience of touch that I don't think.

A lot of people have that. It is a natural communication, but it actually is. And then to explore the different ways of communicating through touch naturally invites this kind of discovery of all the different ways that touch can communicate from the sensate focus to different states of arousal.

It's really great to hear all of that. And also the fact that you were a long distance runner, which, because I, because in my mind I was like how did Joseph develop all of this understanding about breath and how breath infuses the body with sensation and aliveness? And now that makes so much sense.

I wanna read something. That I picked up from, I think it was one of your Arctic blogs or somewhere that I think is really important and speaks to so much about your downloads and your body of work, the services that you've been providing. So this is a quote from you. My Body Electric classes were created during states of sustained sexual arousal.

Taos erotic massage, the big draw and dozens of other erotic teaching structures came to me during this glorious state. The idea and even the details necessary for creating the new profession of sexological body work were birthed in lucid streams of sexual arousal. For most of my life, I have made important decisions by accessing.

My body wisdom in an aroused state. So this speaks to that extraordinary human embodied state that is available to all of us, that I think all people all, embodied human forms would love to access more of if they knew how. And it sounds like the downloads of the how came to you Exactly during these glorious states of sexual arousal.

I'm wondering if you could speak to what states of consciousness open up for you when you are in these lucid states, because I concur with you. I get ideas and how to teach and things of that sort during these states, but I've never engaged in a conversation with someone about what actually opens up in your consciousness during these states.

So first of all I think if I had to talk, name my profession right now, I'm a somatic sex educator. So the term somatic has come into the culture in the last 20 years as being body-based and. Your question. So how did I get so into my body if I was a Catholic boy who was repressed and all this? And there were two things.

One is from age 13, I ran every day probably till 60 years old, and my knees were a little and every day meant 28 days of the month. Not I, and it might be in the, and it would be about an hour or an hour and a half, 10 miles often. So that was one thing, and I felt I had to do this. It was a way of just feeling clear and in my body.

So there was, there, and during this time. A lot came through my mind. I just, there were just things that happened and I paid attention. The other thing, the other body-based thing that I did was more edgy. I think edgy for me because as a Catholic boy, masturbation was the sin. And it was a sin that if you don't go to confession and confess this, you can go to hell.

And I believe this. Yet, I was so drawn to touch myself and crave this that I would have to say I regularly masturbated regularly and regularly went to confession as a Catholic boy. But the this masturbation was it's, it was a different consciousness. And I have to say, I think. That consciousness was what helped me escape the closed world of being a Catholic and believing all this stuff, even though I went into the Jesuits.

So I went into the Jesuits and I knew that I had to stop my habit or my regular masturbation, which I did, but it was. I've written about this a couple places. I remember the last weekend before I entered the Jesuits and I said, I'm gonna masturbate one more time. I know it's a mortal sin and all this, but I'm never gonna ever have sex again.

I remember masturbating and saying, I have to, I wanna remember what this feels like. I've, I was doing this whole thing and then, ah. I came and I go, that's it. I'm tomorrow, I'm entering the Jesuits. I'm going out to the seminary. But an hour later I go, you're going to confession later, so you should do one more time and one more time.

And that day I just masturbated. I had no intention of continuing do it, but I did many times. 'cause I said, this is the last time. So that, that's just the opening, that this was a place. There was an alternate reality, this state in my body, and I didn't real like running, I just naturally happened upon running and happened upon masturbating.

I have to think. And I continued running during my Jesuit years and that was my embodiment. I think that. But I recognized the lack of embodiment from touch and from sexual arousal and having the gift of celibacy, it was called the gift of celibacy. I recognized during those years, I don't think I have the gift of celibacy, like it's not easy.

So when I left the Jesuits. It became a time of reconnecting to my arousal and to touch, and it was quite amazing. Now to get to your, what are the qualities of this because it was. A separate thing. It was like a, I would go into another realm and I didn't, Fanta, I've never been somebody to Fantas, I don't fantasize very much, which really guided my sex education.

