Consent is Alive!
[ A few reflections on consent and life – with an invitation to the *Like a Pro* Wheel of Consent training for Professionals ]
Consent is Alive!
Consent, as an idea and a practice, is a living, breathing proposition.
We might think we know everything there is to know about it, but not only are theories of consent in a constant state of evolution, so are we!
We are changing, evolving and growing, with every passing day. You are not the same person you were yesterday. Your Yes’s and your No’s may be different than they were 5 minutes ago. They might be different from the very last breath you took!
So it follows that our understanding of consent will also change.
Consent, as an idea and a practice, is a living, breathing proposition.
Bring trauma into the equation, and that understanding becomes even more complex.
I like a good visual metaphor. So when it comes to trauma (Developmental Trauma and C-PTSD, especially), I like to ask…
“Who’s behind the driving wheel?” The kind, wise, self aware and conscious adult? Or a younger part that’s perhaps not old enough to see over the steering wheel, with legs not long enough to reach the brakes? Desperately trying to escape danger and keep the car on the road.
One of the most profound realisations for me was the recognition that consent is so much more than a mechanism for asking for what I want in intimate situations.
It floored me when I started to recognise that consent is as much an internal process about how I am in the world – the impacts of exercises like the 3-Minute Game rippling out to touch all aspects of my life. My internal (and often self-limiting) beliefs around what I could ask for, and what entitlement I had to have wants and desires at all!
As a coach and touch-therapist, my understanding of the Wheel of Consent not only gave me tools for how I work with clients, but became a foundation of understanding for how I move through the world.
It’s been the experiential aspects of this learning that have been the most impactful – the deep body knowing that comes with repeated exploration into ever deeper levels of feeling.
From learning how a healthy relationship to anger could support me in setting and holding boundaries – learning to say No – to trusting my Yes as a genuine expression of my truth and my desires…
Consent has, quite literally, changed my life.
Consent is Another Word for Connection
Consent has moved a long way from what I think of as “functional consent” – consenting to cookies on a website, or to a medical procedure we would rather not have to face at all.
These days, I often think of consent and connection as being increasingly intertwined.
Bear with me…
As facilitators, we can glibly parrot that connection with ourselves is necessary before we can connect with others. But what does connection with ourselves even mean?
Perhaps the biggest learning for me (which came as a revelation when I first discovered conscious kink all those many years ago), was the deepening of my ability to feel, and therefore to access deeper levels of emotional attunement. There was a recognition of how efficiently my socialisation had taught me to cut myself off from my sensitive and feeling self.
I often think of consent as another word for connection.
Reclaiming these exiled parts is where the connection to ourselves begins. Connecting with our bodies, in a state of deep nervous system regulation – our bodies becoming the touchstone of our lived realities, subverting in the process everything we’ve been taught we should want or need.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we are socialised to push on through. To over-extend and override. To ignore our bodily and emotional needs in order to be “productive” and live up to external and often impossible expectations. We forget that we live in a society that is a blip in our evolutionary trajectory. We were never meant to be wired-in to digital technologies, or to be life-bound by the requirements of work and capitalism.
Knowing what our true inner wants and desires are becomes a process of excavation and unfolding. Thinking of the Johari window, we simply don’t know what we don’t know! The exploration is what brings new understandings into view.
So how can we work with our clients when there is a disconnection to any part of our own inner world?
A consent “practice” is a process of discovery – learning what gets in the way of connection. Of learning how to live a life where we are truly in consent with ourselves at the deepest of levels, without dissociation or disconnection.
Because… How can we teach consent if we are not truly in consent with ourselves?
*Like-a-Pro: The Wheel of Consent® for Professionals*
Learning through the mind has its place, but, as I touched on earlier, understanding lands differently in the body. It re-wires our nervous system, and arrives as a deeper felt knowing.
Opportunities to practice in an explorative and extended way, processing amongst peers, come few and far between.
So I am thrilled that in April, Michael Dresser and Stella Topaz will be leading the first European offering of the *Like A Pro*: The Wheel of Consent® for Professionals.
Whether for professional development or for personal health and healing, I can’t think of a place I’d rather be than Hastings, this April.
Applications are now open.
Here’s a little more info if you’re interested…
Like A Pro: The Wheel of Consent® for Professionals, is a 5 day training with faculty from The School of Consent Michael Dresser and Stella Topaz - in Hastings, UK April 22-26, 2026, 10am - 6pm daily. Applications now open (with scholarhips positions vailable too).
Like A Pro is an embodied consent training that has become a foundational practice for cultivating integrity and developing boundaries for professionals working with 1:1 clients. We welcome professionals who work with people hands-on, as well as in non-touch capacity, including:
🧠 Therapists / Counselors / Social Workers
🩺 Medical Professionals
🤰 Birth Workers / Doulas
💆 Body Workers / Massage Therapists
🧑⚕️ Sex Therapists
❤️ Intimacy Coaches / Educators
💃 Dance/Yoga/Movement Educators
🌱 Life Coaches
🎬 Intimacy Coordinators
👐 Caregivers
✊ Activists
🫂 Surrogate Partners / Cuddle Pros / Touch Providers
🪷 Healers
🌀 Facilitators
🔥 Change-Makers
Clients are savvier and more trauma-aware than ever — and they’re craving practitioners who can truly meet them with clarity, humility, and mutuality.
As professionals, we’re being called to do better — and to take better care of ourselves while doing it. Like A Pro is at the forefront of supporting practitioners in this process.
For yourself, you will…
Refine your ability to create mutually satisfying and equitable agreements for play and work in both your personal and professional life
Learn precise skills for advocating for your capacity and limits
Embody the skills you are supporting your students in learning more fully, and with more nuance
Learn to inhabit all four quadrants of the Wheel, even when you are fundamentally in a professional service role
Prevent overgiving, exploitation, urgency and burn out
Navigate complex power dynamics with clarity and confidence
Build personal and professional resilience in challenging times
For your clients, you will be better able to…
Support your clients in noticing, trusting and communicating their boundaries and limits
Provide proven tools to empower your client to notice and communicate what they want
Address a client’s tendency to “go along with” - and support informed consent and clear decisions
Assess your clients’ ability to notice their own body and put words to their experience
Scaffold your client’s skill development and move at a pace appropriate to their capacity
Support your students in recovering their self-trust and agency
Help give your clients a felt sense of true mutual agreement and equity
Apply the tools of the Wheel directly and indirectly to support your clients’ ability to meaningfully choose every step of the way in your work together
About the Hastings Faculty:
Join me for this extraordinary 5-day training through the transformative model of the Wheel of Consent, led by Michael Dresser and Stella Topaz. I’ll be assisting with logistics, but also a participant to the training itself.
Cost: US$1950
📝 Applications are open now — and this training fills quickly.
If this resonates, don’t wait — now is the time to claim your spot.
For more information or to apply: http://schoolofconsent.org/like-a-pro
Payment Plans are available. AASECT CEUs available. Partial scholarships are available too for those who are part of or are working with marginalised communities.
Outro
As ever, I would love to hear from you. Drop me a note, leave a comment.
With deep gratitude
Bear