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Clean Sheets 1-2008 by Shanna Germain
Best New Experience: I know that pole dancing classes are all the rage. And I know that I pooh-poohed them for a long time. But then I signed up for this class at BJuicy Studios. Holy shit. I'm bruised and battered. I can do a butt munch, a pole twirl, and a hip shock. For the first time in my life, I own eight-inch stilettos and not only can I walk in them, I can waaaalk in them. I realized I have an ass that won't stop, and a libido to match. I cry every class because the instructor is actually a counselor and she doesn't let me get away with a goddamn thing. And it's by far the best thing I've done for myself all year. No, It's the best thing I've done for myself since I bought my first vibrator.
WWeek 10-2007 " It's Just You and Me Now, Penis"
This is it, fellas. The moment we've been dreading. Since the start of that whole sexual-liberation thing, deep down we knew there was only one logical conclusion. They even made a movie about it called Children of Men. There were some temporary upsides—premarital sex, kinky stuff—but once women started expecting pleasure from sex—for themselves—it was just a matter of time before men became completely obsolete. Guilt began to erode, girls started touching themselves, then each other—generally finding both more satisfying than us. And now here is the final fatal blow: BJuicy Studios' new class, "Look Ma! No Hands!: How to Orgasm With Your Breath" (becomingjuicy.com)—a combination of tantra, psychotherapy and energy work. Luckily this round is limited to just nine women, but word will spread like wildfire. They'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two, and so on. Soon men will be surrounded by the passionate moans of their destruction. We have prepared a bit for this terrible day. The Internet provides an endless variety of pornography. And being gay is getting more acceptable. But it won't be the same. When your lady leaves you—and takes the inhaler—don't get mad. Just be thankful for the time we had, and hold on to the memories—and any videotapes you may have made. BJuicy Studios, 1417 NE 72nd Ave., 334-8578. $125. 18+.
Just Out 9-2007 "Being Fully Alive "
Stripping classes teach women how to be comfortable in their bodies
by Julie Sabatier
“Allow your eyes to drift closed, heavy and soft. Like gently pulling the curtains 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.
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 comfortable 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 encourages 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 “Look 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 I 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 unaffectedly. 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 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 she teaches with Stripper 101 as well.
“What was really interesting to me was who was taking the class and what it was doing for them,” said Donnella Wood, 37, who took Stripper 101 after her girlfriend recommended it. Although she was the only lesbian in her class, she saw a range of human experience among her fellow students, including divorcÈes, sexual abuse survivors and a transgender woman.
Wood is a somatic movement therapist and Pilates teacher at BodyWise Studios in Southeast Portland, where she first encountered Leeor in a Pilates class. Wood says Stripper 101 brought up a lot of important questions for her.
“Why do we think stripper movements are sexy? Is this our postmodern attempt to make everything relative? Are we saying this is a new kind of feminism?” she asks.
For Wood, the class took a surprising turn after she bought a silicone “soft pack” to simulate a crotch bulge.
“I felt like there was permission for me to move in a way that I don’t usually have permission [to move], and that was really fascinating to me. It gave me permission to be confrontational, to be up in people’s faces, to thrust myself forward in a way, to really let myself be seen,” she says.
Wood continued to explore the duality of her masculine and feminine sides, eventually culminating in her final performance during an optional “recital” at Devil’s Point, a strip club in Southeast Portland. She performed two numbers, one without her silicone packing pal and the other with that extra bulge.
“I came out on the stage [packing] and yelled, ‘Who wants to fuck, ladies?’ ” she recalls. “I felt like in my class, other women were like, ‘Go on, baby, that’s awesome.’ There was definitely encouragement.”
Wood says Leeor and her classmates urged her to explore her mixed feelings about the fluid, feminine motions typical of Stripper 101. This is how she came up with her own, unique approach, and she says it’s had a lasting effect on her.
“It’s really important in a lesbian relationship to be able to hold the polarity of energy, holding masculine energy, holding feminine energy,” she explains. “It doesn’t have to be the butch/femme role all the time, but you need that in order for there to be fire in your partnership.”
Leeor is so busy with workshops that she has begun farming out her Stripper 101 classes to a crew of four teachers with a variety of training, some of them working in the stripping industry. She tries to lead at least one class in each eight-week session, encouraging her students to “show up” in their bodies and reminding them it’s about more than just performance.
