What an exciting summer we have ahead of us. We're set, ready to meet
many of you in person, at last. We've talked to many of you via phone,
emails and chats, so it'll be interesting to put your faces to your words and voices.
June we'll be in the Bay Area of CA, heading up to Harbin Hot Springs where
we're bringing you a super-charged polyamory conference with powerful,
innovative, dynamic, creative presenters. WPA's Harbin poly conference's designed to blow your minds and knock
off your socks, if you're still wearing them. You might not be, because Harbin's clothes optional, and we're blessed to be
there. Poly conferences are more electrifying when we
can land a venue like Harbin where we can be naked and be ourselves.
Harbin's just the beginning. The Chicago tantra and polyamory community
invited us to the Windy City where we'll stage a weekend Tantra seminar in June.
Then, in the Fall (date to be
announced) we present a full-on tantra AND polyamory conference at a major hotel.
The Chicago conference will feature
local talent and presenters from the Midwest. You may think Mid-Westerners are
ultra-conservative. Think again; the Mid-Westerners will show us they too have open-minded, progressive,
spiritual folks just as free as polys and tantricas in Maui and California.
I
hope you can join us for one or more of our events. We love meeting you
and bringing conferences to your area so you can connect
with others of like mind and perhaps find new friends and lovers.
Many subcategories crowd beneath the polyamory umbrella but by far the most
popular subcategory of folks to squeeze into our umbrella of late is poly swingers.
Poly swingers are
those, usually couples, who’ve stumbled onto polyamory by way of swinging but
within the swinging scene, they create ongoing emotional relationships and
realize they're polyamorous. They continue in the swing scene, but
become polyamorous within it, seeking relationship and continuity with
lovers whom they find in that scene. And they continue to adhere to
the prime rule of swinging: honor and preserve your primary relationship,
taking care not to let sex outside the primary couple sour that primary
committment.
Couples that come this way to polyamory may first open up their marriages
at swing clubs where they connect with others
who are swingers and having wild sex. They thought they were seeking
just sexual adventure but find they prefer sex with people who become their
friends and enjoy their recurrent company.
Sometimes couples who come to polyamory from the
swing scene didn’t actually engage in
sex with others in the clubs. At the clubs, these would-be swingers just
made love with each other or watched others and then went home with each
other and had sex while charged with what they witnessed. Whether or not they
engaged in sex at the clubs or connected at the clubs with others whom they
did make love with, they had a chance to look at and perhaps try swinging as
a sexual episode pretty much devoid of ongoing emotional involvement with
anyone but each other. They realized they wanted something different than conventional
swinging.
Many couples who initially identified as swingers come to us (we’re relationship counselors) and ask how to find
special singles or couples to join them as lovers. Though they'd
identified as swingers, they're really polyamorists. Though they may
not want to live with the man, woman or couple they seek, they seek
relationship with them. They want more than isolated episodes in clubs or
elsewhere where they don’t really know the other
people. They don't seek total commitment, living with the lovers they seek or
even sharing their daily lives. They want some of the best of
polyamorous multiple person loving: sex, romance, intimacy, love, shared
recreation, good conversation--but not complicated
live-in relationships and marriage-like commitments that
get messy and difficult.
These swingers-come-polys want to be able to trust the new lover or couple, to
dispense with condoms and feel flesh to flesh.
Polys who stay in the swing scene still want to make love, have sex, get off, get down, raunchy and
dirty. They want to play with total abandon and do all the sexually things
formerly forbidden. They want to walk on the wild side and still have the
comfort and security of their monogamous home life. They want to feel
love and intimacy without giving that new person dominion over their lives and
power to alter decisions they
already have as a couple.
In many instances, such poly swing couples want to fulfill their partner’s wildest fantasies. They enjoy their
beloved getting everything she or he ever wanted sexually. They love watching
their partner’s pleasure, enjoy his or her orgasms. Poly swingers get their
voyeuristic fill, see everything they always wanted to see, live, in person,
and not just by watching anonymous swingers in a club, party or one-time date.
