Embodied Grief Literacy for Touch Professionals
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:
If you have a colleague type buddy/ies, especially if you are geographically situated so as to enable a body work exchange relationship with, we suggest taking the course together. If you do not have relationships with other practitioners in your area, but are hoping to build some, try reaching out with an invitation to do this course together.
If you are geographically isolated and/or have a colleague type buddy/ies that you can form an online group with we suggest taking the course together as a group. If there are groups, either locally centered or virtual, that are open to accepting unattached learners, these groups can be shared through the course emails.
If there is interest from learners to work specifically with members of an online, closed affinity group; for example a group for People of the Global Majority (POC), a group for people who are disabled, or a group for folks who do full service or 2 way touch we will offer some assistance in the creation of these groups.
If you are joining without a practice partner or group and do not want to be in an affinity group, we will match you with others seeking the same.
Details:
The Winter cohort has not been scheduled. To be notified when registration opens, join the waitlist below!
Location: Zoom Room with Captions
Participants: Up to 50
Time: TBD
DATES: Winter 2025
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)
Schedule:
Week 1: Container Building
We will gather, get to know one another, and set the container for the rest of our time together.
What is the importance of containment and ritual when tending grief?
Week 2: Grief with No Body (griefs beyond death & breakups)
This session will include explanations of different types of grief so that you may better understand what to look for and name with clients.
What are the griefs that are unnamed?
Week 3: Physiologies of Grief
We often think of grief as an emotion when it is an embodied response to loss. We will cover what happens in the body, cognitively, socially, spiritually, physically.
What are the undeniable embodied realities of grief?
Week 4: Importance of Tending your Own
Grieving is a revolutionary act and just as important as tending our pleasure. We will explore how to weave our own webs of support so that we can show up for our clients.
Who and what can be invited into your own grief?
Week 5: Trauma ≠ Grief
Trauma can be connected, but they are not the same and it’s important to know the nuance of the differences.
How do we notice what is showing up in the client and how do we support it?
Week 6: Pleasure As Resource
Sensory pleasures and erotic pleasures are significant resources for supporting grief.
How do we explore what pleasures can support a client?
What if they need to fuck about their grief?
Week 7: Practical Applications
Somatic Sex Education, sexological bodywork, and other erotic touch providers are uniquely equipped to support folks in their grief with full embodiment.
How do we guide folks in discovering the way their grief wants to move and sound and express?
Week 8: Wrapping Up
We will review our time together and close the circle.
What else needs to be said?
What are your desires for supporting grief in your practice?
Meet Your Teachers:
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.