What if something goes wrong?

In Spaces of Permission however much facilitators do to inform and guide you, we cannot guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong. When you come into these spaces, you must expect that there will always be some degree of risk. This is part and parcel of erotic play, which is driven essentially by the unknown. There will likely be misunderstandings, disappointments and not all of your needs will be met. Acknowledging this is part of the work of maturity and learning from your experiences.

These spaces are not for everyone. This much must be said. You must be able to pay attention to what is going on in the body in the present moment and develop the capacity to hold yourself and the emotional states that arise in you. You must also be able to remain open if someone questions your behaviour or feels uncomfortable as a consequence of your behaviour. If you are unable to receive and be responsive to feedback, these spaces are not for you. For some people, it is not possible for them to feel sufficiently safe in these spaces. For others, it is not possible for them to provide the conditions for others to feel sufficiently safe while they are present. In both cases, this is usually a consequence of childhood trauma, which has not had the opportunity to be sufficiently addressed or healed.

Other people, who have been able to develop sufficient skills and capacities, are able to use these spaces to heal and address their childhood traumas.

While no-one likes things to go wrong, these are actually the times when there is the greatest opportunity for us to learn and to grow. If these things didn’t sometimes happen, there would be little impetus for us to mature - either as individuals or as a culture as a whole.

While we, as facilitators, seek to minimize harm in the space as much we can, this cannot substitute for the responsibility you must take for your own self-care and the safety of others. Acknowledging your own part of responsibility in what happens is an intrinsic part of what minimizes harm for everyone.

What is the worst thing that can happen in a Space of Permission?

The worst thing that can happen is a serious breach of consent. By serious, we mean an act that involves either intercourse, sexual touching or some form non-consensual BDSM play. In the event that this happens, a victim is in their rights to report the incident to the Police and we will support them, if they wish to do so. We also strongly encourage people to seek redress firstly through Restorative or Transformational Justice, because these processes often lead to more favourable outcomes for all involved than through the criminal justice system. That said, we will support people in whatever they choose to do. EL facilitators are trauma-informed and will do everything they can to support.

Sadly, breaches of consent occasionally do happen. They can happen for a variety of reasons, including poor education, lack of impulse control, societal attitudes and unresolved trauma, which can lead to predatory behaviour and/or the fawn or freeze response making it difficult for a survivor clearly to voice their boundaries and non-consent in a crisis situation. For these reasons, you must always check in before and during any erotic or sexual interaction, especially if you do not know the people involved very well. We strongly advise you to go slowly and check in often.

The passing on of sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) unfortunately also occasionally does happen. Before interacting sexually with someone, you must have a conversation about safer sex.

Conflicts and Emotional Breakdowns

In a space of permission it is easy, and indeed common, for a person to experience some degree of anger, sadness or distress as a consequence of something that has been said or done. We are all vulnerable in these spaces and it is very easy for something to cause a trigger response. Just because a person feels triggered does not necessarily mean that the person who has triggered them has necessarily done something wrong. If, on the other hand, they have done something wrong, it may be comparatively small in seriousness in relation to the reaction it engenders. The magnitude of the reaction may mean simply that something has come up that has revealed something important for that person, possibly unresolved.

If the trigger is strong enough it can sometimes lead to an emotional breakdown that can make it temporarily impossible for the person to function in the space. At EL we do not judge anyone who experiences an emotional breakdown. We would even go so far as to say that if you haven’t experienced a breakdown at some point, the work hasn’t deeply reached you. Listen below to Tash Verco speaking about this:

Neurodiversity and Autism

People who are neurodiverse and/or on the spectrum of autism may often have difficulty reading non-verbal cues while interacting with others. This difficulty may sometimes be misconstrued by those who are not neurodiverse as a breach of consent. For this reason, at the beginning of a party or festival we usually ask if anyone in the group identifies as neurodiverse or on the spectrum. We then invite them to share with the group about how they best like to communicate consent.

Couples and Openness (thresholds and windows of tolerance)

Non-Violent Communication and Compassionate Feedback

First of all, we teach everyone in the space a structure called Compassionate Feedback, drawn from the conflict resolution modality called Non-Violent Communication. If someone’s boundary is crossed or if they are unhappy with someone else’s behaviour, very often the person who is aggrieved will either attack the person or otherwise not tell them anything is wrong and will instead tell someone else, for example, a close friend or a facilitator. These common ways of reacting, one might say, correspond to “fight or flight”, which are among the most archaic ways our nervous systems responds to danger.

