Two of my greatest queer erotic embodiment / sacred sexuality teachers, Alex Jade and Lizz Randall, are facilitating workshops at the end of March, and I have a collaboration with another mentor and friend of mine, Betty Martin, the first weekend of April.
So it’s shaping up to be an incredibly erotic and embodied spring!
I highly recommend ALL of these workshops, of course, but which one might work for YOU depends on where you’re at on your own journey, where you are, who you want to work with, and what kind of explorations you want to continue.
Lizz’s workshop Dedicated to Your Body will be an entry-level somatic embodiment experience dedicated, well, to YOUR body, where there will be a lot of temple time, deep ritual, play, somatic time, integration, and pelvic floor exploration. I just had a chat with her this morning about curriculum and I’m really excited it’s happening. I won’t be at this one, but I have known Lizz for many years and I know it’s going to be great.
Lizz’s Dedicated to Your Body workshop is for all women, meaning anybody who identifies as a woman or female and wants to do this work in a space for women-identified folks. It’s different to be in a women’s temple, and as someone who has been doing work in women’s temples for about 15 years, I highly recommend it. Because I know Lizz and her trans- and genderqueer inclusions, I know I would feel comfortable attending, as a genderqueer trans/ish butch who is probably female and definitely passes as a “woman.” Just, for the record. You butches and trans folks are invited, assuming you want to explore your connection with female and woman-ness in a women’s temple space. And, just in case it isn’t clear, it is explicitly inclusive of trans women, as the facilitator is very trans-aware and -versed, and since it’s inclusive of all women, that includes trans women. (Duh. But just being clear.)
Alex’s workshop, Tantra & SM, is in San Francisco through Flesh & Spirit. It’ll be a bit more advanced, I imagine, and delve into some kink things and shadow. I haven’t spoken with her about curriculum but I trust both Flesh & Spirit as a container and Alex as a gender-fluid SM player and as a teacher. I’m signed up and very excited to be there!
Tantra & SM is for any and all genders.
My workshop with Betty Martin is actually two linked workshops, Betty’s Learning to Touch on Saturday and my day-long workshop Playing with Power on Sunday. I am THRILLED to be playing with Betty and building off of her Learning to Touch workshop, and I’m really excited to offer some embodiment practice based in power dynamics and the embodiment of power. I can’t speak to Betty’s side as much, but my side will be about domination and submission, about power and surrender, about giving over and taking, about receiving and pulling out. It’s a combination of my Queering Power Dynamics workshop, which is more theoretical and talky-based, and my erotic ritual day-long workshops that include some small group and optional play parts.
Touch & Power will be for any and all genders and orientations, queer trans genderqueer masculine feminine straight d-type s-type, whatever. I’m hoping we’ll have a wide range of all of it, actually. I don’t expect it to be “power balanced,” meaning to have the same number of d-types as s-types, and as such we’ll ALL be exploring ALL aspects of power and surrender. It’s going to be delicious.
So, won’t you come join me in the Pacific Northwest for some erotic embodiment play this spring? I’d love to see you there.
Click on the big green plus (+) to expand the descriptions and see which one would work for you!
[toggle type=”3″ title=”Dedicated to Your Body: A Retreat for Women
“]
Dedicated to Your Body: A Retreat for Women
March 22-23, 2014, with Lizz Randall in Seattle
Our bodies need tending, away from lovers, partners, children and media. This retreat gives you that time.
In a safe, respectful and fun environment of women discover and connect with the aliveness and potency of your body. This workshop is designed for women interested in the conscious cultivation and exploration of embodied presence and sexuality. You will slow down enough to listen to what your body really wants and needs, to be witnessed and to witness, to receive on your terms, and go with your own flow. This retreat offers you full choice, presence, honor and permission to be where you are and go where you want.
Learn about clear boundaries and self-trust.
Connect with your erotic energy as a source of generative power
Learn how to ask for what you want.
Uncover the power of giving and receiving without losing yourself.
Explore states of embodiment, from subtle to bold, through conscious touch, movement, meditation and ritual.
Develop a relationship with your whole body that serves as a foundation for everything in your life.
Experience the potency of connecting with your eros
Come experience the healing and transformative power of this experiential work.
