The Sanctuary hosts donation-based half-day experiences in Salem, MA.
The space is intended for women & assigned female at birth (AFAB) bodies who seek liberation through embodiment.
We facilitate activities & experiences that guide community to come into new ways of relating through consensual touch & energetic exchanges that include sensuality.
Un-thawing ourselves from the patriarchal scripts of domination, scarcity, hyper-sexualization and shaming; re-discovering what we truly desire and opening to new depths of intimacy and connection.
Meet The Sanctuary
The Sanctuary is a womb like healing space in downtown Salem, MA. This three room suite holds transformative experiences for individuals & groups who seek to break free from normative scripts. The Sanctuary holds people as they cross thresholds for collective liberation and birth new ways of being in themselves and the world. The space is filled with crystals, plants, oracle decks, pillows, and blankets.
Upcoming Sanctuary Experiences
In The Sanctuary you can expect to be guided through experiences which include:
visualizations & meditations, somatic inquiries & partnered exercises, experiential education on consent & boundaries, rituals to grieve & discover pleasure, and space to play & rest.
The container is curated for you to:
Authentically express yourself and cultivate nurturing and satisfying relationships
Feel safe in your body
Experience the belonging that is yours by being a human on this earth
Face your grief and pleasure without fear
Use pleasure and play to heal
Dive into ritual and the wisdom of your body
Cultivate a sense of sisterhood and community
Re-write what sex, sexuality, and sensuality mean to you
Release shame and step into your power
This is a space that welcomes and encourages sensuality.
Sensuality is embodiment. It is feeling deeply into your senses and allowing yourself to derive pleasure from them.
There will not be any sexual exchanges in this space.
This is a space where your sexuality and sensations of arousal are welcome. Though never expected or required.
This space affirms that we are sexual beings simply by being alive. This is a safe space to discover what sexuality means to you - outside of the heteronormative patriarchal scripts. This space knows that sensuality, pleasure, and arousal are not inherently sexual.
We are sexual beings and all of you is welcome here.
The Sanctury lives outside of the normative scripts of what it looks like to connect with our bodies, each other, and pleasure.
We explore sacred relationship with our selves, each other, and the natural world.
We lean into receiving and remembering pleasure as our birthright.
We deepen into vulnerability.
We discover our authentic expression and desires.
We reclaim our voices, bodies, sensuality, and sexuality.
This is sacred and radical work.
Here at The Sanctuary, we know there is something more available to us beyond the patriarchal scripts of connection, intimacy, and sex.
We relax into our bodies. Learning to hear and trust their impulses, messages, and desires.
We discover that there is an abundance of space and love for everyone to be seen, heard, and held.
We remember another way of being together in mutuality and communal care that keeps us nourished and empowered.
Through embodiment, we each step into our gifts.
Rooted in our hearts and connection to the earth - our life force energy flows freely through our voices and actions - rippling out into a new world.
We know our innate belonging and fall in love with life.
Re-wire patterns that keep you disconnected.
Re-write worn out stories.
Re-claim your body, desires, voice, and power.
The Sanctuary is a refuge from the normative narratives that keep us small, ashamed, and disconnected.
We offer a non-judgmental space for you and your body to be exactly as they are.
The Sanctuary resides at the intersection between community, connection and unapologetic self-love.
Meet Your Facilitator
Ariel is a cosmic midwife of the soul, guiding others to re-inhabit their bodies and voices. A queer witch, fierce and soft, Ariel knows that our greatest gifts live in the places we fear most. She is obsessed with ceremonial cacao, and pleasure as medicine. A singer, artist, and musician, Ariel weaves sacred dimensions into spaces with traditional medicine songs and original compositions. She's turned on by creating containers for people to be seen, held, and explore altered states of consciousness. Eco-sexual tendencies, Ariel believes in the power of touch and connection to earth elements as medicine for spiritual and emotional wounds. She emphasizes the importance of spaces for grief.
In the Sanctuary, she envisions a community based on care, interdependence, and connection to the land—a place to tend to grief and pleasure, fostering change in broader communities. Her vision is a world of people in love with life, leaning in to be seen and held, holding the light for one another to liberate our gifts.
At The Sanctuary:
We emphasize choosing over doing
We listen to our bodies and move at the pace of trust. We enter the space with the understanding that we will all make different choices for our selves. We honor our own, and each others, choices. Moving from a place of consensual relationship with ourselves and one another.
We enter the space with the understanding that we are responsible to move at our own pace.
Everything we offer is an invitation. The foundation of this experience is to listen to what your body wants. We intend to move through this experience from a place of consensual relationship with our selves. You always have a choice.
We move beyond binaries
We hold nuance and complexity. We acknowledge that multiple truths may exist at once.
Individual difference is welcome and celebrated
We hold sensitivity to the diverse range of experiences, identities, and bodies present. We recognize that all bodies are affected by colonization and that our ancestry and race have an impact on our bodies and how we show up in spaces. We are mindful of how power dynamics show up and actively dismantle oppression.
We value transparency and curiosity
We value honesty around how we are feeling and what we want and need. Big feelings will show up in this space. We will invite an orientation of curiosity as we move through the space and ourselves.