The Wheel of Consent®

At the heart of giving and receiving is the art of choosing.

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The Wheel of Consent® teaches: 

Empowered choosing

Stronger boundaries 

How to ask for what you really want

Increased pleasure, sensation and body awareness

Enhanced effective communication

Increased agency in all relationships and interactions.

Consent is about people coming to an agreement about how they are going to interact. More than just permission, consent is an ongoing conversation. Human interactions can be complex and interactions that that involve touch even more so. The Wheel of Consent clarifies confusion and transforms that process of making agreements into a fun and fulfilling experience where everybody wins. The Wheel of Consent® workshops will teach you powerful concepts and skills that can be practically applied to real life and enrich all of your relationships including those with friends, family, colleagues, and lovers.

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Let us look at two people hugging, how do we know who the hug is for? ​Who is doing the action and for which person’s benefit? Have you ever experienced a hug that did not feel right? How different would each experience be for each person if the hug started with one of these questions:

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“May I hug you?”

“Will you give me a hug?”

“Can I give you a hug?”

“I am open to you hugging me if you want?”

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The Wheel of Consent® is a framework that clearly explains the complexities of human interaction particularly around touch. It offers a way to navigate giving and receiving with clarity and ease and enhances your ability to communicate so you can create the kinds of touch experiences where everybody feels empowered and good about their choices.

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The Wheel of Consent® has:

1. A structure to describe what happens between people when they interact. It differentiates between the action (who is doing?) and the benefit (who is it for?) so that both people are clear about their role in the exchange, and when they are in or out of agreement with each other.

2. A language to facilitate communication. Giving and Receiving, Taking and Allowing, Serving and Accepting, Offering and Requesting, May I? and Will you? All of these words have clear meanings and intentions and can be used to create powerful and fulfilling agreements around touch.

3. A set of tools to aid the process of making agreements. Learn to clearly and directly ask for what you want and accurately respond to requests from others with what you are willing to do.

4. A set of practices to develop the awareness in the body to be able to work with it. Embodying the Wheel of Consent is at the core of knowing it and we awaken to this through the sense of touch. When your skin gets it, you get it. Walking away with this embedded in your nervous system is the most powerful way to apply it and transform your life.

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The Wheel of Consent® workshops provide an opportunity to experiment and learn with all of this on a practical and experiential level. The practices promote increased access to pleasure and sensation in your skin and in turn access to your body’s wisdom. You will learn to notice, trust, value and communicate what it is that you want to receive or are willing give, and where your limits are. It will bring clarity to your YES and your NO  and show you how to return to your truth when you have strayed from it; something we all need practice with! You may discover parts of you that have been longing for the means to be seen, felt, and heard, thus enabling them to be understood, healed, and integrated.

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The Wheel of Consent® workshops teach foundational concepts and skills in how to navigate giving and receiving with ease in real life and with all kinds of relationships. The workshops are fully clothed and non-sexual. The work is experiential with structured and facilitated partnered touch learning experiences on offer.  You a free to choose how you would like to participate including no touch at all.

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Further info about the Wheel of Consent® origins, trainings, videos and other great ways to engage with it can be found here:

 

School of Consent 

Betty Martin website creator of the Wheel of Consent®

The Art of Receiving and Giving book about the Wheel of Consent® by Betty Martin

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