An eight week virtual course on grief and how it is held in the body, with practical tools for supporting yourself and your clients in working with grief. This course is designed for Somatic Sex Educators, Sexological Bodyworkers, and other erotic bodywork professionals.
As erotic bodyworkers we are in a unique position to hold, emotionally and physically, as folks process through their grief. Whether the grief is erotic in nature; related to sexuality, death of a partner, gender expression, bodies, pleasure… whether it is the loss of a child or pet or parent… whether it is the grief of being harmed by systemic oppression or living through climate change and the rise of fascism…
We work with bodies and the body is where grief lives and is metabolized.
Grief work is a significant skill set that is left out of most major programs in human sexuality and erotic bodywork, leaving providers without the knowledge and skill to support their clients in this intrinsic aspect of the work.
To work with the body is to touch grief.
By the end of completing this course you will have explored many facets of how grief moves through the body. This exploration will include practice in supporting your own grief and the grief of your practice partners. This course will leave you with robust knowledge and skill set to meet your clients in their process and the ways that grief may present in your erotic bodywork practice.
The series will be 8 sessions of 2 hour lectures that include discussion and somatic practices. There will be exercises and discussion questions to be completed outside of class with a practice partner or small group. The suggested time commitment for out of class learning is at minimum 2 hours. Students can sign up solo or with a practice partner or small group of colleagues to work through the material together. Consider:
Location: Zoom Room with Captions
Participants: Up to 50
Time: Tuesdays 10am - 12pm PST
DATES: October 8th - Nov 26th
Cost: $1250 Pay it forward price or $1000 regular price, both with 5 month payment plans available.
*If the $1000 with payment plan is prohibitive, please reach out to discuss sliding scale options
*All lectures will be recorded and the recordings will be available for one month after the end of the course (until 12/24/24)
Week 1: Container Building
Week 2: Grief with No Body (griefs beyond death & breakups)
Week 3: Physiologies of Grief
Week 4: Importance of Tending your Own
Week 5: Trauma ≠ Grief
Week 6: Pleasure As Resource
Week 7: Practical Applications
Week 8: Wrapping Up
Kori Doty comes to this work from the perspective of someone who has utilized erotic touch professionals as significant supports through big griefs in their life since entering this field (formally in 2021 after many years dusting at the fringe). Some of the big things have included complications from gender affirming surgeries, their partner’s diagnosis of colorectal cancer and eventual death, break ups, other close deaths, climate grief, trans antagonism, many layers of parent/caregiver and substance use recovery.
They have used their own self study of somatic sex education, online somatic & erotic spaces and classes and in person, hands on erotic body work with local professionals as well as in partnership with Jess to use tools that we will be sharing and practicing to help metabolize world shattering experiences.
They are currently completing core course 3 with the Institute of Somatic Sex Education and have had the privilege to work and study directly with teachers including Captain Snowden, Pavini Moray, Alex Iantaffi, Lucie Fielding, Caffyn Jesse, Seneca Bee, and many more in and outside of this specific niche world of trans and non-binary sex nerds. They also credit relationships with trans ancestors including Leslie Feinberg, Reed Erickson, Lou Sullivan as having significant influences in their work.
Kori practices under the business name Soft Touch Bodies and teaches this and other classes with their co-conspirator Jess DeVries, including Pleasure (your) Chest. Kori is starting up a monthly event called STICC: Soft Touch Intimate Craft Crossover and are otherwise as of this writing, not entirely sure what else. Previously they have hosted online things including “Resilience Building for Trans Folks and our allies” an online/hybrid class in 2017, “Birthing Beyond the Binary Childbirth Education” of which naming rights were handed off to birthworker King Yaa after retiring the original project collective, “Sex Toy Show and Tell”, “Gestators Tea Party” (a mixer for people of all genders and relationships to parenting who had the experience of gestation and birth)and the quarterly ritual socials they host for members of their Patreon, “The Donut Club”. Their radio shows and podcasts have included “Sex, Drugs and How We Roll” and “Imagination Revolution: UBI”. They've written a number of books including Extolling Your Virtues, a novella about 2 widows exploring the transformative power of intimate friendship in the face of grief and More Love Than Pressure, a collection of poems written over the last full month of their wife's 3 year cancer treatment and palliation.
Jess DeVries is a queer somatic sex coach, sexological bodyworker and grief worker. She primarily serves the queer/trans community supporting folks in reclaiming body autonomy and to inspire curiosity about pleasure and sexual expression including expanding possibilities of what sex can be and guiding folks to define and pursue pleasure on their own terms. She is a grief advocate who regularly facilitates spaces for people to grieve, inviting the wisdom of the body to guide the grief process. She understands that there is a deep kinship between pleasure and grief and believes that they both deserve to be tended as full experiences of our humanity.
Jess provides 1:1 sessions in NE Portland, online, or by phone. She also facilitates workshops and grief circles online for queer folks, ex-Christians, and Covid conscious communities.
Jess came to this work after she spent a number of years grieving the devastation that occurred after leaving the church. In the process of her mourning she found her body seeking masturbation as a way to process that grief. When she began to pursue her work in the field of embodied sexuality, grief was central to how she viewed the work and showed up for her clients.
Within the realms of grief, she has trained with Being Here, Human - as well as - Shauna Janz of Sacred Grief. Her grief work is held by connections to her ancestors, mugwort, hawthorne, rose, connection to her pussy, and many many tears. Within the realms of pleasure and embodiment, she has trained in Somatic Sex Education and Sexological Bodywork at the ISSSE - as well as - the Somatica Method with the Somatica Institute. Her pleasure work is held by delighting in sights, smells, and tastes, a dirty imagination, and sharing touch with human and non-human kin.
When she is not thinking about how erotic embodiment and tending grief will save the world, she likes to make soup, have her hands in dirt, and watch the birds fly across the Portland sky.