What is The Wheel of Consent®?
The Wheel of Consent® is a framework and embodied awareness practice developed by Dr. Betty Martin.
Since its inception, this practice has been brought into schools, universities, therapist programs, and organizations around the world, and reshaped how therapeutic practitioners are trained.
It is simple, subtle, and profound.
This frame for consent is an embodied awareness and communication process we navigate.
In this practice, we deepen our capacity to feel into ourselves, trust our own body’s signals, value ourselves, and communicate.
Through the practice, we deepen our capacity to attune with others while deeply caring for ourselves, navigating interactions with deep presence, care, and dignity.
This is an experiential practice of presence, attunement, and communication.
What does it feel like in your body to want something? What does it feel like when you don’t?
What does it feel like when you are willing? What does it feel like when you’re not?
What does it feel like to make a clear request for something you truly want?
What does it feel like when you are feeling safe enough to speak up or say no?
What does it feel like when you don’t?
What does it feel like when you can trust the other person’s capacity to say no?
What does it feel like when you don’t?
What happens when power dynamics that are present are untended?
As my colleague Ondra Li writes, “The beauty of “The Wheel” is its combination of simplicity and complexity. The questions are simple, the answers are .. not. While some of the dynamics seem to be universal, the aha moments tend to be … nuanced.”
This practice goes beyond legal- medical consent and beyond consent in intimate contexts.
It is not prescriptive. We’re not presenting tips or tricks. It is not purely informational or content-based learning.
This approach holds consent as an embodied process with foundational relational skills that applies to all interactions
(personal, intimate, familial, organizational, professional, communal).
Engaging in this practice develops our skills to notice personal, interpersonal, and group dynamics when making choices, respecting one’s own and others’ boundaries, and navigating situations and relationships with more integrity, clarity, and freedom.
It’s a practice. Each time we engage, we have an opportunity to bring ourselves to our current learning edge and deepen our awareness.
In the practice, we isolate specific dynamics and experiences to be able to notice distinct signals and patterns within ourselves.
In small experiments, we take turns receiving and giving, tuning in to wants and limits, making requests and responding.
The practice is real, relational, and emergent. It’s not role-playing.
The experiments and practice is supported by frameworks. They frameworks can help us make sense of the experience and orient ourselves in the dynamics.
Trauma-Informed Somatic Approach
What do we learn through this practice?
We gently unwind deep protective patterns of people-pleasing, fawning, manipulation, and control to attempt to get our needs met.
We deepen our understanding of how power dynamics, trauma, systemic oppression impact our capacity to access choice and respect for our boundaries.
We deepen our experience of fundamental dignity and self-trust.
We deepen our skills to notice what belongs to us (our body, our emotions, our wants, our limits, etc.) and what belongs to someone else.
We develop skills to notice, trust, value, and communicate our needs.
We learn to notice when we want something.
We learn to notice when we are willing to do something or having something happen.
We learn to notice when we do not want something, when we are not willing to do something or have something happen.
We learn to notice our subtle signals when we are not safe-enough to connect with our wants and limits.
We become more aware of our tendencies to “go along” with what is happening - noticing the circumstances and places where it is more difficult for us to say no, stop, pause, or negotiate.
We learn to communicate more clearly with requests, offers, or invitations.
We learn to savour the experience of receiving a gift, and of giving a gift with ease.
We learn how to support others to notice their wants, needs, and limits and be able to communicate with them.
What do you mean by trauma-informed?
‘Trauma-informed’ has become a buzz-word, something providers include in their copy without necessarily aligning their practices or the environment in ways that recognize and adapt to the various was trauma can shape us.
Engaging in a practice of embodied consent means engaging with the most fundamental aspects of caring for and respecting personal autonomy. This means that it is inevitable that we will connect with moments where we haven’t been able to care for our autonomy or respect another’s.
A foundation of this practice is that we need to tend to our sense of safety first. We intentionally support moving slowly, at a pace where we can notice subtle signals of ‘no’, choose how to participate, and digest and metabolize what arises. We carefully tend to the learning environment, the exercises, and how the practices are offered and facilitated, to offer a presence of care and choice.
The opportunities to experiment are small and short and each experiment builds on each other.
The pace is slow, the setting is private and comfortable, there are many options for how to participate, and the group agreements and guidelines support the practice. The facilitator models the practice while holding the space, including welcoming feedback and repair as mistakes are made.
What “safe-enough” means varies from individual to individual, and not every environment works for every person. Experimenting in this practice is particularly delicate for individuals and groups who have systematically experienced *not* having a choice, or not having their choices or bodily autonomy respected.
We offer tailored and affinity programs for individuals and groups to best serve these needs.
Embodied Consent (informed by Wheel of Consent®) is practice
of embodied awareness, attunement, and communication.
This practice is relational. We need each other to engage in it.
The root of the word consent is con- sentire. To feel with.
Feeling together is a practice of personal and relational integrity.
Within this practice, we meet what arises with presence, curiosity, and care.
We slow down and tend to our personal and mutual sense of safety and connection.
We include awareness of how power dynamics impact our relationship.
Engaging in this practice deepens our awareness and capacity to care for ourselves and tend what is occurring in our relational dynamics.
This enables us to navigate our relationship with ourselves and others with more care, dignity, and integrity.
We access new levels of clarity and ease, gratitude, joy, generosity, and confidence.
My story with the Wheel of Consent®
Since first being introduced to the Wheel of Consent® in 2016, it has transformed how I approach every aspect of my life.
I left my first immersive training with the experience that my brain had rewired - my inner compass for desires, needs, and limits had been reset - and it gave me a completely new frame and somatic awareness to engage from. I was awestruck and inspired by the possibility of unwinding deep individual and collective patterns of harm and move towards more caring and reciprocal relationships.
At the time, I was immersed in work in the realm of gender-based violence, a field that felt heavy and charged, along with necessary and inspiring. Experiencing this practice lit a spark in me that has provided a pervasive sense of possibility.
These are foundational skills that we can learn.
It is possible repair relational harm, bring compassion for ways we have learnt to survive, restore trust and dignity where we have abandoned ourselves or been abandoned, and move towards nourishing connections. I immediately saw the connection and relevance of this practice for a wide range of contexts: organizational, leadership, service and caregiving, familiar, collective, and intimate.
Since then, I have delivered over 20 Wheel of Consent workshops in North America and Europe, with hundreds of participants from several continents and cultural backgrounds in both group and one-on-one sessions. I focus on extended immersive offerings that allow us to slow down, unwind patterns, and develop new habits.
My personal and professional practice continues to deepen through the individual and collective wisdom that emerges each time I offer this work, other modalities I engage in, and my own personal practice of embodied consent.
Over the years, I have come to learn how the practice and framework can be presented in ways that are not aligned with deepening care, and what happens when we neglect the impact trauma and power dynamics have on our capacity to choose. I hold this practice with reverence for the gifts it brings, and respect for its limitations. I continue to stay curious and receptive, and weave lessons how it lands with various people, in various settings, and what I learn from other modalities into my approach.
It is an honour and great fulfilment to get to share this work with you.