SPARK—a course on empowering your creative-erotic self + accessing radical pleasure

SPARk is an inclusive course and community focused on accessing and deepening your relationship to your innate creative energy and erotic power and potential through writing + Art.

SPARK is designed for women, femmes, genderqueer, and nonbinary folks.

Offering wisdom from professional writers, a sex therapist, a sexual + reproductive health and justice educator, a burlesque performer, and a boudoir photographer, Spark is a 9-week guided course and community. The course includes lessons, exercises, practices, and support to tap into the vast stores of creative energy contained in our sexual, erotic, and pleasure-seeking drives. We use writing, movement, and other art to explore and expand our erotic power and expression.

Do you crave inspiration? How about more creative ideas and output? More pleasure, more joy, more creativity, more intimacy, or more community?

Um…yes? Who doesn’t?

We’re not offering quick tricks or magical snake oil that instantly create all of the above—but this course and community does provide the support and guidance to build profound relationships and connection with your body and your creative-sexual source—the deep, innate well from which these forces of creativity, eroticism, sexuality, and pleasure arise.

You can expect to gain:

• an increase in creative inspiration and output

• wisdom from professional artists, healers, and educators

• a deepened relationship to your creative self, as well as to your body, sexual + sensual self, and pleasure

• regular experiences of and rituals + practices for pleasure, joy, and creativity

• knowledge and understanding of inherited and acquired blocks + resistances around your creative and erotic force

• shifts and healing of shame + negative narratives

• heightened pleasure + intimacy with yourself and others

• connection to like-minded folks in a compassionate community

When/where is this course?

We will meet every Monday from 6-7:30 pm MT (5-6:30 PT, 7-8:30 CT, 8-9:30 ET) for nine weeks.

Beginning Monday February 28th to April 25th.

All class meetings will be live on Zoom.

You will receive lessons and exercises for in-class and home-play each week.

But… What if I don’t have a partner? What if I have many partners? What if I’m celibate? What if I’m asexual or graysexual? What if I don’t or can’t have orgasms?

You are welcome here.

What if I’m queer? What if I’m hetero? What if I’m bisexual or pansexual? What if I’m cis, trans, genderqueer, or nonbinary?

you are welcome here.

What if I’m menopausal or post-menopausal? What if I’ve never had sex (however you define it)? What if I’m into kink, or not?

You are welcome here.

If this course and topic appeal to you, then YOU BELONG HERE, whatever the erotic means and looks like to you.

We want to have a range of experiences and expressions of the erotic. As we see it, there are INFINITE EXPRESSIONS OF THE EROTIC. Our dream here is to share a variety of personal perspectives to expand ALL of our definitions of what sexuality IS and looks like. We want to blow open our narrow cultural conception of sexuality and the erotic to call back in everything it has excluded, ignored, repressed, and disowned. We want women and nonbinary folks to RECLAIM our definitions and the power that comes through defining and naming ourselves.

YOU get to define your sexuality and show up with it in whatever shapes and forms and expressions you choose (so long, of course, as we all respect the safety, humanity, and fullness of every member of the course and community).

We want to own that we are two cisgender, queer-identifying, white women. We commit to doing our best to making the space inclusive and open—and also acknowledge that we will have blindspots and make mistakes. Our goal is to make a community and space where we can all learn and expand from each other’s perspectives and call each other in when we may be causing accidental harm.

Why the creative and the erotic (together)? 

Because creativity and the erotic—our intimate connection with ourselves, with others, and with the world—are interdependent. 

Our social conditioning and the social water in which we swim (patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, sexism) dissects and divorces the two. Because this conditioning has a very prickly and oppressive relationship to sexuality, it labels the erotic taboo, bad, shameful, and wrong. This is an effective strategy to separate women and nonbinary folks from the power of the erotic. Similarly, creativity often gets labeled frivolous, unnecessary, and selfish. People (yep, women and nonbinary folks, especially) are assigned guilt and shame for wanting to pursue their passions and take time for creative pleasure. 

We’ve also found, through our own experiences and through listening to others, that addressing the blockages and healing the stories around our sexuality has a ripple effect on our creative process and output—and vice versa. As writers, we have found the writing process to be one of the most healing and empowering ways to understand and express our sexual identities. This course offers a safe, welcoming communal space to explore, expand, heal, and express your sexuality and erotic energies. You do NOT have to be a writer to thrive in this space, and this is not a how-to workshop for sex writing. 

WE SEE SEXUALITY AND THE EROTIC AS PATHWAYS TO RADICAL PLEASURE AND CREATIVITY.

