WORKSHOPS, TRAININGS, & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
EDSE-created and EDSE-endorsed workshops, trainings, and professional development events provide education, research, perspective, and best practices related to some of the most talked-about and culturally relevant topics today. Unlike most other education organizations, EDSE ensures content centers justice, prioritizes critical thinking, and involves compassionate self-reflection in order to ensure attendees of all experience levels leave with an expanded mind, renewed curiosity, and invaluable confidence in their understanding of the subject matter. Each program is held online and provides CEs and training hours that can be used to fulfill licensure, renewal, and certification requirements.
Scroll below to view EDSE’s upcoming lineup, including additional workshops and trainings that EDSE highly recommends!
Fantasy, Sex Dreams, & the Subconscious: A compassionate exploration of the relational lessons they provide
May 3-5, 2024
9 a.m.-1 p.m. PT
$450 general / $525 pay it forward / $299 equity
10 AASECT + EDSE CEs
Online workshop
An enlightened and unconventional professional development training for sex educators, sex therapists, and other sexuality professionals who want to build a more accurate and expansive understanding of sex dreams and fantasy without the influence of patriarchy, heteronormativity, allonormativity, and sexual shame. In an open-minded digital space, attendees will explore their own relationship to sex dreams and fantasy, identify common misconceptions and myths, and learn how to apply the concepts outlined in this workshop to their clients’ personal and relational work. Fantasy, Sex Dreams, & the Subconscious is co-facilitated by Anne Hodder-Shipp, CSE, and Paula Leech, LMFT, CST, CSTS.
By the end of this course participants will:
Be better prepared to skillfully think about and discuss sex dreams and fantasy beyond their literal presentations
Better understand the role fantasy plays in building and maintaining an authentic connection to ourselves and others
Gain a more expansive perspective of sex dreams and fantasies free from pathology and personal judgment
More confidently understand sex dreams and fantasies as relationship enhancers, not threats
Feel less rattled by the provocative, challenging, or downright scary narratives and visuals of some fantasies and sex dreams
Develop compassionate curiosity about their own sex dreams and fantasy experiences
Gain practice working with fantasy and sex dreams as shame-reduction and harm-reduction tools
Better understand the complexity and creativity of the subconscious mind and how it helps us process our emotional selves
Feel prepared to help clients navigate, process, and let go of emotional entanglement in their fantasies and sex dreams
Additional details, including AASECT Core Knowledge Areas and learning outcomes, are available at the signup link.
Advanced SAR: Sex & Drugs
Oct. 25-26, 2024
11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. PT
$395 (payment plans available)
10 AASECT CEs + 10 EDSE CEs
Online workshop
Bianca Laureano, PhD, MA, CSE, CSES, and Anne Hodder-Shipp, CSE, present this intensive, two-day training for practicing and emerging professionals especially those working with those in recovery.
Professional trainings about sex and substance use are rare, and those that exist often center clinical or legal perspectives that do not realistically reflect our clients’ varied relationships to drugs and alcohol. This Advanced Sexual Attitude Reassessment (SAR) is designed to help clinicians, educators, and service professionals investigate their perceptions and biases of the various mind-altering substances present in our communities while expanding their understanding of the roles these substances might play in our clients’ (and our own) lives – especially our sex lives. In this SAR, we will use a harm-reduction framework to explore ideas, experiences, and attitudes about sobriety and recovery; how money, power, ableism, and white supremacy may inform our biases and judgments; and how frameworks like abolition, disability justice, liberation could shift and expand our perspectives.
This unique professional development training is designed to help attendees identify, challenge, and explore their perspectives, biases, knowledge gaps, and judgments about sex and substance use. We use multimedia, engaging small and large group discussion, introspective activities, and interactive exercises to allow participants to examine their feelings and values and process them with compassion.
This SAR will:
Expand ideas, perspectives, and attitudes about substance use beyond right/wrong, good/bad, legal/illegal, healthy/unhealthy binaries
Discuss substance use, sex, consent, and pleasure using a harm reduction lens
Feature perspectives and experiences that may challenge attendees’ feelings or values
Encourage clarity about professional values and limitations, and when to refer out
Discuss the medicalization of psychedelics for mental health treatment
This SAR will not:
Tell attendees how to think, feel, or talk about substance use, sex, and pleasure
Discuss substance use through the lens of addiction or abstinence
Instruct how to use substances to enhance sex or pleasure, or how to promote or discourage it with clients
Advocate for substance use
Advocate for sobriety or abstinence
Additional details, including AASECT Core Knowledge Areas and learning outcomes, are available at the signup link.
