SomaticJoy, LLC
Healing trauma, expanding pleasure, liberating the Erotic Self and Life Energy through touch, sound, breath, and movement.
I have been doing therapeutic and erotic bodywork for many years. I've been a Core Energetics practitioner and couples counselor for 13 years, and given workshops for men and mixed groups since the '80's. I'm also a Juilliard-trained musician and singer, and I help my clients to find and free their voices so that they may express their wants, needs, and desires. In addition, I have been a Reiki practitioner for 37 years (now 4th degree certified) and spent nearly a decade apprenticed to an Abenaki Lakota shaman whose teachings and practices also inform my work.
For the last several years I have spent about half of my time working as a Certified Sexological Bodyworker at Back to the Body Sensuous Retreats for Women in locations around the globe. Aside from trauma-informed bodywork, scar tissue remediation, and pleasure expansion, clients come to me to experiment in a safe space with activities that they have been curious about but afraid to try. Those activities include kink and kink-flavored play, sensation play, impact play, Dominant/submissive play, bondage, toy play, masturbation coaching, and G-spot training. I also maintain two practices; one as a Certified Core Energetics Practitioner and another as a Certified Somatic Sex Educator.
I believe that the truth is always in the body, and working directly with the body is the direct line to your personal truth. I also believe that trained, trauma-informed, one-way touch, offered with a full heart, total respect, and zero judgment, in an ethical, safe, and positive environment is a supremely effective protocol for working with and resolving deeply intimate issues.
Here is one client's recounting of our first session:
You can imagine how nervous I was, that first time, I am meeting someone I had never met before and I will be naked and he will touch me in places that are normally reserved for the 3rd date rule, lol, sorry …well not sorry, a little humor here…but that little catholic school girl was sufficiently freaked out about her on own actions, I really never had done anything like this before!
But…all my misgivings,…. fears,…. insecurities….ALL, were gone the instant I stepped foot into the sacred temple space Barry had created for this occasion! I shook as I entered the door and he reached out to hold my hands and steadied them, followed by a gentle hug which helped settle my breathing. Once I felt more settled Barry smudged the temple and me, we settled and talked, and l prepared for my first session.
Never had anyone spend more than maybe, if I was lucky, 15 minutes touching me, talking to me, asking ME what I wanted and how I felt….let alone…made me gush!
When I left, I was floating, I remember stopping to get food and I was still aroused thinking about all the things I had just explored in this safe Sexolocial Bodywork container. As I sat there, I felt this surge of energy that I had only ever felt when I did something like dance really hard, or worked out to where I would hit euphoria, but those would be short lived burst of energy and yes, they can carry you through the day, but this,…this….was that on steroids! I felt that I could move mountains - in business, in friendship and in relationship.
I have come to understand, through practice the beneficial health benefits of Sexological Bodywork and most importantly the positive effects on my mental, emotional, and physical health. The skillfulness with which Barry has worked with me to uncover and unleash the real me is simply mind blowing. All of my life is affected positively.
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"Working with Barry helped me deal with some of my personal issues towards certain emotions and trauma. I tend to have a very difficult time with anger, both from myself and others. I explained this to Barry and he suggested some things we could do together to confront it. Barry gave me a safe space to work and play with anger and experience anger without consequences or fear.
Also he made me squirt for the first time, that was a pretty big deal since I just thought I didn't squirt and that was that. I've had a fairly long sexual journey and presumed I'd hit my peak, but this was a wonderful surprise that helped me realize there is no peak, and there's still so much I can learn about myself"
AW
To recall the experience of my last session with Barry is to appreciate the immediate sense of safety I felt in my body as soon as we started. My body would melt in surrender to the experience and tears would pour with relief of just simply being. There was not an iota of doubt in all of me that he totally got me.
Barry could see what my body was capable of when I initially couldn't. He gave me such amazing encouragement and I went along with it right away, because I fully trusted him and because he helped me engage my playful side in the game of MORE. It was great to go to new heights!
I cherish the moment at the end of our last session, when I felt such depth of gratitude and love for Barry, and was able to receive his love back. The depth of what I could feel was a whole new level of beautiful, rich and profound experience of my human-ness and our human connection, with full on openness and no holding back.
IS
It would be hard to provide a short, concise testimonial on the value of what a session with you gave to me. My time on your table entirely transformed my connection to my body and alignment with my soul. We discussed some of the blockages I had been feeling in my 2nd and 3rd chakras and a few other things at the start of our time together. And as I lay down on your table, I opened to welcoming the full benefits of whatever was to come from giving you my complete trust and being fully exposed/naked in your capable hands and heart. I knew you would take care of me with your most intuitive soul and skillful process. I knew I was safe, and wanted to gain all of the possible benefits from our session and so I let go in full faith and full body. I have never experienced anything like what you do and I never felt so completely aligned in my body and soul, as a result. The physical reaction of your opening all of my channels made me dizzy, I literally saw stars and felt weightless as I left my body for a time - I was practically floating up off the table when you held me tight in a big hug to ground me back onto the table to come back into myself.
I have thought about our session quite a lot since and my body and mind remain open and connected, aligned. I feel things so powerfully ever since and fully enjoy my alignment. I often notice how I authentically speak from a place of clear expression and not from reaction in the moment, I notice myself as an erotically free woman, enjoying myself in new conscious ways. As I came to say on that day - "this Genie is never going back into that little bottle" - I am still living by that motto, and it is fun to be fully tuned in, and turned on by all of life (even the challenges) in the full power of WHO I AM. I am fully awake and living in a big way, having now launched my next phase, which came into being authentically along my path of curiosity, true faith in myself, and trust in the universe. THANK YOU! XOXO
Please know how thankful I am to have shared precious and important time with you on my journey during this pivotal year - you forever changed my life.
My first encounter with a healer was following a massive, terribly painful surgical experience when I was 19 years old. She, along with a master Rolfer, helped restore me to wholeness and inspired me to later become a wellness professional myself.