I finally calculated the number, and I think the erotic energy retreat for women last weekend at Easton Mountain near Albany, N.Y., was about the twelfth I’ve attended since 2001. The first one, I did because my best friend—a femme I was in love with—had attended one, and I loved what she was like when she came back: sparkly, open, insightful, alive. She told me about it, without too many details, and I decided I had to see this for myself.

I was 22. I hadn’t slept with a girl yet. I hadn’t had a girlfriend yet. I was out, but that identity hadn’t quite been consummated, and I was itching to be absolutely sure that I was, in fact, a dyke. (I mean, I was pretty certain, but what if I slept with a girl and didn’t like it?)

In retrospect, the workshop overwhelmed me. I am pretty sensitive to energy—I think I’ve always been—though it took years of experimenting with energy to discover how to move it and sense it. I went away from it glad I had gone and grateful for the experience, but saying, to myself at least, that I would never do it again. I’d gotten what I needed out of it. I was pretty sexually liberated already (or so I told myself). What more was there to explore?

Of course, there is so much more. I think I was too overwhelmed to even see the places I needed to expand. I was not used to breathing so deeply and powerfully and frequently, not used to tapping in to my own erotic power and pleasure.

About a year later, the same workshop was offered again and I felt drawn to it. So much had changed in a short time. I had discovered so much about myself. I was still in love with my best friend, and she was still stringing me along, but I’d slept with a girl and briefly had a girlfriend.

That second time, I was hooked. I was so much better able to tap into what I wanted, to ask for it, to indulge in my own pleasure without feeling guilty for my desires. I felt strong, capable, fierce.

So I kept going. In the fall of that same year, a slightly more advanced workshop was offered, and I, as a poor college student scrimped and saved in order to attend. The workshop was about power and surrendering—exploring both being in the power position and being in the surrendering position, but I barely remember the surrendering part. By the time I got through the end of the second day, I knew I was a top.

It was relatively easy for me, I’d played with some kink and been, mostly, bottoming and on the receiving side of that dynamic, and it felt fine, but without much heat. Topping, though, being the one in power, was a new charge. I felt like I’d grabbed onto an electric fence, my whole being vibrating and shocked and jolted.

I promptly went home and announced to everyone that I was a top, though it took me years to truly integrate that information into my sex life.

My pursuit of this study started with those three workshops. Since then, I have traveled, I have worked with half a dozen teachers, I have studied tantra and energy and chakras and BDSM and kink and sensation and power play and the intersections between them all.

A little over two years ago, I attended a week-long retreat that really deepened my commitment to this work. As an introduction to the group, the teachers said, “We have a gift for you: these teachings.”

I was awed and ready. I asked what the instructors thought my path looked like. One said that tantra still needs a poet, a writer to record these experiences, these teachings. Another said my work with gender was a needed component.

I went away from the retreat committed to deepening my study of tantra and erotic energy, and in the past two years, I have significantly done so, as I am now coordinating workshops for women to get together and experience these gifts.

It’s a new challenge to be the point person to people who have yet to experience this kind of work. I’m still trying to figure out the language to explain what it is without scaring people off. Certainly, there are plenty of people who would not be afraid of erotic massage, or getting naked, but there are plenty of others who would shut down and never attend if they knew what we do.

So I’ve started thinking about some lists of questions I could use as enticement to attend: Do you want to tap in to your own erotic power? Would you like to get deeper in touch with what your inner wisdom says to you? Are you interested in being better able to articulate what you are feeling and wanting without feeling guilty?

Once folks have attended a workshop like this, it is so much easier to tell them what is going to happen at more advanced workshops. It is difficult to explain to a newcomer that although these experiences are intimate, they are not actually personal, and that we do a lot of work to ritualize the space in which we work to make it healing, healthy, and contained, which is very different than any sort of orgy of sex play that you might envision happening at an erotic retreat.

I believe strongly in some of the fundamental foundations for this work, and I have strongly integrated those philosophies into my own life. Things like being able to say no, taking a breath to listen to what my inner wisdom is telling me, being able to articulate what I want and need without feeling guilty, asking for what I want, making requests based on my own pleasure—these are all key parts of the basic workshop.

In the more advanced play, I’ve learned to treat everything like an experiment, and to collect the data about how it went—good, bad, or neutral, all of that is data for me to examine. I’ve learned to be able to notice my physical response to challenging situations, to notice where my energy is getting stuck, in which part of my body, in which chakra, and to move it up and down along my chakric system in order to move the feelings and responses in my body. I’ve learned constantly about trauma, sexual and physical and emotional trauma, and its affects on the body, mind, and spirit, especially in the context of sexual relationships, building energy in the body, and release. I continue to study holding space for others, and remind myself to breathe.

This path takes self-knowledge, patience, forgiveness and care. It takes awareness and a willingness to look at the shadow side of ourselves, to meet her with open arms, caution, and curiosity. It is a path I am committing to, stronger and stronger and life-long. Who knows where it will take me, but I am so pleased to be where I am at right now, right this minute.

To learn more about the Body Electric School visit them at www.bodyelectric.org or www.thebodyelectricschool.net.