Sex Clubs, Kink and Discovering Something Deeper: Yuval Mann

 

“Sex Clubs, Kink and Discovering Something Deeper: Yuval Mann”

a Girl Boner podcast transcript

Yuval: 

I felt like in the beginning, when I started going to these  experiences, I felt a lot of hesitation and shyness. And like, it feels like a foreign place in which everybody speaks a different language… In many of these experiences and nights, I realized that I don’t even need to have a particular experience.And actually, in fact, the less expectations I have, the more fun I’m having.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August/narration:

Yuval Man spends a lot of his energy and artistry these days helping folks explore and learn about sexuality, which is basically the opposite of what he learned early on.

I think that the main thing is that I haven’t learned anything about sexuality growing up. I think that’s maybe the start of my story. 

August/narration:

A story that involves religion – Judaism specifically.

Yuval: I don’t think there’s anything particularly about Judaism that makes it not sex positive, but the interpretation of the particular Jewish Orthodox community that I was part of, you know, the usual shtick, masturbation is a sin, sex is something to do in hiding, it’s something that you don’t talk about, 

I grew up being only in boys only institutes, and so I didn’t even have interactions with girls growing up. 

August/narration:

Yuval has some positive memories about sexuality from his early youth, when he and some friends were innocently curious about each other’s bodies.  

But the most striking experience he recalls does not bring up happy vibes. Yuval was in his early teens, when he noticed something was happening…

Yuval: I was having wet dreams as you naturally have as the hormones are going wild in your body. 

Of course, I wasn’t masturbating, nor was I having sex, because that’s highly forbidden, not even something that crossed my mind, because no one even talks about it. I would wake up from these wet dreams, wet. and I remember this very distinct combination of pleasure and guilt eating me up at the same time. 

 I was very curious about it, like waking up from these, beautiful erotic dreams that were just created in my mind and feeling this immense pleasure in my body of the release and at the same time feeling unbelievable guilt, fear of God or what will happen to me and is this okay. Out of my fear I would run away to the mikveh which is the jewish bathhouse that you go to to purify yourself. I would go into the water and then go and and pray for forgiveness and that would not happen again.

August: Oh my goodness. did you know the term masturbation? I’ve heard that in some Jewish communities, like the spilling of seed is like a very big deal. Were those terms used? did you even know kind of what that was when that happened?

Yuval: It’s an interesting question. I think I did. In a very general sense, in some kind of, vague fornication context of some sort. But I don’t think I had like a clear idea of, you know, I’ve never watched a pornographic movie, I’ve never touched myself before that. And no one was talking about it around me, so I, I really didn’t have any kind of points of reference.

August/narration:

Yuval eventually left that religious community and joined the army, which is mandatory in Israel. And, wow, was that a culture shift, especially in terms of sex.

Yuval: It’s all men, right? So the discussion is very much about conquest and, very egocentric and like what they did to her and what was happening and all like a very ego-boosting kind of conversation about sex, very performative. Also not very healthy. 

And I remember feeling, at the beginning, also ashamed, because I never had an experience with a woman before. I was a virgin. And I remember feeling Ashamed of talking about it or like sharing that with other people. So I just kept my mouth shut and started having my first, self pleasure experiences with myself looking at magazines and maybe like some porn.

August/narration:

Then, at 19, Yuval met his first partner.

[ethereal pop music…]

Yuval: She was also ex Jewish Orthodox. It was a very sweet connection. And that was my first very, very nourishing, beautiful, innocently childlike, exploratory kind of introduction to sexuality. It was a very passionate, very beautiful, very open kind of interaction.

And that was, I think, my first great sexual experience that opened me to like, Oh, okay, this is something that I’m actually fascinated by and there is something to it and I want to know more. 

August/narration:

The day after he finished his army service, Yuval had his first flight ticket. He “had to get out,” he said. 

Yuval: And I started traveling. I started from Italy of all places and I started hitchhiking around Europe. I ended up living for six months in an abundant house, a garden, in a cave, in a cliff looking over the ocean.

