Former 'Barney' Actor David Joyner Now Runs A Tantric Sex Business
He finds clients on Tinder.
Getty It’s been 18 years since David Joyner retired from playing Barney the Purple Dinosaur. While he has continued acting, appearing in shows including Veep and Just Add Magic, he also has a business called Tantra Harmony, where he provides a tantra-based healing services that include everything from ritual bathing to sexual intercourse. He only takes on female clients — some of whom he finds through Tinder — and he charges $350 for a session that can last up to three hours and might include a full body orgasm, if his clients are to be believed.
How did Joyner get from purple dinosaur to tannic sex therapist? Read on for all the details. Who is David Joyner?
1. Training
Before Joyner became Barney, he was training at ITT Tech to work as IT specialist. While he was in school, Vice reports, he started training in Swedish massage so he could make extra money on the side. From there he discovered tantra and started getting more into the study of that after massage clients reported that his touch aroused them. However, in 1991, he changed careers from tech to TV when he was cast as Barney the purple dinosaur. Attorneys for the show told him he could not teach, practice, or talk about tantra while he was under contract playing a character beloved by toddlers.
Joyner was Barney for 10 years.
2. Barney vibes
Despite keeping his tantric tendencies under wraps during the decade he played Barney, Joyner says used on the same kind of energy he used for tantra. He tells Vice, “The energy I brought up [while] in the costume is based on the foundation of tantra, which is love. Everything stems, grows, and evolves from love. Even when you have emotionally blocked energy, the best way to remove it is to remove it with love, and then replace it with God’s divine love. Love heals and allows you to continue to grow.”
But don’t worry - he wasn’t channelling sexy thoughts while he was entertaining toddlers. He says he was using the tantric principles to "maintain an abundance of joy during the process,” and to deal with the physical demands of the job, recalling that the temperature inside the costume, which weights 70 pounds, could top out at well over 100 degrees.
Barney was beloved by children.
3. Tantric goals
According to Matthias Rose, a certified tantra educator with the Source School of Tantra, “Tantra is a spiritual science of consciousness. Its goal is to liberate us from the unconscious programming that keeps us from recognizing the divinity in ourselves and all beings.” Rose says tantra encompasses all sorts of practices, including the sexual aspects that have ben made famous by reports that Sting can use tantra to have sex for hours on end.
But the sexual aspect seems to be Joyner’s prime focus and his website lists his mission statement as “Connecting your mind, body and spirit together as one, in perfect harmony. Achieving a higher and more blissful state of awareness to your sexuality, and who you are as a spiritual being.”
Joyner got into tantra while studying Swedish massage.
4. Unorthodox
In order to bring the more blissful state to clients, Vice reports that he provides a service for women — or goddesses as he prefers to call them — which includes a ritual bath, chakra balancing and a massage. But his massages go well beyond the kind of massage that will relieve the tension in your neck and shoulders — he prefers using his penis to massage the inside of a goddess’s vagina. And he wants to do it without a condom.
“When the lingam [penis] and the yoni [vagina] meet, there’s a certain energy that takes place that hands on the body alone cannot create. Even through G-spot massage, it’s still not the same energy that flows.”
Condoms "block the energy,” he tells Vice. And while he does provide up-to-date STD test results to his clients, other experts in tantra say the thing about condoms blocking energy “sounds shady” and “ridiculous." Kaya Kwan Yin is a tantra life coach in Tokyo, with more than 100 hours training, explains to Vice that “Tantric sex can happen with your clothes on. What typically looks like penis and vagina penetration is often referred to as 'full union' in contemporary practice. Sexual energy penetrates clothes, condoms, countries, and beyond. Having sex with clients in the world of tantra is more of an anomaly than the norm.”
A sex therapist also weighed in on the condom-free yoni/lngam massage technique. "Even porn stars in California use a condom,"Kimberly Resnick Anderson, professor of psychiatry at UCLA says, ”It’s the law. For him not to use condoms is medically unethical and irresponsible. This is outrageous and far outside the standard of care.”
Joyner thinks condoms block energy.
5. Illegal?
Speaking of things that are illegal, Joyner’s whole practice might fall outside the bounds of California laws. Vice writes that massage with the intent to have sex is considered solicitation by the state. Moreover, having sex with someone for money — even if it’s billed as tantric massage— is prostitution. California defense attorney Jonathan Kelman says, “You can’t legally have sex with someone in exchange for money. If I have a client who gets arrested for exchanging a Big Mac for sex, that’s, by definition, prostitution.” Anderson, the UCLA professor, says of the legality of practitioners having sex with clients, “If I had sex with a patient, it would be criminal, and I would be prosecuted and lose my license.”
He provides services wherever he goes.
6. Goddess testimonials
Whether or not Joyner is operating on the right side of the law, his clients seem very pleased with what he does with them. One “goddess” wrote, “My job was to embrace everything so emotions could be released. During a long and exceptionally expert yoni massage I experienced my first full body orgasm. It was literally the most sensational thing I’ve ever experienced, it was one of the most intense single orgasms I’ve ever had! The best way to describe it is an orgasm times 100, my entire body vibrated with orgasmic energy. I literally felt it from the top of my head to the tip of my toes and everyplace in between. The energy I felt running through my body was incredible.” Another client wrote, “You’re such a wonderful soul. A blessing really. This world is getting highly ridiculous. There should be more people like you in it! (You really can wipe a woman’s hard drive for reboot)!”
Clients love his work.
If you want to get in contact with Joyner, try Tinder. He says he uses the dating app to advertise to potential goddess.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.