At EL we want to avoid blaming and shaming people for their mistakes. And we also want to avoid gossiping where people have little chance to defend themselves against what is said about them behind their backs.. If our erotic culture is to evolve, we need to find ways to tell each other things we may find difficult yet important to say, but in a way that also remains respectful and keeps open the possibility of deeper, more honest and more vulnerable communication.

In Compassionate Feedback one begins by always asking permission to give feedback, and then if permission is given, to use sentences such as “When I observed “x”, I felt “y” because I have a need for “z”.” On receiving the feedback, the person is not encouraged immediately to seek to justify their actions, but instead to take a few moments to empathize with the other’s experience and voice their understanding. They may then ask permission to respond and then if it is given, use sentences such as “When I did “a”, I felt “b” because I have a need for “c” . This process can be repeated several times with reference not only to the event in question, but also to what is happening for both parties during the present conversation. Presuming both parties can reach a greater degree of empathic understanding of each other, at the end each is encouraged to make a request. Please note: a request is not a demand, it is perfectly okay to say no.

From the point of view of our nervous systems, the way something is said is much more important than what is actually said. The melody and tone of voice give archaic cues to the nervous system of safety or danger. The way you speak often betrays more about what you’re really feeling than what you say. In this kind of interaction, notice when your nervous system goes beyond your window of tolerance, and, for example, you start to raise your voice.

They will tell someone else, a friend or a facilitator. This creates a situation where the person may sense that something is wrong, but has no opportunity to defend themselves. Alternately, the person who is aggrieved confronts the person, who they have a problem with, by attacking them, by blaming and shaming them. In both cases, there is little chance for any learning, growth or deeper connection.

Are you open to some feedback? When you did this, it is respectful - eye to eye - and adult.

It is not blaming and shaming - it is speaking up for one’s feelings and needs and those of the other.

Mistakes such as misunderstandings about consent, unintentional or unconscious crossings of boundaries, unintended outcomes from plays that may feel uncomfortable, interactions full of promise that don’t work out.

Often these mistakes are not simply the fault of one person, but come from the fact that the cultures we’ve grown up and live in have not taught us how best to negotiate relationships and sexuality and most of us have been denied opportunities for sexual growth and maturity.

For us, permission means also permission to make mistakes, to be vulnerable and even to break-down. This is only human. ****What is important, however, is our willingness to learn from these experiences and to make a commitment not to repeat the same behaviours over and over.

Without a commitment to help people to become more knowledgable and mature in relation to love and sexuality, spaces of permission can easily become just another form of addictive behaviour.

This is really important.

But then sometimes there isn’t a structure to fall back on. The breakdown throws everybody into the unknown.

For us, permission means also permission to make mistakes, for accidents to happen, and even for people to breakdown.

Tash: being in a space where we allow people’s things to come up. Allowing that process to happen, Allowing people to have their breakdowns but not having that collapse the space. Encouragement to be in the space with people and hold the integrity of what’s going on for you and separation between you and the other. Sometimes people’s breakdowns are such that they want to break the whole space, they have so much trauma that it is impossible for the others to continue while they are in the space. When the space is well held by everybody, you can continue while someone is having a breakdown, we can still be ourselves and get our needs met and be with the person who is having the breakdown. That is one of the reasons why I do this work because I have experienced that. Not ignoring it, but not stopping. Making a space where “everything” is welcome. The asylum is necessary. In our culture we don’t see this, so we don’t develop the skills to handle it and help each other.

This is part and parcel of eroticism, which always has truck with the unknown.

There isn’t a one size fits all approach for when things go wrong and there are so many different kinds of things that can go wrong in this kind of space.

Abuse of Power by a Facilitator

The deep opportunities for learning and maturity actually happen when things go wrong. So it is not necessary bad, when this happens. If things didn’t go wrong sometimes, there wouldn’t be any real impetus for us to change and to grow.

This is a hard truth, which is sometimes difficult for us to acknowledge.

Nobody wants things to go wrong but, when they do, there is an obligation to pause, listen and look at what has happened and see what underlying thoughts, feelings and needs are. It may not be immediately clear how to respond. What is important, however, is not to try to keep going as if nothing important has happened.

In over 10 years of hosting Spaces of Permission, I can say that there are several different kinds of things that can go wrong. Let me give you some examples:

We also recognise that mistakes need to be acknowledged, so that we can learn from them. If people repeatedly make the same mistakes and refuse to learn from them, we do not invite them back into the space.

