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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 7, 2007)
SferT£MB&ñ hlW justput,4i [culture Being Fully Alive Stripping classes teach women how to be comfortable in their bodies by Julie Sabatier U BB B B B ■■ Bl How your eyes to drift closed, heavy and soft. Like gently pulling the cur- tains closed after a long and full day. Feel yourself surrendering in. That’s right...all the way in.... Now feel into that warm space between your shoulder blades, relaxing the back of your heart. And if you’d like, imagine the weight of the world slipping down the curve of your spine." This is how Isis Leeor begins a class called “The Fluid Body,” part of her series of pole-dancing and stripping classes known as Stripper 101. The class begins in a red room in her basement with yoga mats and tea candles on the floor. Unlike many dance studios, there are no mirrors in the room. Leeor sits on the floor with her students. Laughter erupts from her wide smile as she slaps her ass and instructs her pupils to shake their fatty bits. It will be a whole hour before any of us even approaches the pole in the next room. Sarah Lambert says she "started thinking of it as group therapy instead of stripping classes." Coventry Cycle f/Works Women from all walks of life come for two hours once a week for eight weeks to Leeor’s home studio to learn hot moves and how to get comfort able with their sexuality. This is just one of the services she offers. Trained as a counselor and hypnotherapist, she also teaches couples classes and a popular new workshop for women called “Look Ma! No Hands! How to Orgasm with Your Breath." Each one of Leeor’s unconventional workshops begins with guided meditation, where she encour ages students to “drop in" to their bodies. “I think a lot of women can respond to this idea of finding a therapy and an outlet of sex that’s safe and exiting,” says Sarah Lambert, a gay 25-year-old who found the stripping class through an ad on Craigslist. She has moved through all three levels of Stripper 101 and experienced two “Lixik Ma! No Hands!” workshops. “My early expectations of it were |we were] going to learn how to ‘stripper-cize.’ A lot of people do use it as a form of exercise, but 1 don’t. The way Isis teaches it specifically—it’s very much therapy. I started thinking of it as group therapy instead of stripping classes," explains Lambert, who works as a massage therapist. Leeor, who says she’s notoriously bad with names, dubbed Lambert “Curvy Goddess” after that first class. Lambert says the class gave her more than a sexy nickname. “I feel really comfortable in my body now. I can taste and enjoy food in a way I couldn't before," she told me at a taco shop in Southeast Portland. She’s had a lot of issues with her weight, she says. She ravaged her body with too much exercise and one bad diet after another. Our food arrives, and she stops talking as she unwraps her burrito. When she takes a bite, I’m not there. It’s just her and the burrito. Eyes shut, she takes it into her mouth slowly, sensually, yet totally unaf fectedly. I can tell she’s smelling it and enjoying it with every ounce of her consciousness. This is what Leeor calls being fully alive. At 27, she’s been widowed, divorced and lived all over the world. She’s never worked as an exotic dancer, but she does have a background in movement along with a handful of other things. “I’ve done Thai massage in Thailand. I’ve done {neuro-linguistic programming] training. I’ve done thought pattern management training. I’ve had my fingers in a lot of cakes and gone, ‘Mmm.. .OK, but I don’t want the whole cake,’ ’’ she explains. With her small frame and large features, Leeor resembles a sprite or a pixie. She holds her body like a child’s, her small stomach round and relaxed. She exudes a friendliness that is neither intrusive nor relenting. Leeor has been exploring her unique way of connecting with the world since she first “broke open" at age 13. Along the way she discovered her capacity to experience a level of joy she describes Isis Leeor experiences a level of joy she as “one continuous orgasm." describes as “one continuous orgasm." This is what she teaches in the all-day “Look Ma! No Hands!” workshop, and in a way, it’s what her silicone packing pal and the other with that she teaches with Stripper 101 as well. extra bulge. “What was really interesting to me was who was “1 came out on the stage (packing] and yelled, taking the class and what it was doing for them,” ‘Who wants to fuck, ladies?’ ’’ she recalls. “I felt said Donnella Wood, 37, who took Stripper 101 like in my class, other women were like, ‘Go on, after her girlfriend recommended it. Although she baby, that’s awesome.’ There was definitely was the only lesbian in her class, she saw a range of encouragement.” human experience among her fellow students, Wcxxl says Leeor and her classmates urged her including divorcées, sexual abuse survivors and to explore her mixed feelings about the fluid, a transgender woman. feminine motions typical of Stripper 101. This is Wood is a somatic movement therapist and [ how she came up with her own, unique approach, Pilates teacher at BodyWise Studios in Southeast and she says it’s had a lasting effect on her. Portland, where she first encountered Leeor in “It’s really important in a lesbian relationship to a Pilates class. WcxxJ says Stripper 101 brought up be able to hold the polarity of energy, holding a lot of important questions for her. masculine energy, holding feminine energy,” she “Why do we think stripper movements are sexy? explains. “It doesn’t have to be the butch/femme Is this our postmixlern attempt to make everything role all the time, but you need that in order for relative? Are we saying this is a new kind of femi there to be fire in your partnership." nism?” she asks. Leeor is so busy with workshops that she has For W<xxl, the class took a surprising turn after begun fanning out her Stripper 101 classes to a crew she bought a silicone “soft pack" to simulate a crotch of four teachers with a variety of training, some of bulge. them working in the stripping industry. She tries to “I felt like there was permission for me to move lead at least one class in each eight-week session, in a way that 1 don’t usually have permission (to encouraging her students to “show up" in their move], and that was really fascinating to me. It bodies and reminding them it’s about more than just gave me permission to be confrontational, to be up performance. in people’s faces, to thrust myself forward in a way, “The classes are not about the stripper moves," to really let myself be seen,” she says. says W<xxl. “They’re a medium for allowing women Wood continued to explore the duality of her ■ to channel their sexual energy and allow a more masculine and feminine sides, eventually culminat authentic part of themselves to come through.” ing in her final performance during an optional “recital” at Devil’s Point, a strip club in Southeast For a complete-list of classes and workshops offered Portland. She performed two numbers, one without by Isis L eeor visit www.becommfjuicy.com. Available Services W estoxer H eights CLINIC Residential Property Commercial Property Business Card & Logo Business Name Offering general internal medicine and excelling in sexual health care Folding Bi he j Feng Shui Graphic Design Workshop / Class Yun Gee Folta Feng Shui Consultant Creating (Balance, ‘Jfarmony amf (Prosperity in 'Your (Environment Serving I be community for 22 year,* ...and More! Open Tuesday-Sunday (503) 230-7723 2025 SE Hawthorne 2330 NW Flanders Suite 207 503-226-6678 Feng Shui Creation www.FengShuiCreation.com Call for information 36O-28I-89O8 or e-mail at FcngSCrcation@aol.com 602 SE 38th Ave. Portland, OR 97214 503.231.39ii Wed - Sat PAUL MITCHELL
