Welcome to your Body. Remembers pleasure. I'm your host, Rahi Chun. This podcast is devoted to sexual embodiment, intimacy, and the body's innate capacity to heal, feel, and remember pleasure. If something here resonates with you, you're welcome to explore more writings and resources@rahichun.com. And now let's begin.

 Today we invite Craig Coane to the podcast. Craig's Journey of erotic and sexual embodiment and liberation is a beautiful trajectory of love, service, and dedication. His transformational spiritual, erotic experience first as a participant in a body electric workshop led to assisting, then teaching and eventually directing the Body Electric Organization, guiding it into new realms of inclusion and expansion.

He shares candidly essential elements of his various experiences as a participant. That became the ingredients. To Sacred Space holding containers as a teacher and as director, he also shares the incredible gift that the Body Electric plays in offering safe spaces for all communities. So today I am very excited to invite Craig Cullinane to the podcast.

A little bit about Craig. He just finished serving as the director of the Amazing Body Electric School for the last four years, and he served on the Body Electric faculty for more than 10 years. As a coach, he supports his clients in centering their most treasured desires with simple habits.

Translate into real results, which is what we all really want. For six years, Craig was the director of programming for rehabilitation. Through the arts, our TA inviting incarcerated people into a process of growth and healing through artistic expression. Craig also holds a master's degree in service leadership and management.

Very cool. From the SIT Graduate Institute a little bit about the Body Electric in case you're not familiar with them. Their mission. The Body Electric School offers expertly guided educational experiences grounded in the erotic. Its integration with the Sacred to foster, transformative, personal and communal healing.

They have a long, they have a number of guided principles. The ones that really jumped out at me is that the work of the body electric is sacred. The practice of staying in heart, connection with self and others, cultivating the experience of wholeness, and that the body electric is a movement of liberating, erotic aliveness.

Craig, thank you so much for being with us today. This is fantastic. Thank you. I was so happy to be here with you. Thank you. Yeah. As I was sharing with you before we started recording my very first experience of conscious, intentional cultivation of embodied. Sacred erotic energy was through a two and a half day workshop with the Body Electric.

This was in 1990. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, to be honest with you. I was 24. I was the youngest person in the class. Wow. There were like, yeah, there were like 25 or 30 other men and using breath as the engine, we, we rebirthed ourselves using erotic energy and I was like electric and buzzing for a week after that. Yes, absolutely. Craig. I can say it changed my life because it really took me on the trajectory of what I've been doing since so it changed my life too, for sure. Yeah. So I wanna answer your question. Yes, of course. Can I ask you a question?

Yeah. How, what? How did you find your way to it? How did you get there? Back in the nineties, there was a really cool holistic bookstore called the Bodhi Tree here in Los Angeles. And, back then I was an acting school. I was still a student, and I went to the Bodhi Tree and I just saw a flyer for it.

And I don't even remember what it said, but somehow I was guided to it. I some sacred erotic angel put that flyer up just for you. Exactly. Exactly. Totally. And and thank God I just followed my way over there. So Craig I love starting these interviews by asking our guests about.

The pivotal junctures in their journey of erotic embodiment. And how that led you to the Body Electric. I'd love to know about your Yeah. Your path and what Erotic Angels guided you to experiencing the journey you have. Boy. Gosh, that's such a good question. I grew up in a very kind of, I grew up in an Irish Catholic, new England family, and there was nothing about sex and everything was secret and hidden and, in the closet and under the bed and, and just there wasn't a lot of.

Conscious, erotic anything, other than don't do it or something that wasn't spoken about. And I think I emerged from that in the world when I left my family's home at 18. I actually had a deep experience of holding and carrying a lot of body shame, a lot of chronic body shame that I think a lot of people experience.

I think a lot of, queer men experience body dysmorphia and it was really crippling for me. It was I couldn't take my shirt off at the beach. I couldn't there, it was such a wall for me between, for intimacy with men, erotically, sexually. I came out when I was like 19, but it was like, I wasn't going into erotic or sexual experiences with people with a lot of intention or with a lot of the capacity to really stay and be with it and explore pleasure or any of those things.

And on some level, I think, that comes later as you mature. But I really walked with a lot of shame and it was painful and difficult, and so for me, I was in a life change in my life. I had been living in New York City for many years, and that had a lot of sex.