In teaching people, if you're paying attention to your own body rather than going off into some fantasy, it can be a different experience. So let's try that. But I would, I was paying attention and. What I've found is running and sexual stimulation awakens my body in different ways. So there's just as this morning I breathe fast breath, and that awakened my body and it, there's an alertness that comes and it's, it's soil for things to grow out of. And I, I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I'm allowing, I'm creating a space where other things can happen in my mind, in my brain and my body. But I do know that masturbation as. Especially prolonged where I'm just in a state and often breathing and maintaining and not going higher, not trying to get to orgasm, ejaculation release.

It's just the state where things can happen and come to me. And I started doing this, taking notes actually. And then after I. When I got into massage among my friends, I wanted to try arou. I love massage. I love the state of someone else pleasuring me and paying attention to this. And with my intimates, I, we worked with arousal and so when I was aroused and someone's arousing me, I was noticing, and then I think it's just a note.

I, it was. It was out of this noticing that it wasn't just sensations, there was ideas that came up and thoughts, and they had a certain, importance. Oh, that was, oh, that's a really good idea. And actually, in my erotic massages, I often had a pad. It was way, a yellow pad and a paper. And if I didn't write it down, I asked my Maeu, stop and write these words down so I would remember.

Wow. And write this down. So there were always times of paying attention and I, my best maeu for a year. I remember him saying, I don't like doing this writing. I think you should let go of this and just focus on the sensations in your body. But no, this was another realm that ideas came to me of what I should try and there are visions of, it was like a vision.

When I read about the vision quest of Native Americans, I thought, yeah I'm in this state where. Images come to me or ideas come to me. And as I became a teacher, I, some of the things that I was doing, new ideas about what I was doing would come to me. Or if I was working on a client who came to me regularly and he was coming, I'd be in this state and the and idea would come on how to work on his body.

Or her body. Or their body. And it was it was, so I don't know the exact qualities, but I do know that I. The best states were where I was quiet in the body. Even though when I ran, I did other things. It was more when I was quieter and the arousal kind of moved around my body. It was streamings of arousal.

And things came up. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's so much similarity to what you're speaking about those. Aliveness states of running long distance, the arousal states of erotic energy in the body when you're not chasing, after an orgasm or some set of, some something beyond you.

And even the states of psychedelics where there is I don't wanna say. Heightened but different states of aliveness that, that are beyond the normal kind of neural pathway grooves of the way you think. Yes. Yes. As you say, what you shared made me think of the one of the medium articles that you've written.

You, you talk about, the most influential and harmful habit of sex sometimes called the governing habit of sex is the mindless pursuit of orgasm and release. This wanting or craving of orgasm release is a dopamine driven neurological process that gives rise and endurance to all of our other.

Sexual habits and it is a mindless pursuit. You are not, you're chasing after something that is not your current embodied state. And it does lead to sexual habits that are not ideal. It seems like in your teachings with the Body Electric and sexological body work, it is so much about being present to your state of.

Aliveness and embodied, heightened states of arousal and yeah. And what can expand in your realm of experience as a result of that? I told you, I decided when I ran this massage school that I should teach erotic massage for gay and bisexual men. And I started doing this. And in the massage I was a bit worried because.

HIV was in semen. And so I thought, oh, I can't have ejaculation. This massage has to be separate from ejaculation Uhhuh. So I came to a thing where it's prolonged stimulation, but not taking people toward ejaculation. And in my individual sessions, when I advertised. Anywhere I advertised non ejaculatory erotic massage.

So people who came, there was an agreement, men that they were not going to ejaculate. And this work for women also, they were important, but came into my life in a different way because it wasn't about safe sex education. But anyway, I had this. Non ejaculatory and I started, people had to learn to just savor being in a body, savor, savor the aliveness, and be with the aliveness.

And that change what happened in Body Electric. And by the way, for 40 years, body Electric has been teaching that same massage. They still do today without ejaculation. And so I don't know any. Any group, anybody that's done that much. And I've talked to people and what happens when people have this prolonged an hour of arousal in a body electric class, somebody who's had no intention of this, probably never experienced an hour of this type of arousal, they, there's a quiet afterwards where. I love the pause. The pause and paying attention and amazing things happen and I got all kinds of feedback a week later or two weeks later that I've made really good decisions this week.