And I think that was a period of time that I was really coming to realizing that I love that freedom of, traveling and exploring. I met some other people and started exploring with them. And I felt like this deep Insatiable hunger and desire to experience at this point.

 I felt so deprived of basic human experiences like sexuality, relationships even certain types of food that are restricted. A lot of things that, before the army I couldn’t do because of religion, and then during the army I couldn’t do because I was nothing but a number in a system. So that was kind of like the beginning of a very long journey that took me over the next more than a decade.

And then slowly getting into different sex positive, kinky, fetish communities around the world. 

August/narration:

In about 2017, he attended his first official sex party. It took place at a well-known fetish club in Berlin, and he attended with a few friends. 

Yuval: And I had no expectations. I didn’t really know what to expect. I was pretty immersed in the sex positive, kinky, fetish kind of jargon community practices just in my own life, in my own relationships. I had no idea what to expect. It’s a massive club, thousands of people, sometimes at some nights, and I was absolutely blown away by the level of both freedom and openness for everything goes kind of vibe, and at the same time a level of respect and safety that I felt and also my female friends felt that were with me.

August/narration:

The whole experience was very liberating, he said. One interaction, in particular, stands out in his memory. 

Yuval: A very beautiful stranger just came to me and I was like, “Hey, I, I really want to play with you.” I was a bit confused because I didn’t know the rules of the club or something. “Do we need to go to Dark Room or something?” “No. She was like, “no, right here! I want you right now.” And I was like, “okay, that, That’s beautiful. I love that.”

It felt like a place existing in parallel to the normal outside reality in which sex is a taboo thing that you don’t really talk about, in which men need to go through these loops of like trying to, be the right thing and say the right thing to get into a date or something.

And women needs to kind of feel this I need to protect myself. And suddenly people come together and it’s total vulnerability and openness. There are strict rules of safety, but other than that, everything goes. 

And for me, it was like, wow, this, this is a beautiful thing. And it’s something that you don’t really experience or see outside of these spaces.

August/narration:

In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, Yuval found himself stuck in Paradise Island in Thailand. Yes, that’s a real place — a luxury island. Not the worst place to get stuck. He had just founded a business and things had been off to a successful start. But within a week, the business was gone.

Yuval: Like everybody were panicking and leaving all the clients. There was a few months of us just, a few friends, we took a big house and we’re just kind of like hanging out, looking at the world crumble into oblivion to what it felt like that, at least at the time, like just sitting in our ocean view, little Oasis and watching the world go into madness.

August/narration:

By that point, Yuval had been studying bondage with his master, Tati. 

Yuval: And I started studying with her more consistently every other day. And the model that I was working with in the sessions was a lover. We started talking about maybe doing OnlyFans together because it started becoming a big thing and a lot of other people were doing that and we came to this realization that we both really love our sex life. And we think that it’s gorgeous and we also filming ourselves and getting off on looking at ourselves having sex. So we’re like let’s do some OnlyFans!

And then I had this epiphany.I don’t know where it came from, but I was like, I feel this inclination to do work around sexuality, but I don’t know if that is the perfect outlook that I’m looking for exactly. I’d rather do something more proactive, more on the educational side. There is an element of sexuality that I’ve discovered over the last decade in my own exploration that I feel deeply and I also hear from my own lovers that a lot of other men can benefit from. 

August/narration:

So, they decided to create a course instead. Then, Yuval met another lover who was also super into the idea. When his two lovers met to talk about the course, they realized they had studied at the same school years before. 

Yuval: 

Like, what are the chances? Fell in love with each other as well. And we started this beautiful love triangle triad that revolved mostly around really creating this course. Of course we were also in general, very connected with each other, but it felt like this is the kind of project that we came together to do.

August/narration:

And that’s what they did. They spend a couple of months together, shooting Yuval’s first course: The Sensual Alchemy for Men.

Yuval: We were just spending our time hanging out by the pool, getting into the room, shooting. I was either, just shooting myself talking. And then when there is demonstration, one of them is the model and the other one is the camera woman. And we just shot the whole entire course like that. 

