September 3 months:
Consent-based
Teaching Artist program
for artists, consultants, freelancers, + aspiring educators
VIRTUAL: Mondays 9/8–11/17 + Wednesdays 9/24–11/19 at 5–7pm PT / 8–10pm ET. Recordings will be available to students after each class. These recordings will not be available after class has passed.
For students who can’t attend class live, there will be optional sessions Thursdays 9/18, 10/9, 10/30, and 11/20 so you can still participate live.
Please note: This program is intended for live participation and exercises; while you are welcome to register if you can’t attend live class times, students who can attend live either during regular class times or Thursday makeup sessions are strongly encouraged to do so.
Find your unique approach to your field, build your own curriculum for classes and coaching, and build your business to support your creative work.
This program is founded on principles of autonomy and agency.
I believe that consent is a shared responsibility, not that of one person or demographic. I believe we have to take responsibility for risks we knowingly take and choices we make, and move through regret when it comes. I don’t believe in blaming and punishing people we miseducate through media and poor consent education. I believe in rehabilitation and repair. I believe we have an obligation to each other to learn our own boundaries and communicate them, as much as we have an obligation to ask and check in. I think if we redirect resources towards healing, support, and education — and away from trying to identify who’s at fault so we can punish them (often with incarceration) — we would all be better off.
Part of my respecting your autonomy is trusting you to know yourself and what you need to take care of yourself. I will support you in building a care plan at the beginning of class to help you deal with tough things as they come up.
What is this program about?
Do you feel like you do too many things? Are you a jack of all trades, master of none? You think the things you do might all be related, but you’re struggling to connect the dots? Have you reached the limits of other forms of support (such as talk therapy), either as a practitioner or a client, and do you want practical tools, skills, vocab, and exercises for yourself and your clients?
This program will help you bring consent work into your art and build a teaching practice and business that sustains your artwork. You will learn tools to access your creativity, work through perfectionism, mythbust the idea that making money off your work makes you a baaaaaaad evil Capitalist, and find or reconnect with your voice. You will embody consent and feel your boundaries in subtler and deeper ways, and you’ll be able to support others in doing the same. You’ll receive business support to tackle people pleasing and perfectionism, reckon with your inner critic, build a brand manual and successful social media presence, market yourself while prioritizing your self expression, and prevent burnout.
This program combines two of my courses: my Consent Educator Training with Biz Support, and Unblocked. Consent Educator Training and Unblocked have unlimited spots that anyone may sign up for, but the business support portion is limited to 20 slots, exclusively for students who submit an application and enroll in the Consent Educator Training and/or Unblocked courses. Please read more about Unblocked for a fuller picture what we’ll be doing.
If you’re confused about this, I explain it in this video. If you’re still confused, email me.
My approach is somatic, integrative, anti-carceral, anti-cancellation, anti-binary, + based in helping others find their voice.
“Loving your craft means you should get paid more for it, not less.”
Is this program a good fit for me?
If you find yourself…
struggling with people-pleasing tendencies in your work
feeling a codependent relationship with your art (“People need this from me, so I will give and give and give”)
feeling guilt or shame about making money with your art
struggling to find motivation to create
not knowing where to start or when to stop
wanting to make more money from your art
wanting to find a sacred relationship with play
wanting a more easeful relationship with your authenticity and creative self-expression
grappling with your ego as an artist and wanting to believe what you have is worth sharing without feeling like an arrogant shithead
interested in taking your career to the next level while keeping in alignment with your values
… this program is for you.
This program has included:
body workers
therapists
designers and architects
movement coaches
a sex surrogate
a cuddle therapist
a mural painter
a yoga teacher
a gender consultant
an occupational therapist + dog trainer
a tarot reader + ritual guide
a pro domme + BDSM educator
What will we be learning?
I believe that consent is magic. Through deep attunement to yourself and to others, I believe we can find synchronistic flow, foster deeper, more trusting relationships with ourselves and others, and become the people and business owners we want to be as we build the world we want to live in.
A somatic consent practice is a key tool for healing childhood attachment wounds, both with the self and with others. Attachment wounds can disrupt your ability to have a secure relationship with yourself, with your clients, and with your business. This program will help you build your own consent practice and support your clients in cultivating their own.
You’ll learn:
to teach the Yes-to-No Spectrum, FRIES, nonverbals, and other consent vocabulary and structures
to make a care plan and assist others in making their own
to make a marketing funnel and a yearly marketing cycle
to make a “lead generator” and get people to sign up for your mailing list
to find creativity in social media and manage your social media boundaries to avoid burnout
to treat the content you create as an organic, flowing ecosystem where no one creation is single-use
to build your own curriculum and create practice exercises
and so much more!