I got out of a relationship that I needed to get out of for six months, or I'm changing my job. So clarity came. From this state to many people. And again, some people said it was quite a spiritual experience. I never, I don't ever say anything. I have my view, my languaging.

But they had. They had exceptional human experiences through arousal, so it wasn't just me. The preliminary was there. My sadness about my whole body electric experience was that I was in this period offering this experience and it was having amazing. Results in people, but I didn't have this idea that I want to teach people how to do this separate from coming to this class.

I didn't teach it as a practice. And that's and that was my, I think it worked for what it did. But it didn't start a whole movement. Among gay men and others about massage. For some of them it did. I'd say 10%, but people said that was one of the most extraordinary erotic experiences of my life.

This erotic massage, and then they would not get another erotic massage. That was great. I had that. Body electric class. What's sexological body work? And what I'm trying now is to teach people through, it's through practice. You can access this regularly with others, with your partners, or with friends, et cetera.

But I found that. This prolonged erotic experience. It's our aliveness teaches us, our body teaches us, there's things interoception, it comes from within. And so we just have to pay attention. Yeah. I wonder, two things, one, I did wonder how the evolution happened from.

Teaching and guiding the body electric to the field of sexological body work. So you just responded to that because you wanted people to actually go home and have a regular practice of these extended states of e aliveness and arousal. I often wonder whether.

Whether these expanded states of arousal start to de arm or melt the resistance to receiving be, because there are greater states. It certainly changes our breathing patterns. It certainly changes our I'm sure our neurochemistry and all sorts of other things that happen chemically.

And, yeah I think it is such a gift to, all genders, but especially to like heterosexual couples because there's such a mismatch of arousal patterns between vulva owners and co owners that this really teaches, the cock owners to luxuriate and to revel in these extended states of arousal without ejaculating.

I wanna touch upon this term savoring arousal, savoring states of sexual. This is also from, I think from your course savoring states of sexual arousal helps us disrupt our dopamine driven craving orgasm mode, and other limiting sexual arousal habits. It's so bizarre to me that the norm is. Cock owners going for the ejaculation because so much kind.

It's like the party ends after that and I've always seen it that way and, rather than circulating it or breathing to expand, which is what we do in the Taos erotic massage. Because just as we're speaking, there are so many states of enhanced, extraordinary, embodied states of arousal and consciousness that are available.

That it's almost like a cosmic joke. It's almost like the message was, ill guided and so much of mainstream society is now practicing this Ill guided, go for the ejaculation. And the opposite way of saying it's a wasted potential. Here's the potential that's not being used. That we have. I do think this is a bit more difficult. Say a couple's been together for five years and they go, we're gonna take a tan class and we're gonna learn this. And they learn. Breathing together and looking in each other's eyes and going into these prolonged states, and I think this is a path of learning, but what I've found is that.

People in relationships have enormous amounts of habits in the way they relate in their attention and in their bodies, and they're un, they're unaware of the habits and so what? So the, if it's a heterosexual couple, if the man took a class or was with someone that they weren't related to and they were introduced to this, they could, they, they don't have any habits that they have, right?

They could learn and be with it and. Their partner could also do the same and then they could come together. But I find, I think it's more difficult. And I heard this over and over in teaching, even in sexological body work where people say, I tried this with my partner and we just couldn't.

We have, and it's, there's habitual ways of being and trust and that are not even. Understood. So that's where coming to a professional Yes. Or someone else. Third party. And this is why taking classes, some couples go and they do exercises and practices with other people in the class because they don't have any history.

Yeah. There's a lack of, associations or wiring with the person or the pattern and the, there are new neural pathways that can create, be created with a different partner or a different practitioner. I want to ask you, we touched a little bit about.