I had a lot of encounters with folks, and I, in some ways enjoyed it. And, but it was the first time I took Body Electric. I was 33. Oh, wow. I was living at East Mountain, which is a gay men's retreat center in upstate New York. I have finished up my time in New York City and I was about to go to graduate school and I had the summer off, so I lived there.

And the deal was that if you live there, if you work there, you can take a workshop of your choice as like the work study part. And at the end of the summer, body Electric came in and you know what? I didn't even know anything about it. I didn't honestly know what it was. I hadn't heard that much about it.

But something deep inside me said that, wow, do that. And I listened and I went and, not to talk a lot about what happens in the workshop, but one of the things that does happen is this very beautiful and honoring undressing ritual. Where you are consciously undressed in these layers of separation, these metaphors of clothing, of your layers of separation, or peeled away in this very beautiful and honoring way.

And it was so deeply touching to me. It just healed something inside. Something about honoring my body, honoring. Just acknowledging how much of this negative thought I had about it and how hard that was. And some, so something shed or opened up or something. And then I went through the process of the experience and I got into my body.

I got into pleasure. I woke up pleasure. I woke up the breath, I woke up all of it. And in the end of the experience, I had a very deeply profound personal kind of, I don't know. I can only say it was like a. A connection to the divine. Wow. I was wrapped up in this sheet and I felt like I was completely merged with all things.

Like I wasn't experiencing separation. It's like I had come home somehow to some deep connection with all things, and something just fell away that I didn't need. And I emerged from that. And that really began a major journey for me in my life. I took the workshop again, I started assisting them.

I was the coordinator in Boston, joined the faculty. So Body electric and that experience I is definitely the most profound single moment of a portal. Yes. Into healing, aliveness, connection service. Yeah. I say I, I say the body electric is the work of love.

It's the work of loving ourselves, our bodies, other people of the world, yes. Yeah, I would say that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God, that's so amazing the way you describe it, and it really speaks to that principle that the work of the body electric be sacred. I hear. The sacredness of that that unclothing ritual.

It was a ritual really. It was like this, it was a ritual, this beautiful, honoring ritual and when you're being witnessed with such reverence and sharing that experience with other people. Yes. It is just Wow. And I just wanna say there was something important about me walking to that and through that myself, and facing myself and being with my fear as I walked through it.

And to be held by all these other people who are walking through their own fear like we were all in it together. Yeah. Something very powerful about that. Go on. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No. I'm glad you underscore that because I do think there's some sort of creative al like collective alchemy that happens when everyone is breaking through, yes. They there previously. Shame barriers together. There's just an unleashing of this stored energy that everyone Yes. It's palpable. Everyone can feel it. Yeah. Yeah. Craig I wanna, I wanna ask you, because you were, you've been on faculty for over a decade and you've been director of the institute and I'm guessing that, really re metabolizing and un spooling that shame and guilt, especially from our developmental years, it is such a core part of the experience. In your years of teaching and directing I'm wondering if you could share some insights as to what you feel really contributed to the space. Allowing for that for participants. For specifically, because shame can go so deep, especially with our sexuality, in our bodies.

Yeah. Yeah. And the experiences of the Body Electric have been like skilled at really. Holding that safe container and allowing, this kind of thing to un unravel. What do you feel like, because we have a lot of somatic sex educators in our audience, and a lot of what they deal with are clients who have a lot of shame about their body, their sexuality, whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. I think one of the things I think that Body Electric does really well. Is care for the participants. Like we have a deep instinct and the teachers that I've had have a deep instinct about how do we hold not only the individual, but the group with such care and with intention, right?

And so of course we have very clear norms and agreements and practices that we come back to again and again. And you know what I notice? I just taught last weekend in New York City and what I notice is. Once those norms and agreements are in place, once people begin to feel like they can settle in and their body begins to get oh, this is gonna be all right.

They're caring for me. I'm safe. There's options for me if I don't want to participate or if they're, if I need to get outta, once the, their body starts titrating and the nervous system starts to settle and they really get, okay I'm okay. Then it's actually not.

Very challenging anymore. It's like some deep love or the best parts of ourselves have permission to start activating. And I talk about that a lot. We talk about that a lot, that the Body Electric workshop and other places too, that do this well. It's a place to practice the best parts of ourselves.

