workshops

FRIDAY

Workshop Spiciness:

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can mainly be internally focused, not a lot of physical or emotional connection required

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incorporates partner or group interactions, can include touch and deeper emotional processing

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may involve nudity, or explicitly invites in erotic energy, can incorporate partnered or group interaction

  • Avery Deane Swift

    This workshop begins with a 30-min consent and boundary negotiation activity to help folks understand their response to giving and receiving “no,” as well as practice celebrating a no. It culminates in a touch/sensation play exploration of asking for what we want and receiving 4-handed touch (working in triads, with two givers and one receiver at a time). I bring lots of tools and toys and props to play with!

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  • Robin Ekeya & Jasmine Co

    Sex is often thought of as the most intimate activity we can engage in with our partners. Nevertheless attunement with our partners and the intimacy that often follows it is not necessarily a part of sexual activity. Beyond this, the juiciness that comes with deep attunement is available through non-sexual somatic activities. 

    The aim of this workshop is to provide a perspective and some tools for arriving at deeper states of embodied attunement with your partner or partners. Once in this state any range of connected activities is possible e.g. dance, cuddling, napping, lovemaking or simply basking in each other's regard.

    Working in pairs or groups and borrowing modalities from partnered dance, ecstatic dance and contact improv, participants will be led to move within each others somatic fields, weaving together an experience of deep connection with self and other.

    While sensual, this workshop is not necessarily sexual. We do ask that you come to the workshop with a partner you would like to deepen with somatically or else come willing to be paired with someone who is also looking for a connected somatic experience.

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  • Shireen Amini

    A song circle that embraces ALL levels of singing experience where we will sing for healing, joy, and connection - not perfection. Shireen will lead participants in original medicine songs that have been woven through their experience in a queer POC body and their journey toward liberation in a call-and-echo style, building layers, groove, and spirit. This workshop is to provide a sanctuary for your grief, nourishing your self-love, and a fiery energy of power and joy.

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  • Larissa Kaul

    A ritual theater workshop that cultivates primordial erotic joy to consciously and creatively relate to "the taboo"; individual and cultural content that is maligned, avoided, exiled, or craved.

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  • Phoenix Grey

    Learn the core principles of partner dancing (leading/following, communicating movement through touch and shared center). Techniques will be applicable to most partner dances, but will likely be filtered through a lens of west coast swing.

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  • Sahar Yarjani

    Gather for a guided yoga nidra practice to facilitate creative flow and collective healing. Yoga nidra is a deep healing practice that stimulates creativity, and facilitates rest and relational healing with self and others. We'll have a check-in, writing prompt, short movement practice, pranayama (movement of vital energy through breath), and then yoga nidra - a deep meditative state where the body is relaxed and supported. Then, you will be offered suggested prompts for reflection and optional space to share and connect with the group.

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Saturday

  • Jen Ball

    Land in the festival space and regulate as a group with this sweet communal practice. We’ll start with a group check in, then form two concentric circles facing each other while we’re led through a series of mirroring practices. This morning practice builds community, a sense of safety with vulnerability, and helps us check in with our own sense of yes for the play to come throughout the day. We’ll close with a moment of integration and set an intention for how we wish to bring ourselves to the day.

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  • Jamuna Kaur

    This workshop is an opportunity to practice Non-Performative yoga that focuses on using breath and movement to heal the body, practice active rest, and focus on nervous-system regulation.

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  • Leland Hull

    A Contact Improvisation workshop specially geared towards the queer community. Some questions we will be addressing: What does it mean to practice queer contact improvisation? How can we apply the practiced we learn in contact improv to our lives outside the dance floor? What can the contact improv community at large gain from the process of queering contact and how can we spread what we have learned and discovered together?

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  • Mikai’el Jade

    In this multi-stage workshop, participants will first connect with their erotic bodies through breath, movement, visualization and explore and share their intentions for their pleasure practice in their own space.

    Next, participants will engage in their own self-pleasure explorations, staying in their own space, but being around others doing their thang.

    Finally, solo integration time (journaling, moving, stretching, art making), then sharing their experience in small groups with a full group share space before heading back out into the festival.

