Sex.Life.Nonsense

Mark Honeychurch - 2 April 2024

A few months ago Bronwyn wrote an article about Sex.Life, a New Zealand podcast by Morgan Penn, a “somatic sexologist”, and Hayley Sproull, a comedian. The first season of the podcast is of interest to skepticism, as it details Morgan’s 10 day visit to Highden Temple (outside of Palmerston North), owned and run by Bruce Lyon. Bruce claims to channel the spirit of a long-dead spiritual master, and also runs Sex Magic classes - part of the International School of Temple Arts (ISTA).

Bronwyn has done an excellent job already of describing many of Bruce’s nonsense claims, but when I finally got round to listening to the podcast recently I was struck by the depth of Morgan Penn’s ignorance, and the many ways in which she is confidently wrong about basic science - which is disappointing to hear from someone who’s selling themselves to their clients as an expert in their field.

Morgan is a “certified” Somatic Sexologist, with a certification from the “Somatic Sex Educators’ Association of Australasia”. Somatic means “of the body” and a sexologist is someone who studies sexual behaviour - so it would make sense that somatic sexologists would study sex from the perspective of biology. But no, this is not what you’re going to get from a Somatic Sexologist - instead you’ll get:

a variety of Sexological Bodywork modalities, including active receiving, anal touch, internal and external genital mapping, breathwork, scar tissue remediation, and Orgasmic Yoga coaching.

Morgan seems to focus heavily on the genital mapping, which she calls Yoni Mapping - yoni is just an appropriated Sanskrit word for female sexual organs, often used by white people who are in touch with their “spiritual side”.

From what I can gather, the Somatic Sex Educators’ Association of Australasia (SSEAA) is not a real academic institution, it’s just a made up organisation trying to legitimise their profession - which is essentially the alternative medicine version of real sex therapy. Somatic Sexologists apparently use “Sexological Bodywork”, and if it’s related to the Bodywork alt-med modality (also often called Rolfing) like I suspect it is, then it’s likely to be Stuff Somebody Made Up, rather than anything scientific.

To become certified as a Somatic Sexologist, as Morgan has done, you need to complete a 300 hour course. This will set you back about $10,000, including accommodation, etc, and involves both online work and in-person courses in Australia.

I had a quick look at Morgan’s business website, and every page of it boasts about media she’s been featured on - as if this is an acceptable substitute for putting in the hard work of learning about biology and/or becoming a registered therapist:

Apart from that there’s a listing of her services (coaching, the Yoni Mapping I already mentioned, couples therapy, embodied counselling, vaginismus counselling and “ask a sexologist” - which leads to a broken page), some blurb about Morgan, a Media page (with links to media articles about her), an FAQ and some testimonials (which I’m sure the Advertising Standards Authority would be interested in).

The podcast was off to a really bad start where, in the introduction to the first episode, Morgan talked about butthole sunning - basically going outside and allowing the sun to hit your anus for a few minutes, which apparently she does every day. Her rationale for this was that, because anal suppositories are a good way to get some medicines absorbed into the body, the anus is good at absorbing things - and so it will also be good at absorbing sunlight, and making vitamin D. This kind of kindergarten nonsense thinking just really annoys me. No, it’s not the anus that’s absorbing the suppository you stick up there - it’s the rectum, inside, that’s doing the work. And making a parallel between being able to absorb chemicals into the bloodstream with being able to absorb sunlight is just daft - being good at one of these does not in any way mean that a part of the body is going to be good at doing the other.

The podcast was organised with each episode relating the events of one day at ISTA, describing the activities they participated in as a group for the day. Throughout the podcast, Morgan talked about pseudoscientific concepts such as “orgasmic energy”, the idea of working on issues that happen “at a cellular level” (yep, that sounds like a Scientology idea to me) and how there’s “no such thing as a coincidence” (of course there is, if there wasn’t we’d be very concerned about statistics being broken).

Morgan’s talk on the podcast, and on her website, is likely to sound professional to a lay-person, wrapped in a veneer of science - with bold assertions that this is all science based, and liberal use of scientific terminology. She talks of “rewiring neurological pathways”, “clearing stagnant energy on a cellular level”, and how she’s involved in “the scientific study of human sexuality”. But, from what I can tell, this is just the parroting of phrases she’s been taught, rather than coming from some deep understanding of biology.

The daily exercises at ISTA sounded just as bad as Morgan’s sex miseducation - energetic heart fucking, blood rituals, having sex with the earth, and staring at each other’s genitals. Apparently Morgan even had an “energetic orgasm” that lasted an entire night.

In one exercise, which basically consisted of Morgan sticking her finger up someone’s butt in order to stimulate their prostate, she talked about the person she’d been paired with had been sexually abused, but then says that this is okay because she is “trauma informed” and professionally able to deal with this. For one, if this trauma training came from the Institute of Sexology, I’m doubtful as to whether it would accord with current best-practice in any way, shape or form. But secondly, a brief look at Morgan’s profile on the Institute’s website suggests that trauma is not one of her specialities:

On the podcast, Morgan talks about how the course leaders were frequently pushing for people to have sex in public places, like the Temple, rather than privately in their own rooms. And all the lessons happened in group sessions, with everyone together.

As far as I can tell, it seems that the main thing people are getting from Highden is the ability to participate in group sex - which is all well and good, as far as it goes. I’m not a prude, and I think we should all feel free to have sex with who we want, when we want. But dressing up a group sex kink in pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo, in order to try to make it sound like it’s anything more than what gets you off, is disingenuous at best, and potentially dangerous to some attendees. The people running these courses are pretending like they’re therapists and providing “healing”, where there’s no evidence that what they’re doing is either a) clinically useful or b) free from risk of traumatising people.

Due to the expectations placed on people by the environment they’re in at Highden, and the natural tendency of people to “just go along” with things (when actually, without this peer pressure, they wouldn’t normally be interested), there’s a real risk that people are taking in part in group sex activities that they really wouldn’t want to outside of this pressure. And it’s all wrapped in a “get out of jail free” claim that people are “exploring their boundaries” and “personally responsible” for their own sexual journeys, so the people running the course couldn’t possibly be to blame for anything that goes wrong. Like the sign at the entrance to Highden Manor says - “You chose this”.

The one saving grace for Morgan is that she finally says, near the end of the podcast, that she would not recommend anyone attending the school - and that this is why she hasn’t named ISTA or Highden. She says that the pressure she felt to conform, and the fact that none of the activities on the course are told to attendees before they arrive, are red flags for her - as they should be! However, I think it’s too little too late.

It’s trivially easy for listeners to figure out where she’s talking about - a search on Google for “sex school nz” brings up a news story about Highden as the top result (and unsurprisingly it’s not a positive story, either). If Morgan really didn’t want to promote ISTA to people, she shouldn’t have created a podcast about it at all. But then, if she did that, how would she find new customers for her Yoni Mapping service?