It's the place to pr to have a space where you can practice being the most generous. The most involved in your own self-care. Who am I as a giver? Who am I as a res, as a receiver. Can I have the space to really listen deeply to what I'm available for and what I'm not? And I think that what it does is it allows, 'cause I think about shame and guilt and all of that. It's like this shroud. That, that obscures the truth of our worthiness. It's, the truth is, we're worthy. The truth is we're love. The truth is we're goodness. And the shame stories and the guilt stories, they're shroud.

And once those begin to soften and once breath comes into the picture, and once we wake up a little bit and activate that life force within us some of that shroud begins to fall away. And some of the natural. Worthiness that lives in all of us takes more of center stage.

And then the question becomes how do we get in relationship with that? Yeah. How do we befriend the truth of our inner worthiness? And the, and in my experience, one of the things that Body Electric is beautiful for is that we get to practice that. How can I really hold space for another person's process with compassion?

How can I listen deeply? When we start practicing those things, all of this goodness starts to flow. It just has to be. Yeah. I love all of that. What I'm hearing is you know, like the deep care, the safety, and it's really what you said earlier about people having the choice to participate or not, it's like you're giving agency, you're restoring agency and free choice to their body and within such a container where there is this impeccable.

Kind of standard that everyone agrees to of holding space, giving and receiving. The natural life force can, like really Yes. Claim the space. Yes. And it wants to it's absolutely, it's like when we stop giving so much of our energy to all of the things that block it. It's gonna flow and then that's, and then that's such a wonderful thing to be like what does this feel like? How does it feel in my body to have my energy be flowing? What does it feel like in my body to experience pleasure? To get in relationship with pleasure.

One of the great contra principles, pleasure is healing. Of course. Yes, of course. Yeah. So powerful. So powerful. Wow. Something else I wanted to ask you about Craig is I'm curious about. People say, if you wanna learn something, study it. If you wanna master it, then teach it.

And, I know you've been teaching for over a decade. Yeah. With the Body Electric as well as directing it. I'm wondering when you stepped into the role of teacher, after you had, taken the courses, been really, your life changed, you assisted, and then you started, you got on the faculty.

Did that, do you feel like that really. Put you on the fast track of your own kind of erotic IQ and your own kind of awareness of your body's eroticism. And if so I'm wondering if they were, if there were specific junctures that really expanded that for you as a tea while you were teaching.

Boy, gosh, yes. It's great. It's really wild because yes, and and also like I have my stuff, sure. I have the ways that I'm, I am not actualized or I have the ways that I am, the parts of me that that are not as realized as I would like and. All of it's in the mix.

And then there's all these other ways that I've flowered and unfolded as neurotic being in the world. I think one of the biggest journeys for me personally, I am I'm just such a natural extrovert. For whatever reason, like that's how I am. Like I'm so relational and I'm so about like how I experience the energy of groups and and how that impacts my energy. That for me, the new frontier was really slowing down and really going inside and really being willing to quiet down enough and have the courage to just feel what I feel. I think that all of us can be so distracted, of course. And why wouldn't we be in this world and all this?

But to actually do the simple yet not easy task of just touching base, slowing down, giving my attention to what's actually alive in my body and my feelings. Cultivating that relationship, that capacity to stay, to learn, to stay. Yeah, with whatever's happening whatever's happening, that more than anything has been my major learning edge as a person and as a facilitator of this work.

And I noticed more and more, 'cause I think at first when I first started teaching, I was like, it was all about the drumming and the music and the show of it and the energy and all. That's beautiful and all that's part of it too. And it's useful. But now what I notice is I'm a lot more about.

Let's take that sacred pause. Let's just, slow your touch down. Let it come to stillness. People receiving touch. Take a breath. What are you feeling now? What are you aware of? Let's cultivate and right now practice our capacity to stay and to actually discern what I'm feeling. Yeah. As an entry point for greater pleasure, for greater self-awareness, for greater love.

So for me, I'd say that is the, is has been a major arc in my personal learning. Yeah. And of course it's about, oh I can see the ways that I like, as a mechanism, a defense mechanism or a strategy of managing my feelings. Like just, how I can seek comfort uhhuh instead of staying, and how I wanna avoid bad feelings or feelings that are painful. Avoid feeling shame doesn't feel good. Sure. Yeah. And it's kinda okay, here it is, and I'm learning more and more that if I can stay with it, it actually transmutes, it actually has a chance to leave and becomes something different.