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  • Amory Jane

    In this unique hands-on workshop, I'll talk all about sensation play and demo ways to enhance arousal and awaken sexual imagination. I will show both vanilla and kinky activities meant to provide stimulation to a partner or to oneself through ALL of their senses: feathers and other light sensation, pinwheels and claws, sensual feeding (fruit), scents to enhance scenes (I will mostly just discuss that), temperature play, impact (mild, safety zone focus), electricity (mild -- Neon Wand), and more.

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  • Alyx Somas

    This collaborative workshop anchors in honoring our queer lineage and shared roots, to explore the living practices of somatic abolitionism and regenerative social permaculture as they nurture collective liberation. We learn together, supported by the wildlife of our space, engaging our attention, attunement and witness, and integrating with somatic practice and community song. This is a gentle and encouraging experience to expand our capacity to align our intentions with our impacts, to nourish our wholeness, and to live into our deepest human nature: Belonging.

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  • Roy Amotz & Corey Buttry

    In this ritual honoring our individual and collective grief, we will co-create the container we need to invite the more tender parts of ourselves to show up in the communal space.

    Together, we will acknowledge the stories that keep us from connecting with our grief and each other, and, through prayer and intention, make space for our grief to emerge. With the support of the ritual structure and space, we will give our hearts permission for authentic expression. 

    And as Roy plays his flute to invoke the presence of sorrow, we will honor our connection to those who came before us by witnessing each other as we share our grief.  

    This ritual is informed by the work of Francis Weller, Martín Prechtel, Joanna Macy, Jordan Lyon, Jakob Klaffs and Hugo-huga Tibirica, and many more.

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  • Terra Anderson

    This workshop starts with a discussion about our lack of pleasure-centered sex education (especially in a cis-hetero-normative society) and how this set us up to miss opportunities to discover the vast ocean of what our bodies actually want. I then walk participants through an overview of the Erotic Blueprints™, what they are, and how to use them. I'll do a touch demo with a model (Kaeb Bostwick) and then guide the group in either solo or partnered touch exploration teaching them touch skills for each Erotic Blueprint™ along the way! Participants will leave with a greater understanding of how their bodies are uniquely wired for pleasure, a new touch repertoire, and language to articulate their desires.

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  • Lux Gypsum

    Catalyze new connections with your queer kin through play, movement, presence, and (optional) touch. This short & sweet offering of embodied connection exercises is informed by somatics, contact improv, and expressive movement and held in a trauma-informed, empowered container by an experienced facilitator. Join to get in your body, be silly, and make new friends! 

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  • Andy Martin & B. Silva

    We will gather to co-create ritual space in which we view queer experience and identity through the lenses of history, tradition, spirituality, and culture. We will contemplate how our queerness is passed down through a lineage of human and nonhuman ancestors, taking time to honour our ancestors’ courage and resilience, and to notice how we are influenced, inspired, wounded and resourced. This ritual is a group contemplation and enactment of a queer cosmology, exploring age-old questions such as: “what is queerness?”, “why does queerness exist?”, and “where does queerness come from?” This ritual is based on the work of Daan Van Kampenhout, facilitated with permission, and incorporates inspiration from archetypal psychology, science and biology, social history, queer ecology, and transformative justice.

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  • Amory Jane

    Spin the Wheel and Sing! Spanking, Bondage (we use bondage tape for simplicity), Role Play, Sensation Play, etc. These things happen while the singer sings, which is very entertaining for all involved. All of these will be described and demoed by me before the karaoke kicks off and I will be the one doing most of the "topping" though participants are always allowed to request being the top and selecting their own consenting demo bottom or skipping/selecting a different option on the wheel.

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Sunday

  • Ariel Isakowitz

    Who says you can't dance?? Inspired by a contemporary dance technique called Gaga (developed by Batsheva Dance Company in the 90s), this workshop draws on vivid imagery to explore mindful movement. Rooted in pleasure and exploration, this workshop will have you grooving, smiling, and maybe even sweating (just a little bit). Come prepared to experience movement and dance in a completely new way! All bodies and abilities welcome. 

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  • Larissa Kaul & Root

    A performance-workshop about the absurdities and beauties of humanity’s attempts to manage being alive. Explored through ancient cultural technologies as well as the sometimes (or often) ridiculous “magic bullets for healing” that the white, western- dominated wellness industry has produced in the last few decades. Informed by years of working with groups and individuals as a community organizer, performance artist, ritualist, and therapist. A foray into the nondual animist view of Feelings As Beings, and the "self" as a living labyrinth that responds to high integrity play.

