Shadow Play

Shadow Play

BDSM for Self Discovery and Transformation

This three-day workshop offers an invitation to befriend the parts you tend to avoid and push away, explore power and sensation as gateways to self discovery, and craft scenes that open new realms of intimacy and potency with play partners. You’ll work with your edges and patterns, and learn the foundational tools to craft transformational scenes.

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Deep in hidden corners of our being, we each carry the patterns and parts we have deemed too dark to welcome or too entrenched to bother addressing. Turning toward them can spark fear, a protective force that tries to keep us safe but also separates us from the beauty and gifts these aspects of us contain. At the same time these parts exert a powerful attractive force, a gravitational pull that reminds us–if we listen–that our greatest growth is often found when we play at our edges.

This workshop is a chance to develop new skill and capacity in your dance with shadow–your own and others’–within a container that powerfully honors individual capacity, autonomy, and choice. We will use the language and tools of BDSM to craft scenes that invite more of ourselves forward to be seen, enjoyed, and befriended.

Be ready to go deep, and to be fully present in mind, body, and heart for the entire workshop. Together we will meet the shadow with curiosity, reverence, and playfulness, and uncover the unexpected gifts waiting just beyond the edge of the light.

Dates & timing

Saturday 10th October - Monday 12th October.

Saturday and Sunday: 10am - 6pm

Monday: 10am - 5pm

Location: Metro Vancouver, BC

What this workshop explores

Through guided embodied practices, relational exercises, demos, Q&A and open play we will cover:

• Working with your nervous system to play at your edge while staying in your window of capacity (and how to come back if you accidentally tip over)
• Befriending shadowy parts and patterns through scene play
• Externalising subtle energetics to witness them more fully and gain deeper embodied understanding
• The role of the dom, sub, sadist and masochist archetypes in transformational scenes
• Using sensation and intensity to control depth and pacing
• How to identify themes and patterns that are ripe for scene play
• Working with resistance and orienting to it as a compass rather than a roadblock
• Using ritual elements to increase potency and intentio
• Growing our capacity to hold and welcome more of ourselves and more of each other

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Who This Is For

Shadow Play is designed for people who have already done meaningful personal, somatic, or relational work and have a high degree of self awareness and self regulation. Participants should have at least some experience with BDSM at a minimum (either introductory workshops or in your personal life). This workshop is not for absolute beginners. Our application process is intended to ensure that there is a good fit on all sides.

Application form: https://forms.gle/LtWK6LhxiG7aaSvk8

Simone is available for calls if you are considering the workshop but are unsure about your experience level or if it’s right for you.

This workshop may be a good fit if you:

- Are curious about BDSM as a modality for breakthrough and transformation

- Want to explore those parts of yourself that don’t usually feel safe to be seen - without blame, shame, needing to fix or hide

- Long for deeper trust, connection, and presence in intimacy

- Want to step into your full power, vulnerability and authenticity - in your play, your relationships, and your everyday life

This is an experiential learning space - not a play party or group therapy. Erotic energy is welcome, but not expected or required. All practices are opt-in, consent-forward, and designed to support sovereignty and choice.

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Our Approach

Our facilitation weaves together:

- Somatic awareness and nervous system literacy

- Ethical BDSM frameworks (consent, negotiation, aftercare, repair)

- Tools and perspectives from the broader world of BDSM (pleasure and pain, domination and submission, sadism and masochism, freedom and restriction, etc.)

- A strong safeword system and clearly established workshop-wide boundaries

- Relational attunement and honest communication

- Play, curiosity, and embodied experimentation

Participants are encouraged to honor their own pace, track their edges, and value their “no” as much as their “yes.

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TICKETS:

🎟 Super Early Bird - $575 (first 5 tickets, or until July 31st)

🎟 Early Bird - $650 (next 5 tickets, or until August 31st)

🎟 General Admission - $775 CAD (until sold out)

Each tier closes once it sells out or the date passes, whichever happens first.

Pre-sale waitlist is now closed. Tickets launch to general public on Thursday 9th July at 12 noon.

NOTE: This Shadow Play workshop is by application only.

Registration requires a $100 deposit. We’ll then review your application and if accepted, the remaining payment is due within 7 days. If your application is not accepted we will refund your deposit in full. The application is part of a mutual discernment process to ensure the workshop is a good fit for you and that you are well-resourced to step into the depth of this work. As a general guideline, if this page resonates with you and you feel you meet the criteria, you may be a good fit.

Tickets are 50% refundable up to 30 days before the event, after which they are non-refundable.

Tickets are non-transferable.

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Meet the team

Carlin Gettliffe - Rope and Flame

Carlin is a wilderness rite of passage guide, therapeutic dom, kink/BDSM educator, and somatic coach. From the time he first picked up a shibari rope over a decade ago, Carlin has been weaving the tools and techniques of BDSM with various other frameworks to synthesize unique and powerful experiences. These complementary modalities include relational somatic trauma therapy, nature connection, gender reconciliation work, archetypal embodiment, and frameworks from the Light Dark Institute.

His approach to BDSM invites people to tap into and embody their darker selves from a place of reverence and responsibility. His teaching emphasizes physical and energetic attunement, creative spontaneity, and dynamic range.

Simone Ceri - Empowered Pleasure (Assisting)

Simone is a Somatica-trained Sex and Relationship coach, facilitator and self-proclaimed ‘conscious hedonist'. As an Oxford-educated 'good girl' and corporate professional turned erotic guide, her work lives at the intersection of the erotic and the everyday - bridging worlds between the boardroom and the bedroom.Her approach weaves together Somatica, Urban Tantra (Barbara Carrellas), authentic relating and circling, Light Dark, and a deep love of dance and the outdoors.

Simone helps people reconnect with their bodies, desires, and authentic expression, with equal parts play and depth. Her guiding question: how can we make the most of this 'one wild and precious life'?