Yeah. Craig, I love what you're sharing because this is where I think eroticism is really spiritual. When we slow the process down, as you described, and we're just being with what is, it's like it, it opens up our capacity to be with this. Infinite space of being. Yeah. And I kind, part of me wonders like when you described your experience at the end of that first, body, electric weekend workshop Yeah.

Where you just felt this wholeness, this like oneness with everything, yes, it was the breath, it was being embodied, but I also wonder if it was really. Being so profoundly with exactly what is that there's no separation between your experience and the whole of everything.

Yeah. That's how it felt. And it was. It was rare, but familiar somehow still. Yes. I, I think it's familiar because it goes back to, the wholeness of being in the womb or, maybe even before that, I think the body remembers that, that sensation, that experience.

But, I really feel like 'cause you know what you, when you described that. At the end of the workshop, how you felt this sense of universal wholeness and oneness. I felt that too at the end of my weekend workshop and I feel like, the keys are simple, but they're very profound.

The container Yes. Of safety and permission. It does require people to really put their egos aside and come with heart and service, but I feel like it's, it could be a gateway to this, like spiritual, I don't know, this spiritual embodiment experience that I'm sure a lot of Body electric graduates and people can relate to.

Yes. Yeah I would love, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. I want our audiences to to know what some of those simple yet profound principles and practices are. You had shared in one of the blog videos on the Be site, some of these tools of really exploring the whole body as the terrain towards eroticism.

As an example. But I'd love for our audiences to, to know what some of the simple key practices are within the Body Electric workshops that they can explore at home. Yeah. No, it's wonderful. There's a wonderful quote by Stuart Wild. How do you make something sacred?

You say, this is sacred, and then you treat it that way. And I think that, that's part of it. It's sacred, it's an interesting word. And it means different things to different people. And it's not necessarily religious or it's more what do I vest with importance.

What do I say is meaningful to me? And I think an also useful question is, what do I wish was sacred? But I don't treat that way. Good question. It's you know what do I wish I gave more importance to? I know if I really ask myself. I have the great pleasure of teaching a weekly online course.

It's called Men's Morning Erotic Practice. And it's like a yoga, erotic yoga class where I guide people through. An experience of breath work and self touch and self-pleasure, and there's meditation and there's a little group connection, and I would say. Again, what you were saying about this video blog.

I like to say, this idea of awakening our entire body as a neurotic organ, like our skin is our largest organ, and it's like moving the attention away just from the genital to the whole body. So I honestly think that one of the greatest things that we can do is just take a little time just to put our hands on our own body and touch our skin.

Imagine you're like just covering your skin with some wonderful honey love lotion or something, or just slowing down enough to touch your own body. Simple but profound. Profound. And I don't think people think about it. It's we need soothing. Sometimes there's not someone there to do that for us, right?

Like we can do it for ourselves, and if we just place our hands on our own body, for two minutes Yeah. Five minutes and just offer ourselves touch. Maybe not even necessarily in a erotic way. There is just a huge practice, I think. Yes. Yes. I think a practice of getting intentional about erotic pleasure, self pleasure.

Yes. And we have so many stories and culture about masturbation and wrong and bad and shames systems and all of it. There are lineages and practices about if we tap and raise and spread erotic energy in our body it is a source of. Aliveness, creativity. Health, longevity, connection, intuition.

Yeah. Meaning intuition, spirit, everything. Everything. We have, in Body Electric during the, weekend, the experie, the intro weekend, there's always a sex talk, and I always start it by saying this kind of cheekily, I say perhaps like me. When you were 13 or 14 and becoming pubescent, the elders of the village brought you to the temple of Eros to instruct you in all of the, great lineages of pleasure and erotic aliveness, right?

And everybody just laughs of course, because nobody had that experience because culturally we're so terrible. Yeah. That erotic education Sure. In this world, yes. It's so filled with shame. It's so misguided. And it's you look at, the impact of pornography and it's just, that's where people are learning and Yes, and I always this, I ask this question like, what did you learn about masturbation and where did you learn?

And it's fascinating to hear what people say about, oh a magazine that my dad had or my brother had under his bed or more and more, of course it's pornography with younger people. Yeah. That's their first entry into sexual anything. And so going back to your first question, I think one of the most profound and simple things people can do is turn off the screen.

And make a date with your erotic self? Yeah. Spend 20 minutes, like what would it mean if I like put on some music, got some lube? And just pleasured my body and used my breath. The breath is another fundamental piece of it all. How do I activate my breath for pleasure?

