Relational Mapping

Bring healthy attachment skills to your sexuality festival or connection event

Dear fellow organizers and producers,

Thank you for creating more connection and play through your events! We need this, especially now. The past 3 years have been significant for our field, and our collective human experience. The pandemic isolated so many of us physically and also separated communities who responded to covid in radically different ways. This impacted our collective attachment systems and now is a moment to come together and to heal from this tenderness and fear.

Another really important thing happened in the past 3 years. Jessica Fern’s Polysecure: attachment, trauma, and consensual non monogamy, came out. Polyamory will never be the same. The success and popularity of her book revealed what had been missing. So many of us cried with relief and new compassion and understanding. We started to resequence our own experience, to bring new perspective to years of harm with this empowering lens centering the wisdom of our attachment systems. I imagine it may take a few more years for the radical magic of her book to influence our events, our habits, our healing, our culture, and our field. Our field is living, it’s made of sweet humans like you and me. It takes time to integrate the deep medicine of Polysecure in our personal lives and in our professional offerings. We get to be the ones to create that new paradigm together and to make our field safer, more loving, more kind.

What can happen when events are not attachment informed

For years prior to Polysecure I noticed a lot of challenges that I did not have language yet to name. I was organizing and teaching at large sexuality festivals and conferences. I saw many people having fun during the festival and then experiencing a lot of harm, loneliness, and disorientation trying to practice the same level of intimacy in their ongoing lives. I saw people who focused on festivals often struggle to build the ongoing local relationships they longed for. I saw painful break ups. I saw entire communities rupture without knowing how to repair. I saw resignation and isolation in some cases where people contracted into a hyper independence. I saw others become lost, traveling constantly in search of “home.” What was happening to our beloved community between the festivals? The pandemic offered a profound opportunity for us to discover more about our relationships. I started to learn more about secure attachment, relational repair, and community resilience. I witnessed who was thriving in relationship over the years and who was in a loop of relational intensity and rupture… What awareness, skills, and practice could I offer to better strengthen our local village and ongoing life relationships?

Polysecure changed everything. Jessica pointed so clearly and compassionately to what many of us had been missing. She explained what I started to call the Lonely Slut syndrome… why were so many of us in the sexuality field still lonely? I called in a circle of my nearest and dearest fellow sexuality and intimacy colleagues. We began an embodied book club for Polysecure. We danced our experience of reading the book. We witnessed each other intimately. I discovered many studies documenting the connection between insecure attachment and suicidal ideation that reflected what I had been observing. We started to understand how common our experience was and how vital secure attachment is to the mental health of our communities. The loneliness started to dissolve as we grew new language and capacity to let each other in. It was so extraordinary we did a second embodied book club. I met with Jessica Fern to discuss secure attachment in the sexuality and kink field! With her support I created a new model for my work which includes this tool for Relational Mapping. I received extraordinary feedback not only from the participants in our local Play Village, but also from their partners, housemates, and beloveds! I began to teach this as a stand alone workshop and discovered how many producers and event creators wanted me to bring this to their events. This is the training and education I wish I had earlier. This could have saved so many heartbreaks. It gives me indescribable joy to share this with you and with your community!

Book me to teach this online workshop 1 to 2 weeks before your festival or retreat!

Benefits for the festival

Be part of the trailblazing movement for attachment and trauma informed connection and sexuality
Seed more aligned relationships at your event that lead to more returning participants, long lasting connections, less need to market to new people
Be the place people come to find soul connections with a new level of maturity and clarity
Enhance the emotional intelligence and mental health of your community with clear shared language and understanding about secure attachment
Reduce the need for mediation and repair, when people are really clear about what they want there’s less to clean up

Benefits for attendees

Lift the relational fog and see your relational ecosystem with clear eyes
Cherish the relationships you already have with new appreciation
Learn what secure attachment is in a group that values it
Clarify how secure your bonds are with your nearest and dearest
Become aware of relational insecurity that’s often at the root of mental health challenges and suicidal ideation
Tell the truth about relationships that aren’t aligned and have the courage to gracefully graduate from them
Learn what truly feels like love to you, by looking at 18 kinds of intimacy!
Clarify what kinds of intimacy you are hungry for
Practice voicing what you want in your relational life with a new level of precision and ease
Start connecting with festival attendees from a rooted and delicious intentional place

How does it work?

We chat and schedule the workshop 1 - 2 weeks before your festival. It’s 2.5 hours on zoom.
You pay me $250 up front to hold the date & $250 on the date of the workshop. You get to design your own pricing for your people. For example you might charge $25 per person, have 40 attendees and walk away with an extra $500 and more awareness and skill in a core group of people that ripples out to the quality of your event. We can discuss if you want to record the workshop for participants who cannot make it live. This may include an additional fee. Part of the value is doing it live together as a group!
The marketing copy and image below can be used to promote the event to your people. I will provide you with a specific zoom link to include.
I am available for a fun enrollment zoom together to invite your people if you like! It’s a great chance to voice your values and care for your people.
I teach the class at the scheduled time.
I’m available for a 20 min debrief with you post class.
1 - 2 weeks after your festival I’m available for a 1 hour reflection zoom with people who attended the original workshop! I’d love to hear how it impacted everyone and the event.

Relational Mapping

map your inner circle & relational dreams

You’re about to be with a beautiful group of humans together in person! Who do you want to connect with? How do you want to connect? What’s important to communicate when meeting new people to grow the kind of intimacy and bonds you long for?

The quality of our life, is rooted in the quality of our relationships. This workshop is designed to support you to observe and cherish the relationships you already have. You will get a chance to map your inner circle, including the kinds of intimacy you have with each person and how secure your bond feels. From this awareness, bring clarity to new connections, grounded in your existing relational ecosystem and your intentions for your relational life. Join others attending the event to share your intentions and orient together so when you meet in person, you can connect in the most aligned way!

Our time together includes:

What is secure attachment?
Distinguishing visionary reality from physical reality in relationships
Make a map of your 3 to 8 closest people
Observe how secure your connections are in this moment
Clarify the kinds of connection you value most (look at 18 kinds of intimacy)
Which kinds of connection occur with your closest people
What are you cherishing?
What are you hungry for?
Share what you’re looking for with others coming to the festival! (practice)
Takeaways & gratitude

About the facilitator

Zahava Griss (aka Z, they/them) is the founder of Embody More Love, a spiritual kinky dance community for personal & cultural liberation. Since 1999, Z has been exploring dance, embodiment and eros as a source of healing, creativity, building community, and shifting our culture. Z’s performance rituals, books, coaching, grief rituals, and workshops invite a dismantling of oppression so we can create more truthful, empowering, and meaningful relationships. Learn more at www.EmbodyMoreLove.com.