Recommended (Optional) Reading:
Queer Attachment Zine
Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong
When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate
Disability Visibility by Alice Wong
Turn This World Upside Down by Nora Samaran
Body of Health by Francesca McCartney
On Connection by Kae Tempest
Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication Workbook by Meenadchi
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
This is a trauma- and toxic stress–aware, neurodiversity-informed approach to consent that takes the gut-brain axis into account.
Consent is more than “no means no” or getting permission. Consent is a language and an embodied practice.
If you aren’t confident enough to raise your rates so you can work less, if you struggle to say “no” or feel your boundaries with clients, if you want to advocate for yourself and your work in networking or press scenarios, or even if you are looking for more creative flow, this program will support you. This grounding, strengthening work can soften or even remove your creative blocks, help you become less emotionally porous and absorbent, and provide a deeper sense of trust within yourself. You can bring that internal sense of safety with you everywhere you go.
Class structure
Class will meet live on Zoom Monday and Wednesday evenings (see dates and times at the top of this page). For those who can’t attend class live and are watching the recordings, or simply want more practice, there will be additional sessions on Thursdays for you to get live practice with other students.
In addition to our live classes, you will receive several pre-recorded classes with hours’ worth of material to do on your own time, as well as assignments for you to complete, exercises to practice, and recommended reading and listening. Assignments are optional and not graded or quizzed, but keep in mind that, as with any class, you will get out of it what you put in.
Each student will also receive three dedicated, one-on-one meetings with me to tailor what you’re learning to your business and personal needs.
Class content
Our first six meetings are the Consent Educator Training, where we’ll learn about the Yes-to-No Spectrum, the Consent Iceberg, FRIES, the Wheel of Consent®, nonverbal consent, patterns in early consent learning, handling grief, wanting vs. needing, apologies and regret, and more essential topics you can use and teach in and beyond consent work.
Beginning in week 5, we’ll embark on the Unblocked curriculum, which will tackle imposter syndrome, perfectionism, burnout, confidence, and a variety of trauma-informed essentials such as codependency, attachment theory, polyvagal theory, the mind–gut connection, and neurodivergence. You can read about Unblocked in detail here.
Concurrent with Unblocked, we’ll dig deep into business: What do boundaries look like around work? How can you build consent concepts into your brand? How can you develop a healthy relationship with marketing, sales, branding, and making money? We will discuss money blockages, scarcity mentality, Capitalism, creativity and boundaries in social media, reusing content to get the most of what you’ve made, and how to build a scalable business structure.
Assignments outside of class will include things like:
Teaching the content we’ve learned
Running the practice exercises we do in class with people in your life
Writing letters to yourself as a child
Writing your business manifesto or mission statement
Making a brand manual
Various journal prompts
Coming up with your own definitions and explanations to teach
PLEASE NOTE:
This program will help you build a foundation and a structure for a scaleable business. Don’t expect to make six figures right away. You will have a year-long plan that you can repeat and scale up with more students, signups, and sales, but this work takes time. People need to find out who you are and what you do.
Please don’t go into debt for this program! Whatever amount you pay for this program should not wipe you out financially.
In addition to learning with me, you will also get to study with several guest educators:
Meenadchi (name/they) is a facilitator, author of Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication, and CW educator. You will be able to attend their class on Decolonized and Trauma-Informed Nonviolent Communication.
Brooks Herr (they/them) is a genderqueer witch, artist, and CW educator whose work focuses on the power of ritual and ceremony, drawing from witchcraft, ancestor work, tarot, somatics and energy healing. The guiding core of this work is to cultivate a practice of intuitive listening and response wherein we locate empowerment, integrity, authentic information, and (re)connection to our impulses and inner knowing. The program includes Brooks’s class on grief.
Afomia Hailemeskel (she/her) is a content creator, actor, singer, consultant, and CW educator program alum. She will teach our class on Authenticity in Social Media. Watch our conversation about what brought Afomia to the Educator Training, what she got out of it and continues to get out of it, and her Authenticity in Social Media class.
Risdon Roberts (she/they) is an Intimacy Consultant, CW Consent Educator, and Restorative Circle Facilitator. Her work is centered in divesting from binary thinking and disposability politics while supporting individual transformation in the context of community as part of a larger liberatory praxis. They are also a Surrogate Partner Therapist and advocate for Sex Workers’ rights. Ridson will teach our class on Regret and Repair.
Here’s what you need to know:
Full program pricing
The full program has three pricing tiers depending on your circumstances. It costs:
$7200 if you have an established business for 1+ years.
$5200 if you are in the planning phase of launching your business or within the first year of your business.
$3600 if you are in the planning phase of launching your business and you are currently under- or unemployed, are a sex worker, have debilitating student loans or medical costs (including gender-affirming care), have ever been incarcerated, live somewhere where the exchange rate makes the full price cost-prohibitive, or have ancestors who experienced land theft or slavery.
additional options
If you want to do just the Consent Educator Training without Biz Support, it is $800.