Different breathing strategies because I feel like, again it makes so much sense to me now that knowing you were a long distance runner for so many years, that breath was like an integral part of your state of embodiment and to access states of embodiment breath. It's, I feel like the different techniques of breath and breathing are almost like different musical instruments to bring into a symphony of how the energy can can play the body. And it is such an integral part. I'm sure your experience as a runner informed your understanding of breath work, but it feels like you've also taken it upon yourself to use your body as a lab and try out different breathing techniques. I remember when we did during COVID you.

Facilitated kind of these pods forming and you started at it out by leading us in the resonance frequency breathing. Can you speak to your, the evolution of your understanding of breath work as it relates to how it can play different energies in our body? Certainly I've gotten a lot of different understandings of different periods in my life and I'd like to touch on three, but early on it was, the breathing of running is, was really important because it becomes a.

It's a second nature and I remember I live near hills the Oakland Hills. And when I'd run from my house and toward the hills, I would start breathing before I got to the hills of faster breath. 'cause I knew I needed. That I don't like being out of breath. That's that idea. So I started learning about breath with running, but I took a training in quote rebirthing breath.

Ah, at least one year in 1979. So right as I was going to massage school and I had. I had no real idea that this was gonna hook up necessarily with, I didn't I, a friend of mine was doing it and I said, I do it this class with him, and then I invited my breath teacher to teach breath at Body Electric.

And this, but the fast that was this fester circular breathing, so it was no pause at the top or the bottom of the breath. So it's.

I see, that breath and it could be slower or faster. And what I found with that breathing is that when I didn't understand, I understood that if I did this, it had I felt a lightness and a different feeling in my body. So it was a. Another a pleasurable state. So when I was creating this erotic massage I thought, let's weave together this breathing.

What I didn't understand was if, especially with men, if they were breathing a rhythm. It and that they don't normally breathe. They couldn't go off into fantasy. So as long as you're breathing, you have to stay present. To your body. If you're in this rhythm, and especially at the beginning.

So I think the breath kept people present and paid attention. You had to pay attention to your body, that these were things that I just lucked at. I thought, that's amazing. I know. But then I realized that breath is one of the most habitual things we do. There's all kinds of habitual breaths that wouldn't work.

Nervous. We breathe a certain way. Our, we don't even, we're not even aware how our breath changes but it's unconscious, most of it. So I real, so it came to me that. If I want to change habits in my body, if I change my breath if I'm, whatever I'm doing, whether it's a slow breath or fast breath, I'm changing my habits and Or that habit of breathing.

Yeah. Yes. And that if you change one thing in your body, it's all so connected. It starts shifting and changing a lot. And I'd like to give an example of this in, I've never. Really emphasize slow breath. A lot the residents frequency breathing I've been doing since COVID is about five and a half seconds of an inhale and five and a half seconds of an exhale about in that category.

And there's lots of tapes on YouTube for people who like to explore residents frequency, breath. It's quite wonderful. But about two years ago, so I started really looking at diaphragmatic breathing. And the idea of breathing in and the diaphragm on the inhale pushing down, and then the opposite.

And I started doing this and playing with it, laying down. And what happened is I wanted to feel the inhale when I pushed down to push down on my belly in the insides my intestines. I wanted to feel that pushing all the way to my pelvic floor. And it took me, I had done this. I'd had some breath training with this years ago, but I never followed up on it.

But I did several months of this and I got to that. I could, on the inhale push, and I could even feel a slight opening of my anal sphincter that I would push all the way down and come back and push. So the inhale was a, and I was mostly did this on the floor with my knees up. With my feet flat on the floor and my knees up, and I did this again and again, and I then started to try this with sexual arousal in an erotic massage situation.

And what I found is that my breath was moving the inside of my body, and this gave a different. Feeling to arousal. My arousal was playing in this slow breath this, and it came to me that, yes, if the inside of my belly and everything is static and I'm aroused, there's not, there, there's more potential if it's, if there's a lot of movement.

And so I really got into this. This breathing. And I went online and found vi videos of actually looking at the, what's going on and what's, and tried to imagine it in my mind so I could see it even more. But that's, that was my of the last two years. That was an exploration of a breath that I now can breathe all the way down and I can stand and do this breath now and push down and feel it all the way to my pelvic floor and then back up.

