The Sensual, Sexual Side of Pole

When I tell people I pole dance, I’m met with a number of different reactions.  Some people say “You mean, you’re a stripper?”  Women will often say, “Good for you, that’s awesome.”  And men…well, men get that sly grin on their face and manage to look lustful and embarrassed at the same time.  It’s exciting that pole dancing is no longer chained to the province of strip clubs, and it’s important that people understand that.  It’s exciting because women get to experiment openly with their erotic side with less of the stigma and shame that working in a club can bring.  It’s exciting because the deeply sexual side of women, the side that for so long was oppressed, repressed, criticized and shamed, is actually beginning to be celebrated instead.  This is good news for all women, whether they pole dance or not.

            One of the major reasons that pole dancing is beginning to be taken seriously is because of the growing number of athletic pole competitions happening around the world.  The strength, grace and coordination of these women is being recognized more and more as a type of athletic talent, much like gymnastics.  This athleticism has given pole dancing a certain kind of legitimacy within society as a whole, and renders it an acceptable form of exercise for people who might otherwise find the subject too risqué or distasteful. 

On the other hand, if pole dancing becomes mainstreamed as just another athletic sport, we run the risk of it losing the sensual, sexual side of the movement in the effort to make the tricks come out perfectly.  Executing a series of pole tricks in rapid succession takes stamina and skillfulness.  But what makes a dancer interesting isn’t just her skill; it’s the emotion in her movement, the story she tells with her body.  And what makes a pole dancer riveting is that the story is, more often than not, a sensual one.  As women, it’s important that we keep telling this story with our bodies.  It’s important because it gives other women permission to do the same.  And because it brings out deeply entrenched biases and prejudices that are embedded into the fabric of our society, people are forced to confront their opinions and emotions in a conscious way. 

Moral obligations aside, a woman who stays connected to her sensuality during a show is more likely to give a stronger performance.  Her transitions will be smoother, her tricks will be stronger, and her overall performance more vibrant.  Why is this?  Because by staying connected to her sensuality, a woman will stay connected to her body.  It’s one thing to get on the pole and throw a bunch of tricks like a gymnast.  It’s another thing entirely to turn that into a beautiful, flowing performance that drips with emotion and intimacy.  One of the key differences is the presence of sensuality in your movement.

Here are some tips for developing sensuality in your pole dancing:

1.     When you move, see if you can stay aware of how things feel in your body.  Are there areas that come alive?  Are there areas that you don’t feel at all?  Learn to be aware of these areas without trying to fix or change them.

2.     Close your eyes and let your hands explore your body while you move.  Pay attention to how your skin feels underneath your fingertips, the way your hair feels brushing across your face, the way your clothing clings to your body.

3.     Take real pleasure in your movement.  Do what feels good in your body and let that pleasure come through in your movement.  There is something very powerful about a woman who can experience and share her pleasure without feeling shame.

4.     Play around with floor work.  Pole requires a great deal of technical skill with a relatively high risk of hurting yourself if you make a mistake.  Floor work is the perfect way to get out of your head and back into your body without risking injury.  And you don’t necessarily need to choreograph your movement.

5.     Explore your clothing options.  It’s great to practice in booty shorts and a tank top, but see what happens when you put on a sequined bikini top or some fishnet thigh highs.  Does your movement change?  How?  Do you feel different?  In what way? 

6.     Try dancing without a mirror.  S Factor studio is famous for this.  It forces you to stop paying attention to what looks good, and instead focus on what feels good.  This can help your movement become more sensual.

 

In order for pole dancing to continue to gain acceptance in the mainstream, there will initially need to be certain differentiations put into place so people can distinguish it from it’s strip club counterpart.  As Pole continues to evolve in the competitive sport arena, there will be rules and regulations that develop, like any other sport.  It would be a shame, however, if the cost of mainstream acceptance is the loss of the sensual, sexual side of pole dancing.  So much of a woman’s sexuality today is already contained, reined in, controlled.  Pole dancing can provide an outlet for women to explore their sexuality in a safe environment.  The beauty of pole is not just the incredible strength and grace that it requires, but the overt sensual display of female sexuality that accompanies a strong performance.  To take that away would, in essence, deprive women of the very thing that makes pole dancing such an empowering practice.

 

EXTRA! EXTRA!

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This Very Moment Is The Perfect Teacher

This piece is dedicated to Judith, my longtime mentor, a phenomenal woman and a true spiritual warrior.

