Embodied Agency & Desire: The Wheel of Consent

Join us for a 4 night- 5-day immersive retreat exploring desire, boundaries, embodied consent, and the nuanced art of receiving and giving. Nestled in the forest and mineral waters of Breitenbush Hot Springs, this retreat offers a unique opportunity to slow down, soften, and deepen into relationship with yourself and others through the framework of the Wheel of Consent.

Together, we will engage in somatic (body-based) practices, discussion, reflection, and consensual touch exercises designed to help you become more aware of your wants, your limits, and the places where your body says yes, no, maybe, or not yet. Through guided exploration, participants will practice making agreements, understanding boundaries, communicating limits, asking for what they truly want, and discovering greater clarity around giving, receiving, choice, and agency.

Developed by Dr. Betty Martin, the Wheel of Consent is a powerful relational model rooted in touch practices that illuminate the dynamics of human interaction far beyond physical touch alone. The Wheel distinguishes between who is doing and who an interaction is for, opening pathways toward greater clarity, honesty, freedom, trust, generosity, self-tending, and embodied awareness in all relationships.

This retreat welcomes both newcomers to the Wheel of Consent and experienced practitioners seeking a rich environment for embodied practice and integration. Workshops will be balanced with spacious personal time for soaking in the hot springs, resting, journaling, connecting with others, and integrating the work at your own pace. Optional practice spaces throughout the workshop will offer additional opportunities for reflection, embodiment, and community connection.

Over the course of our time together, we will explore:

• Agency and Desire through YES and NO
• An Embodied exploration of the nuances of Receiving and Giving through take, allow, accept and serve. 
• Increasing one’s capacity to receive while opening one’s heart to give. 
• Recognizing habitual patterns that move us out of consent agreements. 
• Cultivating clearer language and communication skills, trust, and relational awareness. 

Our days will unfold through a gentle rhythm of morning and evening workshops, shared meals, optional practice space and optional ritual, quiet integration time, and restorative soaking beneath the Winter sky. The retreat begins with an Opening Circle on the evening of December 13th and concludes with a Closing Circle on the morning of December 17th.

Whether you are single, partnered, dating, married, divorced, monogamous, polyamorous, curious, or simply longing for more honest and embodied ways of relating, this retreat offers a grounded and spacious container for exploration, practice, restoration, and discovery.

*This is a clothes-on workshop retreat, and participation in all practices is entirely optional. While this work can profoundly impact intimacy and sexuality, the focus of the retreat is not sex, but cultivating deeper awareness, choice, connection, and consent in relationship with ourselves and others.

You may view the schedule here.