If you want to do just Unblocked, it is $800. You can register here.
If you want to do the Consent Educator Training OR Unblocked but not both, and still get the Biz Support program, you can pay the above prices minus $800. Biz support, including bonus classes by guest educators and 1:1 sessions with Mia, is not available without doing one of the other programs.
To help make this more accessible, I offer a 6-week payment plan. You must put down a deposit of 1/3 the program cost at least two weeks before our first class. If you are in a country where the exchange rate makes this program financially inaccessible, you are welcome to make me an offer. I ask that you consider what you can invest that will hold you accountable to the work. You can read about why my prices are what they are on my Business + Financial Transparency page.
Have questions? Email me!
What are past Educators up to now?
Rebekah Rose has been commissioned for public art at their full rate, and teaches consent and art throughout Los Angeles.
Sharon Vincuilla is providing private coaching on co-regulation and consent-based collaborative care within the human–dog relationships. You can watch our conversation about what brought her to the program and how she’s incorporated it into her business.
Bobbie Esposito manifested their dream job and teaches consent principles to kids through rock climbing. They’re working on a program to help climbers care for themselves and work through burnout.
If you want to hear more from past Educator Trainees, check out my conversations with Laila Makled, Rebekah Rose, and Mari de Luna.
Before you sign up, you should consider:
A lot of grief comes up in this work. Relationships fall away as you begin to stand up for yourself and voice your boundaries. You will likely experience grief (or anticipatory grief) for those relationships, as well as grief for your past self and how different things could have been.
Your standards will go up. This will contribute to relationships ending, but it will also help you gravitate towards and pull in more aligned, fulfilling, easeful relationships.
The consent concepts we’ll go over in class are things you cannot unsee. I mean this in the best way. The world around you will become clearer, more specific, and you’ll see communication in granular detail. You’ll be able to not monitor or constrain yourself because you will become fluent with the concepts. It will becomes easy and intuitive. However—and this isn’t intended to scare you, nor is it an exaggeration—your life will change and there’s no going back.
The first half of the program focuses on consent concepts. The second half will focus on business, which will include digging into your relationship with money. We will talk about finding your voice in your work, what you want to offer, how to maintain boundaries with your work, and how to engage in marketing, branding, and social media in a way that feels sustainable and authentic and avoids burnout.
This is a business program. It’s to help you start, develop, or restructure your business using concepts of consent and boundaries in a trauma-informed way. My goal is to help you make more money.
Tough shit comes up in here. Old stuff gets the dust kicked off of it. Trauma can come up. I (or the guest teacher) am the only facilitator in the room so we cannot come support on an individual basis. You will have time in Class 1 to develop your care plan.
“Are you making enough money to live your values? We are dreaming a new economy of care into being when we’re willing to thrive and support each other in thriving.”
“There is magic in desire. Asking for what you want is the spell.”
“All flourishing is mutual.”
Are you ready? Fill out your application here.
Keep scrolling to see what folks are saying about the program:
“Mia’s integrity shines through every corner and moment in this program. They visibly care and act to create a container that is flexible, transparent, aware and honoring of bodily and emotional needs. The intellectual, spiritual and creative stimulation and inspiration is overspilling and generous as fuck. Via a constant sharing of theoretical frameworks, thought process, guest thinkers and great prompts. I haven’t seen many programs that combine theoretical foundation, business and social media guidance in such a way. My cohort was brilliant and I strongly recommend doing this course for folks who want to creatively grow and develop their unique pedagogical offering.”
“Mia is a patient and generous educator. The way they conceptualize consent is so rich and nuanced that, once you’ve encountered it, going back to a binary or reductive approach is inconceivable. It’s nothing short of a revelation. In this course, I found myself connecting with others around obstacles to creativity, and in so doing, I experienced increased lightness and ease around being creative. My expectations were met and exceeded as I found discussions on people pleasing, the inner critic, and perfectionism facilitated more comfort and confidence in my own creative aspirations and projects. The exercises, journalling prompts, and discussions enriched my creative practices and sparked self-reflection. For me, there is immense value in engaging with this approach to consent—for creativity and beyond—and I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone.”
“I took the Consent Wizadry Consent Educator Series and was blown away by all of the things that I did not know, and the way that the depths to which the Yes-to-know spectrum goes to help you considering both body and mind. I am an erotic embodiment professional and was looking for more ways to deepen my own consent practice as well as to broaden ways for me to teach my clients and students. Mia truly is a true Wizard. They synthesize multiple modalities of consent, as well as verbal and non-verbal communication skills. I chose Mia’s class because there was queer, trans, non-binary and BIPOC inclusivity. This was represented in the makeup of the class participants as well as the guest facilitators. Representation and inclusivity matters to me as a queer black non-binary femme. I would take this class again and would recommend it to others.”