 

            In 2002 I went on a seven day Buddhist meditation retreat in the Colorado Rockies.  During this retreat, I spent quite a bit of time in silence, observing my thoughts and then letting them go, observing my thoughts and then letting them go (which is exactly what meditation is, by the way).  I meditated in a group, and occasionally the leader of the group would read out loud to us from various books written by people like Pema Chodron and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche - Tibetan Buddhists who have a particular knack for making the Dharma not just comprehensible to the average Joe but relevant to the Western lifestyle.

            The first lesson I remember really taking in and loving was this:  Generally speaking, we regard any form of discomfort or pain as bad news.  And our instinct – the instinct of every living thing in fact – in the face of perceived pain and bad news, is to shut down or run like hell in the other direction.  But, says Pema Chodron, for spiritual warriors – people who have a certain urge to know what is true – feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we are holding back.  They show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we are stuck.  For me, this piece of advice was a true lesson in fearlessness.  A person must be brave to be willing to get close to all of their yucky parts, to explore all the parts of themselves that they usually try to hide from, or feel ashamed of, or run away from.  I loved it.

            With that said, I have to confess that I in no way, even today, practice leaning into my yucky spots anywhere near perfectly.  Au contraire, mes cheres.  I still, with what might seem like alarming regularity to some people, overlook the fact that I am shutting down or running away.  Luckily for me, Buddhism tells me that this is also okay, because the point is to cultivate awareness and then a gentle sense of compassion towards myself in these moments of imperfection.

            All right, so I had better start connecting this to pole dancing before everyone wonders if I’ve gone off the deep end.  Recently, in my dance classes, I hit what my teachers commonly refer to as “a plateau”.  That is to say, nothing new was happening in my dancing.  I wasn’t getting better.  In fact, things were feeling a bit stagnant and uninspired and repetitive.  And I was feeling frustrated, irritated and resentful.  Maybe it was time for me to quit dancing.  Maybe this was as good as I was going to get.  Maybe I was really bad at this after all.  You get the picture.  It felt like a big load of bad news had been dropped on my front door step and yes, it was uncomfortable and even a little painful.  And I wanted out. But my teachers’ reaction to this place (and to every other student who hit this place) was this: “Good.  Stay right where you are.  You are right where you need to be.  Dance.” 

I cannot tell you how irritated this made me.  I didn’t want to dance.  For weeks.  I went to different teachers, hoping to get out of my stuck place.  Didn’t work.  I tried wearing different shoes, but ended up kicking them off.  I played with the clothes I was wearing and just got annoyed.  As Pema likes to say, there was no way for me to manipulate the situation so that I could come out looking good.  There was no way for me to feel on top of things. And so there I was, nailed to an uncomfortable spot.

            And my teachers’ responses continued to be:  “Good”, “Stay There”, “Dance”. Nobody told me what I could do differently, or how I could escape the situation – no, on the contrary.  I was forced to stay in that uncomfortable place, to get to know it really well, until I found a way through.  In fact, staying in that uncomfortable place was the way through.  And the teachers, through all of it, fed neither my hopes about getting out of this place, nor my fears about being in it.  They simply encouraged me to dive into that unknown, uncontrollable territory and move through it. Who would have thought that Pole Dancing could be a vehicle for a Dharma teaching? But there it is.

            Pema Chodron (I love her, in case you couldn’t tell) says that the most important aspect of being on the spiritual path may be to just keep moving.  Usually, when we reach our limit, we freeze in terror.  Out bodies freeze and so do our minds.  But a way of working with our minds in these places is to neither indulge nor reject our experience, but rather to let the energy of the emotion, the quality of what we are feeling, pierce us to the heart.  And, as she reminds us, that this is much easier said than done.  But it is the path of compassion – the path of cultivating human bravery and kindheartedness.

            When we are encouraged to dance through our emotions, whether they are the frustrations of a plateau, or the grief of a loss, or the pain of a rejection, when our teachers say to us (no matter what shows up), “Good.  This is good.  Feel that in your body.  Keep moving.” we are being given a rather tremendous gift.  We are being taught, not just on an intellectual level, but also in our bodies, how to be kind to ourselves.  We are cultivating a certain kind of fearlessness when it comes to being intimate with our dark, uncomfortable parts.  And as we begin to touch in and feel whatever it is that we are feeling with some kind of compassion and kindness, our protective shells begin to soften.  Things that were previously thought to be unworkable and impossible suddenly seem possible.  And as we move through these difficult spots and our capacity for kindness towards ourselves expands, so too does our capacity for kindness to others. 

