EP 7 - Consent Is a Privilege: Amina Peterson on What the Body Knows

Note: This episode includes a first-person disclosure of rape, and discussion of sexual coercion, sex work, racialized harm in wellness spaces, and the limits of "consent" as it's usually defined. Amina Peterson has spent more than two decades in one of the most vulnerable rooms there is - the one where people bring the parts of themselves they've been most shamed for. She's a somatic sexologist and the founder of the Amina Institute, and what makes her rare is that she's built actual structures to get ahead of harm instead of only cleaning it up afterward. We start where she started: as the youngest, darkest, largest, and poorest person in room after room of predominantly white erotic and tantra spaces; and the water ritual that made her realize these places hadn't been built with her in mind. From there, the moment a client's body froze under her hands, and what it taught her about consent: that the version most of us run on was built to hold up in court, and is close to useless for the body. I share the piece of my own story: the day, years after I left my former teacher, that the words "it was rape" came out of me on a bodywork table, long after I'd reasoned my way to the opposite conclusion. And Amina walks through the three tools she now treats as non-negotiable: slowing down, the Council of Six, and Authentic Consent, and the test I speak of - how easy is it to leave? When it's hard to leave, that's when it tips toward cult. Chapters 04:18 · This Isn't for Black People 10:23 · The Moment a Client's Body Froze 12:00 · Consent Is a Privilege, Not a Given 15:10 · "It Was R*pe": When the Body Remembers 19:01 · Slowing Down: Why Practitioners Fly Past 24:32 · Capitalism Out of Our Vaginal Canals 27:20 · The Council of Six 39:18 · Who Holds Your Story? 49:52 · Authentic Consent: The Third Tool 54:38 · Leaving Is Health About Amina: Amina Peterson is a somatic sexologist, EroSomatic bodyworker, erotic abolitionist, community curator, and sensual space & medicine holder. She is the founder of the https://www.theaminainstitute.com/ (formerly Atlanta Institute of Tantra) and appeared as a healer on Netflix's Sex, Love & goop.   / theaminainstitute   https://goddessamina.substack.com/ https://goddessamina.substack.com/s/f... Go deeper with the reflection prompt and the themes of this episode on https://heenaconnects.substack.com/ If you're looking for more support on your own journey, https://app.paperbell.com/packages/23... Connect with Healing After Harm and Heena   / healingafterharmpodcast      / @healingafterharm     / heenaconnects   https://heenaconnects.substack.com https://heenaconnects.com