(Originally published on Click by Lavalife.com May 24, 25 and 28 2009?.)
Ecstatic Intimacy Workshop Day 1, Bellevue, WA May 23
“You’re taller,” someone in the audience yells out when David Deida first walks out onstage at the opening address of the Ecstatic Intimacy weekend intensive.
Indeed, the spiritual teacher (or “transmitter” as he apparently prefers to call himself) is taller than one might think from his clips on YouTube. 6’2″, perhaps, and dressed in a loose-fitting black suit, Deida – author of the book The Way of the Superior Man and Enlightened Sex, among others – uses his body and his hands as much as his words to communicate his ideas.
The effect was mesmerizing even when his message grew repetitive. But this was more due to the fact that he’s presenting his ideas in a variety of ways in the hopes that one or more will stick.
On opening night he touches on the basics: masculine/feminine polarization; the three stages of development (for both men and women); and tantric sex (which led to my favourite line of the evening, something about the necessity of practice, just like music scales, and how if you’re content with “Chopsticks” fine but these practices will let you play Rachmaninoff, sex-wise).
After a break, Deida takes questions from the spiritual seekers – about 140 strong, a more or less equal mix of men and women. Most of the questions are from women in couples seeking to make their relationships stronger and more intimate.
In his answers, Deida keeps returning to the masculine/feminine polarization thing, though I must confess I’m more interested in the tantric sex stuff. Does this make me a shallow spiritual seeker? This morning we’ll be doing breathing exercises with his assistants… I must now prepare to be transformed.
Ecstatic Intimacy Workshop with David Deida, Day 2: May 24
I hadn’t realized that my contact lenses would be such an issue. During the morning exercises, when we separated into groups of men and women, one of the dudes I was matched with suggested I take off my glasses. We’re doing a lot of gazing and the spectacles get in the way. So for the rest of the day I tried wearing my contacts, but the air is so dry in the conference room I was blinking like a fool while gazing into the souls of the two women with whom I did exercises.
These exercises, for those of you as unfamiliar with tantra as I am, are basically designed to open you up with a complete stranger – to learn to be intimate with someone you’ve just met. The exercises are built in stages, so that by the end of them you could be shouting, crying, or, as was the case here, telling someone you wanted to, er, have your way with them.
That was how the day ended, around 10:30 p.m., with Deida instructing us on amping up the (non-physical) communication. The day began with, as mentioned, men’s and women’s exercises led by Deida’s assistants, followed by a lunch break, then a question-and-answer period with the man himself.
I’ve noticed a distressing pattern – the couples seem to have taken over these periods, with women in relationships (sometimes with their male partner, sometimes not) asking most of the questions, nearly all of which are about expanding intimacy with their guy. Meanwhile, us singletons are left out in the cold.
Except for, in the evening, one dude asking about taking the afternoon’s exercise out in the real world. Deida had five men from the audience come up onstage while the women were asked who they would trust the most. He then gave the guys tips on standing so that their purpose in life was reflected in their stance.
One complaint I’ve heard from a few of the folks in attendance, particularly those who have attended other workshops (especially those held by Satyen in Langley, B.C.) is that there are too many rules (the workshop is being run like a bootcamp, with no talking allowed and locked doors at a certain time) and that Deida is inaccessible – he arrives from a side door in the conference room, accompanied by one of his male assistants. Otherwise, though, everyone seems satisfied with the direction that he is taking us in. We’ll see what happens today, our last in Bellevue, WA.
Ecstatic Intimacy Workshop with David Deida, Day 3: May 25
The morning begins with two hours of separate exercises for men and women. The guys get “Rock and Roll” by Led Zeppelin to pump us up at the start and the women get some Joni Mitchell (which I heard later as it wafted through the wall separating our groups).
After having us jump and run in place and doing some yoga poses, Deida’s two assistants K-Don and Eli take questions. There’s a moment of tension as the question period goes long and one guy says, “You know, you’ve been saying we were going to wrap this up ‘in a couple of minutes’ a few times and now I don’t believe anything you say.” This got us back to doing exercises. I believe I’m not at liberty to go into too much detail as to what these were, but let’s just say it had to do with eye contact and locating energy in a partner, and made me extremely uncomfortable. Which I suppose was the point.
My friend the sex educator, whom you may recall from previous blog entries, also came for the weekend, to work in a volunteer capacity. She was allowed to take part, however, and so I found out from her that the women’s exercises were much more physically strenuous and endurance testing. That explains the Joni Mitchell.
During the lunch break, I chatted with a woman with whom, the afternoon before, I’d done an exercise. But talking to a stranger with whom I’d shared an intimate moment – she repeating the words “I’d follow you anywhere,” me saying “You’re beautiful”, and in close proximity – was, well, weird. So we talked about our cats.
Back in the conference room after lunch, we were treated to the man himself, David Deida, taking some questions from the audience/participants. Once again the session was hijacked by couples wanting Deida to solve their problems while we singles twiddled our thumbs. It didn’t help thinking back to something Eli, one of the assistants, had said during the men’s q-and-a that morning, about listening even when the question didn’t seem pertinent because you never know when you’re going to hear some gem of wisdom. Uh-huh.
My energy was serious flagging by the mid-afternoon break, but when we returned to the conference room things got interesting again.
Men and wome were separated into separate groups. Deida asked for volunteers to help demonstrate what men find attractive in women. Suddenly there was a rush towards the stage, so much so that a few of the women wouldn’t fit. One even fell off.
We spent the next couple of hours, men and women, with Deida as monitor, zeroing in on what men look for when it comes to women we’d like to have sex with for one night and those we would like to find enlightenment with for 20 years on a desert island. Two came in with an almost equal number of votes in the first and three for the second. One woman was even selected for both.
The sex educator was shattered when told of what she’d missed. Sick with a cold, she’d decided to sit this session out, not knowing what we’d be doing, and was sorely pissed when she found out.
I said I could easily imagine her making a beeline for the stage and getting in on the competition, and I figured she would easily have won one of the “competitions,” for lack of a better term. Although she was disappointed when I told her which I thought she would have taken. “I already know I’m [expletive deleted],” she pouted. “Three guys came up to me after and asked why I wasn’t up there!” She added, “I want to win the enlightenment one, 20 years on a desert island! Why can’t I win that one?”
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