Spirituality, Somatics, and Sexual Healing With JoJo Bear

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Perfect.

[00:00:02] Speaker B: So welcome to the gay men going Deeper podcast. I am one of your super hosts. My name is Reno Johnston and I am here with Jojo, Jojo Bear. Jojo is a somatic sex and intimacy educator in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jojo uses somatic coaching, sexological bodywork, and hypnotherapy as tools to help people get out of their heads and into their bodies. His commitment is to create an environment where men, single or coupled, can feel safe enough to explore their wants, needs, and desires around their body, sex and sexuality. His passions include teaching the wheel of consent, belly to belly, embodiment and metabation.

And I am delighted to have Jojo here just to kind of set up the conversation as well.

Jojo and I connected through the body electric school, and for those of you who probably heard me talk about the body electric school in the past and maybe wondered, what is the body electric school? So it was first founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1984 in response to the emotional trauma, social dislocation, and shame experienced by gay men during the first years of the AIDS crisis. Since then, the school has offered professionally guided workshops lasting two to six days that inspire and support participants toward integrating their emotional, sacred, and erotic lives. And so I was the director of marketing formally for the school. I'm still involved with the school. I went through your ambassador program, Jojo, which is amazing. I highly recommend anyone who's coming into the school to check that out. It's a great way to learn and support the work. But thank you for being here today. I'm really grateful that you were available for this conversation. I'm excited to learn more about you because I know a bit about you, but I'm just excited to dig in and to hear more about, like, you, how you got here, how you found your way to this work and. And what you're up to currently. So without further ado, I'll start by saying how. How are you today?

[00:02:30] Speaker A: Um, I'm good. Thanks for asking. I, uh. Yeah, I was, I was. I was a little restless last night, so I'm a little on low energy, but I think I'm going to be good. Yeah, I think I'm going to be good today.

I have an exciting day. I'm doing some.

There's a. This is so random, but I need to share because it's just, there's a group in San Francisco called, it's actually a church. It's a real church called the Church of the Clown. And it's the guy who's a master clowner and open up this church and teaching mime and clowning, and there's an art called Buffon, and it's around movement, and it's just the. The stuff that they do. Clowns and mimes are doing somatic work. And when I mean somatic, if anybody doesn't know what that word is, it's anything around the body, anything about being embodied and being, you know, like what you said earlier out of your head and really embodied. And I think, so I'm doing that tonight and all weekend. So I'm gonna be acting a fool this whole weekend. But what you had mentioned around the body electric school, it's one of the things that we do in the school is we get folks to really, it's not only just about their genitals and not only just about the heroes.

It's about getting folks accustomed or reintroduced or just in participation with their bodies. And a lot of people, we use erotic as a way to get people to sign up. And then once they go through a workshop or they go through a weekend, they realize, oh, there's community there, and there's people that I generally see eye to eye with. And there's some lore around the school and history around the school that, like, as you said, it's been over 40 years of people really jumping into this work.

[00:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's remarkable. Okay, so, you know, it's. So we're, you know, we're approaching. The school's approaching.

Well, it's in its 40th year celebration.

I want to kind of go back in time, because I know that when. When I used to tell people, oh, like, I'm the director of marketing for an erotic school, they're like, what did you say? What's that? What's an erotic school? Right?

And so I imagine I. Other people are curious, like, how do you find your way to this work? You know, like, how do you get here? So I'm curious, you know, take me back to, like, earlier years, you know, because my guess is you probably didn't see yourself doing this work later in life. Like, you weren't young, and like, oh, when I grow up, I'm going to be, like, a somatic sex educator, et cetera, et cetera. So, like, you know, take me back in time. Take us back in time.

[00:05:50] Speaker A: Well, I will burst your bubble and say I did.

[00:05:54] Speaker B: Oh, really?

[00:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I'll share this story. Yeah, I share this with all, like, every time I teach specifically about the electric event, especially celebrating the body erotic, which is a great class. It's for men, women, all genders. Everybody could take a CBE. But when I was. When I was. I grew up in Brooklyn, and, you know, when I was a kid in my neighborhood, I kind of was the ringleader of all the boys.