Location: Columbia City, Seattle
Date: Saturday, March 22 and Sunday March 23rd
Time: 9:30-5:30pm
Fee: $395 (early registration by February 15th: $350)
Pre-registration required!
To Register email ageller@fastmail.fm or call (619) 839-9349
Limited to 14 participants
Open to all women: gay, straight, undecided, queer, trans, genderqueer
Lizz Randall is a gifted and highly trained facilitator who has been teaching whole body workshops for over 15 years. Her work and private practice are dedicated to helping people create erotically embodied passionate lives. She has fierce trust in the body, the healing power of pleasure, and the interconnectedness of spirituality and sexuality. Lizz is a Body Electric School teacher, Sacred Intimate, tantra teacher, farmer, and parent.
Amanda Geller is a Body Electric alumni and a fellow woman on her journey. As a coach and entrepreneur she has seen the power of connecting to her body as the starting place for everything working in one’s life.
March 22-23, 2014, with Lizz Randall in Seattle
[toggle type=”3″ title=”Tantra and SM: A Spring Equinox workshop
“]
Tantra and SM: A Spring Equinox workshop
March 29 and 30, 2014, With Alex Jade in San Francisco
Once again, Alex Jade returns to us to share her unique alchemy of classical Tantra and SM. Those who have been to one of Alex’s workshops know that it is difficult to describe the magic (and fun!) that we create in our time together with Alex. We will conjure the healing power of pleasure through Tantra, SM, and more! Drawing on the power of the spring equinox as a balance point between day and night, we will explore the fertility that emerges from the riches of the dark. We will go from stillness to activation as we uncover the inner marriage of polarities.
This workshop is designed for those who have had erotic ritual or community erotic gathering experience, and who have some level of comfort and/or skill with SM. Previous experience with Tantra or with another flesh and spirit workshop is not necessary. We are happy to speak with you to explore whether this workshop would be right for you.
Date: March 29 and 30, 2014
Time: Saturday 10 AM- 6 PM, Sunday 10 AM- 6 PM
More information: http://www.fleshandspirit.org/women-s-community/35-power-of-pleasure.html
LOCATION:
A beautiful private dungeon location, SOMA, San Francisco
Details will be sent after registration
COST: $325, payment plan available.
Early bird: $250 if $75 non refundable deposit paid by February 24, 2014
ABOUT ALEX:
Alex Jade, MSW, is an erotic educator, sacred intimate, psychotherapist, and student of Tantra. She is on the faculty of the Body Electric School and has produced and taught independent workshops for over 17 years. She has mastery in clothes-off, hands-on experiential erotic education and the use of ritual as a healing tool. Alex’s specialties are gender exploration, classical Tantra, SM, and exploring with an open heart and mind.
This will be the fourth workshop Alex has led for Flesh and Spirit. We are excited to welcome her back to our sacred space!
Learning to Touch & Playing with Power
Saturday and Sunday, April 5-6, 2014, with Betty Martin and Sinclair Sexsmith in Shoreline WA”]
Learning to Touch & Playing with Power
Saturday and Sunday, April 5-6, 2014, with Betty Martin and Sinclair Sexsmith in Shoreline WA
~ Women, men, genderqueer, trans folks, singles, couples, queer, straight –
any and all genders and orientations
~ Inexperienced, wildly experienced or anywhere in between
Saturday: Learning to Touch, with Betty
Learn how to notice what it is you want, why it matters, when to bring it forward and when to set it aside. Feel the difference between receiving a gift and giving one, and what they have to do with touch, and what they don’t. And fall in love with both of them – completely and equally.
Find each of the 4 Quadrants of Receiving and Giving and what each of them can teach you. Each one is inherently pleasurable but often misunderstood and therefore sometimes difficult to find. Each of the 4 is innate to who you are as a lover and as a person, and the more you discover about yourself in each of the 4, the more freedom you have to be yourself, fully and authentically.
Sunday: Playing with Power, with Sinclair
Take what you have just learned about desire, consent and the dynamics of receiving and giving, and now expand it to play in the realm of power and power exchange. We take the skills and dynamics, and dive in a little deeper into this fascinating, fun and potentially erotic playground.
For beginners in this realm, this is the perfect way to gain a solid footing of awareness and skills. For experienced players, discover what the 4 Quadrants have to teach you that clarify your dynamics let you go even deeper.
