Pleasure and the Nervous System

About this event

💝Pleasure and the Nervous System: unlock your body’s natural pathways to pleasure by learning how your nervous system shapes the way you feel, connect, and experience joy.

----
➡️ EVENT SOLD OUT? QUESTIONS ABOUT PRACTICALITIES? THE FAQ TELLS YOU WHAT TO DO AND WHERE TO GO: www.exploringdeeper.com/faq.
----

(This workshop was previously called Feast for the Senses)

**How much do you allow yourself to truly feel?**

Our nervous system plays a key role in how we experience pleasure, guiding the communication between the brain and body. When we engage in enjoyable activities—like savoring delicious food, listening to music, or connecting with loved ones—specific areas of the brain activate, releasing feel-good chemicals like dopamine.

However, many of us encounter roadblocks on the path to pleasure. These obstacles can come in the form of trauma, insecurities, limiting beliefs, or societal pressures.

*Pleasure and the Nervous System* is an immersive workshop designed to explore your capacity for feeling pleasure.

WHAT THE EVENT LOOKS LIKE:

This is a two-day experience designed to dive deep into your nervous system and the senses.

This workshop includes opportunities to:
- Diving into the basics of polyvagal theory and its connection to pleasure
- Understanding how self-regulation and coregulation can enhance your pleasure
- Identifying and overcoming obstacles that stand between you and the pleasure you desire
- Expanding your capacity to receive pleasure—a skill you can develop!
- Discovering unexplored pathways to pleasure that are waiting for you
- Exploring intimacy languages and understanding which ones resonate with you

This weekend is all about embracing different forms of pleasure and intimacy, creating a space to explore what excites you, while accepting that not everything will resonate (and that's valuable information too). It’s a playful, insightful journey into what makes you tingle—the ultimate pleasure lab.

**What to expect this weekend:**

- Sensory experiences that engage your eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and skin
- A gradual build-up, starting with connecting to your inner guidance and setting boundaries
- A slower pace to allow for deeper feelings and awareness
- A mix of short exercises to meet new people (if you choose) and longer ones for deeper dives
- Neuroscience insights to help rewire your neural pathways for long-lasting change

**Things we’ll play with:**
- Stimulating all five senses: sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste
- Touch-based exercises, including sensual touch (with clothes on—this is a "pink" event, no genital contact)
- Using tools like ropes, blindfolds, feathers, and more to enhance the experience
- Inspiration from the Wheel of Consent, Ritual Play, eclectic neo-tantra, and consensual power dynamics
- Practicing seduction, anticipation, and other ways to build and sustain pleasure

This weekend is all about nourishing yourself. It’s a chance to deepen your relationship with yourself, your partner(s), new friends, or even life itself. You'll explore new patterns, shake up old routines, and bring healing to the parts of you that need love and attention.

This is a PINK event, which means that during parts of the event, partial nudity and sensual play are possible. Underpants stay on, and sexual interactions are not permitted. You can participate in the full weekend while being fully dressed and without touching anyone. We do ask you to be comfortable with partial nudity and sensuality in the room.

FOR WHO IS THIS WEEKEND?
This weekend is for everyone curious about pleasure. The workshop is suitable for pragmatists (it’s very much science-based with little woo). It’s a workshop suitable for those new in the scene.

All our workshops are queer-centered and straight-friendly. That means, to us, that our workshops embrace diversity beyond the traditional cisgender, straight, slender, abled, neurotypical, or young body.

This event welcomes folks from all walks of life. We are LGBTQIIA+ informed (Wilrieke and most of her team identify as such), slut-friendly, trauma-informed, and non-monogamy informed. White folks are overrepresented in our team and life experiences are coloured through that lens. We do come from different social backgrounds and have different life experiences when it comes to health, wealth, neurodiversity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

We welcome folks with disabilities. We can adapt exercises so that they fit you. Where we can we will support you. If you have a person/animal that supports you in daily activities that you need to bring for your care, they can of course come with you without buying a ticket. Please reach out if you have special needs, and we will discuss how we can support you. In case we cannot comfort your needs, we will honestly let you know.

You can come alone (many people do), with your partner/s or friend/s. If you come with a partner/partners you are welcome to stay together for the whole workshop, or play with others too.

The weekend consists of exercises that you can do on your own, in two’s, or in larger groups. There will be sharings in smaller groups and in the whole group.

As in all of our workshops, you are encouraged to sit out of anything. Witnessing is valid participation.

👋 ABOUT WILRIEKE SOPHIA
Wilrieke Sophia (they/them) is a sex & intimacy educator, (TEDx) speaker, advisor & coach for creative makers and scientists, author, and founder of Exploring Deeper and Cuddle Workshops International.

The main focus of their work is empowerment through self-knowledge and understanding, radical self-inclusion, the embodied experiencing of boundaries and desires, and an extensive practice of consent – all based on a foundation of trauma awareness and neuroscience, embedded in experiential spaces based on interpersonal connective practices. They collaborate with artists and scientists, and are a supervisor and mentor.

With their project Red Flags in Workshops, Wilrieke creates free materials on e.g. accountability, abuse, and power dynamics in the intimacy and wellness communities.

www.exploringdeeper.com
www.redflagsinworkshops.com
www.wilriekesophia.com

Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Fetlife: @WilriekeSophia

SOME PRACTICAL INFORMATION
The week before the event, you will receive an email with detailed information for the day, including the address and what to bring. Make sure you sign up with the email address that you use. Check your spam filter if you did not receive an email five days before the event (if you have unsubscribed from our newsletter, these emails cannot reach you!).

Timings:
Saturday: 10.00h – 18.00h (doors open at 9.30h)
Sunday: 10.00h – 18.00h (doors open at 9.30h)

We will provide snacks, you will provide your own meals (potluck style), and lodging.

➡️ Make sure to have a decent sheet well before the play party. Check the FAQ for tips and recommendations.

ACCESSIBILITY
This workshop space is called Awananda. The elevators in this building are out of order - the owner won’t fix this to our regret. There are stairs to enter the building. On the ground floor is an all-access bathroom. The workshop is on the first floor. There are two stairs to get there. There are several bathrooms on the first floor (no all-accessible bathrooms), and a kitchen with lunch facilities, including a fridge and a microwave. There are mattresses in the workshop space. There is no shower.

The venue has free parking (with a description you will receive via email) and Utrecht CS is a 20-minute walk.

----
➡️ EVENT SOLD OUT? QUESTIONS ABOUT PRACTICALITIES? THE FAQ TELLS YOU WHAT TO DO AND WHERE TO GO: www.exploringdeeper.com/faq.

If you do not find your answer there, feel free to message us via the Hipsy website!
----

Our Terms and Conditions apply to all our events: http://www.exploringdeeper.com/terms-and-conditions/.