Poly swingers get to touch places and things they never thought they would.
They have experiences with people of all colors and orientations. When wannabe
swingers become poly they can be touched by many hands in many places,
simultaneously, which brings them to new levels of orgiastic, ecstatic
bliss..
The classic swinger caveat--avoid as a couple any emotional entanglement with
outside sex partners and regard emotional involvement with others as a
threat to the primary relationship--has validity. Emotions, especially
new relationship energy and the challenges of living with a new lover, can
be daunting; so there’s something to be said for "keeping it light"
as classic swingers do. If you aren’t too involved with new sex partners, you may
avoid
dysfunctions common with dyadic, often co-dependant couple relationships. Maybe it’s enough for two to figure out
finances and how to
raise the kids and you don’t need more people telling you what to do, when,
where, how and why.
And privacy, so valued by swingers, is a good thing. It’s nice to share your
home for an evening but not romantic having to fight for the
bathroom on an ongoing basis. Poly swingers, like anonymous swingers, can
maintain their privacy and avoid emotional over involvement.
Polyamory’s about accepting diversity, even variety, in how you make love.
You
don’t always have to seek live-in, long-term, forever relationships to be polyamorous. If you chose a relationship that fulfills a need or desire and
may not last forever, that doesn’t make you a swinger, either. You're a
poly if you seek relationship, even in the swing scene.
If you’ve tried swinging and want more intimacy but still want your couple
privacy, you may chose to move into non-co-residential polyamory. Develop your
own intimate network of lovers in the swing scene or through polyamory
channels such as
World
Polyamory Association conventions, mixed swinger/poly venues like our
Club Tantra on Maui,
poly websites or
natural evolution with good friends. You may not chose to wear any labels
(swinger,
poly swinger or polyamorous purist), but rather just enjoy your connections with
others who share loving in this new, exciting, intimate way. Polyamory’s
diverse enough to embrace all variations of lifestyles. Now’s the time for you
to enjoy the flavor of polyamory that most suites your tastes.
When you and new lovers get together to make love for the first time, you
can better honor your fertility and health concerns once you’ve heard each
other’s sexual health information, asked questions and perhaps performed a
home-HIV test.
Each of you tells her or his sexual history. Share your test results for
sexually transmitted and other contagious diseases. Say who and how you’ve
touched sexually since your last HIV tests. Say what methods you used (or
didn’t) for disease protection. State your fertility status.
Notice your partners’ body language and eye movements as they share their
sexual history. Body and eye movement can indicate truth (people lie most
about sex). Ask questions until you get enough information to make
intelligent decisions.
WEIGH WHAT WANT & DON’T WANT
Focus, breathe, find your center. Notice signals your body sends you. Is
your belly tense, head aching, breathing rapid? Then gather your thoughts
and take turns saying what you seek, prefer and what you do not want
sexually with each person at the love-in. Consider all health, emotional and
social factors and remember, you can say “No” anytime.
CENTER YOURSELF BETWEEN INNER GIVER & TAKER
You may hide your desires if your Giver-- an inner voice that says to please
others first–dominates you. Your Giver knows how to make other people
comfortable. Trouble is, sometimes giving becomes more than an option, your
Giver becomes your main voice, the only one you hear inside. Your Giver
takes you over and can ignore your own needs.
If your Giver dominates you, you do what other people want you to do so
they’ll like you. You think, “I’m nice and just naturally try to make them
happy first.” This may please them and you for a while.
But when you automatically please others first, you suppress your ability to
choose how you want to interact sexually with your lovers at the love-in.
The Giver, always gratifying others, keeps your Taker--the part of you that
wants to meet your own needs–offstage.
Offstage in your unconscious, your Taker gathers strength and bitterness and
can explode without consideration of your inner ecology or relations with
your polymates.
What works for me is inclusive, pair-bonded loving (Mono-poly), with Sasha
and I each having a veto on one another's sexual involvement. Sasha never
exercises his veto, but I often do. In inclusive loving, all sexualloving
takes place in each others' presence. Relating to other couples has to be
right for both of us, no small requirement, since we're bi, eccentric and
intense and we need all-round approbation with our lovers.
