“Sex work can’t be healing” said an angry woman on X. She expanded by telling me that my “rhetoric was wrong” and that it was ridiculous to claim that sex work can be a healing modality. On X I didn’t have space to explain that sex by its very nature is deeply healing and thus sex work, when done in the right way, can be amongst the most healing therapies in the world. 

 

Obviously there are no scientific randomised control trials on sexual healing because there is no money for big pharma in discovering that whores are naturally incredibly powerful healers. So what can whores heal? At the moment I don’t know the full potential of sexual healing. But I feel it every week. 

 

Let’s start there – with what I feel. 

 

I feel bodies relax and reset. I feel men (and women) enjoying their physical, emotional and even spiritual selves. I feel them connect to something within, sometimes, many times, for the first time ever. We live in a world where many (if not most) men (and women) have felt shame for, and of, their sexuality. Leading us to shut down something that is ours by right – our innate sexual energy.

 

Sexual energy is our life force energy. Think about it, sexual energy creates life! It can be channeled and directed by us to create the lives that we desire. Being disconnected from our own life force energy disempowers us, leading us to hand over our sovereignty to those with more power than us. 

 

I contend that loss of sovereignty is one of the main causes of dis-ease within our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies.  Thus, experiencing one’s sexual energy in an honouring, shame free environment is deeply, deeply healing. 

 

I’d like to introduce two powerful and inspirational females to assist me in explaining the healing power of sex work. 

 

The first is Kali, Hindu mother goddess, also goddess of death and rebirth, who is most often depicted as a fearsome female (the stuff of patriarchal male nightmares) often seated in a squatting position with her tongue sticking out wearing a necklace of skulls. 

Kali is not the beautiful, sexually available pagan goddess imagined by Western artists. Kali is fearsome female power personified. And she is scary to look at! Her sticking out tongue represents the power of the female voice, which as most men will confirm, can crush an ego, inflated or otherwise, in seconds. Her necklace of skulls represents those crushed egos.  

 

My second dame is Lilith, Adam’s first wife and dissatisfied lover who left him to allegedly spend eternity fucking the devil and eating babies for breakfast. 

 

Lilith refused to fluff Adam’s rubbish love making. As legend has it he insisted on having sex “patriarchal style” man-on-top but this didn’t give her the genital stimulation that she needed to experience pleasure and orgasm, she tried to persuade him to vary the position, but Adam, being God’s chosen one, knew that the “correct way” of doing things was for him to be on top during their sex and if Lilith didn’t orgasm, well that wasn’t too important was it?

 

His sassy, sexy, bold, beautiful lover wanted to be creative and playful in the bedroom, but his fragile male ego said, NO. So she left him. And apparently has since spent eternity with the devil – who apparently is a much better lover – quelle surprise!!

 

Maybe Adam needed to meet Kali, because Kali’s necklace of skulls is to remind humans of the impermanence of ego. We are all trapped into believing our ego selves over our real selves, but it’s all an illusion. 

 

Our ego selves are a painstaking construction of “self”. I like Pink Floyd’s metaphor of a wall – brick by brick your ego is constructed to separate you from every other human (or non human) being on the planet (and beyond) and also to keep you separated from your own true self – your inner essence, your soul, your divine spark.

 

In our highly material (and materialistic) age our egos are fed, watered and maintained by possessions, qualifications, labels, friendships, relationships, jobs, clubs, social media, our communities and so on. We are born free of ego (that’s why it is so easy to look into a newborn’s eyes and see infinite possibilities awaiting them) but from within minutes of our birth the world conspires (against us) to construct our egos.

 

Some babies suffer the barbarity of circumcision in their early hours – an unthinkable practice still common in much of the world. Its only purpose is as a crucial brick in the wall. How better to separate you from your inner spark than to prevent you from feeling that spark? But all babies are fed, clothed, named and held (or not) according to societal norms. 

 

In the west, for example, no crying baby is ever put to a male nipple for comfort – the idea to most is appalling – yet throughout human history and in much of the world today this is a completely normal and beautiful way to calm, nourish, nurture and bond with an infant. Gabor Maté will tell you that the lack of physical body to body contact in western baby rearing practices underpins much chronic disease and neurological conditions later in life.

 

Maté points to the Inuit who carry a baby continuously for the first two years of life, importantly this role is shared by all members of the community, male and female, not left to an exhausted mother coping, isolated and alone, on her own. 

 

But coldness and isolation are an intrinsic, I would argue essential, aspect of patriarchal control. And one of the many, many ways society creates your ego without you noticing.  

 

Therapists and life coaches will tell you that one of the most common beliefs people carry about themselves which prevents them from living a heart connected life is, “I am not worthy.” This is an ego belief. The constructed self has learned to believe that they are unworthy of all that they yearn for – love, connection, belonging, security, safety. 

 

Hasn’t patriarchy done a number on us all?! 

 

Can you see how much easier it is to control people who believe they are not worthy of a life beyond the treadmill?

 

This is what makes Kali furious and what Lilith would not settle for. 

 

My client today has an awful ego, and not in the way that you think when you read, “awful ego.” He is not “egotistical” – he doesn’t drive a flashy car and swagger around in look-at-me clothes. 