All of the problems that we have in our culture around sexuality come into these spaces. Neuro-diversity, inequality of income and status, histories of sexual harassment and abuse, body shame, entitlement, lack of impulse control.

Mistakes or misunderstandings are inevitable, what is not inevitable is how we respond and learn from these mistakes.

Unconsciously, many of us come into these spaces because we are looking to resolve long buried traumas, which come up while we are in the space. Others bring with them values and prejudices from the cultures in which they grew up, and these no longer serve when one frees oneself from sexual inhibitions.

Some participants have difficulty reading non-verbal cues because they are neuro-diverse (or “on the spectrum”); others have been victims of sexual abuse or harassment, which can make establishing boundaries in a moment of crisis extremely difficult for them.

Would you like a framework about what we do in that situation? This could be valuable.

Something has gone wrong, how do you make that space safe then and there? How do you do that? It is case-by-case. Making the space safe is subjective.

When something happens and there is a break-down, the best thing to do, I’ve found, is to allow the breakdown to happen. Letting the breakdown happen brings you into the unknown. If there weren’t breakdowns everything would be the repetition of a pre-given possibility.

I’m going to sell a story to make this clear

Plush Animal Workshop

I did a workshop maybe 15 years ago with plush animals and one girl thought she was being clever and she took a knife and cut one of the plush animals thinking it was my plush animal. It was a girl who had some kind of SM thing happening with me and she thought how am I going to get Peter, I’m going to cut one of his plush animals. But she cut the wrong plush animal, she cut an animal that belonged to another girl. That other girl experienced that cut as a cut to her own body, cutting the body of her child. Here I am running this happy workshop with plush animals and suddenly this happens. And what I did, because I was inexperienced, was I tried to keep the workshop going. I continued with my plan. But you can’t continue with your plan. When something like this happens, which was completely unexpected and I had no control over it whatsoever, what I had to do was just stop everything and just sit with it. What tends to happen then is that the group, the group dynamic, tends to find the solution., the intelligence of the people in the group helps to find the solution. Often you have to stay with the not-knowing, you have to stay with the breakdown. Pause, stop and listen. And don’t try to fix it, don’t try to do a clean up operation. Just stay with it. That is the advice of Peter Banki.

This is the approach - not the solution. Make a space in the workshop to pause, stop and listen. Don’t try to clean it up. Other things will occur that will require different approaches. Available staff to deal with a situation? You are no longer the facilitator in that moment. At the moment of a breakdown. This is the irruption of the real, of the other. This is the most interesting moment from a Derridean perspective. It’s the breakdown.

People always help at EL. It’s not just about the individual.

Sharing stories.

Poland with the Couple

One time I witness that a couple had a meltdown and the woman threw something at the guy that really could have injured him Because of a jealousy thing, and she threw something at the guy and if it had hit him it would have, she missed it, Then she went bezeerk, she was screaming and screaming and screaming. and the guy held her down because he didn’t trust that she would get up and throw something else at him. The facilitator at that space was Felix, What Felix did was he put his hand on the shoulder of the man who holding her down. and then instinctively a woman who was in the space came and put her hand on the shoulder of the woman who was being held down. Everything calmed down. It was so impressive how such a simple gesture by someone who was in authority - changed the whole mood. Co-regulation - he instinctively knew what to do.

I think this kind of work has the capacity to open us up and create profound experiences of empathy, if it is held in the right way. If it is not held in the right way, it is very dangerous.

Pause that workshop

A workshop with storytelling about what happens when things go wrong. - early in the event. Sharing stories when things go wrong.

Mistakes and Accidents

Based on our experience of over 10 years and hundreds of workshops, we believe it is inevitable that accidents will happen and that people will always make mistakes.

For us, accidents and mistakes are things like:

Taking a mobile phone into a clothing-optional space; touching someone’s breast by accident when this hasn’t been consented to; arriving late for a workshop; entering into a conversation or play uninvited; misinterpreting someone’s gesture as an invitation when it wasn’t intended to be;

There is no one set of rules that can absolutely protect us from these things happening. They have to be negotiated on an incident-by-incident basis by the individuals involved.

At EL we teach a framework for negotiating and giving Feedback to one another when these things happen, drawn from Non-Violent Communication.

