Culture
My practice is informed by many ideologies and multiple modes of wisdom. I am a forever student, and my teachers are science, human and nonhuman elders and ancestors, my own intuition and spiritual guide, as well as historians, practitioners, and healers who have brought me to and through this work. Specific influences and teachers I call on are: Amina Peterson, Betty Martin, adrienne maree brown, Sonya Renee Taylor, Robin Wall Kimmerer, to name only a few of many. Principles that guide my work include: Afrofuturism, pleasure activism, disability justice, reproductive justice, and liberation for all beings.
I recognize my own skills, experiences, biases, limitations, and areas for growth. I am committed to staying connected and being in community with people locally and around the world who have different lived experiences than I do, and who teach me and keep me open minded and open hearted. I continue to expand my knowledge with continued education, research, and practice in fields related to pleasure, trauma, body literacy, gender, sexuality, race, and more.
“‘Queer’ not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but ‘queer’ as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
Curiosity
My work starts with Body Literacy, which, put simply, is the ability to sense and interpret your body’s signals. Body literacy begins with curiosity. Sensing, locating, following, and sitting with sensations in our body all starts with curiosity. What am I feeling? Sometimes (more often than we think), simply sitting in the “what” is enough. This is what I focus on in my work. Sometimes I may offer resources for someone to continue on to “why”.
“For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of.”
Consent
Authentic informed consent is foundational to my offerings. The container in which we explore will be co-created and agreed upon in advance with opportunities for adjustments when needed. Authentic Consent workshops use methods and teachings from Amina Peterson and Betty Martin.
Though my work exists in a specific container, I hope it also expands our collective ability to be in healthy and loving community with each other. I’m excited to co-create how we may show up as peers, comrades, neighbors, friends etc., not as practitioner-client or teacher-student. I am a facilitator- someone who holds a space for these possible relationship expansions.
Community
Our bodies are designed to experience pleasure. But to be able to feel pleasure, we first must be able to feel.
Pleasure
“For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring s closest to that fullness.”