Show your protective voices that you can, from your discerning center,
experiment with new behaviors and still feel secure. From your Center, face
your sexual self, overcome your family and cultural programming, burn karma,
heal trauma and drop inhibitions. If your love group encourages emotional
release and reprogramming, emotions you experience in the love-in give you a
chance to heal and learn.
STATE DESIRES & LIMITATIONS
Tell each person how you want to share sex with her or him. You don’t have
to justify a request; just state it. Hear but don’t judge other’s requests.
When you request, say, double penetration, your love-in lovers may or may
not give you that. If they ask you to do something you need not comply.
Offer each other alternative intimacies. Match your sexual interactions with
your comfort level. Perhaps, refrain from coitus at first. A man may, in
some instances, ejaculate only with his mate but share oral sex with others
in the group.
Many woman, like me, were forced, raped, controlled, manipulated or
dominated by male caretakers or lovers. We may have attitudes that limit our
sexuality.
If you have primary partners present at the love-in, after each person
expresses sexual wants and limits, tell your partners how you feel about
their sexual desires for others and ask them to say how they feel about your
sexual requests. Reach consensus with your partners before engaging in sex
with others.
Always honor and respect the wants, desires and needs of your partners to
limit how you relate to the others at the love-in. Give your primary
partners they want and thereby create space for their healing, space where
they can feel safe. Then they can open up later on in the current encounter
or future episodes rather than retreat and shut down from this experience or
from polyamory.
Your partner, through hesitancy, reflects a part that is not healed within
him or in your relationship and must be addressed before he can expand
sexually. The sexual sharing must satisfy your partners as well as you for
polyamory to work.
You may have requested something on the line of the following: “Sue, I would
like you to have intercourse with me and Joe, I would like for you to stroke
my hair while Sue and I make love.”
Sue may respond, “Tom, I don’t know you that well at this point and I am not
comfortable with saying yes right now, but I would be willing to let you
honor my pearl.” [kiss her clitoral head]
Joe, who is Sue’s husband may add, “It’s fine with me if you make love with
Sue at this time, and I am open to it whenever she is comfortable. However,
I would like to assist your joining, at that time. And yes, I would love to
stoke your hair when you two make love and also pleasure you in any way you
would both desire.”
Ann, your wife may interject, “I wouldn’t be comfortable with Sue and my
husband joining together and Tom assisting unless Sue and I connect first
and get to know each other intimately in that fashion. Once we know and love
each other, then I am open to anything.”
And so on around the group until all have expressed their desires,
preferences and limitations. But, no matter what you expressed in the
beginning, you can change your mind at any time.
And honor emotional interruptions to sexualloving. Honor a person’s feelings
and don’t take them personally. An upset person, her history and her life’s
experiences trigger her and she’ll process and reveal what is up for her in
her own time and way.
As a group, you can be there for her in ways she previously never thought
possible. Let her release things long pent up and heal and reprogram
herself.
Before getting sexual with your lovers, I suggest you Join hands in a
circle. Imagine energy circulating through you, from left to right; receive
energy from the hand that holds yours on your left, send it down your right
hand to the hand you hold on your left.
Make eye contact for 30 seconds or so with each person at the love in, then
lower your hands. Each shares
How would you would like the relationships among you to develop?
What’s the best that can happen for each of us?
What’s the worst for each of us?
Your sexual history?
Test results for sexually transmitted and other contagious diseases?
Who touched you sexually since your last HIV tests? How did you touch?
What methods did you use (or not use) for disease or pregnancy protection?
What’s your fertility status?
What do you seek, prefer and not want sexually with each person?
Make eye contact with each person and tell her or him how you want to share
sex with her or him. You don’t have to justify a request just state it
Hear and repeat in your own words each person’s requests with the
understanding that each will consider the requests. Then respond to the
requests or offer each other alternative intimacies.
