I Went to an Erotic Dance Workshop but I Don’t Feel More Sexy

It’s twilight now and I’m standing in front of an empty chair, a little chilly and nervous, wearing only a bra and tiny shorts - called ‘booty shorts’, as I had learnt earlier that day. I’m surrounded by other scantily-clad women, mainly in their mid- to late-20s, also waiting by their chairs. The room is dark, thankfully, with tealight candles and the fragrance of whatever was burnt and wafted around to ‘cleanse the energy’ hanging thickly in the air.

The men walk in. About two thirds of them are the partners of the women and the other third are strangers, carefully curated by the workshop facilitators for single women and for those who opted to undertake this ritual with an unknown partner. They sit down, the music starts, and the instructions begin.

Tonight I am playing the role of the seductress, in order to own my sexuality, connect with the ‘divine feminine’ energy (a concept completely divorced from gender) within all of us, and reconcile my sexuality with a higher consciousness or spirituality. I’m a little fuzzy on what it all means, but I’m going with it.

Anyway, back to the sexual-spiritual fusion ritual. We start dancing for our assigned partners to some seductive RnB. Despite my intention to dance freely based on what feels, rather than looks good, as we have been instructed, in my nervousness my mind quickly flicks through the catalogue of sexy moves that we learnt earlier that day. Your toes should always be pointed and back arched, we’re told, the moves look better that way. I feel awkward and self-conscious. My calf muscle starts to cramp and my hair pulls on the carpet from writhing around suggestively on the floor. Erotic dance is hard.

While we have been encouraged to dance primarily for ourselves and for own pleasure, I’m highly aware of my ‘witness’, or spectator, though he doesn’t seem sleazy at all. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel the same freedom and joy in my own body that I get from a great session at No Lights No Lycra, where we dance in a dark hall for an hour, or when I crank up Taylor Swift alone in my room. Despite the recommendation to focus on parts of your own body that you like, I know which female body parts are considered most titillating in our culture and which parts of my own body have, uh, historically been most appreciated. Would it be equally sexy if I rotated my elbow instead of twerking in front of you? For the most part I feel like I’m performing sexiness rather than feeling it.

After the first dance, the breathwork, or ‘energetic lovemaking’ part of the ritual begins. We are invited to sit on our partner’s lap (this is completely optional but almost everyone chooses to do so), maintain eye contact, and start synchronising our breath, with the intention of exchanging masculine and feminine energies. The exchange seems to be taking place and at some point I feel a certain body part press against my thigh… I shouldn’t be surprised, I tell myself. I guess that’s what can happen when you straddle a stranger in your underwear.

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How did I find myself here? I’m always up for trying new things, especially anything related to self-development. When I see an unusual offering on Laneway Learning or a new therapeutic modality, I’ll sign up. I almost pride myself on jumping in head first, without fully knowing what I’m in for. Fearless perhaps, or just foolish.  

The purpose of this weekend workshop was to remove the shame from being a sexual being, which is simply part of being a human being. To embrace one’s sensuality rather than seeing it as dirty, or manipulative, or - insert whichever other negative connotation society has attached to it for you. To marry tantric and mindfulness principles with sexuality.

It sounded great. I love dancing, so erotic dancing wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, right? Plus, I was about to embark on an extended overseas trip, and after a recent break-up, sure, I could do with some increased confidence and empowerment.

Day one was devoted to theory and personal reflection. Until now, my impressions of tantra were limited to the cultivation of extended tantric orgasms and that scene from Sex and the City. Here, we learned about how to apply principles of tantra in three practical steps. One: Consecration. Start by setting an intention and surrender the outcome of your actions to the higher good or for the benefit of all. Two: Transfiguration. Through maintaining soft eye contact with the other person, or with oneself in a mirror, aim to see beyond the physical appearance, outward personality, and behaviours, to connect with the spiritual essence within. And step three: Sublimation. Move energy throughout your own body and in exchange with the other, using breath, sound, and movement. Though there is undoubtedly much more to tantra, I appreciated how the concepts were presented in such an accessible format.

Today there are many offerings of a spiritual and/or self-development nature from various coaches, gurus, and self-help entrepreneurs. According to Dr Kirk Honda, host of the Psychology in Seattle podcast, these courses often share some common features. There’s usually an aspirational, charismatic leader - check - with a beautifully toned, lithe body, who facilitated most of the weekend wearing only lingerie. There was a big reveal - the concluding ritual on the evening of day two - nerve-wracking, but with the seductive allure of potential self-transformation. There was also an emotion-inducing part, in which the facilitator danced for her real-life partner to demonstrate the ritual. Some participants were so touched that they cried. I felt like I was witnessing an intimate moment between a couple that perhaps shouldn’t have been witnessed. Am I missing something? Maybe I’m just a cold fish, I wondered.

Most of the participants had a strong interest in spirituality, broadly speaking, and despite my commitment to self-growth, this is a culture that I often feel I don’t quite belong to. Two participants instantly recognised something in each other upon arrival and concluded that there was probably a relationship in a past life. Some of the women talked about “making love” to the earth, or to the ocean while swimming, as a way to connect with a new country and for other reasons I don’t recall. I would smile vaguely and nod, trying to avoid offending anyone with my skepticism and fit in with the group. Also, people kept describing things positively as “juicy”, or “that’s where the juice is”. Can someone tell me what this means? Did it originate from a reference to the flow of sexual bodily fluids?

