Big Man Energy

By Adam Curley

arion gyrates his hips, making figure eights below his pale, round belly. He has stripped down to his polka-dot boxer briefs. “Every man has a pussy,” he announces to the room. “Let your pussy’s energy take over.”

A rap song plays through a speaker on a side table: Lick it now, lick it good…

In the community hall’s back office, 20 men in a variety of clothing-optional states dance with their eyes closed. Some drop to all fours on the carpet, embodying the Slut, one of the feminine archetypes identified during Arion’s morning workshop (“She who takes what she wants, when she wants it”).

In his introduction, Arion has told the group that “for thousands of years men have ignored their feminine energies and it has caused us to rape women, to rape the earth”. The men are “holding space” for each other to remove the masculine masks they wear in the outside world. They dance the Mother, the Maiden, the Wild Woman and the Priestess. When the workshop ends, they embrace and trickle out into a groomed valley surrounded by hills rippling with shades of green, barley and wild grass in the spring wind.

Men also wander out from a workshop held in the indoor basketball court. They come from a chapel and from the Chai Tent, a marquee furnished with old lounge chairs and decorated with draped purple cloth. It’s time for their sharing circles.

At Menergy, sharing circles are sacrosanct. The annual three-day retreat is supported by the Queenslandbased non-profit organisation Mens Wellbeing and is held at the Licola Wilderness Village, in the wane of Victoria’s alpine ranges. Sharing thoughts and emotions is its cornerstone activity, and nothing is too immediate or