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Return to Sex Coachingfront page of "Style" section -- Tuesday April 9, 2002
"Pathways, Offering Inner Peace at $10 Off"
By Peter Carlson
One of the great things about Pathways magazine is that it demolishes the myth that Washington is populated exclusively by politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, the jackals of the media, and the occasional curbside narcotics peddler.
Pathways celebrates a different variety of Washington-area hustlers -- aura photographers, shamanic healers, spiritual belly dancers, past-life regression therapists and at least one middle-aged woman who bills herself as an "individual sex coach."
Is this a great city or what?
Published in Bethesda, Pathways combines New Age mysticism with good old-fashioned can-do American capitalism. The spring issue, for example, includes an advertisement for the Atlantean Meditation Helmet -- "the new helmet for the new millennium" -- as well as an ad for the Arlington HydroTherapy Center that features this cheery slogan: "Not Your Grandmother's Colon Hydrotherapy!!"
Now in its 26th year, Pathways is a fat quarterly magazine -- 170 oversize pages in the current issue -- dedicated to "improving the quality of life physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually" in the Washington area. Available free in 350 local bookstores and health food shops, it's jampacked with articles and ads (mostly ads) touting every New Age theory and therapy you can imagine -- and quite a few that you'd probably never imagine.
Until I encountered Pathways, for instance, I never knew about the wildly eclectic array of therapists available in the Washington area. We've got aromatherapists, massage therapists, magnetic therapists and meridian therapists. We've got crystal therapists, cranio-sacral therapists, enzyme therapists, energy therapists and thought-field therapists.
Meanwhile, the competition between colon hydrotherapists has gotten so intense that one in Gaithersburg ran an ad offering a $10-off coupon, while one in Potomac promises a "State of the Art" experience, featuring a warm fire, candlelight and soothing music.
Hey, it sounds like a great place for a romantic date. Or maybe not.
This year, shamanic therapy is very big. Before reading Pathways, I thought I'd have to travel to the rain forests of the Amazon -- or at least to Sedona, Ariz. -- to find a halfway decent shaman. I was wrong. The Washington area is thick with shamans -- or is it shamen? -- and they are eager to help with all your shamanic needs. The Shamanic Healing Institute has two branches in Maryland and one in Virginia. All three provide past-life therapy, a "shamanic journey" and something called "soul retrieval." Mention its ad in Pathways and you get 10 percent off on your first consultation.
I'm a die-hard fan of Pathways but I must confess that I seldom actually read the articles. The prose is just a tad too ethereal.
"Although we might initially say that we 'have' a soul, it is actually more accurate to say that we are a soul who 'has' a personality," writes Corinne McLaughlin in an essay called "The Science of the Soul." "Until our personality is more purified and invokes the soul's help, it tries to run the show and often creates a mess."
Perhaps my personality isn't purified enough, but that's about as far as I got in that article. I bailed out and headed for the ads, which are much more fun.
The ad for Tantric Ecstasy Training promises "Emotional Release," as well as a "Spiritual Belly Dance."
The ad for Washington lawyer Jesse P. Goode promises "ethical legal services from a practicing Buddhist."
The ad for aura reader Rose Rosetree promises that a $100 reading will "validate what you're going through emotionally and spiritually."
Right about now, you're probably thinking: "How can I choose the -- best-- aura reader or spiritual belly dancer or shamanic healer?"
The answer is simple: Look at their credentials. Washington is a city that loves credentials, and these folks have long lists of them.
For instance, Jewels Crowe-Munoz of the Self-Empowerment Education Center is "a Certified Trans Medium as well as a Certified Angel Counselor from the Inner Peace Movement."
Regression Therapist Darshan Kaur Khalsa is "a member of the National Guild of Hypnotherapists and the Association of Past Life Regression Therapists."
And Maryland shaman Deanna Stennett is "a graduate of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies three-year program" and "an ordained minister with the Circle of the Sacred Earth, a church founded on Shamanic Practices."
But probably the most impressive credentials in any Pathways ad belong to "individual sex coach" Loraine Hutchins. "She has studied with women's masturbation teacher Betty Dodson, sexologists Annie Sprinkle and Carol Queen, Body Electric Erotic Massage School founder Joseph Kramer, queer guerrilla theologian Eliyahou Farjaje Jones, sacred sexuality teacher Deborah Anapol and bioenergetics therapist Jack Painter, among others. She also co-starred in Dodson's first erotic teaching video, 'Selfloving: Portrait of a Women's Sexuality Seminar' . . . "
Hutchins's picture appears in her ad. A woman with a big smile on her round face, she looks very friendly. And her ad explains just how friendly she is: "Polyamory-friendly, queer-friendly, BDSM-friendly."
The sex coach's duties are left to our imaginations. I picture Hutchins wearing a whistle and a Tom Landry fedora and carrying a clipboard as she nervously paces the sideline. She blows the whistle and her team huddles around her while she diagrams the next play using X's and O's.
"All right, team," she bellows, "go out there and -- score --!"