Course Description
This self-directed online course includes reading, video viewing, somatic inquiries, online assignments, and one-to-one support from faculty. There is a weekly support call for advanced students and continued access to our community of practice calls. This program requires a minimum time commitment of 10 hours per unit and your registration is valid for 9 months from the date of purchase.
Course Content
Unit 1: Embodied Ethics
Unit One introduces students to the living, counter-normative ethics that ground Somatic Sex Education. Students learn how these ethics differ from dominant Western frameworks, why it matters to honor the political and cultural lineages that shaped them, and how centering anti-oppression, somatic tools, and peer-based culture-building creates safer, more generative alternatives to shame and punishment. This unit frames ethics not as a fixed path or checklist, but as a responsive, relational practice that invites curiosity, complexity, and mystery—while also cultivating respect for the wisdom and leadership of sex workers within the SSE field.
Unit 2: Intake and Assessment
Unit Two equips students with the practical foundations for working with clients through thoughtful, trauma-aware intake and assessment. Students build and organize their personal Somatic Sex Education toolbox, gather a range of assessment tools, and learn why there is no single “right” way to conduct an intake. Students will learn and practice core tools such as Somatic Alliance and Somatic Racial Safety, be introduced to real-world examples of intake systems from working practitioners, will develop skills to safely vet clients and events and complete the unit with their own draft SSE intake ready to use and refine.
Unit 3: Mindful Erotic Practice/Masturbation Coaching
Unit Three students learn how to work skillfully with erotic attention, shame, and pleasure. Students continue their exploration of Mindful Erotic Practice as a core SSE tool, for self and with practice clients, and explore Core Erotic Themes as a way to understand desire and patterning. We explore adaptive positions, foundational sex-coaching principles, and practical tools to explore how shame takes shape and how to interrupt shame in the body.
Unit 4: Empowering Voice and Choice
Unit Four deepens students’ embodied understanding of consent through theory, practice, and reflection. Students learn to explain the Wheel of Consent—its origins and its relevance to Somatic Sex Education—while distinguishing between boundaries, domain, and limits. We will refine skills with foundational practices such as Waking Up the Hands, the 3-Minute Game, and the Spectrum of Response, and learn how to make consent communication accessible for non-verbal people and those with limited or unreliable speech. Through exploring our own comfort zones within the Wheel and practicing Bossy Touch, students integrate insight into both giving and receiving, supported by guided reflection.
Unit 5: Working with Trauma
Unit Five offers tools to work with trauma, grief, and systemic harm with clarity, skill, and care. Students learn how to practice as trauma-informed Somatic Sex Educators, understand the distinctions between SSE and psychotherapy, and deepen their capacity to stay present with the embodied histories carried by BIPOC clients and communities. This unit includes guided breathwork and somatic emotional release, trauma-informed client-directed touch, and frameworks for tending grief, while critically examining Polyvagal Theory and cultivating practices of voice, choice, and anti-oppressive care in client sessions.
Unit 6: Pelvic Pain, Scars and Dearoumouring Touch
Unit Six centers pelvic health, pleasure, and healing as a core practice in Somatic Sex Education. Students deepen their anatomical and embodied understanding of the pelvis while gaining practical tools to support pelvic floor awareness and clients living with pelvic pain. Through learning about dearmouring, trauma-informed gynecology, and pelvic steaming, and by witnessing and practicing client-directed scar tissue work, including on circumcision, cesarean, and top surgery scars. This unit also examines the pain pleasure continuum, highlighting how pleasure and mindful presence can interrupt chronic pain patterns and support lasting sexual and somatic wellbeing.
Unit 7: Pleasure Mapping
Unit Seven immerses students in the diversity of ways to have “pleasure anatomy,” including all kinds of tissues of arousal, genitals, and non-biological genitals. Students witness and practice pleasure-mapping, genital, chest, and breast touch across many body types and anatomies while learning how sensation exploration can support clients in discovering and trusting their own pleasure-seeking impulses. Through client-directed erotic touch, pleasure mapping (including online formats), and guided reflection on both giving and receiving, students gain practical tools for helping clients follow their inner yes and cultivate a deeper, more self-directed relationship with pleasure.
