In Conversation is a companion series to In This Body the Podcast, offering shorter, slower moments drawn from the wider well of dialogue. These are distilled encounters with thinkers and feelers whose work lives at the intersection of embodiment, sexuality, creativity, and spirit. Each episode invites you into a more intimate pace—thirty minutes of attunement, reflection, and quiet inquiry into the ways the body remembers, responds, and reclaims. Paired with gentle journal prompts, these offerings are an invitation to not just listen, but to feel what stirs within your very own body.
Betty Martin
Betty Martin is a somatic educator, former chiropractor, and the creator of the Wheel of Consent—a framework that has transformed how individuals and practitioners understand touch, power, and receiving. With over four decades of experience in hands-on bodywork, sacred intimacy, and sexological bodywork, she has become a leading voice in the fields of embodiment and consent. Her book The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent is widely celebrated for its clarity and compassion. Betty is also the founder of the School of Consent, where she continues to train facilitators around the world in trauma-informed, consent-based touch practices that centre empowerment, curiosity, and agency.
You can find out more about Betty Martin here.
The Conversation
What if receiving wasn’t a performance, but a practice? What if pleasure wasn’t something given, but something awakened from within? In this episode, Betty Martin—author of The Art of Receiving and Giving and creator of the Wheel of Consent—offers us a language and somatic map for exploring how we relate to pleasure, touch, and consent. We talk about how cultural and childhood conditioning shapes our sense of deserving, and how the body can relearn safety through slowness and attunement. This is a conversation about returning to the self—through three-minute games, sacred attention, and the radical act of asking for what you want.
Highlights
00:48 – Betty’s journey from chiropractic care to sacred intimacy
04:19 – Understanding the Wheel of Consent as a practice of spiritual honesty
07:43 – Why asking for what we want is inherently vulnerable
26:49 – Pleasure as a physiological phenomenon available to us at any moment
Embody the Material
Questions to sit with:
What does receiving feel like in your body—truly, fully receiving?
When was the last time you asked for what you wanted without apology?
Reflect on a time you “went along” with touch you didn’t actually enjoy. What did your body know then?
What would it mean to trust your pleasure as a source of intelligence?
Additional Invitations:
Try the “three-minute game” Betty mentions. With a partner or alone, notice what arises when you name what you want.
Choose one moment today to notice something pleasurable: the texture of your clothes, the warmth of your tea, the feel of sunlight on your skin. Let that noticing be enough.
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