And there's a fluidity that I have as an older man that I didn't have. Before I started this, my belly, there's a fluidity in the bottom half of my torso. So when I read more about the anatomy of this, I know some, but there is, there's supposed to be a movement ability of the intestines and the the different organs. There's this slight movement, but it can get really. Tight and so I think I've loosened up the inside of my body. Yeah. And that feels good. But I'm also, it also is. Positive in sex too. It's, I can feel just a slow breath. I used to do fast breath to move erotic energy and feel erotic pleasure.

I usually don't say energy. I say erotic. I say sexual excitement. I usually to move the sexual excitement around moving all the way down into my pelvis and I, I feel a whole, even as I'm telling you this, I'm, my body's lighting up that, yeah. This is some new thing that's happened recently. That's so exciting.

I'm happy with, yeah. That I'm really happy with. The other thing I'm recognizing is because there is such a consistency to the 5.5 seconds in 5.5 seconds out, it's if you wanna upregulate and bring more aliveness, you can do the upregulating breath. But then if you wanna prolong the states of that extraordinary aliveness, it seems to me that the resonance breathing will support that because it is so consistent in a very downregulated breathing rhythm.

In fact I use. Resident frequency breathing as a diaphragmatic breathing now? I do 5.5 down and I arched my back and do all this and move my pelvis. So there's this pelvic rocking that I do with the resident frequency breathing and the pushing. So I've used that well. Yes.

Awesome. There I want to, I wanna ask you about the erotic massage dancing, because it feels to me like the erotic massage dancing is bringing together all of these elements, the touch, aliveness, the breathing the attention, the savoring. How did the erotic massage dancing evolve in the way that you've taught it that you teach it whatever I've done, I've watched and said, what could be a little addition here or there and added, so I've been doing, I have been doing erotic massage for. Many years. Years. And there's a people who I do erotic massage on. Some people are very still, but they're breathing. I always had people breathe.

But some moved more. Their body started getting into it and I thought, there's more, I, there's something about this. About not being like a corpse receiving. There is something about being in the stillness, but there's also something about. Waking up your whole body and engaging in your whole body.

Where this came from is erotic massage, as I taught it at Body Electric and all was similar to giving a massage a nonsexual massage. And that means a person receives and I give and they have an experience and I thought there's something wrong with this. I want the person. To engage and that they're part of giving themselves this experience and they're guiding the experience even I see they're saying do this and guiding their arousal and being involved, and their hands are involved.

I like a massage, dancing. Is that I'm facil, I'm giving a massage guided by the person that I'm touching. And they are, their hands are involved. Their breathing is involved. They can change it. I can give suggestions at the beginning when people haven't had any experience with this.

Certainly I'm guiding most of it, but what happens is when people are aroused and they're moving that arousal. The term circulates, but it moves to different parts of the body. And the neurology more, the neurology is turned on. The neuro, the neurons are firing and. Their hands are involved, they're engaged, they're responsible.

Then it's, that's more usable in sex with others. I think being still in receiving erotic touch and having a really interesting experience doesn't carry over as much. With the partner. Which is really a dance. So that's where the dancing part came in, I thought.

Wait. We don't want just a massage like the stillness of a Swedish massage right on the table. We want somebody who's dancing what's happening in their body, and they're touching, and they're breathing and they're moving. And then this also is available to them in their own solo sex. They can dance and move and breathe.

Yes. In fact, a version of the erotic massage dancing, I teach. For people who like to watch porn, right? And I say. Good. I'm, I don't have, my problem with watching porn is that porn grabs your attention and it's in the porn. And if you're masturbating your attention's in the porn and not very much in your body, right?

So I say, what if you watch standing up? And if people are standing up they naturally start to move and engage as they're watching. Their attention is still there, but more of their attention has to come back here. And so it's a similar, it's a standing version of this and the experience of watching porn becomes less.

Passive. Yeah. Less passive active. And then like I've been used, I've used myself, I haven't. It's wow. And what happens sometimes is there's so much going on in somebody's body, so they let go of the porn for a while and they're in their body. They're like, wait, this is way more interesting to pay attention to this.

