Communicating Your Desires & Limits: An Introductory Somatic Workshop

Communicating Your Desires & Limits: An Introductory Somatic Workshop

Embark on a transformative journey with our somatic workshop, Communicating Your Desires & Limits. This somatic workshop will invite participants to cultivate a deeper connection with their bodies, fostering self-awareness, enhancing communication skills, and improving touch with others. The learning will unfold over a series of slow and optional exercises where participants will notice the wisdom of their body and allow that to pull them towards their desires and state their limits.

🌟 Workshop Highlights:

- Somatic Awareness: Engage in somatic practices that promote body-mind connection, providing a foundation for noticing what is true and right for you.

- Consent and Boundaries: Explore the power of saying 'yes' and 'no' with more clarity and confidence. Learn to find more trust in yourself in this safe and supportive environment.

- Mindful Touch: Delve into the realm of non-sexual touch and the misconceptions society teaches us about it. Discover the nuances of communicating about touch that facilitate connection, trust, and mutual understanding. All touch will be optional.

- Build Clearer Agreements: Develop the art of expressing desires and limits with authenticity. Enhance your ability to notice what you really want and ask for it with clarity, and notice your limits when you cannot give generously.

🌈 Who Should Attend:

• Individuals seeking to expand their skills to notice their desires and limits
• Those interested in deepening their trust of their internal experience
• Anyone curious about the transformative power of mindful touch
• All genders and backgrounds welcome
• Adults age 18+
  👽 Other things!

• Coming solo, with a friend(s), or with a partner(s) are all encouraged choices
• Bring a lunch! There will be a 30 minute break halfway through the workshop to eat
• Participants are encouraged to wear comfy clothes and bring their own pillows for comfort - yoga matts are available.
• The workshop will be a mixture of lecture, practice, and discussion, with strong emphasis on practice and discussion.
  

🌻 Agenda

1. Welcome/Introductions/Warm Up
2. Finding Your Yes, No, and Naming Some Desires (No Touch)
3. Bringing Awareness to Touch (Touching Objects)
4. Mindful & Gentle Touch with Others (Touching Hands Optional)
5. Closing
   

👾 Workshop Group Agreements

These agreements help create the container of safety for the workshop.

1. Confidentiality — Outside the group, share only your own experience and learning; do not share the names or personal experiences of others in the group that could lead to others identifying them.

2. Feelings are welcome and do not need to be justified or explained; honor the feelings that arise in others by allowing them to feel without fixing or advising.

3. When sharing, speak from your personal experience - Use ‘I’ statements (eg. I feel, I notice, I’m experiencing, etc.). This helps you to notice and take responsibility for your own experience. Please avoid speaking on behalf of others.

4. Use the names and pronouns people request, and honor the lived experience of those in the group. Be willing to stay open and set aside assumptions about people's identities and experiences (e.g. gender, race, sexuality, ability, etc.).

5. Stay within the stated limits of each practice. The workshop is clothed. We will not state wants for, or make requests or offers for unclothed, genital, or explicitly sexual touch during exercises. There will be options to engage in non-sexual touch with other participants and it is not required. You never have to touch anyone you do not want to, and you are allowed to change your mind as many times as your mind changes. You get the full value from the workshop however you choose to participate.

🌿 What we invite for your own experience:

1. Invite beginner’s mind — everything we offer is an experiment and an opportunity to notice yourself and learn; take what works for you and leave the rest.

2. Participation can look many ways and you choose how you want to participate — actively join an exercise, witness, journal, take a break, and change your mind at any time!

3. Do not do anything you do not want to do.

4. Prioritixe self-care and nervous system regulation — take care of your needs for water, toilet, etc; if there is something specific you need, can you find a way to ask for it?

5. Inviting the adult part of participants, not the child. The child part will always be there and is important, but we want the adult to be guiding the experience, and that means making decisions about what is safest for you. We are here to make space for feelings, big and small, to be present and expressed. We are not here to guide someone therapeutically.

🌜 Accessibility and health protocols

• Thank you for not wearing artificial scents (e.g. perfume, scented lotion, aftershave).
• The facilitators will take covid tests days and the morning before the workshop.
• We ask all participants to take a rapid antigen test the day of, before the workshop. We will happily provide a full refund for those who cannot attend.
• We will not require masks, yet encourage attendees to do anything that supports them in feeling safer (ex. masking, social distancing, doing activities outside).
• More covid-cautious details to come.
• This is on the first floor of the venue and is wheelchair accessible.
• More accessibility info at tulayogawellness.com/faq
• This event is in spoken English without opportunity for translation.

About the facilitation team

Alec Lossiah (they/them) is a sexuality educator and budding somatic facilitator. Alec is passionate about finding ways to experience the full depth of human desire within our limits. They are currently inspired by Dr. Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent to bring consent-oriented, trauma-informed, touch-based workshops to Minneapolis so that all who are willing can experience the magic that is finding deeper trust with oneself and letting that guide one to pleasure and connection.

Elle Hawkins, Lcsw (they/them) is a certified sex therapist and avid educator. Elle's goal is to empower all people to show up fully as themselves and feel confident in consciously engaging with their bodies on their own and with partners. Elle uses somatic experiencing techniques to support others in discovering how to deepen their relationship with their bodies, communicate desires and boundaries, and have a more easeful connection with embodied enjoyment.

This workshop is influenced and inspired by the Wheel of Consent® as developed by Dr. Betty Martin. We have trained with the School of Consent, but we are not certified facilitators.

For more information visit .

Host or Publisher Alec Lossiah