            I finally got out of my plateau, right before Christmas.  I had gone to a very advanced Pole Tricks class at a different studio (I normally dance at S Factor) and I was pushed so far beyond my comfort zone that I literally almost burst into tears.  The class was too advanced for me, but I hung in there, determined to finish it and determined to stay with my discomfort.  When I came back to S Factor for my regularly scheduled classes, I felt a certain amount of relief at being back in a more predictable environment.  I might be uninspired, but at least I knew what to expect.  And then the unexpected happened.  I had decided to dance in a heavy, faux-fur lined sweatshirt, which I would peel off early on so that I could both grip the pole and not overheat.  As I went to unzip the sweatshirt during my dance, the zipper got tangled in gauze top.  I could not move it up or down.  It was stuck.  And I was stuck, inside my increasingly warmer and warmer, bulky awkward sweatshirt.  Shit.  All of the frustration, all of the tension and irritation came back with fierce intensity.  Only this time I didn’t fight it.  I had to dance with the damn sweatshirt on. I wouldn’t be able to throw tricks the way I normally did.  I was dripping in sweat.  Go.  It was one of my best dances.  I rode the emotions, I let them take over my body and I let myself really give in to what I was feeling in the moment.  I let it pierce me to the heart.  And I found my way through.

 

 

I Have a Bone to Pick with You, Ariel Levy

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I Heart My Nervous System

I have just started reading a book called “Job’s Body: A Handbook for Bodyworkers” by Deane Juhan.  Initially, I picked up the book just so I could geek out over all the mind-body discussions.  I have been a massage therapist for the past six years and this book was on virtually every “recommended reading” list for my graduate studies in psychology.

            Of course, I only got to page 9 of the Introduction before I found something that I could relate back to pole dancing.  And naturally, I needed to share it with the rest of you, immediately.   Ok, here we go.  Deane Juhan says, “It is the touching of the body’s surfaces against external objects and the rubbing of its own parts together which produce the vast majority of sensory information used by the mind to assemble an accurate image of the body…”

Indeed.  So when I am laying on the floor, eyes closed, legs splayed, mid-dance, dragging my hand across the soft skin of my belly, or maybe when I feel the tips of my toes slowly rub against each other while my hips swivel on the floor, I am not focused as much on what my body looks like as I am on what it feels like to me.   And when the sensation experienced is pleasure, I begin to have a positive experience of my body.  This pleasurable touching of my body as expressed to my brain, by my nervous system, suggests to me that my body is very good as it is.  It is good not just because it feels good, but because it responds well.  Clarissa Pinkola Estes discusses this very same idea in her book “Women Who Run With Wolves”.  Says Estes, “What constitutes a healthy body…At the most basic level - thebreast, the belly, anywhere there is skin, anywhere there are neurons to transmit feeling - the issue is not what shape, what size, what color, what age, but does it feel, does it work as it is meant to, can we respond, do we feel a range, a spectrum of feeling?”

So pole dancing, by virtue of the fact that it asks us to have a sensory experience of our bodies that is, ideally, rooted in experiencing pleasure is essentially creating a space for women to accept their bodies as they are, in the moment, and to experience them as something good.  Hooray!

Wait, there’s more.  The nervous system stimulates the body to move in specific ways as a result of specific sensations, says Juhan.  All movements flood the nervous system with sensations regarding the structures and the functions of the body.  In other words, movement is the unifying bond between mind and body and sensations are the substance of that bond.  As we mature, one of the ways in which we develop and maintain a sense of identity is through selecting and maintaining a specific repertoire of “movement habits”, which subsequently generate a specific repertoire of sensations.  We then put ourselves in a stable environment that will not challenge our choices.  The majority of this decision-making, says Juhan, is largely unconscious.  So a habit develops and even if problems arise, parts go numb or forgotten, we rarely question our habitual patterns.  Here Juhan makes the argument for why touch therapies can be so effective and sometimes produce such positive results so quickly:  Because no matter how much I might move myself around, the tendency is almost always to move in the ways I have always moved, guided by the same deeply rooted habits, sensory cues and mental images of my body.  But, says, Juhan, if you can succeed in surrendering to the movements another person imposes on your body, without your own systems interfering, it is possible not just to gain new information about your body from this new sensory input, it is also possible to see your habitual patterns as nothing more than a habit.  This insight, when permitted to arise, gives us the wonderful gift of choice.  Rather than being chained to our habitual movements, we are free to explore new ways of moving.

