Wheel of Consent® Workshops with Helena De Felice
Embodied
Consent Practice
A foundational practice for relating
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Upcoming Embodied Consent Workshops
Looking for a customized offer? Don’t see your community listed?
We work collaboratively with communities, teams, and organizations to engage in this practice.
We co-create offerings that are “safe enough” for your learning and tailored to your specific needs.
Through experimentation in practices we deepen our skills in sensing and tending our own wants, needs, and boundaries and our ability to support others in honouring their inherent dignity.
Embodied Consent (informed by Wheel of Consent®) is practice of embodied awareness, attunement, and communication.
These skills are relational.
We need each other to develop them.
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.
A Small Sample of Spaces that Have Held This Practice
Who is it for?
“Who is it for” is a central question in the practice of the Wheel of Consent®.
The practice of embodied consent is profoundly impactful for bringing deeper intimacy, integrity, and care into your relationship with yourself and others.
Those who are drawn to this practice tend to:
໑ work with people in a position of power, and have a commitment to positively affect human change and healing (teacher, therapist, bodyworker, physician, manager, leader, etc.)
໑ be looking for deeper and more meaningful connection in their relationships (intimate, family, friendship, community, etc.)
໑ have experienced harm and have a desire to access a deeper sense of safety and trust in their own body and confidence in moving towards deeper intimacy
໑ be interested in developing deeper self-awareness and relational skills for more ease and joy in life, and/or
໑ care deeply about dignity, respect, and want to be more skillful in caring for themselves and others.
With more power comes greater responsibility.
We consider advanced embodied consent skills ,with awareness of how power and safety influences choice, to be essential for:
໑ practitioners, teachers, facilitators and care providers,
໑ leaders working within positions of authority, and
໑ leaders committed to empowering others in affirming their personal autonomy and power.
Who is this not for?
This practice is tender and potent.
It is important that you participate because you want to.
It is not appropriate for anyone else to require or demand that you attend.
You are welcome to arrive and leave with skepticism and doubt.
You are welcome to leave whenever you want, and return when you want to (or not at all).
You are not required to trust or believe what the facilitator offers or trust others in the space.
Doubt, skepticism, and distrust are all important and wise signals designed to keep you safe.
A cue that it may be best to wait until you are more resourced is that
the idea of engaging in this practice causes your body to contract, experience tension, or anxiety.
If you are in active crisis, it is best to seek other supports. Consider engaging in this practice once you are out of crisis and you can access more curiosity, perhaps with ongoing support from a therapist.
Sometimes more information about the workshop, what you can expect, and how you can care for yourself can resolve some tension or hesitation. Sometimes it helps clarify a ‘no’ or ‘not now’.
Sometimes a brief meeting with the facilitator can help.
You can schedule a free 20-minute consult here.
Sometimes it is supportive to attend with a partner and a friend, sometimes it can make it more difficult to drop into the practice and your own experience for your own learning.
It may not be appropriate to attend with someone you are in a role-power differential relationship with (e.g. your boss, or therapist).
Where can I start, without committing to an in person workshop?
- read the book The Art of Receiving and Giving by Betty Martin
- explore some of the practices that Betty describes on your own
- watch some of Betty’s videos
- try a one-on-one coaching session, or
- attend an online introduction or online training.
What People Are Saying
“Going along with” is so familiar to us that we hardly notice it is happening.
Slowing down, tending to safety, and attuning to ourselves
changes everything.
Download the Wheel of Consent® PDF
What’s different in this handout (compared to the original)?
1. The text has been re-oriented and brackets have been added for accessibility. Thank you Angie Cibis!
2. The description of the practice, description of the quadrants, and the shadows have been updated to make it more complete and congruent with how Helena currently teach this practice.
What’s different in this simple handout?
1. Removed descriptor of the quadrants and the shadows of each quadrant.