Om Rupani Workshops

This is not what I thought I would be doing when I grew up!

The bright, mischievous kids that grew up in the bustling city of Bombay/Mumbai thought he was going to make an excellent engineer some day—like so many other bright Indian boys around him. Maybe go into medicine. Also like so many other bright Indian boys. Alas! The plans we make!

I came to the US when I was 13. I turned 13, hit puberty, and started high school. Yippie! Difficult 4 years of my life those high school years. Lost lad yanked from a thriving neighborhood where he had a 100 friends all the way to the great land of Houston, Texas. Of all places! No friends. Slow at the language. Alone and lonely. Difficult parents. Formative years. Survived somehow.

I started college at Boston University. Studying Biomedical Engineer! And Pre-Medicine. You see!? Still on track. But not for long. Existential crisis two years into my studies. Turned out the good Indian boy was not made to be an engineer or a doctor. I even took a semester and a summer to work at Mass General Hospital as a last ditch evaluation for my career choice. Let’s go work in a hospital so I can figure out if I want to work in a hospital for the rest of my life. I worked as a Phlebotomist! Starting the morning shifts early before most of the city was up. Going room to room in the expansive maze of that spectacular hospital, drawing blood from patients! At the end of that stint, I got my answer. Nope. Don’t want to spend the rest of my life walking these lysol-ed corridors.

Now what?

Then the Muse called! Transferred from BU to UMASS Boston. Signed up for a photography class thinking it might be fun. They handed me a Pentax K-1000 with a standard 50mm lens. As basic and as lovely an SLR film camera as any student needs. And love happened.

Photography became that opening and that journey of work and self-expression that I thought was going to be occupied by sensible and technical fields. Photography continues to be a great love of my life. If you want to see some of it, go to OmRupani.com

None of this is why you are here. You have come to a website about the dark arts of Domination and Submission. I’m getting to it! If you do decide to come to one of my workshops or for a private coaching session, you and I are going to be delving into some intimate matters about your personal life. So feels only fair that I should bare some details about my own first, give you some context.

I fell in love with a gal from Philadelphia my second year at BU. I was 19 then. I am 46 today. She and I are still together. Can still stand each other. Still happier together than most couples we encounter. About 10 years into our relationship, we started to feel that our sensual life could use a boost. We decided to do something about it. Read some books. Take some workshops. Try on some new ideas and do some personal and inner work. That was the start of a new journey that connects all the way to this conversation and the work I am offering here. I started the sensuality work to enhance my own life. Over the arc of many years, I have come to be the one who offers others the methods and guidance for enhancing their sensual and intimate relations.

The full account of this journey would take a book-length memoir. And I may indeed write that memoir some years down the line. But let me give just a summary here. I started off just taking workshops, I’m sure just as many of you have done. I studied Tantra with wonderful teachers like Laurie Handlers, Barbara Carellas and Charles Muir. I brushed up on the details of female anatomy and arousal with Sherie Winston.

I found OneTaste and studied their practices in pussy-stroking and communication and shadow work. I studied with the other branches in that lineage — The Welcomed Consensus and Morehouse. I did bioenergetic and emotional release work with Osho dynamic mediations. I did The Landmark Forum and other classes in their curriculum. I read many books on a variety of topics having to do with sexual expansion and expression.

Along the way I also discovered the magical kingdom of BDSM. It started of innocuously enough. It started off as a photo project! I thought women looked exquisite in rope bondage. I thought I would learn to do some rope bondage so I could make some images. But that little notion was the white rabbit down the rabbit hole. I came home from my rope class and tied up my woman. The effect that rope had on her, the transport it created in her system immediately informed me that a new door was opening up for me. The experience of it was actually not dissimilar from when I first discovered photography. There was a feeling of recognition, a feeling in the gut of a realm revealing itself—something vast and complex and rich and full of mystery and wisdom. So I followed that calling with diligence and enthusiasm. I studied and took classes and read about dominance and submission. I went to d/s events and conventions like Dark Odyssey and met and learned from extraordinary teachers and practitioners of this art.

All of this—in synthesis—is what I offer my students and clients. What I have felt, what I have learned, what I have practiced and enjoyed and integrated is what I teach. It is very much an extension of my life. It is simply a sharing of what I have found to be true and fun and worthwhile.

Training is needed! Lineages are needed — in any field, including in the sensual arts. I feel I have learned much, thought a great deal, acquired and assimilated and integrated an enormous amount of skill and wisdom along my journey. And I want to share this with others. I want to teach it. It is enormously satisfying for me to do so.

It’s an ongoing work to find good and effective ways of giving to others what I have acquired over the years. My evening salons, my writings, my workshops and my coaching sessions are all built around this mission.

I very much feel that we need SCHOOLS for the sensual arts. Book learning is not enough. It is highly inadequate in fact. Trying to create sexual expansion by reading books is the equivalent of trying to become a better skier or archer by reading books. Information that can be written down thus CAN help. But only up-to a very limited point. Beyond that, you must engage. You must come and DO in person. And you must come do with OTHERS! No form of learning truly thrives in isolation. We learn TOGETHER. Our collective intelligence and curiosity contributes tremendously to our growth. We have a deep need to speak our experience to others and to hear of their experiences. Our inquiry remains stunted until it is shared and joined with others who are inquiring just as we are.

So that’s what we are doing here. This is my invitation to you. Come learn! And come learn WITH others who are seeking the same expansions and the same fun that you are seeking. We need community just to have a thriving life. And we need community around any pursuit that is of meaning and importance to us. Our sensual life is no exception to this.

——Om Rupani