Moving Into Intimacy
is a new workshop for the Body Electric School.
Coming to San Francisco, California March 8-10, 2024
Facilitated by Lui Gervais
Moving Into Intimacy is a creative physical workshop exploring the inner and interpersonal worlds of embodied pleasure. Moving Into Intimacy is an effort to answer the questions: What is intimacy? How can we successfully create more intimacy in our lives? And how does intimacy connect to our sensual bodies and our Eros?
Moving Into Intimacy is movement workshop offered as a spiritual practice. Each moving meditation is an aphrodisiac. Each ritual casts a spell of transcendence, from emotion isolation into to fully awakened, easily held states of loving presence. Moving Into Intimacy is a toolbox of creative sensual practices for you to take home with you. Tools that will inspire practical new ways to create the intimate erotic life you dream of. It’s a moving/breathing/loving/
I’ve been evolving this somatic work for more than twenty years. The inspiration for Moving Into Intimacy first came to me in a high-school classroom. After my touring life as a dancer, I was back home, reimagining the gifts of my performing career as an arts educator. In a rural Maine schools with desks piled high along the walls, an AP English class came face to face with the angelic Life Skills students who were often isolated from the rest of the student body. These disparate students met for the first time by stepping into a moving meditation I still use in my teaching today called The River of Love.
Facing one another for the first time, these teenagers, some dreaming of college, others struggled to walk or speak, paired up and walked slowly sideways together down a corridor I had drawn on the floor with masking tape. The only real instruction was to maintain eye contact with their partners the entire time. For some students, this was a real physical emotional challenge. At the end of the corridor, they would step in even closer toward one another and walk slowly back.
As the music pulled on emotions, some partners instinctively reached out to offer a hand of sustained support for those in need. The moving meditation created an invitation for the able bodied students to rise to meet the moment.
Around 20 minutes into the meditation the energy in the room profoundly shifted. The initial embarrassed laughter fell away and the room dropped into a new kind of focus. A feeling of warmth and intimacy fell upon us all. Eyes filled. Hearts opened. The collective consciousness of those students and teachers harmonizing. Dropping into a deeply felt shared intimacy.
From the moment it happened the first time, I was caught in the rapture of this subtle miracle. I became wed to its untold promise as a healing modality. That harmonizing shift became a beacon of inspiration for me as a somatic inventor. I began asking…what just happened? And how can I make it happen again? What were the essential ingredients?
Over years of experimentation, I came to learn that the essential ingredients were sensual. Synchronized breathing. Sensitive loving touch. Creative movement and gentle stillness. Commitment on the part of the participants. A willingness to be vulnerable and of course a certain amount of amount time.
As a busy teaching artist, I slyly went to work to answer my creative questions and thankfully, I had many opportunities to experiment. I tried a finger tip meditation with some seniors in a nursing home that left them with eyes soft and moist with emotion. I tried a puzzle piece meditation with first graders and watched them get lost in and around each others small bodies. When I explored a sensitive touch meditation with university students, one shared that he felt like he had just made love in some way that he didn’t quite understand.
At a certain, I had enough ideas and began offering my sensual meditations at gatherings of men. I had an intuitive sense that I needed to set these meditations free from clothing. I would invite the group to undress to their level of comfort. When I turned back from getting the music started, the entire room was naked and I soon learned that these sensual meditations were powerful beyond my imagination. Not only did they create an embodied spiritual experience, but they were also doorways to conscious erotic play.
As I explored these meditations in my sacred intimacy practice, they created a powerful healing. By meditating together with a partner, I found myself helping my clients embody the pleasure and connection that they were seeking. Together we layered in the experiences and gave them the practices they needed to create the pleasure they desired.
One recent participant shared “I have learned the profound importance of creating connections and have received the tools necessary to establish these connections. I discovered my love for movement and realized that there are many other things available that can make my sensual life more interesting, creative, and healing. Lui taught us a vocabulary to navigate the space of intimacy, sensuality, and sexuality, and showed us meditations to deepen our experience in these areas. It has had a profound impact on my life.” Julian J.
Moving Into Intimacy is coming to San Francisco, March 8-10. Please feel free to reach out to Lui at lui@bodyelectric.org with any questions. Check out his other writing on his blog at embodiedinstitute.com.
Don’t miss this exciting new offering from the BodyElectric School.