clarity in consent

About: A weekend retreat exploring desire, boundaries and pleasure through the body. Facilitated in collaboration with Daniel Little, Somatic Sex Educator.

Dates & Times: Saturday, July 25th 10:00am – Sunday, July 26th 1:00pm.

Location: A barn studio and land in the rolling hills of Charlotte, VT.

*Can stay on site camping or in the barn studio.

Contribution: Sliding scale, $125-275.

What to Bring: Yourself, a willingness to explore, comfortable clothing with layers, a journal and any drawing materials, camping gear if you’d like to spend the night.

ABOUT

Have you found yourself saying yes when you mean maybe, or going along with something you don’t want? Many of us can find it challenging to communicate clearly what we want and don’t want, for a myriad of conscious and unconscious reasons. Sometimes, when asking for what we want feels too risky, we hold back. We learn at a young age to self-manage without noticing, dampening our own aliveness and calibrating our self-expression to what we think other people want from us and what will secure our attachments. We lose contact with the clarity of yes, no, and maybe, and with our authenticity and true desires underneath.

This is a weekend of slow embodied practice to help us find the path back to our aliveness, and to nourish both authenticity and belonging, alongside other people seeking the same. We’ll use Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent as a guide to the dynamics of intimate exchange and relationality. What we call erotic energy is part of the journey: the aliveness in us, and the ways we let it move. Throughout the weekend we’ll practice asking for what we want, naming what we don’t, and meeting one another with utmost care. Choice and voice run through every practice.

The pace is inquisitive. We will slow down enough to notice and we will be witnessed in the noticing. Through these practices, we make the unconscious more conscious, enabling us to have more choice in our everyday lives. Our hope is that through this container, you’ll leave more attuned to your own desires and more able to name them. You’ll be clearer in your boundaries and know what it feels like to honor them. And you’ll have practiced the kinds of asking, offering, and witnessing that make intimate exchanges more deeply nourishing and pleasurable.

flow of the weekend

Saturday we will begin by arriving: with ourselves, our bodies, minds, and spirits..with each other, the land, and the space among us. Together, we will clarify any intentions, check-in, create the group container and deepen embodiment through movement.

Once we have arrived together, desire and pleasure will be explored as a felt experience: working with movement, touch, the natural world, and direct inquiry. Through the day we step into the Wheel of Consent itself, walking it as a ritual of awareness and attunement and practicing slowed-down consent conversations like the three-minute game.

The evening offers an optional, structured container for slow, titrated exploration of erotic belonging, where participation is fully chosen and each person keeps to their own choice and voice throughout.

Sunday is primarily for integration and any incompletes. We will make space for any questions we haven’t yet asked of ourselves or one another. There will also be time to reflect and decide if there are certain ways we want to carry this work forward into our lives and relationships.

Our time is designed to be reflective and ritualistic. It is to support increased awareness, clarity, and embodiment in relational exchanges. As human beings, we need different things moment to moment; that being said – the subject is scheduled to change.