Desire Lab
for FLINTA: femme (female, sapphic, women), lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender folks
Desire Lab invites us to become more alive, more attuned to who we are, how we feel, what we want, and the conditions and consequences of racialized, capitalist empire. I believe that tending and feeling our desires, erotic and otherwise, how they have been shaped and limited by empire, and unlearning that shaping in our flesh/consciousness is part of breaking our hearts open. In this heart break, we begin to learn to feel (not just think) how our liberation is bound up in one another’s and to move—with enormous pleasure—from this place. And this, in the legacy of Audre Lorde, is really at the heart of this course.
What do you desire? How can you tell?
What forces, stories, people, politics influence your desires?
Are your desires difficult to locate? Scary or seemingly too powerful? Elusive or feel impossible to verbalize?
How might your erotic and sexual desires entwine with/come out of your mundane, professional, political, ecological, and spiritual desires?
Do you worry that being honest about your desires could rupture connections or threaten responsibilities in your life? What if the opposite were true?
Are you curious about expanding or shifting how sex and/or eros manifest in your life?
Desire is neither inherently good nor bad, but it is a very very big feature of being a human. Desire is shifting, relational, contextual, conditioned, embodied, painful sometimes and ecstatic other times, and often entangled with complex emotional and political terrain. Many of us have learned, in our bones, that there’s potential danger in diverging from norms and expectations around our desires and our bodies; different dangers and stakes depending on how our bodies are raced, classed, gendered, sized and more.
In Desire Lab, we tend desire so that we can cultivate more intimacy with ourselves, others, and the whole heartbreaking/heartbreakingly beautiful world. In doing so, we hone our capacity to trust our desires and to discern how to work and play with their power towards our own and everything’s liberation. Together and on our own, we listen for, feel, experience, analyze, and articulate our desires—as well as our pleasures, curiosities, boundaries, needs, fears, and blocks—as FLINTA (female/femme/sapphic, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender) folks in a FLINTA exclusive space. Our tools include meditations, movement, breath work, touch, writing, creative exploration with the Internal Family Systems model, show and tells, witnessing/being witnessed, reading, and discussion. Erotic and sexual desire are core gateways for our work here, however we always contextualize these arenas inseparably from other “categories” of desire including political, ecological, mundane, creative, professional, spiritual etc. We engage texts (particularly in the online version of the class) by Audre Lorde, Paul Preciado, Kim Tallbear, Thanissara, Julian of Norwich, and others entwined with other kinds of activities. All practices are adaptable to individual needs.
I come to this work as a queer person, dancer and performer, artist, movement educator, abolitionist, meditator in the Insight Meditation tradition, Internal Family Systems practitioner, former sex worker, kink and erotic explorer, and Urban Tantra practitioner. I believe that desire, eros, and sex cannot be understood outside of social context. I do this work because I am passionate about undoing limiting or violent or outdated holds on our hearts and what it might look and feel like when more of us and more of life is thoroughly present in erotic encounters and spaces and what that might illuminate about other areas of existence, other manifestations of desire.
*identites are fluid and categories are not hard and fast. If you wonder if this workshop is for you, please be in touch.
