As humans navigating capitalist and heteronormative expectations – e.g. being ‘productive’ within a minimum of a 40-hour workweek, having all the ‘right’ answers, ‘flawless’ sex without communicating desires – we forget that growth often occurs because friction exists, and learning happens through inquiry and unintended actions. The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi understands that imperfection allows for new paths to form and for curiosity to flourish.

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This seminar will define and explore the concept of wabi-sabi as a way to relieve pressure from our clients' search for sexual perfection, and from our own search for the ‘right answers’ to give them.

Explore Michael Metz and Barry McCarthy’s ‘Good Enough Sex’ Model as an intervention framework to help partners intimately connect without the pressures of ‘perfect sex’. While the name leaves a bit to be desired (how 'bout just the ‘Good Sex’ Model?), it cultivates the wabi-sabi of intimacy.

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Here we will delve into the 12 goals of the model that feature the “physical, cognitive, behavioural, emotional, and relational factors” (Metz & McCarthy, 2007) that enhance partner experience and help foster intimate relationship success. From eschewing the scripted formula of ‘intercourse + orgasm = sex’, the GES helps partners develop a new lens through which to see pleasure.

If there’s anything we learned from a global, 21st century pandemic, it’s the power of the outdoors. Specifically, how many of us longed for fresh air, tranquility, and an escape from a challenging world. Recorded science has now shown us the true physical benefits of spending time amongst the trees, from a decrease in symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress, to an increase in productivity, psychological well-being, and life longevity. 

In this 2 part seminar and guided forest immersion, you’ll learn the biopsychosocial benefits of shinrin-yoku (‘forest bathing’), hosted by a Certified Shinrin-Yoku guide. Share space with the forest and more-than-human world, learning how to slow down, reflect, and engage all your senses. 

Pleasure is something often desired yet not fostered, with beliefs that it simply arises from thin air, from a ‘spark’, or from a romantically scripted idea of relating. This often leads to placing pleasure out of mind, only noticing it when it ‘magically’ appears. In contrast, mindfulness and flow states require a engagement with the here & now, and a cultivation of pleasure.

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This seminar will describe psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 8 steps toward a state of flow and how it can work in tandem with mindful practice to weave a fabric that fosters pleasure, both sexual and non.

​As therapists working in a largely virtual world, we can often feel siloed, yearning for bygone days of in-person learning. As more research appears about cognitive offloading and deskilling due to virtual technologies, personal community knowledge becomes all the more salient. In what cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger define as ”communities of practice”, knowledge sharing amongst those with a shared focus can enrich both the individual and the group.

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Here we’ll take time to engage deeply with our peers, exploring our most and least favoured interventions and approaches, why we use them or don’t, and develop a shared knowledge base that we can continually build upon.

Case consultation with peers and supervisors is an aspect of our practice ethics and guidelines. Sometimes this can fall by the wayside with consultation and support becoming more infrequent as we balance client loads, training opportunities, license requirements, financial costs, as well as fears associated with sharing our vulnerabilities.

Collaborative perspective on client cases offers us ways to improve both client outcome and our own safe and effective use of self. Explore sex therapy case and client issues with the years of expertise and experience of the peer group.

Stay tuned as more seminars and activities are finalized.