The more I breathe, the more I feel. But if we can. Think to ourselves like, how can I get there? How can I get to 20 minutes of just offering myself nourishing, yummy, erotic touch? And you don't even have to ejaculate if you don't want. And actually that's interesting too. There's a big story about ejaculation.

The Daoists in 500, BC China were experimenting with going long periods of time without ejaculating. 'cause they believed that our ejaculate was our source of power and helpfulness and they would say that ejaculating depletes our energy and our life force. So I would say.

Can I touch my body? Just spend time touching my own skin? Can I create a little space to explore? Pleasure, erotic pleasure? Without screams? Can I activate my breath? Cultivate my breath as my friend? Yeah. And scheduling some pleasure time. Yes. Some exploration time scheduling.

Yeah. Yeah. 'cause it starts to build a muscle, right? It starts to build like a work, like a a muscle around the erotic, around embodiment, around self-loving. Yes. Yes. And that can evolve into a lifestyle which is, healthy for everyone. Yeah, we've been doing this morning class on Wednesdays for almost two years now, and Wow.

People who have been coming from the beginning are like just that one hour a week. They are noticing, real changes in how they walk in the world. Wow. How inhabit their own body, their sense of confidence. Awesome. I'm really interested in, awakening the inner sexiness in us.

Yes. Yeah. You, I didn't you have a class on that, right? Like a, an online class? Yeah. Yep. It's awake. This is for men folk awake, your inner sexy man. And it's who am I if I tap that inner sexiness and I activate it and I walk in the world from that place? Yeah. I like to give this homework assignment, for this whole week.

Every time you walk down the street. Just walk like down the street, like you're the sexiest guy in the street. Oh, I love it. That is in competition to anybody else, but just what does it feel like to be like, who am I? How am I, how would I walk? How would I feel? Like fake it till you make it, activate it from within and experience it and see what happens.

Huh Uhhuh. Oh, that sounds like so much fun. That's awesome. But it's really, I think it's when I see kids, they're so embodied. They're so tactile. They're like sharing their affection with each other and somewhere along the line we get conditioned out of it.

And it feels embracing your inner sexiness and all these practices are just returning us to our organic nature, really. Yes, exactly right. It's just an invitation to be in relationship with that beautiful, buoyant life force energy. The erotic Yes. Yes. It's, jean Houston, her great book. The oh, I forget the name of the book. Oh no. The Search for the Beloved by Jean Houston. She talks about erotic energy or aeros as the lure of muchness. Where we are spiced and seeded and activated and evoked into becoming, right? It's this umbrella of, if I'm, if I've got access to my own erotic energy, my life force energy, and it's in my body, it informs everything.

It informs, and it does every sense. It forms how I eat food and it create creative, work, life, everything. It's an umbrella, not just sex. Yes. Yes. I think that is the that's the misunderstanding that people have about eros and erotic energy. It really is the aliveness, yes. That informs everything as you said. Our intuition, our creativity, our love, just a love for our fellow being, all of that. Yes. Yeah. I'm curious during your I want people to get a sense of the body electric and, because, when I did my workshop back in 1990, I think it was just workshops for men.

Yeah. And 25 years ago, it's really evolved into all genders. There's a lot of. BIPOC workshops. There's a lot of Yeah. All women workshops. It's really for everyone. And I've been so impressed because I saw on the on the website like a whole thing, like a Jedi Committee on Justice Equity.

Diversity inclusion you guys support like violence against women, land acknowledgement of the peoples. It's really incredible. I'd love to know during your tenureship as director what was it like for you to step in, from being a participant to assistant to faculty and then stepping into guiding this incredible Yeah.

Like this incredible force and and during your tenureship I'm curious how, like where was the energy guiding you to lead it? Yeah. God, that's a, yeah. It was, it was a wild ride and you know the let me first say that it wasn't just me. It was many people, there were a lot of incredible people who loved Body Electric who care about it so much and I think that Body Electric at that time really when I started imagining stepping into offering some leadership, it was probably like spring of 2018. And at that time I see, I think the school was in a period of some contraction, like it had. I think it's, the next year is our 40th anniversary of Body Electric.

Wow. It started. Yeah. And over the years it expanded and contracted and, Sure. Directors and different this and that. And I think that the owner at that time was really ready to get out. And was, we were trying to investigate a way to do that. And and also it had also, body Electric had always been organized as a privately owned company, not in May, mostly because of the nature of the work.

