Content 

Untouched is a full-day workshop that aims to build foundational skills and knowledge for gendered violence workers seeking to increase their capacity and confidence in providing support to survivors of sexual abuse and violence, regarding issues related to sex, intimacy and pleasure. 

Developed and delivered with Susan Stark, this training upskills counsellors to support victim/survivors reclaim sex and intimacy as powerful sites of healing and transformation. The focus of Untouched is sexual self-sovereignty, or one’s relationship to sex with self.

Untouched intentionally and mindfully adopts an intersectional feminist and somatic approach to this work - providing practical tools and resources that can be integrated into existing counselling and support frameworks.

This training facilitates experiential learning through interactive activities, embodiment processes, reflective learning and the provision of specialised information. These tools are drawn from Sexological Bodywork, Somatic Sex Education, Somatic Experiencing and Wheel of Consent frameworks.

Participants will:

• ~ Gain information on how the nervous system impacts people’s experiences of pleasure and how to include the body in healing sexual trauma
• ~ Develop ways to work with sexual shame, guilt and triggers
• ~ Become familiar with the foundations of embodied consent and tools to support this learning with survivors, including sexual communication and boundaries
• ~ Learn new theoretical frameworks and practical tools for working with desire, including its relevance to embodied consent
• ~ Learn new theoretical frameworks and practical tools for working with and cultivating erotic pleasure 
• 
  

Assumed Knowledge

As this training is designed for counsellors working in gendered violence, it assumes participants bring a basic knowledge of trauma, its embodied impacts, polyvagal theory and 3-stage trauma recovery.

We recommend you have reasonable experience and skills in being able to notice and intentionally regulate activation and deactivation cycles in your own nervous system. This involves bringing conscious awareness to stay with and track sensations in your body.

Facilitation 

We adopt an experiential, somatic and interactive learning approach. Working somatically is vital when we are wanting to reclaim and reshape our experiences of pleasure, sex and intimacy.

Untouched invites participants onto their learning edges - to practice and play with ideas and concepts; to fully embody the ideas and concepts through ourselves first.

This learning approach is grounded in the principle of embodied consent. Attendees are encouraged to engage with the training by bringing full awareness to their own capacity and desire to participate. Full, authentic choice is cultivated throughout the workshop.