Maybe it was this spirituality culture that put me off. I turned up on the second day a little reluctantly. It was perhaps a feeling I should have followed, like many of my intuitions, but I was holding out for the mysterious ritual that might make everything worthwhile. Day two was devoted to dance work and rehearsal for the ritual. The erotic dance moves, drawn from striptease and pole dance, looked smooth and sexy when demonstrated by the facilitator and her assistants, but rather more clumsy and comical in my body. Less is more, the facilitator advised.

The intention to connect with ourselves and our own bodies seemed at odds, I felt, with the ultra performative nature of female sexuality and performer-spectator relationship with which we are so familiar. A group environment tends to further encourage conformity. While we had been encouraged to wear whatever feels comfortable for us for the ritual, as some women changed into very sultry lingerie, others, perhaps emboldened by pre-performance adrenaline, removed further items of clothing at the last minute. When one participant threw off her modest but sweet summer dress, the group cheered. I felt disappointed.

Nor could I fully accept the workshop’s higher spiritual goals to bring repressed sexuality into awareness and to heal the unconscious, unhealthy patterns of relating between the masculine and feminine. According to writer and life coach Maya Yonika, this language is typical of ‘Neo Tantra’, a vast movement that promotes embodiment techniques and sexual union as a vehicle towards spiritual enlightenment. Reinvented for the West much like yoga, Neo Tantra is largely divorced from traditional Tantric origins. Yonika writes that proponents often “wave flags that proclaim more and better sex and orgasms as the key to freedom and higher consciousness”. I’m all for enhanced pleasure and intimacy, but does it need the spiritual pretext? It’s an interesting juxtaposition, though I’m not entirely convinced.

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You might be thinking, if I wasn’t satisfied with the workshop, why didn’t I communicate this directly to the facilitators or submit the feedback form? Well, I absolutely intended to fill out the form. I sat with it for a few days, planning to scan and email it later, but ran out of time before going overseas (like the time when I had planned to reply to a tinder date, but didn’t quite know what to say and then unintentionally ghosted him). There was simply too much for me to unpack after the experience, questions and comments that would not fit within the confines of the form. Hence this de-identified blog post (plus, hey, no one reads this blog).

I should also add that many, if not most participants found this workshop very beneficial and enjoyable. The ritual, in particular, seemed to be a powerful bonding experience when performed with a known partner and many of the couples looked very blissed-out and connected afterwards. Some women were able to show new sides of their sexuality after years of being in relationship, to their partners’ great appreciation.

Perhaps my resistance stems from my years as a student of the Melbourne School of Philosophy (something I share with Hugh Jackman apparently, unlike our views on international adoption), with teachings based on Advaita Vedanta, an ancient branch of Hindu philosophy. These Vedic practices promote meditation (or disembodiment) as the master key to enlightenment and their more ascetic principles tend to distrust the body and sensory pleasures. Todd Jones writes that traditional Tantra began as a radical movement within both Buddhism and Hinduism around 500 AD, which embraced everything that mainstream Indian spirituality left out, and originated amongst lay peoples.

At this point, despite my internet wanderings, I’m still not clear on what tantra is, so I turn to the ever-helpful Gwyneth Paltrow for guidance. GP’s go-to tantra expert Michaela Boehm says:

“It is essentially a tradition in which awakening is pursued through embodiment (vs. disembodiment in meditation, etc.) and union is sought through relationship and intimacy. In the West it has been mostly pursued for its emphasis on using sexual union as one of the vehicles to awakening (enlightenment). In reality, only a small portion of tantra has anything to do with sex, and only as a way to merge with the divine. There is a much larger tantric discipline that deals with allowing all feelings to be met with equal acceptance, and for each person to become deeply sensitive to what they are feeling. Subsequently, they are then able to feel others and their needs.”

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So do I feel more sexy? Well, in moving beyond my comfort zone I have slightly increased my confidence. But a confrontational or emotional experience is not necessarily a transformative experience. I don’t dismiss these concepts however - it is totally feasible to me that my divine feminine has been buried and dismissed within a masculine, patriarchal society, and re-connecting with that will take more time than one weekend. Real breakthroughs are rare, most growth is slow and gradual.

Still, there were some key takeaways for me. I really liked the maxim to ‘mind your own pleasure’, rather than trying to please. This seems like common sense, but I can do with the reminder. I often come out of my own body and into my mind, wondering if the other person is enjoying the experience.

I also liked the transfiguration step of trying to connect more deeply and fully with the whole person in sexual intimacy. To set the intention to see the other, beyond their personality, achievements, and physical appearance - to even feel their heart and soul. A lofty but worthwhile ideal.

But my main learning was that if I go to a self-development workshop and I’m not feeling it, that’s ok. There’s nothing wrong with me for going against the grain, I’m not necessarily less evolved or open, and I’m not necessarily projecting some judgment because I secretly want to explore sex work. We have different paths to healing and growth. If it works for you, great, and if it doesn’t, it simply doesn’t. I questioned myself, but didn’t need to.

Ultimately, I still value my curiosity and willingness to jump into the unknown. I’m grateful for my body, soft flabby parts and all, and its ability to experience pleasure in movement and dance. And I’m grateful for my ‘methods of seduction’, and connection, that have nothing to do with my body.

And I’ll keep dancing, at No Lights No Lycra sessions, at clubs, and in my bedroom, to dance almost purely for myself, but sometimes surrounded by other dancers, equally lost in their own blissful, self-exploratory worlds.

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