So I used to get all the boys to come to my basement. We used to undress, we used to listen to music. We used to dance around, undressing each other, rubbing up against each other's bodies. It was all very innocent. We were all the same age. So if anyone has issue with that, relaxed. It was very honest, curious, interesting. And so I did that for a long time, every summer. It was just kind of like my thing. And then, of course, you know, my mother shows up one day and shames the fuck out of me, and that was the end of that. But I've always. Since I was a kid, I've always been like, kind of. I always like being the ringleader or the person that's setting up something or that's creating something, whether it's a story, whether it's a yard sale, whether it's. So I was always that kid. And even in high school, I was that kid. And so I've always had that sense.

[00:07:25] Speaker B: What did that look like in high school?

[00:07:28] Speaker A: Well, in high school, you know, I want to say I'm really unique compared to a lot of my peers. High school, if I could go back to a period of time, I would go back to high school, because high school, I had fun. I came out at an early age, and I had boyfriends, and I had drama, and I had hormones.

[00:07:51] Speaker B: What year would that have been?

[00:07:53] Speaker A: This was from 88 to 92 now.

[00:07:58] Speaker B: Okay, that I am like. That must have been a big deal back then.

[00:08:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And if anybody knows Brooklyn, I went to high school in Bensonhurst. That was like Guidoville. It was just like all straight jockey dudes. But I fortunately went to a school that was very. The benefits of growing up in New York was that the school system, I mean, when I was there, it was great.

The school systems were so integrated with so many different cultures. I had everybody in school, black, white, chinese, asian, south asian. We had. I had friends of all different races and colors. And, you know, it was just what it was. It was what it was. And so I had a lot of, you know, opportunity to be around a lot of people.

Fortunately, um, there was just. There was other queer people, and we get. We gravitated towards each other and we kind of hung out. And there was enough of us to have frenemies and, like, you know, the best girlfriend, the frenemies and so that was it. I think what helped me out immensely was, um, when I was coming out, and that was a really big period of time, like, of HIV and AIDS and safe for sex was, like, the thing. I mean, I was terrified of it, but it didn't stop me from, you know, experimenting and having, like, you know, emotional entanglements with people. What. What had helped me a lot was I got one. I had a lot of mentors. I had a lot of older folks. And when I say older, I mean, like, thirties, forties. But I had a lot of older folks that were very, very protective and really good role models to me.

[00:09:54] Speaker B: How did you come by those mentors?

[00:09:56] Speaker A: Well, there was.

I mean, I've always, you know, it was either, like, you know, I would be attracted to some older guy, 30 or 40, and then I would meet all these people. I really.

I didn't have. I don't have that experience of being taken advantage of around with older people. Like, I. For some reason, I just feel like maybe it's the angels, the higher powers, or whatever, that I just had a lot of folks that were just like, I want to help you. I want to be around you. And so. And I know that's not the case for everybody, right? And it wasn't like I was not. I didn't avoid shady places. I was at some pretty dubious places.

I think one of the other thing that helped me. Washington. I met this dude.

I don't know why I just said, dude. I met this.

That was.

I want to say his name was Anthony, but I just remember his face. He was italian. He had the biggest nose ever. Beautiful nose. And he took me to the Hetrick Martin Institute, which was, at the time, on the west side freeway in the west Village. It was right off of Christopher street. Now, the Hetrick Martin Institute, if anybody doesn't know this, it is part of the Harvey Milk High School. Hendrick Martin Institute is an institute in New York that helps and supports LGBTQ youth. And this was back in the day. They had, like, a saram shackle kind of space right across from the piers. It was very funny. And they basically had a drop in center for teenagers from all over the boroughs. And so I would just show up, and I. I kid you not, there were, like, queens that used to walk, balls that used to be there. There were kids from Staten island, kids that got kicked out of their homes, drag queens. I mean, this was like an all under. It was from 21 and under. So I got to meet all these New York urban kids and kids that d…