Agency: The Evolution of Erotic Massage

Erotic massage is a powerful healing practice. One that fills our bodies, clears our minds and nourishes our spirits with Life Force energy (Eros). When this energy flows freely and powerfully, especially during an erotic massage, the receiver takes a journey among rare peaks of ecstatic pleasure. 

I first learned about the fundamental need for agency and the healing power of erotic massage at my first BodyElectric workshop at Easton Mountain more than 20 years ago. During the final afternoon of the Taoist erotic massage ritual, men were screaming, weeping and laughing with the release of layers of repression. I knew there was great healing power present. I surrendered completely to the massage ritual, eagerly expecting to be launched through a portal into ecstatic bliss, but it didn’t happen. The hands that touched me didn’t ignite my pleasure. Without agency, I didn’t feel as though I had a way to include my side of the somatic conversation. 

Pleasure is an individual, internal affair. Only we can sense the peaks and valleys of our pleasure. Agency gives power, space and the responsibility for the receiver to ask for the touch they need. To harmonize the massage with the waves of pleasure that are pulsing through them. To participate when necessary rather than being solely a passive recipient.

In my teaching, I’ve installed an ‘agency dial.’ With the ‘agency dial’ turned on, the giver is open to and welcoming of the receivers requests. Each request is met with a simple, verbal “thank you” and carried out immediately. With agency, the receiver is employed with the simple, yet daunting task, of not enduring. Not suffering in silence with touch that is out of sync with their erotic flow.

Turned all the way up on high, agency becomes total control. On this setting, every touch is demanded by the receiver. Agency set on high lets the receiver take creative control, to stimulate their genitalia in the way no one else can and they are encouraged to do so. Total control may be a good setting for those working through trauma or for those who need more control in order to relax and work through their healing. But total control could also keep pleasure away, keeping the receiver working, assessing and directing the entire time. 

At the other end of the ‘agency dial’ is complete surrender, which is more ideal especially when the erotic bodyworker gives exactly what the receiver wants and needs instinctually. Complete surrender gives over the entire creative responsibility to the erotic bodyworker which allows the receiver to let go, receive and relax. To get out of their heads and into their erotic freedom. But this heavenly alignment doesn’t happen every time or in every moment. Agency is there when something needs to shift. Complete surrender, when it becomes an unconscious habit, may create a pattern of polite silence which then opens the door to enduring.

When we endure, our centers of intelligence shift from our embodied pleasure to problem solver. We find ourselves wrestling with what’s not working? Hoping it will change. Wondering if we can breathe through the disconnect and say nothing. Hoping our silence will not upset our practitioner, but enduring is not sexy. Energy does not rise nor is it pleasurable. Enduring does not lead to the orgasmic healing we seek in an erotic massage.

A friend shared that he would never speak up when a massage wasn’t working for him. He would endure in silence and then pretend his satisfaction, never to return. I’ve worked with many participants who are unwilling to speak, to use their agency. 

They remain in silence, not breathing. Leaving the bodyworker shut out.

In the middle range of the ‘agency dial’ between total control and complete surrender, there are the variable amounts of agency that meet the moment. Perhaps a request for more full body touch. Perhaps a request for less genital touch. Or more genital touch. Or lighter. Or heat building touch. Or simply more space to feel without being touched. Agency doesn’t mean to micromanage. And also, not to endure. But the presence and invitation to speak up within the moment to moment evolving energy and pleasure coursing through the receiver’s body.

Perhaps because of my initial erotic massage experience all those years ago, agency is part of my own need for alignment. Like consent, especially for those of us called to this work, agency is an essential tool that we need to champion and include in our toolboxes. As pleasure continues to heal, agency is there to remind us that those that we serve are ultimately the masters of their own healing