The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

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To get the most out of our intimacy we first need to get really clear about what we want, how to trust what we want, how to value it and then to ask for our needs to be met in a way that is clear and clean. When we add one or more other people into the equation, each of whom are also trying to get their needs met and using the less-than-helpful guesswork-performance-telepathy-pleasing approach, everything can get a bit unclear. This is what makes consent so exciting. It’s this idea that if we can work through our shyness of talking about our wants and desires, of trusting that neither you or your partner(s) are weird and that you can talk about this stuff, consent can be very fun and very sexy! Awareness of the Wheel of Consent helps people avoid these kinds of misunderstandings, and lets people know that they have an equal right to occupy all of the four quadrants. It also emphasises that ongoing communication during intimacy is usually a good idea, and provides a really clear language for doing that.

On the face of it, consent should be simple. Yes means yes, and no means no. We clearly communicate exactly what we feel, and it is immediately understood and acted on accordingly by others. However, real life is often more complicated. In all areas of life; with our friends, family, work colleagues and in our most intimate relationships - our consent skills may be impaired, for any number of reasons: The key to learning how to have fulfilling, consenting exchanges is learning how to set and keep consensual agreements. This means that everyone remains fully in choice at all times, and still gets what they need. A question people often ask about the Wheel of Consent® is “But if we are having sex, shouldn’t it be for both of us? Why would it only be for one of us?” And they are right – it is important that if two people are sharing physical intimacy, it should be ‘for’ both of them, i.e. it is something they both really want to do.Similarly, if the person in the allowing quadrant is not able to say ‘no’ to a request from the taker for access to their body, they are enduring or tolerating the touch, and are therefore not in consent, either. When one person is not in consent, the other is automatically not in consent, too. Therefore, for healthy, enjoyable interactions it is important that both people are having a good time and enjoying themselves. Use of Wheel of Consent in Tantric Healing Therapy Consensual agreements can come in many forms – they can set multiple parameters such as timescales, boundaries, limits, and specific instructions; or they can be as simple as saying ‘I would like you to pleasure me”. In all cases understanding your own needs, and acting on them, are the essential first steps to being able to make effective agreements. Why is the Wheel Of Consent life-changing? We will engage in a radical inquiry into and practice of the nature of receiving and giving, the nature of consent, knowing what you want, and how to communicate it. Dr. Betty Martin has adapted a simple exercise (from a game originally invented by Harry Faddis, which he called the ‘Three Minute Game’ ) in which we can practice having a direct physical experience of each of the Wheel of Consent’s quadrants in turn. This game helps many people really ‘get’ the quadrants at a deeper level than just having a conceptual understanding of them. However, the practice of sharing touch with others is not always possible or preferred, in which case there is still a great deal that can be learned through the conceptual understanding alone. To fold: www.youtube.com/watch?v=21qi9ZcQVto (Confession – I first fell in love with this tiny booklet that Sinclair Sexsmith had made, and I needed an excuse to make one myself. So here you are!)

Challenge patterns of pleasing others or crossing over their own boundaries. To safely practice articulating their ‘no’. It's about waking up our natural ability to notice what we do and don’t want. It’s about slowing right down andcreating clearagreementsthat we can relax into.

Curious About How The Wheel of Consent Can Help You?

This has been a very short introduction to the Wheel of Consent®, which is about so much more than just saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Rather, it is both a conceptual map, and a somatic experience, which can fundamentally change the way we experience and relate to ourselves, and each other, in all areas of our lives; from friends, to family, to work colleagues, to our most intimate relationships. This is a good question! With all the emotions often associated with sex, such as excitement or anxiety to please the other, it can sometimes be difficult for people to distinguish between what they want to do, what they are willing to do, and what they are not willing to do. This is particularly true if they have got into the habit of ‘going along with’ certain kinds of touch – either because they think it’s what their partner wants, or because their social conditioning (e.g. related to power imbalance, or their gender) has trained them to do that. Video on playing the 3 Minute Game is here: http://bettymartin.org/how-to-play-the-3-minute-game/) Diagram of The Wheel of Consent

