Ex-Nomura banker turned sex guru says banking is bad for sexual health

Seven years ago, Mike Lousada was just another investment banker working for just another bank in London. In a 20-year career in the City, Lousada worked in derivatives marketing for Barclays, SocGen, J.P. Morgan, Nomura and West LB. In 2004, he could be found opining about hedging strategies in Risk Magazine. Today he can be found in Naomi Wolf’s book ‘Vagina’.  For a fee of £100, Wolf writes that Lousada will heal sexual wounds at a location near London’s Chalk Farm neighborhood.

“I got into this indirectly,” Lousada said. “Back in my 20s, I was finding City life stressful and I went to meditation classes. That got me interested in Buddhism and through Buddhism I became interested in Tantra.”

Ultimately, Lousada decided that working as a derivatives marketer in an investment bank wasn’t doing it for him. “I realized that the City didn’t have enough meaning for me.”

In 2006 Lousada took voluntary redundancy from Nomura and took up Reiki healing, a Japanese technique which involves laying hands upon a patient's body to help direct energy flows. According to the Wall Street Journal, Reiki has become popular as a method of treating cancer patients.

From Reiki, Lousada moved into sex counselling. Having trained as a counselor and certified sex coach, he said he's at the cutting edge of a new form of 'physical release' therapy. "Fifty percent of the work is just talk work – I am educating people about their bodies and sexual responses and helping them understand what’s not working for them. I am also doing physical release work,” he added. “It is therapeutic, not for entertainment.” Lousada has been written about by the London Times, GQ, and the Independent. 

Most of Lousada’s work is with women, but he works with men as well. Not all his clients are bankers, but some are. Lousada said he's worked with close to a thousand people, of whom 10-15% have a financial services background.

“There are two problems with men in banking,” he said. “One is erectile dysfunction (ED). The other is premature ejaculation (PE). Both are linked to the nature of banking jobs. ”

Lousada said male bankers are prone to ED because they suffer from performance anxiety. “Banking is a performance-related, competitive culture. If you work in an environment which emphasizes performance so heavily, it creates a mindset that spills out into other areas of your life.”

For female bankers, Lousada said the biggest sexual problem is a loss of femininity. “A lot of women in the City are very identified with the masculine side of themselves. The problem is that opposites attract, and so they will probably attract a feminized man and then be dissatisfied.

“Women who are masculine want an even more masculine man to partner with,” he said. “In their love life they want to feel very feminine, but they often don’t know how to negotiate between these different parts of themselves.

Busy bankers need to make time for intimacy. "Even if it's just an hour a week, you need to allow intimacy into your life," Lousada said. "It's especially important if both members of a couple are in a demanding job. If you don't make time, your needs won't be met. And if those needs aren't met repetitively then one member of a couple will go elsewhere for fulfillment."