MORE ABOUT THE CLASSES:
Saturday, April 5: Learning to Touch
At this workshop, you will:
~ Get crystal clear on Receiving and Giving – what the difference is and why it matters
~ Fall completely in love with both of them, equally
~ Find the surprising source of your confidence and creativity
~ Bring a new level of presence and sensuality to all your touch
~ Learn the Circle of Consent and the 4 Quadrants, a sensual practice that will clarify your relating on all levels
~ Learn real, tangible skills to ask for what you want, with ease and generosity
This workshop is for you if you:
~ are seeking the next level of ease, confidence and joy, wherever that is for you
~ love and care for each other, but can’t quite find the key to loving your love life
~ know there is something deeper, more meaningful in sex, but have no idea were to start looking for it
~ have been experimenting with Tantra but find it awkward and contrived
~ are not comfortable ‘receiving’ and don’t know why or what to do about it
~ want to have more fun!
Sunday, April 6, Playing with Power
At this workshop, you will:
– Practice principles of giving and receiving touch
– Feel in to your consent and agency, and more feminist foundations for power play
– Learn and explore some of the basics of domination and submission
– Experience what it’s like to tap into the great strength of vulnerability in being seen, asking for what you want, and giving yourself over
– Feel into the inherent power that is in all of us
– Deepen your connection with your own calling
This workshop is for you, if you:
– Have some experience with giving and receiving consensual touch in groups
– Trust yourself to feel in to your yes and no in the moment, and vocalize that
– Want to take your power play to a deeper, bigger, bolder, playful level
– Want to increase your capacity for asking for what you want in the moment
– Want to get more in touch with your own surrender to another’s desires, or
– Want to get more in touch with your own desires, to request them of another
– Are eager to play with power and touch
For one person:
One day: $120
Both days: $200
For a couple (or pair of friends):
1 day: $200
Both days: $380
Maximum class size: 14
When & Where:
Saturday and Sunday, April 5-6, 10 am – 6 pm both days
Shoreline, WA, at a private residence
TO REGISTER, visit bettymartin.com/learning-touch-playing-power or contact Sincliar!
ABOUT BETTY:
I’m Dr. Betty Martin, a Chiropractor, a Body Electric School trained Sacred Intimate, Certified Sexological Bodyworker, Foundations of Facilitation trainer, and a self-propelled erotic adventurer and intimacy coach.
Every one of these and more has contributed to my understanding of the nature of professional touch.
I’m one of those lucky people who grew up in the touch-y feel-y hippie years. Then I got serious and went to Chiropractic school and learned to touch with some clear intent.
That makes about 30 years as a hands-on professional, first in therapeutics – Chiropractic, Somato-Respiratory Integration, Educational Kinesiology, Reiki, Neuro-Emotional Integration – and later in body-based erotic education, including sensual massage, Taoist Erotic Massage, Kashmiri tantric massage and Sexological Bodywork.
I’ve taught peer counseling, gender liberation, embodiment and empowerment, fantasy play, goddess awakening and erotic massage. I’ve played with contact improv dance, Authentic Movement, Non-Violent Communication and Shaivic tantra. I am a student of The Work of Byron Katie. I am a Board member and train and certify new facilitators for a touch and communication workshop called Cuddle Party.
ABOUT SINCLAIR:
Sinclair Sexsmith, known as the “kinky queer butch top,” is an erotic coach, teacher, and writer who produces Sugarbutch Chronicles at sugarbutch.net, full of dirty stories, essays, advice, and journal entries since 2005. They travel frequently to perform and lead workshops, and to work with people one-on-one for identity puzzles and sexual experiments. Sinclair’s work is published in more than twenty anthologies, and they edited Best Lesbian Erotica 2012 and Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica. They are an expert on strap-on technologies, a feminist Dominant, an identity puzzler, a classically trained poet, and a sacred intimate, and prefer the pronouns they and them.
Saturday and Sunday, April 5-6, 2014, with Betty Martin and Sinclair Sexsmith in Shoreline WA
Is there a URL for the Tantra and SM workshop, please?
Yes! Sorry to forgot to include it. http://www.fleshandspirit.org/women-s-community/35-power-of-pleasure.html