Trips and Falls

We have public liability insurance for this

More Serious Injuries

In the case where an incident happens that may constitute negligence or assault, the facilitator team will take a victim-centred approach. (What is this? It is where we encourage the person injured to make the decisions best for them, we give them information about what they can do.) If you choose to report what has happened to the police, we will support you and work with the Police in their inquiries.

There are some situations where people are injured and where there is not a clear victim and a clear perpetrator. Zahava’s film - Podcast - injuries without a perpetrator -

Not stepping into dangerous situations oblivious to the risk and taking on the responsibility to educate yourself as to where the edge of danger is for you and/or for the other person.

We generally favour restorative approaches as they provide forms of redress not available through the criminal justice system. These include: … We support and encourage you to explore these options, as they are trauma-informed. The victim themselves has to initiate this process. We can provide with you with the information to do so. As faculty, we will provide you with all the support we can.

We ourselves endeavour to be trauma-informed in our approach to our work more generally. Trauma informed is…

“I feel unsafe to come back to the space again after what happened.”

As a victim, how I went through since the last retreat - so difficult time to me - I got really hurt and I went through a difficult time in my life, how to find the solutions - find the therapist to talk - my innocence was violated - I went as a child in the space to play, I was an adult - I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have a voice to talk - this is not yet finished what happened.

I know some of the faces I have been with - but a new person, I don’t know if I can trust them again. I want to play as a child, be innocent, I am giving - I’m a healer, I need someone to receive that - not to be violated - There was no one to rescue me. In that space - I asked for help.

She reproached me for not sending him off at that time from the group. I don’t want this to happen again to someone else.

“If I can’t keep the people safe, how can I do this work?”

After this happened, I thought stop doing this work. This has been a real crisis for me. If I tell the people explicitly not to do something and they go ahead and do it, how can I make the space safe? I told the people explicitly don’t do this and they did it.

I invested 10 years of my life doing this, I’m proud of what I’ve done, I’m not going to throw it away. My internal dialogue: this is too hard. I don’t want to be accused. I’m frightened. If I do this work, I take the risk. So I try to do this work as safe as possible, and I am as defended. There is no shame in defending and protecting yourself. You have to take care of yourself, stand up for yourself. Boundaries. You have to protect yourself in these spaces - they can give you a great deal you can have fun, but you also have to protect yourself. Ideally, they can help you to become a more knowledgable, mature and wise individual. And a good role model for others.

But I don’t have too many idealistic illusions about it. That’s why I don’t use that language that is often used in the tantra scene. Yes, it does help, it can do good things for people, but we have to be responsible and learn how to take care of ourselves in these spaces. If we talk about heart connection, unconditional love, everyone is one, etc., that gets in the way of seeing the reality. I’m one for seeing reality.

Before you enter the space, it is helpful to have an idea of the different things that can go wrong. Many of you will already be familiar with some of these, but not all of them. Please read this through carefully.

The list is not exhaustive and we welcome your feedback.

Non-Reciprocal Expectations

Neuro-diversity and Autism - all the problems associated with it.

Creepiness man or woman or trans-person - crossing boundaries, taking someone’s attention and energy when it is not offered - people don’t say anything - It takes time to learn the mores of these spaces: when it is welcome to approach, when not, to learn to check before crossing someone’s boundaries, to be sensitive to timing, and if this person is likely to say yes or not, given the way they have interacted with you up until now. To see if there is an invitation, conscious or otherwise. There are ways to make yourself more attractive in these spaces to a potential partner.

Impulse control. If you have impulse control and can demonstrate it, at a both conscious and unconscious level a potential play partner will recognise that you are a safe person to interact with.

Couples and Openness (thresholds and windows of tolerance)

Sexual Violence

Sometimes it is difficult to know in the moment if consent has been given and it is possible to make mistakes, to think consent has been given when it has not. You may in the moment think you are in consent and realise later that you weren’t. You may think the other person is in consent and realise they were not.

The answer obviously is to be careful about who you interact with and to go slow. Practice impulse control and know that you can stop. If you have a tendency to freeze or fawn in situations where you feel uncomfortable, we encourage you to practice not being concerned about the other person’s feelings in voicing your ‘no’ or boundaries. Practice telling how you actually feel.

People who have sexual trauma (which unfortunately is very common) often have enormous difficulty with creating boundaries in moments of crisis.

What is the difference between a not very good sexual encounter, which sometimes happens, and sexual assault?

Am I okay with this? She wants to see you, but she doesn’t want to have sex with you, she wants to talk about sex with other men. What’s in it for me?