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It begins with how you establish your relationship with your clients. I'd say most people come to Body Electric initially because they want erotic experiences and then they end up spending time getting to know people, sharing, processing etc., and the whole experience ends up touching them in emotional, spiritual, mystical, psychological ways. With clients, try to communicate to them when they first start coming to you that you have a deeper level of learning that is available if they are interested. It's always a blend of seducing them into a deeper place with simply having big energy somehow break down their defenses. In your sessions, you should always try to have some time to explore what's going on in their lives in terms of intimacy. (If they weren't struggling in this arena in some way they probably wouldn't be showing up). I find that the conversational tone of being a supportive friend works better than trying to be a therapist with solutions to their problems. The presenting problem (premature ejaculation, for instance) is usually a symptom that has the potential to tap into deeper issues. This isn't an easy process, to break through men's defenses. There is a faith piece here, that those who show up at our doors are seeking a greater sense of fulfillment in their lives. They have to be pretty brave to ask for help in the erotic arena. So how do you capitalize on their courage and their willingness to be that vulnerable? The key is compassion rather than knowledge, ideas, head stuff. On some level with men, the goal is usually to help them feel things more deeply. When you can sense that a feeling is flashing across their psychic landscape (sadness, grief, anger, despair, fear), your job then becomes to guide them further into it with as few words as possible and give them room to feel things. Erotic energy is an amazing entry into these other realms of feeling because it establishes a sense of deep acceptance and safety. For most men, it is more challenging to feel safe enough to cry than to have a boner in the presence of another man. Boners are important for all kinds of reasons -- most of us are already experts on those specifics. But the most valuable is the capacity (or rather potential) it gives for greater intimacy. So if you can capitalize on the intimacy from a heart space, then it opens all kinds of possibilities for exploring your heart's desires, disappointments, wounds, victories, dreams, and perhaps most challenging, blind spots (shadow material). Underlying this whole process is the almost homeopathic application of truth as a healing balm. Too much truth can be shocking and counter-productive. People who are hungry for change and are actively seeking several means to accomplish it can usually handle greater degrees of it. Having intimacy with your clients, knowing them well enough, gives you a sense of when it is appropriate to pierce their hearts with enough force to break through their defenses and have them feel something deeply. So much of it seems related to good fathering. How do we ourselves have enough love and courage (big heartedness) for our clients that they can feel it as the motivating energy for why we are calling them forth to experience the pain and fear? The adult (sacred intimate) knows it is going to hurt, that it will definitely not kill you, and most likely feeling it will be enormously helpful. The child in us has a lifetime's worth of reasons why it makes perfect sense not to experience what has become frozen, numb and stuck inside of us. Having someone hold us while it hurts is such a vital (and missing) link in the process of healing.
– Collin Brown
Collin Brown and Steve Schwartzberg
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