The course runs on the premise that creativity is an erotic and/or sexual process. We’ll dive into this idea in the sessions, but essentially, the act of creation—whether writing, dancing, art-making, culture-making, baby-making—is the fertilization of material (receptacle, container, seed, egg) with the spark of idea (vision, will, action). We’ll use this concept to better understand and deepen our creative drives and processes.

This course also focuses on the shame and fears stored and storied in our beliefs and feelings about our sexuality. Not only do these fears restrict our experience of intimacy and pleasure, they also drain our creative energy and insight.

As we begin to heal and clear blockages (through play, validation, and connection to others), and explore our embodied sexual and creative selves, we gain access to huge amounts of creative potential—which we can learn to channel into specific creative containers—projects, practices…and yes, pleasure.

Who is this course for? 

This course is for you, if: 

• you want to get in touch with (and/or reconnect) with your creativity to build a practice in a structured, supportive way.

• you want to deepen your relationship to your body, sexuality, and the erotic. This includes, but is not limited to, sexual intimacy with yourself and others, as well as other aspects of being.

• you are feeling a lack of pleasure in your life and want to find new ways to cultivate it, or you just want to dedicate time and space to centering and prioritizing the many forms of pleasure.

This class is for both writers and non-writers. We will use writing as a tool for accessing, excavating, witnessing, and connecting with our bodies, our internal stories, and our creativity—but you do not have to be an experienced writer (or a writer at all) to do this. You are also always welcome to use speech, movement, and/or other art in response to prompts and exercises. 

That said, one of the takeaways of this course is that you will build a deeper relationship with the part of you that uses words and language to express yourself and the erotic and creative in your life. 

Additionally, this class is designed specifically for women and nonbinary people, including transwomen, ciswomen, femmes, and genderfluid, nonbinary or genderqueer folks. While we value and believe in the importance of healing writing spaces for cismen and transmen, we are less experienced in supporting men in their sexuality, and we also want to create a safe and inviting space specifically for women and nonbinary folks. 

This is not a therapy course; we are not therapists (though in preparing this course, we consulted with a certified relationship and sex therapist and will be bringing her to class for an “Ask a sex therapist” q+a!). We recognize working with sexuality and the erotic can bring up trauma and grief; we will have resources and supports available for this, but this is not a course designed to work with trauma specifically.

What can I expect to receive from this class? 

— weekly LIVE meetings on Zoom with Courtney + Ansley with activities, exercises, questions, sharing, and discussion.

— weekly lessons, readings, and exercises, in-class and for “homeplay.” Most of these will be writing-oriented, but are also useful for other art forms and ways of self-expression.

— exercises, recommended readings, tools, strategies, words of encouragement, and wisdom from professional artists (with a guest visit from a certified sex therapy professional)!

— guest speakers including renowned couples and sex therapist Jane Ryan, MA LMFT; burlesque queen + healing arts coach Perle Noire; sexual and reproductive health + justice educator Joie Rose, cMSW / cMPH; boudoir + couples photographer Kate Merrill

— a sense of belonging to a small, intimate community of like-minded people with a private group space for sharing

— a private community group online (Facebook) for sharing, connecting, and asking questions between sessions

— practices grounded in embodiment and movement, as well as consciousness and energy-based medicine (rooted in Courtney’s training in BodyTalk and EFT).

— meditations + visualizations to access different parts of your creative self. 

— a deepened relationship to your body, creativity, sensuality, and sexuality.

— increased pleasure in your sexuality and also in your creative work and daily living. 

— a new understanding and appreciation for how writing can help you heal your relationship to your body and sexuality.

Why Courtney and Ansley?

In addition to being partners in (erotic) crime and art, Courtney and Ansley are longtime friends. They met while earning Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After grad school, they have continued to work and make art together, publishing the sex-positive literary journal The Thought Erotic, planning and hosting writer’s retreats, and writing collaboratively.

Courtney E. Morgan is an author, teacher, and creativity consultant + coach, dedicated to helping people discover and harness their creative + sexual power and vitality. Her first collection of stories, The Seven Autopsies of Nora Hanneman, was published by FC2 Press in Spring 2017. Her writing has also been published in Lunch Ticket, Pleiades, The Red Anthology, American Book Review, and others. She is the founder and managing editor of The Thought Erotic literary journal on sexuality and gender. After teaching at CU Boulder for five years, she now lives in the Colorado foothills and teaches creative writing at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, as well as to folks dealing with poverty at shelters and libraries, and personalized on-site and online writing and healing courses.

Courtney is drawn to creating SPARK because she believes deeply in the intertwined and inseparable power and connection between our creative and erotic lifeforce. She has sensed, explored, and nurtured this symbiosis in her own work and life for many years—and through work and talks with clients, collaborators, and friends, has become aware of an intense collective need for normalizing and creating space for these conversations and explorations in community.

