Draft:Body Electric School

The Body Electric School (hereafter TBES ) is a private not-for-profit.

Early History
TBES was founded in Oakland, California by Joseph Kramer in 1984. Kramer developed the erotic massage practices that are central to the School’s work in response to the ravages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the wave of fear that was sweeping the gay community. Kramer was determined to create a professional massage certification in a homosexual-friendly environment. Inspiration for the name of the school came from Walt Whitman's poem, "I Sing the Body Electric.

Kramer engaged Claire Arnesen to teach courses in conscious breathwork. Kramer first worked with Arnesen from 1980-81 and in his dissertation described the profound effect of her instruction on his personal healing process. In 1985, Irene Smith, an associate of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, was hired to teach “Bodywork for People with Life-threatening Illnesses.”

In 1986 Kramer began offering the workshop “Celebrating the Body Erotic,” a weekend-long experience introducing male participants to conscious breathing and deepening levels of full-body awareness, with extensive interaction among participants in the group. His instruction emphasized techniques for circulating erotically generated energy through the body and retaining it without ejaculatory release. Kramer integrated conscious breathwork techniques he had earlier learned from Arnesen into the instruction. The final day of the workshop culminated in an exchange of “Taoist Erotic Massage.” The term is Kramer’s, and he clarifies that his practice was not originally founded on Taoist principles but rather reflects the affinities he discovered after the fact with the non-ejaculatory regimen of Taoist practitioners like Mantak Chia.

Matthew Simmons (d. 2020) was the co-creator of “Celebrating the Body Erotic,” and Kramer’s assistant in the early days. Simmons later taught on his own for BE, and also developed a practice of companioning terminally ill people in shamanic modalities, a skill he developed in the context of the AIDS epidemic.

In 1989, Collin Brown began to assist Kramer with the business, facilitating workshops, and moving toward a broader vision for the school. Brown suggested the school develop longer, more in-depth experiences. Thus, intensive programs such as “Dear Love of Comrades,” “Cosmic Orgasm Awareness Week,” and “Sacred Intimate Training” (a term that reclaims the sacred healing dimensions of sex work) were developed.

In 1992, in collaboration with his close friend Annie Sprinkle, Kramer began offering Taoist Erotic massage classes to both men and women. These classes offered a prototype for Body Electric’s workshops for women. Kramer and Sprinkle, independent of the school, filmed their first massage instructional videos titled “Fire on the Mountain: Male Genital Massage” (1992) and “Fire in the Valley: Female Genital Massage” (1995).

TBES also developed a certified massage program independent of the erotic curriculum, initially led by Doug Frasier. When Frasier stepped down in 1990, Brown invited Chester Mainard and Irene Smith to lead the massage training. For the erotic touch department of the school, Mainard developed anal massage techniques, based on his years of teaching medical anal massage to university students. Workshops that shared his light-hearted approach to learning, developed with Selah Martha, were titled “‘The Land Down Under” and “Tapping the Root.”

Ongoing Development
Brown purchased the School from Kramer in 1992. He also organized the formation of the Wildwood Conservation Foundation to purchase and preserve Wildwood Retreat Center, 210 acres near Guerneville CA, as home to many BE intensives. He continued teaching and consulting for the school until 2019 and resumed teaching in 2023. Brown invited Isa Magdalena, a colleague of Annie Sprinkle’s from Amsterdam, to develop women’s programming for the School, adapting the techniques of the Taoist Erotic Massage and its place in the workshop’s structure. Magdalena and her partner P.K. Kozel became the first women to teach for BE], from 1993 to 1998, along with K Ruby and Vision Dancer.

Selah Martha began assisting and instructing for the school in 1995 and in 1996 became co-owner and co-director of BE with Brown. Martha focused on women’s and all-gender programming, and curriculum design, and further developed a vision for the school. She wrote and published “Out on A Quim, the Body Electric Newsletter of Women’s Sacred Erotic Work” and defined Body Electric as a “queer wisdom school for all.” She based the later book Circle Work: Intuitive Technology on her teaching experiences at the school.

Transitions since 2000
Bob Findle purchased the school from Brown in 2004. In addition to stewarding the school, Findle facilitated workshops for men. In failing health, Findle in turn sold the school to Tom Berry and minority stakeholders in 2011. In January 2019, a collective of alumni and friends purchased BE from Berry and reincorporated it as a charitable non-profit organization registered in the state of Ohio. TBES now operates under the oversight of a Board of Directors.

In 2020, responding to the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, TBES developed an extensive schedule of online experiences. The accessibility of online programming has continued since the lifting of pandemic restrictions, resulting in an expanded list of both virtual and in-person courses. An inclusivity-focused approach has figured prominently in the development of new programming, under the guidance of a director and committee for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Programs designed for specific gender identifications also continue.

Personal Impact of Body Electric Programming
In his doctoral dissertation, based on feedback from the three thousand men who experienced Body Electric classes between 1986 and 1982, Kramer summarized themes in what early participants in workshops said of their experience. Among the responses of those he surveyed, consistent themes emerged: fresh insight into and transformation of old traumas, particularly of sexual abuse; the integration of spiritual and sexual experience; the reframing of sexual pleasure as an energy that arises from within the self; and an expanded awareness of the attractiveness of others beyond narrow criteria of one’s “type.”

Documented descriptions of personal experience by other participants corroborate aspects of Kramer’s summary. Larry DeRolf focuses on the experience of a sacred dimension of sexuality accessed during the introductory "Celebrating the Body Erotic" workshop. Carlton Elliott Smith and Carl Maves address themes of personal healing as a result of the process. Rex Poindexter focuses on objective aspects of the workshop structure, as does Mike Albo. A staff writer for the New South Wales News describes his initial introduction to the work of BE in Berkeley and its subsequent importation to Australia. Writing of her experience of a mixed-gender workshop in 2000, Suzanne Blackburn emphasizes a dramatically heightened sense of internal integration and self-acceptance, a spiritually informed sense of community with other participants, and the initiation of a more general process of self-reclamation.