If you have primary partners present, after each person expresses sexual
wants and limits,
tell your primaries how you feel about their sexual desires for others
Ask your primaries to say how they feel about your sexual requests
Reach consensus with your partners before engaging in sex with others
****
Our Northern
California Conference, Celebrate Relationship Choice, at
Harbin Hot Springs, CA (June 17-19, 2005) in Middleton, (two
hours from San Francisco) offers optional nudity, free sexual expression in
WPA's designated private area, healing hot pools.
We've scheduled interactive workshops on pair bonding, romantic
love, multiple-partner sexuality, jealousy management, BDSM in poly
relations, bisexual loving and choreographing the dance of poly
loving. Enjoy panel discussions, networking, party and opportunities
to experience living compersion–empathy for others' love-joy.
Presenters include Kelly Bryson, Shama Malin, Donald Michael Kraig,
Dave Doleshal, Sasha and Janet Kira Lessin, Harold Kornylak, Amber
Seitz, Cougar Brenneman,
Rich Sposato, Tana Gallante, Scott Catamas, Master Rex, Dawn
Davidson,
Akien MacLain, Scott Longewell, Scott Catamas, Terry & Paul Brussel-Gibbons
& Marcus
Brussel-Jenkins, Ed Jor-El Elkin, Cathy & Barry Smiler and
more. If you'd like to present too, email us; we're open to more. We'd
especially like a presentation on the interface between paganism and
polyamory.
The schedule below is tentative,
subject to change.
Locales are abbreviated as follows Conference Center = CC;
Lower Pool = LP; Upper Pool = UP; Back Patio = BP
Celebrate love and passion; enjoy
tantric energy exchanges, partnering, lovemaking, sharing,
compassionate communication. Dr. Sasha and Janet Kira Lessin
blend tantra practices with modern transformative, spiritual
sexuality exercises and Jungian psychology to give you
hands-on experiences, reverent relationship rituals,
inspirational demonstrations, fun-filled fantasy fulfillments,
a sensual party and coached coupling. Advance your
consciousness, improve your partnership and love more
This seminar’s focus is on women, the
most wounded in our patriarchical society. Regain balance
individually and globally. Reintegrate the divine feminine within
and without.
Women who attend this seminar
represent the Sacred Goddess imprisoned by society, shamed and
blamed throughout the ages. Rejection of the feminine; burning,
raping, molesting and demeaning women has caused us, as a society,
to split. The battle of the sexes raged for centuries, destroyed
families, decimated countries and ravaged our souls. Rejection of
the external feminine by men caused chaos and craziness within
themselves because they’ve denied half of their own beings.
Women let themselves be controlled and dominated by men because
men were physically stronger and more violent. Women co-created
global dysfunction by buying into the story that they were
unworthy and let themselves become dis-empowered.
End the battle in this seminar. The war of the sexes can never be
won because we’re simply warring against the parts of ourselves.
Reintegrate. No one’s to blame; we’re all guilty. Heal the
male/female rift now--personally and globally. The gaping
man-woman chasm manifests in our interpersonal relationships as
guilt, strife, pain, shame, blame, rejection, resentment,
manipulation, violence and ultimately, in international relations,
war.
Men learn in Celebrate Sacred Sexuality how to free the
Goddess as you bear witness to her beauty. Ride the wave of
femininity and discover bliss with surrender and intimacy from
vulnerability and oneness when you remember who you truly are.
In this seminar, men learn how to open their hearts, listen
actively and empathetically to women, comprehend their logic,
support the women, help them identify their needs and offer them
healing behaviors to fulfill these needs.
$295 SINGLES, $495 COUPLES - This seminar is gender balanced.
Call 808-244-4103 to register.
We're looking for presenter's for our first annual Chicago Polyamory & Tantra
Seminar. Our focus will be on both alternative relationship styles and
tantra, so be prepared to expand your hearts, open you minds and change your
world.
Join us for our East Coast Polyamory Conference September 23-25, 2005 at Bryn
Mawr, PA. As you can see from the photos
and venue description (World
Polyamory Association: Bryn Mawr Polyamory Conference: Prefecting the
Polyamory Paradigm - Bryn Mawr, PA, September 24-26, 2005), Bryn Mawr's a super
location, ideal for all our needs and then some.
