Ethics & Accountability
Published, versioned, and kept in public.
This page exists because of what this field has done, not in spite of it. It carries a version number. It is reviewed annually and after any upheld complaint. Previous versions stay published rather than being replaced quietly, so that what was promised remains checkable against what is promised now.
The Tantra, NeoTantra and somatic sexuality world has a documented history of boundary violation, of persons who claim Authority as Teachers who became unaccountable, and of organisations that wrote their ethics after the incident rather than before it.
I spent a decade inside it. I am not writing from the outside.
An Ethics page is not a safeguard. Structure is. What follows is structure, and the parts that are still missing are named as missing.
What this work is, and what it is not.
Ambiguity about scope is how harm gets room to happen. So the line is drawn explicitly rather than left to be inferred.
- Somatic and embodiment education
- A structured, boundaried, educational practice
- Client-directed throughout
- Concerned with awareness, agency and capacity in your own body
- Psychotherapy or counselling
- Medical treatment, or diagnosis of any condition
- A sexual service, of any description
- Surrogate partner work
Five rules that hold at every tier, without exception.
These are not guidance. A practitioner who breaks one is not practising this modality, whatever else they call it.
Touch, where it happens at all, is one-directional: practitioner to client, for the client's learning. The client does not touch the practitioner.
The practitioner remains clothed at all times.
There is no sexual contact between practitioner and client. Not in any tier, not under any framing, not by mutual agreement.
The client directs. The practitioner offers, the client chooses, and the client can stop anything at any moment without explaining why.
A practitioner who is not competent to hold what has opened stops, returns to safety, and refers. Continuing past your own edge is a breach, not dedication.
The rule that cannot be skipped without leaving the method.
Most codes of conduct sit alongside the practice, which means they can be quietly ignored while the practice continues. Here the safety principle is the structure of the work itself.
The modality works through four layers, in order: nervous system, fluid, form, subtle. The governing rule is that no layer is worked deeper than the one above it can currently hold.
Consent, regulation and boundary live in the first layer, and the first layer gates everything beneath it. A practitioner cannot reach the deep work by going around the consent work, because the deep work is only reachable through it. Most harm in this field is somebody reaching for the fourth layer while the first is not established.
Sessions never end at depth. The return upward is mandatory. If time runs short, the descent is cut and never the return.
The asymmetry does not end when the session does.
This is the specific failure mode of transformational work, and naming it vaguely is how it persists.
No relationship with clients
No sexual or romantic relationship with a current client, and none for twelve months after the working relationship ends. The number is stated so it cannot be negotiated in the moment.
Dual relationships declared
Where a practitioner and client have another connection, it is declared and, where avoidable, avoided. Small communities make this common rather than rare.
No recruitment during the work
Practitioners do not sell trainings, retreats or further containers to a client during an active working relationship.
Supervision is mandatory
Every practitioner holds a supervision arrangement with someone who is not their own trainer. Somebody outside the room hears about the room. This does more for safety than any code.
What is held, how, and what is never published.
Sessions are confidential. The limits on that are the ordinary ones: a serious risk to your life or someone else's, or a legal requirement. Those limits are stated at the start of the work, not discovered later.
The Field Study draws on intake forms written over a decade. It publishes aggregates only. No names, no verbatim lines, and no theme reported at a count small enough to identify the people inside it. A quote from an intake form is identifiable to the person who wrote it, so none is ever used.
Consent for research use is asked separately from consent for the work, and declining it changes nothing about the work.
A route that does not run through me.
Complaints processes that terminate at the founder are the reason this field has the history it has. Everybody knows it, and saying otherwise insults the person reading.
How a complaint is handled
- It does not come to me first. The route below reaches an independent contact who is outside this modality and outside my network.
- You are never required to face the practitioner. No mediation is imposed as a condition of being heard.
- At least one independent person sits on any panel. Not a colleague, not a graduate, not a friend.
- Outcomes are published annually in anonymised aggregate, including the number received and how many were upheld. A year with no complaints is reported as such.
- Certification can be withdrawn, and withdrawal is published.
Named, rather than quietly absent.
This structure is written ahead of the modality it will govern. Some of it is therefore intent rather than fact, and pretending otherwise would undo the point of the page.
The independent contact is unnamed
The complaints route needs a real person who has agreed to hold it. Until there is a name on this page, treat the route as designed rather than operating.
No practitioners are certified
Nobody is certified under this modality, because the certification pathway does not exist yet. If somebody tells you they are certified in it, that is not yet true.
No external recognition
This standard is set here, not by a statutory regulator or a professional body. Certification would mean assessment against a published standard. It would not mean licensure.
Insurance requirements are not final
Practitioners will be required to hold professional indemnity cover. The specific requirement is being established.
Review. This page is versioned and reviewed annually, and after any upheld complaint. Previous versions stay published rather than being replaced silently, so that changes to what was promised remain visible. Version 0.1, August 2026.