Upcoming Desire Lab
IN PERSON in spring 2025
ONLINE starting in March 2025. Stay tuned for details…
Email hjvanderkolk (at) gmail (dot) com to register and for more information
Testimonials
“Desire Lab is a gentle yet provocative container that supports participants to reimagine expression and possibility for desire. Hana is a skilled and unobtrusive facilitator who combines somatic practices in a group and pairs with readings, discussion and easy daily homeworks. Would highly recommend for anyone on a journey to be more compassionate and wonderous with themselves and the world!” ~~ Ratna S., 2024 participant
"Desire Lab offered the gift of sanctuary in which I could learn to listen intently to my body and begin to bring language to its many curiosities and hesitancy. Developing a deeper understanding and acceptance of the many contradictions within desire is life-changing work. Desire Lab introduced me to skills that aim to dissolve shame and confusion around desire and fortify tenderness and recognition of self.” - ernest, 2023 participant
"This class helped me connect with a range of other open hearted, curious people as a path back to myself. Through the exercises I got to embody the values I've been cultivating around pleasure, and with the witnessing of each other as a group I got to refine an understanding of my own desire.” -Sellers Webb, 2023 participant
“Desire Lab was fun, profound, and transformative. As with all of Hana's offerings, this course offered an accepting, nuanced, body-positive community environment, in which I learned to bring more animality and play, and less self-consciousness, to my relationship with my body and with others.” - Stephanie, 2023 participant
“Desire Lab is one of those opportunities that can change your perspective and therefore your life. I feel more free post-Desire Lab, and that's a pretty incredible thing. - online participant, 2023
FAQ
How can I/we explore desires, eros, and sexuality when there is so much horrific stuff happening in the world? This is such an important question and one I think about and feel into a lot. My current orientation is that part of our work as people living in a reality that allows time and conditions for taking an online class and considering the intricacies of our desires is to become more attuned to who we are, how we feel, what we want, and the conditions and consequences of racialized, capitalist empire. Desire Lab invites us to become more alive in this way. I believe that understanding and acknowledging our desires, erotic and otherwise, and how they have been shaped and limited by empire, and unlearning that shaping in our flesh/consciousness is part of breaking our hearts open. In this heart break, we begin to learn to feel (not just think) how our liberation is bound up in one another’s and to move—with enormous pleasure—from this place. And this, in the legacy of Audre Lorde, is really at the heart of this course.
Will this class be explicitly sexual? Will I be expected to take my clothes off, engage with other participants in explicitly sexual encounters, or share my intimate sexual fantasies? I approach this class as more sex-adjacent than explicitly sexual, though I will offer ways for you to take what we are thinking, talking, and writing about and exploring in embodied ways into more explicitly sexual exploration in between course meetings and after we finish if you are interested. You will not be expected to take your clothes off. You will be invited to share about erotic and/or explicitly sexual experiences during certain exercises if you like, but that is always optional. You won’t be expected to do anything you’re not interested in doing. I will give ample guidance on how to locate consent with yourself and with others in the class and will always offer modifications to exercises. Desire Lab is a gentle space with a lot of focus on autonomy and diversity. I hold no expectation of what the right way to engage with the class is and try to set that tone for the whole group.
I struggle to stay focused and feel connected in virtual learning settings. Is this class for me? Maybe yes, maybe no. We do a balanced mix of language/speaking/thinking practice and non-language, body-focused practice and a mix of being all together as a group, on our own exploring embodied exercises or writing, and in pairs or small groups for conversation or practice. I have found that this blend of configurations and approaches helps keep people engaged even though we are not in physical space together. I give a lot of guidance and structure for how to approach time on one’s own and in small groups and pairs and have found that people have quite engaged, meaningful, and intimate experiences even though we are not all in the same place.
Exploring desire virtually seems counter intuitive. How will this work via Zoom? I have actually found this format surprisingly generative for the content of this course! I was skeptical myself, but have found that the virtual interface allows for a special mixture of intimacy with others in the class and private time with oneself/one’s home space. I have even found that people are able to have very intimate and supportive experiences with one another in pairs and small groups through sharing, listening, and witnessing one another visually. We regularly write anonymously into a shared google doc together (thanks LA Warman for this approach!), which allows folks to share very candidly with one another. Finally, we do a good amount of movement and self-touch practices in the class and there is always an option to have one’s camera off for these. Sometimes we witness one another with cameras on and this has been a powerful experience for most. In between sessions, we will have opportunity for correspondance with one another and will have a place to drop writing, images, video, and other traces of the rituals and practices we do between sessions.
Can I try the class out to see if I like it/if it feels like a fit for me? No. You can make a deposit to reserve your spot in the class that is fully refundable up to two weeks before the first class. Once the class is underway there are no refunds. I am available for 20-minute discovery calls if you have questions about the course and/or want to get a feel for me as a person/facilitator.
