About this Event

Sex confidence, Pleasure & Self-Connection:

A four week course

This course is aimed to equip you to be a pleasure astronaut; giving you the curiosity, confidence, ideas, rage and tools to change your relationship to yourself, your body and sex.

Often we are only living the tiniest parts of our sexual selves (or don’t even know what our sexual self fully looks like).

 So many of us struggle to find real exciting fearless pleasure. So many of us have fear around our bodies, around pleasure, around connection and have unfulfilling sex.

Patriarchy wants our sexuality being constantly oppressed, controlled and judged. Navigating this is a minefield - we are either told we are too slutty or too frigid, our bodies are hyper analysed, our identity criticised and our agency stolen.

Sexist attitudes and rape culture are harming our ability to connect with our authentic self. This is a space to see and dismantle these barriers and reclaim ourselves.

Course content:

Expected commitment: Approx 5 hours per week

2.5 hours a week facilitated sessions with independent and collective exercises in between sessions. You will also be invited to meet up online in a smaller group for discussion/activity each week.

Activities include discussion, writing, solo work, creative expression. Whilst we encourage participation in all the activities everything is an invitation.

We won’t make you do anything, share anything or reveal anything you don’t want to. You do not need to participate in anything you are uncomfortable with. This is a space for you.

The course will look at:

- Barriers that sever our connection to self

- Dismantling our idea of sex, sexual self and pleasure

- Learning to fall in love with ourselves

- Self lust

- Understanding and connecting to what we actually like and want

- Feeling more confident in our sexual selves

- Exploring what real intimacy might mean for us

- Understanding how sexual trauma impacts us now

- Activating and understanding and tuning in to our senses

- Finding your desires and dreams (and how to express them)

- Working through uncomfortability and processing fear

- Building radical honest boundaries

- Building healthy control, power and strength in our sexual selves and self connection

- Writing your own pleasure diary

Details:

11am - 1.30pm

SATURDAYS:

4th, 11th, 18th & 25th October

COST:

Sliding scale payment options:

Pay what feels appropriate to your circumstance (suggested guidance below)

 £90 If you’re on benefits or low income, often choosing between essentials, rarely able to afford meals out, a trip or holidays

£120  If you’re getting by, but have a little for extras and treats now and then, can get drinks or food out sometimes but paying the top rate would be a stretch.

£150  If you’re on a steady income, can afford a holiday/s, eating out, have some savings

£200 If you’re financially comfortable and want to chip in extra to help sustain solidarity spaces.

SIGN UP FOR YOUR SPACE:

PAY HERE:

To confirm your spot

£90 / £120 / £150 / £200 

There are some access solidarity spaces available, please email to apply for these. There are also options to pay in instalments.

10% of all profits goes directly into SLEEC for Palestine Rights, to support families on the ground in Gaza.

More about the Course

Pleasure as a form of rebellion

Pleasure, sex, and self-connection are not just personal, they’re political. We live under deeply oppressive systems that depend on our disconnection: from our bodies, from our desires, from our inner knowledge.

A society that teaches us to suppress pleasure, to disconnect, to ignore the body’s wisdom, is a society that’s easier to control. When we numb out, when we perform instead of feel, when we disconnect to survive, we become obedient.

So choosing to intentionally and intuitively feel, to center pleasure, to explore sex and sexuality on our own terms, to come back into a radically honest relationship with ourselves - is a form of resistance.

It disrupts the narratives that say we have to earn rest, that desire is dangerous, that our bodies are not our own. Reclaiming pleasure is reclaiming power.

Who is it for?

This space is for women (trans & cis), femmes and non-binary folk who want to explore their relationship to sex, pleasure, and self connection under the systems of patriarchy and male violence. We are not gatekeepers of identities. If you identify with any of these genders or presentations, this space is for you.

It is for those who feel sexually unconfident or uncomfortable and don't feel fully connected to their physical/sensual/emotional/sexual self. It is for those who have uncomfortability around sex/intimacy/masturbation, struggle with pleasure and orgasms or have trauma that impacts their sex life.

It is equally for people who feel good about all these things but just want to find MORE confidence, more self knowledge, feel more excited and most importantly have more joy and celebration of pleasure.

It might feel uncomfortable the idea of even signing up to a course like this. We are taught to be silent on these subjects, to hold a lot of shame, fear, embarrassment and often guilt around sex, our bodies and our sexuality. But this is about dismantling everything that upholds this, about rebelling, resisting and in a world full of violence, choosing pleasure.

The facilitators:

This course is a collaboration of Rebel Girls Club and SLEEC and has been curated by Bryony Ball and Jess Mercedes.

Bryony is Co-founder of SLEEC and has worked in mental health, trauma, sexual violence services for over ten years. SLEEC supports survivors of sexual violence to redefine recovery and reimagine healing. Their support is based in community, mutual aid, solidarity and radical joy. She is also an award winning artist and curator.

Jess is founder of Rebel Girls Club. RGC is a sanctuary for radical self care. She is trained in a vast range of different therapeutic practices and alternative health modalities. She believes in collective care and community health support.

They both come from the anti-violence framework looking to dismantle harmful structures for real liberation.

SIGN UP FOR YOUR SPACE:

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To confirm your spot

£90 / £120 / £150 / £200