Eleven of us — all ladies wearing lingerie, silk robes and different sheer or flowy clothes — are dancing, freeform, in a circle. Spacy digital music fills the room, which seems to be one thing like a spa tent: Pale woven carpets blanket the ground, billowy white curtains drape from the ceiling and flickering lanterns solid summary shadows on the partitions, certainly one of which is awash in glowing aqua gentle.
Mia Banducci.
(Elizabeth Weinberg )
Practically everybody’s eyes are closed as we dance individually — however collectively too? — partaking in sluggish, sensual motion, a tangle of curves and limbs. We swirl our arms above our heads, run our palms by means of our hair, swivel our hips and swing our butts.
“Connect with your body, your wild, true self,” says our host, Mia Banducci, who’s sporting nothing however a silky crimson bra and underpants, a strappy garter belt and a sheer scarlet negligee.
We’re right here on this Saturday afternoon — in a Beverly Hills workplace suite turned occasions house — for a intercourse ritual, led by Banducci, an intuitive advisor who goes by Mia Magik. The purpose of the $99, three-hour-long occasion is to attract on our “divine feminine energy” — the top of which is an orgasm. The train is meant to assist us embrace our physique’s capability for pleasure, shed sexual disgrace and detonate inhibitions. With these issues, the logic goes, comes a “reclaiming” of our energy and a manifestation of our deepest wishes.
Who’s to say if a $99 orgasm can ship all that. However, hey — there’s natural coconut oil readily available, which is a pleasant contact.
Members loosen up through the “intuitive dance” at first of the workshop. (Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Occasions)
Banducci is a modern-day witch working towards “bringing ancient wisdom into the modern world in a really accessible way.” She’s additionally an L.A.-based entrepreneur and self-empowerment influencer with greater than 300,000 followers between Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, the place she sells workshops and retreats and promotes her new ebook, “IntuWitchin.” A number of of her movies have been considered hundreds of thousands of instances.
Suffice to say, she’s not your grandmother’s witch. Together with her cascading brown hair, come-hither expression and upbeat demeanor, she appears extra like a cross between a Victoria’s Secret mannequin and Tony Robbins. She wears a sharp hat in free YouTube tutorials and leads ladies into the Topanga forest for “rage rituals,” throughout which they scream and thrash sticks round as she guides them in unleashing pent-up anger.
To be clear, Banducci doesn’t establish as Wiccan or Pagan. She considers herself “an earth-based spiritual practitioner” and trauma-informed healer. (“The word witch comes from the Old English word ‘wicce,’ which means wise,” she says.) Her witchy aesthetic seems to operate extra as a solution to stand out and preserve issues lighthearted whereas serving to ladies join with each other and deal with their frustrations with trendy society. She usually holds her rituals — intercourse, rage and in any other case — open air, in a forest or by the ocean. For intercourse magik, she weaves in meditation, breathwork, guided imagery, self-pleasure, non secular counseling and different strategies to assist members get crystal clear on their wishes. Readability, then, might result in their getting that job or home or relationship. Although Banducci would say that they used intercourse magik to manifest it.
“Orgasmic pleasure is the most powerful energy on earth,” she says. “And when you are experiencing the highest pleasure to draw in what you want, you’re magnetic. It’s about becoming literally attractive to goodness.”
Inuitive advisor, Mia Banducci.
(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Occasions)
Trendy witchcraft is a non secular apply that takes myriad kinds. It usually includes rituals round transformation tied to the Earth’s seasons or the moon’s cycles, and will incorporate historical esoteric instruments corresponding to numerology, astrology, tarot playing cards and power work, usually for self-empowerment or therapeutic functions. It has discovered audiences each on-line and in individual, particularly in Los Angeles, the place witches with hefty social media followings usually lead in-person occasions. They embody Amanda Yates Garcia (a.okay.a. the Oracle of Los Angeles), Gabriela Herstik and AJA Daashuur (a.okay.a. the Spirit Information Coach).
Intercourse magik (usually spelled with a “k” to distinguish from a “magic” primarily based on illusions and trickery) dates again to the third millennium BCE in historical Sumeria, now southern Iraq and Syria, and has been round for hundreds of years within the Western world. However it’s rising in reputation as one other therapeutic type of self-love, says College at Buffalo professor Marla Segol, creator of 2021’s “Kabbalah and Sex Magic.”
“It’s part of a larger self-acceptance movement that also includes intimacy workshops, body-acceptance workshops, even yoga,” she says. “Yoga, for many people, is about being present in the body, honoring that presence. Sex magik takes on the removal of shame and the sanctification of the body.”
It’s pure that the apply would flourish on-line, Segol provides. “Social media has become our public square and, in some ways, replaces institutions like churches in how it brings people together, especially to perform rituals.”