It seems simpler in some ways, but it always felt like it wanted to be a not-for-profit organization. It's a community organization. It's an educational. Organization. So when I stepped in with a group of other people to imagine this transition from the former owner we knew that we wanted to transition into a not-for-profit organization.

I see. 'cause the truth is there's a lot of people. Yeah. It was huge. Ands a lot of people who've been impacted by Body Electric and so in some ways we had some really generous people supporting us because I see their lives had been touched by the work. Of course. Totally. So it took maybe like to the beginning of 2019 to make, to get the deal on the contract.

And we purchased the school from the former owner and then basically myself and this amazing woman named Sarah Zeal. And our great friend Andre Andres Cero basically ran the school for 2019. And we liked to say that we were, trying to, fix and drive a car going 80 miles an hour, wow. Because we didn't stop any programming and we just had to go into this transition of it. Wow. And so we spent that year just getting our sea legs of 2019 on how do we do this? And we built the board of directors and we applied for enough for-profit status and all of that. And it took a year to get the not-for-profit status.

And I was, that was lots of sleepless nights for me. 'cause I was like, in this Trump era. Maybe they're gonna say no to the nature of the work and all of this and Right. We had to go through like a pass through organization for the dona. It was just a huge experience. Oh my God. And luckily we had this very dedicated advisory group that met every week who really held it together all of us. And then COVID hits. Of course. And there goes, like with everybody there goes the business model. But Right. We had a desire to create an online experience for Body Electric that we called bringing Body Electric Home.

And again, it's 'cause what, what Body Electric did really was bring people to these amazing peak experiences, but there wasn't a lot in between. I see. Which sometimes felt. Like not responsible almost sometimes, I understand. Like, how do we bring, but it was like, here we are.

This is what we can do. But what the so basically when COVID hit, we just slapped like a zillion online classes up and people were so desirous of connection. I taught a class that I developed called Daoist Eroticism, and I taught it probably 16 times in 2020. Wow. Oh my God.

They filled because people were just like, I need to be in connection. And all of those classes were about like, how do I cultivate a self-pleasure practice? We did like anal pleasure classes. How do you learn how to pleasure yourself, ally? How do you, we did art and arrows. We did lots of things.

We tried all kinds of different experiments and the online experience allowed us to be experimental. And it. Checked a lot of boxes for us to make it through COVID until we got back to Christian workshops in 2021. I see. So that was a huge thing. And then another major thing that was happening was.

I'm 53 years old and I was the youngest teacher by far. And all the other teachers were like mid sixties or older, and we needed to train this next generation. So we brought in 15 people. Wow. All genders, all bodies, all races, all cultural ethnicities. And we were just like, alright. And so now we have those people teaching our workshops.

Oh my gosh. And there was a huge desire of course, to, body Electric has always typically been like white gay men mostly. And we were like, look, we need to broaden this. We need to do our work. We need to figure out how to welcome other kinds of people into this experience.

So we started, we've started experimenting with, men of color, body lifting workshops. We're actually having our first bipoc women of color one in June. And, all genders. Oh, the women's work started really in the nineties, so that's been happening for a long time.

Okay. And so has the all genders work, that's been happening for a long time and it, we just have been continuing to grow in and expand it. And we did a big retreat, a visioning retreat in 2019. And one of the biggest kind of communal pieces of wisdom that came from the experience almost Shamanically, was body electric is for everyone.

Wow. It's a gift to the world, and if it if that's true that it's for everyone, then we need to do our work to figure out how to make these spaces safe and accessible to lots of different kinds of people who experience their eroticism differently. Yeah. What you're offering is such a gift to.

Any embodied ero erotic being, yes. Regardless of, just what you said, ethnicity or gender or anything. And so to make it available to every erotic being who's willing is just feels right, yeah. Because it is such a gift that you guys have cultivated. But Craig, I'm blown away that during a four year tenure, you went from a private to nonprofit.

You have made it multi-generational. 'cause as you said, you were the youngest teacher, now you've got like a new generation of teachers and you've really expanded. We've broadened the appeal to, really anyone of any, like any being, much less go through COVID and navigate that whole thing.

That is amazing. That is amazing. There was a lot of people who worked very hard and who loved the work and are dedicated to it. It was far from just me and, for whatever reasons, because I was like positioned as I was and I was a teacher for the school, and I had all these different jobs.

