G-Spot Orgasm Therapy? Inside the Sexual Healing Business Salon.

com / By Tracy Clark-Flory Ben and Jen Rode offer women coaching, massage California. and G-spot orgasms. It's legal in

Just over eight minutes after getting onto the table, Becky is crying. Let your g oddess out, says Ben Rode, the 29-year-old man rubbing down her naked body with o il. This is your goddess ceremony. Meanwhile, Ben s 31-year-old wife, Jen, who is fi ve months pregnant, performs Reiki, floating her hands over Becky s head and neck, asking questions about a past life as a queen. Swelling, chiming New Age music plays in the background, as the picture-perfect pair let out long, throaty exhal ations to prompt Becky to breathe deep. Most surfaces in this Alameda, Calif., bungalow bear crystals and lit candles. I t feels like being in a womb: In the kitchen, a stove is on with the door cracke d open and next to the massage table a faux fireplace blazes. After nearly an ho ur of working her body over, Ben s hand slide between Becky s legs and he begins wal king her through a guided meditation on her ideal man. Imagine seeing him for the first time, he says. You lock eyes from across the room. After a lengthy narrative buildup, he says, His lips gently touch yours. Your knees melt out from under yo u. Ben, a tall all-American sort with ice-blue eyes, moves his fingers to her cli toris, Let your pleasure spread, down your legs, all the way up to your boobs. As Becky s moans deepen, he announces, K, I m going inside. He slides on a pair of latex gloves and liberally applies lube to his middle and ring finger. As he enters, Becky s ahhhs almost turn into song, and then she begins sobbing after Ben tells her, You re ready for him. Jen, a petite, near-platinum blo nde, begins to recite the affirmations that the three agreed upon during the int ake interview. You re ready for your beloved, she says. Your dreams are your own! Ben shouts to Becky, Rub your clit, and she does, her moans turning into yelps. Good go ddess. Feel your goddess, he says. Feel the Becky inside you. Feel her. Feel how p owerful she is, ready to take on the world. She gets exactly what she wants.

Ben intensifies his hand movements and then yells, Push it out! Let it go! Surren der to the process! Here she starts wailing like a mother who s lost her child, the n howling like a wild animal caught in a trap, and then making a sound I ve only e ver heard in a scene from Saw II. You re so fucking ready, woman, he says. You re so rea y, goddess. Her back arcs, butt hovering in the air, and clear liquid begins spra ying out from between her legs. With this, a droplet of ejaculate lands on my sh oe. - -

While their sessions encompass a host of services from past-life readings to mot ivational coaching there is clearly a sexual component in the literal climax. Bu t unlike a happy endings masseur, Ben is licensed in the state of California as a sexological bodyworker. Last year s release of The Sessions starring Helen Hunt and John Hawkes increased pop-culture awareness about the existence of sexual surroga tes, who sometimes engage in sexual intercourse with clients but the realm of sex ological bodywork, which in the U.S. is only recognized in the Golden State, is still little known.

The Rodes, who married seven months ago, just a month after meeting, call their particular brand of therapy explosive sexual healing. Most of a typical three-hour session, which costs $497, is spent talking to the client about her personal ch allenges and goals, developing affirmations, and then engaging in full-body mass age and Reiki. This all builds to the G-spot orgasm, which they use as a state of hypnosis or trance, says Ben, who is also a hypnotherapist. He compares it to hac king a computer. As their website explains, What we ve noticed is that a woman s block s to having a FULL release (1 or 2 steps beyond orgasm), are the same blocks she has to getting what she wants out of life. They also claim they can cure everyth ing from depression to migraines. Ben says they limit their services to women because his expertise is in the fema le body (although they have hopes of Jen getting her sexological bodywork certif icate so that they can develop a way to offer couples joint treatment). At 17, h e set out to read everything he could about female pleasure. He says his sexual partners started telling him, This is sexual healing. What are you doing to me? an d he began to think this might be his calling. He completed a two-month program at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco to get h is certificate in sexological bodywork and started booking sessions in the eveni ngs after his full-time job as a mailman. After falling in love with Jen, who was formerly a preschool teacher who offered Reiki, clairvoyance and intuitive counseling services on the side, he quit his po stman gig and began doing bodywork full-time with his new partner at his side. J en s wifely presence seems to neutralize the practice. At the same time, it s easy t o imagine clients worrying, Is she really OK with this? But Jen tells me jealousy is simply not an issue not even on the rare occasions when she can read a client s mind and tell that she s thinking naughty thoughts about her husband. (When Jen t old me how rare this was, Ben joked about being disappointed.) Comparisons to sex work are inescapable. Joseph Kramer, founder of the New Schoo l of Erotic Touch in Oakland, Calif., estimates that 90 percent of sexological b odywork does not involve genital touching. We teach people to touch themselves we ll, to touch their partners, he says. We keep our clothes on, the touch is one way . We re playing with erotic states, but there s not any interaction. He allows, thoug h, that it s a form of sex work. The key difference from prostitution, he says, is t hat it s contained. Kramer explains, The playground is not our bodies. The playground is your body and I m here to help you to map out what s possible with your body. Th is is foundationally about how you feel your own erotic embodiment. And referrals are often made from psychotherapists, he says. In California, the certification is recognized by the Department of Consumer Aff airs, but Kramer still advises sexological bodyworkers to first talk to the coun ty clerk, district attorney or police force about what they do. There s a movement in several other states to recognize sexological bodywork. Kramer says it s been m uch easier to get the profession recognized in British Columbia, Australia, Switz erland and Germany. This surprises him none: Some [U.S.] states are still teachin g pure abstinence for sex education, even though it s been proven not to work, says Kramer, but he remains optimistic. I think the actual breakthrough will come whe n there s enough data on what we do. Kramer compares sexological bodyworkers to Freud and Jung at the turn of the cen tury. They were starting their psychological investigations and it s taken 110 year s or more to get to this place where psychotherapy is so prevalent, he says. Not t oo long ago people thought psychotherapy was really weird. - -

In the denouement to Becky s session, following a second explosive orgasm that did not quite reach my foot, the flushed 31-year-old yoga instructor showered and g

ot dressed. Then she sat down with me next to a table bearing a crystal ball and tarot-like Oracle Cards. It doesn t feel sexual at all, she says, wearing a blissed -out expression. It s not a place of thinking about sex. She describes it as an alert type of meditation and a restful awareness. Indeed, the triad s throaty exhalations were very reminiscent of your average yoga class. The squirting? Not so much.