Seventeen years ago, a Body Electric workshop changed my life for good.
One April weekend in 2002, "Celebrating the Body Erotic" worked its indelible magic on my body, heart, and soul. Twenty-two men met one another as nervous strangers at 8:45 on Saturday morning. By 7 Sunday night, we were a band united and transformed in "the dear love of comrades."
I learned to breathe as though making friends with my lungs for the first time. I leaned to touch myself with a level of pleasure and unashamed abandon that I wish had been availalble to me--as it should have been--at my adolescent awakening over thirty years earlier. I learned to share those gifts with the men who'd embarked with me on this two-day adventure. With astonishing speed and ease, we built for each other a space of safety and unconditional acceptance where we could all flourish. We reached out to each other with delight and respect. I experienced, with a shattering intensity, the presence of the Sacred in my own body, and in the bodies of the other men who bared their souls and flesh. It left me weeping tears of joy, at the oddest and most upredictable moments, for weeks afterwards.
For thirty-five years, the Body Electric School has offered a precious, life-giving vessel of deep erotic wisdom, a source of healing and growth, self-discovery and community. Its mission began amidst the physical, psychological, and spiritual trauma of the AIDS crisis. In the mid-1980's, founder Joseph Kramer extended a lifeline to men struggling to affirm the wholeness of their erotic selves in the face of that threat. Over the years, its programming has widened in scope to include workshops open to mulltiple genders and orientations--while continuing to offer single-gender workshops that provide safe space for men who need to do the work of erotic, emotional, and spiritual self-realization with one another.
And in 2019, the School takes a courageous new step, as it transitions to a model of non-profit, community-based operation that opens a wealth of fresh possibilities. The cost of workshops has already been lowered. The School's new leadership is committed to reaching younger, more diverse, and more marginalzied populations.
As the transitional management team observed a few weeks ago, when it announced the move to non-profit operation, "Body Electric has always belonged more to the people who love and appreciate it than to any one individual. What's different now is that it is also up to us to do the hard work of sustaining and running it, with our own energy and our own finances.
"For those of us who know first-hand the exceptional, unique value of what we do... for those who have healed and matured from Body Electric in our own lives... for those for whom BE unites spirit and embodied healing with conscious erotic celebration -- we are the ones now entrusted with keeping this work alive. We carry this mantle forward because BE has helped us become healthier and happier people. Together, we can keep this precious offering available now and for generations to come. "
If you've taken workshops with the School in the past, it's a wonderful moment to renew your connection with this extraordinary, visionary community. If you've heard of the School and always wondered what its work is like, now is a great time to dive in, to grow more fully into your capacity for deep joy, to be some of the change in the world that you'd like to see.