Do you see where I’m going here?  While pole dancing is not a form of touch therapy, it incorporates some of its elements through sensory awareness.  Not only that, but when you learn how to pole dance you are surrendering to a new form of movement.  This movement creates new and unfamiliar sensations in your body.  All of a sudden, you are aware of places in your body that are numb, in pain or maybe throbbing and alive.  Your habit of keeping your pelvis tight and tucked under is made glaringly clear to you.  The stiffness in your jaw seems so…unnecessary.  Just by bringing these holding patterns into your awareness, just by allowing new sensations to flood through your nervous system and into your brain, you are giving yourself the choice, the permission to move differently.  This new form of movement, through new sensations, creates a new image of your body in your mind.  If your breasts feel beautiful then maybe you begin to believe that they are actually beautiful.  If your hips feel amazing as you push them out into a huge circle around the room, then maybe they are amazing.  Even more profound than that, as your body begins to move in this sensual, erotic way and nothing bad happens – in fact, only good things happen – then maybe your mind will begin to believe that your sexuality is something to be celebrated publicly, that it is something playful and good, rather than something to be shamed, chained and kept hidden.

Juhan says that massage therapists do not operate as interventionists in the body.  Rather, they act as facilitators.  Their hands are like flashlights, illuminating a dark room, and the medicine they offer is self-awareness.  I like to think of my pole dance teachers in the same way.  Only it is their bodies and their movements that illuminate the way, reminding us that we are not a collection of parts, but a unified whole and that pleasure in the body can lead to profound shifts in the perceptions of the mind.

 

The Why Factor

I recently attended the most splendid play.  I love plays.  And of course, I love pole dancing.  So a play that combines the two is just, well, delicious.  The play was called The Why Factor: Proportion Distortion.  The Why Factor is an all-female writing ensemble started by Christina Howard in 2006.  Over the past few years, these women have created four original productions each focusing on a different theme in women’s lives.  This particular production focused on exploring female body image and sexuality.  The story centers around nine women who attend a pole dance class in an attempt to get in touch with their sexuality.  Through the work they do in class, the women are forced to confront issues of self-acceptance, the ways in which they keep themselves chained to their past and the realization that they each have tremendous untapped power.

 

The play was sponsored by S Factor, an all-female pole dancing studio based in Los Angeles.  The structure of the classes and the dance movements were based on the S Factor experience.  S Factor emphasizes the emotional connection between erotic dance and the female sexual psyche.  Many students who have attended S Factor classes (including Christina Howard) call the experience “transformative”.

The instructor in the dance class (played by real-life S Factor Instructor Janelle Taylor) is cast simultaneously as Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, dance, volcanoes and destruction.  Pele represents the passionate and creative force that transforms and rebuilds our lives.  She has the power to clear and purify all that is not needed.  As the instructor, Taylor beckons the women to bring forth that which lays dormant at the very core of their being.  She believes that every woman has a fire that burns deep within and that calling out this fire has tremendous healing potential.

 

This Pele archetype is particularly important for the modern day women   As a goddess who is associated with destruction, Pele is often misunderstood and even misjudged.  We often like to connect the Divine feminine with cozy, comfy things such as nurturing, mothering, unconditional love, and non-judgmental support.  However when it comes the darker, wild side of the feminine, i.e. the chaotic, the unpredictable and the destructive, we shy away and even disown these parts of ourselves.  Pele reminds us that fiery eruptions and emotional upheaval are almost always followed by new life and change.  She reminds us that this wild side of the feminine is where a part of our power resides, and to disown it or deny it is to deny a core aspect of the feminine nature. 

 

There is a particularly poignant moment towards the end of the play when a student, unable to handle where the class is asking her to go and the implications it has on her marriage, chooses to leave.  Pele/The eacher leaves the classroom to go after her and returns unsuccessful only to face a classroom full of doubting women.  The students challenge the teacher, telling her the work is easy for her and questioning the validity of the journey she has taken them on.  “OOOOHHHHHH!”  bellows Pele.  Her fiery explosion stuns her students into silence.  She rages on, telling them about her own journey and it’s darkest moments, explaining to them that this sexual openness has never come easily for her, that she struggled for years with her demons and that it had, in fact, required a part of her to die and then rise from the ashes left behind.

