Anchorhold

Welcome to a space for the spirituality of gay and bisexual men. We have within ourselves the resources for our healing, liberation, and growth. Connecting with each other, we encounter the grace to lay hold of a richer, juicier life. Losing ourselves in deep play, we rediscover the bigger, freer, more joyous selves we're capable of becoming. Here I share my interest in personal and communal ritual, making art that expresses my inner life, and an intentional practice of erotic spirituality.

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

A Morning Practice

As you awake, connect with your breath. Lay the heel of your hand against the front of your scrotum, where your penis emerges from it. Curl your fingers over your scrotum. With the tips of your fingers, gently explore your perineum and inner thighs. Contract your perineum as you exhale, and feel the contractions with your fingertips.

You are cultivating your yin masculine energy: the soft, yielding, vulnerable energy that complements the hard, active, assertive yang energy of your erect penis.

Yin and yang are not opposites of each other. They are complements of each other. They are present in all phenomena. Their presence in your sexuality is one manifestation of this--a specific experience of something universal.

As you continue, gently grasp the tip of your penis with the fingertips of your other hand: your thumb on top of your glans, your middle finger exploring your sulcus--the furrow that starts just below your meatus. Stay forward of your frenulum. Focus on the softness here, the pliability that remains even when the magic wand that is your phallus is rock hard.

This too is the place of your yin masculine.

This stimulation will not cause you to ejaculate. Be aware that the goal here is not ejaculation. You can continue this for twenty minutes, breathing, exploring, massaging.

This is a place of lucid dreaming. This is a place of masculine wisdom and compassion. This is a treasure at the heart of your treasure.

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Letting Go of Shame, Opening the Heart: On the Healing Power of Queer Men's Ritual

I was delighted to sit down a while back with Body Electric instructor and podcast host Craig Cullinane for a conversation about my take on the bigger, freer life we all deserve. Craig is energetic, thoughtful, and a great interviewer.

You can watch and listen here.

Along the way, we talk for a while about a ritual close to my heart: the Lingam Puja that I first developed fifteen years ago at Easton Mountain in upstate New York. And about the one-on-one guidance I offer on the Path of Phallic Awareness.

Sacred Intimacy: Companionship in Spiritual and Erotic Healing

Different practitioners use the term "Sacred Intimacy" to mean different things. It's important to remember that Sacred Intimacy work is different from therapy, and can't replace therapy. I'm not a therapist. I don't claim to offer services in any officially regulated modality. (Some Sacred Intimates are also practicing therapists, but they're clear with themselves and with clients which modality they're working in.) Put simply, I offer heart-centered companionship and deep listening.

For me, first and foremost, Sacred Intimacy means that what passes between us is holy. It's filled and enlivened with the presence of the Divine. I will do my best to be as present to you, as available to you for your good, as I'm capable of being. My intention is to be open to working in whatever modality we agree will be helpful to you. A session begins with a short conversation in which you explain to me where you're at, and what you hope to take away from our time together.

The emphasis is on healing, growth, and the expansion of your life. You may, for example, have issues of erotic shame that you want to work on, or grief, or body image, or intimacy. I may ask for clarifications and make suggestions. Together we agree on the starting point for the experiential work that will follow.

A session might unfold through breathwork, guided meditation, bodywork, intentionally focused erotic interaction, creative movement, the shared creation of ritual, artistic practice, psychodynamic role playing, or some combination.

I can't hope to be of service to you unless I feel competent in the role I assume, and unless I have the sense that what we do has potential to help you move forward with your declared intention. So our initial conversation may involve some give and take around what's possible and what's useful.

It's essential for your integrity and mine that we maintain full confidentiality and respect one another's boundaries. We enter into sacred space together at the beginning of a session. We leave sacred space at the end, and what's happened within the safe container of the session remains distinct from any interactions we might have before or after the session. What happens in the session stays in the session.

Every Sacred Intimate has his own understanding of the nature of his work. Just below you'll find a series of links to the web pages of a number of Sacred Intimates working in various cities and areas.

What's an Anchorhold?

For centuries in Europe, a handful of men and women took a vow to devote themselves to the cultivation of their inner lives and to make themselves radically available to their communities for spiritual counsel. Committing themselves to remaining in a single dwelling for the rest of their lives, they were known as anchorites; the houses in which they lived were their anchorholds. Those who needed what the official channels of the religious establishment couldn’t provide came to the anchorhold for conversation and support.

Neither priests nor monks, the spiritual practice of anchorites and their interaction with those who came to them fell outside formal control of the Church. As a result, religious authorities often viewed them with suspicion. One of the best known of these dropouts from ordinary social and religious norms was Julian of Norwich, a woman who had a near-death experience in 1373 and spent the rest of her life thinking about what it meant, for herself and for the world at large. The book she wrote about her revelation, the first in English that we know for sure was written in by a woman, is an astonishingly daring and original rethinking of Christian theology: a vision of a God in whom there is no wrath, who is both Father and Mother of Creation, and who will somehow, by a miracle beyond our ability to grasp, eventually effect the salvation of every living being.

Men and women of spirit who fell between the cracks, anchorites practiced what in its own way was a profoundly queer inner life, following the instincts of their own experience, flying under the radar of the powers that claimed to control access to the Divine.