The whole design: the learning environment, the practices themselves, and how the practices are offered and facilitated, are safe-enough. The opportunities to experiment are small and short and each of them build on each other. The pace is slow, the setting is private and comfortable, there are many options for how to participate, and the group agreements and guidelines support the practice.And so it is with sex. There are many different sexual activities you could potentially do with a partner, if you were both up for it. There are probably some things you really want to do, some things you’re not massively into, but would be willing to do if your partner was really into them, and other things you would not be willing to do, however much your partner wanted to. Similarly your partner will have their own lists of things they want to do, things they are willing to do, and things they are not willing to do. This embodied game is something you can do in pairs. The idea is that each of you takes a turn to spend a few minutes practising being in each of the quadrants with your partner. You might start with the Take/Allow dynamic. The Taker asks the Allower, ‘May I touch your hand, in the way I want, for a few minutes?’ If the Allower is willing, they say ‘yes’ and mention any boundaries they have (e.g. ‘please avoid my little finger’, or ‘please don’t scratch’). The Taker then touches the Allower in the way they want to. The Taker should not be trying to please the Allower, or give them a massage. Rather, this is an exercise entirely for the Taker to touch in the way they want to, within the boundaries the Allower set. At any point, either person can ask to pause, or stop the practice. Then after the agreed time the Taker says ‘Thank you’ and the Allower says ‘You’re welcome’ - and you can switch roles. Teaches you the four quadrants of the Wheel – how to find them, feel them in your body, and see where they can take you As you become more familiar with these non-consensual ‘shadows’ of the Wheel, you might start to notice which ones you sometimes find yourself in. This self-awareness can be helpful, because once you’ve noticed it, the way to get out of the shadows is to establish clear agreements based on asking, “Who is Doing?” and “Who is it For?”, and have we both consented to that? It’s also helpful to remember that the shadows are adaptive survival mechanisms which all of us have used to try and get our needs met. The Wheel of Consent offers tools for meeting these needs in a more skillful and consensual ways.

February 28 - March 3, 2024: Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington, NZ with Michael Dresser and Stella Topaz - Applications open Note, Sally might have said she wanted to stay another three hours and then share a taxi, and that might be something I was not willing to do, i.e. it was outside the limits of what I would consent to. At that point I might either go into the shadows of Allow, going along with something Sally wanted resentfully, or I might stay within the Wheel of Consent and make other arrangements. Getting clarity on the difference between want to and willing to is another way of getting clear about the question ‘Who is it for?’ The Wheel of Consent is a model of interaction that is based on exchanges of touch but applies to much more. It sheds light on troublesome and confusing interactions and clears them up. It turns out to describe the fundamental dynamics of most human relating.Dr. Betty has adapted a simple exercise (originally invented by Harry Faddis) called the ‘Three Minute Game’ in which we can practice having a direct physical experience of each of the Wheel of Consent’s quadrants in turn. This game helps many people really ‘get’ the quadrants at a deeper level than just having a conceptual understanding of them. However, it’s also important to recognise that there are many situations in which sharing touch with others may not be appropriate, in which case there is still a great deal that can be learned through the conceptual understanding alone. The wheel of consent is a revolutionary tool, and there is no way I could possibly explain it better than Betty Martin does here . Effectively the wheel of consent, as you see above, pulls apart any instance of touch into two axes. The first is about who is doing the touch, the second is about who the touch is for. This separation helps us to see touch as occurring in some really different dynamics so that we can work out what is happening in our sex lives, and what we want more and less of. I’m not going to go into any more detail about the wheel of consent, but you can find a print out of the resource Betty Martin made about it here , and video resources to give a longer explanation here . What I am going to do is make some suggestions about different ways to make use of it in sexual and kink negotiations. Play the 3-minute game Discuss individual preferences and differences in sexuality and pleasure with more confidence and ease. One way of answering this question is to consider the example of the party, and specifically the third scenario, where it’s for both people. This is where Sally and I each want to go to the party, and feel we’ll enjoy it more if we go together. So far, so good. But suppose three hours later I’m ready to go home, and I ask Sally if she’s also ready to go, and share a taxi with me. Sally replies that she’d like to stay another half hour. In response, I say that although I’m ready to go, I’m willing to stay another half hour, as it makes sense to share a taxi together. Here is a simple example: I ask John if I can place my hand on his knee, and he replies, “Sure, that’s fine”. On the face of it, we seem to have consent. But the Wheel of Consent says our agreement is not complete until we have also answered the question, “Who is it for?”