Questions

Who does the touch?

A patient and sympathetic man. Also a mercurial and highly experimental man. Together they make a whole.

Who do you work on?

I work almost exclusively on women. Men desperately need conscious touch, but for lots of reasons I am not the one to work on them. Also at the moment I cannot recommend someone who does the work I do on men. Hopefully in the near future.

Where is this done?

Out of my home, wherever I happen to be. When in Toronto, it is in an upscale place on a gentle street in the Riverdale neighbourhood. It is quiet, very safe and tree-lined. The outside of my home is rather shabby looking, but the inside is aesthetic and light filled. People are often happily shocked by the contrast. It’s part of the adventure. :)

Can I meet you first before I decide to book?

Unfortunately no. I’d love to meet, and we’d probably chat for hours, and I used to do it to make people feel safe and comfortable, but it’s too time-consuming for me now. Hope you understand.

How long is the experience?

About 3 hours, roughly. Long form touch is life-altering. It cannot be rushed. Trust me on this. ;)

How long have you been doing this work?

For about ten years. The beauty and transformation I have seen in that time is extraordinary. So….much….beauty.

Why do you do this work?

The work I do is life-altering. It can be like a lightning strike. Deep touch returns people to their essence, to their primal selves, and ignites all the stuff our brain pushes away to make it through the day.

How did you prepare for this work?

I lived in alternative realms for a long time as a searcher. Yoga, meditation, Buddhism, various spiritual ephemera, drumming with elders…all that stuff. A deep trauma as a child pushed me into therapy for years dancing around pain, anger, and sadness until I was hanging by a thread. Eventually I got down to the hard work of liberation, and that involved going wholesale into the question of how you take unwanted touch and transform it into sacred touch. Many women have this same challenge, so there is often a kind of holy alliance with them when they arrive at my door.

Why this touch? Why not regular (RMT) massage?

Ah, well….let's have a glass of wine and discuss. 

The simple answer is:

Registered massage therapy is highly industrial, one-dimensional, and lacking in soul. Touch and massage are profoundly important to us as humans–to connecting with each other, to our sensual, sexual and spiritual realities, and crucially, to our eventual surrender to the love of others. So while we're living in an age of profound and acute touch starvation, the business of professional touch accesses only one level of our being, for lots of good and not-so-good reasons. You can easily get a good massage most anytime of day, but are you ever moved by a massage? Inspired? Elevated? Altered? 

Rarely, if ever.

It's not to say the people that do registered massage are the problem, but that the system itself is broken. Many highly artistic and sensual beings go to school and get trained in massage, and then find themselves little-by-little ground into knot-reducing machines, where the art and heart are removed from they do. They wear uniforms like doctors or nurses, they have charts, and they know muscle groups. Meanwhile, the more microscopic they get about massage, the less they actually connect with the person in front of them. As if touch is only mechanical or medical.  

In fact, we are very complex multi-layered beings, but regular massage only addresses the most superficial parts of us. What most of us crave is to be touched, to be moved, and to be understood. This is the great deficit of our time. Our phones have become our lovers, and we give so much attention to electronic devices, rather than each other. This touch starvation can and should be challenged by conscious, deep touch, but the touch-making business is only either industrial or sleazy, and not much in between.

In the my own little way, I have set out to change all that. I believe in touch as a highly artistic form that can move people in a thousand different ways. Your mind often has a very tight grip around your body, shutting it off from feeling and possibility. When it becomes a pattern, you don't even know why you are so unhappy. When you are touched with finesse, artistry and patience, your mind releases its grip and allows your body to speak in its own language. There is often a rush of freedom and exhilaration. You whisper to yourself that you won't allow yourself to live this way any longer. 

That's the potential of this process. It's meant to remake you into a softer, kinder, and more bodily person. It's meant to turn you on in a world that habitually turns you off, or hits your sensory buttons at the easiest and cheapest level. It's meant to show you all the invisible conditions that go into making you alive, connections in every direction that are severed by a highly industrial world filled with fear, violence, and machine-like actions. To connect deeply to yourself is to create a standard for yourself and for others about the softening effects of touch and pleasure. Regular massage simply cannot alter you in this way.  

What happens during the touch? 

Something amazing.

Is there music? 

Music is critical to creating an atmosphere of surrender. The music I use is painstakingly chosen as to align with deep rhythms of relaxation. Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon or William Basinski's Cascade is typical of what I might play.

Do you do "regular" RMT-style massage? 

No I do not. This is a different planet. :)