Intimacy & Embodiment Coaching
A supportive space for exploring, questioning, and learning about human connection.
What is intimacy and embodiment coaching?
Coaches can support clients around many different areas in their lives, such as career or general life skills coaching. My coaching practice focuses on helping clients name and move toward their goals one of more of the following areas:
Intimacy: Building skills for connection and closeness with others, including romantic and sexual relationships.
Embodiment: Building skills for being more comfortable, present, aware, and joyful in your body, including your sexuality.
Coaching isn’t about giving you advice or answers —it’s about helping you find your own path. There are as many ways of experiencing your body and human connection as there are people—and then some. As a coach, I provide a grounded space for clients to reflect, learn, and explore what is right for you.
Coaching work can be entirely talked-based. In my practice, it can also include structured exercises for experiential, touch-based learning.
Coaching may support your self-care and healing around issues such as anxiety, depression, anxiety, or trauma. However, I am not a licensed talk therapist and coaching is not intended to diagnose or treat any mental illness. I encourage clients to work with a licensed talk therapist alongside coaching work, and I am happy to consult or collaborate with your therapist or other health care provider.
How I support clients through coaching
My coaching work focuses on learning and strengthening skills for connection with yourself and others. The work is highly individualized and starts with setting your personal goals. Depending on those goals, clients may benefit from one or two focused sessions, or from a longer series of sessions that build upon one another.
I strive to be trauma-informed, body-positive, inclusive, and anti-racist in all my work.
Below are some examples of ways I support clients through coaching.
Education.
I can provide information, be a sounding board, and support self-reflection on:
What you want from relationships, intimacy, and sex
Exploring values, attitudes, shame, and self-compassion
Expressing your needs, desires, boundaries, and listening to others’
Styles and approaches to dating, sex, and personal relationships
Exploring gender, sexual orientation, coming out, and gender transitions
Replacing “performance” with real intimacy and vulnerability
Core relationship needs, attachment styles, and how to talk about them
Self-love, solo sex, and porn
Kink and BDSM education
Safer sex and sexual health basics and resources
Somatic awareness
I can guide clients through exercises to enhance their awareness and experience in their own body, such as:
Guided body scans, meditations, and visualizations
Locating desire, ambivalence, shame, and desire in the body
Soothing or discharging emotional energy
Exploring sensation with everyday objects
Soothing, sensual, and erotic self-touch or breathwork
Consent and communication
I can help clients practice consent and communications skills, such as:
Making and receiving requests
Negotiating needs, wants, and boundaries
Holding space for boundaries, triggers, and conflicting needs
Conversational skills: initiating, small talk, flirting
Exploring and sharing fantasies
Experiential learning
I can help clients build skills, awareness, and practice feedback through structured, touch-based exercises, such as:
Sensate focus exercises with mutual, non-genital touch
Exploring cuddling and everyday affection
Hands-on consent and communication exercises
Deepening awareness through one-way massage
Finding positions, techniques, and adaptations that work for your body
Why Intimacy & Embodiment Coaching—and who can benefit from it?
All sorts of people in many different sorts of situations.
People who may benefit from Intimacy & Embodiment Coaching can include:
If you have limited sexual or relationship experience and want to build confidence, comfort, and communication skills.
If you are exploring or emerging in your sexuality or your gender and want support in bringing your true self into connections with others.
If you are adapting to major changes in your life—such as a divorce, coming out, or gender transition.
If you’re adjusting to major changes in your body—such as a major surgery, an injury, or a disability.
If you’re looking for affirming support and skill-building in exploring diverse sexual interests (such as kink/BDSM).
If you want to build your skills for body awareness, consent, and a playful, non-goal-oriented approach to intimacy and pleasure.
I work with adults of all genders, ages, body types, backgrounds, spiritualities, and relationship styles, and anywhere on the spectrums of sexuality and asexuality. I’m especially interested in working with transgender, queer, and intersex people and their partners. As a white and able-bodied person I strive to embody anti-racism, disability justice, and cultural humility in my life and work.
While my coaching work is mainly with individuals, I can also support couples who want to practice skills for connection, touch, and intimacy together but are having difficulty doing so. The couples coaching I offer is focused on providing a supportive space and real-time feedback from the “sidelines” for couples—usually those already in couples therapy—to practice skills with each another.
Is this talk therapy? How does Intimacy & Embodiment Coaching relate to talk therapy?
Unlike a licensed talk therapist or other licensed health care professional, coaches do not diagnose mental health or medical conditions and do not specialize in treating them. Coaching may provide some benefits for clients dealing with issues such as depression, anxiety, gender dysphoria, or post-traumatic stress, but is not a substitute for therapy.
Talk therapy—which may include sex and relationship therapy, trauma therapy, somatic psychotherapy, and gender-affirming therapy—can provide great benefits for clients on its own. Therapy can (among other things) help clients understand their experiences, needs and goals; address shame, trauma, anxiety, depression, and gender dysphoria; uncover and shift internal narratives; develop mindfulness, coping, and communication skills. Some concerns can also benefit from medical treatment, such as sexual function concerns with a physiological origin; some kinds of depression and anxiety; and gender dysphoria.
While being in talk therapy is not a requirement for coaching clients, I do strongly encourage clients to do both, and I am available to collaborate with clients and their therapists in the Triadic Model throughout coaching work (at no additional charge).
What is coaching not for—and what other supports are out there?
While Intimacy & Embodiment coaching can be helpful for a variety of situations, , it might not be the right support for you right now if:
You are looking primarily for someone to provide a specific experience of touch or closeness, rather than a personal learning and growth process.
You’re not ready to practice embodied or hands-on skills in a one-on-one setting right now, for any reason.
You may need longer-term or more intensive support than coaching alone can provide.
There are a wide range of other supports out there that might be right for you, such as:
As mentioned above, working with a licensed talk therapist—one who gets you and is knowledgeable about the issues most important to you—can be tremendously helpful for many people. You can use directories like Psychology Today, TherapyDen, and Inclusive Therapists to search for therapists near you.
Surrogate Partner Therapy (SPT) is an intensive therapy option where a client, a surrogate partner, and a licensed talk therapist work as a team to help the client develop their capacity and readiness for intimacy and relationships. Learn more about SPT and my work as a surrogate partner.
There are a wide range of different types of online and in -person workshops, classes, and conferences out there where individuals or couples can learn and practice somatic and intimacy skills in a group setting. To name just a few, check out the School of Consent, BodySex, Body Electric, and Velvet Lips Sex Ed.
If you’re mainly looking to experience comforting, strictly platonic touch, I offer Platonic Cuddle Therapy and also encourage you to check out Cuddlist and Cuddle Party.
If you’re mainly looking for a sexual experience, seeing an escort or other type of sex worker may be right for you. Please consult your local laws and listings—and consider donating to sex worker support organizations near you like HIPS or chapters of SWOP-USA.
How long does Intimacy & Embodiment Coaching take and how is it scheduled?
Coaching sessions are typically 60-90 minutes, scheduled every 1-3 weeks. I recommend planning for 3-6 sessions. Some clients may benefit from additional sessions depending on your current needs, goals, and other supports.