I’ve all the time been comfy with my physique and I contemplate myself “sex-positive,” as they are saying. However I used to be trepidatious driving to the intercourse ritual. We’d been advised to put on comfy, unfastened clothes permitting easy accessibility to our our bodies. Was my slouchy, off-the-shoulder sweater too revealing? Or not attractive sufficient? What would we be doing, precisely, for 3 hours? Who had been these ladies?
It seems the atmosphere Banducci fostered was surprisingly comfy — clear and intimate and protected. (The occasion was meant to be held in a Topanga dwelling however was relocated as a result of wildfires.) After the “intuitive dance,” Banducci led us in a guided meditation, throughout which we used our 5 senses to examine our wishes.
Banducci leads the group in a guided meditation.
(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Occasions)
Then we laid down on cushions positioned in a circle and acquired comfy beneath gentle, fluffy blankets. Banducci inspired us to caress our our bodies, maybe our neck or hip, shedding as a lot clothes as we had been comfy with. It acquired very quiet. The music was sensual and meditative. Over the subsequent 45 minutes, Banducci — who was additionally reclined and interesting in self-pleasure — guided the group in “orgasmic breathwork” whereas encouraging vocalization.
“All sounds are welcome,” she stated. “Any time you give yourself permission, you’re giving others permission.”
Then it was not so quiet.
Afterward, everybody sat up, hair mussed and faces flushed. It was time for a traditional circle share.
One girl, Alyssa Herrmann, 37, revealed that her throat felt blocked throughout masturbation, stopping her from orgasming.
“It felt like a pile-up. Stack, stack, stack. All clogged, here,” Herrmann stated, gently touching her throat.
“A pile-up of what, specifically?” Banducci requested.
“Of not saying anything?”
“Yeah. That would be my invitation to you — even just for this week — ‘I say what I mean, and I mean what I say,’” Banducci coached. “That goes for your husband, for your work, for your friends.”
Members share their emotions throughout a gaggle dialogue.
(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Occasions)
UCLA Emeritus Professor Dr. Gail E. Wyatt, a licensed medical psychologist and board-certified intercourse therapist, says she wouldn’t advocate ladies discover their sexuality in a gaggle setting.
“If a woman wants to get in touch with their body and get out of their comfort zone, they should go to a licensed therapist who has experience in sex therapy, where what she says will be understood and protected,” Wyatt says. “This [event], it’s a chance people took. And if it turns out to be positive for them, that’s great — but there’s no guarantee.”
A number of members, nevertheless, stated they discovered the occasion empowering. The ladies in attendance ranged in age from early 20s to mid-40s and all however one had been right here for the primary time. Most had heard in regards to the occasion by means of a pal or on social media. There was an artist, a scientist, a life coach, a health franchise proprietor. They’d come to handle hesitations round intercourse or to reclaim their voice, make clear intentions or conjure a way of energy and company.
Emaan Singh, a 28-year-old social employee from Orange County, grew up between Chandigarh in northern India and Southern California. She stated afterward that she discovered Banducci’s workshop liberating.
“I grew up in a patriarchal environment in India. Like [it] is here too,” she stated. “When women express their sexuality — this is all over the world — it can come with criticism or pressure from society. This was a way for me to express my sexuality in a way that wasn’t controlled by anyone else, without caring about the opinions and judgments of the people around me, and in a way that’s not attached to another person.”
Alayna Bellquist, a 42-year-old marine biologist from San Diego, stated the expertise was transformative in serving to her reframe how she views her physique.
“As a biologist, I see nature and wild spaces and every organism as perfect. But I didn’t extend that viewpoint and privilege to my own body,” she stated. “The work I’ve done with Mia is helping me see that my body is nature too. And I should provide it the same grace and understanding.”
Banducci teaches the group about breathwork.
(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Occasions)
Intercourse magik, Banducci says, is especially well timed proper now.
“The ultimate mother is Mother Nature,” Banducci says. “And we are desecrating our planet, using and abusing her — and she’s done. Women are saying, ‘Enough. We are done being raped and pillaged and plundered. It’s time to stand up.’ Sex magik is a reclamation of your power; it’s using your pleasure as a power and a resource.”
Banducci has led this explicit intercourse magik ritual “hundreds of times” during the last decade, she says, at one-off workshops in addition to retreats round California and in Europe. Her subsequent one in L.A. is March 1.
It’s her favourite ritual of all of them, partly “because of the surprise of it.”
“We’ve been taught that the most natural thing in our lives — literally, how we all got here, sex — is something to hide and be ashamed of and not talk about. But when you let it be safe and free in a space together, it just ends up creating so much aliveness,” she stated after the occasion.
“My mission is permission. Giving people the freedom to be their full selves.”
And with that, having “sent our orders up to the cosmic waitress,” as Banducci likes to say, members wait to see what the magik brings. On the very least, a great evening’s sleep.