    Each workshop is different, but participants can expect some combination of the following: Meditation, Bad Feeling Figure Drawing, Making offerings to Snake Mother, A “Nest practice” where participants will be assisted in listening directly to Bad Feelings and come up with perfect solutions to entice them into transformation, white boards, singing and chanting, and aftercare.

    I pray that participants will experience a deeper permission for their own responsible queer feralness to unfurl, for a few cultural ghosts to sigh and relinquish their deathgrip on the group, to get a glimpse of our Primordial Mother, or That Which Connects, and to contribute to the vitality of our Earth through human creative expression.

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  • Sunray

    Release inhibitions and embrace self-acceptance in this body positive exploration of meditation and yoga. This workshop is clothing optional (as bare as you dare) and will be a personal, non-sexual practice. This is a non-touch session and no intimate interaction is allowed with other attendees. Our goal is to collectively feel more liberated and more confident in our own skin.

    We will co-create a space to witness (not stare) at our beautiful imperfections and unique experience of being human, together. We’ll start with creating agreements for our conduct to create a safer space for vulnerability. Next is a guided meditation, and then move into an all-levels practice (suitable for beginners and those more experienced). Please bring your own yoga mat, a towel or sarong to cover your mat if you are nude, and a water bottle.

    This is a closed container workshop and once we begin, no one new can enter the space.

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  • Antje Schaefer

    Time to take all the yummy good feels you’ve gathered this weekend and anchor them into the “how I want to be out in the world” on a cellular level. And, to gently integrate the challenging experiences you may have had, bolstering them with your inherent  resourcefulness.

    This guided movement and subtle sensing practice is an opportunity to re-write the script on embodied relational patterns and social habits that keep us small. By zooming deeply into the fabric of our bodies and felt-sense experience, we build our capacity for choice and liberated expression.

    We’ll co-create a lived experience of secure attachment and embodied fullness by deeply tending to our own systems, together. Moving from a foundation of being deeply at home within ourselves, we’ll titrate in and out of connection in digestible ways and practice deeply relaxing to queer the places where we still embody tensions, holdings, separation or keep ourselves small.

    This workshop includes physical proximity and touch with individuals and the group as an option; participants are invited to be in the moment-to-moment inquiry of what is right-sized for their system. We’ll be on the floor a lot, as well as moving about the room. Wear comfortable clothing to move in.

    The closing intention of this practice is to create an accessible somatic memory of feeling secure and free in ourselves that we can revisit in the days to come.

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  • Avery Deane Swift

    This workshop covers Polyvagal theory and practices to help support neuromodulation. We start with a regulating drop-in, then spend the first half discussing theory and the second half practicing tools.

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  • Maya Muñoz Tobón

    This session is an opportunity to return to ourselves. To orient our senses inwardly and integrate our current experiences, and our whole queerness with the sensorial support of our ally: the Rose.

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  • Osprey Huffsmith

    Group singing cultivates nervous system regulation, greater aliveness, and feelings of communal ecstasy. This song circle will include simple facilitated songs sung in a group setting, in the community singing tradition. Themes will center on the erotic, pleasure, desire, bodies, and belonging. All songs will be taught by ear, through call and echo / "repeat after me". All voices welcome - whether you have sung before or this is your first time. Please join us!

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  • Andy Martin

    This dance workshop is offered in the form of an ecstatic dance session – clothing optional and touch optional.

    We will create a mutually-supportive, judgment-free space to honour and explore authentic expression through movement. With no moves to learn, this session is an invitation to tune into our unique selves and free our bodies to move as we please. Participants can dance solo, and/or explore dance with others. Wear whatever they want. Sit in stillness or twerk it out. It's up to them completely.

    Participants have described this session as liberation! Cathartic, meditative, movement medicine, connecting with their inner child dancer, wild, so much fun, a good workout, and a practice in releasing inner judgment.

    Andy (DJ Bluesky) will be facilitating and spinning the tracks, taking participants on a journey from stillness to the peak and back again, riding a wave of diverse musical styles from around the world. The session will start with a short introduction to ecstatic dance, followed by the dance set and a closing reflection circle.

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