 

In this scene Pele is describing a struggle that many women face with when confronted with their sexuality.  It is easy to think that a woman who can lead you into a deeper relationship with your sexual self has it all figured out or that somehow, her road was easier than yours.  It was not.  It is easy to think that the girl on the mat next to you has it all together.  She does not.  The wisdom that we see in our teachers comes from a willingness to dive into the darkest parts of ourselves and to know and love those places intimately.  The demons inside may change or go away but that is not the goal.  And when we find ourselves back in what seems to be the same place, for what feels like the millionth time, it is wise to take the lesson, be utterly kind to one’s self but also to notice what is different this time.  In my experience, we rarely visit the same places twice.  Rather, we circle around in an upward spiral, coming to what seems like the same place from a different perspective.

 

At the end of the play Pele says she believes that within every woman there is a fire that burns hotter than the earth’s core.  But that it is often buried, making it burn even hotter.  The journey then is to uncover this fire, this wildness, and to let it out so that it might purify and energize us.  The journey is to let others feel and see this fire, to make them understand that it is as inherent to a woman’s nature as nurturing might be.  The journey is to let the ashes of that fire be the fertile ground for new beginnings.

L.A. Not So Unbound

Last weekend, I went to a performance given by the dance troupe LA Unbound.  I went to support several of my pole dancing teachers, who were performing an erotic pole dance number in the show.  Quite a few other students and some teachers from that studio were there as well.

There were about twenty routines in the show - maybe more- with everything from tap, jazz and modern to belly dancing and hip hop.  There were also a few "burlesque" type routines, with women in various states of undress tilting their heads and shaking their rumps. I was not particularly blown away by the performances.  Until my teachers came out.  Now, let me just say that there was a fair amount of anticipation prior to their particular performance because the curtain actually dropped before they started, which did not happen for anyone else.  Behind the curtain you could hear a bit of clanking and rumbling.  In addition there was quite a bit of whistling, cat-calling, screaming and general noise from the audience.  Finally, the curtain went up.  Four women lay on their backs in a circle, toes pointing  towards one another, their bodies dwarfed by their voluminous tutus. The music started and the women began to stir.  They rose slowly, in synchrony, chest first, as if invisible strings were pulling them from their hearts.  As they danced, the tutus and tank tops were shed to reveal corsets and panties.  The women's movements became progressively bigger, fuller and more powerful.  Their bodies were charged with emotion and even though they were undoubtedly trying to communicate something to the audience, they really didn't appear to be dancing for the audience.  Rather, they seemed to be dancing for themselves.  They swirled, and flipped and climbed and circled their hips and tossed their heads and touched their bodies and rolled around on the floor oh-so-deliciously.

And then it was over.  The next act came on.  A sassy little number that was, I think, also meant to be sexy.  But somehow, after all of that raw emotion, that deliberate, genuine display of female sexuality, it seemed...silly.  A few more "sexy" dance routines followed, most notably "Unstripped", which was the grand finale.  I watched these women dance, shed their clothes and shake their asses and I felt uncomfortable.  Rather than enjoying the deliciousness of their movements, they seemed to be "putting on a show".  It was like watching a little girl put on her mother's dress and pearls in an attempt to look grown up.  I just wasn't buying it.

Now, I am not a dancer.  And choreography is not something that I can pretend to understand all that well.  But I do understand movement and I understand emotion and I really understand how the two of them work together.  A critic once said this about dance, "Only when skill is illuminated by animal power does the stage begin to glow…animal power is high-octane emotion-life, trying to burst through the performer’s body.  That emotion, that life force, is indivisible from the sex drive.  It takes us very close to the ultimate, orgiastic release that is the closest we can get to the instincts of our own private animals.”  

Hmmmm.  No wonder the pole dancers were so hypnotic.  Those women spend hours every week delving into, rolling around with, and otherwise reveling in that sexual life force.  They understand that their emotions are inextricably linked to it.  And they understand that the more they let that sexual life force live in their bodies, the more powerful and inspired their movement will be.  Sexy choreography, hot costumes and a come-hither expression certainly suggest a kind of erotic allure.  But to be truly sexy means to be not just comfortable and present in one's own body, but to be deeply connected to the sexual life force within.  And to let that sexual life force explode, ooze, drip - to let it  to find it's way out through your body and into the world for everyone to see.