Bring all your gear for sports and play as you're
certainly going to need it. We have a full
weekend planned for you with plenty of education,
instruction, presentations, speakers, experiential
workshops, playshops, song, dance and
entertainment.
Pennsylvania's gorgeous this time of year. We've
just the right formula for love and blossoming
poly romances as we mix a poly conference with
colorful trees, warm days and chilly nights.
Come join us, stoke up the fire and cuddle close
in our poly puppy pile.
SUPER EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT. Register before May 15th and
SAVE $135
before May 15, 2005 - $155
Members before May 15, 2005 - $100
before June 15, 2005 - $215
Members before June 15, 2005 - $155
before July 15, 2005 - $235
Members before July 15, 2005 - $175
before August 15, 2005 - $255
Members before August 15, 2005 - $195
before September 15, 2005 - $275
Members before September 15, 2005 - $215
September 15, 2005 and after - $295
Members September 15, 2005 and after - $235
Celebrate love and passion in a
weekend journey to sacred sexuality, where playful
spirits enjoy tantric energy exchanges, partnering,
lovemaking, sharing, compassionate communication and
more. Our blend of tantra practices combined with
modern transformative, spiritual sexuality exercises
and Jungian psychology give you hands-on experiences,
reverent relationship rituals, inspirational
demonstrations, fun-filled fantasy fulfillments, play
parties and coached coupling. Choreograph the dance of
yin and yang at each chakra. Advance your
consciousness, improve pairing and model love more.
Connect deeper with your partner or find new love.
This tantra playshop is ideal for beginners.
POLYAMORY: MORE LOVES, MORE LOVING
Synergistic Sacred Sex & Reverational Relationships for Three or More Lovers
by Sasha Lessin, Ph. D & Janet Kira Lessin, guides you and your love group to a fun-filled weekend of
All-Chakra Total Tantra to intensify intimacy and celebrate each other. In
this celebration, you open all your energy centers (chakras), heal emotional
wounds, expand ecstasy and love for each other. You celebrate your separate
selves and also transcend them in delightful spiritual energy with each
other.
POLYAMORY, MANY LOVES: The Poly Tantric Lovesyle, A Personal
Account Janet Kira Lessin, is an autobiographical testimonial of Janet's experiences
with polyamory and tantra. Hold onto your hats for a wild ride! Polyamory
may not be the easiest lifestyle, but it's sure fun. The ups and downs of
relating with more than one certainly keep things lively. Never a dull
moment. Combine polyamorous relating with tantra and you're soaring to new
heights.
We know you're out there. We got a
lot of response. We know you have a lot to see. Stories to
tell us. We got a lot of emails from people saying
they'll contribute, send in articles but not many articles
actually came in our mail. We need YOUR contributions in
order to make this happen.
The new
poly magazine, POLYAMORY seeks articles, stories, thoughts,
ideas. POLYAMORY is for you, about you and others like you. Share your victories, follies, highs, lows,
hopes, woes, loves, loves lost, excitement, depression,
happiness, sadness, joy, sorrow and bliss. We want to
hear it all, know all about you and what it takes to be polyamorous in these amazing and sometimes trying times. We'd love to
feature your art on our web site and zines. We'd even
love to share your photos with the world (if everyone in the
photos grants their permission). Show us how talented you are.
Share your happy faces and joy that you've found with your
poly loves and family. We're here to promote you and
your work. We're here to change the world, make it a
better place for all of us. Please send your
contributions: articles, arts, comics, poetry, advertisements,
announcements, groups, professional bios, etc. to
WorldPolyamory@aol.com.
http://www.worldpolyamoryassociation.com/magazine.htm
Member's of the World
Polyamory Association get a free personal ad so you may easily
find the relationships you seek.
Please send articles,
ads, listings, art and photos to:
WorldPolyamory@aol.com.
Include your author's bio, contact information, web site, email and
photo. Or you may call 808-244-4103.