I’m concerned that if I explore my desires I will end up needing to make some big changes in my life and I can’t do that right now because I’m a parent or care giver to another loved-one, have a demanding job, or am in a partnership configuration or living situation that can’t get jostled right now. Should I participate in this class? This is an important consideration and I ultimately trust each person to intuit if this is the right time to engage with this class. While, Desire Lab is gentle, it also invites participants to contemplate and shake up how they are orienting to themselves, their bodies, sex/sexuality, activism, and more. As stated above, all exercises are totally adaptable to individual needs and it is possible to modify, but creative self-inquiry (rather than distanced, theoretical work) is the focus of the course.
I have experienced sexual trauma, is this class for me? Please see my note on trauma below.
Other questions? Email me hjvanderkolk (at) gmail (dot) com. I am happy to answer questions over email or to schedule a 20-minute discovery call.
A note on trauma
o Many FLINTA/SLINTA people have experienced sexual assault/abuse and/or harassment and/or violation
o I believe that acute sexual trauma and experiences of harassment/more mild forms of violation are inextricable from one another in our culture. However, not all kinds of sexual violation are the same and they require different attention/treatment. This workshop is trauma-informed (I am sensitive to the fact of trauma is inevitably in the room and design and guide exercises with an awareness that traumas could be triggered and so give ample space for consent, pausing and adaptation), but I am not a trauma specialist and addressing acute PTSD is beyond the scope of this workshop
o If you are a survivor and have been/are already getting support around your experiences, the workshop could offer you additional tools in the process of healing and expanding your erotic life in a trauma informed setting
o There will always be ample opportunity to pause, opt out, and/or modify any exercise/practice
o In Desire Lab in person I offer several practices that involve working with a partner or a small group. Touch in these practices is, however, always optional and there are powerful ways to engage in this partner/group work without touch.
o Consent (self-consent and consent with one another) will be emphasized throughout and we will move at a slow enough space so that consent can be identified more of the time.
o Please be in touch if you are a sexual assault survivor and wonder if this workshop is appropriate for you
A note on my sliding scale
People who pay more for my courses make it possible for others to pay less and for me to simultaneously cover the costs of the spaces I work in and get compensated for my work. I make my living teaching workshops like these and offering one-on-one coaching sessions. I also occasionally get paid for work as an artist and event organizer and guest artist/teacher in university settings. I come from class and educational privilege in my family of origin, but I DO have to earn my daily living expenses independently. I benefit from my class background and from white supremacy as a so-called white person in many other ways. I am also a queer, middle-aged person living with chronic health challenges and I regularly participate in mutual aid practices in my home community and in other places where I spend time and enjoy the land and culture. I consider all of these conditions, the cost to use the spaces I teach in, along with the economics of where I am offering things when pricing my work. Please consider your overlapping circumstances when choosing your pricing option. Let’s get all of us what we need/more free one little and large effort at a time. Thank you!
I do a sliding scale for everything I offer because I want what I do to be accessible to a wide range of people and because the co-called US is a country in which the state does not ensure housing, health care, and education for all, so I believe we must take it upon ourselves in part to actively participate in creating a more equitable society in which all are thriving.
I offer this rather involved explanation of my sliding scale because I think taking the time to really consider money/class/privilege in a measured, informed, realistic way is part of the work of embodiment and connection, part of the process of/a way to practice getting more deeply in touch with how we feel, the conditioning we are living with, and what a more abundant, joyful, and interconnected world might look and feel like.
Please make your price point choice from a place of calm and openness to consider the facts about your financial/resource reality, rather than from a place of scarcity (living in capitalism makes most of us feel like there is never enough). Please consider the following questions when choosing:
Are you able to work for money?
Do you currently have enough income to meet your basic needs?
Do you currently have enough income to meet your needs and pay for other things beyond basic needs?
Do you have savings?
Do you have debt? Are you able to pay it off?
Do you have housing security?
Do you have access to healthy, fresh food and are you able to pay for it?
Do you have access to health care (allopathic, alternative etc.)?
Do you have access to education (in the past, present, or future)?
Do you have access to generational wealth in the form of cash, loans, gifts, child care, property (now or likely in the future)?
Are you partnered? Does your partner’s income or family situation effect your answers to the above questions?
Are you living with ongoing mental or physical health challenges?
Do you have elderly parents or other family members for whom you need to provide financially?