I knew the the school, yeah. It made sense that I was the director at that time, when, yeah. But, our board of directors is incredible. There's so much that people have given and still continue to, we have a new director, a wonderful man named Tom Kovac, who's taken on the directorship of the school.

And I trust him so much and he is such a good man. And he knows and loves the work. Awesome. And that's what's most important. Yeah. Yeah. That is the most important. So I'm curious, during this time of ex when it's almost like permission to experiment online. Yeah. To see, I'm guessing that the body electric, like I'm guessing people found you from all over the world, I'm guessing, right?

So many more. Hundreds and thousands of people started getting to know us and yeah. Because guess what? Stepping in is your first experience to a naked weekend is a big step for people. Exactly. For some people. Exactly. So the online thing allows us this onboarding piece where they get to know us and they go, what is this about?

And then they get to know us, right? Yeah. Yeah, and there's all kinds of interesting classes. Like I just this wonderful erotic educator teach psycho psychotherapist in New York, Don Chewy, I. He and I just for the second time, finished an online class called, we call it the 30 day Porn Cleanse. The pause that refreshes.

Ooh, nice. Nice. So it's like, what's the experiment of getting space from my porn habit? What? What happens? What liberates, right? Myself and this wonderful teacher in Seattle, Mark Fleming a couple times, I've taught a class called Healing Body Shame. For GT men. And there's lots of really interesting experiments, in the online world, so yeah. It gives us a lot of options. Yeah, totally. What a way to take that. Opportunity and really experiment and run with it. That's terrific. But before you get off of the class that you and Don taught, about the 30 day porn cleanse, yeah.

I think there are gonna be listeners who would like to know what these people what the 30 day cleanse revealed, or what people discovered about their bodies or their habits. Yeah. I think that we are creatures of habit, indeed. And if we just have to step back and look at it, it's if I just think about how I engage with pornography and if I can just look at it through the lens of this is just a habit.

Take away the judgment, take away the, oh, this is wrong or bad, or whatever people experience and just watch it. Yeah. Oh, I have a habit and I have a habit where I, it's at the end of the day and I'm tired and I want to go to sleep and I throw on the screen and I watch something and da and then notice it and go what's the impact?

How does it impact my energy, my body? How does it impact my connection with other people, my sex life? That, it can have an impact, right? And so what we do is we invite people to create their own experiment. Like some people are like, I'm not watching porn for 30 days. And guess what happens? Feelings arise. Things that they haven't, using porn as a way to disconnect or to distract. Feelings come up. I noticed we, we did it for the first time at the beginning of 2022, and it felt like a lot of people, what was coming up for folks was a lot of unexpressed grief.

Wow. Grief from COVID, grief from whatever. So a lot of that. So it's like what arises when I don't have this thing that I'm using to manage my feelings? That's one thing. Some people are like, that's a huge thing. It's a huge thing. It's massive. Yeah, it's huge. And I wonder the degree to which people realize that they are avoiding, that they're using porn to avoid their feelings.

They're not going to it to get sexually turned on, but they're, under, underneath that it's to avoid whatever feelings are coming up. Yeah, definitely can be. And so then the question of course, again, it goes back to how do I learn to befriend my feelings? How do I learn to stay?

What's the value of that? Because you know it if we're going to the distraction, it numbs us. And if it numbs us in some places, it numbs us everywhere. And that means less joy, less pleasure. Some people were like I'm still gonna watch porn, but I'm just gonna be really intentional and conscious in my body when I do it.

I'm gonna breathe when I do it. I'm gonna move when I do it. I'm gonna see what that's like. So different people had different experiments, but, what was best about it and which is best about it, is the beautiful honesty and vulnerability of the people who take the class where they just come and they go, wow.

I'm not alone. And I'm hearing people share their struggles with this and I'm resonating with it. And again, it's like I come in with my own stuff, but I'm in this with other people. Yeah. That's that's such a healing bomb, isn't it? Yes. When it comes to sexuality, I think so much of the shame comes from people thinking they're the only, that they're a freak, or they're the only one they have, that they're only one thinking about these weird fantasies, or they have these weird habits or whatever it is, and to realize, no, you're not the only one.

It's actually very common. Maybe it's the norm, it just takes the sting out. Yeah. You say shame dies in the light. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's good. That's good. Craig I'm curious where I know you had a four year stint as director and where little less than four, almost four years, little less than four.