Courtney doesn’t feel called to create this course because she’s all “fixed and healed” and a perfect embodiment of owning creative-erotic power—but because she’s (forever) in the process of continuing to rewrite narratives of shame and fear and confusion, and to cultivate and nourish gentle relationship with this vulnerable, yet wildly powerful part of herself. And has felt strongly called to work with and around others in doing (their version of) the same.

Ansley Clark is a poet, teacher, and editor. Her poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. She taught creative writing and literature at the CU Boulder and community colleges for seven years before moving to Washington State. She teaches poetry workshops for adults, teens, and kids at Hugo House in Seattle and Bainbridge Island Artisan Resource network, as well as arts-based antiracism workshops with organizations around the country. She is the director of the writing center at South Puget South Community College.

Ansley believes that creative power and erotic power share a mutually nourishing, critical bond. In her early twenties, she realized the extent to which her Christian upbringing led to feelings of guilt and shame around not just sexuality, but also pleasure, joy, and creative freedom. She hopes to encourage in others the same kind of healthy, radical pleasure and creative freedom that she has worked for years to find.

She also believes that creativity and erotic connection are keys to breaking free of capitalism. This quote from adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism says it all: “Pleasure is not one of the spoils of capitalism. It is what our bodies, our human systems, are structured for; it is the aliveness and awakening, the gratitude and humility, the joy and celebration of being miraculous.”

Course Content

Here’s a taste of the nourishing, juicy goodies we offer in this course:

• Guest teachers, including sex and relationship therapist Jane Ryan, burlesque performer and sensual empowerment coach Perle Noire, boudoir and couples photographer Kate Merrill, and sexual wellbeing activist, Joie Rose.

• Writing and other arts-based exercises, such as writing your body’s story, writing your pleasure, imagining speculative worlds, creating erotic collage and erasure, and responding to your favorite sexy art.

• Meditation and movement to help you ground, self-soothe, release, visualize, and connect with yourself and others.

• Creative physical practices, including energy medicine, emotional freedom techniques, and breathwork.

• Readings from Audre Lorde, adrienne maree brown, Sharon Olds, Kate Baer, Natalie Diaz, Ada Limon, Lucille Clifton, Emily Nagoski, Melissa Febos, Mantuk Chia, Toko-pa Turner, Ursula Le Guin, Mona Eltahaway and many others.

Week 1:  Root—Getting (Re)Embodied, Writing Embodiment

• Inhabit your body through visualization

• Write your body’s story(ies) & language sensation

Week 2: Flow—Your Creative-Erotic Juiciness, Reclaiming + Finding New Language

• Find a new written or visual language for your genitals and/or sexuality through collage

• Conversations with our sex through TCM + Energy Medicine: the Strange Flows

Week 3: Center—Witnessing, Integrating + Sharing Shame + Shadow

• Excavate and understand shame through erasure poems

• Witness, release, burn ritual

• Ask a sex therapist with Jane Ryan

Week 4: Connect—Erotic Belonging, Relationship(s) to Others, to Self

• Engage in a creative community

• Draw and write your genitals

• Find pleasure through sexy selfies with Kate Merrill

Week 5: Feel—Self-Pleasure + Creative Pleasure

• Write your orgasm and/or pleasure

• Breathwork for self-pleasure

Week 6: Accept—Body Care

• Respond creatively to erotic art through ekphrastic exercises

• Connect with your body through burlesque-inspired rituals with Perle Noire

Week 7: Imagine—Visioning + Building Sexual + Creative Possibilities, Sexuality + Social Change

• Write new (better) erotic worlds

• Individual sexual wellbeing=collective sexual wellbeing w/ sex educator and activist Joie Waxler

Week 8: Expand + Contract

• Prompts and reflection on creative, erotic and pleasure rituals

• Wrapping up art/writing piece

Week 9: Share + Connect

• Community sharing + building

• Share artwork

• Reflect on your own and the group’s erotic writing and art

BONUSES

• Sign up by February 22nd for EARLY-BIRD PRICING! And these bonuses:

• The first three people who enroll also get a FREE 45-minute BodyTalk Session with Courtney! BodyTalk is a consciousness-based healthcare system that supports your own body in guiding itself to alignment and healing. Courtney has studied BodyTalk for over five years and is currently in the certification process. Distance sessions are available online.

• The first ten people who enroll get an advance exercise to connect to your creativity + sexuality!

PRICING:

Nine-week course, 1.5 hours per week LIVE instruction, in-class and home-play exercises, readings, resources, guest speakers, community forum, and additional resources.

• Early-bird Price: ONLY $455

• Regular Price: $495

• Payment Plan: 3 payments of $165