 

On the contrary, his ego has entrapped him in a life of miserable grey. He is possibly the greyest man I have ever met. Mr Cellophane: dull, easy to ignore and utterly miserable. He will be tormented on his death bed when he reflects on his completely wasted life.

 

Well maybe not entirely. Somehow he found me and he books regular Ra (tie and tease) sessions which are perfect for him. Ra is my Kali-esque session. It’s the session to strip you of ego and allow, if only for a moment, your true self to shine. To the untrained eye it looks harsh, like Kali, but the blindfold, cuffs, crops, floggers and pin wheels are there not to literally strip away flesh, but to invite you into surrender and sensation. 

 

Tantric sex is very much about sensation – about bringing your conscious awareness to sensation inside the body, not to label it as an emotional feeling, e.g. happy, sad, nervous, turned on, but as pure sensation, e.g. fizzy, warm, bubbly, throbbing, sharp, soft, gentle. 

 

Sensation leads us to the experience of energy in our bodies and energy leads us out of the material (and materialistic) realm into the quantum realm and back towards our original essence or soul. This is the journey you take with Ra.

 

My clients are blindfolded on arrival, they don’t get to see me in my lingerie let alone naked until after they have come. For years I thought the blindfold just removed sight – the most over-used of our senses – so allowing space for the other senses: hearing, taste, smell and touch to become heightened. But a female client of mine introduced me to a whole new way of seeing the blindfold – as an interruption to ego.

 

Remember, your ego self is who society tells you that you are. Years of social programming says that you are THIS person with THIS set of beliefs and THESE characteristics. Your ego self separates you from your true self and never is this truer than in sex. 

 

I introduced the blindfold to this female client during a yoni massage that I was coaching her lover to give her. To receive the massage she needed to lie spread eagle with her legs wrapped around her lover in full view of me – a virtual stranger. Even a whore might have qualms about this! So I suggested she wear a blindfold for her comfort. She loved it and thought about it for days afterwards. Eventually she messaged me to say, “I think it’s like holding your hands over your eyes as a child – if you can’t see them, they can’t see you, so you don’t have to feel the shame.”

 

Through the childish trick of wearing a blindfold my female client was freed from “being seen.” In the darkness she could let go of who she is meant to be (her ego self) and connect with her true, inner self – and the inner self loved the sensations she was receiving through her lover’s yoni massage. 

 

Do you begin to understand the allure of gimp masks now?!

 

I’ve yet to use a gimp mask on any of my clients but in a Ra massage they are always blindfolded for the full duration of the session. They’re also tied – both wrists and both ankles – spread eagle on the bed, first lying on their fronts and then on their backs. It’s not about pain, it’s about sensation, and, I know how pleasurable pain can be, so I don’t hold back! I want to make their skin tingle so that when I’ve stopped flogging and spanking them and pour oil over their skin they feel the oil, followed by my hands, with heightened sensitivity. 

 

I want to make their ears listen out for every movement I make, I want to activate that nervous anticipation that quickens the pulse and shortens the breath. It’s such a rapid activation of the body. The game they are invited to play with themselves is to receive it all. To take whatever I give them. To surrender to sensation – whatever it is. To submit to pleasure, all of it. 

 

It’s dark and it’s wicked and it strips layers of ego from them. Freed from their pathetic, miserable, dull little egos these giant men emerge. Men who feel so big, so bold, so WORTHY.

 

Today’s client thanked me at the end, again, for being his “safe place.” He had been tied up, and hit really hard – I’d even slapped him on the arse cheek whilst my finger was deep inside him. I had really “punished” him today. Yet he feels safer with me than anywhere else. He feels able to be “himself.” He feels seen and understood and – my words – freed from his depressed and depressing ego existence.

 

Today he told me that our sessions had given him the confidence to change jobs. To move from a job that is slightly better paid into a position that is more in alignment with him and thus carries much less stress. He is beginning to make choices that are good for his soul rather than what’s expected of him by those who seek to maintain his ego. 

 

Good whores don’t fluff male egos. Like Lilith we dare to lead our men into more mutually pleasurable, soul nourishing experiences. Like Kali we know that living a life on your terms, one that will free you of death bed regrets, means stripping yourself free of the limitations of ego as much as you possibly can. 

 

We can’t re-grow foreskins, but we can blindfold you and flog your backside until it’s red raw and your body tingles in ways you’ve never previously experienced so that when you return to a shitty job you feel worthy enough to say, “Fuck this!” 

 

Kali is smiling down at my client today – he is taking bold steps towards reclaiming what is left of his life to live it on his terms. 

 

That is the power of sex. 

 

“Good” sex takes you beneath ego so that you reconnect with your true self. 

 

Separation from our true selves is, I believe, one of the greatest causes of dis-ease on the planet. Reconnected to your true self you are able to give yourself the love, the care, the acceptance that you need to live a healthy and nourished life, and you are guided to make life choices that are actually good for you. 

 

The patriarchal model of sex pulls men and women away from “Good” sex. This infuriated Lilith who fled the scene. 

 

Whores, a bit kinder than Lilith, devote themselves to showing you the way back. 

 

So, I repeat the claim that I rather foolishly made to an angry woman on X, sex is the most potent healing power on the planet and thus whores, our sexual shamen, are the planet’s greatest healers.

 

Kali picture credit Raja Ravi Varma on Wikipedia

Lilith picture credit: Charles Chen on Unsplash