Touch as Technique Level I

ABOUT

Dates: Wednesdays in October (over 4 weeks) starting on the 2nd-23rd

October 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd

Time: 18:30 - 21:00 PM

Where: Hout Bay, Sacred Valley House

(A mailer with the exact address will be sent out on the morning of the class)

Led by Nico Athene , this 4 part entry level course builds a better understanding of consent through embodiment.

The work aims to clarify the difference between giving and taking, allowing and receiving, and sets up dialogue and structures to notice the subtlies of when and how we step out of self-consent, or consent with the other.

• Practice learning to feel what you want, and how to ask for it, what you do not want, and how to say no, while staying in relationship.

• Recognise your vagal responses and begin to develop a muscle for working with them somatically and in relationship, to open up different options and nuances of response.

•  Increase your ability to respond - response-ability to the moment and your triggers from a more integrated place.

• Find new patterns from which to relate. 

The work uses touch-based exercises and the basic principles of contact improvisation to explore Dr. Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent. At the end of the series and from within this awareness, it offers a small view into a more dynamic, archetypal perspective of consent.

Partners are welcome to attend together. However, they will be encouraged to work with everyone in the room in order to practice setting up consent within all kinds of relationships and dynamics.

This work and technique can radically improve:

• your ability to be present with yourself and in relationship (with a sexual partner, your own triggers, a client, or someone you barely know)
• to get more pleasure and presence from touch (sexual and non-sexual)
• to improve clarity in professional and personal relationships
• to develop professional practice for work that involves giving and receiving touch (such as massage, dance education, sacred sexuality work etc)
• to begin to work with your core triggers more consciously.  

Each 2.5 hour workshop offers deeply embodied and vagal tools for understanding consent.

They include homework preparations and reflections.

The work is great entry level prep for the upcoming residential retreat The Erotics of Rupture running from the 26th November to the 1st December 2024. More information and bookings can be found here.

Reviews from the previous workshops:

'Nico facilitated this important work around Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent with all the embodied clarity and insight of one who has been working actively for years with conscious movement, performance and sexuality. I really feel like I have more practical tools for my engagement with others more meaningfully in the sensual and other arenas.' - Adam

'I just finished Touch as Technique, the last weekly series that Nico hosted... It was really really really amazing to realize how much the body is able to consent to things or not consent to things that we think we are okay with. That the brain and the body can sometimes differ with its yeses and its nos. Consent is really about tuning into the body, and letting your body tell you what its yeses and nos are, and Nico gives really wonderful exercises to help you interrogate and investigate those sensations and emotions without being prescriptive of what they should and shouldn't be. It's a guided and held space to figure out your own process with these concepts surrounding embodied consent. I REALLY recommend going and seeing where it lands for you. It is deep and was very illuminating for me.' - Astrid

‘The practical exercises, group reflections and Nico's skillful facilitation enabled me to develop a far clearer awareness of and sensitivity to the complex dynamics and relational subtext of touch, communication and consent. It also enabled me to be much clearer about my own desires and how my capacity to seek and receive pleasure are often conditioned and constrained by quite murky motives and assumptions. Highly recommended!’ - Flo

‘Yes. YES AND BIG yes. ?? cannot recommend this enough. Attended the last one and it was deeply insightful.’ - Rina

About Nico:

Nico Athene is a visual artist specialising in performance with a specific interest in butoh and post-Jungain, archetypal animisms. She first became interested in understanding consent when working in sex work, and has developed her knowledge and approach in the eight years since. Athene has degrees in Fine Art (MFA University of Witswatersrand), Public Health (MPH Edinburgh University) and Social Anthropology (University of Cape Town). Athene facilitates workshops in contact improvisation, animist movement, consent-through-touch, and eco-intimacy. She has taught at both Wits University under a grant from the Centre for Human Rights and Arts at Baard University, independently as a consent and eco-intimacy educator with 8 entry level Touch as Technique Workshops already complete, and for the Centre for Applied Jungian Studies.