That doesn't happen when you're lying down or sitting down. It happens. When you're standing, so erotic massage, dancing, either standing. Or sitting, and if I might say I have a free website about teaching that standing it's called embodied porn watching.com and embodied porn watching.com.

Okay. And there's videos on there. That show people standing and doing, there's exercises and it's all explained. Yes. Yeah. I just I think there's, one standing up is more akin to our, it's it's just what you're saying, the transferable somatic imprints between being passive on your back.

Can only be, it's quite limited when you're engaging with your liver, right? Quite limited. Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to the new somatic imprints when you are standing embodied, engaging not only with yourself but there's a relational dynamic as well. And so a relational, both active dynamic where you are the instigator of your experiences, which is really just empowering imprints to, to wire with your.

Extraordinary embodied states of arousal. Yes. A story about that, if I might, a short one, and that is, yeah. Somebody I was coaching. I started coaching him when he was a teenager, but I, he came back and I was coaching him in this standing for watching porn and he told me, he says. My girlfriend now says when I wanna have sex, she says, I'd really only like to have sex with you after, on the same, in the af after you've done your I used to call it porn yoga after you've done exercises. While you're watching porn. Or embodied porn watching. But she only won it. She said, you're more alive then after you do that. Yeah. And I, and he was surprised and I said, yeah. Makes sense. It makes total sense. So good. So good.

Joseph, I don't know if I ever shared this with you, but my life as a somatic sex educator was deeply influenced by both the body electric and obviously sexological body work. When I was 23, I came across a three day body electric. Workshop where we, it was a rebirthing workshop using extraordinary states of embodied arousal.

And it really put me on the path to wanting to know everything about these extraordinary embodied states. So I have always body Electric has always been like a really dear. Dear place in my heart and in my body, and of course becoming a the field of sexological body work has.

Allowed so many of us to really honor our purpose in life in a very unique way. And so I'm extremely grateful to all of your teachings and to the service that you've, yeah. To, to your service in the world. Thank you so much. It's a rough job, but somebody has to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Not all things.

We're so blessed. We're, so many of us are so blessed and I'm sure there are. Hundreds of people like me who've been, if not thousands, who've been so affected by your teachings and the way you have taken on that Jesuit motto, of being, of service as a teacher and who don't get the chance to interview you and express it to you in person, but know that there are legions of us around the world who are so grateful for all that you've done.

Thank you. I will have all of your links on the show notes. I know that recently you've offered a new course. Is it savoring arousal? Is that the new course you launched this year? I've taught individual online courses of different names and I, I don't have any one course, one that I do, I call it sustained sexual arousal, and it's to grab people's attention, they go sustained sexual arousal.

But I find, again, focusing on that arousal is a way of waking up and becoming embodied, and we need embodied rituals. Yes, I'm, I feel as we go more and more into the amazing world of virtual and what's happening is really. Conscious people need to have rituals that they can pull back, pull in, and wake up their body in a short, in an hour.

Or in an afternoon, once a week where they can remember their body and have access to it. And sex can be part of it. Psychedelics can be part of it. Exercise, but that's what I'm. Breathing. Yes. But I think it's really important for people to, to access the amazing things of the body and sustain sexual arousal is one of those.

But Joseph has so many websites and so a lot of free education, a lot of sex education videos that are free on erotic massage.com. Orgasmic yoga.com. We mentioned embodied porn watching yoga of sex.com. And again, I'll have all of these links in the show notes so you can reach out to Joseph.

Start a ritual yourself, which I totally concur is really the secret to have some sort of regular practice. So you are. Default embodied state of being has a different buzz and a different hum to it. Which is all available based on these practices that we've been discussing. Breath work focused attention, a savoring touching aliveness.

Joseph, it it's such an honor to see you and to have this communal shared experience. I thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for inviting me. This has been delightful.

 Thank you for listening to Your Body. Remembers Pleasure If this conversation supported you, the simple way to help this work reach more people is to leave a five star rating or a brief review. You'll also find more resources and teachings@rahichun.com. Until next time, take good care.