Unit 8: Anal Mapping and Massage
Unit Eight builds students’ confidence and competence in working with anal anatomy. Students deepen both their anatomical and embodied understanding of the anus while learning essential principles for safe, attuned anal touch, including pacing, working with the resilient edge of resistance, and recognizing different forms of anal pain. Through witnessing and practicing anal mapping and massage, and integrating learning through guided reflection, students develop practical, client-directed skills to support anal pleasure, comfort, and trust.
Unit 9: Loving Justice
Unit Nine supports students in developing grounded, compassionate approaches to conflict, accountability, and repair. Using frameworks such as the Window of Transformation and the Loving Justice Heart Map, students learn how to hold multiple truths, navigate nervous system responses, and stay connected during moments of harm or disagreement. Through exploring account-ability, non-disposability, indispensability, and joyful accountability, students create a personalized map for how they will respond to conflict and potential harm in their Somatic Sex Education practice.
Unit 10: Active Receiving and Sensual Massage
Unit Ten explores active receiving as a powerful, collaborative practice that invites us into co-creating pleasure and intimacy through breath, sound, movement, and choice. Students learn and practice sensual massage, discover how vocal expression can open pathways to freedom and connection, and explore inclusive erotic work with people with disabilities. Through demonstrations and hands-on practice; including pleasure-centered, client-directed erotic touch, students expand their understanding of erotic diversity.
Unit 11: Erotic Massage Ritual
Unit Eleven brings together the core skills of the program through the practice of Erotic Massage Ritual. Students learn to distinguish Erotic Trance from partner connection, explore the power of the body’s “inner pharmacy,” and develop ritual skills through intention, spontaneity and improvisation. By witnessing high-arousal, emotionally rich rituals, including a four-handed session, and by facilitating and reflecting on their own Erotic Massage Rituals, students gain a deeper understanding of how structured, intentional touch can support expanded states of arousal and transformation.
Unit 12: Developing Your Unique Contribution to the Field
Unit Twelve supports students to reflect on self-care within the larger context of community care and socio-political realities, explore multiple models of SSE practice, and articulate their own intentions and guiding principles through a personal Somatic Sex Educator Manifesto. The unit concludes with self-assessment, course evaluation, and evaluation call with their mentor to clarify next steps, electives, and pathways forward in the program.
Please review our Student Agreement Form, which outlines what our program offers, how students are evaluated and the process for working toward certification, and Institute policies and procedures, prior to enrolling. Our program is unique, and we encourage you to review this document so you know what to expect from us and what we ask of you. Upon registration you will be given access to the online curriculum where you will see this form again. At that time we ask you to initial to agree to each point and add your signature at the bottom. An electronic copy of your completed form will be emailed to you and one copy will be kept in our records.
Course Includes
Course includes reading, video viewing, somatic inquiries, hands on practice session, online assignments, and one-to-one support from faculty.
Course Textbooks
Included with the cost of the course:
- Anatomy of Pleasure by Onika Henry, Caffyn Jesse, with artwork by Rocklyne Taariq Cornwal and illustrations by Murali Shanmugam.
Course Textbooks to Purchase
- Caffyn Jesse, Science for Sexual Happiness
- Caffyn Jesse and Shauna Farabaugh, Pelvic Pain Clinic
- Richard Strozzi-Heckler, The Art of Somatic Coaching: Embodying Skillful Action, Wisdom, and Compassion
- Betty Martin and Robyn Dalzen, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent
* Your Course Textbooks (must be purchased separately) are available in Kindle or hard copy from bookstores and online retailers:
** Caffyn has made their books available for purchase as a digital download for ISSSE students HERE.
*** Please also refer back to “Care-Full Consumerism” from Course 1 for additional resources on sourcing texts.
Course Pricing
Refund Policy: No refunds are available for online courses.
Canadian Student Payment Options
Canadian Students have the option to make payment via e-transfer. Please email us at info@somaticsexeducator.com to inquire about this option.