It’s a journey, a prayer, an act of worship to the Goddess lying before me.

The Massage is one of the highest expressions of sexual and sensual energy. As much as it’s a physical experience, and oh yes it is!, it’s also as much an energy, and often, a deeply spiritual experience as well.

I’ve been doing bodywork for more than 25 years.

The journey began with a basic course in ‘Swedish Massage’, simply to explore touch.

I was studying psychology and in the 1st year course there were a lot of touch studies, what happens to babies that aren’t touched and cuddled and adults that don’t get affection. This fascinated me and I wanted to learn more about touch.

So off I went to find massage lessons.

25 years ago South Africa was a very different country, there wasn’t the proliferation of massage courses that there are today.

I ended up at a Beauty College.

I had to go at night, being at university during the day.

I couldn’t learn with the girls show were studying beauty technology, so I was in my own room, had to beg some friends to come and be models for me to practice on. They all thought this was really strange, but a few agreed. One even said he’ll come if he could bring a book, so for the entire massage lesson he lay on the table reading.

I wanted to learn, so if there was a body there I was happy.

I grew up in a family that was very affectionate, there was a lot of touching, nudity was never an issue, so I was always comfortable with bodies.

I had no idea what to do with this knowledge. I really enjoyed it, felt natural, right, connected to massaging and touch. I took whatever opportunity there was to do massage, hands, feet, backs, whatever…

From the time I was a teenager I realised that there was more to the world than just the physical. This was no more than a vague notion that eventually fell under the labels of energy and spirituality.

Sometime during that fist year at university there was an exhibition on sexuality. They showed a movie called Caligula, the story of a Roman Emperor. The movie featured top actors with explicit sex scenes. Before this they showed a few documentaries of what was happening in the world of sexuality, including interviews with some Tantra teachers.

A switch went on inside of me, a recognition of something that I didn’t really understand, but knew this would be part of my life.

After that first course I went to everything I could find involving massage and touch. I did courses in Stress Release Massage, Sports Massage, Shiatsu, Therapeutic Massage, Esoteric and Energy Healing, Breathwork, you name it I did it.

A few years later I came across Kinesiology, which fascinated me. I didn’t understand it, went back to learn more until I did, then got hooked and studied it for 4 years. The gym I was a member at was remodeling, I went and asked them to build me an office to do sports massage, which they did and I went on a very, very quick learning curve.

I specialized in sports massage and kinesiology for injuries and pain, worked with athletes and dancers for more than 10 years. I became a Kinesiology instructor and taught sports and injury massage.

I kept coming back to the connection between the body, the mind and spirit.

And I kept coming back to sexuality.

I had whatever sexual experiences I could, simply being fascinated, or to be more honest, obsessed with all aspects of sexuality.

There was nobody around to teach me anything close to what I wanted to learn, even clinical sexology was in its infancy. The clinical route never appealed to me, I simply saw it as too limiting.

Most of what I learned was through experience, some amazing, some that shook me to the core, challenged every aspect of myself, my self-definition, what I thought I knew about sex, sensuality, relationships, life and love.

What came out of the experiences was a knowledge and understanding that no teacher or books could ever give.

To this day I am constantly learning, expanding the knowledge and understanding I have, which is one of the things that make this journey so exciting and challenging.

There came a time when I realised that there was nothing else I wanted to do but work with the magic of sexuality.

I had no idea what that really meant, but I announced that that’s what I was doing and jumped in with both feet. I quickly saw that I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did, how wide and deep and, yes, how wild in every way, the real world of sexuality was.

I walked a line of fire nearly every day for a good long while learning so much.

There is a lot that I did on the path that I would do differently knowing what I do now, that’s simply and deeply human, that we learn from our experiences.

At some point on the journey I came across the work of Anthony De Mello, an incredible thinker and teacher.

In a piece he wrote about selfishness he talks about the fact that we’re brought up to believe that selfishness is bad. In truth, everything that we do, no matter how charitable or altruistic, we’re getting something from it. If we can see this, see what it is, we’re able to raise the interaction to a very high level. Obviously, this excludes anything at the expense of someone else.

I thought about this in connection with what I do and came to see that it allows me to express so many parts of myself, of the gifts I have, the knowledge, understanding, information, in a way that nothing else will.

Everybody has certain talents and gifts.

This is one of mine.

And each day of sharing is a celebration that fills me with wonder and gratitude. 

When I write about myself, it’s an expression of what I’ve come to believe is important in Sensual Massage, the principles I work with and teach in my lessons and classes.

As much as this is about the way I massage, I believe that all Sensual and Tantric Massage should be like this.

More than that, I wish that every woman, and man, could have an experience like this at least once, feel loved, pleasure, feel whole and feel beautiful.