And I did, and somehow, I don’t know how it happened, within a week, I had a group of like 12 men who signed up to go through the course. And I was like, holy shit, like this is happening. And this is how it starts.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

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August/narration:

Today, Yuval continues that work as an erotic intelligence mentor. He aims to help people use their sexual expression as “a vehicle of individual and collective evolution.” 

Whether you’re able to explore sex-positive culture or just want to deepen discovery in your life wherever you’re planted, we can all learn a few things from Yuval’s fetish scene adventures, about communicating openly and embracing it when someone says “no.”

Yuval: There is a level of openness. I had such a transformative pleasure of exploring, which is showing up authentically as you are, being very attuned with your immediate, somatic, bodily desires and intuitions. Like, “Hey, I want to do this with you.” And being totally open in suggesting that while at the same time being absolutely and totally open of having that desire rejected.

 Like, Oh, thank you for being honest and saying no. Like, celebrating the no as much as you’re celebrating the yes.

August/narration:

And as you explore new desires, sex-positive spaces or different kinds of intimacy, practice patience with yourself. No one starts out as an expert. 

Yuval: I felt like in the beginning, when I started going to these experiences, I felt a lot of, kind of hesitation and shyness. And like, it feels like a foreign place in which everybody speaks a different language.

And then slowly I started getting into a certain groove of feeling just comfortable in my own skin. Like I’m not trying to pretend to be anybody else that I’m not. I’m just here to have a good time. In many of these experiences on nights, I realized that I don’t even need to have a particular experience.

And actually, in fact, the less expectations I have, the more fun I’m having. Sometimes I would spend the whole night just sitting in the lounge and speaking to people. Just having beautiful experiences while being completely naked with each other. It’s such a unique far out human experience that you don’t usually get in normal day to day life.

And it’s people that you otherwise would see in the street or in a coffee shop and not even imagine, but suddenly you get this moment of naked vulnerability and just talk about life, about the human experience. And for me, that is what it’s more about than just having sexual escapades. Those are just by products of openness and freedom.

And I think going to these spaces without expectation and just like, “Hey, I’m open. I’m just open to whatever I’m supposed to experience.” I’m always saying that sex is an evolutionary playground of mutual self discovery. And I think in these spaces It’s even more apparent than anywhere else.

You’re always experiencing what you need to experience. And you’re always going through the emotional, physical experiences that are standing in your way for your own transformation and evolution.

August/narration:

I love the self-grace in those words — giving ourselves permission to let go of expectations and meet ourselves where we are.

Such ideas come up a lot when Yuval works with folks. Here’s what he most wanted you to know about his work.

Yuval: I think the main thing that I want people to know, is that I talk about sex and orgasms just so people will listen. Once I get their attention, we can start talking about the things that matter most. Which is, Who are you? what is this life? What is this human experience? What do you come from? Have you been created or have you emerged? Are you a separated entity living in a environment in a world that is happening outside of oneself or have you emerged from life? and if so, what does it mean about the way that you relate with your body?

What does it mean about the way that you relate with your spirit? What does it mean about the way that you relate and share your heart in the world? What does it mean about relationships of all kinds especially intimate and sexual relationships? And then we get to the real stuff, you know, not just how you can have better sex but what is sex?

Why do you even have it? What can we learn from your current sexual experiences of sexual expression? And what your sexual expression can tell us about the way that you perceive, the kind of beliefs and narratives and stories and relationships that you have about your body, about pleasure, about spirit, about your heart, about love. That is the juice that I really care about. I will keep talking about orgasms and sex, so people will keep listening. Listening.

August: so honest and so important. I really appreciate that. 

August/narration:

Yuval primarily works with singles and couples, including women, men and non-binary folks. He also sometimes has group offerings. You can find his video courses at yuvalman.com. He also hosts a free community called the Sensual Saloon on the platform and app, Telegram.

Yuval: 

It’s totally free. There are hundreds of people from all around the world and there is a beautiful, alive, vibrant conversation about sexuality, eroticism. There is a place to share erotic art. There is a place to show erotic poetry and stuff. There is a place to ask questions and get direct answers from me and other people in the community. And it’s completely for free. It’s such a joy to offer that to, to the world and to, to people and build this beautiful community. 

August:/narration:

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