The School for Ethical Touch is our response to the lasting negative impacts we have witnessed and experienced in the context of traditionally authoritarian models of healthcare, our recognition that these choices and behaviors are not inevitable, and our longing to participate in something better. We feel that it’s high time for a considerate and thorough re-imagining of the culture and practice of care provision. 

When therapeutic exchanges are transparent and considerate, predicated upon informed consent and refusal, and grounded in the full engagement and empowerment of a person in their own care, the recovery and healing process becomes a relational act, one that fosters trust in the intrinsic capacities of our bodies and in the providers who are supporting them.

Rather than continuing to double down on outdated, detrimental attitudes and focusing on managing liability as the sole response, we propose that the time is long overdue to address the roots of power-over dynamics in the culture of care as a microcosm of the culture at large, to radicalize and humanize the role of the provider, and to transform provider education and standards of practice to responsibly meet those in need of care with the generosity and respect they deserve.

We believe this to be a simple, powerful and immediately applicable remedy.

As somatic practitioners and manual therapists engaged in hands-on care with our patients and clients, we believe that this proposal is of greatest relevance for providers whose scope of practice includes physical touch of any kind - and, because the impacts of the failure to center the agency of the patient/client are amplified exponentially in the vulnerable realm of sexual and reproductive healthcare, we find that there is a particularly urgent need to offer this education to providers whose scope of practice includes pelvic health.

In our work with birthing people as well as with survivors of sexual violence and other forms of intimate trauma, we have long observed the overwhelming need for providers who are able to offer skillful, ethical, trauma-informed touch rooted in the understanding and practice of dynamic embodied consent. 

photography by Beth Moon

The body is the ground where we individually and collectively navigate our relationship to healing and health, and the work of SET takes place here, in the realm of flesh and bone.

This school is a home for those who wish to enter into therapeutic relationships that occur beyond the traditional power-over dynamics of care provision, and that nurture the wisdom that is innate to each and every human being.

We envision a world where healing work, in the manifold ways we practice, occurs in the spirit of shared humanity brought to bear on the fragilities, vulnerabilities, and needs we all hold in common. As such, it is a world where healing is also a meeting of minds, a ritual of agreement and empowerment. In this way, we seek to address and contextualize not only the healing of the individual, but also of the collective/social body and of the great body of the earth.