Here’s what past attendees had to say:
“Bianca and Anne are very skilled at creating content that is thought provoking and leading discussion that allow participants to feel brave, share, and discuss.”
“What worked for me: The trust placed in me to show up how I am able to in the moment; the mixture of discussion, viewing of content, and breakout group opportunity; the variety of content provided to challenge my biases and assumptions.”
“I really appreciated the effort put in to create an accessible and accommodating space which helped me feel safe to actively participate and integrate the discussions. I also enjoyed the variety in perspectives covered and how this revealed some of the more problematic assumptions that were actually behind some of my previous views on sexuality in relation to substance use. It was full of lovely ‘check yourself and whether you actually believe that’ moments! Thank you!”
“I really appreciated the accessible environment and the modeling of centering our access needs. I also appreciated the recognition of the social context in which we live as it relates to drugs (i.e., War on Drugs, systemic oppression/racism, etc.). There was also lots of time given to the conversations, so we could all share our thoughts.”
“I really loved this SAR and appreciated all the wisdom brought to the space. I am so grateful that there is a training like this to talk about sex, sexuality, and substances. There aren’t any others that I know of!”
“I (un)learned sooo soooo much and I am deeply grateful for this life changing experience. Thank you both for facilitating such an incredible and intentional container.”
“I appreciated how Zoom allowed me to take care of my access needs in a way in-person would not. And also that it allowed for a range in perspectives based on the differing geographic locations of participants.”
“I feel grateful to have access to so many online resources via this SAR, and to be able to connect with folks from all over. I think the value of having a virtual gathering in this context was really big, because of the way we got to see a lot of differences in how drug use is treated, and how sexuality is discussed in people’s communities.”
Other recommended trainings:
Sexual & Reproductive Justice
JUNE 7, 2024 10 A.M.-2 P.M. PT
$275
4 AASECT CES + 4 EDSE CES
Reproductive Justice (RJ) is a framework and practice that guides us to do the work rooted in body autonomy and self-determination. When reflecting upon how we have come to witness the RJ movement expand, there is a deep connection to a global health equity approach for young women and girls. This course offers an historical overview of how RJ came to be, the global connections, successes, and missed opportunities that have also expanded to include sexual justice.
Unlearning the BS: Anatomy & Physiology
JUNE 13, 2024 10 A.M.-2 P.M. pt
$275
4 AASECT CES + 4 EDSE CES
Why do we put a gender on our genitals or internal organs when they do not need to be gendered? Our lungs, stomachs and colons do not have a gender, and this course will begin the unlearning process! Guided by trans and intersex community scholars who have expanded our understanding of bodies, this course will explore how we may create more inclusive and affirming experiences for all bodyminds! It is recommended to have taken the Intersectionality and Disability Justice courses prior to this one.
Abortion in the US: Realities, Laws, & Healing
july 6, 2024 noon-4 p.m. pt
$275
4 AASECT CES + 4 EDSE CES
The Overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 created even more challenges and criminalization for many pregnant people to find quality care to terminate a pregnancy and those who support them. What we think we know about abortion is not exactly correct; especially as new legislation and decades of organizing for body autonomy have demonstrated. This class offers an overview of what options exist for pregnant people and what to expect, support for pre and post care, social impact of policies, climate chaos impact on abortion, and debunking myths while reminding us communities of color have always had their own rituals and practices for pregnancy options and have been organizing for generations. This class is taught with equity, reproductive justice, and disability justice frameworks.
(How Do We Get to) A More Inclusive History of the US Sexuality Field
JULY 16, 2024 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. PT
$275
4 AASECT CES + EDSE CEs
Wondering where are all the Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) are in the history of the US sexuality field? So are we! This course fills in the numerous gaps in the contributions, research, labor, and lives of BIPOC to the US. Honoring the contributions of some white sex professionals and making space for a more inclusive understanding of how BIPOC have also created new forms of healing, knowledge production, and research will be offered along with how a framework of dehumanization has guided the field and must be shifted. Learn something new and challenge the single story narrative we’ve been taught about the US sexuality field. It’s time to grow.
EDSE programming is trauma-aware, expansive, intersectional, and affirming.