I'm curious where you feel like the Body Electric is going from here and. Where are you personally going from here? 'cause that's a big shift in your own life to, to step down as director. Yeah. Body electric I've often felt, and I've said. Has its own shockti. Like I feel like Body Electric has its own consciousness.

It has its own desire for how it wants to be in the world. And it happens through people. It happens through the people. And I think that Body Electric will continue to offer that. Tried and true workshops that have been honed over many years. Yes. And I think that's good. I think we need to hold onto what works in terms of the Yeah.

Architecture of humans and their eroticism. I think Body Electric will keep the ways that we continue to really deeply care for our participants, as a baseline. There's lots of places it's going d different kinds of containers. D we're imagining, like you said, things for people of color, just for people of color or maybe spaces that are just for non-binary or trans folks.

Just creating lots of spaces where people feel welcome to explore themselves. I think that's the key. And it can look a lot of ways. And yeah, so cool. I would love it to go more internationally. We are in Australia Yeah. And Canada, and we have been in Israel, Uhhuh. But, it wants to go abroad and I think that's a good idea.

Yeah. I'm as curious as you are to see where it's gonna go, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. And for me personally, I just, I'm still teaching for the school. I'm the host of our podcast, which you're gonna be on. Yes. Yes, the Erratic Liberation Podcast, which is a joy. Yes. And I've basically, my soul, my spirit, my inner self has been calling for me to cast out on my own.

I'm a coach and, I'm in this place right now of really building my coaching practice where I'm supporting people in so I guess what I would call cultivating their soul habit. Wonderful. Centering their deepest longings and their connection with self as a way, as a foundation for their beautiful lives.

And I'm excited about that. So I'm teaching I'm teaching my own workshops, my own things that I love. One thing that I really love and care about is and I've done this with Body Electric and I'm, I've done it outside of Body Electric too, is, i'm teaching a course down in Ashe, Asheville called creativity and Eroticism.

So that's what, that's my dream. It's if we tap and raise this pleasure energy and this tribal commun communal experience and then paint, or write or move, yes. Who am I? What can I be, who am I as neuro as a creative being? That's what I love. And I wanna do that all over the world.

I wanna do that like for a week in Bali or wherever. Yeah. And that's my awesome that's where I'm going, so Cool. Cool. Yeah. I feel the excitement in your body as you share that. That's really wonderful. Two things really, like what you spoke about as far as your private coaching practice of getting people in touch with their deepest longing, there like meeting their deepest, erotic core.

And living from that place that's right. Wow. That's like it, yeah. Yeah. And then, to invite people to create from that erotic joy. Yeah. I just imagine the energy radiating from the art, yeah. How can Craig, how can people find you? Craig linine.com or on Facebook?

Yeah. Okay Craig Linine, so that's C-U-L-L-I-N-A-N-E. Craig Cullinane. I, so I'm launching my website right now, so if you go there, you're gonna see some landing pages of some stuff I've done, but you can kind, you can connect from me to me from that place. Or also I'm on Facebook.

Cool. And Craig Lenane coaching on Facebook. But I'm gonna have my beautiful website that this wonderful man is helping me with, I'm excited about. And yeah, so it's growing, it's building or you could, maybe find me through the Body Electric website, but Sure. I would, yeah. That's how Awesome.

Awesome, awesome. I look forward to seeing the incredible website, and I will know that this person has created it from his erotic core. Yes. And I'm so excited to have you as our guest on on the Erotic Liberation Podcast. Yeah, I'm excited about that too. It's right around the corner. It'll be so much fun.

Wonderful. Craig, thank you so much for being with us today. I really, I just really honor your path and thank you. Yeah. And just, what you had to share with us today is it, it goes to the principles of so much of what the body electric hold space for, which is simple but profound and really, you know what I wish for everyone.

Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you's such a pleasure. I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you. How are the themes from this interview landing in your body right now?

Are there ways you can bring more sacredness to your experiences of your sexuality, whether in your self pleasuring rituals or lovemaking experiences? Are there ways to cultivate deepening your heart connection with yourself and with your lover or lovers during your erotic expression?

Are there ways your exploration of your sexuality for yourself can also serve as an act of liberating, erotic aliveness for the world?

 Thank you for listening to Your Body. Remembers Pleasure If this conversation supported you, the simple way to help this work reach more people is to leave a five star rating or a brief review. You'll also find more resources and teachings@rahichun.com. Until next time, take good care.