Eight women are lying in a room in a mansion in Mount Martha, a wealthy suburb an hour out of Melbourne. Their heads are in the middle of the circle, their bodies splayed out like a multi-pronged sundial. Slowly, as Jordana Ezra guides them, they insert a finger into their vaginas. As they breathe, they push a pressure point.
“Go to noon … press in, breathe,” she says. “And now, three o’clock.”
They go again. Ezra is working them through what she calls a “somatic reflexology practice”.
Somatic sexology is a field of alternative therapy that merges the practice of treating how trauma is stored in the body with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of sexuality and pleasure.
Lying side by side, the women are trying to “disarm” their bodies – by releasing the tension.
This is all part of a three-night “trauma-informed luxury retreat for queer pussy owners” held in the huge house that looks out across Port Phillip Bay.
The setting is luxurious – there’s a basketball court no one is using and a pool people dip in and out of. Sailboats drift in the distance. The walls are white, the carpet is so soft you sink a centimetre into it. Downstairs a chef is making lunch.
Sexual empowerment retreats have been running for decades but this one, targeted at queer women, is believed to be one of the first of its kind.
“I’m the only one that does what I do,” Ezra says.
The retreat is her baby. It promises to help participants “create a devotional relationship” with their bodies and “embody a new depth of pleasure and queer celebration”. This is sex education like you’ve never seen it before.
And it costs up to $6,500.
Though the luxury retreat comes with a luxury price tag – the eight women here aren’t all surgeons and bankers – there’s a nurse, a student, a lifelong public servant, a small business owner, a paramedic, a social worker. Some say they have saved for a while, others went on a payment plan to get here.
They come from across Australia – as far as Perth and Brisbane. They’re between 30 and 50.
Most have realised within the last few years that they are queer. Ezra, who works as a sex coach and offers girlfriend experiences outside running the retreats, says her clientele are for the most part “lesbian first-timers”.
“People that are attracted to my work are either coming out later in life or they want to have a deeper sense of sexual liberation in their queerness,” she says.
“They see other people feeling really free in their sexuality and they want to be able to experience that.”
The ‘wheel of consent’
Some have known their whole lives but are struggling with different aspects of their sexuality. Some have husbands and kids at home, and some are bi-curious or bisexual.
In the first workshops, participants are taken through “the wheel of consent”. They’re paired off to ask each other, “Can I do this to you?” before the other takes a breath, thinks about it, then answers.
“Sit with it,” Ezra tells them.
This is about not just knowing your own boundaries but being able to hear a no and not take it personally, or giving a no without losing the flow. It’s about learning to ask for what you want.
“Taking with consent,” Ezra says. “The retreat is all about safety.”
On the first night everyone keeps their clothes on.
An early exercise is eye gazing – strangers locking eyes, staring at each other for minutes. By the end of the retreat they are gazing at each other’s vaginas.
Half lie with their heads in the middle of the workshop room, their partner between their legs. They stare one another’s eyes before the partner spends a few minutes looking down below.
“You are looking at the most beautiful part of this person,” Ezra says.
Then they swap places.
Afterwards, when Ezra asks them to share how it was for them, they all say it was incredibly intimate, that it felt liberating, that it was an honour to look at that part of the body.
“I … am a lesbian,” one says. She giggles.
Another says: “At the start, all I wanted to do was shut my legs. But by the end I felt really seen.”
There’s a lot of nodding. A lot of “mmm”s.
The four days are filled with a burlesque workshop, plenty of massaging, and a death and rebirth ritual, in which they “attend their own funerals”.
As the setting sun casts an orange glow across the pool, the Arcade Fire song My Body Is a Cage plays in the background.
The women take turns to stand in the middle of the circle. As they remove an item of clothing, they loudly say what is “dying” with it. “Shame”, “the feeling of not being queer enough”, “being too scared to ask for what I want”, they say as they strip down.
Next they lie with a piece of red sheer material over them, while two people massage their feet and two whisper words of affirmation into their ears. When they stand they declare who they now are.
There’s a lot of talk about reverence, of hydrating parts of the body that have been neglected, of holding space and of being enough.
Yet peel back the unconventional exercises and woo-woo language and you’ll see there’s something more serious going on.
Ezra vets everyone – spending hours on the phone with people who have applied for for a place. To suss their vibe and how they will fit with the group. She rejected two people this time around.
There are some rules – people can’t be experiencing “highly activated” sexual trauma, no cisgendered men are allowed and participants are encouraged to do some “somatic work” first.
“It’s got to work,” Ezra says. “And some people aren’t ready or it would be too much.”
‘Cracked open’
One person is there because her sister recommended it. Another heard about it via her ex-girlfriend. One saw it on Facebook.
A lot of these women are trying to shed something. Internalised homophobia, a deep dislike of their own bodies, nervousness or shame surrounding their sexuality. Others are trying to find something – community, the belief they are queer enough, a deeper connection to themselves, pleasure.
“Some of these people have never been seen in their authentic sexuality,” Ezra says. “They’ve never had that space in their life to be in a room that doesn’t judge you for who you are.”
She talks about them being “cracked open” and, as the retreat rolls on, there are changes.
There’s less clothing – a lot of lounging by the pool, tops off. It gets flirty, the sexual undercurrent becomes supercharged. The consent exercises escalate from tops-on touch to yoni massages.
The word pussy is said – a lot.
Ezra and her crew don’t stay in the main house. Each day they come back, often with gifts left on the beds – vibrators in the shape of peaches and cactuses, a splash blanket for moments of intimacy. There are hats that say “lil prick” and “vibe” and lots of lube.
This isn’t for everyone. “I don’t want fucking normal people coming,” Ezra says. She also knows that some may balk at the price tag – the $6,500 “luxury” tier includes two solo sessions while the “pleasure” tier costs $4,500.
She says the retreat is growing. There are two return participants. And next year she will take it to Bali where it will run for a week. There are more people having a late blooming experience, she says – more people looking for this.
She isn’t wrong. Research shows that more women are realising they are queer later in life. Changing social beliefs means they can be more open about their sexuality. In 2024 Gallup reported that nearly one in 10 Americans now identify as part of the LGBTQ community.
Countering ‘comphet’
Ezra says a lot of what the retreat is trying to do is dismantle “compulsory heterosexuality” – or “comphet” as it’s called in the community. This is the idea that heterosexuality is the assumed, default sexuality that you learn.
“I still feel like we’re living in a society that celebrates and over-glorifies the hetero experience,” Ezra says.
“And that is homophobia in itself. Until everybody is shown that they can love and relate in so many different ways, then we are still living in a very oppressive society.”
There are jokes that this is like joining a cult and the agenda is definitely unorthodox. But the women who are here feel they have found something profound.
One, who spent a week in bed after she realised she was gay in her late 40s, says she feels as though she has “shed dead skin and shame”.
“And gently moved into new skin, new insights and acceptance of my queerness,” she says.