“The classes are not about the stripper moves,” says Wood. “They’re a medium for allowing women to channel their sexual energy and allow a more authentic part of themselves to come through.”
For a complete list of classes and workshops offered by Isis Leeor visit www.becomingjuicy.com.
The Portland Mercury 6-2007 "Employee of the Month"
Isis Leeor Counselor and Instructor Becoming Juicy by Marjorie Skinner
Isis Leeor wears many hats: A counselor with experience and certifications in massage, energy work, Qigong, Core Energetics, hypnotherapy, and thought pattern management, among other practices, she also teaches Stripper 101, a class that's less trendy workout than sensual empowerment therapy. Oh, and she's a web designer too. Leeor's empire of activities resides under the umbrella of "Becoming Juicy," a catchall name that references her life's ambition to teach people of every gender and persuasion to embrace a healthy relationship to their sexual self. Whether teaching stripper moves to a broad cross section of society (the class culminates in a "recital" at Devil's Point), or how to orgasm without using your hands, Leeor's tutelage is like a cross between yoga, tantric sex, and affirmation exercise. And often, it involves truffles.
What types of people attend your classes?
I've had an amazing range of women in class. I know this is cheesy as hell, but when you walk into class I see you as a truffle with legs. The question isn't if you are delicious. Of course you are freakin' delicious! Now I want you to taste your center.
You work with men, too. What's that like?
In Portland, or any place where there's an emphasis on evolving past the caveman paradigm, men are often asked to choose between their feelings and their genitals. I work on bringing the polarity back into relationships and showing men how to reunite the upper and lower halves of their body. Women really do want their inner killer. We love the parts of them that are alive and intensely present enough to hunt down our food, or in more modern times take us and fuck us open to god.
Besides classes, you offer therapy sessions. Describe your methods and the issues you help resolve.
Well, there's a point in most first counseling sessions with me where the person turns to me and says, "You want me to do what?" I've had people running around the room clucking like chickens, screaming profanities, and standing on top of chairs proclaiming how they were going to save the world. My experience is that talk therapy can only get you to a certain point. I aspire to work with the whole system. There is no one issue I work with. Someone may come in wanting to work with something specific... say being less sexually inhibited. But as the story unravels, it may or may not have anything to do with sexuality. Our wounds are not linear. They are more like constellations.
Willamette Week's "Best Place to Unleash Your Inner Booty"
10-18-2005
Let's be honest: Given Portland's inordinately large number of strip clubs and huge unemployment rate, who hasn't considered taking their clothes off for cash? Sure, there's nothing remotely sexy about a tense stripper with bad posture and a generic pole routine. But beating the ladies at Mary's will require more, by way of Isis' Stripper 101 ( 334-8578, www.becomingjuicy.com ). After a few months of classes-which grew out of Isis' work as a holistic, body-centered therapist-students can perform for friends onstage at a Southeast bar or just for the hubby at home. Stripping class? $12-$20 per session. Not getting booed off the stage during the first legal, public exposure of your fun bags? Priceless.
Willamette Week's Holiday Gift Guide " BACK TO SCHOOL, BAD GIRLS"
12-2005
Going to class never sounded so fun. With Isis Leeor's Stripper 101 ($180 for an eight-week session, BJuicy Studios, 1417 NE 72nd Ave., 334-8578), you'll be pole-dancing with the best of Portland's ladies of the night and getting your sweet ass in shape at the same time. There is no nudity required, but an optional "recital" takes place after each level of classes at the Devil's Point—part of the infernal crew of Dante's bars.
Portland Observer's “Stripper 101- Not Your Usual Class”
8-2005 (It's a long article with lots of pics so I am giving you a taste.)
Exotic dance instructor Isis Leeor started her Stripping 101 classes for the self-esteem of women in a variety of age groups, sizes, and attitudes…Her classes are structured according to the skill levels and personal backgrounds of her students. She expects to help some women put the spark back into their marriage or even help former victims of sexual abuse learn to appreciate their body… “I teach people how to access their own sensuality instead of putting on an act. Strippers often do the moves but they just aren't into it,” said Leeor...
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