Yes, No & Everything in Between

Do you ever…

• Say “yes” when you mean “maybe”?
• Hint at what you want instead of asking directly?
• Go into “freeze mode” when someone asks you what you want?
• Ghost people because saying no feels too hard?
• Feel hurt when someone tells you no?

Do you want to…

• Be confident that you can identify your desires and communicate them respectfully?
• Trust that you can say “no” or “maybe?”
• Move beyond “rules” about consent and towards genuine, mutual connections?
• Learn how to tune in to the wisdom of the body and not get stuck in your head?

In order to have safe and satisfying relationships with others, we need to develop our capacity to feel ourselves– to know how to identify and honor our desires, curiosities, limits, and fears. That’s what this workshop is all about. When we connect with ourselves, it opens the door to have more genuine connections with others.

This workshop is an opportunity to move beyond discussing and analyzing: because our feelings don’t just happen in our brains! Together, we’ll do a series of activities that help us tap into the experience of the body so we can go straight to the source and get the most direct and useful information about what we do and don’t want at any given moment. This atunement with ourselves creates the conditions for trust, clarity, and authentic, mutually satisfying connection.

In this workshop you will:

• Be guided through easy, low stakes activities that help you notice your internal experience.
• Learn how to “notice, trust, value, and communicate” your desires.
• Practice your “yes” and your “no”, and making and receiving requests.
• Leave with more insight about your yourself and ideas for what to practice next.

More about the workshop:

This workshop is for adult individuals – single, partnered, poly; all are welcome. You can bring a partner or friend if you want (everyone needs a ticket), but you do not need a partner for this workshop.

You will have the opportunity to practice touch in this workshop, but ALL the practices in this workshop are optional, and touch is never required.

Many of these practices can apply to intimacy and sex, but this workshop is not “about” sex or intimacy. Some activities involve non-sexual touch, and this is a clothes-on workshop.

Light refreshments will be provided.

About the trainer:

I’m Laura Moss, a mental health therapist and group facilitator based in Seattle, WA. I have been working in the mental health field since 2016 and my work as a healer focuses on embodied trauma healing, collective liberation, embodied consent, and somatic parts work. You can read more about me and my practice at my website: https://mossandstonecounseling.com. Outside of my professional work, you’re likely to find me wandering around Lake Washington, contributing to mutual aid projects, and taking my cats out for supervised visits to the garden.

The background of this work:

This workshop is based on embodied consent, a concept and practice of feeling for desires and limits in the body as the foundation for relating to self and others with integrity. It draws from the work of Betty Martin (and many other contributors, as well as from the legacy of sex work). I’m incredibly fortunate to have studied and trained with Betty, and highly recommend everyone check out her transformative body of work, including her brilliant framework The Wheel of Consent, and book, The Art of Receiving and Giving.