“I chose to take the consent educator course because I felt like most of my coaching clients really needed this work, but because many of them were navigating a lot of trauma, they felt safer getting this education from me than another person. I am so grateful that I made the investment even though it was really scary for me at the time. I have used what I learned in every capacity of my work: as a sex coach, as a surrogate partner, and as a restorative practices facilitator. I especially loved some of the guest speakers and learning about how to market and manage a business. I am still in close touch with my cohort, and we use each other as a resource and that has been invaluable. I’m so grateful I chose to invest in this program and highly recommend it for anybody that feels it’s an alignment with their offerings.”
“Mia’s Consent Educator course was everything I hoped for. It gave me the push, confidence, and resources I needed to start my own business and teach consent to others. Mia also held space that allowed for inspirational and supportive relationships with other folks in the cohort to form. I am beyond grateful to Mia for all the work and care they put into building this curriculum and know I will be referencing it for years to come.”
“Mia’s consent educator program needs to be a requirement for businesses starters. It gave me the language, frameworks and somatic tools to state and live my boundaries with confidence and care.”
“I loved taking the Consent Educator class with Mia and would recommend it to everyone, educator or not. It is Mia’s particular style and flavor of facilitating that makes learning easy, fun, and surprisingly intuitive. The concepts they introduced were ideas of consent and relationship that my body has always known but had never articulated out loud before. In addition to learning from Mia, I received opportunities throughout the course to learn from the container itself. My cohort was chock full of folks whom I admired in their work and integrity. I loved being able to learn from and alongside my peers in a well-facilitated and nuanced way. This is a class that I would absolutely invest in again, because I know the learnings will become richer each time round.”
“I had the pleasure of being a part of Mia’s consent educator course. I enjoyed every minute of it. I took a workshop with Mia quite a few months ago and from that one workshop I could tell that they were very special kind a teacher, someone I could be very excited to learn from. Not only is Mia super educated and intelligent, they also have a way of living in their own personal experiences into the curriculum. In a way that makes it not only relatable but easier to grasp and understand. If you’re thinking about this course and you’re not quite sure whether or not this program is the right fit for you, I’m telling you that you should do it and give it a try because it may give you a lot of new perspective on your own life, business, and consent in general. ”
“I had no idea what to do with my work. I had been running an extremely small business into which I had never put my full attention, sitting in the car 10 to 15 hours per week, providing services to a very affluent and white demographic who did not truly appreciate what I offered, and drowning in the shame of not actively acknowledging my privilege or addressing the ways that oppressive systems work through me. I needed to change, but I was overwhelmed and anxious and did not know where to start. I began a long journey of self actualization and lifestyle reimagining and found along the way that, as I set firmer boundaries and became more authentically me, I was leaving some relationships behind and others were also choosing to let me go on without them. I became very lonely and a bit discouraged and needed help.
Being part of Mia’s Consent Educator Course was like being welcomed into a magical guild of explorers; nourished with care; and embarking on a comprehensive growth inducing quest. I was taken under Mia’s soft wizard robes and connected with others traveling on similar journeys. I found that I was accepted. For who I am. Without question. I was given a practical guide, resources, and guidance to develop skills. I was told I can do this and wrapped in warm genuine encouragement as I tried on new ways of being my professional self. The glimpses of my future self and work became more clear. I saw and experienced magic in my own life, discovered who I am, and embraced the idea that I am a being who can allow magic to flow through me.
When I look for evidence that I have traveled, I see that I am developing curricula for new service offerings, practicing with a group of people every week, continuing to engage in practices of play and learning, and collaborating with designers to develop an artistic direction for a new entrepreneurial endeavor. I have a new business name and I found more clear and effective ways to title my role and describe what I do. I have new clients who are fully on board with what I offer and who validate the ideas that form the foundation of my work. I have a network of other magical beings with whom I can continue to grow and I have strategies to keep developing skills in asking for help, remaining regulated, and advocating for myself and others. I am so grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of Mia’s Consent Educator Course; it was an extremely significant component of my journey and something that has contributed to a strong foundation for a much healthier life.”
“Being taught by Mia has been such a joy. Because of their educator training I’ve been able to straighten out where and how I’d like to use consent work, which was so unclear to me before starting this course. This clarity hasn’t only improved my ability to see myself actively participating in teaching consent work, but it has improved how I interact with those I am in relationship with on a regular basis. Whether it be my new found love for grounding in gratitude instead of apologizing (brought to my attention by Mia) or my ability to detect shifts in the way folks around me are feeling based on prosody and nonverbal communication- and don’t even get me started on their Yes-to-No spectrum, which I now use as a warm nudge to remember just how important my gut is. I highly recommend giving any of Mia’s classes a try, and letting the growth speak for itself.”